# What would convince Believers that they've been wrong all along? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 22, 2002, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063 "2002-08-22T12:49:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/61 "2002-08-23T17:34:37Z")
—Apos, thanks for getting my joke, and my point. I’m not necessarily a better person, or a vastly changed person because of a faith decision.— At some point, I intend to start a longer thread on belief here. But one of my central points from that, relevant here, is going to be the silly assumptions that people make about people’s characters qua their beliefs. I mean, if we meet a really arrogant person who is also an arrogant SOB for Christ, how many people would make the assumption that his arrogance is due to his belief? Lots, I’d bet. And yet this assumption seems almost totally unjustified: for all anyone knows (perhaps even the person themselves), their belief is the one thing keeping that person from being REALLY arrogant! —Before converting, I tried one of the “special technique” approaches to religious enlightment, and was alarmed when the spokespeople for this international movement admitted that artists complained they were less creative after using the technique.— Well, I would think that people would get the general point from things like this: beliefs have effects, for goodness sakes. Not always the same effects in every person for every belief, but beliefs are mental effects which cannot help but have implications. If someone comes to feel that they are having a personal relationship with the creator of the universe, I would HOPE that this experience would affect them at least a little, regardless of whether they really were or not! So, being faithful helped you with your homework. I (and maybe you) have no real explanation as to why this would be. But is it too much to suggest an equally untestable null hypothesis here: that the faithfulness itself, whatever it was, was what was doing the work, and not some other process connected to the correctness of the beliefs and feelings involved? ---
**Author:** ![shazza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90ced4/32.png) [@shazza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shazza)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/62 "2002-08-23T17:43:20Z")
Hi, I’m new here and just would like to note that I’m agnostic. I neither have faith that there is a God or that there isn’t. I’ve long ago thrown out the bathwater (religious doctrines, definitions of God, etc.) and am still pondering if there was ever even a baby in there to begin with. Anyway…my question to you is what makes you sure that Believers are wrong? My opinion is that perhaps there could be a baby under all that religious mish mash. It’s just that there’s alot of muck that one has to get through. The question that one should ask, is what is the foundation of one’s belief. Faith isn’t a valid answer as faith should be what’s placed upon that foundation rather than the very foundation itself. Just MHO. 🙂 Sharon ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/63 "2002-08-23T17:53:53Z")
> [@](#): > > Well, gobear, that was a very, you know, rational blanket condemnation of all believers. I can only assume that you’ve never talked to, for example, Polycarp, or any other of the myriad reasonably intelligent, rational people in the world who have, in fact, a reasoned faith. I’m very glad to learn that all theists are closed-minded, irrational idiots. Obviously, you’re new to the topic because **Polycarp** and I have gone round and round on this very topic. In fact, my posts stems from the responses I get from believers in these threads. And you’ll notice that I never said that believers were “closeminded, irrational idiots,” so I’ll thank you not to put words in my mouth. > [@](#): > > Of course, we’ll just ignore the several people here who were at one point theists and have become otherwise… apparently, they weren’t REALLY theists because they could actually think. I guess. The point you seem to have missed is that arguing with believers is pointless because it only makes them firmer in their faith. The former theists, including me, fell out of faith through introspection and thought, not because an atheist pointed out religion’s flaws. At least with the more intelligent believers, you’ll get an acknowledgement of the difficulties of faith, something fundamentalists never do. And yes, I can repsect intelligent faith, but I have boundless contempt for fundamentalism. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/64 "2002-08-23T18:04:11Z")
—I can even lie to myself, and try to convince myself I do not believe, but I still believe. its obvious God made me to be a believer, so if he wants me to be a believer that much, who am I to argue?— This is probably true for many many people. And it’s the one reason why the idea of trying to argue someone out of their faith seems not just fruitless, but downright mean. It would be no different than trying to eradicate any other important part of someone’s character. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/65 "2002-08-23T18:05:19Z")
