At the moment they clearly are. Some of, desperate to hear anything, transform the sound of traffic, of a dishwasher, of a dog barking, of an ice cream man driving by, into deep answers for life’s persistent questions. But a real answer would be loud and clear and obvious.
And even if the complete answers are complex, that does not mean we couldn’t be given high level answers that we could understand. If a kid asks “where do babies come from” you don’t have to pull out your organic chem kid and start building a dna model. If we do go to a better place without memory of pain (kind of like childbirth in the other direction) that would be a good thing to know, and would make such misery easier to bear.
Ok, people claim that now.
That happens now too. Anything that’s wholly internal to a person can’t be treated as externally real; people recognizing that is a positive thing.
I guess I’m a gullible person, but if I started hearing a voice that introduced itself as the voice of God and assured me of his existence, I would believe.
Same if I witnessed something so spectacular that it defied all reasoning. God wouldn’t even have to announce himself.
I think only a very small percentage of people would remain unconvinced no matter what.
Sure they do. That’s part of the point. Several posters in the other thread " A god the proved he existed" God could and perhaps does prove his existence to individuals , and how would that change anything? Others would still deny it and people still have to decide what to do with such knowledge? Even in that old movie in which a world wide miricale occured several times, the minute the miricle ceased and people were left to actually decide for themselves they began to doubt a miricle ever happened. My theory is that absolute proof would need to be big and maintained, which might just defeat the whole purpose of creation because free will would be essentially done away with. If God is going to assert his existence to everyone worldwide he might as well take over and rule absolute
exactly. So proving he exists is fairly useless, unless he proves it to the world, and then contuniues to prove it.
I think most people would. The next thing would be to discover what that meant for you and if anything was required from knowing.
Do you mean that no one would sin if they were certain there’s a God? Because I don’t think that’s so. People default on their credit cards without doubting the existence of Capitol One. They just . . . you know . . . things happen, man.
According to a poll cited by Wikipedia, 95 percent of Maltese are theists but only 16 percent of Estonians are. And yet, I’m pretty sure God is equally coy in Malta and Estonia.
As for my personal view: If some super-powerful egomaniac visits earth proclaiming that God’s days of coyness are over, that egomaniac is not God.
A “takeover”?
The repositioning of heavenly bodies such as I suggested earlier would have to qualify as a form of “takeover”
I consider free will to be incompatible with an omnipotent God, and what He does or does not make clear is irrelevant.
I’m sure God would only use the Benjamins baby.
Not sure how that follows; the Biblical God was anything but circumspect. Free will is entirely compatible with awareness of God’s existence; faith may not be (under some interpretations), but a system in which God proves himself to some but not others is hardly faith-based anyway.
Just like the proof of anything else. If gravity only worked for people who were pure of heart, we’d have similar problems nailing down what it was and how it worked.
Point was, the beliefs people hold, in both content and, crucially, intensity, exists despite the non-existence of god. That is, when god revelation=0, belief is still greater than 0.
Were god to exist and reveal itself subtly, by degrees, this belief would become more uniform and intense, exponentially so, the more people god revealed itself to.
There is an excellent (and very depressing) story exploring this idea; by Poul Anderson, it’s called “The Day The Sun Stood Still.” A young man asks God for a miracle…and, sure enough, the sun stands still for a day.
At first, everyone believes. But, over time, people begin to doubt again. Ultimately, nothing is settled. Everyone interprets it the way they want to.
I agree with those who say that the first thing to do is to ask a lot of questions. And, yes, we get to judge the answers. “Because I am the measure of good” is not an answer. “Because I wanted to forge you in the fires of adversity” is an answer, although a stinky one.
Ultimately, I can’t see any way to be anything other than inimical to this God. If he doesn’t grant wishes, he’s good for nothing…and if he does grant wishes, he weakens us and makes us dependent. Do we really have the wisdom to ask only for those things that would make us better people? Alas, I fear not.
One nice thing, though: it would mean the end of organized religion, as God would be accessible to everyone, and there would be no need for priests to intercede.
This would prove that an extremely powerful entity of some kind existed, but it would not prove that said entity was the divine creator of the universe.
