EBON MUSINGS: THE ATHEISM PAGES BUILDING BLOCKS

The Theist's Guide to Converting Atheists
What would convince an atheist that a religion is true?

In several years of debating atheism and theism, I have made an observation. Ask any believer what would convince him he was mistaken and persuade him to leave his religion and become an atheist, and if you get a response, it will almost invariably be, "Nothing - I have faith in my god." Although such people may well exist, I personally have yet to meet a theist who would acknowledge even the possibility that his belief was in error. Many theists, by their own admission, structure their beliefs so that no evidence could possibly disprove them. In short, they are closed-minded, and have been taught to be closed-minded. (For more on this, see "Thoughts in Captivity".)

In light of this, it is ironic that atheists are often accused of being the closed-minded ones. Fundamentalist proselytizers very frequently claim that we are hard-hearted, that we are dogmatic and irrational, that we reject God based on preconceived bias, and so on. Such claims result from psychological projection. Incapable of coping with the fact that there are some people who genuinely do not believe in their god, these theists simply deny that such people exist, and instead insist that everyone thinks the same way they do. Therefore, people who reach different conclusions than them must have some secret ulterior motive for not believing. This is truly ridiculous, but unfortunately, some people really believe it.

Thus, in the spirit of proving that atheists' minds are not closed, I've assembled below a list of everything I can think of that I would accept as proof that a given religion is true. Also included are things that I would accept as circumstantial evidence of a particular religion's truth and things that would not be acceptable to me as proof of anything. While I do not claim to speak for all atheists, I would confidently say that any religion that could produce one of the things from the first list would probably gain a great number of converts.

To be fair, I invite all theists to respond by preparing a list of things that they would accept as proof that atheism is true. If any theist prepares such a list, posts it on the Internet and tells me about it, I'll link to it from this page.

[Update, June 2007: This essay has been available on the internet for six years and has been discussed on numerous web forums, and this week I received what is, to my knowledge, the very first theist response to the challenge outlined above. As promised, here is the link. See also the related discussion on Daylight Atheism.]

[Update, February 2008: A second response was sent in. See discussion on Daylight Atheism.]

[Update, April 2010: Response #3. See discussion on Daylight Atheism.]

[Update, July 2010: Two further responses.]

[Update, September 2010: Response #6.]

The first category deals with things that would absolutely convince me of the truth of a particular religion. If shown any of these, I would convert on the spot.

The second category deals with things that would not be conclusive, but that would count as circumstantial evidence. Show me one of these and I might not convert right away, but your religion will look a lot better to me.

The final category deals with things that would not convince me; none of the following would persuade me to rethink my position. To date, all the evidence I have ever seen presented for any religion falls into this category.

Subsidiary Articles
How Not to Convert an Atheist: Continuing the theme of the above essay, this article advises theists what arguments and tactics are likely to be ineffective at convincing an atheist to change their mind.

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