Here’s an [example](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=131947) of what I’m talking about. > [@](#): > > **Spoofe** > In the tract “It’s Coming”, about Noah and the Flood, it’s written that the Ark measured 137 meters by 23 meters by 13 meters. This comes out to about 41,000 cubic meters of volume. However, later in the tract, it says, “It was big enough to haul 50,000 animals with room to spare.” However, this comes out to be less than .82 cubic meters of space per animal… that includes space for the animal itself, its food and water, and any waste material it may have. > > How, pray tell, does that work, given that it’s physically impossible to do what Mr. Chick described in his tract? > **His4Ever** > Sorry, I can’t tell you how it all worked out, I wasn’t there. What I can say is that God says it happened, therefore I believe it. I’m sure there was plenty of space for what God intended. He told him exactly how to build it and brought the animals to Noah. I’m sure God, being the Creator of the universe, knew what was needed. That’s the mentality of fundamentalists–“Logical inconsistency? Inconvenient facts? God can fix those with miracles!” ---
**Author:** ![burundi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3ec8ea/32.png) [@burundi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burundi)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/66 "2002-08-23T18:07:53Z")
I grew up in the Presbyterian Church and believed for most of my childhood and early adolescence. Around the age of 14, I began questioning my faith, largely because it didn’t make logical sense. As other posters have pointed out, you can’t prove Santa Claus doesn’t exist, but I don’t believe in him either. For years, I was on the fence, spiritually speaking. I didn’t have a lot of faith, but I wasn’t willing to completely reject the idea. The thing that changed my mind was my grandmother. She was a loving, gentle, devout woman. She watched her husband, two of her children and several of her grandchildren die of lingering diseases. As far as I know, that never made her question her faith. I never heard her speak a bad word of anybody. She led as Christ-like a life as anybody I’ve ever known. When I was 19, my grandmother was diagnosed with bone cancer. Bone cancer is a horrible, horrible way to do. It’s painful and debilitating and slow. She _suffered_. Her God let her suffer. No dying peacefully in her sleep. No sudden heart attack. Months and months of excruciating torture for this good, kind believer. And I decided. If God–as the traditional Judeo-Christian concept–does exist, He’s a right bastard. Screw Him. I find it more comforting to believe in the Inner Light or even nothing at all than to believe in the capricious whims of God the Father. ---
**Author:** ![EchoKitty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f4b2a3/32.png) [@EchoKitty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EchoKitty)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/67 "2002-08-23T18:29:16Z")
Shazza said, “Anyway…my question to you is what makes you sure that Believers are wrong?” I’m not sure they’re wrong. I’m not sure of anything (nobody can be). My question is what would make you believe something that goes against everything you see and hear, as the Ultimate Truth. You wouldn’t believe it from a Las Vegas magician. You wouldn’t spend the rest of your life believing in Santa Claus. You suspected it was phony at around 7 years old, and someone showed you the logic supporting the truth that Santa Claus couldn’t possibly be real. Then you stopped believing. Why would you choose “Unbelievable magical diety that does tricks and wreaks havoc on non-believers” (standing over there behind Door #1) over “we are born, we live our lives, and we die. Period.” (behind Door #2). I just don’t understand why logic prevails in every part of your life but this. It just doesn’t make sense to have two completely sets of rules. I mean, do you believe in faith healing? I’m guessing most here on the SDMB do not. Do you believe that there are really things called angels with wings growing out of their backs? Do you believe that there’s a creepy boogeyman that hides in your closet? ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/68 "2002-08-23T18:43:46Z")
