What would convince you that a god exists?

[ideologue08]

Well, look at that. I guess we really do learn something new everyday

[Minimalist]

The jinns "of Islam" do exist, that is an undeniable fact.

Why is it that your "undeniable facts" are so fucking easy to deny?

[Praetorian]

I bet the Merseyside Skeptics would LOVE to investigate the truth claims of people who say they talk to jinn.

I'll go a step further and say that if the existence of jinn were to be imperically proven, it would point to Islam being at least partially true.

[ebg]

If "god" appeared before me why would he give a shit what I thought?

The problem always seems to be that ignorant bible-thumpers can't bear the thought that there is someone in the world who thinks they are full of shit about their god.

The problem is theirs, not mine.

as a christian, I agree with you...he doesn't give a shit what you think! Never read about Jesus chasing after people.

[smax]

You have to feel sorry for Christians, they are constantly trying to argue the existence of the supernatural and yet constantly arguing against it at the same.

Its a very small box they are trying to fit everything into to.

[Fruity]

Chadwooders wrote:

Would the Fatima miracles be sufficient for you had you been there?

No. In so many ways, no. The little predictors of that were kids with huge imaginations. Also, there is no proof that what they say happened actually happened. I certainly hope that I never become so naïve as to believe that anything that happens after staring at the sun proves a god's existence.

So I'd like to add to my answer. He'd have to be there, other witnesses, and he'd have to do something unexplainable and unimaginable. Whether it be good or bad is besides the point. He could very well be a bad god (or goddess, you know).

[Cato]

as a christian, I agree with you...he doesn't give a shit what you think! Never read about Jesus chasing after people.

Of course not, he was too busy chasing a herd of swine off a cliff.

When he did try to chase after people, the locals were sympathetic, and for only the cost of three nails put the ungrateful bastard up for the weekend.

[Lord Privy Seal]

Would the Fatima miracles be sufficient for you had you been there?

Well, it clearly is not sufficient to convince you to abandon that vile heretic Swedenborg and return to the sound teaching of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. Why would you expect it to convince people who do not even share your belief in the supernatural?

What if Klingons and Vulcans both showed up and each had culture contained religion based on Sacrificial Atonement of a divine Klingon/Vulcan that arose from the dead?

The mere presence of Klingons and Vulcans would be sufficient to convince me that Something Weird is Going On. Human "aliens" from other planets who differ from us only in superficial ways and can even interbreed with us? Weird. This would provide a good prima facie case that at a minimum some alien species abducted populations of hominids or humans to create the Klingons and Romulans. Their Sacrificial Atonement religions would be much less impressive. Religions centered on dying-and-rising gods/goddesses were fairly common in the Mediterranean world prior to Christianity. Given the human "aliens," shared archetypes and values (e.g., honoring those who sacrifice themselves for the community as heroes) would not be so surprising. It might even be a clue as to when the source populations for the Klingons and Romulans were abducted.

What would convince me that a god exists? It all comes back to the definition of "a god." "The god of the Bible/Qu'ran?" Which one? A literal/fundamentalist one that created the Cosmos a few thousand years ago and rode dinosaurs with Adam and Eve? A liberal "Love Wins" version for whom most of the Book (whichever one) is parable and allegory or human attempts to fumble toward the Ineffable that are just products of their own culture and circumstances rather than Eternal Divine Writ? The god of process theology? How about the Gnostic/Sufi version? As an absolute minimal first step, the Abrahamic believers would need to be able to work it out among themselves who was right and what particular One True God was the One True God. Believers: what would it take to convince you that somebody else's god or goddess, or some version of your own religion that you consider to be Vilest Heresy, was true?

We also can't exclude the middle: what if Yahweh or Allah exists and has superhuman powers, but his propaganda wildly exaggerates his stature and power? Given that his foremost concern is to be King of All the Humans and have their worship and obedience, it follows that he's not much more powerful than us, otherwise he wouldn't need human status and authority. He would be able to accomplish his ends more easily with his own power than by bossing us around. If he does need our worship and obedience so much that he's willing to subject us to everlasting torture when it isn't forthcoming (or at least threaten to do so if he can't actually do it), we can hardly rule out willingness to lie to his human propagandists about the extent of his powers! On the other hand, if we encounter a "god" with impressive but finite power, how many Abrahamic believers would accept him as the real thing, rather than assuming that he's a demon trying to lead people astray? Anybody who's watched Star Trek would be familiar with this plot, and have no reason to immediately fall down in awed worship.

Stepping back up to a "Creator" deity, an entity capable of creating hundreds of billions of galaxies would hardly need human minions. The notion of a deity carefully dialing up a set of cosmological constants on its Big Bang-O-Matic, pushing the big red button...then waiting 14 billion years for the human worshipers it wanted to finally turn up, and finally, communicating only with a tiny handful of isolated desert tribesmen in order to get its religion going, is patently ridiculous.

The prior probability for the existence of an Abrahamic-type god (especially with the omnimax attributes) is vanishingly small based on the Cosmos we can observe. Proposed evidence for such a god (miracles, clever logical syllogisms, etc.) would have to be sufficient to overcome the weight of all the counter-evidence, which is: Every. Single. Thing we have ever observed and validated about how Universe works. "[This particular version of] the Abrahamic God exists" would have to be the best explanation for all of the evidence we have (astronomy, physics, paleontology, etc.), not just for some odd one-off event like the alleged miracles of Fatima. This is especially the case because the Abrahamic religions posit the existence of an inherently-deceptive, miracle-working anti-deity with his own army of demons. If David Copperfield can [cut himself in half with a laser,[1] legions of powerful supernatural beings could surely generate lots of amazing miracles.

Nutshell: the evidential deck is stacked very heavily against traditional concepts of Abrahamic religions, because their truth-claims simply are not consistent with the Universe we live in. Their inclusion of deceptive anti-deities makes even the occasional example of possible Fortean weirdness (Fatima, etc.) far from sufficient even if it were verified to be real, as we have no way to distinguish between a "true" miracle and a "false" one.

NOTE:

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCA1MWFtlBs

[NoraBrimstone]

I just showed this thread to my colleague, who is a Pakistani Muslim, and she is still laughing at you, Mo.

[cneron]

"What would convince you that a god exists?"

Impossible to say, but it apparently hasn't happened yet.