What would convince you?

[TheKeyAuthor]

1 Would he have to appear on Oprah or the like? Which means he has to be a celeb first. How would he become a celeb?
2 Would he have to do tricks like change water into wine? Which means the likes of David Copperfield, Siegfried and Roy etc. are candidates?
3 Would you believe a "miracle" on TV anyway?
4 Are we too sceptical and information overloaded to believe anything any more?
5 Would anything possibly convince anyone in the 21st century anyhow?

Who is this 'he' of which you speak? Guru Nanak was pretty nifty at performing miracles and there are all those fruit that favour Islam.

Convince me about what? You're being really rather vague!

If 'god' did come back and started doing fancy trick miracles and appearing on TV I would wonder why he was pissing about with nonsense and not bothering with important stuff such as brokering agreements to end all the wars around the world, which he should find easy, being omnipotent and all.

I would probably conclude that such a being was not something I wanted to worship.

I suppose it depends which god you're talking about. If we assume you're talking the Abrahamic-religion god then he is apparently omnipotent. If that's the case then it's simple - he could write "I exist" in thousand-mile high letters on the face of the moon.

And/or he could change the text in all the torahs, bibles and qu'rans, to form one unified and coherent religion that would glory him and bring peace and joy to the world. Or he could make his corporeal presence known to each and every one of us simultaneously.

But he doesn't do any of that. I wonder why?

"But he doesn't do any of that. I wonder why?"
Now that is a thought provoking question.

Actually I had JC in mind. A human being who could not or would not save himself.

"Brokering agreements to end all the wars around the world." That would be the Secretary-General of the UN? Actually, I have a feeling that such a person would not survive the authorities in any country for long. History would undoubtedly repeat itself.

Jesus was human but he was a human who had god's omnipotence pretty much on tap. After all, a normal human cannot walk on water or raise the dead. And Jesus was certainly willing to employ such miracles to demonstrate god's love.

So if an omnipotent god could write on the moon, so could Jesus. Or, at least, Jesus could ask god to do such a thing. What a sight that would be to behold! And if Jesus then followed that up by asking god to re-write all the world's religious texts into one clear, coherent and unambiguous statement of what is expected of us from our creator, how much better would life be for everyone.

If he could then round it off with a hat-trick of saving the world's starving children then so much the better.

But he doesn't.

Some miracles can be written off or explained away. There may well be proper miraculous weeping statues in the world but the fact that a number of them have been discovered to be faked misidentified as such casts doubt on the rest.

But, say, a new 1000 mile high mountain range suddenly appearing on the moon, all sharp-edged and clear, spelling out the words "God exists" can't be written off, explained away or ignored. Well, I suppose one could say that an incredibly powerful alien from another dimension did it but at that point you're pretty much talking about god anyway simply under a different name.

A miracle whereby all the world's religious texts were instantaneously changed into the same text that hasn't got the ambiguities and contradictions of existing religious texts, now that's something that really would take god-like powers to perform. Even Dawkins himself would pay attention to that, particularly if it happened to all the copies of The God Delusion at the same time

Fair enough there might still be a few hold-outs and zealots but the net benefits would have to outweigh the issues caused by a tiny number of people sticking their fingers in their ears.

The problem is that the stories are often ambiguous and allow people to accidentally or deliberately misinterpret them.

Maybe god could produce a summary of each of the stories to explain whether it's true or a parable and what moral lesson we should take from it.

The problem is that the stories are often ambiguous and allow people to accidentally or deliberately misinterpret them.

Maybe god could produce a summary of each of the stories to explain whether it's true or a parable and what moral lesson we should take from it.

This is a game with infinitely high stakes. Get it right and you get eternity in the presence of god. Get it wrong and you're cut off from god forever (and possibly condemned to an unending torture of fire and brimstone etc)

Any omnipotent and omniscient deity worth worshipping should care about whether his message is getting across clearly or not.

The op said she meant to believe in Jesus. Well, there's quite a lot of evidence that Jesus did exist anyway, isn't there? Jesus isn't difficult to believe in.