First, I have to applaud the posts of **WV\_Woman** and **JThunder** on the first page here, because they seem to me to be saying things that I would feel I needed to if they had not done so first. **Apos** and others, it’s important to grasp that my faith, and that of several others who have posted here as believers, is not equivalent to “intellectual adherence to an unfalsifiable hypothesis” but rather “confidence in the _bona fides_ of an entity with whom we have had experiential contact” – faith in the sense of trust, as in “I have faith in the good intentions of **Mars Horizon, Jodi, gobear, Gaudere, Libertarian, xenophon, pldennison** ” and a large number of other people here whom I have come to know and count as friends. I don’t “believe in” God in the sense that one “believes in” the law of gravity as a useful explanation of terrestrial and celestial phenomena; rather, I believe in God because I know and trust Him – or, at least, my perceptions of an entity apparently possessed of great capabilities and limitless love, Who for His own reasons has chosen to care about me. I concede that (1) I could be self-deluded about that experience, (2) I could be misled by a trickster entity of some sort, (3) I may be attributing to that entity characteristics from my own upbringing and experience that are not really His. My refutation of the first objection is that the results of following Him have been, if negative in terms of secular success, extremely positive in terms of self-fulfillment, and that not exclusively in some abstract religious sense, but implying better interrelationships with people, a much better feeling about both myself and my fellow man, the filling of gaps in my life with romance, marital love, and a family… And the interesting thing about why I feel this could not be self-delusion is that the results I mention stem from things that not only did I not _want_ but which would be positively rejected by the former me. I cannot refute the second objection. But this merely substitutes an evil or amoral deity-figure for a beneficial one, hence failing to respond to our “Is there something that would make you stop thinking there is a god?” topic, or substitutes a truly improbable hypothesis, such as Bob-the-practical-joker-alien who is possessed of not only skills approximating miracle-working but also telepathy, uncanny prognosticative abilities, and a few other highly unlikely talents, and who has sustained this joke without getting caught for at least thirty centuries now. IMHO (and I’m well aware of the objections), a god on the general order of those advanced by modern theology is **less** improbable than Bob. I am perfectly well aware that in presuming from my impressions of the entity that He is in some way to be identified with the Christian Trinity I am in fact feeding in my own presuppositions. However, it’s my distinct impression that that was His self-identification, and that He did not delimit Himself as some of his followers do. It might also be pointed out that the accounts of those who have had such experiences are traditionally colored by their social and cultural baggage but do seem to have some irreducible matters in common, which would testify to the accuracy of those common experiences (unless they too can be explained away, a possible hypothesis but not one I particularly enjoy exploring, because attempting to examine the limits of human thought using human thinking is a fool’s game). Further, I can suggest that nothing in my experience leads me to require myself to buy into the dogmata and conceptual apparatus of evangelical conservative Christianity, and that one can read that collection of history, theological speculation, apocalyptic, prophetic discourse, myth, legend, wisdom literature, love poetry, praise poetry, and much else with the sort of critical intelligence one might bring to a similar collection of, say, Tamil literature. Yes, it does speak of the God I believe in; no, it is not the be-all and end-all of knowledge of Him, nor is it to be taken credulously and more-or-less literally. Like a few others here (points in the direction of Phobos-set;)) I find a great deal of sense in the works of John Shelby Spong; unlike him, I do not see the necessity of drawing the Tillichian distinction between a ground-of-being entity and an active-in-the-real-world God, because I believe that the God that does exist acts largely through pre-planned phenomena in the world He created and through the people He called to be His own within it (which does not necessarily have any equation with those who call themselves Christian; **gobear** , for example, is a good man whose ethical code leads him to do much as Christ commanded on the “horizontal” human-to-human level). So to eliminate my belief in the God I believe in, I would have to have proof that not only were my experiences and the results from them in error, but also that nobody has ever had any valid such experience. To eliminate the possibility of belief in any god whatsoever, someone would have to demonstrate to me that it is _logically impossible_ for the universe or anything in it to have any teleological basis – and I think that is not possible. ---
