ziffel

"If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank". -- Woody Allen

I would also be mightily impressed if god healed an amputee.

Gawen

For the biblical god:

Everyone on the planet at the same exact time has the same exact stigmata.

ziffel

Emphasis mine.

That's what I don't get. Christians say god won't do these things for us (for whatever reason) but he's certainly done them before, for others. Jesus is recorded as having said that he performed miracles 'so that you might believe'. Many people 'believed in him' as a direct result of the miracles, and thus it stands to reason that he could do the same thing for us today, but for some reason chooses not to. As Johnny Skeptic points out in a recent thread, god is most certainly not doing all he can to save people.

Barefoot Bree

That would be a good start.

But the truth is, there is nothing that could change my mind, short of the entire known history of mankind changing instantly, so that God's existence was self-evident without any doubt or question, throughout that history.

Cause he's been conspicuously absent throughout.

And if he suddenly appeared, I'd have to ask him where he's been the past couple of milennia. And he'd damn well better be able to come up with some really huge disaster over in Alpha Centauri that required his whole attention for all this time before I'd accept that particular note from a doctor.

Truth_Seeker

ggazoo....if you would like, take a look at my deconversion story here.
It is kind of long, but tells some of the details of my search for God.

Gawen

Oh...don't get me wrong. If my evidence comes to pass, it would mostly likely change my mind on the EXISTENCE of the biblical god. But I didn't say anything about worshipping it...*winkin with a grin*

Bartender

It would take a god opening up the heavens and shouting "Boo!" I just don't see that happening.....

knotted paragon

Well, the obvious answer is, "then I saw her face, now I'm a believer..." But if the Monkees aren't your bag, baby, then biblegod (if that's the cartoon you are asking about) would think about it and I would know.

I have two questions for you ggazoo:

1. Exactly what hard evidence would it take for you to abandon your belief?

2. Exactly what hard evidence would it take for you to become a believer in Allah?

MollyMac

I think of this as the 'breadfruit' question, by which I mean I require roughly the same amount of evidence as I would to believe in the existence of breadfruit. I have never seen a breadfruit but I know enough about them to be convinced that they exist and I would recognise one if I saw one.

Cheerful Charlie

There is no evidence. Man has been hunting evidence for god fo millenia.
Now, after all this time, the West has excellent, top notch Unuiversities.
these have the best philosophy departments and divinity schools possible,
and we have seminaries. These have great experts who write great textsbooks.

And in all of this, no evidence, none. Many years ago, challenged on
my Atheism, I hunted down the best text books I could find and I followed
leads to read the best I could find on the subject. After some years I
knew no evidence for god exists.

The final round was to spend some months in the Rice University library
going through 20 years of the best philosophy and best theology jounrnals,
reading the best and brightest offering the best evidence for god
that could bemustered by the best and brightest.

There was nothing.

Having been well read on god from 2500 years of the best and brightest
from Xenophanes onward, I became rather knowledgable.

What about god? As a strong atheist, I am quite aware now that the claimed
attributes of god as asserted by Judasm, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism,
the class of gods that are creaters of all, omni-everything cannot exist.
these gods have claimed attributes, omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence
and so on that create impossible contradictions. This being so, god is impossible.

That is WHY there is no evidence for god in all these alledgely excellent philosphical
and theological textbooks.

When I understood finally that strong atheism disposes of god by noting these
contradictions, I also saw that once this class of gods is shown inpossible, that also
destroys secondary claims about god , immuntibility, omnipresence et al.

And tertiary claims, no god, no Jesus, no Mohammed, no Moses on the mount.
No god the creater, no creationism, no need for religious homophobia,
no excuse for Wahabism, or Shia law, no room for fundamentalisms
of any sort.

I have recently been looking at lesser classes of gods and none can possibly exist.
Logically, this is all nonsense.

What it would take for me to become a believer does not and cannot exist.
For me, god is as impossible as it gets.

Not only is god impossible, but I have found that in the end, belief in god
creates total metaphysical nihilism.

A god that creates all and is omniscient, and there are several ways
god can so be omniscient, then he creates all to the smallest details.
As he contemplates creting a universe he must say, if I do it this way,
on 12th june, 1999, a man named John Smith will commit rape.
Should I allow this universe to be created or another? God than in the end
decised personally and with full knowledge of what the Universe will have in it
to the last quark, the last atom to the Planck time and distances, to the
smallest details possible.

Free will is utterly impossible.

Then if free will is utterly impossible, why create one man damned
and other saved? Why create Ghandi and Hitler? All evil
then is god's specific and personal doing. Created atom by atom from
before the beginning.

There is no way to finesse this problem.

But if god loves us, cares for us, wants us to be saved, why create evil at
all and men who are damned? Why create a man evil and make him suffer
in eterrenal torment forever for something god decided to the last atom?

This makes no sense. Sin makes no sense, Heaven and hell, no sense.
Heaven and hell, no sense. Good, evil, salvation, damnation, it makes no sense.
Nothing makes any sense any longer. The Universe loses all coherence, logic,
metaphysical meaning. Logic and truth are destroyed in such a mad scheme
where a mad god thrashes about at metaphysical random. This makes no sense
and to pretend there is anything worth believing here destroys all logic,
reason, rationality.

God as all knowing and creator of all, or omnipotent and all powerful
and outside and beyond time and creator of all leads us to omnigenesis,
the realization god creates all to the smallest particle.
Omni - all, genesis - creation, creation of al to the smallest particle, the
final quark, all we do, think and are inclined to do.

These ideas drives us logical step by logical step to final metaphysical
nihilism so overwhelming that few ideas of man have ever achieved such
total destruction of truth, logic, and reason. meaning and everything
that can be imagined.

God cannot be true.

Only this year did I run all this down to this final logical conclusion.

God cannot possibly be true and in terms so strong I cannot overstate them.

What would it take for believers to final realize this and stop wasting
time with gods and all the evils that come from god beliefs?
I am writing this up in book form, and someday hope to publish this
and we will start the final showdown between god belief and atheism.

I have discovered thusly god is about the most impossible idea that
can be imagined. Even I was shock at how bad in the final measure
god is as an idea.

Total metaphysical nihilism is hard to top as a good reason
not to believe in gods.