Deacon Doubtmonger

Which leads me to:

H. Ask, "So the fuck what? We see flaming letters on the moon; how does that give the fundy who pointed them out to me the right to demand I accept jeeby-kins as my lord and personal savior, granting his church a claim on my actions, thoughts, feelings, time and (of course!) money?"

Fencesitter

Because it boosts their belief that nothing that God could do would convince an atheist to change their position. And except for one response here, you've pretty much confirmed that.

Fence

Sultanist

No it's still 100%. Mine was the one dissenting response and I'm not an atheist.

Fencesitter

Sorry. Thanks for the correction.

Fence

Anixmander

There is a small problem if such an incident occurred that I don't think anyone has mentioned yet. The problem is that you still have to trust the entity that it is telling the truth about its claim. Honestly I think that possibility of either a natural or supernatural entity playing a prank writing "The God of the Bible Exists" is perhaps just as likely as the Bible God writing that.

capsaicin67

It would have to be very personal or spectacular for me to consider changing my position in order to make up for the several years of many instances of seeing people be full of shit or exploitative, and absolutely no instances of magic.

Also, I'd find it odd that god has been absent for so long to that point.

JesusLovesYou

Well lets see could it be, because an atheist said if God wrote it is me with the stars one night, and it lasted for 10 minutes he would believe? So is it the atheist posing this kind of question or is it why do the atheist give this kind of answer?

Biff the unclean

Were you talking about sultan or me?
I don’t need magic or the spectacular to believe God exists. The same set of criteria that makes me believe anything exists would do fine for God. The souvenir mouse pad sitting here on my desk for instance. The mundane criteria that leads me to believe there’s actually a mouse pad there would be just fine to convince me that there is a God. I don’t need messages on the moon or stars moving beyond the speed of light. Just the very low, slip shod, criteria I use on the mouse pad would be more than adequate. The criteria is so low that it might be easy to fool me, but that’s okay, I don’t mind that much.

The fact that God can’t even reach the standard of a piece of neoprene is not an indication that there is nothing God can do to convince me. It’s an indication that God can’t do anything. Even though I could be easily fooled there’s nothing there to fool me.

TheBigKahoona

I understand that the question itself is quite silly. What I'm trying to get at is how rationally or irrationally we react to things that disprove or cast doubt on what we believe. Many people have pointed out the fact that Christians on this forum have been presented the facts which disprove their religion and yet still refuse to acknowledge the obvious. According to the Atheists on this forum, Christians give pitiful arguments and lose debate after debate concerning the big invisible pink unicorn. I'm not trying to fool anyone into belief. I'm simply trying to examine why people react so irrationally when they are shown evidence which disproves what they belive.

But if you witnessed something seemingly magical would it lead you to believe in magic or would you deny its authenticity?

If me and 2 of my friends saw an angel appear to us and tell us that "Allah is the one true God" I STILL might not believe in Allah simply because I hate him so much. I might say we all ate something odd for lunch. I might say that some swamp gas from mars exploded in front of me in the form of an angel, but I would not acknowledge Allah's existence. I find the fact that I would react in this way disturbing because it is so irrational.

Wallener

Yeah, picking a fight with an omnipotent being sure fits my definitions of 'rational behavior'....