Religious people who misunderstand the atheist position will say there is absolutely no amount of evidence that can convince an atheist, and so they argue that atheists are just as dogmatic, ideological or fundamental as religious fundamentalists. This view mistakes atheism as a religion.

“Atheism is to religion as bald is to hair color.” Often times, if you ask someone what would convince him that his religion is wrong, he will often say “nothing, there isn’t anything that can convince me otherwise.” Sometimes people will be a little bit more liberal and suggest things that could convince them, but they set up their belief system so that one couldn’t possibly be proven wrong.

Like Marxist philosophy, which always seems to have an ad hoc explanation of why the great revolution in England didn’t occur, Christians have demands of knowledge. They ask immensely complicated questions. When Bill O’Reilly had Richard Dawkins on his show, O’Reilly said, in his infinite wisdom, “when [scientists] figure it out, you come back here and tell me, because until that time, I’m sticking with Judeo-Christian philosophy and my religion of Roman Catholicism.”

Until scientists have all of the answers, these people will still huddle into that epistemic void, and try to pass off their religious beliefs as some sort of healthy skepticism. In the spirit of proving the religious wrong, I have devised a list of things that would convince me that someone’s religion is true. If you can produce these things, I will convert on the spot.

1) Prophecies. It isn’t good enough that a religion just happens to have some sort of prophecy. They have to be accurate and things that have been confirmed. A good example of this would be something like predicting a major earthquake, a meteor hitting the Earth or a significant natural disaster that could not have been predicted using scientific means. Suppose that in the Bible, it said something like, “On the first day on the first month, two thousand and twenty years after our Lord, the Earth will shake, and buildings will crumble, new rivers will be formed and a western part of the new world will drift in to the sea.” This would be incredibly impressive and if one could repeat these incredibly unlikely events, without using the scientific process, I would be hard pressed not to believe in the truth of a person’s religion.

It is an unconvincing prophecy if one prophecizes using vague, unspecific dates, places or times. For instance, if one were to say, “Sometime in the future, a person will be struck by lightning,” it wouldn’t count as a convincing argument because invariably somebody will be struck by lightning in the future. People often point to Nostradamus for prophecies, arguing that he predicted things like the stock market crash, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the fall of the Soviet Union and the thing that pisses me off the most, 9/11. Of course, Nostradamus’ prophecies are so vague that they could apply to just about anything. For a prophesy to be considered even worthy of consideration of the truth of the religion, the predictions must be unambiguous with little room for interpretation, with specific dates and places.

The prophecies must also be non-trivial. If a prophecy claims that a storm will eventually subside or that a plague will eventually go away, then it is a trivial statement and shouldn’t be considered. Prophecies must predict something that is surprising or unique. If a holy text predicted that in the 1969 World Series, a shoe polish play would occur, that would be incredibly impressive.

Prophecies cannot be self-fulfilling or something that human beings can work to make true. If a fortune cookie tells someone that he will be successful in the future, he will probably try to be successful in order to claim that the fortune cookie was true.

2) Scientific knowledge. If the bible or any other holy book contained something about the laws of electromagnetism, the theory of evolution, or even the first 100 digits of Pi, I would be convinced. In fact any sort of scientific knowledge in scripture that predates publication of the scientific theory in any scientific paper would be interesting. If Jesus said something like, “I say unto thee, air moving at a faster rate has a lower pressure” (Bernoulli’s law) that would be pretty impressive. Of course these scientific propositions would have to be something specific and unambiguous.

3) Prayer. If prayer actually worked for those of a particular religion, I would be convinced of a person’s religion. Of course, once again, these cannot be trivial prayers or things that could have happened by chance. One cannot attribute that a person’s cold or fever went away, simply because they prayed for it to go away. Obviously with or without prayer, the person is going to get better eventually. I would like to see someone help an amputee grow back a limb through prayer. If one could produce a double blind study, which showed that people who were prayed for had a statistically significant better recovery, better odds in any game, command of lightning or any other seemingly random event, I would be convinced.

I never understood the excuse, “it doesn’t work that way” or “God works in mysterious ways.” Could it be that the fact that “it doesn’t work that way” or “God works in mysterious ways” is simply because he doesn’t exist, and people attribute what small trivial prayer gets answered, forgetting all of the misses where God didn’t answer someone’s prayers? Isn’t it a more plausible explanation that all those trivial prayers happened through chance and that cold reading is at work, rather than any God? The simple truth is prayer doesn’t work and is only a form of wishful thinking that has yet to convince me of anything.

A good maxim would be, have the same standards to your religion as you would when buying a used car. If you can produce these things, I would be hard pressed not to convert.

