What evidence would it take to make you believe in god?

I've answered this question a lot lately. So I thought I'd put down how I am answering it - that way I can just point to a reasonable answer, instead of having to write one every time. I may polish it slightly over time, to clarify what I am getting at.

So what evidence would it take to make me believe in god?

The short answer is "almost any evidence at all, if it meets a few criteria, and I know before we start what it is we're looking for evidence of".

Here's a longer version, slightly clarified from one I posted elsewhere to a question from a theist.

First, let's agree on what phenomenon we're investigating:

1. Which god are we discussing? What are its properties?
2. what observations would rule out such a being?

This is necessary because if its properties are undefined, how can *anything* constitute evidence for it? How would one distinguish between evidence for, evidence against and irrelevant information?

Given suitably clear answers to those, I will accept pretty much any evidence that's

• sufficiently extraordinary to match the extraordinariness of the claimed god,
  
• sufficient to rule out alternate non-supernatural explanations, and also
• sufficient to rule out alternative supernatural ones

i.e. any evidence sufficiently strong to convince me we found what we were looking for (rather than something else extraordinary or even ordinary), and that we're not just fooling ourselves or being fooled by someone or something else.

In other words, if you specify which god hypothesis we're proposing up front, and what evidence could rule the hypothesis out (otherwise it's an hypothesis without any explanatory value at all), I'll then be prepared to consider evidence for it. To cover all those bases, it will have to be multiple, pretty consistent pieces of evidence, but I won't limit it. Lots of things will do.

[One problem I often run into is that frequently the theist asking the question's concept of what constitutes evidence is not what's normally regarded as actual evidence for a phenomenon at all. Feelings aren't evidence, for example. Nor is popular opinion. Nor is "it's written in this book" really evidence, because not everything written in books is true. Historians have ways of becoming reasonably convinced of certain things having happened, rather than relying on statements in a single work of unclear providence.]

Any real evidence. Almost anything that's demonstrably not just at some stage come out of people's heads.

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Now your turn, theists: What observation(s), if any, would convince you that your particular god doesn't exist?

Facing death

I get into discussions with christians a lot. Recently, I've had a lot of (online) discussion with fairly radical bible-literalist largely-creationist types.

I'm often asked by them if I fear death, and I explain that I came to terms with it years ago. I say I don't fear it at all. Many of them tell me I am lying, or that I am deceiving myself, and when faced with the real prospect of death I will come crying back to the Lawd begging for forgiveness, no-atheists-in-foxholes.

I never bought it - I've come close to death before, and even before I really thought it through, the prospect of dying wasn't that terrifying (pain, on the other hand, I'd really rather avoid, but that's a side issue). But how would I feel NOW?

Well, I recently had a serious prospect of death. I was laying face down on the floor, having crawled a few feet toward the phone and unable to move any further, with all the symptoms of a stroke, and resolved to wait for someone to find me (which I was pretty sure would be no more than ten minutes). So anyway, I had several minutes to ponder the very real possibility I might die, not at some distant time in the future, but with the very real good chance I might die today, possibly right there on the floor.

I didn't actually think death was all that likely, mind you; I was more worried about the prospect of surviving with major defects and being a damn nuisance, but even that didn't seem hugely likely - if things went well, I expected I'd probably come out of it mostly okay, given a few weeks or months at most. But still the prospect that "this could be the day I die" was there.

So how was it?

I felt not the slightest twinge of fear. Not the briefest moment of doubt. I had no impulse to pray. I had no sense that I was risking infinite torture imposed by the merciless and implacable god of the new testament*.

I simply thought that it was possible I might die. It was annoying, like missing the last half of a good TV show that I'd really been enjoying. I was somewhat concerned that my kids might see me dead on the floor, which would be somewhat traumatic. That was it.

So I feel vindicated. I was right. When faced with the immediate, real possibility of death... I don't fear it. Not a whit. All the vile christian threats - they don't work on me any more. Even when I think I might really die.




* This guy (I'm looking at KJV):
Matthew 10:28, 13:41-42, 25:41, 25:46
Mark 4:11-12, 9:43-48, 16:16
Luke 12:5, 13:23-30
John 3:36, 15:6

Religion and the utility argument

I was just reading Greta Christina's post on hope.

It's a wonderful post. I just wanted to explore an aspect of one of her themes and head down a little side-track.

There is an argument that is sometimes made: "but religion brings people hope".

This is a claim that religious belief is useful, even when it isn't true.

I have several issues with this claim.

Firstly, it often comes during a discussion of whether or not a religious belief is true - a discussion in which it has no place whatever - and in that context, such ground-shifting is tantamount to an admission that it isn't true (or that the support for it is so weak that such ground-shifting is required).

But let's examine an argument about its utility even if it isn't true.

That some religion might be useful in some circumstances may well be the case. Is it always useful? Is it sometimes harmful?

The answer is quite plain on its face - religion for its own sake (i.e. irrespective of its truth) is not always useful, and there is plenty of evidence that it can be harmful, or that it can be used in harmful ways. I have different examples than Greta Christina, but I think she addresses this fairly well, so I won't spend time on it here.

The problem is the argument is used to justify religious belief outside those specific circumstances where it has utility. The exact circumstances where it is useful are not examined, because it isn't really being used as an argument for its use in those specific circumstances alone, but instead for its general use. It's another form of bait-and-switch; the underlying aim is to turn off the arguments against religious belief, so that religious belief can be maintained generally.

