Believers: What would it take to convince you your faith is false?

[sisu]

Death…

[Czarcasm]

@Shodan

I believe that the correct electrical stimulus of the optic nerve can cause a subject to see flashes of light. I don’t think that proves that there is no such thing as light.

Regards,
Shodan

When I do a headstand it looks as if my son is walking on the ceiling. I don’t take that as evidence that he can.

[cosmosdan]

Like Joseph Smith, if God appears with Jesus, and then a few angels, to tell me that my faith is wrong and wants me to start the correct one, that will do it.

[Blaster_Master]

I am a man of faith, and I consider myself Christian, though I do not hold some of the same beliefs that most Christians do. That said, it is difficult to say exactly what might ever convince me of God’s non-existence because of the nature of my belief. You see, I’ve reached my particular set of beliefs, particiall with a seed of Christianity, and adjusted my beliefs in line with how my experiences fit or do not fit with what has happened. Some of the changes I’ve had in my belief have been from what I perceived as contradictions between the Bible and the beliefs I was raised with, and others simply through contemplation or whatnot.

The thing is, there were points I was unable to explain certain occurences in nature or my life with my understanding of God, but I feel as though I have finally reached an understanding that explains it, though I haven’t fully fleshed it all out. The only way I could really see my belief fundamentally changing is if somehow I realized that trends of human history and behavior make a sudden and irrevocable change in a drastically different direction. But even then, we’ve had moments in history like that in the past and we’ve eventually found our way out of it and back on path.

So, the only way I can really imagine my view changing is if I somehow realize that I’ve completely misjudged humanity and creation or my current musings end up in an irreconcileable quandry. The first of which means my understanding of God, which I currently perceive as being absolutely compatible, may also be wrong because it may not be compatible with my new perception. The latter would mean that it’s ultimately not compatible, but that doesn’t seem likely. And even if it isn’t compatible, it doesn’t mean I’m not still really close to the answer.

And since I’ve seen a lot of problem of evil discussion here, I feel I should respond to that as well. And, honestly, I never really understood how people see the problem of evil as a problem. Even since I was very young, it always seemed intuitive to me that evil has to exist in order for free will to exist. That is, in order to have free will, we must have choices, and choices require options. If we only have a single option, then it’s not really a meaningful choice. Thus, evil must exist so that we can make meaningful choices of choosing to do good or choosing not to.

Moreseo, I don’t view creation as some completed process. I view creation as though God set the pieces in motion, and we are still becoming all that we can be. Just as we evolved to become what we are today, we will continue to grow and learn and evolve to become greater than we are now. If we were only making perfect choices from the beginning, there isn’t really any sort of growth involved. That is, what is perfect about God’s creation isn’t a given moment in history, but the whole of all time and all space. Eventually we will come to learn why we shouldn’t make evil choices and why we should make good ones and we will come to learn to do these things.

To give an analogy, it seems to me to look at the evils as evidence that there is flaw in creation is like watching a film and stopping it several minutes in and then complaining that the characters are flat, their motivations are lacking, the plot never went anywhere, and there was no meaningful climax or conclusion. To judge a 2 hour film on only the first 20 minutes of it would be foolish. Now, that’s not to say we’re necessarily roughly the same amount into creation, but even if we’re closer to the end than the beginning, I still expect that there are likely to be a number of major “plot points” in human history, not to mention the universe as a whole.

It is precisely this idea of free will and process that have made it difficult for me to understand how anyone sees the problem of evil as a problem. Hell, certainly for atheists who believe in evolution, that idea of process should explain it, even if you don’t necessarily believe in free will.

[WhyNot]

@BrainGlutton

What, like a programmer writing in a backdoor?

Sure. Or like It gave us eyes to see and ears to hear. A “god center” in the brain could be one more sense, albeit one that most of us don’t use everyday.

I’m not sure if you wrote it in the hypothetical or not, but there do appear to be such areas viewable on functional PET scans. When monks meditate or Christians pray, it lights up like a glowing blue/white pearl in the brain - just as gurus and yogis have told us for centuries. There is increased blood flow to certain regions of the temporal lobes during religious experiences. Some people can even activate them while looking up - as in “beholding the heavens”.

I think it’s damn cool, but I don’t see how it negates the existence of Divinity.

[BrainGlutton]

@Blaster_Master

The thing is, there were points I was unable to explain certain occurences in nature or my life with my understanding of God, but I feel as though I have finally reached an understanding that explains it, though I haven’t fully fleshed it all out. The only way I could really see my belief fundamentally changing is if somehow I realized that trends of human history and behavior make a sudden and irrevocable change in a drastically different direction. But even then, we’ve had moments in history like that in the past and we’ve eventually found our way out of it and back on path.

Wait, why might your faith be disturbed by anything people do?

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

If I die and there is no afterlife.

[Voyager]

@Shodan

I believe that the correct electrical stimulus of the optic nerve can cause a subject to see flashes of light. I don’t think that proves that there is no such thing as light.

Regards,
Shodan

However we can measure light, and do multiple and repeatable experiments demonstrating its presence and properties. God, not so much.

