Thanks for a great resource. I'm suffering the Culture War equivalent of PTSD and reading your stuff is balm to my non-existent soul.

Your guide is made of "win"!

(1) an ongoing sense of God's presence, what believers often call God's abiding or living within the believer's heart...

strikes a chord. As a dancer, and now practitioner of Tai Chi (without the supernatural overlay), I have on a couple of occasions had experiences that I would judge conform to Jack's description. That this type of experience can be induced in a variety of settings, and can be learned, suggests its part of the way the human mind works. It seems that Eastern traditions are better at it than Western traditions.

See:
How to convert an atheist:
http://www.barrypearson.co.uk/articles/gods/convert.htm
Index to "religions and gods"
http://www.barrypearson.co.uk/articles/gods/

I'm actually amazed only two people have responded to your challenge - am I understanding that correctly?

Yes, that's correct. I'm in negotiations with a third, but haven't heard back from him in a while.

First off I'm unclear as to what's the challenge here. For a theist to assemble a criteria-of-disbelief statement that you'll then address point by point as with quixote?

Or is the challenge simply to thoughtfully answer the question, "What would convince you that your faith was mistaken?"

The latter. I'm just interested in knowing what would persuade a theist that their belief in God was incorrect and that atheism was more likely to be true. It doesn't have to be scientific evidence, although I much prefer something that has an objective standard of fulfillment, not vague philosophical criteria whose satisfaction is in the eye of the beholder.

Pre-emptively, I'd like to say I'm not in the business of proselytizing but will usually entertain any questions up to, and sometimes even non-productively surpassing, the point of non-productivity.

I'm actually amazed only two people have responded to your challenge - am I understanding that correctly?

My opinions change occasionally. In the context of this discussion, assuming nothing more than that I'm a theist who acknowledges very realistically the possibility that his belief might be wrong, and who still believes that God created the universe and its content and has an interest in each and every human life...assuming those and nothing more, I'd like to address some things, once I have a clearer understanding of the page we're on.

First off I'm unclear as to what's the challenge here. For a theist to assemble a criteria-of-disbelief statement that you'll then address point by point as with quixote?

Or is the challenge simply to thoughtfully answer the question, "What would convince you that your faith was mistaken?" If that's the case, I have issues with the formation of the question itself, both here and on Greta's blog. For example, Greta seems to limit the discussion to 'evidence,' i.e. asking what evidence would overturn a believer's faith in God.

Although you can't speak for Greta, is the question here, "What scientific evidence would overturn your faith?"

Or, is the question here exactly as you write it, "what would convince a theist he was mistaken and persuade him to leave his religion and become an atheist?" This could be any hypothetical condition, including but not limited to scientific evidence.

Just want to start off clear.

Very interesting! I think this is the sort of thing we need to see more of; a way to get inside the head of the other side, which I'm sure will be useful for both sides of the dispute.

Thank you, Quixote, for bravely wading in to a nest of atheists and sharing your take on things!

I concur. Thank you, Eunomiac. (And Quixote, of course, again.)

Anyway, just a couple of things I'd like to respond to briefly:

*As far as we know, the matter outside of our brains doesn't think--now, what could be the reason for this? What difference may there be between the matter outside our brains, and the matter inside? Could it perhaps be a matter (pardon the pun) of organization? After all, my brain and my liver are made up of very similar sorts of matter, but only one can be reasonably said to "think;" the difference is that the matter in my brain is organized in a very, very different fashion from the matter in my liver. Generalizing it out, isn't it safe to say that matter which is not organized like our brains does not seem to think, whereas matter which is organized like our brains, does?

The other problem here is that "think" is an ill-defined word; what sort of "thinking" are we talking about? Do dolphins "think"? Do computers "think"? Do ants "think"? Are we talking higher-order abstract conceptualization, or are we talking about baseline decision-making, or what? Once we nail down that definition, it then becomes somewhat imperative that we show that other matter doesn't, in fact, "think," which may be difficult to do, particularly with some sorts of animals (and some sorts of humans).

Naturally, there's the whole issue of brain damage, and if the brain isn't the source of thought, then why does damage to that tissue impair thinking, change personalities, and so on?

*There are a variety of ways to determine morality, from the sort of personal determinations that all people, Christians included, must make (what criteria do you use to determine that stoning children is unacceptable, if your morals come from the Bible?) to more widespread social determinations, to those things which seem to be more hard-coded into human (and other animals') instinct. One of the most basic is this: there are certain traits which are absolutely fundamental to society's existence. A society cannot function if the individuals in that society cannot reasonably assume that they will not be killed by the other individuals in said society when they turn their backs. Thus, any society will have mores against killing. If I cannot reasonably trust that my neighbor's communications are accurate, then society cannot function, because society requires communication, so all societies (where this may be an issue) will value honesty. The same goes for stealing. On the flip side, since the survival of young is necessary for the society's continued existence, caring for the young is valued. Basic game theory underlies the ethic of reciprocity--if I help my neighbor, my neighbor is more likely to help me when I need it--which is probably why it's so common among social animals.

Humans have been social animals longer than they've been humans. We see these moral codes in other animal societies; chimpanzees practice altruism, and they certainly aren't the only ones. Humans are simply the first to codify and diversify these rules, in part because we're among the first to need diversification for these rules. When an individual does something contrary to the traits necessary for social survival, we rightly determine that to be immoral, and we can generally agree on that assessment.

