What would make you believe?

I love everything about the above graphic except the last two sentences. That is Scientism. And curiously, it is espoused by many who would call themselves atheists. The two are not in disagreement necessarily, but interestingly it is mostly non-scientists who believe in Scientism--likely because of a lack of understanding of science and reductionism. That critique aside...

This post is an attempt to help Christians explore what it means to be an atheist (from four of my friends), and also, what it might look like to be an agnostic Christian (me, briefly).

This hopefully goes without saying, but I am not an atheist.  I lean toward agnostic Christianity, with respect to existence sometimes, but with more of a Kierkegaardian position:

"If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe."

Edit: After further consideration, I think this position describes the nature of belief--not the nature of what is believed in (I am not a scholar of Kierkegaard, and thus very capable of misunderstanding his meaning in a first readthrough).  Why is belief necessary?  Because I am not capable of grasping God objectively.  What is belief then, how does the Christian/Kierkegaard regard subjectivity?
See Jamie Turnbull (Kierkegaard's Influence on Philosophy: German and Scandinavian Philosophy, pgs 156-157):

--I love Jesus and I think he is the best thing for everyone.  Wikipedia actually puts it really well:

Christian Agnostics practice a distinct form of agnosticism that applies only to the properties of God. They hold that it is difficult or impossible to be sure of anything beyond the basic tenets of the Christian faith. They believe that God exists, that Jesus has a special relationship with him and is in some way divine, and that God should be worshiped.

This deviates somewhat widely from the Calvinism I grew up with.  In any case, I do know atheists and find that their view is often misrepresented, as the graphic above in part illustrates.

Atheism can be a vague concept for people around west Michigan to engage with--in the church, not many people know or have friends that are atheists, in my experience.  I have the pleasure of knowing several atheists/agnostics/etc from my time at Penn State as well as from west Michigan--they are dear friends of mine. We're not afraid of talking about spiritual things together either.  In this post I've compiled a few perspectives from friends that I highly respect and admire.

It turns out to be a difficult question to answer--who has context for the divine?
(I'm not looking at you human.)

D. C. 4/7/15:
I have a hard time trusting claims about God. All the knowledge I have currently acquired indicates that such claims are just that, claims. A claim in itself that requires belief without proof is potentially dangerous. For you see, a claim is inherently a true or false statement. The claim is either true, or it is false. As far as I am aware, wishing alone will not turn a true statement false or a false statement true. (I could be wrong though, maybe enough people wishing God to exist could cause God to exist. If that is true, could we then collectively wish hard enough or other things? Technically I don’t know the answer to this, but I am more apt to think that wishing does not affect existence or truth.) Therefore God or gods or some other god could exist, but for me to believe I would need a reasonable amount of evidence.

What is reasonable amount of evidence? My best answer, and possibly my annoying answer at this point, is “I don’t know.” If God exists, and God is omnipotent, omniscient, etc…. then God would know what would be a reasonable amount of evidence, strictly by the definition of God.

Ash H. followup question: How would I feel if I knew definitively there was a god or God?

I don’t think it would matter how I felt about it, if God were there. There would be nothing I could do to change the fact if it was true. It would just be like another piece of information I would have about the universe/everything. I would have lots of questions for God…why is it this way? I would have a lot of why questions. If the Judeo-Christian God exists: I might be honestly shocked. There would be a lot of information I would need to sort though and figure out.


A. C. 4/23/15:

It's an interesting thought of what would make me be theistic, either believe in god(s), or for some higher power in general. Without racking my brains, the first thought that comes to mind is to use the same empirical evidence-based inference method I use for any other thing. I would (or should) believe in god if I observe reproducible evidence (hopefully scientific) of the same. However, this turns out to be an oxymoron, as "belief" is the term we associate to things that lack factual evidence. Therefore, I think the logical thing for me to say is: "I would know of a theistic universe if I find evidence of the same". Till that time, I am certain (in scientific terms) that the universe is not facilitated by a deity.

I find it very fascinating of how different people are motivated by different things, and is something worth discussing. It's good that we are thinking and discussing about it.


L. S. 4/29/15:
Like I mentioned earlier, I’m more than happy to talk about anything in regards to my atheism with you. I personally find the subject matter incredibly important, in addition to being extremely interesting. So my straightforward answer to your question is “I don’t know”. However, allow me to expound on that a little.

The first problem is that to really answer that, I’d need to have you define which god. For example, some people say that the universe is god, others that love or energy is god, etc… If there is a god, depending on what characteristics you want to give it, I would say that this being should have the power to know what it would take to convince me, even if I don’t. And I think it is possible, though extremely unlikely, that I could be convinced (again), that some god exists.
As I see it, there are two main problems that would need to be overcome before I could believe in any god:

The first is sufficient evidence. You touched a little bit on this when you mentioned faith. I usually ask people to define the word faith for me to understand how they use it because not everyone uses it the same. Personally, I define faith as believing in something without a good reason. What it boils down to is - if you have a good reason then you wouldn’t need faith. So for me, evidence and reason is essential in understanding truth. (Truth being defined as – that which comports to reality). The reason this is so important is that without evidence and reason, a claim of faith in a Christian God bears no more weight than a claim of faith for the Muslim God, Bigfoot, Santa Clause, or the flying Spaghetti monster. I should mention that this only matters if you actually care about if your beliefs are true. So as far as I can tell there simply isn’t sufficient evidence that any god exists. And the evidence that does exist is unreliable at best.

The second problem is that we have no way to confirm causation on a supernatural level. In the physical world, physical objects obey physical laws. When I push a ball with X amount of force it rolls Y distance. However, even if we could confirm a miracle happened (so far 0 confirmed), we couldn’t necessarily attribute it to god. There is no yet discovered way to test for a supernatural intervention and no way to determine who or what caused that intervention and why.


M. C. 5/8/15:
If God came down to earth-- in a form humans could perceive-- and started to actually help us, then I would believe.
Wholeheartedly, cause the intuitive part of me does believe.