Questions on Theism

So, a few observations on miracles.

1. There are miracle stories in every religious tradition and plenty of not-exactly-religious traditions. Unless there's some big difference in credibility -- which I'm not aware of any reason to think there is -- if you think "no smoke without fire" about one set then you should think the same about the others too. Which means you either have to believe in lots of different gods, or believe in one god and lots of evil spirits (or something) that just happen to do more or less the same sorts of miracle. (Or, I guess, believe that miraculous things happen but they're brought about by people's latent psychic powers or something, but that's pretty far from any religion's account of these things.)

2. When miraculous stories are investigated carefully, they consistently seem to evaporate. This happens even when the people doing the investigation belong to the religion that claims responsibility for the alleged miracle. For instance, consider something commonly cited as evidence for miracles: the shrine at Lourdes, to which pilgrims in their millions trek in the hope of miraculous healing. The Roman Catholic Church has a process -- to its credit, not a completely ridiculous one -- by which it certifies some healings there as miraculous. Although the process isn't completely ridiculous, it's far from obviously bulletproof; the main requirement is that a bunch of Roman Catholic doctors declare that the alleged cure is inexplicable according to current medical knowledge. As an example, the most recent case is of someone who had a tumour that went away after she bathed at Lourdes. (My understanding is that this is a thing that occasionally happens, miracle or no.) So, anyway, they appear to certify about one miracle per two million pilgrims, and I think pretty much all the pilgrims are there in hope of healing. One per two million! (If you think the alleged cures are so improbable that they couldn't happen naturally one time in two million, I have a bridge to sell you.)

3. In some situations (those in which a lot of these miraculous healings tend to occur) it really isn't difficult to get people to think more has happened than really has. Consider, for instance, the case of Peter Popoff. Lots of miraculous healings at his meetings -- but the whole thing was a fraud.

4. In general, unfortunately, people do lie. And make mistakes. And see what they hope or expect to see. And tales "grow in the telling", so that after a few steps of Chinese Whispers something sounds far more inexplicable and impressive than it ever really was.

You might try the following experiment: Talk to some of your Christian friends, and ask them for the most impressive examples they have personally experienced of miraculous interventions by God. If in fact there are no miracles, what you should expect is that (1) the things they cite won't, on the whole, be all that impressive; (2) the more careful and intelligent of them will have less impressive experiences; (3) the most impressive experiences will be the least verifiable.

First of all, congratulations! These kinds of questions are extremely challenging to even ask from within certain philosophical frameworks, and the fact that you're here at all means that you've accomplished something exceptional. Further, by using the question of miracles specifically, you've focused on empirical, testable claims with verifiable consequences. The epistemology that you're associating with atheism or agnosticism is fundamentally the ability to ask exactly these questions, the habit of doing so reflexively, and the willingness to follow those questions to real answers.

The basic Bayesian response to the question of miracles isn't just "are they lying, or is there a God?" Ask the question a different way: in a hypothetical universe in which Christianity is false, how many claims of miraculous events do we expect? In a hypothetical universe in which Christianity is true, how many true (and false!) claims of miraculous intervention do we expect? Do we expect a difference in the kind of miracles that are claimed to occur? For example, we experience people claiming that God cured infertility or cancer, but never people claiming that God cured their amputation. It's an interesting discrepancy, and which universe is that most consistent with? Etc. Don't think about it in terms of picking apart each individual claim. Just ask yourself about an interventionist God in terms of your honest expectations for such a God, and consider the world-as-it-is in comparison. Use the miraculous as a prediction that can succeed or fail, rather than simply as an explanation that is immune to correction.

A miracle simply doesn't convey very much information.

It can tell you that there's something odd about the universe (assuming you're got accurate information about the miracle), but it doesn't give you details about how you should live or what (if anything) happens after you die.

Hume's argument against miracles is still the gold standard.

Other useful resources.

You're lucky! If it's only the argument from miracle keeping you from becoming a better thinker, then that's easily solved. It's really brittle.

First, "account of a miracle" is very, very different from "evidence of a miracle". The only datum here is someone saying "A miracle has happened to me!". From a Bayesian point of view, to assign a probability you must take into account all different models that could produce that statement, including:

• a real, honest miracle
• deception, inflicted on the witness
• deception, self-inflicted
• mistakenly reporting a perfectly natural phoenomenon for a miracle
• etc.