With regard to Hitler and moral relativism, there are a number of ways to go about the matter. On one hand, we could accept the moral relativist stance and say "sure, he thinks he's right, but we're equally right in thinking him wrong." And then we let the ideologies duke it out and see who wins. Or, we could recognize that his social mores don't find his beliefs acceptable, since he lives in a society that includes Jews, who probably aren't too thrilled with his mass slaughter of them; if members of your society can disagree diametrically with your assessment of the social moral imperative, then chances are you haven't accurately assessed the social moral imperative. Or, we could apply the principle of minimum suffering, and see that Hitler's actions increase suffering, thus defying a morality based on limiting suffering. Or, we could imagine what would happen if everyone behaved as Hitler did, killing those he deemed inferior, and determine that such actions, applied universally, would lead to widespread or total destruction, and thus cannot be considered moral. Atheism may be at a loss to explain morals; after all, atheism is merely the lack of belief in a God or gods. But atheists have no such problems; if anything, it's difficult to choose which method of determining morality, though they may all lead similar places.

If anything, it's the theist who has such a problem; how do you distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable commands in your book, if that book is your guide to morality? How would you distinguish between the moral directives of God and the moral directives of the Devil if you derive your morals externally?

I can't say that I've ever experienced rights or wrongs that seem to transcend some human moral concept, and I honestly can't quite figure out what that's supposed to mean. I can certainly see a sliding scale of moral rightness or wrongness, with no apparent ends on either side, but I do not see any divider where the scale veers off into "so moral/immoral it must be divine." Where would one make such a distinction? If the Holocaust is transcendently immoral, then what makes it so? If six million Jews were killed without starvation, torture, and experimentation, would it be transcendently immoral? If only one million Jews had perished in the concentration camps, what then? What if just one gypsy had been subjected to Mengele's experiments, starvation, work, and the gas chamber, would it still qualify as transcendently immoral? Where does one move from "normal human atrocity" into "offense against god"?

There are more examples of prospective systems–feel free to supply your own–but I believe they will all suffer from the same deficiencies.

I'm sorry, but I don't see any deficiencies in there except your appeal to emotion.

This would be a higher standard of theism than I was aiming at, but since I was a bit uncharitable to you earlier, I will accept your challenge. Shoot...

Shoot? That's my line. No, seriously. If you are going to accept, you should present a logically coherent formulation of your god. The first step is yours, as it should be since you are bringing forth the positive assertion.

I suppose this is why it is natural for theists to conceive of the sensus divinitatis–it is such an integral and natural facet of their experience. Since it comes so easy and a theist has difficulty imagining life without it, perhaps this is why they claim that atheists must be repressing it. Please don't take offense to that statement; it would be similar to me not understanding why you can't see the color red. This sense is so strong in theists that I beleive Alvin Plantinga has argued that it is a properly basic belief.

This in no way nullifies what I think are rational reasons for the existence of God (oh yeah, sure, the crowd said), but it surely helps to support them.

I have likely destroyed whatever hope I had in cnvincing folks on this site that I could maintain objectivity, but I liked both of your posts so much that I thought it well worth the risk to think deeply about it and report back what is an honest answer. Goes for Eunomiac as well...

That was an admirably honest answer. From my own experience as a former believer, and from talking with other believers, it seems that there are at least two qualitatively different kinds of sensus divinitatis: (1) an ongoing sense of God's presence, what believers often call God's abiding or living within the believer's heart, and (2) a sudden, dramatic and emotional experience of God's presence, typically in a moment of desperate hopelessness or danger, like the mythical atheist in the foxhole who turns to God in his moment of greatest terror, or the desperate alcoholic who turns to God for salvation from the bottle. For convenience, I'll call these type 1 and type 2 religious experience, respectively. From your comment, it seems you have had only type 1. Is that correct?

You would be surprised how many atheists have had such feelings, both type 1 and 2. I had type 1 many years ago when I was a believer. I have had two experiences of type 2 in recent years, decades after I lost all belief in God. Those events did not reconvert me, mainly because I am a neurobiologist by training, and I have a plausible biological hypothesis for such experiences. I won't try to explain it here, because it's rather involved and I'm writing a book on the subject. Unfortunately it won't be in print anytime soon. The closest things I can recommend are M.D. Faber's The Psychological Roots of Religious Belief and Lee Kirkpatrick's Attachment, Evolution and the Psychology of Religion. I assume that by "God gene" you are referring to Dean Hamer's book of the same title. I confess I haven't yet read it, but what I've read about it in reviews casts some considerable doubt on it. That's not to say there is no heritable component to differences in religiosity. Twin studies show beyond doubt that there is. It's just that that genetic contribution probably cannot be attributed to any one gene, or even to just a few genes.

The main point I would like you to consider is that the sense of God's presence is evidence of activity in your brain, but not necessarily evidence of the presence of God. To compare it to the visual sensation of the color red is not quite fair. Any person with normal color vision will corroborate your sensation of the color red. Even someone with red/green color blindness can corroborate it indirectly if he has a spectrometer of the right kind and understands what it measures. Corroboration of your religious experience is not so easy. Some people never feel it. Other do, but feel something very different from what you feel, and would disagree with your characterization of it. I think a better comparison between religious experience and vision is to think of religious experience as analogous to a visual illusion, like the Ames room. Our brains use shortcuts to make sense of the world, but these shortcuts can, under unusual circumstances, cause errors in our perception. I suspect that the sense of God's presence is an error in perception.