You can say that all faiths worship the same God, but most people in most of those faiths vehemently disagree. In any case, the perception is what he was talking about. Each faith worships a God with a different nature or different attributes. Each division was strong enough for people to part ways, and not gently.
Furthermore, the differences in many cases are substantial. The monotheism of the religions from Abraham is incompatible with the polytheism of Hunduism or the essential atheism of Buddhism.
The vast majority of believers I’ve talked to about the subject believe yet don’t claimed to have experienced God. That’s why they admit to having faith or scriptural evidence that they don’t understand isn’t a reasonable amount of evidence.
Then you are an agnostic atheist and I don’t understand why you would ask the above question.
I’ll have to look for that movie. I mentioned “The Voice You are About to Hear” earlier. Starring James Whitmore. In that one God spoke to everyone on the planet for a short period.
I doubt a world wide miricle would mean the end of organized religion.
“If God proved that God existed , then what?”
"let’s say God as a matter of policy and practice did appear in a vision to THOSE WHO PRAYED “Here I am God sincerely wanting to know if you really exist” God appears and says , “here I am I really exist, I created everything, Try to treat each other and the planet you share with some respect and consideration. Love, would be great.”
ahh…
I see. In your scenario he PROVES? it to someone who already believes it and may be self deluded…
but he does NOT bother to prove it to me?
In that case I would continue to disbelieve.
all PROOF must be presented to ME!
else I refuse to consider it PROOF!
“If God proved that God existed , then what?”
Let’s assume this god PROVES IT to me!
Now the question becomes “Which GOd”
the god you present
“here I am I really exist, I created everything, Try to treat each other and the planet you share with some respect and consideration. Love, would be great.”
sounds much better than the god that ann coulter and rush limbaugh prefer.
I would NEVER worship the god(devil) that right wing evangelicals
worship. He is just too mean and rotten for me.
But your god sounds like a decent guy!
I do have some issues with him, though…
I would like to ask him some questions…
"If you are all powerful and can do anything then;
“1. why did you foil all those assassination attempts on hitler?”
“2. why did you allow the holocaust?”
“3. why didn’t you stop 9/11?”
“4. is big foot real?”
“5. can’t you do something about mosquitoes and black flies?”
“6. is helping athletes to win big games a form of cheating?”
If this were true, then we would not observe the splintering of religions on doctrinal lines, and wide variance of belief. The most obvious case is the case of monotheism vs. polytheism that Learjeff pointed out. But, even within Christianity, there are a multitude of incompatible beliefs.
Take a concept as fundamental as salvation.
Calvinists believe that God chose who would be saved before he created the world, based on God’s mercy. Nothing any human does or believes affects whether they will be saved.
The Church of Christ believes that salvation comes from “obedience to the proclaimed facts of the gospel”, meaning that after death (unless that death is before the age of 13) God will judge whether a person obeyed the commands of the New Testament. No salvation occurs until death.
Southern Baptists believe that salvation comes solely from faith in Christ, and occurs in life when one repents of one’s sins and accepts Christ.
And, Catholics believe in mortal sins, which prevent salvation regardless of faith.
All of these beliefs are the result of sincere attempts to understand God. They can’t all be right. This implies that there is not, in fact, a Godly source that provides insight and knowledge to anyone who seeks it.
I apoligize for my previous answers. I was short on time and looking at them now they appear abrubt and dismmissive which was not my intention.
I agree that some worldwide miraculous event amounting to “I am God, and I really exist” would have a profound impact and a lot of people would believe. My suggestion is that it would fade in a relatively short time unless that proof was asserted over and over again
His word being what exactly? I’m not proposeing Gid says “The BIble is true , those others aren’t” I’m only saying he demonstrates his existence. That still leaves us with the decision of what to do with that knowledge.
How do you tell what is a miraculous healing and what might be remission? I suppose if all cripples were to walk, all blind made to see, etc. that sure would do it but this all goes to what I’m hinting at. That ultimately there may not be some middle ground between the God that is imagined now , that believers struggle to understand , and a God who simply takes over compeltely and says, I’m here and running the show from now on, which IMO would effectively end free will.
Some would say we already have a fairly clear idea of right and worng, we just fail to choose right consistently. So can individuals petition God with every choice they have to make about which is right and which is wrong? What does that do for the learning process?
wrong about what?
I tend to agree with Spiritus Mundi
but what I was getting at is my theory that if God met the demands of those who required proof , it would lead to the end of free will and ultimately defeat the purpose of creation.
But once this entity shows that it exists, the only actual knowledge we have to work with is that this being exists. You keep saying “God” as if we all know what you mean, but we don’t. We need to know fact from fiction when it comes to what this god did, what this god can do, and what the future plans of this god are before we can decide whether or not to listen to what it has to say. If this god that is wanting peace, love and understanding has any connection to the god of the Old Testament there are questions that have to be answered, or as far as I’m concerned that well is too far poisoned to drink from.
I was kidding because it wasn’t clear what I meant by taking over. I didn’t mean taking over in any sense of physical laws, which such a God already controls, but in the event of global proof of existence, either eventually fading and a return to where we are now, or , God’s intervention is complete and mankind has to obey, which essentially abolishes free will.
I’m sure many people would react that way, but I think if it was a singular one time global miricle that change would be tempoary for mankind in general. In time, people would rationalize and justify so they could pursue their own agenda, just as they always have whether in or out of religion. It’s mankind’s nature.
