I would believe in God if...

[Cyberman]

If I could have my Sam back tomorrow and things continued the way they should have been, I would at least consider it.

[Lek]

There is nothing other than actual, demonstrable, objective evidence that would make me believe in anything.  That's the standard.  It's not going to change.

If I do have an experience that is actual, demonstrable and objective then I would have a good reason to believe in God. Right?

[masterofpuppets]

There is nothing other than actual, demonstrable, objective evidence that would make me believe in anything.  That's the standard.  It's not going to change.

If I do have an experience that is actual, demonstrable and objective then I would have a good reason to believe in God.  Right?

Yes, if it is actual, demonstrable and can be shown on an objective basis to be evidence for God. The number of times a theist has been to do this successfully is zero.

The main problem is not that I doubt that theists are actually having their purported "personal experiences". I will grant this quickly. What I will not grant is that these experiences are evidence for God. We can demonstrate that such experiences are delusional at best.

[The Industrial Atheist]

If he walked with me and he talked with me aanad he pulled gold nuggets out of his aaaaaassssssssss.

[Cephus]

There is nothing other than actual, demonstrable, objective evidence that would make me believe in anything.  That's the standard.  It's not going to change.

If I do have an experience that is actual, demonstrable and objective then I would have a good reason to believe in God.  Right?

Only if you can demonstrate it objectively such that anyone can examine your evidence without any kind of bias.  Got that?

[SteveII]

Just curious if some of you have any genuine thoughts on this. Other than, "seeing evidence," what are some things that would make you believe in God.

For me, I would be believe in God if I could logically understand why he created a billions of year old Universe with stars, galaxies, blackholes, planets, etc. and all life while seemingly allowing it to look like it all could have happened without a conscious creator. [1]

I ask this question, because for me, I still want to believe in a God, even though I don't. It just baffles me to think that everything just goes back to some form of cosmic luck. So that is why I ask the question, not based on what a religion will tell you about god, but what you'd like god to explain, to you, before you'd believe.

If you do decide to answer, lets just assume that god is any conscious deity. It would not be necessarily, any god that we know of, but rather just a god that you could imagine, knowing what you know. For example, if you're thinking that you'd like God to explain how he could murder millions of humans, including babies and children, in a global deluge, remember that we're not parsing over religious bullshit. We're atheists, we know that if a god exists, he wouldn't do anything illogical. So knowing that, we can openly talk about god in a more open way than any religious zealot ever could, because we truly have the ability to think for ourselves what a logical god figure would be like.

1. But does it look that way?

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Yes, if it is actual, demonstrable and can be shown on an objective basis to be evidence for God. The number of times a theist has been to do this successfully is zero.

The main problem is not that I doubt that theists are actually having their purported "personal experiences". I will grant this quickly. What I will not grant is that these experiences are evidence for God. We can demonstrate that such experiences are delusional at best.

No you can't unless you have found a way to disprove God. Unless you do, it is only your opinion that "such experience are delusional at best".

[residentatheist]

I have a formula to determine if a god is real or not.
Source + Feasibility = Probability

The source for all gods is man and the feasibility of a creator god is 0/zip/nilch.

We have no need to prove TFSM doesn't exist. So why would we need to prove any other man made god doesn't exist.

"Not Exit" is the default. Evidence is required for "Exist".

[Mister Agenda]

Capture of a ghost, demon, or angel so it can be scientifically examined would lead me to seriously consider it. It would at least be something, if they're clearly spirits or energy beings, or whatever they're supposed to be.

[Nanny]

IWBIG if the head were so squared away that the Virgin Mary herself would be proud to float on down and take a dump.

[AceBoogie]

If any prt of the story even made any sense at all I might possibly still be an agnostic theist.

God created the universe just to eventually create us... for what? To "enjoy" the earth and worship him? So god is such an all-knowing, powerful being yet he needs little minions to stroke his ego? Why is there evil in the world? To test us? Why do we need to be tested? Why do we need to be here in the first place?

And Christians will say things like, "Well god wanted us to enjoy his creation because he loves us."

But then how did he love us if we did not yet exist? Well then of course they say, "God lives outside of time so blah blah blah blah"


It's such cyclical logic that it's hard to understand why anyone believes this crap.

It makes much more sense that the universe is indifferent to our existence. It's not "luck" either. One thing we do know is that the universe seems to, most of the time, operate under strict "rules" and processes. The conditions happened to be right for life to flourish on earth and so it did, according to the "rules" of nature. And maybe all of this is part of some larger, cosmic thing that we don't yet understand but at the end of the day I see no logical reason to assert that "because god" is a suitable solution. 

Life is awesome and beautiful in so many ways but the more you examine things the more you start to realize that this whole god nonsense is simply unnecessary. There's no need for any of it to explain why life is beautiful or why nature is amazing and fascinating.