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Well, you've caught me, because I can't provide a surefire test either. To be fair though I'm one of those guys in the "you can't ever be 100% sure" camps so I don't know if that sort of test is even theoretically possible.
The tests which I've found most consistently produce results are tests related to sin and sacrifice, which is where faith comes in. If you have the faith to test God and give up a sin, even for a short period of time, good results will generally find their way to you in a way somewhat unlikely to be the result of chance. Better results the bigger the sacrifice.
If I thought that that was how God worked then it would move me in the other direction. Since I think it's highly unlikely that he works that way, but still more likely than randomly receiving $100, it happening would still move me towards the "God exists" side and it not happening would move me very slightly away, but it's a bad test that I wouldn't try due to the weak signal (among other reasons).
Yes to both. My faith would definitely be a lot weaker if not for that and similar things happening. I can point to 3-4 instances in my life much more significant than the example I shared (both in terms of experimental design, and in terms of how strong the resulting signal was) without which my faith would probably be nonexistent by now. Probably another 3-4 examples at the same level as what I shared too, but which I can actually talk about.
As for why I don't think these are mutually exclusive, I think this is just naturally how updating works if you're doing it right. If I'm learning about some ridiculous conspiracy theory, and learn some half-plausible evidence for it, then perhaps I will lend the conspiracy theory a bit more credence, but at the same time, since I still don't believe in it, I will create a justification/explanation for why that evidence exists besides the conspiracy theory being true.
I absolutely think confirmation bias is still a possibility, and all I can say is that I do my best to stay conscious of that.
Thank you for the thoughtful responses.
You say that you don't believe "God works that way" in regards to the $100 in the mailbox, which is a sentiment I understand as most people of faith would say the same I think. Can you help me understand why $100 in the mailbox is not the way God works but improving sound quality upon request is?
I understand that there are many examples in your life outside of the ones you have given, but are any of them repeatable in a way that you could re-perform the test and have the results consistently be the same? I think I know the answer to that, but it just seems to me like if praying for improved sound quality and it happening is reason for increasing belief then there are a multitude of things you could pray for daily of a similar nature, and record the results/update accordingly. I am sure there is some reason why that is not true as I am aware of the general aversion to testing god in most faiths, but you seem more open to the idea.
Incoming wall of text, I'm sorry, I didn't want it to be this way
Let me start with a couple of first principles which strike me as intuitively true. I don't mean for this to be persuasive per se so much as to build a foundation to explain my beliefs about God.
God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, and wants us to be like him
Being like him means being happy, good, and free
It's impossible to force people to be good while preserving their freedom1 (which, yes, means God is not "omnipotent" according to some definitions of the word).
Essentially what I'm trying to explain here is God's motives and why he doesn't just answer every single prayer or personally appear to each person on Earth. The point of us being here is to learn to be good. God wants to reward us for being good, but he wants us to be good for its own sake, not for the reward.
There's a lot more details I'm glossing over, but in short, God putting $100 in the mailbox in response to a simple prayer doesn't match my understanding of who God is and what his motives are. I don't really see how something like that would help anyone to be a better person. The sound quality thing--I wasn't sure if it would actually work, and I'm still not sure if it's something that would always work in similar circumstances, but it at least matches my understanding of who God is and the kinds of behavior he will reward.
This is where the principle of faith comes in, which here I'll define as "the willingness to test God in what is, to you, a small way given your current experiences." When I was a kid and had seen a few tiny little miracles2, and told of very large ones3 by my parents, I at least had a high enough estimate that God was real4 to do something little like take a few minutes to say a prayer. I was extremely stubborn and refused to consider any of the responses I got through prayer as divine messages--they were generally just simple, good feelings. Soon afterwards the responses became thoughts rather than feelings though, and generally extremely useful thoughts which answered my prayers.
I realize (and realized at the time) that this is terrible evidence. The point is less "those thoughts and feelings proved that God is real" and more "I did a small act of faith and was rewarded in a small way." Given the quality of spiritual guidance I was receiving as I prayed, I considered it a worthwhile occasional pastime even if it really was just some sort of altered mental state where I was more likely to figure out the correct answers to my questions.
