Evidence - what will it take?

przyk said:
Why are you a believer? What justifies this belief? What makes you so sure you're right?
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Personal experience.

przyk said:
What would have to happen for you to reconsider or abandon your beliefs?
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My faith is pretty strong, so to be honest, I'm not really sure.
 
ggazoo said:
Personal experience.
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Think you could be more specific? Also, I'd be interested in hearing what it is about these experiences that single out Christianity, as opposed to any other religion, superstition, scientific theory, etc.
My faith is pretty strong, so to be honest, I'm not really sure.
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First of all, is it faith? Faith is essentially belief without evidence. Do you feel that your beliefs need to be supported by evidence, or is evidence just a bonus if it happens to be in your favour? If you don't need evidence, what is it that justifies your beliefs? Is the Christian ideal just in line with your personality?

Also, can you think of any specific Christian claims that, if contradicted, would constitute evidence against your religion? The reason I'm asking this is because religions often come up with ad-hoc explanations for challenges, which generally come off as excuse-making to atheists.
 
Cris said:
There can be many attemps at explanations, these are called speculations, but only a single explanation will be true. Every effect has only a single corresponding cause.
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Well put. But my point was that information can be constructed to support anything.

przyk said:
If you don't need evidence, what is it that justifies your beliefs? Is the Christian ideal just in line with your personality?
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At the risk of sounding crass, I don't feel that I have to justify the reason for my beliefs on these forums. I've tried that and have been ridiculed for it. I was asked, and I answered how I wanted to.

I would still be more than happy to explain why however, but unfortunately it would come at a great risk of mockey and the tired claims of how I didn't prove anything to anyone, which is why I just left my response to "personal experience". They were my experiences which took place between me and God. To have them scrutinized on a message board by anyone who didn't live it would be an exercise in futility (as I found out the hard way).
 
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For me to accept your god, first you would have to prove to me that jesus was a real person. Or to make it simple, prove that a person named jesus really died on that cross.
 
snake river rufus said:
For me to accept your god, first you would have to prove to me that jesus was a real person. Or to make it simple, prove that a person named jesus really died on that cross.
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You could say that about anything. Did the Holocaust happen? Most of us weren't there, so how do we know that it wasn't just a made-up story that's been passed down through the years?

Same thing.
 
But there is evidence to show the holocaust happened. If jesus was a real person, there should be Roman records. And there are Roman records. Pilate really was a governer, he really did put 3000 some people to death. We know their names. can you guess whose name is not listed?
 
Of course there are no Roman records - considering the status of the Jewish people at the time, the Romans didn't want to have an egg on their face. But, there have been Roman authors who have cited him.
 
The romans kept records of many other Jews at thyat time so your argument doesn't hold up. And to the best of my knowledge, no roman authors mentioned jesus untill nearly 300 years later. Find something from the supposed time of christ.
 
I've already tried snake... any evidence that I've provided on these forums has been refuted. The impression I get is that if you don't believe in God, then it doesn't matter what evidence is provided; it's never good enough. That's why I posed the orginal question.

Understanding that this is a science site (not that science and God don't go hand in hand because they do), the Christians and atheists will never come to a unified conclusion, because Christians believe that you not only use your brain to reach God, but your heart also.

That's the difference.
 
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ggazoo said:
The impression I get is that if you don't believe in God, then it doesn't matter what evidence is provided; it's never good enough. That's why I posed the orginal question.
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It does matter what evidence is provided, because I would believe it if there was any evidence. But there's not, and you know it.

Understanding that this is a science site (not that science and God don't go hand in hand because they do), the Christians and atheists will never come to a unified conclusion, because Christians believe that you not only use your brain to reach God, but your heart also.

That's the difference.
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Yes and you not only use your brain to reach the flying spaghetti monster, you use your big toe. That is the difference.
 
How about if all the stars in the universe spelled "I'm the God all mighty, whom created you and this universe, all religions are redundant, only belief in an all mighty creator is needed and since you ask for evidence, here it is spelled out to you from every star of the universe"

ya! if that was to take place, and every nation on earth could read this phenomena in their language, and every other person can see it as well, "not only me or the elect few" but everysingle person on the planet can see it, then I would incline that a superior being exists, though not sure if it be god, or some intellegent force that can manipulate space. LOL

Godless
 
"Religion" is merely a word for "magic" used by the people who believe it is real. Everything about religion looks like magic to me. Therefore, to convince me that religion is real, you would have to follow the same procedure as to convince me that magic is real.

Don't forget: "Any sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

The best you could do is to convince me that what you consider the evidence of the truth of religion is merely the artifacts of an advanced technology.

Therefore, you might convince me of the existence of highly advanced extraterrestrial life, but not religion.

