"How to Have a Rational Discussion"

Unfortunately, that only works if they assume you're asking the question in good faith, which is rare; the standards of casual debate are so low that most people encountering a similar question are going to interpret it as an attack on their conviction, not as a prerequisite for discussion. In other words, "no, I can't imagine anything that'd change my mind" probably doesn't mean what it says on the box, but rather something along the lines of "I'm confident in my opinion; I don't consider myself a seeker or a lapsed adherent, and I'm not trying to solicit reasons not to hold it".

This is particularly true when belief in an orthodoxy is cast as virtuous in itself; then admitting vulnerability even in principle means you're imperfectly orthodox and thus imperfectly moral, and that someone trying to get you to think of vulnerabilities is directly attacking your moral worth. Even without this, though, it's pretty rare for people who haven't internalized the notion of falsifiability to be comfortable with taking on their beliefs in this way.

Eventually I made a habit of this with religious friends. "What might happen that could even hypothetically change your beliefs in God?" "Nothing." "Oh, 'kay then."

I'm currently considering an approach with the most recent friend who is "researching" for the sole purpose of knocking it down. "Since you already know that what you read isn't going to change your beliefs, why are you pretending that you care about evidence?"

I'm trying to come up with a way of saying that that's likely to cause them to update (even if they're updating in terms of "oh, yeah, as long as I know I'm not gonna change my mind it is pretty silly to pretend like it matters")

Okay, I guess that does fit the literal wording given. I was thinking that directly changing my mind wouldn't really count as "evidence".

This seems sort of like a general-purpose bypass for that step, though; if something like God exists, it could presumably reach into my brain and change any of my beliefs. It doesn't seem like this is enough to support a rational discussion.

But wouldn't that just provide evidence that something, somewhere is bringing about something we though was impossible via a petition?

In other words, even if that happened, I might still not believe in the god under discussion. Indeed, in the past I've said that an amputee regrowing their limb in front of me at a request in the name of Jesus and initiated by a hand clap or the command, "Now," would work. I now think this is incorrect.

I say this because even if that happened... what about all the other stuff I find incomprehensible, dubious, outright illogical, or the like? For X god to be true, it would seem that all of the beliefs associated with X god need to also be true, not just the ability to do what could be incredible magic.

For me, miracles still wouldn't explain the problem of evil/suffering, why the Bible is, apparently, such a bad piece of evidence to convince people of the right religion, how "the fall" works in light of evolution, and why contemporaries of Jesus who were historians did not care to write anything like what the gospels said about Jesus... even though they wrote at least something about him.

Does that make sense?

To really believe, I'm not sure if I think there's any other way than to have most or all of my "show stoppers" answerd, and the apparent absence of miracles is just one of them.

So, my response would probably be, "To have all my questions answered."

Now, honestly, I think other than god's direct descent and explanation, I don't think there's any way to answer these questions and thus I'll always probably be a non-believer. So maybe I'm in the same situation as Kenoubi.