# Believers: What would it take to convince you your faith is false? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 9, 2011, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/believers-what-would-it-take-to-convince-you-your-faith-is-false/566936 "2011-01-09T01:32:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/believers-what-would-it-take-to-convince-you-your-faith-is-false/566936/81 "2011-01-14T17:14:39Z")
> [@Blaster\_Master](#): > > Let me try an analogy. Imagine you’re playing a game of tic-tac-toe. If one knows nothing about the game and choices of moves are essentially random, sometimes one will make good choices that might lead to a win or tie, and sometimes one might make poor choices that lead to a loss. I’d equate this utter lack of knowledge of the game to much how we experience free will in every day experience. As you get more experience playing, you start to notice patterns and can more often avoid moves that lead to losses. This is the process of us learning and understanding the moral and ethical rules that should help us understand what choices we should and shouldn’t make. Eventually, because tic-tac-toe has a small number of states, one can objectively know exactly what move to make in any given state to guarantee one will not lose. One is still able to make poor choices, but being able to see and understand totality of the consequences, one will not want to choose anything but the optimal move. This is how I see the ideal sense of free-will. Interesting analogy. I can understand why this idea of the how the universe works would appeal to a non-fundamentalist believer in God. But consider its limitations. My problem with Christian religion is that learning through experience goes against the “rules”. The Bible and God are supposed to supply us with the answers to the game of life, not the living experience itself. Human beings are born unto the world naked and illiterate and ignorant, but instead of being commanded to go forth and learn and discover the meaning of life on our own experientially, we are told to go to church, pray to God, and have faith that He will take care of us. The answer always boils down to this: Seek answers from Him, not from our own brains. So ultimately we are expected to accept the rules of life because they’ve been laid down by decree. Being educated by the living experience is irrelevant. Learning through experience inevitably leads to sin, and we are told to fear sin. So we must follow the rules that are spelled out to us on day 1, in church. Or risk God’s displeasure. And for what? What is the point of this whole exercise? That’s what I don’t get. If the meaning of life is to learn that God has all the answers and is the guide to righteous living, why do we even need Earth to learn this? How does the knowledge we acquire through religion really help us in the afterlife? What purpose does it serve? Is it all because God has this deep-seated need to prove that humanity will come around to accepting that he’s the boss? ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2011, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/believers-what-would-it-take-to-convince-you-your-faith-is-false/566936/82 "2011-01-16T05:11:58Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Serious question. It always seems that believers have some way (and rarely if ever an intellectually honest way) to answer the “problem of evil,” or explain away science that seems to contradict doctrine, or to rationalize any other objection that skepticism might raise. > > Hypothetically speaking, what data or phenomena or events can you imagine that, if you observed or experienced them, would convince you, on a level as deep as any conversion or rebirth in your past, that God does not exist; or that God is not what you think he is; or that St. Paul was wrong and Mohammed was right or vice-versa; or that God does not care at all what you believe or how you worship or whether you worship; or that God is indifferent to your “sins” or the state of your “soul”; or anything else flatly incompatible with your faith and doctrine? In order to be convinced that Christianity is not true, I would have to encounter an intellectual argument against Christianity that is more convincing than all the pro-Christianity arguments I have ever seen. That’s the only thing that would do the job. I was an atheist once. Then, after making my first encounter with a serious case in favor of Christianity, I converted. Since I have changed my worldview due to a convincing argument once, I am well aware of the possibility of it happening again. However, the arguments against Christianity that I’ve encountered are so weak that the possibility does not loom terribly large in my consciousness. Similarly, for instance, it’s possible that someone will, in the future, convince me that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, but I do not find it likely. > [@Blalron](#): > > Let me throw out a hypothetical for believers: What if we set up an experiment where you sat down and wore a magnet helmet that can manipulate the brain, and induce the exact same warm fuzzy feeling of pure love, that you believe to be bestowed on you by Jesus (or whatever deity you believe in). Would that give you second thoughts about whether you’re experiences are caused by the supernatural, or are purely a product of the physical brain? Nope. First, I know of no one who describes an encounter with Jesus as a “warm fuzzy feeling”. Second, since the first such helmet [turned out to be a fraud](http://www.citeulike.org/user/danielhind/article/5917291), that would seem to merit extreme skepticism of any further claims in that direction. Third, even if there was a helmet which certain persons could put on and then believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States, it would not shift me towards believing that he was born elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2011, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/believers-what-would-it-take-to-convince-you-your-faith-is-false/566936/83 "2011-01-16T07:01:01Z")