Suppose astronomers observed that the stars in the sky had been re-arranged to spell out “I am the Lord they god” in every human language. We would know the being that did this was immensely powerful. But would we know that it was omnipotent and eternal? How would we know that there were no limitations whatsoever to its power? It might be all powerful so far as we were concerned, but there might well be thousands or millions of other such beings with equal or greater power. How do we know that this being is benevolent? For all we know, it may be a juvenile delinquent from the Q dimension playing pranks on the yokels.
We can possibly know that a super-powerful being of some kind exists. We could never know, based solely on observable evidence, that this being was the divine, all-powerful, all-knowing and all-benevolent creator of the universe.
Any belief in God necessarily depends on some degree of faith.
No conceivable test could ever establish the entity as the all-powerful creator of the universe. The ability to fake being the creator of the universe is much lower on the scale of power.
That said, an entity with a lot of power could compel us to believe, simply by imprinting belief directly on our brains. So, an entity powerful enough to do that will have “proven” his almighty-tude: no one would doubt it. (No one would be able to!)
However, as you note, an entity could do something really huge and impressive, and that would qualify him/her/it for small-g godhood.
The g might have to be fairly small though. I mean, it’s not too hard to imagine an alien developing some kind of mind-control technology that could compel belief, and yet still be unable to turn a fish sandwich into lunch for fifty people, far less five thousand.
I see two ways for this to go, taking the existence of God as a given for the argument:
God convinces everyone, and removes the ability to be unconvinced; in which case, job done, but the hypothetical objective observer will think He cheated;
or
God convinces everyone, but leaves intact the ability to be unconvinced; in which case, those people who consider the existence of God infinitely unlikely must, if they’re consistent with their beliefs, assume that any alternative explanation they can think of is more likely, and get on with arguing with each other about who’s right and trying, with laudable scientific integrity, to devise objective means to weigh one hypothesis against another.
I’m not sure why you think so.
Sure, and then later on, when the kid is more mature they can handle more information. If there is a force or entity that guides and sustains the universe it is obviously more complex than we can grasp at the moment. IMO, the simplified answers are available. everthing is connected, We are one, Be here Now, etc. but it’s up to the individual to decide what that means to them and what actions they will take.
Not at all. Quite the opposite. I think even if people recieved something that convinced them God existed that it wouldn’t be enough for most people and in time, in pursuit of thier own interests, they would rationalize it away.
In that other thread several posters said a God who proves he exists. I’m saying that God proving he exists wouldn’t be enough.
Well they’re already his stars to do with as he pleases so , not really. What I mean is God proving his existence and then saying, “do what you will with that knowledge”, wouldn’t change anything.
Unless God stepped in to say, “we’re doing things my way from now on” proof of his existence wouldn’t matter all that much. If he did step in in such a manner , that would IMO defeat the purpose of creation , if creation and creator exist.
I’ve seen a couple of threads on the concept that free will doesn’t really exist and it’s very intriquing. Cewrtainly in this world the concept, or the illusion of free will exists. Choice and conequence. IMO , if creation and creator exists, {not nessecarily being separate} then this world of apparent duality, good, evil, pleasure and pain, choice and cinsequence is part of the point. The exoerience of choice, and discovery.
I’m sorry but this is my stop.
The range of questions starting with ‘why’ is too long and too important to dismiss with a casual “You just haven’t earned it yet, baby!” (curtesy of The Smiths). To be convincing, this new found god would have to be much more forthcoming with the answers. And if he’s everything we’ve imagined him to be so far, I’m sure he would have no trouble finding a way of revealing these answers in pretty short order. To my mind, it’s the most convincing path to acceptance of such a being.
Also, revealing himself to only those who make the right sort of effort to believe is not substantially different than what happens now. So no, he does not get the benefit of the doubt in revealing himself though suspended disbelief.
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sure. I’m saying if God proved he existed and then said “try to do better, carry on” little would change or any change would be temporary.
of course it is. Because even that event , the appearence , the miricle, would be subject to questioning and ultimately faith.
It seems unreasonable to judge God in the same catagory as the physical universe he created.
How do you know that? You mean beliefs hold without repeatable, demonstrable, hard evidence right?
If you don’t believe in God then you don’t believe anyone’s experience is real correct? Belief in God is already incredibly dominant in mankind.
What you seem to be saying is, and correct me if I’m wrong:
God has revealed himself to those who believe.
God withholds revelation from those who do not.
Revelation is not subject to testing and yields no evidence for the existance of god.
How is that different from what we have now?