Question

[Edwardo Piet]

Main reason I left the faith is simple. I just couldn't handle lying to myself any longer. Christianity is clearly based on so much nonsense, whether we're talking Bible only or Catholicism or whatever. To even think otherwise is ludicrous. That's all there is to it. There's nothing you or anyone can do to convince me to come back to the faith, short of a clear vivid remarkable vision from the Christian god himself, validated by virtually every person I know and trust to be fairly rational.

Need to fix my words here is strong. What I should have said that you won't convince me that your Christian god exists, unless some vivid explicit miracle happened that was clearly from that god and everyone I know and trust witnessed the same thing and couldn't arrive at any other more plausible conclusion. This does not mean that I would necessarily go back to the Christian faith, only that I would believe. It's one thing to believe a god exists; it's another to want to acknowledge it as my god.

Even if that explicit miracle happened and it fell in line exactly with what, say, most Christians believe about God. Let's say God showed up and it was clearly the Christian God.

Still not evidence of God for me: The most plausible explanation was that a highly advanced alien visited earth and talked to people thousands of years ago to tell them to write a book. And that alien is powermad and wants us to think it is God.

The way I see it, a natural explanation is always more parsimonious and always makes sense. The chances of there being a highly powerful and advanced alien, thousands upon thousands of years ahead of us in technology, and capable of producing the most grandiose of illusions, is extremely low. And extremely improbable. But it still makes more sense than some "supernatural" being "outside of the universe" showing up and talking like a human.

Any being that showed itself in nature, would have a natural explanation... and the natural explanation would always make more sense than the supernatural one.