Having had some experience as an amateur mentalist, I'm always amazed at the degree at which people want to believe in the supernatural. Even when you tell them explicitly that it was all a trick, they still might argue you have power you don't know to have, and things like that.
Anyway, the simple fact that there are many ways to account for a witnessing of a miracle, automatically reduces the probability of such an event really happening.

Second, as others have pointed out, a miracle might point in the direction of the divine, but which divine? Islam, Induism, Buddhism... all have instances of miracles happening. Can you remember for example the case of the hindu milk drinking statues? It was famous all over the world. It even has its own Wikipedia page.

The third point I will explain with an analogy: suppose you travel back in time bringing with you a pair of walkie-talkie. Lo and behold, miracles can happen: suddenly people are capable of talking to one another even if they are very far apart!
Simply the fact that something very unusual has happened cannot confirm or deny any model of reality per se.

Bayesian statistics sum it all up pretty neatly: if you consider reporting a miracle as an outlier in an otherwise pretty standard distribution, you must decide the probability that the outlier is the indicator of some unusual model of the world by comparing it with all the other models. In math notation:

P( Christian god | miracle reported ) = P( miracle reported | Christian god ) * P( Christian god ) / P( miracle reported )

Assuming P( miracle reported | Christian god ) to be pretty much 1 and P( Christian god ) to be somewhat low but not fantastically so, the problem lies in the term P( miracle reported ), because it can be decomposed in this way:

P( miracle reported ) = P( miracle reported | Christian god ) P( Christian god ) + P( miracle reported | no Christian god ) P( no Christian god ).

Since we already estabilished that P( Christian god ) is low, then P( no Christian god ) must be high, but the real weight is in the term P( miracle reported | no Christian god ). As we already know, because of the tendency of the human mind to be deceived, this term is pretty close to unity, and so P( Christian god | miracle reported ) is pretty close to P( Christian god ).
This does not refute the existence of the Christian god, it simply says that, since witnessing can happen with equal probability whether a Christian god exists or not, then you cannot take that witnessing as evidence for a divinity.
But since you already hinge only on this for your belief, then you're pretty solved.

Thank you for an honest assessment of your own views, and a question, instead of just laying into an attack. I'll see what I can do to respond in the same spirit.

Isn't this a well known theist apologist position, the "argument from miracles"? You actually get a whole lot of links for that, starting at La Wik.

But you have a lot of odd ducks here, so you might get something new.

when atheists make their case, they assume a universe without miracles

I'm sure some do, but it's certainly not necessary.

But let's be clear about what we're talking about when you say miracle. It seems to be events caused by the will of an agent through magic.

Quantum fluctuations, with no known hidden variable cause, presumed to be ontologically random, are not what you're after, right?

So, I try magic occasionally. I point my hand at something, concentrate, and "will it to move". Haven't gotten it to work yet. That part is the problem. It hasn't worked for me. Never has. And it doesn't seem to work for anyone else either.

HPMOR is about a hyper rationalist atheist living in a magical world. Magic works just fine for him. The important ting isn't the physics that's our current best conclusion on how things work, but the empirical method of coming at our conclusions. What do you know, and how do you claim to know it?

What we have are reports and claims of events that people can't explain. Do you know of any evidence of a such an event that you find convincing and inexplicable? I don't.

And even if there were such an event, it seems to me a huge epistemological leap to go from "I can't explain" to "invisible beings are fucking with me through magic". And an even greater epistemological leap from that to "the Christian narrative is true".

That's the point that you haven't elaborated on.By what evidence or logic do you go from "invisible beings are fucking with me through magic" to "the Christian narrative is true"?

Even if you feel compelled to keep your miracles, you can still drop your cross.

p.s. Shouldn't Harry be pondering those little notes he gets from the Time Cop a little more?

LW article Excluding the Supernatural worked for me. I didn't want it to work! I didn't read it as an attempt to change my mind. I just read it because it seemed interesting, and then realized in horror that there probably aren't any deities. Losing my belief in theism was an upsetting experience, though I can't bring myself to regret it.

Thank you for reminding me that Luke (ours, not the bible's) saw miracles when he was a Christian and then deconverted anyway.

My own atheism follows deconversion as best i can recall at about the age of 9 or 10. There was one day i was afraid for my soul having been told once again that not believing in god would put me in hell and all of the sudden it struck me that the fact that you are afraid of something does not make it more or less reliably true. So believing because i was afraid simply stopped making sense and honestly I could not think of any other good reason to believe. Clearly there is some sort of very large change of state that occurs between belief and disbelief, even more so than between Republican and Democrat (two American political parties that hate each other).

