Paul Davies: What would it take for me to believe in God?

It is a very good one and as a lifelong atheist I have thought about this a number of times but as life goes on the answer becomes less clear.

Direct experience. I have had various hallucinations and understand how easily the mind can be put in conditions described by many as personal experiences. The seeing the light, similar experiences caused by pain, sleep deprivation, narcotics or coming off them, so that becomes less fantastic than easy to dismiss.

I haven't had hallucinations through pain, I seem to go through controlable, excrutiating to unconcsious. The sleep deprivation is one I experienced a lot and medically administered morphine has created others. All these have made it clear that thinking you have encountered a deity is not the same as having done so, in the same way as dreaming you won the lottery doesn't mean you bought a ticket.

The inexplicable. Science done properly is the study of discovering questions. It is why there are no facts in science, the closest is theory, because what we know could be disproven.
What is inexplicable today will be common knowledge tomorrow. This is why those with limited understaning believe science and religion are enemies. Of course in today's world more people get 'scientific data' from social media than real scientists, so Iif this were the case, I would say Farcebook is more likely to be replacing religion than science if that was the cause.
The unknown ad unexplained is a common reason for people in science to become religious, something that makes me question their scientific principals as the whole point is not to answer everything but understand how little we know and explain some of it if we can.

Miracles.
What defines a miracle? I had this conversation with someone when they were declaring power of prayer as an alternative to power of COVID vaccine. The research coming together for the vaccines has been around 50 years in the making and came together just a couple of years before the most lethal corona virus on record where we wouldn't adapt to this beyond a single variant at a time even if we kicked it out. If you were to calculate the odds of this it would be far less likely than winning th elottery every week for a year. Those sort of odds tend to equal miracle for many, so maybe prayer had already been answered.
I have genuinely had the phrase "Patient's body is unaware how to die." written on my medical notes by a doctor who may not have intended them to be added to permanent record. I have survived things because I believe I can. I don't consider it miraculous, I just survive because it never occurs to me that I wouldn't. I have recieved diagnoses that declared I wouldn't walk again, and set myself the target of a half ironman triathlon the year after the second of these. It took me an extra year and I was slower than the winner went on to complet th eKona in, but I didi it. I watched as people praying for a third party to give them a miracle stayed immobile, while I pushed through excruciating pain and various setbacks to finally achive what they would look at as a miracle, and I thought of as anything but.

Creation. How else can the universe have come into being?
Of course the simple question is how could the creator have come into being? The argument is just as relevant and if something can exist out of space and time, then physics, the rules a deity woul dhave put in place, means nothing and it's easy to explain anything as easy if we don't have to consider that.
The something from nothing argument. There is a hypothesis that could easily answer this. We still have nothing, in the same way as a balance sheet has to reach a total of 0. There is matter and anti-matter etc. all cancelling each other out, so in truth we are living in a world that has a sum total of nothing.

So the list of things that would persuade me of the existance of a deity are dwindling as life experience makes me realise how much hasn't even come close to convincing me.

but you end up in the position of PAUL surely. and you have to conclude were you deluding yourself or being true to what you experienced. these are not arguments. the NT is about a PAST generation who EXPERIENCED something. something this physics wanted proof of himself to believe. you are going round in circles surely?

Hmm. Some rational and self aware being who can casually and at will abridge the following laws of physics would go a long way to being convincing: ability to travel in other than 3 spatial dimensions, ability to travel in more than the future forwards/entropy increasing direction of time, ability to abridge fundamental conservation laws or underlying symmetries and in particular the laws of thermodynamics. Plus ability to explain away the euthyphro dilemma in some manner understandable by humans. Doing all that doesn't prove you are god but at that point, how would anyone know the difference?

A cheeky question, indeed. Happy to hear someone acknowledge that. The question is terrible, so, rather than beating an exceptionally dead horse, may I phrase it this way? – If someone asked you, what would it take for you to believe in birthdays as, ‘special,’ or, Mickey as a, ‘Mouse,’ or (hyperbolic example), the Fast and Furious franchise as, ‘how cars work,’ do you begin to see the subjectivity inherently involved, and question the question itself? That was rhetorical; it’s just a bad question, theist or otherwise. Great Channel. Bad clip. Why post do?

Hard to have an experience with someone when you won't open the door.

Mr. Davies contradicts himself. He wants a direct experience from God, but isn't open to it. God is not an intruder, He says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me." Rev. 3:20

I would settle for a 1 kings demonstration. I’ll bring the wood and the water. You bring the sacrifice.

“I won’t ever have one...” this is not a SCIENTIFIC response to a very scientific question. He chooses not to have one and if he did he would deny it. (“I would not be comfortable with a god transcending to me.”)

BOOM.....bias, not neutral. EVERY professor I’ve ever had and naturalist I’ve ever heard lecture.

Emotional choice not to allow the experience of the Pantocrator.

He is a religious nut, narrow-minded and a fraud. He probably helped make FAKE ASS fossils with the Leakeys.

The Spirit of God (the Spirit of truth) speaks to everyone.

Believe ? If you have to ask yourself then it is best to forget it forever . The time spent debating is pure folly.

Wouldn't worship but I would believe. Worshipping is not in my DNA.

Telepathically beg...(pray) for a 24 karat diamond to fall out the sky into my lap every time I do it. Then I would believe.

Even a supposed direct experience might make one believe in a God, but it's still not good evidence of a God. That experience can be chalked up to a variety of known and unknown reasons, which usually can't be tested.

I'll be honest: I wouldn't know how to answer this question definitively as an atheist. The general answer I give is that such an argument can't be made from ignorance or a god of the gaps. I can't accept 'I don't know how this works, god must have done it'. With that, I don't know how such evidence would look. Indeed, most ideas I come up with are more god of the gaps arguments (at least I'm trying). :)

Atheists: to believe God exists, God would have to give me some sort of experience…. because there couldn’t possibly be anything wrong with my epistemology.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Christopher Hitchen Quote: 'That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.' Simples.

When we first picked up pulsars we assumed an intelligent source. So a regular pulse is evidence of intelligence But the info in DNA is unconvincing?

What has Paul Davies done to his face?

Any Empirical evidence.