However, let us go further, and start with the assumption that in fact religious belief is useful in some circumstances, and we happen to be faced with exactly such a circumstance. Here we find a second bait-and-switch. The point is actually to support the theist's specific religious beliefs. Are they really willing to consider other religions? If we examine, say Ásatrú, and find that it's better (more useful) in these specific circumstances, will they abandon their current belief when in that circumstance and embrace Ásatrú in that situation instead?

The emptiness of the argument is immediately apparent.

If utility is what is sought, their religious belief must be put into competition with all religious belief, with incompatible religious belief, to find the belief(s) that are most useful. If the point is really about utility, it is the high-utility beliefs that should be maintained, and the theist's beliefs will very likely lose. There are many thousands of extant religious beliefs, many thousands more extinct ones, and uncountable infinities of potential beliefs (indeed, including lack of belief in anything supernatural) - if "religious belief" is a useful thing, we should try to work out which specific beliefs help the most. Is the theist willing for their beliefs to undergo such examination? If not, they undermine their utility argument - if they actually want religion for its utility, they'd be willing to find the most useful beliefs, not the ones they're currently infatuated with. The fact that they simply don't do this shows their argument for the bait-and-switch that it is.

Southern Comfort?

I no more envy people that find faith comforting than I envy people that find a double shot of whiskey in their morning coffee comforting.


... I might find it understandable, but that's not at all the same thing.

Why I look forward to the death of atheism

As should already be obvious, I'm an atheist.

But I'm an atheist who looks forward to a time when there are no people who identify as atheist - to the death, as it were, of atheism.

After all, I don't identify as an a-tooth-fairy-ist; it's just naturally accepted that as an adult, I don't carry such a belief. Being an atoothfairyist is so universally common that it isn't even a term. Atoothfairyism, if it were ever to have existed, is certainly now long dead. It's not necessary to identify as a skeptic of the religious beliefs prevalent in ancient Greece. Such a lack of belief is, essentially, a dead issue.

So it goes with the religions presently at large -- I hesitate to say "modern religion", because there's little about their fundamentals that's modern. I look forward to the day when it's utterly pointless to ever mention a lack of belief in them, because it is essentially universal. When that day comes, atheism as we presently understand it, will be utterly dead. We'll just be people, getting on with life.

Maybe then we can really get to work of fixing the mess we're in.

Unasking the question

The problem with asking a theist to give evidence for a God is not so much the fact that they lack evidence.

It's that they don't seem to have a coherent concept of what they mean when they say the word. The God concept slips around in any argument - one moment its one thing, the next moment it's some other, contradictory thing.

(And woe betide anyone should they dare ask for a coherent definition! Your likely fate is to be buried under increasingly thick layers of blather, each one getting further from any sense of definition.)

I have come to think "God" is not a concept in the usual sense. It's a bag for holding and dealing with a large pile of (often conflicting) emotions, with a vaguely concept-like structure imposed on it by hundreds of generations of talking about it.

I wonder if perhaps the debate should shift. We should unask "What evidence is there?", and instead we should perhaps be saying "You keep using that word - what do you think it means?".

If you can get an answer that sounds like it means anything whatever ask "Umm, can we write that definition down, please?"

You still won't get any evidence, of course, but maybe you can get them to talk about the one damn conception of God for more than one sentence at a time.


Well, it depends on what the meaning of "is" is.

A possible place to look for an explanation for religious belief?

Dana has a review of Julie Sweeney's movie Letting Go of God.

Now, on a completely unrelated note, there are various potential explanations that have been suggested for the fact that religious belief is very common - generally either taking the form that it in some sense carries a social benefit, or that it is a side effect of something else (or an interaction of several somethings) that carry a benefit. Some of these explanations have some evidence for them, though I don't think there's really conclusive evidence that any of them forms a complete explanation.

Anyway, something Dana said brought up a thought:

She doesn't ever state this directly, but the end of the movie talks about her daughter reaching for magical explanations when Julia's trying to explain things like death in rational, material terms. And that struck me: religion is never growing up. What her daughter invented to make herself feel better about things she didn't understand sounded exactly like the answers most human religions invent.

We as a species have never seemed to mature past the age of four.

And then I thought... if you add in the "invisible friends" bit, you've got a couple of indicators of development typical of maybe a three year old.

That reminded me of neoteny - the retention of juvenile characteristics into adulthood. This is a common evolutionary trick - rather than change an underlying gene, alter the timing of its development - it's generally going to be a much smaller change (this sort of idea should be standard fare for the evo-devo crowd, but I first encountered the concept in one of Dawkins' books, many years ago), but the effects can be dramatic.

Humans are "masters" of neoteny. We retain dozens of juvenile-ape characterstics. It's why our faces tend to be almost hairless. It's why we play games and retain curiosity into adulthood. It is one of the major drivers of our success; it is, not to put too fine a point on it, a prime cause of why we are who we are: I gather chimp brain development continues until about 1 year of age. In humans it lasts until we're about 23!

Is it so surprising then, that certain mental development characteristics of toddlers might hang on? If our evolution has caused us to so dramatically retain certain juvenile aspects of brain development, might associated mental milestones tend to come along with them?

Is religious belief a side effect of neoteny?


If speculation is not to your taste, have some (tangentially related) science - on genes in humans that have shown a much higher rate of evolution since our last common ancestor with chimps - what potentially makes us what we are.