What would it take for you to change your stance on religion?

[Akar]

What would it take for you to change your stance on religion? Whether you're an Atheist or a Theist or a Deist, what evidence or event would you need in order for you to change your position on religion?

[mishkin]

(Atheist). I seriously can't imagine what could make me change my mind. Something like a man with a beard separating the waters from vigo to new york. No, actually my first option would be to think that it is a very advanced technology in the hands of a maniac, the second that the ancient aliens are finally back, maybe the third that god exists and has done a miracle.

(Once an argument in a book by Philip K. Dick shocked me. But I was young and more stupid and at that time I drank a lot).

[Akar]

What was the argument that you read, if you recall?

[mishkin]

The boock was The Transmigration of Timothy Archer . Unfortunately my memory sucks.

[Cyclops]

(Atheist). I seriously can't imagine what could make me change my mind. Something like a man with a beard separating the waters from vigo to new york. No, actually my first option would be to think that it is a very advanced technology in the hands of a maniac, the second that the ancient aliens are finally back, maybe the third that god exists and has done a miracle....

As an agnostic, pretty much the same. I'd be all "yeah funny how he did it when the moon was, you know, somewhere...ooh pixels, I see pixels guys"

That said I do have a sense of the divine, I think its part of us rather than us part of it.

[conon394]

(Atheist). I seriously can't imagine what could make me change my mind. Something like a man with a beard separating the waters from vigo to new york. No, actually my first option would be to think that it is a very advanced technology in the hands of a maniac, the second that the ancient aliens are finally back, maybe the third that god exists and has done a miracle.

(Once an argument in a book by Philip K. Dick shocked me. But I was young and more stupid and at that time I drank a lot).

I would agree, but also I think as an Agnostic I have to hold an open mind too many across history have had faith and many of those not just enforced or lacking alternatives and the freedom to opt for them. I would say for example if my main and reserve parachute fail on a sky dive and I live - that is simply the random chance of being in a really tiny percentage. Now if I jump with a group of 30 evangelicals and thay all have the same problems and spend the fall calling out to Jesus and we hit water with no intervening thing to slow us from terminal velocity and nobody blacks out and everyone swims to safety - now that would change my mind - because the probability of surviving that is very much something approaching zero, of 30 +1 well very much closer to zero.

[Sir Adrian]

(Theist) I arrived at my beliefs though a decade long process of reading philosophy and logical introspection. Basically at this stage it would either take the revelation that everything around us is a hologram or a simulation or a time machine taking me back to see Bob the Cromagnon play a trick and Steve and inadvertently starting all of the world's religions.

[Sar1n]

Hard agnostic, and I don't see any realistic way to change that. I realize that as long as humanity's understanding of reality is imperfect, and it's unlikely that it will ever be perfect, any phenomenon, anything that affects reality can have a logical, causal explanation and there's no reason to involve any deity, which is by definition unprovable.

[Calypze]

Atheist here.

I'm a skeptic first, and atheism is simply an outcome of that. In principle, evidence pointing to the truth of either theism or deism would cause me to change my mind. In practice, given what we know about the universe, I would consider the probability of such evidence appearing to be vanishingly small. But I am not dogmatic about atheism. It is simply the default position given the lack of evidence for either theism or deism.

"I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be." - Isaac Asimov

[Slydessertfox]

But I am not dogmatic about atheism. It is simply the default position given the lack of evidence for either theism or deism.

This is pretty much the same for me as well. As per what would have to happen...well maybe if a deity literally descended from heaven one day, but even then I might wonder if it was just some weird alien thing.

[Muizer]

What would it take for you to change your stance on religion? Whether you're an Atheist or a Theist or a Deist, what evidence or event would you need in order for you to change your position on religion?

Considering a future religious self, I'd ascribe it to a mental disorder. Of course, that future self would look back on me like someone 'blind to the Truth'.

[Akar]

Considering a future religious self, I'd ascribe it to a mental disorder. Of course, that future self would look back on me like someone 'blind to the Truth'.

I'd rep you for this if I could . Both funny and true.