**Author:** ![EchoKitty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f4b2a3/32.png) [@EchoKitty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EchoKitty)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/69 "2002-08-23T18:44:03Z")
Shazza said, “Anyway…my question to you is what makes you sure that Believers are wrong?” I’m not sure they’re wrong. I’m not sure of anything (nobody can be). My question is what would make you believe something that goes against everything you see and hear, as the Ultimate Truth. You wouldn’t believe it from a Las Vegas magician. You wouldn’t spend the rest of your life believing in Santa Claus. You suspected it was phony at around 7 years old, and someone showed you the logic supporting the truth that Santa Claus couldn’t possibly be real. Then you stopped believing. Why would you choose “Unbelievable magical diety that does tricks and wreaks havoc on non-believers” (standing over there behind Door #1) over “we are born, we live our lives, and we die. Period.” (behind Door #2). I just don’t understand why logic prevails in every part of your life but this. It just doesn’t make sense to have two completely sets of rules. I mean, do you believe in faith healing? I’m guessing most here on the SDMB do not. Do you believe that there are really things called angels with wings growing out of their backs? Do you believe that there’s a creepy boogeyman that hides in your closet? ---
**Author:** ![g8rguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7cd45c/32.png) [@g8rguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/g8rguy)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/70 "2002-08-23T19:02:55Z")
> [@](#): > > Obviously, you’re new to the topic because **Polycarp** and I have gone round and round on this very topic. In fact, my posts stems from the responses I get from believers in these threads. And you’ll notice that I never said that believers were “closeminded, irrational idiots,” so I’ll thank you not to put words in my mouth. My apologies. I stand by “closeminded” and “irrational,” however, as being things that (quote possibly unitentionally) you at least implied (“they [theists] choose to close their minds to reason” sounds to me rather like you’re implying that theists are closedminded and refuse to listen to reason, i.e. are irrational). That said, yes, I’m new to this particular topic on the SDMB and as I’ve misunderstood your position, mea culpa. > [@](#): > > The former theists, including me, fell out of faith through introspection and thought, not because an atheist pointed out religion’s flaws. Well, naturally! Isn’t that just a property of faith in general? I take it to be evidence that many theists do not, in fact, refuse to listen to reason (many do, of course) but that faith being a personal matter, they listen to THEIR reasoning, not someone else’s. If you were to tell me “God doesn’t exist, and here’s why,” I’d politely listen to you, but could hardly be expected to immediately conclude that you’re right. First, I’d have to give careful thought to your ideas, examining them to see if I think they’re sound and in the light of my own experience with the world, and if in the end I found your arguments convincing, so be it. The “giving careful thought” part is crucial, though, since accepting that your reasoning is correct would itself be an act of faith, would it not? > [@](#): > > I have boundless contempt for fundamentalism. Amen to that, at least! ---
**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:** [August 23, 2002, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/71 "2002-08-23T19:28:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by WV\_Woman \* > \*\*Nothing would convince me that God doesn’t exist. \*\* My question is: which God? Even Christians have different views of God. Is it possible that you could accept evolution and cosmology, and then reject the God of the literal Bible, while still believing in both God and Jesus? Many, perhaps most, Christians do this. Is it all or nothing for you, or could you handle believing in a God consistent with proven scientific discoveries? ---
**Author:** ![Mars\_Horizon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mars_horizon/32/2804_2.png) [@Mars\_Horizon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mars_Horizon)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/72 "2002-08-23T19:32:41Z")
**Polycarp** , your words are like a refreshing drink of cool water on a hot day. May your God richly bless you for your efforts at building relationships and understanding. Like your royal biblical namesake, your heart truly is devoted to God’s. [sub]yer killin’ me though with the planetary humor![/sub] 😃 ---
**Author:** ![partly\_warmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bc8723/32.png) [@partly\_warmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/partly_warmer)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/73 "2002-08-23T20:00:14Z")
**Apos** quote: " I mean, if we meet a really arrogant person who is also an arrogant SOB for Christ, how many people would make the assumption that his arrogance is due to his belief? Lots, I’d bet." Yep. One of the reasons I’ve hesitated to add to religious debates here is that I _like_ adopting stances on the SDMB that I think might be right, even if they don’t win thundering applause. Yes, a religious community _would_ try bring somebody who was offensive, arrogant, selfish back into line. But being religious doesn’t make a community a body a professional therapists, so results vary. **Apos** Quote: “So, being faithful helped you with your homework. I … suggest an equally untestable null