Often, when we say that we’re an atheist, what we mean is that we don’t believe in gods. It…

…would I believe He existed?

The question of what it would take for me to believe that God exists comes up from time to time, and I think it’s good to have an idea of what sort of evidence would be acceptable to me. Now, if I knew that God wrote my name in the stars, then I would believe, simply because such knowledge entails the existence of God. The question then really ought to be whether or not I’d believe that it was God who wrote my name in the stars, if indeed my name is written in the stars.

My co-SINner Damion has a post up criticising this familiar atheist meme:

“I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” – Stephen Roberts

His criticism is this:

THE REASON THEY DISMISS ALL THE OTHER GODS IS THAT THEY’VE BEEN TRAINED FROM BIRTH TO ACCEPT ONE RELIGIOUS DOGMA AND NEVER EXAMINE THOSE BELIEFS CRITICALLY.

I think this is true in many cases, but I’m sure Damion is aware that this is an over-generalisation – there are some who converted later in life for instance. But let’s assume that even in these cases the reason for not accepting the existence of, say, Donner* is because of His incompatibility with the worldview of the religion they converted to. Damion adds:

Let us not pretend for a moment that theists made a survey of all the gods and then picked out the ones with the most evidential backing.

Right. Of course, we shouldn’t rule out the idea that they came to their beliefs by weighing up the evidential basis of each position, but this probably applies to the vast majority of theists. So should we, therefore, ‘stop using this meme’, as Damion requests?

I think not. I’m not a fan of spouting memes and slogans to defend my position (it’s rather lazy and can get very boring after the first ten times you hear each one), but I think there’s at least some value in the ideas contained in this one. I’ll divide the meme in half:

  I always really enjoy it when people ask me questions about or challenge my beliefs, no matter how strongly…