After all, Occam's razor says that a rational explanation for any phenomenon is more likely than a fantastic one because it is simpler. Highly advanced extraterrestrial life is natural and therefore far less remarkable than something truly "supernatural."
 
I am an atheist who cannot imagine being converted to some religious belief. My views are based on faith, just as the views of religious people are based on faith.

Science as well as religion is based on faith. The mathematician/scientist believes in the validity of some simple, but unprovable axioms.

The difference between science and religion is in the simplicity of the axioms of mathematics & science when compared to the beliefs required by religion. Most of the basic axioms of science seem very self evident, for example:
  • Two points determine a straight line, which is the shortest distance between them.
  • The addition & multiplication tables for integers from zero to nine.
  • Equals added to equals result in equals.
  • If statement A is true, then Not statement A is false (the law of the excluded middle).
The set of basic beliefs required by religion are far more complex (I find it difficult to call them axioms).

I wonder how many believers there would be if religion was first taught to people when they were 25 years old.

I started down the path to atheism when I was 6-8 years old and was told the story of Job. It seemed weird to me and when I asked questions, the answers made less sense than the original story. The concept of god treating Job so badly in spite of his being loyal to god, seemed wrong. It did not seem right that god should cause Job’s wife & children to die because he was having an argument with the devil.

At that age, I was merely confused by religious teachings, while arithmetic made sense. As I learned more, religion seemed to get more confusing and less believable, while mathematics got more complicated, but always seemed understandable and believable. Perhaps if I had taken topology when I was ten years old, it would have confused me as much as religion did.

When I was in my early twenties, I encountered the following quip.
  • An agnostic is a cowardly atheist.
I immediately realized that it applied to me. After reading the above quip, I acknowledged being an atheist if the topic came up (I seldom initiate a discussion of religion). For many years I had considered myself to be an agnostic rather than admitting even to myself that I was an atheist. I now realize that I had a weird notion that something terrible would happen to me if I denied the existence of god.

In response to long forgotten questions, I remembered comments like.
  • So young and already blasphemous!
Such remarks (instead of an answer) were made with a suggestion of horror in the voice of the speaker. I had the feeling that I had done something wrong. I wondered what I had done, not thinking that merely asking a question was naughty.

To this day, I am convinced that religious belief is instilled by a subtle type of brainwashing. All the adults believe. The adults are all powerful and competent. Disagreement or questions are viewed as being naughty. The child is dependent on the adults. Therefore, the child believes without really understanding.

When I think about how children become believers, I am reminded of a time when I was a laboratory rat for a psychology class.
  • My roommate asked me to participate in a visual perception test. About 25 of us were shown groups of three vertical or horizontal lines and asked to specify which was the longest or shortest or widest or what ever. It was explained that the results were supposed to be statistical, rather than the experiment being a test of particular people. We were instructed to answer verbally, with the results merely being tallied.

    I happened to be about the 20th or so in the group of 25. On the first set, I heard 19 answer B and one answer A, when Line A seemed to an obviously correct answer. I answered A, after which 5 people answered B. The next few sets of lines were a bit harder to judge, and all the others gave the same answer, different from mine. I started to feel very uncomfortable and wondered if my glasses were not doing a good job of assisting my terrible eyesight.

    Then my memory of carnival scams told me what was happening. I said.”I am the mark in a room full of shills and I do not like it.” I walked out of the room and later refused to be interviewed on my views (after all, I had made my view quite clear before walking out).

    I later discovered that most of the other marks allowed themselves to be influenced by the group, concurring with the answers given by the others allegedly being tested. They must have felt like fools when they discovered what was really being tested. I personally think that the professor who thought up that test should be fired for deliberately humiliating students.
it seems to me that a child being given religious instruction obviously presented as truth by adults has little chance to escape being brainwashed. Many college students bowed to peer pressure in that so called test of visual perception. It must be much harder for the child to avoid being influenced by adults.

I consider myself to have been lucky: I was told something that seemed very unreasonable to me while I still had some critical judgment facilities intact. Only the seeds of atheism were sowed by the story of Job. It took years and a lot of confusion before they took root.
 
nicely stated dinosaur, enjoyed reading that.

we've all gone through, similar transitions to atheism.
as you say people should be taught religion when their twenty five, children should be allowed to be children.
 
ggazoo said:
A question for the atheists. Having browsed these forums for a while now, the question I pose to you is this: exactly what hard evidence would it take for you to become a believer?

Outside the second coming of Christ (unless that is the evidence that you require), what are you looking for? A historical document? If so, what would that be?

I ask because everything that has been discussed on here which may have a even a slight chance of being construded as a hint of proof, is refuted without question.
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Loud Trumphets........Yep, that's it, Loud Trumphets. If you and everyone else hears some loud trumphets coming at you out of nowhere, watch out! :D
 
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