hypothesis here: that the faithfulness itself, whatever it was, was what was doing the work, and not some other process connected to the correctness of the beliefs and feelings involved?” Yes. When one’s starting to venture around the spiritual decision that apparently causes people to believe in something that can’t be proved, naturally a reasonable person looks for any indication what the results might bring. I said to myself “Religion that restricts my thinking? Isn’t God about truth? That can’t be right.” It was no “proof” at all, as you point out. Nor was any single thing afterwards proof. There’s no proof, you have to take testimony, instead. Preferably, from someone who’s a caring, wise, compassionate, and educated religious person – a rabbi/priest/monk would _tend_ to be an embodiment of changes caused by religion. In the end, there’s no proof – each person has to look inside and ask “do I believe this”. It helps to be in a quiet place with no possible distractions. Some miles into a desert with a backpack would be ideal. ---
**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:** [August 23, 2002, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/74 "2002-08-23T20:00:14Z")
Most atheists used to be believers. Here’s why I switched. I’m Jewish, so from the beginning, even when I believed in God, I believed that what most people believed was hooey. I believed because everyone else did, and no one didn’t. (I realize now that some people, like my Grandfather, were probably nonbelievers, but it wasn’t something they would ever mention.) My atheism comes from reading the Bible. When I learned about the different authors, a quick examination indicated that this was clearly correct. I was pretty much all the way there when I did a major analysis of the Bible in grad school, based on on a Plato discussion board on religion (this was in 1976 - these discussions have been going on on-line before many of you were born!) That’s when I saw the contradictions and absurdities clearly. ( **Mars Horizon** did a good job listing them.) Oddly enough, I bought lots of stuff in the Bible, like David’s empire, until recently. It was quite a shock to learn that this part of the Bible was wrong also. BTW, theists often accuse atheists of leaving religion because of anger at it. Not me - my religious experiences were all pleasant, I had good teachers and nice rabbis. I still light Hanukah candles. The traditions do exist, God doesn’t. ---
**Author:** ![shazza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90ced4/32.png) [@shazza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shazza)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/75 "2002-08-23T20:06:48Z")
EchoKitty, you said : \I just don’t understand why logic prevails in every part of your life but this.\ Maybe it’s because one has to look at the stakes that their giving up by not believing that there’s a God or an afterlife. I mean, sure, it’s easy to let go of the Santa Claus belief, but even when you let that go, you still do get presents and isn’t that the whole point in the eyes of a child? I think that belief endures despite it’s illogical nature mainly because we emotionally “can’t let go” rather than “won’t let go”. I’m sure that there’s alot more to it than that, but perhaps this is one of the main aspects and appeal. Dunno. ---
**Author:** ![stpauler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@stpauler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stpauler)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/76 "2002-08-23T20:10:19Z")
One of my favorite bumperstickers: “I’m a militant agnostic. I don’t know and neither do you.” I’m actually a humanist, grew up in a generally secular household. We celebrated Xmas and Easter with presents with no Jesus-strings attached. I did the standard “examine-one’s-beliefs” in college and came to my own conclusion. That unless my knowledge is innate it needs to be thoroughly questioned for truth. I start with an empirical basis of evidence. I avoid the “leap of faith” logic it takes to believe in something simply because a step or evidence is missing. That is the easy way out. It’s syllogistic at best to omit parts because a book said so. So if I’m trying to play religious Red Rover Red Rover, I’ll use that argument. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/77 "2002-08-23T20:36:54Z")
