That's is a pretty common question, but it's difficult to answer with theists. What it would take is any evidence (or, actually, at this point even convincing argument) of a god. You narrow the field even more by capitalizing the "G". That is, once it could be determined that gods were something other than constructs, we'd have to go for a specific one.

Here's the problem of "existence" for me: I know that smiles exist. You can probably make one with your face. But they don't exist. Smiles are a collection of muscle contractions. We could argue about which muscles are required, etc., and we can have the same discussion with consciousness. But gods as a concept fall into some obviously made-up-shit categories. They're not even close to a smile in terms of existence.

I'm saying it would be an uphill climb to convince me.

Nothing could convince me 100%.

I could be convinced that there is a superpowerful conscious being (by some sort of demonstration) but how could I know that this being was not created by yet another even more superpowerful being.

I don't even know how a god could know for sure that he/she/it is the one and only God.

How can something know for certain that there is nothing outside of its own being or outside of what it is aware of?

When my foreskin magically grows back.

I think without miring ourselves in semantics too much it would it be safe to assume that the majority of you find it hard to pin down just what I mean by God.

I mean a personal God. One that watches you and loves you, roots for you and created you and your life, the universe and everything (42). I don't have a good grasp of pantheism so I'll leave that alone. I'm talking classical long white beard and halo God.

What would it take for you to really believe?

I ask because I have asked other why they believe and it usually has something to do with a funny warm feeling inside their tummy when surrounded by stained glass or something equally vague. Does that make any sense? How do you argue against a funny feeling? I get them here in Iraq about certain roads and buildings. Something inside just tells you to steer clear of something and you do it. I'm sure you've all had that feeling from time to time. To call it instinct would but give it a name. It's quite a leap from self-preservation to theism, I know, but I can see a connection, fallcious as it may be.

The attributes of infinite, omnipotent, omniscient are intrinsically undemonstrable to a finite being.

As for a finite but vastly more powerful and knowledgeable entity, practically indistinguishable from the omni version - I think any demonstration whatever could do no more than 'prove' that there was a whole level of reality beyond our current perceptions and understanding of the 'universe'.

There would be, from our perspective, no way to distinguish the nature of that next layer of reality, whether it was being fed into our minds via a Matrix-style setup, or something like the traditional God of Abraham, or any of an infinite number of possibilities, most of which we could not even begin to conceive of.

It is the fundamental error of any God believer to assume that we could have the slightest basis for any certainty of knowledge of the attributes and implications of any such behind-the-scenes reality. 

The only practical approach amounts to a generalization of Ockham's Razor - keep your assumptions as simple and direct as possible, based on how the universe appears to be.

If some totally incomprehensible phenomenon appears, that in no way justifies leaping to the God assumption. Such a conclusion fails to recognize that once you assume the reality of something so completely beyond our actually experience of the world, the likelihood of it corresponding to such a primitive concept as 'God', which is so clearly a naive extrapolation from our mundane experience and instincts and intuitions, seems small.

That and consideration of the history of incomprehensible phenomena coming to be better understood after more study, whether lightning or comets or the stars themselves.

EDIT: If it manifests as something like the narrative in the Bible, that still proves nothing. Any culture, civilization, race of super-beings with the power to put on such a show would easily be able to find out our belief systems and realize what special effects would have the most impact.

All that aside, if it is that powerful, and starts making demands, we presumably have no real choice - 'might makes right' after all, the essential message of the the Abrahamic God. Doesn't really matter what its motivations or ultimate nature are, nothing we can do about it.

Nice Topic!

In answer to the question: In the abscense of empirical evidence tested in muliple ways, by a multitude of reputable scientists, and testing conducted within multiple conditions, over several decades... at the very least.
I would require a frontal lobotomy or a railroad spike through my brain, to be so insipid as to believe in god(s).

Never tried LSD?

I wasn't aware of that. Let me know how it turns out.

Sure, that God if you will.

Is this not the exact same reasoning as someone believing in God because it comforts them? If I believed there was a God then how ever big a dickhead he may be is irrelevant to the question of his very existence.

That's why I don't like the atheists that pour over the Bible to look for bad stuff and somehow use that as an argument that God, at least this God, does not exist.

Speaking of LSD... someone once asked if Jesus appeared before me in person... would that convince me? No... because the simple fact that it is more likely that I am suffering some sort of hallucination rather than all the sticks in a line that have to be correct for Christianity. Just playing the odds...

Bobspence1, would I be out of line to sum up your post as stating that God is unknowable to us like a cube in a flatland... so in that case the best postulate is the null hypothisis?

I take it that our CAPABILITY to do the reverse is that we are God's gift to Theists.

B.S. galore.

First off, if this God had some religious doctrine, it would have to not be full of contradictions and not sound like the kind of bullshit a middle schooler would write

Now assuming you are talking about the christian God, even if he did appear, I would still not trust him. I would believe he existed but I wouldn't want to and I would despise him unless he told me he didn't do all that shit that it says he did in the bible.

