Dear Theist, We’ve Heard It All Before

Recently, Hemant Mehta had a dialog with a Christian mega-church pastor at the pastor’s mega-church. About 6000 people got to hear Mehta talk about atheism. One of the things that Mehta talked about was that he (and most other active atheists) have heard all the questions before. It was after this that his pastor friend brought out a questions that no atheist has every heard before.

Get ready to have your mind blown. The question is…

Is there anything that would tempt you or convince you to believe in God?

I bet you never heard a theist ask you that before, right? Okay, we have all heard that question before. The fact is that Mehta is correct. It is extremely unlikely that a theist is going to ask me a question that I have never heard before. I would love to actually hear a new argument. But I doubt I will. At best, I will just hear some rewording or older arguments.

If you are a theist, please, please, please attempt to blow my mind with a new argument. I would love to hear it but I think you should Google it first just to make sure that no one else already made that argument. Then I want you to Google the question to find out if anyone actually answered the argument before. Then you can hit me with your genius point.

As for Mehta’s appearance at the mega-church, I think everyone should watch it because he did a fantastic job:

The only minor point that I want to add to Mehta’s response to the question is that I honestly don’t know what would convince me that God exists… but do you know who would? God! If God exists, then he would know the precise argument or experience that would convince me and if he doesn’t want me tortured for all eternity, then he would presumably provide that argument or experience to me. The very fact that he hasn’t is actually evidence that he doesn’t exist. Think about it.