> [@Surbey](#): > > Knowing there is a god and knowing there isn’t a god are both unanswerable questions and both require faith in that assumption. That is not to say they are equal though; they are most certainly not. There is LIKELY no god. But to say definitively there is no god requires faith because you can’t prove there is no god. It’s very unlikely there is a god but you can’t prove it . Atheism has nothing to do with definitively saying there is no God. Atheism is the lack of belief in god, and strong atheism is the belief that there is no god. Belief and knowledge are two different things. I can believe that I know which horse will win the third race at Belmont, but I sure don’t know it. Defining atheism as a claim to knowing that there is no god pretty much defines it out of existence for anyone who isn’t a nitwit. There are an almost infinite number of possible gods - how can anyone claim that none exist. Some gods, like the god of the deists, has no impact on the universe after the creation by definition. How can we know it doesn’t exist? And atheists do not hold this position. In 35 years of discussing this issue on-line, I have run into exactly one atheist who claimed he knew no gods exist. And he was an idiot. If you care to start a poll, I’m reasonably sure that Doper atheists would unanimously say they do not know that there are no gods. Given your description of what you believe, or don’t believe, you are an atheist. Deal with it. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2011, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/believers-what-would-it-take-to-convince-you-your-faith-is-false/566936/84 "2011-01-16T21:37:52Z")
> [@Blalron](#): > > Here’s a hypothetical for Christians. Archeologists in Jerusalem unearth a skeleton, which is carbon dated to 33 A.D, nailed to a cross that reads “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” Would this cause you any level of doubt? Why should it? It would have to be a forgery. If a crucifixion victim in those days was buried at all, he was not buried still attached to his cross. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2011, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/believers-what-would-it-take-to-convince-you-your-faith-is-false/566936/85 "2011-01-17T05:48:17Z")
> [@x-ray\_vision](#): > > No faith is needed to be an atheist. Of course faith is required to be an atheist. You need to have faith that you’ve come to the utterly correct conclusion. If you doubted that, you’d be agnostic. As for the OP, I can’t imagine how you’d go about convincing anyone of the non-existence of God. What sort of evidence did you have in mind? ---
**Author:** ![SmartAlecCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/67e7ee/32.png) [@SmartAlecCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAlecCat)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2011, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/believers-what-would-it-take-to-convince-you-your-faith-is-false/566936/86 "2011-01-17T11:59:27Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Of course faith is required to be an atheist. You need to have faith that you’ve come to the utterly correct conclusion. I suppose in some sense. But isn’t faith what you need when you have no evidence? I have faith that the sun will come up tomorrow, but that is based on a huge body of scientific evidence and valid predictions that lead me to that belief. There is simply no evidence (I mean the scientific/rational/physical/reproducible stuff, not the woo) that god is in any way real. And what’s this “utterly correct”? Most atheists accept the possibility that they could be wrong, and will revisit any beliefs when confronted with evidence. The “faith” group simply ignores evidence and uses ‘faith’ as a replacement for an honest appraisal of evidence. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2011, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/believers-what-would-it-take-to-convince-you-your-faith-is-false/566936/87 "2011-01-17T12:06:58Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Of course faith is required to be an atheist. You need to have faith that you’ve come to the utterly correct conclusion. Nonsense; unbelief is the logical default. If a claim is made that something exists, it’s the job of the person making the claim to produce some evidence for it. Faith isn’t needed to assume that everything we have evidence of is true; that’s the opposite of faith. > [@elfkin477](#): > > If you doubted that, you’d be agnostic. More nonsense. Agnosticism is just a form of weaseling. No one is “agnostic” about unicorns or faeries or Zeus; people are only “agnostic” about superstitions that are powerful enough that they fear offending the believers who hold to them. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2011, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/believers-what-would-it-take-to-convince-you-your-faith-is-false/566936/88 "2011-01-17T12:15:03Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > As for the OP, I can’t imagine how you’d go about convincing anyone of the non-existence of God. What sort of evidence did you have in mind? A way is found to restart the human brain safely after it has been dormant for, say, ten years and you are able to remember everything, including your own death. You are revived, and have no memory of anything happening after your last seconds on Earth. While this wouldn’t _prove_ that there isn’t a God, it _would_ be evidence against an afterlife. ---
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2011, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/believers-what-would-it-take-to-convince-you-your-faith-is-false/566936/89 "2011-01-17T13:21:35Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Of course faith is required to be an atheist. You need to have faith that you’ve come to the utterly correct conclusion. If you doubted that, you’d be agnostic. Atheism doesn’t require believing you’ve come to the utterly correct conclusion; all that’s required is being without belief in the existence of God/gods. Atheism doesn’t even require coming to a conclusion. You give me a far out claim and I’ll be without belief. I may conclude your claim is bullshit, but even that doesn’t require faith (faith being defined as it is in the second definition in entry one [here](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith). If you’re using a different definition, let me know). > [@](#): > > As for the OP, I can’t imagine how you’d go about convincing anyone of the non-existence of God. What sort of evidence did you have in mind? Depending on how one defines _God_, one can point out the contradictions in various religious books and show how various stories have been plagiarized from other myths. The problem of evil. The problem of God being a complex thing that didn’t have a beginning. There are plenty of things that can be presented to a theist that can change his mind. I’d bet that most atheists in the U.S. were brought up as theists and these sort of things are what brought us to drop belief in fantastic claims. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2011, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/believers-what-would-it-take-to-convince-you-your-faith-is-false/566936/90 "2011-01-17T13:45:34Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Of course faith is required to be an atheist. You need to have faith that you’ve come to the utterly correct conclusion. If you doubted that, you’d be agnostic. You don’t seem to understand what either term means. Look, I’m sure this has been pointed out to you in the past, but maybe this time will stick. Do you believe in Vampires? If someone asks you if vampires exist, what do you say? Do you believe in Thor? If someone asks you if Thor exists, what do you say? Obviously no atheist knows to absolute certainty if God exists or not, but you don’t know to absolute certainty that you aren’t a brain in a jar being fed false experiences by researchers. Saying there is no God is like saying there are no Smurfs. There is absolutely no evidence for them, and the people that do believe in them are simply asserting it because it comforts them. An utterly pathetic way to found a belief system IMHO. > [@](#): > > As for the OP, I can’t imagine how you’d go about convincing anyone of the non-existence of God. What sort of evidence did you have in mind? We already have quite a bit of evidence that the mind is resident in the brain. That alone undercuts an immortal soul. But the real evidence that there is no God is that there is no evidence \*for \*the existence of God. It’s just as valid to say that psychic dolphins created the universe. Why not? If you don’t require evidence for your factual beliefs then is any belief too stupid? ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2011, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/believers-what-would-it-take-to-convince-you-your-faith-is-false/566936/91 "2011-01-18T08:10:27Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > You state you believe in a directed, Intelligent, creation by God, what do you mean by God? Is God in existence? Is God a being? Then wouldn’t existence preceed God, If He was not in existence he wouldn’t exist! A being requires a place to exist, so place would come before a being. According to Tao Te Ching, the Tao is “older than God.” (ch. 4) Interestingly, it also “doesn’t take sides” and “gives birth to both good and evil.” (ch. 5) That’s two birds right there. I am not promoting “belief” in Taoism however; it seems to say the same thing regardless (a pretty good trick right there). Just that there are occasional situations in which it seems to have a good answer. Of course, Taoism criticism is not a big part of the culture in these parts, and without that intellectual crutch, there may yet be some rather large flaws for me to explore later. Who knows? It is pretty good as far as 2500-year-old tracts go. In context of the OP, since “faith” is irrelevant in this instance, I guess it would take the right kind of rigorous attack on Taoism to dispel the ‘curiousness’ about it. This attack may already exist and I am simply ignorant of it. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > (In my case, based on occasional past experiences with hypnosis and . . . other things intended to induce it, I don’t think I’m **capable** of hallucination; missing circuit or something.) I am perfectly confident that you are capable of hallucination (without drugs). HOWEVER -It could prove unsatisfactory for me (or anyone else) to induce this in you. Better to figure it out yourself. Maybe better still: don’t. -You may well be better served by avoiding seeking hallucinatory experiences. You may achieve them accidentally, and that would probably be best. - I am not sure how you could dissuade me from this “faith” that you are capable of hallucination. You are a person. You can be driven to hallucination. This seems obvious to me on a certain level. But following through may not be worth seeking (because of the possibility of a ‘necro’ aspect; “other”). It depends. You could end up the next Pope or something. Follow your own advice. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/believers-what-would-it-take-to-convince-you-your-faith-is-false/566936.md?page=4)