Since then I have realized that all the evidence from miracles or from logical "proofs of god's existence" may prove something exists that we don't understand, but it does not prove that a vengeful god who recited chapter and verse to Moses, who parted the red sea and flooded the world, who created Adam without a belly button, and who wants me to go to church each sunday or else who will throw me in eternal hell fire because he loves me so much, none of these proofs show all this theology is true. So suppose you saw a young virgin girl stand there in front of a statue of mary and you saw her with your own eyes start to bleed from her hands and her side. You could be reliably sure something was happening that you did not understand. You would have learned NOTHING about whether this means God will burn you in hell for eternity if you say "fuck god" or that Mary was taken bodily into heaven as a virgin at the end of her life (as the Roman Catholics believe) or that the blessed Eucharist is merely a symbol and is not actually the flesh of Jesus Christ (as many protestants believe but not the Catholics).

So one thing you can be sure, you can witness miracles yourself and believe the accounts you hear of miracles, and it does not tell you one iota about dogma. It doesn't even tell you that there is an omniscient and omnipotent being, or who created the universe, or whether or not it is OK to use birth control devices. So no matter how many miracles you see or hear of, you must still wonder, do the thousands of years old texts attributed to moses actually reflect what moses said god told him, and even if they do, was moses correct in concluding that the voices he heard were god? Was the miraculous life of Jesus really a warning to us about all the things we must believe and do in order to avoid an eternity of hellfire, or was Jesus some other form of very special being who had great, but not necessarily perfect moral knowledge?

From there we can talk more about miracles. Science creates models of the world that predict what we would expect. When we get the prediction wrong, we know the model is wrong. So far, whenever that has happened we have not had to resort to "OK the only way to explain THAT is that there is a really smart powerful guy who is invisible and is secretly, but not too secretly, pulling the strings." But suppose there is a "miracle," all that means it is something that science can't explain at the moment. Most likely it means science hasn't figured it out yet. Weather used to be a miracle, eclipses were miracles, asteroids hitting the earth were miracles. Getting sick used to be a miracle, and getting well used to be a miracle. We learn more, we explain more without appealing to the man behind the curtain. Guess what, we are only half way there to explaining everything, and we will ALWAYS be only half way there. But everything we do explain, we don't wind up seeing the man behind the curtain, the trend is not looking good for god.

Good luck with this!

This isn't just idle curiosity. I am currently a Christian (or maybe an agnostic terrified of ending up on the wrong side of Pascal's Wager), and when you actually take religion seriously, it can be a HUGE drain on quality of life. I find myself being frightened of hell, feeling guilty when I do things that don't hurt anyone but are still considered sins, and feeling guilty when I try to plan out my life, wondering if I should just put my plans in God's hands. To make matters worse, I grew up in a dysfunctional, very Christian family, and my emotions seem to be convinced that being a true Christian means acting like my parents (who were terrible role models; emulating them means losing at life).

As a former Evangelical Christian, I wonder if this isn't the crux of it all.

Of course it's possible real faith healings and resurrections have taken, and are taking, place somewhere on the globe. It's possible that these miracles are happening due to the power of a supernatural entity. And it's possible this supernatural dude is best described by the Christian Bible.

It's going to be difficult for you to dismiss these possibilities no matter how small because you've (presumably) been indoctrinated to believe in things like eternal conscious torment in hell, let alone the guilt/shame/fear associated with all sorts of "secular" worldviews and rational thinking. Indoctrination is very powerful, and it can wreak havoc with your emotions long after your rational mind has (all but) dismissed religion's claims as fairy tales.

The rest of LW has provided, and will provide, plenty of reasons to seriously doubt miracle claims. But religious memes have evolved to survive such skepticism—they are clever enough to avoid being pinned down...they escape and get passed on. They are hard to dismiss and tempting to believe in.

The reality is, there is some non-zero probability that the power of Jesus Christ through prayer raised someone, somewhere, from the grave. And this would provide some evidence of the veracity of Christianity...and this would make hell into a bit more realistic threat...and hell (at least in many Fundamentalist churches) is beyond the worst conceivable punishment...

