That said, I would like to now offer my responses to the five major categories of comments/criticisms that my post generated:

1. You don't offer any scientific evidence in support of your thesis.

As I acknowledged in some of my responses to the comments, my post wasn't meant to provide irrevocable proof for my proposition. Rather, it was meant to make people wonder about the possibility that beliefs about God--like any other beliefs--are susceptible to revisions based on life circumstances in which one finds oneself. As I am sure most of you can appreciate, the "no atheists in foxholes" hypothesis is not easy to test in a controlled laboratory setting. For obvious (and valid) reasons, the human subjects committee would not approve such an experiment. However, what we do know from one experiment (conducted in the 1960s) on obedience by Stanley Milgram (see all three parts, starting with this video) is that people can do crazy things, things that they would never think they were capable of doing, when they are under a sufficiently high level of stress. (In the case of Milgram's experiments, participants were put under stress by ordering them to obey authority, and they delivered electric shocks to people.)

More directly relevant to our focus are studies in the area of Terror Management Theory (TMT). In a nutshell, TMT suggests that the terror evoked by the fear of death causes people to embrace symbolic systems, such as cultural norms, mores, religious beliefs, etc. According to TMT, the more the terror, the greater the reliance on the symbolic crutches, including religious beliefs. One study showed, for example that, after being reminded of death, Christians rated fellow-Christians more favorably than they rated Jews and vice versa. Ask yourself: If being subject to terror can prompt a religious person to become even more religious and fundamentalist, couldn't it push an atheist to change the confidence with which they hold their views about God (i.e., either push them to become even more confident that God doesn't exist, or push them towards believing in God)? (If you continue to believe that your position as an atheist is set in stone, please revisit this question after reading the rest of this post.)

2. Far from making one believe in God, stress has made me an atheist.

A significant proportion of the respondents said that, contrary to what I proposed, stress eventually lead them to embrace atheism. This is not necessarily a rebuttal of my overarching thesis, which is that people's opinions and beliefs are unstable. As I wrote in the last paragraph of my original post, "Extrapolated to the topic of God: This means that no one is a complete atheist or, for that matter, a complete believer in God."

Think about it: If stress converted you from a believer to an atheist, what is the guarantee that it won't do the reverse again in the future?

3. It is logical and scientific to be an atheist.

This was, by far, the most prevalent counter-argument against my position: that from a logical, rational and scientific viewpoint, it doesn't make sense to believe in God. By extension, those with this viewpoint felt that atheists wouldn't succumb to believing in God--no matter the level of stress-- since belief in God "doesn't make logical sense" and "it is scientific to not believe in God."

Perhaps the most cogent articulation of this view was made by Brett, who cited atheist philosopher Michael Martin. According to Martin, one is justified in not believing a claim if (a) it has been subject to extensive study; (b) there is no direct evidence supporting it; and (c) it is the sort of claim that, if it were true, would clearly have available evidence to support it.

Brett claimed that the topic of God had been put to rigorous scientific study. I am not aware of these studies, but I will take Brett's word for it. However, I am not sure that I agree with him that there is no direct evidence supporting the existence of God. I will offer two arguments in support of my proposition. The first argument is linked to the well-established phenomenon of placebo effects. We all know that a person stands a better chance of being cured by a pill--even a sugar pill--if he believes that the pill will cure him. Now, why couldn't the placebo effect apply to the concept of God? Specifically, isn't it possible that you will directly experience God if you believe that God exists but not if you don't?

Many of you may think of the hypothesis I have just articulated as being "non-scientific." But think about it: Is it any more non-scientific than the placebo effect hypothesis? What the placebo effect hypothesis (and more generally, self-fulfilling prophecies) says is that there is no such thing as one objective reality: your reality depends, in significant part, on your perceptions of what is real. If you believe that a pill will cure you, it will. Likewise, if you believe a God exists, then you will see proof that God exists.

If what I have just articulated isn't convincing, consider another argument: most of us are wedded to the scientific approach to figuring out what to believe. What we don't recognize is that the scientific approach can itself have some limits (similar to how mathematics has its own limits; see Godel's theorem). In particular, the scientific approach is heavily reliant on logic, and more fundamentally, on thoughts. What if a certain reality could only be perceived if one weren't thinking? Applying it to the present topic, what if God only reveals himself/herself to you when your cognitive system is not engaged?

I am not heavily into meditation, but most mediators I know, especially the ones who have been practicing it for a long time, tell me that they routinely experience a certain sense of "spiritual awakening," which produces an emotional state akin to the emotional state of elevation when they meditate. In such a state, it is possible to experience a certain sense of connectedness and a "peace that transcends all understanding" (to quote Jesus). One recognizes, in this state, that we are all from the same "source," the Universal Intelligence. When one experiences this state, one has received direct and personal evidence of this intelligence, and most meditators I know wouldn't object to referring to this intelligence as God. So, this is not an "egotistical" or "separatist" God, but a God that is truly omnipresent and omniscient.