in hiding, that’s a good idea, but the true non-believers–the ones that never believed from the start–might not take any of that as “evidence”. Pay no attention to the fact that they couldn’t dispute it or offer up a solution to how it’s done, it would still be a “fancy parlor trick” of an advanced degree.
It’s like glee says in another post above, there’s never any evidence. But what WOULD constitute as “evidence” to you or him or her? Obviously you’d all have different and varying degrees of what you’d consider “evidence”. Evidence is relative. What could be proof of supernatural things exisiting to one, someone else could just pass off as bunk.
There won’t be any factual evidence of the supernatural simply because:
There are too many people already set in their ways of not believing in the stuff and mostly because
There would never be agreement on what “proof” or “evidence” was valid.
So I was just wondering what would make some of the stronger disbelievers believe in the stuff.
Myself, I don’t know if I believe in ghosts or alien UFOs…But I keep an open mind. Still, if a UFO landed in front of my eyes (even if it was only me) and green creatures got out–or if the situation described in my OP happened in my house, that would be proof to me. From then on, I’d be a firm believer, beliiiiiiieve me. But that’s me. That might not work for someone else.
Hence, this topic.
Judging from history you’re wrong. People can and have been convinced of things that were formerly considered ridiculous, like continental drift - because sufficient evidence was gathered.
The skeptics aren’t disbelieving in ghosts and such because they are being unreasonable or nitpicky about evidence; they are doing so because no good evidence has ever been presented.
About the same kind of evidence that would make them believe in anything else. Logical consistency, evidence that doesn’t evaporate in front of skeptics ( especially those who know how to spot fraud ), etc.
It is an intriguing possibility, that something we currently consider part of the supernatural might be found to really belong to the natural world.
I doubt the things we lump together as the supernatural - god, ghosts, telepathy, afterlife - will turn out this way. But we can’t say with perfect confidence they won’t. Charles Fort was correct to point out that scientists opt not to look very hard at things they already disbelieve, and that they are not getting at the whole truth this way. Not that this is unfair on the part of the scientists. We all prioritize our work. Scientists have various hunches and inklings how things will turn out and should be allowed leeway in choosing the questions they want to answer. But it is good that some experiments are always getting tried, here and there, to see if twins can really see out each others eyes, or to see if group prayer really does have some reproduceable influence on distant outcomes.
It was only a few years ago that somebody discovered elephants can vocalize at frequencies too low for humans to hear. We were just missing it all those centuries, because we can’t hear them. There is a very great deal we don’t know about our own communications. Who’s to say now that there is absolutely nothing about thoughts that can be sensed at a distance? Arguably, we have machines that can sense something about our thoughts at a distance. Telepathy is unlikely, but not quite impossible, right?
The extraterrestrial visitor question is quite another. I imagine that many people wonder whether there are extraterrestrials that have visited us, or, as the only alternative, Earth holds the only life in the universe. I think it’s certain there are infinitely many intelligent civilizations in the Universe (unless we misunderstand the open nature of the universe and its expansion as technical points in cosmology), and it’s also by far the most reasonable to think that none of them have ever been here.
any god worth his grey beard and robes would just simply… make us into a species that believed. Really thats all.
really IMHO as soon as we evolved as a species into self realisation we also copped a whole dose of self doubt and so figured into the comfort equation a know all superior being who was on our side and would help us with all our questions. And in the case of judaism and islam give us a whole set of rules to organise our every breathing moment of life ( disclaimer here am sure other religions do this but don’t want to unearth cites if asked)
Am equally convinced that we will eventually evolve out of a dependency on gods or the idea of them. The evidence is already there, the sun, once a god is now a stellar object, minor gods and deities are now apostles, prophets and popes imans and such like.
Sadly however, I suspect that when we have evolved out of gods then we will substitute them with an equally inadequate belief system.
People can be convinced of things fairly easily, but persons are much harder to convince. Continental drift did in fact go from being almost universally rejected to almost universally accepted, but for the most part, that wasn’t because individual geologists changed their minds. Mostly, it was because the old geologists who rejected it retired or died, and the new generation of geologists who replaced them accepted it from the start. Granted, scientists have a better track record than most folks when it comes to changing our views, but we’re still human.
Why does this not apply to any observation? Is it not also true then, that nothing van be shown to factually exist, because there will always be a way to explain it away?
My brother believes in God. I tell him, if he must label me, I am an Agnostic…that I allow for the existence of God but refuse to believe in this being, absent sufficient empirical evidence.
What gets me is that if he’s right, he’ll get to rub it in my face later on. However, if I’m right, well, I’ll not get to enjoy such a pleasure.
If I’m God, and I’m as omnipotent as a lot of people would have me believe, I’m presenting myself in front of all the silly humans and saying, “Hey fuckheads, look, I’m real. Cut the shit out out or I’m really going to get pissed. Make me come back here one more time…”
Really, how long would that take? And it would probably save God a lot of potential grief.
It would be simple for god to make a display that would convince the whole world. It is god after all. Crap ,he could just implant the noodley truth into all our minds at once and not break a sweat.
See it this way - you live your life to your full potential, as you know it’s your only one, and he is waiting for an afterlife that will never come. Any doubt he has will be very unsettling, while you are free.
Well, God seems to soften a lot of people’s heads without even existing.
For supernatural, can we just say considered supernatural now but not later with sufficient evidence? Maybe that could halt the supernatural does not exist by definition stuff.
As for the OP: There is absolutely nothing supernatural about aliens, except for the kidnap you through walls kind. The reason I don’t buy them visiting is lack of evidence. Traveling between stars at sublight speed is possible, just very difficult.
Ghosts: if a ghost can appear on schedule, and do ghostly things, in other words, if it was reproducible, then we’d have to figure out what is causing the phenomena. As it turns out, some people are naturally fantasy prone, and that is a simpler explanation than a soul returning from the dead.
As for God, remember that God supposedly convinced lots of people he existed. He should be able to figure out how to do it again.
There is a very small chance that I could convince anyone here that I am God.
Just go outside and watch as I send a large flaming meteoroid to land directly in front of you.
The first time I thought about this it was a bit unsettling to realize that my consistent, logical, evidence based worldview could be shaken by highly unlikely yet perfectly plausible events.
The whole “proof of god” thing is meaningless if god doesn’t show himself to everyone. If you can see god and he won’t show himself to me, you might take that as proof that he exists. And maybe he does, to you. However, the fact that he doesn’t present himself to others dilutes the idea of an “all powerful” entity to basically nothing. He is only your god. Not all powerful, not an overseer of all mankind, and actually nothing to anyone but you. It reduces his power to less than that of my local police station (which has power over everyone in my community).
Proof of god as an all-powerful entity can only exist if he proves himself to everyone and communicates his agenda to us all. Otherwise, the words “god” and “conscience” are pretty much interchangeable.
You won’t ever find theological proof of anything, since it’s all completely baseless. Science can prove things, as far as anything outside pure mathematics can be proved because it’s based on facts; theology can’t prove anything because it’s not based on anything but empty assertions.
Besides, religious claims in general are virtually always wrong; as relativity appears to be correct, I wouldn’t expect a theological “proof” of it, any more than I would expect theological “proof” of anything else that’s correct.
Still, if a UFO landed in front of my eyes (even if it was only me) and green creatures got out–or if the situation described in my OP happened in my house, that would be proof to me. From then on, I’d be a firm believer, beliiiiiiieve me. But that’s me. That might not work for someone else.