What specific evidence would people require to believe in God's existence?

Legend writes

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so what? the same can be said of the God of the Bible.

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You know, you just admitted that the god of the bible could have been aliens.

Larni writes

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You could never really tell if the second coming was in fact a clever visitor form anothe world with a 2nd class degree in xenosocial-psychology.

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Millions believe in gods without any proof, just imagine what some sort of proof would do!

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This is a scenario I've been dreading over for years now. Throughout history, we've seen many magicians, prophets, soothsayers, magic healers, christian missionaries, etc. that primarily targeted the more vulnerable people, people with less education and less means to tell that something is funny there.Just less than a decade ago, hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of third world people believed in scam artists that claimed they could remove the bad parts of your body without making incisions. All the scammers did was spill some red liquid on the stomach of the sick, pretend like his fingers are going into the body, and then pretend like he was removing little pieces of stuff. Naturally, noone was allowed to come in contact with those bad little pieces of stuff from that person's stomach.This scam attracted crowds of hundreds of thousands and millions and millions of dollars poured in.If an alien race is advance enough to travel the distances in space to get to us, they would be seen by many as gods.Science fiction writers have used this concept in just about every scifi show. The Goa'uld system lords, Asgards, Ancients, Q, Vorlon, Shadow, Lorient, and even Picard have all been praised as gods. It's an entertaining concept on tv, but I'm not sure I want to see an actual technologically advance alien coming down from "heaven".ABEThis reminds me of an Outer Limit episode I saw years ago that somewhat resembled an experience I had while in college.A group of college students decide to go on a "faith" trip to the wilderness with Brother "so and so" (can't remember his name). They stayed in cabins and listened to his teachings about Christ and all of that. Eventually, one by one they renounced all modern knowledge to follow Christ. A couple saw something was funny so they began to investigate. It turned out that the monk was actually an alien merchant and the group was no longer on Earth. The alien explained that they were on their way to a distant place where the decendants of this group, who by that time would be subservient servants who will believe that their alien captors are gods, will be sold as slaves. The twist of the story was that at the end, the alien ordered this young man who have discovered his secret to be burned alive by his peers. Because FAITH in the Almighty was unquestionable, his peers tied him up and burned him alive, watching him scream in agony. Indeed, their descendants were destined to be slaves.Sounds familiar? (ahem... people of the Americas and those damn christian missionaries)Edited by rgb, : No reason given.

nwr writes

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But I do suggest that gullible people are more likely to become religious, much as gullible people are more likely to be taken in by scam artists.

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What about science? If what you say is true about gullibility, how come the only groups that seem to be able to exploit this gullible crowd are religious zealots, politicians, and scam artists? How come the academic communities have always had trouble tapping into this vast ocean of resources?

I wasn't talking about looking into the research. I was talking more along the line of, say, scientific concepts that are so certain we rarely question them anymore. For example, the Earth orbits the sun in an eliptical orbit with the sun as one of its foci. That versus the religious version (the sun goes around the earth in a perfect circle because everything in heaven is perfect and circle represents perfection... or something like that).Religion seems to be doing just fine advertising about how stars are proof of the creator and all of that. Why can't the academic community use the same tactic and advertise that the stars are huge nuclear powerplants?I'm not talking about scientific concepts that are up for debate. I'm talking about stuff we take for granted that the more gullible don't know.What I was thinking was more along the line of "the gospel of cellular mitosis..."

Chiroptera writes

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This is exactly the sort of thing that I feel the academic community should not engage in.

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Why not? The so-called unwashed masses are not going to spend the years in proper schooling to learn these things and spend the extra time looking at and examining the evidence thouroughly. What the academic communities have done is create this elitist club where you either understand the technicalities behind the theories/concepts or you're an idiot.I've read many books written supposedly for the not-so-science-literate people. The ones that were written by actual scientists have trouble communicating with the not-so-science-literate people. The ones that were written by journalists, while being easy to understand, were less than accurate.Many people know what the trinity is in catholic doctrine. However, most of these people don't have a clue what it actually is or how it reinforces the faith. The church seems to do fine with its followers by telling them to "just don't worry about the why and how, just believe in it".I think this is why the academic communities have such trouble trying to reach the regular folks. To the regular folks, we're are some kind of elite club. On the other hand, religion and creationism are making great progress with the masses simply because they have made their teachings a lot more comprehensible and appealing.

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But the role of the academic communities, in my opinion, should be divorced from conscious propaganda.

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The masses can't seem to see through the propaganda of religions and creationism. Isn't it time we try a different tactic in approaching this problem?

Reverend, not that I don't appreciate your post, but was there a purpose to your post? You basically just reworded what I said and said the exact same things I said.

nwr writes

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If you have huge congregations of people yelling "Rah, rah, go scientists, go," it won't make the science any better. It might make it worse.

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This, I agree with.

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Science isn't in the "saving souls" business. It is in the business of finding out what we can about our world. Scientists should do science, not evangelism.

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While science isn't in the saving souls bussiness, it is in the bussiness of survival. With christian evangelism and anti-science rallies on the rise, especially now that we have an administration that is more creationism-friendly than any other administrations before, I am just afraid that this will eventually lead to our fight for survival.

chiroptera writes

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history, I think, shows quite well that this type of Leninist vanguardism will ultimately fail.

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And yet just about every religion in the world is as old as history itself and is still strong and kicking.

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Not the Bolsheviks, not the Dept. of State, and, sadly, not you, either.

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I don't think it's sad that it's not up to me to say what is good for the people considering that I haven't fully developed my ideas on the matter. I might never have them fully developed.