I would woo Splendour and invite all of 2+2 to the wedding. Everyone would figure out that something really bizarre must have happened... God being the most likely answer.

"Lets say 1% is your current odds that you give God of existing. Shouldnt scientifically speaking...you believe in him then?"

How can you believe in something you think has a one percent chance is true?

I see this idea brought up so many times that it tells me that most people who claim they "believe" in God actually only "assume" there is God. (Of course this should not really bother a benevolent God, given you strive to please him with your actions. It would only bother the egotistical God postulated by a few Christian sects.)

I can't answer this hypothetical because I would never be 100% sure after something like this that God was real, unless I had lost my mind. It would be much more likely that I was hallucinating. I could only become convinced of the existence of God if I saw something impossible and my experience was shared by others.

If it's the christian god (or some other deity with hell as punishment) I flip him the finger and tell him the devil seems more honest.

After my encounter with God I would take a deep breath, walk into the bathroom, look at myself in the mirror and say, "Damn dawg, you were just tripping balls!" Then I would shrug and go back to bed to sleep off whatever hallucinogen I had consumed.

As long as I remained in a rational mental state, nothing except a logical contradiction could ever convince me of God's existence.

I'd ask him to do it.

When God asks you to do the impossible it is for the purpose of showing you it's impossible.

This. God knows exactly what he would have to do to get every single person to believe in him as well as the ability to do exactly that. And yet he does not.

50% -- either he exists or he doesn't.

The dinosaurs dominated the earth for over a million years. Man has been dominant for 6 to 10 thousand years. This god must be god of the dinosaurs.

Wow. Of course its neither impossible nor all that deep a lesson he's be teaching us. I don't think its impossible at all for God to make available the means that everyone would be certain he existed. Seems a rathar inept God that asks us to do something but denies us the necessary tools.

Why is the God the Christian's imagine such a tool?

That isn't the issue. He HAS made available the means. The impossibility isn't with God but with man.

Edit: Read bigmonkey's post.

You can lead a horse to water ...

It seems the better the brain God gave a person the more more likely that they would disagree with you that God has not made the means available. If there was a God he'd still be sick since he seems to favor the irrational and has something against intelligence.

Most of the faithful would seem to agree that God hasn't left much available to rationally believe which is why they constantly resort to faith.

You can lead a horse to a mirage but he can't drink what's not there.

Well, the more correct description is that you build a horse from scratch and lead it to water but without being able to make it drink.

I'd do it. How? Basically using the same tactics I use now, but just a little more obscurantism. I think I'd be good at it.

Says you, but if you could convince me of this, you wouldnt need to convince me of this. See the problem? Well, its not a problem for me, just for you and your just God theory.

if its impossible for us, god would have to be deranged to expect it of us.

and evil to hold it against us.

There is no way I could convince 2p2. I would say eff god and spend the rest of my time on the planet trying to convince immediate family and friends. If I had time left over I would work on 2p2, but I think an eternity of hell would be in the cards for me.

I'd be a bit more reasonable and it doesn't matter if this thing is god or not.

All it has to do is explain why it's a good idea to persuade anyone that god exists that is consistant with the existance of a good god.

I'd then come to 2p2 and provide the same explanation. Wouldn't be a cinch but it would be damn impressive.

If you have a whole bunch of beliefs (all seemingly reasonable to you) yet you know from past experience that you're really, really bad at belief forming and are wrong 99% of the time.

You seem to be confusing the idea of 'God' existing with the idea of the god you believe in existing. They aren't the same. If I give God a 1% chance of existing, believing in the Christian god isn't a freeroll, since it could be that Allah is actually the god that exists and I'm still an infidel.

People who seek God, including people who spend their whole lives seeking God, forsaking possessions, spending hours per day in prayer, etc, come to radically different conclusions about God.

This proves that even lifelong effort fails in the majority of cases. Since the conclusions are mutually exclusive, and each specific conclusion is a minority position, the majority (of people who literally give their lives for God) are wrong about God.

Furthermore, nobody ever comes to a conclusion about God unless they've been exposed to that conclusion through an external source. Nobody ever believed in Christianity without having been exposed externally to the Christian tenets (for example).

Therefore, conclusions about God are derived from external sources and are highly unreliable. Furthermore, the majority of people lack the ability to draw valid conclusions, even if they undergo extreme effort and spend decades trying to commune with God.

Therefore, your statement here is factually incorrect, NR. You are wrong.

Matthew 19:

24"Again I say to you, (X)it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

25When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, "Then who can be saved?"

26And looking at them Jesus said to them, "(Y)With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

I'm right if the Bible is right and wrong if it's wrong.