For those of you who believe, what good arguments do you have that God exists? How do you know? The reason I ask is because I am 98% atheist and I want to exhaust either the 2% or the 98%. (Does that even make any sense? You know what I mean. ) I can't think of a single good argument that God exists. Because the bible says so is a horrible argument. I will never believe in any religion. I know some of you are general theists who don't subscribe to a religion. What is your justification that a God exists?

Ugh, I just realized that I totally derped the title. I meant to write: " "What good arguments are there that God exists." I've only had two beers tonight, I swear!

Can't add much to this obviously but here I'll list some of the things that would go a long way to proving God to me

- Extensive double-blind experiments showing the effectiveness of intercessory prayer (despite $5,000,000 per year being spent on these tests, no proof is evident)
- Numerous verified reports of spontaneous conversion to belief in a specific deity of which the subject had no previous knowledge i.e non-cultural revelation (none are recorded)
- Any verified demonstration of the laws of physics being suspended

This is a big one for me, too.

I've often pondered what would make me believe, and frankly, I'm not sure. Even if something incredible, something stupendously awesome happened, God's name being spontaneously carved in the moon, for instance, wouldn't the chance always be higher that it was of some other (extraterrestrial) origin?

Isn't the chance always higher that some alien race is just ****ing with us? I'm not sure.

This made me really lol. Not the kind of lol that most people post, (which is really just a smirk and a "heh") but a real lol.

You should make a thread entitled "What would be more plausible if "God" was suddenly inscribed on the moon, that God did it or aliens?"

People are much more likely to write their own name than someone else's so I'd say the probability is higher that it would be god.

BTW, the most common thing for people to write when doodling is "hello".

Wat? Joke I guess?

Alien usage of religion to control the masses, just like human usage of religion to control the masses, is infinitely more plausible than a magic sky king doing it.

In thread after thread, fervent atheists refer to God as "daddy sky god" or "magic sky king," and then they expect to be taken seriously by the theists. We are not really interested in arguing against your parodied caricatures. If you just really want to hi-five with other fundamentalist atheist types, then by all means, go ahead. It says something about the vulnerability of your position, that you have to blow air into these strawmen all day, post after post, doesn't it?

It says more that you are completely oblivious to the reasons we atheists make those jokes

Apologists have a collection of go-to arguments that they can recite (cosmological, teleological, objective morality etc). They also have their personal conversion stories. But in my limited experience, I have not seen much overlap in these reasons. You don't often hear of Christians claiming they converted after hearing the Kalam cosmological argument, for example! So if these arguments were not the ones that originally convinced them of their faith, why use them to try to convince others?

One aspect of Christianity I struggle with is how someone reaches the conclusion that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. It's an incredible claim, literally. The Christian might list their evidence for the Bible, but I have not heard anything that would convince someone who did not already believe it to be true (how archeology is considered proof of the scriptures is puzzling; since the Harry Potter stories took place in real locations, does that affect its fictional nature?).

So the interesting question to me is, how does someone first become convinced of their religion? The stuff that is fed to children during their early years can have long-lasting impact, so theists that hold their beliefs from indoctrination is not really interesting, to me. What I find much more fascinating are the reasons given by those that had sudden conversions when they held no strong belief beforehand. Does it happen after a traumatic personal event, for example?

As for asdfasdf32's Q "I've often pondered what would make me believe, and frankly, I'm not sure" - if an omnipotent entity existed, it should know exactly what kind of evidence would be convincing to each of us that feels this same way. Which leads me to another aspect of Christianity that I don't understand: why is it important to have a faith-based belief rather than a simple, easily achieved supernatural "wassup!!!" from upon high? In anticipation of the response "why should God prove himself to you?", in no way do I see this as God having to do something lowly or demeaning - in fact if God existed then isn't there an awful lot of cover-ups going on in modern times to keep God's presence hidden, compared to a few thousand years ago when God kept popping up all over the place?

Just because God's existence became common knowledge in no way would mean that everyone will just fall into line and start worshiping.

Jews.

*Grunch*

There aren't any that is why belief requires faith

I think the ontological arguments are, in potential, the strongest because the “how do we know?” is a priori. There are some issues with them, but here’s my attempt anyway:

1. The existence of God is either logically necessary or logically impossible.
2. The logically impossible is not conceivable. Thus,
   
   
3. If the existence of God is conceivable, then the existence of God is not logically impossible.
4. If the existence of God is not logically impossible, then (per 1) the existence of God is logically necessary.
5. The existence of God is conceivable.
6. Therefore, the existence of God is logically necessary.