[Voyager]

@BrainGlutton

What, like a programmer writing in a backdoor?

<Kirk>Why does God need a backdoor?</Kirk>

[Blalron]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

If I die and there is no afterlife.

So you’re belief is completely unfalsifiable within your lifetime?

[BrainGlutton]

@Voyager

<Kirk>Why does God need a backdoor?</Kirk>

“Bob,” Og and Allah, the potential of that straight line staggers even my propensity for blasphemy!

[CurtC]

@Blaster_Master

And, honestly, I never really understood how people see the problem of evil as a problem. Even since I was very young, it always seemed intuitive to me that evil has to exist in order for free will to exist. That is, in order to have free will, we must have choices, and choices require options. If we only have a single option, then it’s not really a meaningful choice. Thus, evil must exist so that we can make meaningful choices of choosing to do good or choosing not to.

Does free will exist in heaven?

[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?

[sisu]

@Blalron

So you’re belief is completely unfalsifiable within your lifetime?

Correct.

[Voyager]

@BrainGlutton

“Bob,” Og and Allah, the potential of that straight line staggers even my propensity for blasphemy!

I just set them up …

[rogerbox]

I feel in my heart there is a loving God. I sometimes intellectually have doubts, but I’ve also witnessed and felt things that give,me a strong belief. But I won’t KNOW if there is a God or not until I die. Until then I just believe it to be true.

[CanvasShoes]

@akennett

I really don’t think “despite” is the right word there.

Heh. Yes, I see where you’re going, but no. I just have a really bad memory anymore. Not to mention I’m not “that” kind of Christian. Learning Bible lessons is really more (in my humble opinion) for fellowship, knowledge and just plain old “chicken soup for the soul”. (again, in my humble opinion). There are those who can remember exactly where, which book, chapter and verse, I can never remember where which concepts can be found off the top of my head. Not my strong suit, and frankly I disagree with the hard sell where God is concerned, it’s counterproductive (imho).

Regarding what verse, or subject matter, is where? I’d have to go look it up. As an interesting aside (again, I have no clue where this is in the Bible, my sister told me, and of course I promptly forgot), there is information in the Bible which speaks AGAINST cramming stuff about your belief down others’ throats.

Personally, I think that sounds completely logical, I mean after all, we’re humans, and we react according to human behaviour. Some of my fellow Christians bug the @#$#@ out of me when they act as if this isn’t so, that they have some magic “freak free” force field courtesy of God.

No. God expects us to use our brains and I’m sorry, but shoving psychotic badly written tracts (with simplistic themes) at people at airports or on sidewalks and constant over the top “witnessing” is just going to turn people off and make them RUN the other way. Counterproductive.

And it’s not as if I hide it or anything, I’ll mention having gone to church, or “give credit where credit is due” so to speak. But I’m much more about living the word rather than forcefeeding the word. I usually only say something in the Dope, if a question (like the OP) has been specifically asked of Christians.

I did think of one other thing though, along the same thing as what I originally posted. God is all about the heart and soul, there’s no possible way to prove his existence (until the end that is :D), a person either feels it, or doesn’t. It’d take a much better person (or more skilled one) than I to bring another person to that point.

[monavis]

@DHMO

[SIZE=2][SIZE=2][SIZE=2]Part of the problem with the OP, as I see it, is that both sides of the discussion, i.e., those who believe the Bible is the absolute, unvarnished word-for-word truth, and those who maintain it is complete, utter bullshit, and many who hold any of a wide spectrum of positions in between, are not actually talking about God. In the Bible, God created man:

As a practical matter, most discussions of which I am aware seem to start from Man creating God in his own image and likeness. Throughout history, mankind has proven to be petty, petulant and vain. Treaties made and broken, wars fought and populations slaughtered for a wide variety of reasons, many of them made up ad hoc to justify the greed of some petty tyrant.

Many arguments against God take the form: “How could an all-loving God allow Evil in the World?”

The explication relies heavily upon our interpretation of the arguments for and against Free Will v. Determinism. The majority of adherents of Abrahamic faiths believe there are a variety of agents(angels, seraphs, cherubs and whatnot) who continually do the bidding of God, unceasingly, for eternity, because that was the function for which they were created. Mankind, according to tradition, was created with free will, to have a choice to do good or evil. Free Will is meaningless unless the choice is valid. Suppose someone made an offer to you—they would hand you one million dollars, tax-free, or put out your eye with a sharp stick. Which would you choose? Of course, there really is no choice in that scenario. Likewise, unless there was a real, positive perception of advantage to be gained, nobody would “choose” to do evil.

While the Bible, mostly the Old Testament, relates episodes of God “smiting” those with whom He finds disfavor, in other passages and interpretaions it may well be likened to the admonition by your parents, “Don’t play in traffic, or you’ll get hurt!” Now, were your parents threatening you with bodily harm to “punish” you for disobeying them, or were they advising you of the untoward consequences of dangerous behavior? If you needed to traverse a dangerous landscape, say, a quagmire, and a reliable scout had preceded you through the area and clearly marked out a safe passage, and warned you of the negative consequences of straying from the path, would you castigate the scout for “punishing” you for “disobeying” him by striking out, on your own, away from the marked passage?