[Prodromos]

It's impossible to reason without arriving at a Supreme Being. The arguments for God (e.g., from contingency or motion) seem to me so incontrovertible, that I'd need to set aside reason before I could adopt atheism.

I find it impossible to take atheism very seriously as an intellectual position. As an emotional commitment or a moral passion—a rejection of barren or odious dogmatisms, an inability to believe in a good or provident power behind a world in which there is so much suffering, defiance of “Whatever brute and blackguard made the world,” and so forth —atheism seems to me an entirely plausible attitude toward the predicaments of finite existence; but, as a metaphysical picture of reality, it strikes me as a rank superstition. I cannot imagine how it is possible coherently to believe that the material order is anything but an ontologically contingent reality, which necessarily depends upon an absolute and transcendent source of existence. To me, the argument for the reality of God from the contingency of all composite and mutable things seems unarguably true, with an almost analytic obviousness; and all philosophical attempts to get around that argument (and I am fairly sure I am familiar with all of them) seem to me to lack anything like its power and lucidity. And the same is true in only slightly lesser degree of the argument from the unity, intentionality, rationality, and conceptual aptitudes of the mind, or the argument from the transcendental structure of rational consciousness. Even so, I must ruefully admit, I would be deceiving myself if I did not acknowledge that my judgments follow in large part from a kind o primal stance toward reality, a way of seeing things that involves certain presuppositions regarding, among other things, the trustworthiness of reason. Ultimately, though, I know that, if the materialist position is correct, there can be no real rational certainty regarding ontological questions, or regarding anything at all; so the very assumption that what seems logically correct to me must in fact be true already presumes part of the conclusion I wish to draw.

~ David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God

[Akar]

Looked up the guy on Wikipedia and was surprised to see he's part of the same political association as I am.

Hart ... is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.[

[AqD]

What would it take for you to change your stance on religion? Whether you're an Atheist or a Theist or a Deist, what evidence or event would you need in order for you to change your position on religion?

If I discover myself to be a God I'd believe my religion and participate in the brainwashing of fellow humans for eternal entertainment.

[Sar1n]

It's impossible to reason without arriving at a Supreme Being. The arguments for God (e.g., from contingency or motion) seem to me so incontrovertible, that I'd need to set aside reason before I could adopt atheism.

Nope. At some point, you arrive at problem that your knowledge of the universe is incomplete and what you know isn't self-proving, and at that point you can either be honest and leave the question open, or you can substitute a supreme being to placate your beliefs.

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

I'll bite. Reason tells me that there may be something more, who knows. It leaves me faintly agnostic, always open to the possibility, Yet everything in favor of the active God I'm told about boils down to hearsay, embedded conceptions that can be chalked down to thousands of years of buildup, a belief for comfort itself rather than a logically arrived end, and attributing things that can be logically and believably explained as coincidence to the deeds of an active God.

For me? It would take a revelation, thanks to Thomas Paine and his treatise for putting this in simple words for me. Everything about religion as an entity falls into the above category; I'd need something damn convincing and good reason for it to not boil down to alien technology or mind components on our own world.

What I will say is that there is an origin, which may or may not predate the Big Bang. We don't know and cannot know the nature of such an origin, and for all we know it was an on/off switch of sorts of the Big Bang to instigate all that is and the rest is the blindest of luck. Still, what might be is something I consider as important to consider as what is and isn't. Science is the best we can do, but it still changes as new details come to light. I'm open to further possibilities down that road, I'm also open to revelation or true evidence of a supreme being. I'm also open to life being an utter simulation for the amusement of supreme beings, a well crafted world in the domain of a supreme being, or being myself a supreme being from which existence itself spawns - and when I die, I either create something else, or I take the entire universe with me. Obviously, thinking in any of the latter frames is amusing, but hardly conductive to live from. No matter how much I try in roleplaying, the only frame of existing I can truly master is my own.

