I dont post too often on OLO, but I do try to read most posts, and I have certainly noticed we tend to get many hardline religious posters, and equally some very aethistic / sceptical posters.

Rather than a thread where everyone bangs on about their beliefs, my question to everyone is;

"What evidence would you need to completely change your religious / non-religious beliefs?"

For example, if you are a committed, born again Christian, what evidence would make you become a convinced aethist? On the other hand if you are a firm humanist what would give you belief in a higher being(s)?

To start us off, I'll have a go. I'm a very committed sit-on-the fence centrist, with a hard-line agnostic 'dont know' attitude. So for me I could go either way.

To believe in a God of some kind I would need to see some miraculous event that completely defied science and could only be some kind of bona-fide miracle caused by a god of some kind. Its hard to imagine how that might work, but lets say a Jesus / Mohammed kind of figure came to earth, who was able to pass James Randi's $1 million dollar challenge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi_Educational_Foundation#The_One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge

On the other hand to be completely atheist I would need to see some kind of massive scientific breakthrough that answered some of the great unknown questions of our time;
http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/125th/
Maybe a visition from a galatic alien civilization that revealed the answers to these questions and proved that life in the universe had been going for millions of years before the earth was even created would be sufficient.

So to the religious; Could you ever be given factual evidence that would make you abandon your faith?

and to the non-believers; What miraculous acts would make you believe?

Oh, and by the way just to make it more challenging, no quoting from either religious texts or Mr. Dawkins and friends!

cheers,

gw

GW,

You've got me thinking here.

I'm a Christian, I believe in the Bible, I believe in God and in his son Jesus, therefore any evidence I see will enforce my beliefs rather than turn me against my faith. Belief for me is a matter of choice. I life a happy life, and in general Christians are the happiest people. I became a Christian because I saw that Christians had something that I didn't have. In my case that was the evidence I needed to convert me.

So I suppose, if I was to become an Athiest, I will need to see athiests enjoying life a lot more than I do. Athiesm would have to offer hope, and I would have to hear testimonies from Atheists about life changing experiences.

I would say that to prove the existance of God, one must first start looking for him. An athiest cannot look for God as he does not believe there is a God to be found.

Even those that saw Jesus walk this earth, still didn't believe, and if God was to appear today, and appear as a guest on a TV show, I think there are a lot of people who still would not believe.

"Athiesm would have to offer hope, and I would have to hear testimonies from Atheists about life changing experiences.

Sorry Steel Mann, I doubt many atheists are into doing 'testimonies'. They've usually seen and heard enough of them from the growing numbers of born-agains in their midst to be completely turned off anything that might remotely resemble the practice.

*"What evidence would you need to completely change your religious / non-religious beliefs?" *

Oh that is quite simple really. If the alleged Almighty, alleged
creator of the heavens, planet earth, the galaxy etc, is out there,
it would clearly be in his ability to write the rules by which
he wants us to live, on the face of the moon for all to see.

He-she has so far never bothered. Just countless claims by
countless people, that only their version of the truth is the
correct one. From the pope, to the JWs, the muslims etc, etc,
everyone squabbles. It could so easily be sorted out with
one simple click of his magic. Until then I will remain skeptical
and based on my knowledge, assume that when people hear voices,
its more likely to be dose of schizophrenia, then any direct line
to the Almighty him-herself.

It's a bit of a non-question, isn't it?

For a start, you cannot ever prove a negative. So by definition, there will never be sufficient concrete evidence that a supreme creator does not exist, in the eyes of a believer.

On the other hand, if there were factual, easily available, verifiable evidence of an Almighty Creator, we wouldn't need religion anyway, would we?

In such a world, there couldn't be any such categories as believers and non-believers.

The concept of believing would be like telling someone "I believe in grass". They'd say, "yes, and?" because the grass would be there.

Or non-believing would be like telling someone "I don't believe in motor cars". They'd say "sure, why don't you take a walk down the middle of Parramatta Road, and tell me again when I visit you in hospital?"

Sorry, the question can only be answered emotionally, not factually.

Which leads us straight back to the tired old arguments between religion as an emotional crutch, and science as a belief system.

Bronwyn and Yabby,

You criticise, but you dont answer the original question...

Pericles,

I dont agree that this is as simple as you make out. For example lets say you are trying to convince a blind person that the colour Red exists. Given they cannot see it, and have never seen it, what evidence would you give them that the colour red does actually exist?

I quite like Steel's original answer. All the other responses have been just negatives.

BTW to Yabby, Brownwyn and Pericles answer me this; if I performed some verifiable miracle in front of you (flying, walking on water, raising the dead etc) and told you this was a power given to me by God would you not believe?

cheers,

gw