Ken Ueda is a senior math, physics and philosophy triple major. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].

Religious people who misunderstand the atheist position will say there is absolutely no amount of evidence that can convince an atheist, and so they argue that atheists are just as dogmatic, ideological or fundamental as religious fundamentalists. This view mistakes atheism as a religion.

“Atheism is to religion as bald is to hair color.” Often times, if you ask someone what would convince him that his religion is wrong, he will often say “nothing, there isn’t anything that can convince me otherwise.” Sometimes people will be a little bit more liberal and suggest things that could convince them, but they set up their belief system so that one couldn’t possibly be proven wrong.

Like Marxist philosophy, which always seems to have an ad hoc explanation of why the great revolution in England didn’t occur, Christians have demands of knowledge. They ask immensely complicated questions. When Bill O’Reilly had Richard Dawkins on his show, O’Reilly said, in his infinite wisdom, “when [scientists] figure it out, you come back here and tell me, because until that time, I’m sticking with Judeo-Christian philosophy and my religion of Roman Catholicism.”

Until scientists have all of the answers, these people will still huddle into that epistemic void, and try to pass off their religious beliefs as some sort of healthy skepticism. In the spirit of proving the religious wrong, I have devised a list of things that would convince me that someone’s religion is true. If you can produce these things, I will convert on the spot.

1) Prophecies. It isn’t good enough that a religion just happens to have some sort of prophecy. They have to be accurate and things that have been confirmed. A good example of this would be something like predicting a major earthquake, a meteor hitting the Earth or a significant natural disaster that could not have been predicted using scientific means. Suppose that in the Bible, it said something like, “On the first day on the first month, two thousand and twenty years after our Lord, the Earth will shake, and buildings will crumble, new rivers will be formed and a western part of the new world will drift in to the sea.” This would be incredibly impressive and if one could repeat these incredibly unlikely events, without using the scientific process, I would be hard pressed not to believe in the truth of a person’s religion.

It is an unconvincing prophecy if one prophecizes using vague, unspecific dates, places or times. For instance, if one were to say, “Sometime in the future, a person will be struck by lightning,” it wouldn’t count as a convincing argument because invariably somebody will be struck by lightning in the future. People often point to Nostradamus for prophecies, arguing that he predicted things like the stock market crash, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the fall of the Soviet Union and the thing that pisses me off the most, 9/11. Of course, Nostradamus’ prophecies are so vague that they could apply to just about anything. For a prophesy to be considered even worthy of consideration of the truth of the religion, the predictions must be unambiguous with little room for interpretation, with specific dates and places.

The prophecies must also be non-trivial. If a prophecy claims that a storm will eventually subside or that a plague will eventually go away, then it is a trivial statement and shouldn’t be considered. Prophecies must predict something that is surprising or unique. If a holy text predicted that in the 1969 World Series, a shoe polish play would occur, that would be incredibly impressive.

Prophecies cannot be self-fulfilling or something that human beings can work to make true. If a fortune cookie tells someone that he will be successful in the future, he will probably try to be successful in order to claim that the fortune cookie was true.

2) Scientific knowledge. If the bible or any other holy book contained something about the laws of electromagnetism, the theory of evolution, or even the first 100 digits of Pi, I would be convinced. In fact any sort of scientific knowledge in scripture that predates publication of the scientific theory in any scientific paper would be interesting. If Jesus said something like, “I say unto thee, air moving at a faster rate has a lower pressure” (Bernoulli’s law) that would be pretty impressive. Of course these scientific propositions would have to be something specific and unambiguous.

3) Prayer. If prayer actually worked for those of a particular religion, I would be convinced of a person’s religion. Of course, once again, these cannot be trivial prayers or things that could have happened by chance. One cannot attribute that a person’s cold or fever went away, simply because they prayed for it to go away. Obviously with or without prayer, the person is going to get better eventually. I would like to see someone help an amputee grow back a limb through prayer. If one could produce a double blind study, which showed that people who were prayed for had a statistically significant better recovery, better odds in any game, command of lightning or any other seemingly random event, I would be convinced.

I never understood the excuse, “it doesn’t work that way” or “God works in mysterious ways.” Could it be that the fact that “it doesn’t work that way” or “God works in mysterious ways” is simply because he doesn’t exist, and people attribute what small trivial prayer gets answered, forgetting all of the misses where God didn’t answer someone’s prayers? Isn’t it a more plausible explanation that all those trivial prayers happened through chance and that cold reading is at work, rather than any God? The simple truth is prayer doesn’t work and is only a form of wishful thinking that has yet to convince me of anything.

A good maxim would be, have the same standards to your religion as you would when buying a used car. If you can produce these things, I would be hard pressed not to convert.