Open to explore possibility

[Astreja]

Why not?  In the absence of empirical evidence, a belief essentially is based on feelings.

I disagree. We can have good reasons to believe in something, which can extend beyond mere feelings or emotions. Let's take a simple but telling example: We both believe that Siera Leone exists somewhere in Africa, although we very probably never set foot there, nor saw any incontrovertible evidence/footage supporting its existence.

Ah, but I said "in the absence of empirical evidence." It's possible to go get that evidence by travelling to Sierra Leone. I know of no way to obtain comparable evidence about gods.

I've considered the possibility on more than one occasion.  I've dismissed it every time.  The assertions of religion are not adequately supported by real-world data, so it's a waste of my time to consider the issue again.

The assertions of religions are mostly metaphysical, they clearly aren't the same as scientific assertions, so it's a category mistake to try to fit them to real world data. And actually, some parts of scripture - both in the Bible and in the Qur'an/hadiths - actually mention natural phenomena, making the entire respective religions vulnerable to falsification.

I don't "do" metaphysics. I have no respect for that particular methodology, none at all.

And mentioning natural phenomena in a scripture only indicates that the people who wrote the scripture were aware of those phenomena. It does not support any of the supernatural claims.

I'm prepared to reopen the issue if and only if better data is found - testable data, not scriptures or believers' personal experiences or philosophical thought experiments.

Again, please consider that whatever convinced you may simply not be enough for someone like me.

It's actually not up to you to decide what would be convincing or not. There is a whole field in philosophy called epistemology that deals with this problem. It's a stretch already to restrict the scope of knowledge to testable data. Mathematical truths are not testable data, nor are historical facts or truths based on inference, such as the existence of an external world and of other minds, etc.

You are correct in that I did not consciously decide what convinced me. Nonetheless, I am unconvinced. I am in a state of intractable disbelief regarding religious claims. Wittering about epistemology and mathematics and history does not change the fact that I find religion execrably silly and childish, and am baffled as to why anyone takes it seriously.