No get out of jail/gaol free cards for the religious. That's as silly as a positive god claim.

It means they were somehow deluded into believing in this due to misinterpreting something that possibly occurred in their lives

No, but I strongly believe in rehabilitating and educating prisoners. The US prison system is a black hole that is completely devoid of positive programs. The occasional quality programs are few and far between. Also, thanks for spelling the word gaol, i just saw it spelled that way for the first time on he closed captioning while watching the Aussie show Harrow on Hulu. I love learning stuff.

No, just no.

How about if you remove crazy people from your life?

I would not trust any “conversion” made under the threat of burning forever in hell, nor one made with a view of gaining an idyllic afterlife in heaven. Christianity is fatally flawed IMO.

The only conversion worth anything to me is a gradual growing in awareness and appreciation for reality.

I'm less likely to trust someone if they've 'found God' than I am if they've realized their actions have harmed others. God is usually an excuse to do the most inexcusable things.

It is all false. The thing is most people will think it is genuine at least for awhile. This is all false too in my experience because if a person changes faiths it usually involves a marriage and a new sex partner. These changes have very little to do with a god at all and everything to do with getting along with others in the world. The bottom line is that you never know what is going on inside a person's head and we all play these sort of games.

For those who "find god" in prison for example, where else were they going to go? You must also ask yourself if this type of admittal will affect a parole board decision. Often it does and we are back to playing this same old type of game again.

No test would be sufficient until they provide what they can never provide. Proof that there is a deity as they describe it.

"Finding god" means different things to different people and there's not necessarily a salvific emphasis to it. It can be a proxy for finding oneself or one's place in the world, or for finding connection and community, or gaining a perceived understanding of how to find meaning and purpose, or of a perceived connection to the Divine -- or any of several other forms of value. The need to be saved from perdition is not an emphasis in all Christian traditions, and it is not literal in all traditions.

If "finding god" means becoming a better person -- kinder, gentler, humbler, more serene and supportive and real and so forth -- then it's fairly easy to determine over time if these changes have occurred and are lasting. But even if these changes do happen, it's primarily evidence that the person values these qualities and has bothered to cultivate them, not evidence for divine influence. It is evidence that the particular, chosen religious abstraction works for that particular person, perhaps.

My oldest brother was something of a carouser in his youth and transferring his allegiance and source of support from his drinking buddies to his church buddies provided what was, for him, a more functional and responsible sense of belonging. But my family saw it as god rescuing a wayward son about whom they had been very worried and had felt impotent to effectively guide. My whole family converted to that fundamentalist sect afterwards, and the rest is history. So even in that scenario, which was fairly literalist and had a salvific emphasis, the main impetus to convert was to solve a practical problem in this life. Authenticity, in my brother's case, was that he quit drinking and carousing and coming home and throwing up on the back steps, and started "acting like he should". Religion always solves at least one important problem for the acolyte; it may or may not include a problem with feeling too guilty.

Pascals wager.

I have never thought about that, since it has never been something I would fake, myself, and never really cared if anyone else was pretending. What reasons would someone have for doing that other than the obvious one of attempting to appease family members or getting a congregation to tithe to the church where you preach?

Since 'finding god' is a null assertion to me, genuine or excuse is irrelevant. One might be sincere but it's only accepting a fantasy, a form of self-delusion.

Good luck with that. A test could be be found in the book of James.

As long as I am not making that statement, I care not.