I’m not saying it would natter less AT ALL. Belief in God is incredibly fractured and believers use thier beliefs to justify all kinds of BS. I’m saying a world wide miricle would eventually come back to the same place we are now because of the nature of mankind.
I agree, but part of the reason I started this thread was to help me clarify the premise rattling around in my head so bare with me.
Starting from " God needs to prove he exists" and assuming an implied “to me” I asked how. so are we talking individual visions and miracles for those who sincerely pray for an event of proof. That’s where I started but let’s accept that that would be to close to what is claimed now. So we’ll say one singular world wide event occurs in which God wants all mankind to know he exists and the stars are rearranged to spell out “I Am God , I exist” And for an added bonus, everyone sees it in their own language , and illiterates have angels to read it for them"
Then what? IMO such an event would certainly mean some changes for people. The fundamentalists would be elated. “IN YOUR FACE ATHEISTS!!” but I suggest that with no further involvement , in time mankind would drift back to where we are now. People disagreeing on what the event meant and how we should respond, and people rationalizng it away and saying it doesn’t matter, or just people realizing that they can still do bad shit and no lightning strikes them so who cares about the event.
I’m not interested in a discussion of whether free will is an illusion or not. Real or illusion , my suggestion is that God proving his exostence wouldn’t really change anything , and further continued intervention would lead to the abolition of free will, and IMO and my theory, defeat the purpose of creation.
what you present as a conclusion is not the conclusion.
Of course . The actual question is why create at all? and then. why duality?
And you are far, far, far from being alone in this. Many an atheist has, usually in their youth, begged, prayed, humbled themselves, and otherwise, in all modesty of spirit, besought God’s wisdom.
To be fair, a decent many believe they have been answered. I’ve talked to many people who honestly believe that God answers them, as individuals.
Most of us, alas, only heard the universal silence, or the staticky kind of noise one hears when one listens to the roar of the surf for a while. One almost senses a kind of message behind it… But never anything quite intelligible.
Your point, however, is very valid: the fact that many of us have not heard does not mean that we were not listening.
Oops, I was unclear; the Poul Anderson story was in print, in a book. The book of the same title (“The Day The Sun Stood Still”) containing that and other stories is in print at Amazon. (Scroll down a little for the cheaper copies; don’t buy the $60 collectible versions! The story is good, but not that good!)
I think that a miracle of the sort described in the OP, where God reveals himself directly to everyone, and where God answers prayers and grants miracles – heals anyone of any injury, consoles anyone of any woe – would mean the end of organized religion. Why should anyone pay a priest to intercede, when God himself is standing right there? What purpose does the priest have in such a world?
I think the OP intends that the proof is reasserted over and over again. We would get to test it every day. If I drop a hammer on my foot, I pray, and God heals my injury.
I do agree that, humans being what we are, we would soon become inured to the wonder of it all. We’d treat healing prayer the same way we treat a doctor visit today. “Hey, Al, how’s it going today?” “Oh, same old, same old. I got a piece of steel rebar jammed through my chest. Hurt like hell. But God fixed it right up.” “Yeah, I know, I’ve had days like that too…”
Indeed, I don’t doubt that some few die-hards would continue to deny the evidence of God’s existence, no matter how obviously manifest it might be.
But the big shift in public opinion would be vast and permanent. Atheists, in that world, would be as ridiculous as communists are today (after the fall of the USSR, there just isn’t any real spirit left in communism!) Hell, we atheists would be the “flat-earthers” and “creationists” of the era! We’d be the ones hysterically denying the reality that everyone else can see with their own eyes!
If the miracle is not re-asserted, then I somewhat agree with you. The belief would gradually fade. However, it would still have a massive social effect, and this effect would long outlive the actual witnesses to the event. Great-grandsons would still tell of the day that their great-grandfathers saw the Face of God. The residual effects of faith could last a millennium or more.
"“here I am I really exist, I created everything, Try to treat each other and the planet you share with some respect and consideration. Love, would be great.”
if you and others feel like proof of existence isn’t enough and you want your questions answered to your satisfaction before you do anything about it, that’s your choice.
I cetrtainly can understand a reaction to God saying “I really care about creation " of,” like hell you do, what about X, Y and Z.?"
I’ll make an observation that all of these type of questions can be boiled down to , “why is there so much suffering?” which IMO logically becomes “Why is there any suffereing at all?” which then leads to “Why a world of duality, good evil, pleasure and pain?” which leads to “why any creation at all?”
I see it as a question of purpose not smarts. Using your own analogy, what would be the purpose of a detailed biological explanation of where babies come from, to the inquisitive 4 year old.
I assume that babies drowning is only an example. there really isn’t that much difference between a baby drowning and say a 25 year old, in terms of "how tragic is it, is there?
IMO, all these question boil down to , “why is there so much suffering?” which IMO logically leads to “why is there any suffereing at all?” which leads to , “why a world of apparant duality, good evil, pleasure and pain?” and finally, “why any creation at all?”
Nope, because just believeing in God doesn’t provide us with the knowledge of what to do with that belief. Which is kinda the point in this mental exercise.
What if GOD had already proven “The Almighty” to exist to all humanity sometime in the distant past…and then peeps wrote that shit down for generations to remember from then on.
Forward a few thousand years…that same indisputable evidence is so commonplace now that we have forgotten what it was that gave it to us.