Ex: II Kings 2: 23-24:

While traveling, some kids make fun of Elijah's bald head, so he curses them in God's name and two bears come out and maul down 42 of the kids.

That sounds retarded and is ridiculously cruel to do to 42 kids. I would not worship this God no matter his existence or not. I would rather be friends with this guy's enemy, who must be much nicer.

So really I could never worship the same guy you do, but believe in him yeah if he just only appeared here on earth and I saw him. Btw he appears a bunch of times in the bible to quite a few different people. It also says that nobody has ever seen God though so idk.

I would acknowledge his existence if he revealed himself as others have suggested. Believing in him is still another matter.

The comforting god is a construct for Christians who don't bother to read the Bible. Are you saying you'd believe because he's a dickhead? Would fear drive you that way?

You're right. You should really have the procedure carried out by a professional.

If there is a multi-omni god and it (he?) exists, and we do not have 1)a True Religion, b)Unshakable proof that god exists, god is either indifferent or malevolent. I mean, if we're talking about the same god that sends people to eternal torture for not believing in him.

For me, I'd say a bunch of flaming metallic pillars, all across the world, that are covered in a fire that gives off light but not heat (maybe the light could be unusual colored too); the pillar would be covered in writing unlike any other language, yet could be read and understood by anyone, and would contain instructions on what god wants or doesn't want.

If this happened, I'd say I'd definitely believe in god. And it wouldn't even mess with our free will; we'd have questions of how to honor god, not whether or not god exists. And this evidence would actually give proof of a *truly* just and good god, and one that knows what level of evidence would be required for incontrovertible proof.

If God is an all-knowing entity, he would have to make me into an all-knowing entity as well so I could know that he knows everything. Otherwise how could I know that he is all-knowing?

But then if that happened, I would still wonder if I knew everything there was to know. So I can't know that I know everything. So I guess god is impossible living in the realm of logic.

It depends on how you use the word "believe" - If you use "believe" in the same way I use "acknowledge", you and I have no problem. If something proves itself to exist I don't need belief in it as I would have knowledge of it. I don't have to fervently believe in 2+2=4 to make it work.

If you use "believe" as the theists do "love and obey his words without question", we will have difficulties.

Without getting bogged down in semantics it seems that a few posters here have all the same logical fallicies that theists have. I have seen: some huge appeals to emotion:

By the way... I am an atheist too. There's a subtle hint in my name.

I think I was trying to point out that the arguments that atheist have for not believing are very similar to the arguments theists have for believing. To have sticky posts titled:

THEISM IS IRRATIONAL, VIEWS OF OUR COMMUNITY,
Questions about God... theists answer these!

Question for our Christian visitors

...are very similar although points reversed to those asked by Dr. Dino. I just think that atheists should hold themselves to a higher standard.

If God sees fit to leave me a million dollars on my doorstep tomorrow, I will believe.

Preferably on Leno. With Barack Obama. On a Thursday. In June.

That would do it for me.

Actually I had a giant list to go though (logical fallacies) but we had mission so I had to cut it short. I don't feel like doing it now because I may come off as personally attacking people, which I am not. I am merely pointing out that many atheists' arguments are about the same as theist arguments.

And come to think of it I don't even like the term "atheist" as much as I used to. I once off handedly debated a youth minister and he said "Well then, what religion are you?". Quick as light I said "Atheist". He brought up a good point that I have dwelled on since, he said "Tell me what you are, not what you aren't".

I am not as iron clad in my atheism as I believe many theist are iron clad in their theism. Certain plants and animals routinely challenge my brain like "There's no way that could have happened by chance". Our circulatory system alone is simply amazing. The last "good" argument I know of for the existence of a God would be the argument from design. So many things in the natural world look designed and it is very difficult for me to shake that sometimes. Don't misunderstand me, I know that evolution by natural selection is as sound as any idea in science but it is much easier sometimes to imagine it all to have been created.

Call that "the argument from personal apathy" if you will.

I would also like to point out that if a biological process could not be explained at all with evolution by natural selection that does not automatically grant the theist the intellectual victory.

Is anyone else ever challeneged in their own athiesm?

I actually saw a video a few weeks back where Dawkins made the case to change the term 'atheist' to 'non-theist.' Though honestly it seems like a fine point to me. If it sounds like a movement, it will be treated as such- re-defined by god-believers of whatever flavor to mean 'the' atheism, rather than 'a very loose series of collection of people who don't believe in god(s).' Which is the problem that 556calibreatheist had with the youth minister.

The correct answer, BTW, is 'I don't have a religion.' You could talk about your philosophy, but unless you've got dogma + practices, you're not really talking religion.

Again, 556Caliberatheist: How did I do?

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I didn't get a million dollars. I guess there is no God...

Hank says you only get the million after you leave town.