Attn: Theists - What would it take to prove you wrong?

[Esquilax]

If there is an evidence that God does not exist, i.e. if the truth is God does not exist, then yes, that might be a reason to hide the truth. But if there is no evidence that God does not exist then we don't know what the truth is. Why should I change my position to atheist? What's the reason?

Because theist implies belief in a god. Without getting into yet another argument about nomenclature, what you're essentially saying here is that you don't know whether a god exists or not, but you believe in one anyway. Thoroughly irrational.

Moreover, my point is that whatever label you choose to identify as, your actual beliefs are not impacted. I can claim to be a theist until the cows come home, but I still don't believe in a god, and am therefore an atheist. The reasoning you've given for why you're a theist can't possibly be the reasons you actually are one, only why you'd identify as one. That's fine, but you can't actually believe in a god because you're afraid of what people around you will do if you said you didn't.

And if you believe because it makes you happy, then you're running high risks of having beliefs that don't conform to reality.

You can choose to *try* to believe in something.

But you can't make yourself believe in anything that you find to be untrue. You can rationalize things to yourself in such a way that they make sense to you, but only because you already had a mindset- a belief system- that is conducive to accepting those claims you're attempting to rationalize.

It's a process that take time. I never said that if you choose to believe in something then at the very moment you do believe in it right away. Again, it takes time and effort. Your effort can be successful (you can finally after weeks, months, or years later truly believe) or it can also fail.

Why else do you think christians meet at church so much? Or why they spend so much effort attempting to get at children? Nab 'em while they're impressionable, spend enough time ensuring that their belief systems never harden to the point that those unevidenced beliefs are rejected... and bam, you have a believer.

But that's just reinforcing something that was already there.

In my case, I choose to *stay to* believe in God. I have believed in God in years so it's not a difficult thing to do for me.

Or rather, you choose not to take challenges to your beliefs seriously.

I never said that that's the only reason, and you shouldn't assume that I'm not believe very fervently in whatever I believe. It's certainly irrational to make this assumption without more information.

Hence the "if" at the beginning of the sentence: I wasn't making an assumption. In fact, I'm dead certain there are other reasons you believe.

Yes, I'm very ok believing in things that may be untrue.

That's a pity.

How about you? Do you only believe things that *absolutely* true? Do you honestly said that you don't believe anything that may be untrue?

I apportion my belief to the available facts, with the caveat that additional information will make me change my mind. If evidence of a god comes to light, that's the time I'll believe one exists, but the rational standpoint is to disbelieve in a thing until that evidence is presented. Not discount entirely, but disbelieve.