Hi Folks,
As a sort of offshoot from my other thread on reasons why you believe, it might be interesting (and somewhat sobering) to consider what things (if any) might make you head over towards the non-belief camp.
To get the ball rolling:
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Clear evidence of the non resurrection (physical) of Jesus of Nazareth: I doubt whether this is realistically obtainable even if it did exist, but I guess such a find would have me seriously questioning my Christianity (though not necessarily my theism).
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**New discoveries of biblical texts **(especially apostolic NT gospels) that show up major canonical NT discrepencies, changes or forgeries. Depending upon content this could be something that has little impact or could move me well away from any last vestiges of Evangelicalism.
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**A profound and well attested miraculous demonstration **(with myself being personally involved) that revealed ‘another’ God. This one’s tricky - I’m wary of mircle claims, and since I believe in an evil side to the supernatural I’m also wary of demonic counterfeits. But if I claim Christian religious experience as a motivator for belief, then I have to admit at least to the possibility that some truely overwhelming supernatural display could affect my current beliefs.
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**Very strong and persuasive arguments **that undermine the philosophical and reason-based arguments for God’s existence. Probably not enough on their own, but if all the cosmological, teleological, moral and pragmatic arguments for God could be overwhelmingly shown to be unreasnoble then it would seriously undermine my faith.
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**If hyper-advanced extra-terrestials show up **(especially if they either a: don’t believe in God or b: claim to have been involved in the formation of religions in earth’s history). This would change my ideas about humanity’s place in the universe, and have knock-on effects concerning the incarnation. And probably quite a few other things too.
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Personal suffering. Although I perhaps like to think that my faith is strong enough to weather suffering and evil I’ve never really been put to any serious test. I pray I never am. But many people lose faith from such things and I would be very arrogant to assume I’m any better than them.