So, for those who were indoctrinated, Pascal's Wager is a pretty good bet according to the simple math. Believe! Do anything you must do to avoid an infinitely bad eternity in hell! No matter how slight the probability, it makes sense to at least try to believe and "live according to God's plan." It's a mathematically sound wager. (Most Christians I talk to end up revealing Pascal's Wager as the basis for their belief if you dig a little bit. Most start off with flowery sounding stuff about "God's love", etc... but if you push beyond that, they paraphrase the Wager, even if they've never heard of Blaise Pascal.)

For those who don't "take religion seriously", it's pretty easy to make this bet. They just go with the flow and reap the social and psychological benefits of church and faith. If the church gets too demanding, they leave and find a church/denomination that is more accommodating to their lifestyle.

For those who can actually wrap their heads around the implications (hell, etc.) of a Universe ruled by the God of the Bible—for those who take that religion seriously—it's quite a difficult dissonance to resolve when rational thought collides with some of the fantastical claims of faith.

You seem to have compiled a pretty good-sized list of rational reasons to doubt...but you'll never prove God doesn't exist. And there will always be sophisticated sounding theological gymnastics available to provide reasons for why you just need more faith even though things don't seem to make much sense (i.e. God doesn't cure Ebola because..., God never raises someone from the dead in a developed country with pristine medical records and lots of evidence because..., God doesn't heal amputees because...).

I went through something like what you are experiencing. It's very difficult—anxiety and fear galore. After this will come the existential void/sigh of relief phase. Then some anger. Then it gets better. Check out Marlene Winell and Valerie Tarico. Good luck!

I don't see how a god necessarily solves the problems theists want it to solve. A logically possible god could have created human life without any meaning, purpose, moral absolutes, an afterlife or a guarantee of ultimate justice. Christians and other traditional theists just project this wish list onto a god for basically selfish reasons, when a god has no obligation to arrange the universe for its creatures' convenience.

Most people are aware of the placebo effect, but greatly underestimate how large it's power truly can be.

I have fibromyalgia. At one time I couldn't write, needed a cane to walk, had constant diarrhea, and worse. I had already tried dozens of treatments. I had grown skeptical.

Then I was given a treatment which made lots of sense. It was based off of a theory which I had my doubts about, but after learning more about it, I was 100% convinced this was it. After trying the treatment, I was immediately much better. I could run. I could shave my own beard without pain. I could play sports, I could eat all sorts of foods without problems. One day walking caused me pain, the next I could run without any problems. For two months I was in heaven.

Then all the pain came back. No matter how much I tried that treatment again, it didn't help. Worse, as I learned more about the treatment, I discovered I'd been scammed. Yet it still seemed to have worked a miracle, if only for two months. Why? The placebo effect. More than any other treatment I'd tried, I was convinced this one was going to work.

(fyi, now, three years later I'm doing great)

Verging a bit away from your question, but:

feeling guilty when I try to plan out my life, wondering if I should just put my plans in God's hands.

I'm not sure I understand what "putting your plans in god's hands" means specifically (I'm not very familiar with Christianity in practice, especially American protestantism which I assume is what you're talking about), does it mean not thinking of long-term consequences of things? (not saving money? Not getting an education? Not using condoms?). Is it because planning is bad (because, dunno, it shows a lack of faith?), or just because it's useless (because things will turn out differently?)?

To make matters worse, I grew up in a dysfunctional, very Christian family, and my emotions seem to be convinced that being a true Christian means acting like my parents (who were terrible role models; emulating them means losing at life).

Couldn't you find role models that are Christian that you would consider as admirable? That would probably cause less mental anguish than ditching Christianity wholesale, and I get the impression that there are a lot of Christians with happy, stable and satisfying lives (or would having a suburban home, a stable 9-to-5 job and 2.5 children fall under "losing at life"?).

Thanks for the post, that must have been hard given your beliefs.

At first, please do note that it's a long leap from believing in miracles/magic to believing in the christian god.

when atheists make their case, they assume a universe without miracles

It's not an assumption but an observation. You wouldn't call them miracles unless they were a gross deviation from your normal experience.

But there are a LOT of people out there claiming to have seen events that one would expect to never occur in a naturalistic universe.

Did you know that the lifetime prevalence of psychosis exceeds 3%? That's a lot of people out of touch with reality willing to claim all sorts of stuff. This is just one example of a naturalistic explanation yet you can see that it could cover many of those claims.

Luke Muehlhauser; apologies if I'm misremembering) in which he states that as a Christian, he witnessed healings he could not explain.

