Also, there's plenty of people who convert because they believe God's spoken to them. So that second part isn't quite true. I mean, if you had a vision or a dream like that, would you assume you were hallucinating, or that god was talking to you? Why bother making you think you have hallucinations when you won't even believe it?
A being with the experience of everyone and forever should be able to convince me, with my decade and most of another one. It's like how teachers take the responsibility for the learning of very young children, except massively more so. Or alternatively could just pull a Pharaoh and make people believe it.
He's shown that that's not his gig. Otherwise, original sin would never have occurred. Free will is an important thing, because otherwise you're not a person, you're a machine.
And...there were a lot of plagues and 'proof's from Old Testament and New, if I remember right. I mean, the argument that God really needs to update his shit if he is real is a fair one, but that's not quite the same thing.
I meant as in, things for historians that would write it down in proper historical texts rather than a religious one with an obvious agenda. It's not as though there weren't any around.
And also things that should be impossible but there's credible evidence of them having happened, rather than things that are just a bit odd. Like the global flood except if there was any reason to think it actually happened. Plagues and earthquakes aren't exactly supernatural, maybe they thought so at the time but we know better than that now.
2000+ years is a while, and from what I remember, there's a decent chunk of apologist argumentation that basically says that enough people claim the miracles happened in the historical texts that it is less unlikely for it to be true than that they were lying. And if you're going to say 'well but that's conceivable of happening anyway', then you're not actually arguing in good faith. Disputing accuracy of bible, sure, whatever. But 'even if they did happen, god didn't do it, they're too likely to have happened' is a flawed argument. Because the easy answer is 'they aren't
always supernatural, no.'
In what way is being tortured eternally better than being unmade?
In the fact that you are able to continue experiencing and thinking? I dont know about you, but I would find final cessation of cognition far superior to having the only things I experience be pain, suffering, and remorse, with a heavy sauce of hopelessness.
The Absurd Hero. I take comfort in my defiance of the inevitable. And that sustains me.
Besides, where there is existence, there is hope.
Also, there's plenty of people who convert because they believe God's spoken to them. So that second part isn't quite true. I mean, if you had a vision or a dream like that, would you assume you were hallucinating, or that god was talking to you? Why bother making you think you have hallucinations when you won't even believe it?
False dichotomy. While anyone who realizes the implications of solipsism could, if sufficiently reticent, dismiss any divine experience as a hallucination no matter how significant, that could also apply to literally anything but their own qualia. Almost all people can still be convinced by experience, that experience just has to fit the magnitude of the claim and not demonstrate signs of falsehood. Dreams and visions are already the realm of hallucination, even people who believe in divine vision will admit this for other religions.
Even a dank euphoric atheist like me could be persuaded of at least the substantial power and existence of the Christian God with a satisfying display, but that display is not "I prayed for something plausible and then it happened" or "My terminal illness went away on its own". Try "resurrecting someone who's already started rotting or was cremated" or "rearrange some stars to spell out a Bible verse or a secret only I could know about".
The ramifications of doing so could easily outweigh the benefits in converting one person. How many people will lose faith in their understanding of reality and try and find some other explanation? The plurality of the world is Christianity, so if they're likely to convert away...You want independently verifiable events, because ones that aren't might just be hallucination. But independently verifiable events by nature mean other people have to be involved, and maybe that would go badly. Maybe your atheism will convert more people, in the end, through butterfly effects, than if you weren't. God's responsibility to his creations is not towards you individually. It is towards humanity as a whole. I was pointing out how you were saying that only people who already believe in God hear from Him was not quite true, if you think they're all being honest/factual in their recounting of events (hallucinations can be convincing, man).
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