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Between faith and reason, what would it take to change your mind? (Part 2)
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Part 1 challenged believers to determine what would be required to demonstrate that they are mistaken about their beliefs.
But what if the believers are right? What evidence would an unbelieving critical thinker require to convince them that there is a God or that the Book of Mormon is true?
In fact, it's easy to propose evidence that would be convincing. The problem is that religion undermines attempts to gain evidence and ensures that it remains in the untestable realm of faith.
We could have kept and studied any of the artifacts Joseph removed from the Hill Cumorah. Sadly, an angel took away the golden plates, the Liahona, the Sword of Laban, the breastplate, and the Urim and Thummum. The recovered Book of Abraham papyrus could have contained at least some of the same text that Joseph translated, but it doesn't. Archeologists could have found other records in Mesoamerica that detail some of the same history as the Book of Mormon, but so far, they haven't.
Some religion could show, under controlled settings, that its prayers or blessings were more effective than placebo. We could live in a world where ghosts, angels, and even God himself were frequent and obvious visitors. We could live in a world where instead of a still soft voice somewhere in our hearts, angelic visitors would literally and physically appear to confirm the truth of God's message.
Compelling evidence is easy to suggest, but believers object to these and say that it's asking for too much. It would eliminate the need for faith. Which is exactly the point. A skeptic needs more than trust, hope, and intuition to obtain knowledge. A skeptic knows that these are too unreliable to determine if what we think is true is actually correct. True knowledge is gained through testing, not faith, and not even logic.
Believers might also say that objective and testable evidence would eliminate agency. But this is internally inconsistent. The scriptures are full of stories of people seeing angels or participating in miracles, and still rebelling. Even a pillar of fire and the parting of the Red Sea didn't stop the Israelites from building a golden calf. Laman and Lemuel saw an angel and still rebelled. Even in heaven, one-third of the hosts of heaven who knew and lived with God rebelled.
Indeed, one of the believer's arguments against testable evidence is that nonbelievers wouldn't accept it anyway, even if it were available, because their hearts are hard and their minds are closed. So clearly, it is still possible to make choices and to rebel, even if objective evidence is abundant.
Believers might say that believing in God through direct evidence would be believing in him for the wrong reason. But it's not about right or wrong reasons. It's about good and bad reasons. Objective and controlled evidence is a good reason to believe in something. Trust, hope, certainty, and personal convictions are not. By definition, a God who requires belief through bad reasons is an irrational God.
Believers might also say that it's for our own good that we don't have a perfect knowledge. If we did, God would hold us more accountable. But because we don't know any better, we can be forgiven, and this is for our benefit.
One wonders how this same strategy would work in anything else in life. Intentionally withhold information, and when people make the wrong decision, as they certainly will, blame them for it, and then offer to forgive them. Meanwhile, a few will get lucky and happen to guess correctly. These are rewarded.
Many believers will say that they do have objective and testable evidence that confirmed the truth of their beliefs. Perhaps they paid their tithing and were blessed somehow. Perhaps they prayed and received a spiritual witness. Perhaps they received a blessing and their illness was cured.
Unfortunately, these kinds of experiences are not examples of objective or testable evidence. If we introduce controls for human bias and if we look at larger sample sizes, we find that what people are experiencing is based on their personal perception of things, not a true reflection of reality. For every person who has prayed, paid tithing, or been blessed and received a positive result, there's another person who didn't. Anecdotal evidence is easy: it's a statistical guarantee. Get enough people to do something, and some of them will swear it made them rich, or they lost weight, or they found God. The trick is then getting everyone else to believe they weren't doing it right, or that they need to try harder.
For the nonbeliever, evidence could be easy and plentiful. Changing our minds could be easy. But the world does not present that evidence. To compensate, religion tries to explain why we don't really need or want that evidence and whatever evidence they do offer disappears as soon as we attempt to test it in an objective way.
Email Jonathan: slcfreethinking@gmail.com
Read Jonathan's other articles on science and religion
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