In 1930, Albert Henry Ross published the book "Who moved the stone?" In which he examines Biblical texts surrounding the account of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Ross initially started as a skeptic. "Who moved the stone?" was initially intended to be a full refutation of the resurrection, but during his research for the book, Ross was compelled by the evidence to become a Christian. Hence, the first chapter of the book is entitled "The book that refused to be written."
Ross was a lawyer by profession, but while he initially believed the resurrection was a fairy tale, he eventually came to conclude that the evidence for the resurrection alone fulfilled the standard required to convict a person in a court of law. Which raises the question: why are there still atheists? Why was Albert Henry Ross thoroughly convinced to toss atheism aside and become a Christian, while so many others reject Christianity? The answer is what I call the skeptometer.
I'd like to admit that I didn't come up with this concept, or the title. I believe credit can be given to David Wood for that (though he may also have got it from somewhere else). Nevertheless, it is a well known, and frankly self evident fact that different people have different standards of evidence for different truth claims. When we want to believe something, we often require little evidence, and we are more resistant to evidence that contradicts our desired belief. When we don't want to believe something, we tend to resist evidence that it's true, and more readily accept evidence that it's not. Wanting to believe isn't always the standard, but more often than not, desire controls the skeptometer.
We see several examples of the skeptometer in the Bible. Jesus' miracles had various effects on different people. Some people took them as evidence that He genuinely is the Messiah. Others claimed He was demon possessed. The Israelites saw God in the desert, but they were scared of Him, so when Moses went up the mountain, they soon worshiped a golden calf instead. Even Thomas, who obviously wanted to believe Jesus had come back, refused to believe until he was able to inspect Jesus' wounds.
With regard to religion, there are various reasons people convert. Some people just accept the faith they were raised in. Some people accept the faith they were taught in school. Some people accept the religion they like the most. Fear is another great motivator. It's hard to reject a religion if you're afraid its followers will persecute you, even if it's a small persecution like mockery. It turns out that the reasons people accept certain beliefs has very little correlation to how true that belief is.
This isn't always true, of course. Some things are believed because they are as plain as the nose on your face. Like, for example, the nose on your face. With no cause for bias and few things that would suggest otherwise, the fact that you have a nose will rarely be denied, which is where the phrase comes from. The fact that the sky is blue is another example. While it often changes from grey to orange to black, most of us accept by pure observation that the sky is blue by default.
But not every belief comes from observation alone. Take, for example, Napoleon's invasion of China. Everyone has a different skeptometer when it comes to that. None of us saw that happen. Some of you will accept the fact that Napoleon invaded China just because I used it as an example. Some of you might have paused reading for a moment to Google it. The more historically educated of readers won't need that Google search to tell them that Napoleon never actually invaded China.
If you fell for my trick, consider what I'm about to say. Those who didn't, put yourselves in the minds of those who did. What else could you have set your skeptometer too low for?
The life of Napoleon is not something based on observation. Napoleon is dead. Everyone who ever met Napoleon is dead. Since bias doesn't really creep in here, most of our skeptometers are generally quite low. But let's crank it up a bit. Let's imagine I am an anapoleonist. I demand evidence for Napoleon's existence!
So you take me to the historical records. But I don't accept them. Anyone can write about Napoleon. Is Harry Potter proof that wizards exist? So you show me paintings of him, but I don't believe he genuinely posed for them. They're just artist's creations. So you take me to his grave, but I don't see him, I just see a big French monument. So let's get his body out. But wait, there are billions of people on the planet even now! So that could be anyone!
In that scenario, there would be no possible way to convince me Napoleon existed. You would have shown me evidence, but nothing that convinced me. This wasn't due to the evidence, or the quality thereof, but due to my own refusal to accept it. In the case of Napoleon, the historical record ought to be enough.
Many atheists today have an unreasonably high skeptometer when it comes to God. Penn Jillette, for example, believes that all miracles are just magic tricks. If Jesus returned to the Earth for a day, appeared on 'Penn and Teller: Fool Us', and performed a genuine miracle, Penn wouldn't be convinced that miracles existed. He would just think it was a magic trick he didn't know how to do. Nothing can convince Penn Jillette that miracles exist because he judges all evidence for miracles with the assumption that miracles do not exist.
The difference between Albert Henry Ross and Penn Jillette isn't the amount of evidence they've seen, but their likelihood of accepting it. If we score the skeptometer at 0 to 10, Ross was at around 7, where Penn is at 10. Ross obviously wasn't gullible, as he initially set out to prove the opposite conclusion. Penn Jillette isn't gullible either, but he has a standard of evidence so unreasonably high that it's impossible to convince him that he's wrong. Both ends of the spectrum are generally bad. Gullibility lets lies in, whereas extreme skepticism shuts truth out.