So at that point, now that praying more-or-less consistently works for me (if only weakly), it's no longer a test, just something I have found that works. I'm not even close to being willing to accept that God is real, but my estimate of the probability that he is real has risen enough that I'm willing to test something somewhat more substantial, a test which would have seemed crazy for me if not for the weak evidence I had gathered through prayer. For me, that was scripture reading, a task which required somewhat more effort, had somewhat more results (it was a fairly enlightening activity), but still comes nowhere near convincing me that God is real.
This process continued for years. It wasn't all forward progress either. There were plenty of times I would get lazy and stop testing the boundaries, which would soon result in me forgetting evidences I had previously seen (or distrusting my own past self's ability to accurately interpret those evidences) and then backsliding until simple things like reading the scriptures were fairly large acts of faith with equivalent rewards.
Years later, after seeing some much cooler (but still ultimately dismissible) miracles, I was essentially forced to make a choice and test God in a way much greater than I ever had before. I prayed for strength, threw my life in his hands for this enormous test, and it turned out better than I could possibly have imagined. That's an experience I can never deny, so these days I find myself doubting the church much much less, because of the colossal obstacle placed in the way of my skepticism. Unfortunately this obstacle doesn't help much against my many other faults such as laziness and selfishness. Which, again, is my whole point--evidence of God on its own doesn't usually help us to become better people.
I actually did keep a prayer journal5 for a while, but I worried that the very act of keeping the journal was tampering with the results. In my head, I reasoned that if you pray for something and then look for the result, you will probably end up finding something that you interpret as the answer to your prayer, even if it's quite a stretch. I wish I had continued the journal, because now it seems to me that there are relatively easy ways around that, mostly involving time constraints. If something has been plaguing you for months, you pray for it to be solved, and the next day a good solution presents itself, I consider that pretty good evidence for prayer. The longer the solution takes, the worse evidence it is. I like this method because so many of my biggest prayers were answered seconds after they ended, in quite blatant ways.
So to finally answer your question, I think only some of these specific tests are repeatable, but the general principle of faith is fairly straightforward and consistently repeatable, provided your understanding of it is correct. Just take the next step, one you should already know is a good idea based on past experience, and it will lead to positive results, usually both tangible and in the form of a spiritual confirmation. This next step won't instantly confirm that God is real, but it will provide enough evidence to continue forward with a repeat of that test or a larger test, and that process can pretty much continue indefinitely.
Footnotes
Also I think it's fundamentally incoherent to force someone to be good at all. IMO moral goodness fundamentally requires deliberate choice. A murderer who accidentally shoots a dictator rather than their intended victim can't exactly claim moral credit for the result. A bank robber whose money is returned by the police isn't good for returning the money.
Which here I'll define as "things fairly unlikely to have happened without God's intervention", thus marginally increasing my probability estimate that God is real
I honestly spat upon anyone else's description of a miracle which I hadn't seen with my own eyes. Completely dismissed them as probable lies or confirmation bias. I still do, which is why I feel a bit strange writing this stuff down--it's not the kind of thing that would have convinced me at all. In fact even now if someone else were to write a similar post as my original one, I'd still immediately discount it as coincidence or something. That's probably a sign I'm a bit too skeptical, considering I still think others are liars when they share experiences identical to ones I have personally seen for myself.
Whenever I say something like "If God is real" there's an unspoken addition to that: "...and my understanding of him is sufficiently accurate." My understanding of him is heavily reliant on my church and their doctrines, so really what I'm saying is "if this whole system of beliefs is true".
I didn't keep a scripture journal but had similar results attempting to track the evidence there as well. I noticed that I felt better on days when I read the scriptures, but it was incredibly difficult to tell whether it was due to some spiritual enlightenment, or some confounder--maybe I only read the scriptures on days when I felt good. The days I forced myself to read also turned out pretty well, but again I rationalized it as "maybe the days I have the willpower to force myself to read are the days which will turn out well." It's hard to ever know these things for sure.
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