This doesn't mean that someone else couldn't :)

One could say that "miracles" are misunderstood natural events

I bet they're mostly events that never happened, people just claim they did. This doesn't require lying, although that happens too.

I'm aware of plenty of arguments for non-belief:

Interestingly only the first two of those seem like good arguments to me.

Most atheists simply don't believe that miracles exist.

When it comes to near death experiences I did have an experience that could validly labeled that way after 5 days of artificial coma. To me it's not very surprising that I did saw strange things will my brain was in a strange state. While that experience did influence me I don't take it as evidence that the supernatural exists.

But that isn't everything. Even if the supernatural exists, why should I believe that the God of the bible exists. The bible at various points simply doesn't make sense. I would rather go for something like Buddhism. Buddhism is much more coherent then Christianity.

I am an atheist. However I have personally had an experience that surely seemed like my prayers being directly answered. When I was young, from about 6 to 9, I would see these weird bright lights in my field of vision. Very often when I closed my eyes and frequently in normal daylight. Think greenish orbs superimposed over my field of vision (I could still see fine).

I was very freaked out about these lights. At 9 I prayed to god something similar to "I am not sure if you are real or not. But if you are real please makes these lights go away. If you answer my prayers I will know you are real and no longer doubt. Please help me."

Soon thereafter the lights went away. And until I was much older I considered this very convincing proof for the existence of God. However I have since been convinced the prior of God existing is so low that I should not believe despite my personal experiences. Seeing does not always justify belief. Maybe I was hallucinating the lights or a medical condition improved by itself. But to this day I am still not sure what to make of my experience and whether I should believe in God.

Despite feeling belief in God is reasonable (even if I do not believe) I am very confused by people who are confident in a specific theory of God (say Catholicism).

Ha!

New meaning to the phrase "I Believe! Help my Unbelief!"

Whether you say something happened because of a physical process you haven't yet come to understand or the ineffable will of god, you're basically just saying you don't know why it happened. Neither theory has any explanatory power, and random miracles aren't evidence either way. If you claim that miracles are due to the perfectly understandable will of god, and demonstrate that people that follow Christian values are consistently helped by miracles and people who do not are consistently hurt by them, that would be a different story. But since we haven't observed that, miracles aren't evidence for a god.

It is a good habit to read the the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on a subject whenever it is relevant. (/u/BenSix had mentioned it already.)

Good answers have been given by commenters already, so I'll take a second to say: this reminds me strongly of C.S. Lewis' dissertation on miracles. Titled, can you believe it, Miracles.

I don't remember the entire discussion, but his opening expressed an idea of priors similar to what you've outlined here: those who review history looking for miracles will find evidence for them. Those who review history looking for evidence against miracles will find it. His idea was, simplified, "If a miracle occured, a person who does not believe in miracles would accept the evidence as being of an unexplained phenomena that more study will reveal. So, even if I were to raise the dead before your eyes, it would not constitute proof of a miracle to you unless you already accepted the idea that miracles can occur."

I... did not like this thesis. Now, I read this after my own falling out with Christianity, but I still had (and still have) a deep respect for Lewis. But this thesis reminded me very much of the argument made by creationists about how world views determine your interpretation of scientific fact. When laid over the field of paleontology, the idea starts to show its flaws. In geology, if you determine a rock is a million years old, you can't "interpret" that fact to mean it only looks a million but is actually a thousand years old. That's doublethink: the rock "is" a million years old (by looks) but actually "is" (by essence) a thousand. You're saying the evidence suggests two things: what the rock "looks" like (according to the evidence of your senses) and what the rock "is" (according to the evidence of your senses on the matter of religion).

I feel that Lewis' argument on miracles and priors relies on the same sort of difficulty. An event "is" (by looks) a miracle and either "is" (by essence) really or not really a miracle. That tells us nothing. The phenomena is or is not a miracle. Your priors don't matter. If Horus really did return from Hell, my disbelief can do nothing to change that fact. Horus' death and return, as real events, guarantee a world that physically resembles and acts like one where Horus' death and return did happen, not one where they did not happen. So the evidence can only mean one thing, not either depending on my priors.

So, all of this is to say, "miracles" are not different from other phenomena. They are not a special class. You judge a miracle (or report of a miracle) the exact same way you judge a rock. If I walked into my office tomorrow morning and found a large rock had appeared there overnight, I would use the same senses and tools to determine where it had come from as I would if it were the second incarnation of Christ. Neither event has a special set of circumstances regarding how I gather or consider its evidence. I still have to judge the second incarnation of Christ by sight, sound, smell, touch, etc and the evidence I gather is still subject to the same scrutiny and consideration as if it Christ were a rock.

