What would it take for me to believe in God?
Man, a lot of people want to know the answer to this one.
I guess, simply put, I need to see
a miracle. I need to-- I need evidence for God and maybe that would come in the form of a miracle that
has no possible explanation in the natural world.
And I hear from a lot of religious people who love to tell me stories
about these supposed miracles.
Like, I mean, I know the Catholic Church talks about miracles that
these future Saints did, like Pope John Paul II recently did a "miracle".
It's like, "Well, maybe get some real doctors to look at it, instead of like Vatican-sponsored doctors."
And you hear stories about people who are like,
"Oh, I saw this person get their
limb amputated, but it grew back somehow, and like they prayed, and they're healed now."
Or sometimes you see videos of people at faith revivals.
Those places where they like touch your forehead and you fall backward and
whatever medical issue you had is now fixed.
And it's like, first of all, if your limb is growing back, how come there's no video camera there?
Like every time that happens, there's never a camera.
And how come at those revivalist, you know, meetings...?
Let's release the medical records: the before and after of all these people
and let's see it. But they never release the medical records, because of course they're not actually doing anything. They just want you to think they're doing something.
So, every time I see supposed evidence
of God's existence,
it's never backed up by any evidence.
So, I would have to experience it personally.
So, I know I'm not, you know, no one's lying to me or pulling some magic trick on me.
And if it happens somewhere else, let's get some on-the-record proof that, you know,
I prayed for something to happen,
it did happen
and there's no other possible explanation for it.
But, you know, in general, just-- I need some evidence.
And what Christians tend to offer are anecdotes, not evidence.
And as I've heard people say many times before, the plural of anecdote is not fact.
So, just because I hear these stories over and over, it doesn't mean
all of a sudden we have proof of God's existence.
SGHeathen says that, you know,
"you said you'd be convinced if an 'unexplained miracle' happens. But an 'unexplained' phenomenon may not be a miracle,
let alone, you know, explained by a being."
All of that is a good point.
Just because something happens to me that I can't explain
doesn't mean I'm jumping to say it's a miracle.
I mean, I want to explore it and see what all the possible explanations are.
And even if I can't explain it, maybe someone else has a better explanation for me and I should look into that.
And it's very important to note that just because something happens that you can't explain, maybe that no one can explain,
there's a big leap that I think a lot of religious people make,
to go from "I can't explain it,
so the Christian God must have done it."
It's like, how did we jump from
"you don't know how something works" to "Jesus walks on water?"
That's a huge leap to say that.
So, I don't know. If I can't explain something, if no one can explain something,
and we know that there is no possible explanation out there that will never figure out in the future,
and apparently "I don't know" is not an acceptable answer, then maybe-- Okay, maybe there's some--
something out there that I can't explain.
But to say-- to jump automatically to say that God did it?
That's a cop-out of an answer, because then we just got to go back to "All right. Well, where did God come from?" and they can't explain that either.
So, it's just a--
I think people automatically jump from "If you can't explain something,
it must have been God" and "It must have been the--
the personal God that you happen to pray to."
And they shouldn't be doing that.
My name is Hemant Mehta. I write at FriendlyAtheist.com
and if you have any questions for us, please leave them in the comments.