> Ultimately it depends on the claim, but the basis of it would that you'd have to be able to both test and repeatably reproduce whatever effect is claimed.

Can you explain further why this would be a good standard, or how it would help? I mean, suppose you were god (with the usual alleged attributes that generate this kind of issue). How would you make yourself repeatable or testable?

Prayer seems like one of the tests that you would propose. This seems to me to be a maybe not great test? Even we respond differently based on the situation. My kids pray to me for ice cream fairly regularly, for example, and sometimes they get it and sometimes they don't. (Sometimes they eat their dinner and haven't had more sweets than are good for them by my judgment; sometimes they're disobedient and annoying; sometimes I'm a first-rate bastard to my kids; and so on.) If god exists, I don't know that I would expect him/her/it to respond repeatably or to be testable, at least in that sense.

> Can you explain further why this would be a good standard, or how it would help?

Without this as a standard what are you left with to verify the divine is the divine and not a con? I think we can both agree that there are a lot of crazy cults and charismatic leaders that claim things they aren't and can use tricks and the slight of hand to prove things that aren't true. Assuming a loving god exists, shouldn't that being give us a way to tell the difference between false beliefs and true beliefs? Or if that doesn't matter to this divine being, then why would it be important to be a believer in the first place? The best way I know how to verify truth is repeatable tests with measurable results. Do you have a better way?

> I mean, suppose you were god (with the usual alleged attributes that generate this kind of issue). How would you make yourself repeatable or testable?

How couldn't you?

Assuming I'm the god of the universe, then the test would be as easy as "Anyone that thinks 'all hail cogman10!' will see a gold star in the periphery of their vision." Heck, I could simply have all my creations be born with the innate knowledge that I exist and these are my rules.

If you are a all knowing, all powerful, ever present being then constructing any sort of "this will always return true" test would be trivial. There are already tests like this in the bible "if you have the faith of a mustard seed you can move a mountain". Wouldn't the act of asking for literally anything demonstrate the minimal amount of faith?

But, assuming there is some law of the universe that I'm bound by (making me not all powerful), then I'd surely know how to communicate specifically with cogman10 to let them know that I exist beyond doubt (and to do that for everyone). If I didn't know that, then I must not be all knowing.

Or, if I didn't care to communicate that and instead I'm fine with my creations being tortured for eternity over an instant of choices... then I'm not particularly good or loving.

I picked prayer because it's a concept I'm most familiar with from my mormon upbringing.

> Assuming a loving god exists, shouldn't that being give us a way to tell the difference between false beliefs and true beliefs?

Oh, sure, I think that makes sense. I mean, supposing god exists and wants us to know he/she/it exists, it makes sense to me that some sort of revelation has to be there. But this god, being per se infinite, has to accommodate finite creatures. That seems like a challenge.

> Assuming I'm the god of the universe, then the test would be as easy as "Anyone that thinks 'all hail cogman10!' will see a gold star in the periphery of their vision." Heck, I could simply have all my creations be born with the innate knowledge that I exist and these are my rules.

I guess I would say that the universe itself seems to be repeatable and testable, at least at the scales we can measure so far. Of course there's a lot we don't understand, but that's kind of expected if your deity of choice is infinite.

I'm not sure what Mormonism teaches, but the Bible at least says that everyone knows that God exists, and that they suppress that knowledge. Maybe that's begging the question, though I doubt such claims are merely axiomatic (i.e., without some kind of reasonable argument). At least the request for something repeatable and testable that expresses the divine in some way would be answered by the universe you inhabit. This doesn't really lead to a Personality, which I think you'd have to arrive at in a different way. But I don't think persons—divine, if they exist, or otherwise—are repeatable that way.

> Wouldn't the act of asking for literally anything demonstrate the minimal amount of faith?

I don't know. Maybe the point of the saying is that no one has faith the size of a mustard seed?

> But, assuming there is some law of the universe that I'm bound by (making me not all powerful), then I'd surely know how to communicate specifically with cogman10 to let them know that I exist beyond doubt (and to do that for everyone). If I didn't know that, then I must not be all knowing.

It seems to me that one of the essential problems that most religious systems have to deal with the challenge of creaturely freedom and divine omnipotence. One possible supposal is that freedom is somehow incompatible with the desire for incontrovertible, watertight evidence, and that the two exist on a continuum. Perhaps the maximal amount of evidence is provided for the maximal amount of creaturely freedom?

Again, I think I understand the objection, but I'm not sure whether it adequately addresses the challenges that come along with it. I appreciate you thinking about the problem and talking about it, though. I have a lot of questions like this, too, and it's helpful to push some electrons into the ether instead of just talking to myself about it.