—My refutation of the first objection is that the results of following Him have been, if negative in terms of secular success, extremely positive in terms of self-fulfillment, and that not exclusively in some abstract religious sense, but implying better interrelationships with people, a much better feeling about both myself and my fellow man, the filling of gaps in my life with romance, marital love, and a family… And the interesting thing about why I feel this could not be self-delusion is that the results I mention stem from things that not only did I not want but which would be positively rejected by the former me.— Again, I have to note: beliefs and experiences and such have effects. It seems pretty conventional to suggest that most of these effects seem pretty obvious possible outcomes from the sorts of beliefs you describe, and indeed are commonly found with all sorts of different (even contradictory) beliefs and new experiences. That a former you might have rejected some things is neither here nor there: obviously you have been changing, and the chicken often comes in tandem with the egg. —So to eliminate my belief in the God I believe in, I would have to have proof that not only were my experiences and the results from them in error, but also that nobody has ever had any valid such experience.— I’m not sure that’s a good characterization of the problem. The problem is why we would need to posit an actual entity apart from yourself and your experiences to explain even your subjective experiences and feelings. ---
**Author:** ![partly\_warmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bc8723/32.png) [@partly\_warmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/partly_warmer)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/78 "2002-08-23T21:18:06Z")
**EchoKitty** quote: “My question is what would make you believe something that goes against everything you see and hear…” This is what did make me believe, and it’s very much the same as described in the Bible and other religious documents: Go out in the desert by yourself, with no phone, radio, or books to distract you. Nothing to write with, nothing to do. Stay for a few days. Ask yourself: “Am I truly alone?” If you get an answer, it won’t be anything you can see or hear, but you will believe. Contrarily, if you absolutely reject putting yourself in the situation that a number of famous religious people have found enlightenment, then you absolutely don’t want an honest answer to your question. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/79 "2002-08-23T21:28:02Z")
**Apos** , that way lies _The Matrix_. I am suggesting to you that as a result of a phenomenon that I _perceived_ as an encounter with another entity that I construed as God – and I allowed explicitly that I could have been deluding myself – changes happened to my life and my outlook on it that became much more positive, and that a part of this was demonstrably the result of following His instructions in ways that were not palatable to me, and further that as a result my personality modified in ways that made me much more at peace with myself, and in ways that I would **not** have chosen before the modifications. I am **not** positing “an actual entity apart from [my]self” simply “to explain even [my] subjective experiences and feelings” – I am to the contrary describing an experience that **appeared** to consist with an encounter with such an entity, and that the concomitant changes in my life were as promised a richer and fuller secular life, to say nothing of a spiritual peace. You are quite welcome to conclude that I deluded myself. However, what part of my motivations would enable me to delude myself into believing that a mental-construct god would tell me to choose to do things that, due to circumstances I did not know as yet, would lead to a change in my personality that would make what did in fact happen a fulfillment of self, when id, ego, and superego were united in figuring those changes as unpalatable to the former me? I have a great deal of respect for an atheist who refuses to accept on to-him-questionable authority a series of bizarre pronouncements about a supernatural entity that claims to have created and to rule the universe. I respect an agnostic who says, maybe such an entity can exist but I have no evidence. However, why am I as an individual who believes in such a god _because he has such evidence_ any less rational than the aforementioned? ---
**Author:** ![minty\_green](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@minty\_green](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minty_green)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2002, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063/80 "2002-08-23T21:45:21Z")
There have been two unanswered questions to believers in this thread that I would very much like to see addressed. > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by rsa_ > You may have heard this on the news a couple of months ago. A group of Christian teenagers were leaving on a bus trip from their church in the Dallas area to travel to a church camp 250 miles away. The teenagers prayed for a safe trip before departing. Sadly, not too far from Dallas the bus driver fell asleep and the bus crashed into a bridge support killing four or five of the kids and injuring many more. > > Does this trouble a Christian at all (not the tragedy itself, but from a theological perspective)? > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Voyager_ > Is it possible that you could accept evolution and cosmology, and then reject the God of the literal Bible, while still believing in both God and Jesus? Any takers? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-convince-believers-that-theyve-been-wrong-all-along/125063.md?page=5)