Quoth Justin_Bailey:
No, an entity appeared before all of humanity and declared that e was not God. I know plenty of folks who declare that they are not God, and none of them sways my belief. Why should this one? Yes, e says that es people have reason to believe that God does not exist, but why should I take es word on that? Again, I already know plenty of folks who say the same thing, and most of them even give some indication of what their reasons are.
The face declared “I created this reality.” Everything after that is just details to the mind of a believer.
But how is the scenario in the OP “evidence that my god is a lie”? According to many books and internet posts that I’ve read from atheists (and occasionally others) seeing and hearing something is not evidence that the thing exists. According to those books and posts, all humanity is best by problems such as hallucinations, genes that make as see things incorrectly or interpret things incorrect, “thought viruses” that invade our brains and make us believe things which aren’t true, and so forth. Because of this, supposedly those who think they have seen or heard God, or an angel, or a heavenly saint, or any other supernatural vision, can be dismissed without further investigation.
So in your scenario, wouldn’t a proper skeptic have to respond by saying that the event is not reliable evidence for anything? The fact that everyone on earth has those memories would not prove anything, since first it would be impossible to verify that everyone on earth did, and second, any well-trained skeptic can come up with an explanation that dismisses the evidence of group testimony.
The Face also mentioned that we are a random unexpected phenomena and that we are being allowed to continue only because of e’s decision to do so. The face told us that gods of any of the sort we conceive of are to all known knowledge, impossible.
Not only did it deny it’s role as a god, it told us quite clearly that such beings do not exist. While I don’t disagree with your conclusion, there is no reason to think that all believers would simply switch over to face worship.
It’s certainly evidence. But just because someone tells you something doesn’t mean that thing is true. So if large numbers of people have the memory (some especially religious people might lie about not having it) it would suggest that *something *happened.
It doesn’t prove anything, of course, but some number of people would accept the face’s words at face value. That might damage religion to an extent where it would be unsupportable.
I would imagine that rational people would question the veracity of what they saw. And certainly the vision in the sky could be lying, could be satan, or whatever. But as I said earlier, I was trying to make the flipside of the “What if God told you he was real.” threads that theists like making.
Personally I would take this with a huge grain of salt. Us living in a simulation is IMHO much more likely than the angry God described in the Abrahamic religions, but again I’d be looking to science to see if they can find evidence of The Simulation before accepting it whole heartedly.
Well if the face truly wants me to believe that it’s the creator and ruler of the universe, it needs to accomplish something that’s indisputably supernatural. A Great Debates thread about a religious topic where nobody makes some version of the nasty comment that Czarcasm put above would do it.
It’s a very interesting question, I think I’d become extremely confused seeing that the foundation of my life has been swept away. It’d be like discovering my wife and kids are robots or something like that.
Could we once, only once, have a hypothetical-situation thread (especially one about religion) where 95% of the post are “God doesn’t exist”, “I’d check myself in the Betty ford clinic” or something like that? Is it too much to ask that if the thread is for believers, that beleivers are allowed to dominate the thread? or that if a gypothetical is assumed, people don’t destroy the thread by examining every possible flaw of the hypothetical?
By all means, mercilessly attack my belifs and my religion if the thread even remotely calls for it, that’s not the issue; it’s the simple repsect for the OP and the board.
I’m sorry-what comment are you referring to?
I suspect many religious people would think it’s Satan trying to trick them.
As what many would considered a non-believer, I completely agree with this. I have heard, read, and been bored by all the arguments for the non-existence of God before, and really don’t think that re-hashing them adds much to the sum of human discourse and knowlege.
However, as an areligious and non-monotheistic Believer:
This weird being, very powerful being, tells everyone in the world
a) the universe is a petri dish
b) the petri dish experiment had some completely unintended and unexpected results
c) there is no God
Obviously, the simple fact of b) casts doubt on their ability to determine c). They don’t have all the answers, either.
I cannot speak for those who believe the inerrancy of a specific text.
No, he created this universe, that’s an entirely different proposition. Presuming that we can take the Face at it’s word, then at most it’s a demiurge. It may have caused our universe to come into existence, but it didn’t create reality itself; it didn’t create the fact that two plus two equals four. If it’s account is accurate it didn’t even design us, or anything in our universe; it simply plugged some starting parameters into a very large computer, with no way to predict or even necessarily understand the result.
If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.
Back when I was a Christian I would have assumed, like many other Christians, that this is the anti-christ and I’d prepare for the battle, confident my god would save us all.
I’d probably be scared but a little bit excited.
Speaking as what I call an Apatheist (I’m apathetic about the Theism question) who considers the question open but meaningless and uninteresting, In my book, any God worthy of the title just has to be powerful enough to create this universe we are in, intelligent enough to do so, and have had the intent to do it. It doesn’t matter if It intended us, specifically, we could be an accident. All It had to do was intend to make this universe.
The OP’s hypothetical meets those criteria. God appeared to all humanity and revealed Itself to be an incompetent fuck, not worthy of worship. All else is just quibbling about details.
ETA: OP, if you want to make a hypothetical in which it’s proven that God doesn’t exist, you will have to try again. This one doesn’t do it.