Yep… Sad, isn’t it, that we treat Hesiod’s Theogony as nothing more than mythology.
I guess a God that answered prayers would be strange.
Say half of the people are praying for the Broncos to win, the other half for the Steelers. God answers the prayers on God Exists Day, and we get some kind of temporal mobieus strip in which both teams win. Everyone is agog at how both sets of events are plainly observable, regardless of the fact that they are also evidently self-refuting.
After a very short time, the answering of everyone’s prayers would lead to an almost infinitely splintered universe, in which just about every conceivable possibility played out simultaneously. No one would know where the hell they were, especially considering everyone would be dead in at least some of the parallel reality threads.
Meanwhile plants would be having no trouble at all. Being mindless, they just go along. Viewed as part of a theistic universe, they submit to an Iswara kind of god- they have no volition, they are essentially vegetable robots. They don’t pray for a piece of divine power with which to express their will; they are sheer subject.
Animals can be the same way. A dog may look at us with worshipful awe, within the limits of its comprehension, but what makes that possible is a lack of any self-awareness. A dog doesn’t seem to understand that it exists, or to have any sense of relative value between it and you. They are capable of exerting will in their animal way, but it is completely malleable because ultimately there isn’t any identity to offer resistance to the thwarting of its will.
Humans have minds, and so questions of belief and unbelief, god and no god, proof and no proof, duality or monism arise. People become convinced of the reality/importance of their own identities, and so mentally separate themselves from everything else, creating a ‘this and that’ point of view. Ultimately the question of the proof of the existence of God comes around to, “prove it to who?” or “who is asking?”
It leads to something kind of like what cosmodan keeps saying, only proof of God doesn’t destroy free will, it destroys the actor. A person becomes like a plant, will-lessly surrendered to an Iswara kind of God. Which is the only kind of God that makes any sense. It doesn’t do anything, it never has, neither have you. It necessarily has to be beyond ‘is’ and ‘is not’, this and that, true and false. Not that the Bible is necessarily true, but it would be worse if it made sense. Consistency would put God on one side of the fence and not the other, which violates omnipresence. Better if there isn’t a fence, via nonsense. Frankly it doesn’t really make sense that anything exists at all, but it has to. Faith becomes an end to mind, not a satisfaction or a pet for it.
A God that answered prayers would prove its existence by manifestly destroying everyone’s identity through an impossible paradox of simultaneous wish-fulfillment. Real free will would prove to lead to an impossible universe. So, why suffering? Who suffers?
ETA: to answer the, “then what?”, well there wouldn’t be a then what. There’s not going to be a ‘before’ and ‘after’ in a world where the theory in your question plays out.
Assuming god answers prayers… something he seems reluctant to do. So if he made himself known in some fashion, he still would be under no obligation to answer prayers, or questions for that matter.
Then what?.. Then chaos and religious wars and potentially an end to civilization as we know it.
If there was a proof of a God, then there would be no Faith. What kind of God there would be may change a lot of thinking. A lot would depend on How the God was. Many may be surprised that he/she/ it didn’t meet their criteria.
Facts dispel faith.
If the God in question is all knowing etc. then Prayer would be unnecessary, one would just trust that they received all that they needed, and what they didn’t have was not for their own good.
I hope you understand that I’m not making any claim that it is true, or that God even exists. However, IMO, that Biblical calim is not subject to proof or disproof since it would be God and only God that judges the heart and mind of those who claim to seek him.
. Not at all.
in theory, revelation , wisdom and understanding is recieved here and there in certains areas and situations where the reciever is truly prepared and willing to recieve insight. It’s not as simple as “Hey God help me understand everything” “Okay pal here ya go” Indivduals preconcieved notions and emotional make up, cultural influences and education allplay a role as well as ego. What we wind up with is the pure light of God filtered through individual impure filters which all alter the light in theirmown way. That’s not even considering how many beleivers are flying on tradition only or participating for personal gain.
