I’ve had some discussions at work about the nature of god and religion, as I am the only avowed atheist out of 11 people in my department. The question has come up: is there anything that would convince me that I am wrong, there really is a god?
It would have to be some kind of huge demonstration of forces, at minimum. Something that I personally experience and people that I know and trust also experience, so a “personal revelation” wouldn’t cut it. I’d be too suspicious of having hallucinated it. Something on the order of the sun dancing around in the sky, and a voice calling down a message clearly understood in all languages would be pretty good. so long as there were scientific instruments recording the phenomena too.
Even then I’d be more likely to conceive of the power I’m witnessing as being wielded by an alien superior technology rather than god. I mean, if Kang and Kodos want to call themsels Jesus or Mohammed or Thor, more power to 'em. Who knows, maybe the content of the message might convince me.
I understand, of course, that revelations and epiphanies are quirky, will o’ the wisp kind things, much like stokes. So maybe I would have a completely different answer tomorrow.
A good, old-fashioned ressurection might do it for me, but it would probably need to be a personal friend or family member. Because, I might be to suspicious if it were Elvis or something. He may really have just been hiding out all these years.
If not ressurection, then a plague of locusts on the Duke basketball team would also suffice.
Surely people who experience divine visions are being manipulated too? And off the top of my head, Mary and Moses didn’t have much choice either. How much is the ‘free will’ thing actually a genuine tenet of Christianity? Same goes for the ‘proof denies faith’ fallacy.
Anyway, speaking for myself, I’d question any kind of purely mental experience, believing it to be delusion or hallucination. Something physical, experienced by many others, might convince me.
Perhaps a better question might be, what evidence would *convince believers * that there is *no * god?
I suppose that once somebody has made up their mind on believing something, especially if its the basis of their faith, it would be almost impossible to convince them otherwise.
Humans are not reknowned for being able to admit that they are wrong.
I suppose science proving convincingly that he exists would do it for me. So that his existence is no longer based on faith.
Apocalypse would not do it, as I believe the ‘apocolypse’ can happen totally under our own control (a nuclear war)
Winning the James Randi million dollar challenge would be a good start. Honestly, I it doesn’t have to be anything big, just something "super"natural. Changing water to wine, bring someone back from the dead, make it rain donuts. Something that is seen by many, documented and that cannot be faked.
I was thinking more along the lines of the Red Sox and the cubs both winning championships the same year… now there’s a miracle for ya!
Dani
(Still hoping for the Red Sox half of the miracle to happen. I’ll accept that, if not as proof of God, at least as proof that the Universe is weirder than we can imagine :p. Yeah right… :()
I’d say you probably couldn’t know until it happened. I have a friend who was an atheist, or perhaps “very strong agnostic” would be a good term. Didn’t believe in God, didn’t care one way or the other. Sitting in a library one day he had a sort of mystical conversion experience. He totally alterered his life plans and became a Catholic priest.
I’m not sure. While I freely admit I could be wrong and that god does exist, it’ll take forty-seven seperate miracles to convince me. And even then, like the OP, I am more willing to believe it’s Kang, Kor, or Koloth fucking with my head than YHWH, Allah, or Vishnu finally revealing himself to me and the world at large after two millennia of being incommunicado.
I’m not an atheist, but I’m pretty much a non-practicing Jew. I’m not convinced that God is in all of our lives all of the time, but whenever I have been to [Judeo-Christian] religious services (haven’t been to any other kind) I have felt the presence of God, especially when I have gone in the last couple of years. Which is interesting, because that’s when I’ve been the least religious overall.
I’ll note that this isn’t limited to temple situations. I attended a Sukkot dinner recently at another Jewish family’s home and I definitely felt the presence of God there once the ceremonies started.
I have never felt His presence outside of religious ceremonies, though. I suppose I know that He is in my life at those times, but I have no way of knowing if/when he’s present in any other situation.
Feeling His presence constantly would be enough to convince me that He is with us at all times.
not to start a great debate, or anything, but what did you feel, and how did you know it was attributable to the presence of God?
At various situations that I felt were important to me personally, I have felt an emotion that is hard to slot in with other feelings. If I believed in God, I might have attributed it to that, but it was just a strong feeling of well-being, and a sense of something big/important going down.
As for the OP, if a giant hand lifted the roof of my house, picked me up between its thumb and fore finger, lifted me to its giant eye and said in a big booming voice “YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE SET THAT FIRE WHEN YOU WERE SIX YEARS OLD”, I might start to believe in God, if it had six fingers.
It wasn’t really that, for me. It was just the feeling that God was there with us, as though He were a silent and invisible person at the table (or temple or church or what-not). I’ve felt this in services for religions other than my own, such as the Catholic mass and the Episcopalian ihavenoideawhatit’scalled I attended in the last year or so. It can’t really be explained other than that I knew that there was a presence and that that presence was Him. It’s certainly possible that it was an emotional hallucination. Either way, it’s happened and continues to happen in religious ceremonies and places for me. It’s not a feeling of religiousness, or spirituality, or any such thing, just of God himself being there in spirit.
atheist out of 11 people in my department. The question has come up: is there anything that would convince me that I am wrong, there really is a god?
