My computer ceased working, and so I only got a part of what I wanted to say posted. In general, I was trying to say that there should be some level of evidence that would be sufficient to prove the existence of a deity. Now, obviously, our prior probability for the god hypothesis is very low. One experiment, no matter how convincing, would not be enough to convince us. The probability would actually be higher that some part of the experiment was mishandled as opposed to god actually being real. However, an experiment (say, take three groups of terminally ill patients, give all of them equivalent levels of medical care, give the names of the members of two of the groups to a church and have them pray every day for their health, tell one of those two groups that they're being prayed for but leave the final group ignorant, and monitor how many of them make unlikely recoveries) if it did ever provide evidence in favor of prayer working, that would be a step towards proof of god. It's not proof on its own, of course, you'd have to replicate it, run other similar tests, etc to ensure that you ruled out all other possibilities, ensure that it can be replicated, and everything else we need before drawing those conclusions. You'd have to run a lot of tests, and those tests would have to disprove a lot of theories that we currently have good cause to believe.
We're not absolutely certain that there is no god. Therefore, there should be some level of evidence that, if seen, would be enough to get us to change our minds. Saying that you can't envision anything that would change your mind is really just a failure of imagination.
My computer ceased working...
That makes sense, as it looked like you were about to quote, but only got the ">" down.
However, an experiment (say, take three groups of terminally ill patients...
And this has been DONE (the fact that you worded your suggestion as an exact replica of the study implies that you certainly knew this, though).
...if it did ever provide evidence in favor of prayer working, that would be a step towards proof of god.
Absolutely, so long as "god" = "entity or system that is able to bring about physi...
I have a feeling that most of the people reading this site already understand everything in this article, but it's a useful synopsis of common issues faced when trying to have a reasonable discussion with laypeople, and might be good to point them to if necessary.
http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/how-to-have-a-rational-discussion/
I also want to mention how much I wish someone had shown me something like this as a teenager- I was very prone to lecture others against their will- as it might have saved me a lot of grief. I'm curious to see if these tendencies might have been common among members of this community growing up, so please comment to tell me if so (actually, please tell me even if not-no reason to encourage my own confirmation bias)!