Interesting. My personal theory is that ultmately it isn’t about right or wrong as we see them but acting in accordance with the reality that is creation, or denying that reality and acting contrary to it.
For example; all life is connected in a very real way. the truth is that there is no real meaningful seperation between myself and others. So ultimately acting in the interest of others , as Jesus and others have preached, is in reality, the most benficial thing for myself. The challenge is to discover how this applies to the real mundane day to day world we live in.
The premise of “God proves himself to individuals who sincerely seek him” is getting seriously watered down as we go on, here. Now it’s just God timidly hinting at the truth, in a way that cannot overcome a person’s preconceived ideas. That’s a really half-assed revelation. Sounds like the pure light of God is about 25 watts.
Also, if you assume that some people in certain areas and situations actually do receive genuine insight, why are they then not able to make this insight the dominant religious understanding? Surely the Genuine Article of religious truth would win people over, coming as it does pure and true from the source.
I see your point, although all we could really document would be the details of exactly what happened, but I’m thinking more about the impact upon behaviour. as people began to doubt they would drift away from any changes in behaviour. They would tell themselves , “well maybe it wasn’t really God,” or "if it was he doesn’t really care and he’s not involved so I’m going to start drinking aand gambling and whoring around again.
Not IMO, because if that kind of declaration wouldn’t really change anything then what’s going on now, mankind’s quest for answers over generations, is just a good and perhaps the purpose of creation.
Free will isn’t suddenly negated by that knowledge. I’m pointing out that God proving his existence wouldn’t really change anything in any permanent way. We see several posters saying they want to be able to ask questions and want satisfactory answers. I’m suggesting that people would want God’s continued overt involvement , and that would result in an end to free will because for us to truly understand it all and how creation all fits together ends the search and the striving.
Okay God, you’ve come and shownb you really exist , what must I do to be saved?
“How about love the Lord God with all your heart might mind and strength , and love your neinghbor as if he was you.”
What, we already heard that!
I know, but you need to work on it more.
What? How does make me an agnostic atheist?
Now see, that’s not the first question that would come to my mind.
Mine would be more along the lines… “Okay God, you’ve come and shown you really exist. Now what??”
How to go about being “saved” is not my go-to question under this scenario.
What makes you think he’s in the “saving” business anyway?
What is he going to “save” me from-the situation he put me in in the first place?
How can we discover the reality of creation? If all life is connected in a “very real” way, in what way is it connected? Because there’s no connection that’s apparent to me.
Well, that all depends. God proving that he exists isn’t going to dissuade anyone from drinking, gambling, and whoring unless people also believe that God frowns upon those activities, and moreso if they will be punished by God for engaging in them. The “worldwide miraculous event amounting to “I am God, and I really exist”” that you wrote of contains no rules for humans to live by, so it would change their behavior only to the degree that we would want to understand and commune with God regularly; and to the degree that we would use God’s existence as an endorsement of whatever religions are already in current practice.
See above, it would indeed change things: people would try to reconnect with and study God, and all (monotheistic, perhaps) religions would have a surge of membership and devotion, as in the absence of more information from God than “I exist”, we’d have to fill in the rest with what we imagine God is like and wants: i.e., religion.
People would, quite justifiably, want to know how they could be saved (assuming this God had a doctrine of salvation and an afterlife), and what they could do to please God. They would then have to decide if and how to implement what God wants them to do in their lives.
You say you’re an agnostic that used to be a believer. If you used to be a believer, that infers that you no longer are. I don’t think you’d mention that you used to be a believer if you still are. If you no longer have a belief in the existence of any gods, you’re an atheist. I understand that some people don’t like the label, but it fits.
This is what you wrote in the OP.
I thought the “it” you referenced in the last sentence was the proof of God itself, not the substance of God’s remarks as it relates to what his will is.