We could live a carefree, idyllic life, free from wars, disease, and want, in a land flowing with milk and honey, had God but made us automatons with no free will, our lives and fates completely determined beforehand. Would any here claim that a totally Deterministic Creation would be preferable to what we now “enjoy?” Some might, but I would choose to live freely, and accept that my actions in this world have consequences, both positive and negative.

It would be as though God is standing at the door to Paradise, holding it wide open, and calling all of humanity to enter and dwell within for all eternity. He could, if He chose to do so, force everyone to go inside, whether they wanted to or not. Or, He could clearly state that the door will be held open only until judgement day, then it would be closed forever, and any not within would be left outside for the rest of eternity. Is it really “punishment” to say that those who intentionally, of their own free will, chose to stay outside must, therefore, remain in the dark and gloomy netherworld forever? Had God physically forced everyone to enter Heaven’s Gate, where would free will be found?

God is not a man in flowing white robes, long white hair and beard, living in the sky. He has purposes and plans of which we have no inkling, and could not begin to fathom even if we knew. To attempt to fit God into the confines of what we would expect of our fellow humans is to disrespect both God and ourselves.

Likewise, many Bible-thumpers, who have read The Book from cover to cover, and can quote chapter and verse, have no clue what they are talking about. Most of the writings were targeted at an audience we can scarcely understand today. It was a simpler time, and the technological advances which we take for granted were, to them, still millenia away. To maintain that any part of the text has the credibility of a modern physics text is ludicrous. The words were never intended to be the be-all and end-all which some ostensibly “devout” will maintain as the final word on how the universe was put together.

There is no fundamental disconnect between a profound belief in God, and a healthy respect for modern science. The two address different aspects of our place in the universe, and how we perceive and interact with it. To say that, if it does not appear in the Bible, it does not exist, as many claim, is ridiculous on the face of it. Most “fundamentalist” objections to evolution, creation, and any of a host of modern debates are easily shown to be bunk. The problem for people like me is that, if a right-wing nutjob believes X about some topic, and I also belive X about that topic, therefore I also believe *every single lunatic theory *which the right-wing nutjob pontificates on.

Take evolution, for example. I happen to believe in a directed, intelligent creation by God. Whether by Intelligent Design or the product of the accumulation of millions or billions of random mutations, the fossil record would appear exacly the same. The Earth would still be about 4.5 billion years old, the different plants and animals would be in geologic strata comensurate with an age measured in hundreds of millions of years. The act of “Creation” in Genesis may very well have been setting out the physical constants of the universe. For many of these (the speed of light in a vacuum, the charge on an electron, the ratio of the mass of the electron to the proton, Plank’s constant and many, many more) there is no compelling, fundamental reason which science can determine why they should have the particular value they do, but the Universe, as we know it, depends on them having *that exact *value. How could an Old Testament writer have conveyed this viewpoint to his audience? We have only recently had the capability to even form the questions for which science has hinted at the answers, and there is much we still do not understand about how the Universe is constructed, on its most basic and fundamental level.
[/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE]

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.

Weren’t the writers of the Bible, Koran etc. human beings who put their spin on what God said, did ,or how he acted? Why does one human have the right answer or how does one know if the writer, teacher etc. has the facts. What is the proof? How does one know who is correct there is so much that contradicts the other!

[monavis]

@kanicbird

Love, overwhelming Love, all problems are gone and you feel totally at home where you were always meant to be.

Much like a heroine addict describes their first hit, without the withdrawal symptoms.

Also there is the absolute knowing that He is the Lord.

The physical appearance is quite unimportant, and why I mentioned it last, as He will use any form He chooses, and will chose the form He wants, including the traditional westernized appearance which was the form He chose with me. I know the thing you want the most, facts, measurements, clothing, email address, SS # etc, but that is the least important factor almost irrelevant.

I would like to get the chance to see the infant Jesus.

The mind can create many things yet not understood, you believe you saw Jesus because it was important to you. Just like in the movie Harvey, this man saw this big Rabbit.One can hyponitize them selves into seeing things that they desire. Next time you see Him ask him why he told the people standing there when he was talking to them that they would not see death until he came in His father’s glory with his angels and it didn’t happen!! Ask him to have at least one of the 2000 year old persons to come forward and of course prove they were 2000 years old.I believe infant Jesus grew up to Adulthood so one could only have photos of that, he may have a photo though!

[monavis]

@monavis

The mind can create many things yet not understood, you believe you saw Jesus because it was important to you. Just like in the movie Harvey, this man saw this big Rabbit.One can hyponitize them selves into seeing things that they desire. Next time you see Him ask him why he told the people standing there when he was talking to them that they would not see death until he came in His father’s glory with his angels and it didn’t happen!! Ask him to have at least one of the 2000 year old persons to come forward and of course prove they were 2000 years old.I believe infant Jesus grew up to Adulthood so one could only have photos of that, he may have a photo though!

spelled hypnotized wrong…too late to edit!