[Muizer]

As an emotional commitment or a moral passion—a rejection of barren or odious dogmatisms, an inability to believe in a good or provident power behind a world in which there is so much suffering, defiance of “Whatever brute and blackguard made the world,” and so forth —atheism seems to me an entirely plausible attitude toward the predicaments of finite existence;

Interesting. Whenever I hear people make such agruments agains the existence of God, I cannot take the truely serious. This sounds more like they're disappointed in God. How can you be disappointed in something you don't believe in?

but, as a metaphysical picture of reality, it strikes me as a rank superstition. I cannot imagine how it is possible coherently to believe that the material order is anything but an ontologically contingent reality, which necessarily depends upon an absolute and transcendent source of existence. To me, the argument for the reality of God from the contingency of all composite and mutable things seems unarguably true, with an almost analytic obviousness; and all philosophical attempts to get around that argument (and I am fairly sure I am familiar with all of them) seem to me to lack anything like its power and lucidity. And the same is true in only slightly lesser degree of the argument from the unity, intentionality, rationality, and conceptual aptitudes of the mind, or the argument from the transcendental structure of rational consciousness. Even so, I must ruefully admit, I would be deceiving myself if I did not acknowledge that my judgments follow in large part from a kind o primal stance toward reality, a way of seeing things that involves certain presuppositions regarding, among other things, the trustworthiness of reason. Ultimately, though, I know that, if the materialist position is correct, there can be no real rational certainty regarding ontological questions, or regarding anything at all; so the very assumption that what seems logically correct to me must in fact be true already presumes part of the conclusion I wish to draw.

Well good of him to acknowledge his own limitations and uncertainties. Of course, nothing about this suggest it makes the slightest bit of sense to be religious. Even if I were convinced there's a god I'd still see no reason to be religious. That is because it's not belief in the existence or non existence of god that matters but the belief some people profess to know how that god relates to and intereacts with us and the world around us.

[MaximiIian]

What would it take for you to change your stance on religion?

Religion, for me, is pretty fluid. I practice what I feel is best for me and my spiritual needs, and my religious framework has shifted over the past decade and a half, from a broad neopaganism to traditional Wicca, to initiatory Witchcraft, to Celtic paganism, to Hellenic paganism, to my current identification with Religio Romana. Though I think where I am now is fine, it works for me. Roman religion, historically, was remarkably syncretic and flexible, and inclusionary towards many private and foreign cults alongside the traditional religion. The modern reconstruction of such is, likewise, very flexible and enables me to honor a wider pantheon than more ethnicity-specific reconstructions would have. I can honor my ancestors and their traditions and their spirituality, while also adhering to my own.

But religion is not the same thing as theological position. I think what you're asking about is the latter.
In that case, I'd say it would take some very vivid and direct personal experience, with incontrovertible proof of there being solely one god, or bending the laws of logic to prove a negative and demonstrate that there are no gods.
I've had UPG that demonstrated, well enough for me, the reality of the gods, plural. But I must emphasize that that was my personal experience, and is only being used as proof for myself. I would not expect anyone to hold the same beliefs as me without something analogous to it, nor would I seek to use it as proof for anyone else.

[Akar]

Religion, for me, is pretty fluid. I practice what I feel is best for me and my spiritual needs, and my religious framework has shifted over the past decade and a half, from a broad neopaganism to traditional Wicca, to initiatory Witchcraft, to Celtic paganism, to Hellenic paganism, to my current identification with Religio Romana. Though I think where I am now is fine, it works for me. Roman religion, historically, was remarkably syncretic and flexible, and inclusionary towards many private and foreign cults alongside the traditional religion. The modern reconstruction of such is, likewise, very flexible and enables me to honor a wider pantheon than more ethnicity-specific reconstructions would have. I can honor my ancestors and their traditions and their spirituality, while also adhering to my own.

But religion is not the same thing as theological position. I think what you're asking about is the latter.
In that case, I'd say it would take some very vivid and direct personal experience, with incontrovertible proof of there being solely one god, or bending the laws of logic to prove a negative and demonstrate that there are no gods.
I've had UPG that demonstrated, well enough for me, the reality of the gods, plural. But I must emphasize that that was my personal experience, and is only being used as proof for myself. I would not expect anyone to hold the same beliefs as me without something analogous to it, nor would I seek to use it as proof for anyone else.

Great explanation!