If God actually proved his existence in an indisputable way–meaning, there was no one who prayed to him who could walk away doubting they received a message from the diety that they prayed to–you’re still saying that the human capacity for rationalization is stronger that God’s ability to persuade us into accepting his will as fact. Assuming his effort is truly in good faith–meaning, he put forth the time and energy to compellingly explain his plan for us, without trying to skate by with as minimum information as he could away with–I wouldn’t be so sure of this. We are, after all, talking about an entity who is probably more powerful than our silly little imaginations could ever get our heads around.
Immediately in many cases. Although if the visions keep up, I expect that to shift to blaming Satan or whatever.
Even if they didn’t though I think that one long term result would be an exodus from the worship of God to something else. Specifically, religions based on non-existent entities that don’t suddenly show up and start contradicting what the believers want to believe. A real, communicative god loses one of the major features that makes him attractive; you can’t put words in his mouth anymore without the risk of him suddenly popping up and saying you’re wrong. He stops being a wish fulfillment fantasy of the believers, and starts being someone with actual opinions that may well not conform to what the believers want to hear.
Funny thing is I think the believers would be more prone to dismissing such visions as pure hallucinations than atheists & agnostics. The latter two might not believe that consistent, worldwide visions are “God”, but they’d likely believe it was something. After all, that’s exactly what many of them have been asking for, evidence.
Look. If for the sake of this thread we want to stick to the Bible, it does have passages where it drops the insistence on faith and says how to Know God. For instance, Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God”. Note that it doesn’t say to ‘be good’ or ‘be pure’ or somesuch. No, be still.
I think one has to be prepared to take this one to Biblical proportions. ‘Be still’ to the ultimate degree. Unfortunately the Bible doesn’t much go into the how-to’s of being still, but instead gets lost in a lot of hocus-pocus which I assume is for the benefit of the majority of people who will go their entire lives without ever achieving a Biblical degree of stillness, and therefore never ‘know God’ for themselves. Those people won’t be prepared to appreciate what is to be found down that road; they need bearded Jews in sandals wandering the desert, or going in and out of whales, casting out demons into pigs and all the drama you find on the subject. Because it isn’t obvious, and not necessarily easy either.
But here’s a link:
Yes, the when the Bible gets off of faith and into knowledge of God, it talks about non-duality.
The first guy in the Bible to come face-to-face with God, Moses, seems to have had a non-duality experience. The bush that burns without being consumed? That is Moses losing his mind, not to be taken literally. The voice of God comes out of the bush and identifies itself as, “I Am that I Am” which is a solidly non-dualistic thing to say if you really look into it. Maybe the story was cobbled together by clever rabbis; if it is a true account of some guy spontaneously reporting what he experienced, well I don’t know what else it could be if not an experience of non-duality. You’d say the same thing if it happened to you.
What comes next? Why, a strong moral conviction. The story has to dress it up with fingers of flame writing commandments into stone, but I think a non-duality experience will give any person a strong sense of moral conviction- frankly it is a (if not the) ground of morals. One that anyone could touch, but which most people won’t and so require faith to follow along. The hocus-pocus stuff is for the majority of people who will never understand. The non-duality experience is a religious experience, but it isn’t really an introduction to the cartoonish God we’re all so familiar with. Not really a god at all, just non-duality.
I admit I could be wrong- wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. How do I know for sure? But I think non-duality is all there is to find if you are really looking for something down this road. It isn’t really a god; then again, it can be the source of the universe. It isn’t something you find, it is more like you have to get out of your own way. It is right there, in every experience, but usually overlooked. It asserting itself to be manifest to everyone in the world at once a la the OP just doesn’t seem like the kind of thing it would do. People have to get over themselves on their own, not wait for a miracle.
So yah, Judaism overlaps Buddhism but seems to provide hocus-pocus for the unenlightened. Culture and who-knows-what have turned the Western approach to it into… the misleading mess that has been passed down to us. If you can handle framing ‘knowing God existed’ as actually ‘not-knowing’ and radically ‘not-doing’ via a non-duality experience that is a kind of enlightenment more along the lines of Buddhism yet consistent with Judaism, then the answer to the OP is the old Buddhist saying: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”
Your Buddhist mind tricks will not work on this bunch of miscreants. 