If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
-Baron de Montesquieu

Certainly to take any position requires some sort of faith, but the difference between an atheists faith and a believers faith is that an atheists faith is contingent on the evidence, for a believer it must be absolute (ie non-contingent). I know many believers do not understand the difference between them and conflate the two ideas all the time.

My faith is contingent on the evidence, if 'miracles' did occur, I would certainly be interested in searching more as to the causes of such a phenomenon, but the immediate reaction would not be one of sudden conversion.

Dogmatic? Moi?

>>But doesn't that mean that you in turn are being just as dogmatic as the most religious fanatic - you must be right and nothing could convince you otherwise?<<

Food for thought, of course, but I don't think it does.

If I recollect correctly my stance was not that "nothing would persuade me otherwise".

I specifically allowed for the situation where there is "the permanent, unquestioned existence amongst us, of that supreme being."

What it would do, which I also pointed out, is remove all need for religion, which relies on ignorance.

Not in the sense "you're an ignorant so-and-so", of course, but in the sense of "an absence of knowledge". With that knowledge, the need to bridge the gap with belief - hence, religion - ceases to exist.

Which again leads us to the point where the question becomes meaningless.

Bronwyn, have you considered which posters alias is an anogram of Crap Ploy? An excellent fit if everthere was (almost as good as "Big Rally Ham").

I think that there are non-believers who are just as dogmatic as some of our fundies, the terms might be messy by the concept makes some sense. The fun bit is that most religious believers are athiests for everybody elses god (except maybe for panthiests).

Everybody
Just thinking in terms of athiesism and christainity is to narrow, what evidence would it take to turn a christain to belief in another faith (or visa versa) is just as relevant as belief or non belief in a particular view of the christian god. Even amongst our resident christains there are a wide variety of beliefs about the nature of their god.

Some worship a god I could almost like, for others their god is deeply disturbed. What would it take to turn a fundy to belief in a genuinely loving god?

R0bert

Steel Mann: “in general Christians are the happiest people… 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.”

Oh my sainted aunt! Aside from the fact that “a happy life” is a rather shallow basis for choosing a belief system, are you really arguing that runner, Poly and Gibo are happier than average atheist? Lordy be!

Atheism is full of hope. More so than religion, because it is not a fatalistic way of looking at the world, but one that insists the world is what we make of it. What a honourable, beautiful, difficult challenge. Atheism (or perhaps I should say humanism) is a way of seeing ourselves both in relation to the universe, and in the small sphere of our influence, and, in our own small way, trying to reconcile these two images. It is hungry for truth and it is deeply invested in promoting goodness in order to coexist with others around us.

In my experience, including on this forum, some Christians are morally corrupt. (Just as some atheists are.) They have a store-bought philosophy that they twist in order to justify their own prejudices. The majority of Christians on this forum are openly hateful of homosexuals and Muslims.

Your statement is simplistic, patronising and false. If you haven’t heard atheists talking about life-changing experiences, then that is because you haven’t opened your ears to the

GW: “When I have discussed this with friends they have normally stated Pericles' position...”

Firstly, that’s not Pericles’ position. Secondly, if someone raised the dead, I would assume that they had found a way to do so. There are wonders in the universe we cannot yet explain, many feats we are yet to achieve. This does not prove there’s a god, simply that our centuries of intelligence gathering haven’t finished yet

GW

Like Perciles, I don't think your question is logical. Religious people already believe despite there being absolutely no evidence that god exists and pretty good evidence he doesn't. On the other hand, if God was demonstrably a part of the universe, then there’d be no atheists to change their position.

But, to enter your fictional universe for a minute, one thing that would make me believe was if there was some consistency among religions. I'm no more convinced by Islam than Christianity, but I'm even less convinced by religion because we have both of then. Our species' numerous religions and the variations between them support the case for separate sects springing up for various psychological, historical and political reason. If there had only ever been ONE religion, I'd be more convinced.

I'd also be more convinced if religion *worked*, in the sense that religious people were truly demonstrably better at being human than non-believers. The infighting, out-fighting, suspicion between sects (Christianity and Islam being the great example) are just too clearly human.

Miracles wouldn't work for me — they're the show-ponies of religion. The Christian saints all performed miracles apparently, and as Fractelle pointed out there's a miracle on every second street corner in India, and Islam is partial to a bit of miracle-making too.

Finally, if god were a nicer, I might be more likely to buy it. But he's not. Whether he's Islamic, Christian or Jewish, he's consistently vengeful, insecure, capricious and bigotted. I simply don't want to be in his team.

When Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door I sometimes ask them about themselves. Most of them I have talked to have tried a number of fundamentalist Protestant sects although I have talked to one raised as a Catholic and another from a non-observant Jewish background.

It didn't sound as though they wanted evidence but explanations they could accept.