Glad you decided to open up about this difficulty. As one raised Christian (you are obviously among fellows here), I can appreciate the power of Belief. This is not an easy issue to face, however you end up updating your beliefs. Good luck.

Miracle claims are on shaky epistemic grounds. How do you confirm it was a miracle and not someone being mistaken about some phenomenon? Or more likely, that they don't have enough knowledge of the physical or cognitive sciences to know whether some phenomenon is possible or miraculous?

The proper use of humility is to take into account that we are human beings and we make mistakes and we have insufficient information, so we should try to anticipate our mistakes or lack of info and correct for them in advance. Meaning that one should have the prior for "I'm a flawed human being" higher than the prior that something was a miracle. Indeed, one should always take into account alternative explanations.

I recently listened to a defense attorney making claims about how personal experience and eye-witness testimony are the best kind of evidence you can possibly have, in defense of Christianity.

If your religion dictates that you must believe in miracles being real, you will have to break yourself in colorful ways in order to do so.

Aiyen:

I think the place I would start -- and did start -- is with the question, "Have I ever personally experienced a miracle?" I quickly discarded most possibilities and came down to just a few, all of which were fundamentally a strong of events, each of which was individually highly unlikely. But unlikely things happen every day, so that's not enough to say it is a miracle.

Next, I would ask if people I personally know and trust have experienced miracles. I'd ask them about their experiences. For me, I knew no one who had experienced anything that sounded like a miracle. Again, there were some unlikely coincidences, but that's not really enough. If one of them claimed to have experienced a true miracle, then I'd keep evaluating their credibility over a long period of time. Does their story change? Reasonable consistency would be more credible. Do they act like I would expect them to act if they had really experienced a miracle? A non-believer suddenly becoming a devout missionary in the absence of any personal crisis would be credible. Do they get anything by claiming to have experienced a miracle? Someone getting attention from conspicuous religiosity is less credible for me, though that doesn't necessarily make sense: if I had personally experienced a miracle, I'd think that I would sell off all my worldly possessions to talk about it as much as possible. Is this yet another in a series of flighty decisions? Going from new age to confused to born-again is not very persuasive for me. And so on.

Finally, given that people have cell phones with cameras now, and given that virtually everything else shows up on YouTube, I would think that there would be at least some credible video. I'd also think that I wouldn't be able to analyze whether it is credible, given the possibility of a good special effects studio. But I bet someone else would and that I would hear about a truly inexplicable video.

Max L.

There is no logical argument against miracles. They could exist.

But there really is no reliable evidence for them. If there was, I would also think this is a supernatural universe. But as it stands I'm pretty sure this is a natural universe, without souls and without praying superpowers.

I mean have you heard about the beatification of Pope John Paul II? A nun with symptoms similar to Parkinson's was healed after she prayed to John Paul. She even had a relapse but they went with it anyway.

The Christian philosopher Timothy McGrew ends his Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the subject by saying...

...one's considered rational judgment regarding the existence and nature of God must take into account far more than the evidence for miracle claims. That is not to say that they could not be an important or even, under certain circumstances, a decisive piece of evidence; it is simply that neither a positive nor a negative claim regarding the existence of God can be established on the basis of evidence for a miracle claim alone, without any consideration of other aspects of the question.

Aquinas, for example, maintained that miracles took place but also that the existence of God could be proved through metaphysics. If you find evidence for the former compelling, give the latter a chance. I am an agnostic but I find it hard to believe that God would demonstrate His existence solely through selective and ambiguous appearances. Good luck!

As some others have said, others on LW (like myself) were not always non-theists. Feel free to reach out if you'd like to discuss or need/want support. Thinking these thoughts and living as a heavily-doubting theist is extremely challenging and draining, from my experience. I was consumed during my initial questioning and ultimate de-conversion. I read and thought day and night, felt sick, alienated, lonely, etc. I wrote some posts here if you'd like to take a look:

• My story / owning one's reasons
• Recent de-convert saturated by religious community; advice?
• My blog has a bunch of mixed stuff as well, though I don't write in it anymore and haven't for a long time.

