What Would It Take To Be Convinced?

[Neo-Scholastic]

God would have to come down in human form, perform miracles, and fulfill prophecy.

Oh wait a minute...he did that already. And you still dont believe. Never mind.

[Longhorn]

God would have to come down in human form, perform miracles, and fulfill prophecy.

Oh wait a minute...he did that already. And you still dont believe. Never mind.

And we're supposed to believe it's him based on conflicting assertions from other people who haven't seen it happen, because his omnipotent ass clearly can't be bothered to come down and sort out the confusion that's caused millions to die needlessly, because mysterious ways. Got it!

[Cephus]

If there were a god, that god would know what it would take to convince me and would be able to provide it. As I am not currently convinced, I will continue to lack belief in any such gods.

[Cyberman]

God would have to come down in human form, perform miracles, and fulfill prophecy.

Oh wait a minute...he did that already. And you still dont believe. Never mind.

But all we have, the only thing we have, to corroborate that - that even suggests that - is a collection of stories that not only disagree with recorded history, they also disagree with each other. As evidence it fails at the very first hurdle on my list.

[Iroscato]

God would have to come down in human form, perform miracles, and fulfill prophecy.

Oh wait a minute...he did that already. And you still dont believe. Never mind.

Says an old book and very little else. Sorry, but it'll take a bit more first-hand experience than that. But your god should already know that, right? After all, he made me.

[AFTT47]

I don't know that I could be convinced. If a very powerful being showed itself to me and performed what appeared to be miracles, I would assume an alien like Q from Star Trek. I don't know how it could demonstrate that it is actually the creator of all things. I don't suppose it really matters because whether it is God or a being like Q, I'm probably going to treat it the same way.

[vorlon13]

Something else that WON'T work would be witnessing from scriptural cherry picking apostates/heretics/blasphemers who strangely and bizarrely feel they know more about achieving Salvation than their supposed deity(s).

How the fuck they think that level of bullshittery is going to save anyone (by their own scriptures) is a total motherfucking mystery.

[Jericho]

I agree with most of the others here in the sense that I probably could not be convinced. Sure, if something crazy happened that may make others believe that god exists (like a great being descending onto our planet), I would examine it and reconsider my stance. However, I know for a fact that I will never believe in the god(s) that is/are described in the religious texts.

[Darkstar]

Well, god could flex his pinkie or something and magically instill knowledge of his existence in the minds of all sapient beings that presently exist and will exist in the future. Or, you know, unverifiable text of dubious origin that blatantly contradicts history, science, and flat out common sense. I guess he could go that route...

[robvalue]

To me the only kind of "God" that makes any sense is the one where we are a simulation and "God" is our programmer or the computer we're running on. So in that case God would probably be nothing more than a regular life form in whatever reality is running the simulation.

If that is the case, I suppose the programmer could make it more and more obvious this is a simulation by making weird stuff happen. Maybe lines of code start floating around everywhere, where we can all see them. Our bodies get disconnected from our heads, float around then connect again with no damage, and so on. Of course if this happened my first thought would be I'm dreaming or hallucinating, and even though those around me are "confirming" they are experiencing it too, I have no way of knowing any of it is real. But as far as the reality/dream/hallucination I was in is concerned, that would be pretty good evidence that we're in a simulation.

As for mister beardy pants, I don't have enough information about what it's even meant to be since even theists can't give me a sensible definition. I could have passed 3 on the street yesterday. So I don't even know what it is I'm looking for evidence of. If some amazing being turned up and did a load of powerful things, then I'd believe that whatever it was, it was real. Theists would also have no idea if this was their God or not. And of course it's subject to the above problems of dreaming and hallucinating. So whatever a "God" is would determine exactly what evidence I would need. But fucking anything at all would be a start.

But there's just not enough detail in the story books to be able to make an identification, even if Yahweh is tapping his feet waiting for me to do so right in front of me.

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Pro tip for Chad:

Just because something is written in a book, it doesn't mean it's true.