What I will never, ever be convinced of is a male, omnipotent god who is also benevolent. It's not possible. Either he's not omnipotent or he's not benevolent! Or he doesn't exist.

I do believe in something more than science tells us is true...but not in the god the monotheistic religions worship.

Since miracles occour in all faiths it does kind of lead you to a more many paths up the same mountain approach to faith.

Jesus' existence isn't in doubt, he's mentioned by several non christian sources such as the Talmud and Tacitus, Seutonius are some. However if Jesus knew he was God in human form does that make his sacrifice less meaningful if he knew he was going to resurrect himself in a few hours.

There is very little evidence at all that jesus ever existed considering that the archeology of Nazareth has no evidence of a occupied settlement during the time that he was supposed to have lived around there. And all Tacitus writes about in 20 odd volumes is to mention in one paragraph a 'despicable cult' causing riots and trouble in a province with the group possibly called christus or not.

Since he did not exist as believed in the first place difficult for him to return again.

I'd love to see the sources for there being no occupied settlement at Nazareth because that isn't information I have ever come across before.

I have always been taught that there are archeological findings dating back to at least 600-900 BCE and there was the funeral cult of Kfar HaHoresh dated even older at 9000 year and the finding of the 65 remains.

Other non Christian people mention Jesus such as Thallus, Mara Bar Serapion, Suetonious, Pliny the younger. None of whom were very flattering towards him or his new cult.

Historical Jesus or Joshua probably has more independant evidence than Julius Ceasar. My Fav theory is that Jesus and Barabbas were one in the same or that Jesus was an Essene like John the Baptist.

There is no contemporaneous documentary evidence for Jesus outside of the Bible. None. Zip. Nada. Indeed, it's debatable whether the Bible itself counts as contemporaneous evidence given the question marks over who wrote the gospels.

Thallus etc were writing long after Jesus died. Hell, none of the people you list were even born while Jesus was alive. A lot of what "evidence" there is either vague (Christus is a job title that had been applied to more than one prophet) show signs of later tampering or significantly contradicts the Bible to the extent it's unclear if it's even talking about the same person.

By contrast, there isn't only contemporaneous documentary evidence of Caesar there are the records he wrote himself of his military campaigns that match up with records written by other people at the same time. There are any number of coins that were minted in his lifetime that bear his face. His name was carved into walls while he was Emperor. Cicero, Sallust, Cattullus and many others all wrote about Caesar during his lifetime. Hell, there is still at least one bust of the man. Can the same be said for Jesus? No.

"There's more evidence for Jesus than Caesar" is a canard that is often heard but it's simply not true. Now, if you'd said "There's more evidence for Jesus than Socrates", I'd agree with you.

I already believe Jesus existed as a person.

What would convince me that he was the Son of God, or that God exists at all?

Basically I'd have to hear a little voice inside my head saying "I'm here, I'm God, I exist". Or I'd have to see him, standing in my garden or something like that.

Miracles etc wouldn't cut it, there could be plenty of other explanations.

If he was really God, why wouldn't he just speak inside our heads and tell us so?

Maybe because you couldn't be sure if it really was god talking to you personally or if you were simply having an auditory hallucination or a psychotic episode.

Mmm that's true Snorbs.

And the thing is, even "miracles" could be explained by someone being an alien with superpowers, or time travel, or... All sorts of things really.

There isn't really any way to "prove" the existence of God.

Maybe this is why a central tenet of religion is that you have to have faith, i.e. you have to believe just because without having it proved to you.

I can't think of anything that would actually convince me. Because you're all rather missing the point: 'gods' were invented as a means of controlling the unruly masses, for the benefits of the rulers and the priest class. And these imaginary friends have to be ambiguous, so the masses can be kept on the hop, and sold a New and Improved version when they get wise to the old one.

The reason for 'faith' is because it's based on nonsense and superstition which is why it takes blind faith to believe in all the sky fairies/religions/cannibalistic cults .