What Would it Take for You to Believe in God?
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This is a question posed by the blog “the BEattitude“, which has recently gained over 1,000 well deserved comments on a post concerning losing religion. The author’s personal answer, he says, is very simple:
I expect God to do for me what he did for virtually every Bible character.
In other words, he wants God to show himself, which shouldn’t be a difficult task to fulfill for such a being. He also shows how the Apostle Paul is being hypocritical about telling believers that faith is all you need, as Paul only became a believer after Jesus appeared to him as a blinding light. Are we really expected to have faith in Jesus Christ, when the founder of the Christian church itself could not do the same?
Faith is the most important requirement of any religion, because with faith you cannot distinguish between what cannot be seen and what does not exist. Without faith, your eyes are finally opened to all possibilities, and reason ultimately prevails.
For me, the question has an equally simple answer. I would expect the Bible to be filled with unambiguous, literal, truth.
Any God that is worth worshiping should be able to make sure that their holy book was completely accurate, doesn’t contain contradictions (or ambiguity), and can be read and understood by anyone. It doesn’t take much effort (for an omnipotent being) to correct the scribe who makes a copying error, or to protect the books from damage as believers are persecuted, or to write everything as literal fact that cannot be observed in nature.
This is what any rational person would demand of any other claim, so why can’t it be done for religion? The pseudoscience of homeopathy is less ambiguous than current interpretations of the Bible, yet more people reject the former. It is clear to anyone that the Bible is not true, and yet instead of giving up on Christianity, the believers can do nothing but lie and make excuses about the mistakes.
In the scientific community, when you are reduced to this level of dishonesty, your reputation is destroyed. In the religious community, you are held as a warrior for faith. I don’t know about yourself, but my mother taught me to never trust people who lied or made excuses for their mistakes. It seems only the scientific community has taken this to heart.
How about you? What would it take for YOU to believe in God?
(via theBEattitude)
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Thanks for the pingback.
Christians are asked to ignore both rational thought and reason in order to believe. Why do people do this willingly? Because the Bible says they will go to hell if they don't believe without seeing, even if it defies all logic.
But as you've stated, the founder of the Christian church didn't even have the faith to believe without seeing. Without Paul, the Christian church would not exist. But we are all told to believe his hypocritical teaching without question.
Not being allowed to relying on our ability to reason and question is the equivalent of cult mentality. It's no surprise Christian believers are equated to sheep with the faith of children in the Bible.
If such a god were to take credit for the creation of everything, I would like to hear his/her explanation of how he/she was created.
I think a few confirmed miracles would be a good start: I've often heard Christians say that atheists are too cyncial to believe a miracle if it happened before our eyes. We'd say it was a stunt or a special effect.
But supposing somebody I know who has a serious disability; for example my grandma who has Alzheimer's disease – what if after a moment of prayer the parts of her brain which are damaged re-grew. That would be seriously miraculous.
How about giving an amputee a new limb?
All these things are beyond the realms of science, and if they were to happen with some frequency then we would be forced to conclude that something super-natural was occurring.
A higher than 90% prayer success rate would do it for me. Of course, they'd have to be a ton of details to sort out.
Well i think that whatever it was it would need to be repeatable and observable by others. Sure i may see something miraculous but my first thought might be that I'd made an error or been hallucinating, unless it was something that I could observe multiple times.
One example of something that I would consider prove of the existence of an intelligent creator of the universe is that if one day we looked far enough with our telescopes and saw a part of the universe where the stars spell out a message in English, or any of the languages of Earth. It would have to be significantly complex so that it couldn't just be attributed pareidolia.
Or say it was discovered that saying a rather specific prayer could cause limbs to regrow while other similar prayers were ineffective. That would be pretty convincing.
I don't think there is anything that would make me want to worship a god. If a god truly exist why would he want or need worshipers?
How disdainful it is for you to say there is no God. Psalm14:1. Truly, a mastermind has blinded you. Look at the Ten Commandments and see your filth. Come to Christ to be cleansed. You will be embarrassed and ashamed on Judgment Day with this post you wrote if you don't see your folly. This post is devoid of any rationality to see what is around you and not see there is a Creator. All the things that are seen are evidence for the things which are unseen. How daft it is to say there is no God. The Bible is 100% correct. It says Judgment Day will come and it will most assuredly. Consider your eternal destiny. Come to the Savior. God's wrath abides on you, why not do something about it instead of intellectually posturing, about all the reasons you won't trust the Savior? You are an enemy to God because of your unbelief. Look at the Ten Commandments and see your filthy state before God, and come to the Savior.