One of the more direction-changing thoughts I had (independently and prior to finding out the concept already existed) was what John Loftus claims "The Outsider Test for Faith (OTF)." Basically, if you weren't already a subscriber to some religion, X, could you be convinced of it? Similarly, why are said miracle claims un-convincing even in the least to someone who doesn't already share your religious tradition?

I had a different twist on that. My natural inclination when researching (say, which tool to buy or which method is best) is to force myself to be agnostic to all of them and then research to see which is the most convincing. Say, googling "Milwaukee vs. Dewalt router" or "Milwaukee routers suck/are great" and "Dewalt routers suck/are great" to see what I find. I pay attention to Amazon 1-2 star reviews to look at their content. I started wondering why this shouldn't work for religion. Everyone in my religious community was suggesting that I should "have faith seeking understanding." This always struck me as "believe that you may believe more strongly." I wanted to know why the one thing that mattered the very most in the world shouldn't hold up to the same test I put my financial purchases through.

In addition, I wondered why the Bible, God's inspired book, failed to convince so many others who surely were aware of it. Assuming Christianity was true meant that other religions were false/lies/invented (by humans). Measly human minds creating stories out of thin air have been able to sway more than half the world away from God's official word?

Probably doesn't sound all that great re-writing it, but this was a pretty mind-blowing thought to me back then, and was a definite contributing factor to my ultimate deconversion. Sure, there's apologetics to counter it, but they have to work fairly hard to speculate about God's motives for not being more clear.

As others have stated outrightly or alluded to, toss in whatever apologetic ammunition you'd like and it still works pretty well. Some biblical prophecy, miracle, perfectly fitting theological aspect about Christ, etc. seem amazing to you? Why doesn't it to the nearest Muslim, Hindu, Scientologist, or Mormon? And why do things like reading golden plates from a hat or being embodied alien spirits seem so ridiculous as to not even warrant a fair shake when Christians hear them?

Speaking of miracles, I've never gotten a good explanation from a christian about what happened to this Lazarus person Jesus raised from the dead, especially in the context of the often-quoted verse Hebrews 9:27, " And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment."

Assuming this resurrection happened historically, then what happened to Lazarus afterwards? He just disappears from the story like a character in a play who has one thing to do in the plot and then he walks off the stage.

So either Lazarus died again later, but without leaving a record of his mortality that has survived down to our time. So how could he have died twice, despite what Hebrews 9:27 says?

Or else we have to take Hebrews 9:27 and the resurrection account literally, and postulate that in October of 2014, Lazarus in his deathless body still wanders the earth like a character from Highlander or something.

Have you seen these debates? The second one addresses the issue of miracles, by the way. What do you think about them? What do you think about Leah's reasons for converting from atheism to Catholicism?

Hey, it's been a while since I've looked over this thread. A lot of the answers have been very helpful; thanks! Another question-if I decide that I want to let go of my faith, do you have any advice for overcoming indoctrination and not being constantly afraid that I'm headed straight to hell? A few times I've decided that it made sense to let go, but while my beliefs are starting to tend more towards naturalism, my aliefs are still firmly Christian, and the fear keeps pushing me back. As a number of people have pointed out, religious memes are very resistant to purely reason-based attack. Thoughts?

commands given by God that seem horrifyingly immoral

Just out of curiosity, what moral system are you using to make this judgement?

I can relate to your doubt. Maybe you can see some of the same doubt in my summary of my theism opinion. Feel free to send me a private message if you want to discuss this with an irenic (always wanted to use that word) long time agnostic.

Well, theism ≠ supernatural.

Even materialist universe where consciousness arises as an emergent phenomenon of interacting neurons is not incompatible with theism - why wouldn't [gG]od create such a universe? He can.

Personal second hand (i.e. I know the family, but did not meet the guy himself) miracle experience: There was a guy who has been diagnosed with cancer, operated (not very successfully) and released with the prognosis of one year of life maximum. He took to (very) heavy drinking (much to dismay of his family) and lived for 35 years, dying in the ripe age of eighty-something (also much to dismay of his family, because they'd preferred him dead much sooner I guess).

"I'd like to know how atheists respond to the evidence of miracles."

In an infinite universe all probabilities are 1, over time. Everything can can be observed to happen no matter how apparently miraculous. This is one way any interpretation of any evidence for anything could be true. But as you can readily conclude, this raises as many questions as it resolves.

Perhaps it would be better to first refute a God who torments people for eternity if they don't find an ancient Judean preacher convincing enough? That seems more straightforward, I would think, than God.