Firstly, using the Bible against an atheist who has just posted about why the Bible is not the truth; not a good idea. I agree with you that by the Bible's standards, I am probably a very bad person, but I don't believe these standards apply anywhere in reality.
Secondly, you assert "The Bible is 100% correct" when I clearly isn't. The first book of the Bible explains a creation story that didn't take place, and we have the evidence to prove it! This fact alone (ignoring all the other mistakes the Bible has made) is enough to disprove the "100% correct" claim.
Thirdly, I do not doubt there is a creator; I just doubt the creator is an intelligent being. Why do such beings not need creators themselves? You are saying that intelligent life needs an intelligent creator, but that the intelligent creator doesn't need one. Doesn't make a shred of sense.
I have seen the ten commandments and must say they suck as a guide for life. I know few that call themselves christian that follow them as you think they do. You seem to be a little deluded as to the accuracy of the bible. I would bet you have never read the bible in full and only know what is in it based on what others tell you. Your so called evidence can be applied to the many thousands of god that have been created by mankind. If you look into your beliefs you will find that what you claim you believe is the same means others use to claimm is the evidence for the gods or goddess.
I have seen the ten commandments and must say they suck as a guide for life. I know few that call themselves christian that follow them as you think they do. You seem to be a little deluded as to the accuracy of the bible. I would bet you have never read the bible in full and only know what is in it based on what others tell you. Your so called evidence can be applied to the many thousands of god that have been created by mankind. If you look into your beliefs you will find that what you claim you believe is the same means others use to claim is the evidence for the gods or goddess.
Firstly, using the Bible against an atheist who has just posted about why the Bible is not the truth; not a good idea. I agree with you that by the Bible's standards, I am probably a very bad person, but I don't believe these standards apply anywhere in reality.
Secondly, you assert "The Bible is 100% correct" when I clearly isn't. The first book of the Bible explains a creation story that didn't take place, and we have the evidence to prove it! This fact alone (ignoring all the other mistakes the Bible has made) is enough to disprove the "100% correct" claim.
Thirdly, I do not doubt there is a creator; I just doubt the creator is an intelligent being. Why do such beings not need creators themselves? You are saying that intelligent life needs an intelligent creator, but that the intelligent creator doesn't need one. Doesn't make a shred of sense.
This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 6/4/2009, at The Unreligious Right
First of all: I don't believe. Just the same as I don't believe in Gravity or my shoes. They're there. The're understable and we can measure them.
You can argue that gods could be beyond our understanding and that we can't limit ourselves to mundane and material world. I can say the same about invisible untouchable gnomes living under our beds. Why don't believe in invisible untouchable gnomes living under our beds?
[youtube cfxdM2KKVdg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfxdM2KKVdg youtube]
Yo Adrian, cool day conference in London, free (or £5 donation)… enjoy
If god wants to end all religious wars and trigger instant mass belief, all he has to do is cause a burning cross, crescent or wheel (or all three for *real* peace) to appear on the wall of the UN main chamber during a session.
Oh, there will be arguments and accusation of trickery, of course, but a lot of people will be convinced.
A small local suspension of physics like that should be a piece a' piss to a deity. He's done much more overt stuff according to his books. Why so coy?
How funny – I made the commercials for Jaffa Cakes and the "Smashing Orangey Bit"
I posted this on BEattitude:
It would take the total dissolution of ALL religious groups, fundamentalists, right-wing extremists, fascists, demagogues, life time imprisonment for Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, and the bringing to justice all the real 911 culprits and the Wall Street, Federal Reserve, and corporate criminals. Also turn every human into a vegetarian and to comply with Bernard Shaw's (I think it was him) theory of the second giant leap, the first being the industrial revolution and the second when humans no longer contrive to survive. Then I may believe in God. Robken
The de-deification of western culture (including the sciences) is our task for the next 100 years.
For me it would take a loss of curiosity of the world around me and a lobotomy.