True. I’d forgotten the part where “believers” would be saved (not believers in Jesus, but believers in Marmite’s peculiar flavor of non-Deity Jesus who descends from heaven). And how, in the OP, I’ve come to realize I’m damned.
Well then, it’s an odd OP. Essentially, “Imagine a situation where you and everyone you’ve ever known discovers they are damned because of a silly game played by an omnibenevolent God. Now what?” Well, I’ll be damned.
You didn’t really mean to type “omnibenevolent”, did you? Because of all the things I’m sure this god ain’t that’s at the top of the list.
Point taken. it is the equivalent of saying,“What would you do if someone shot you in the head, point blank, with .44 automag?”
I’d die.
It’s more like “What would you do if someone held a .44 automag point blank to your head and promised to shoot you, and you knew they’d do it?”
I think he’s hoping we’d beg and grovel, but some of us are clearly in the ‘denial’ stage, and I’m in ‘anger’…
Hence the OP being odd. The Bible describes God as good and loving. I still haven’t gotten around to reading the Quran, but I always assumed it similarly described a good and loving God.
Anyone who has ever claimed God to be omnibenevolent has to have meant it tongue-in-cheek. This includes the writers of Scriptures. The OP states that we are all damned, but also says that we should have relied on the “prophets” and “books,” which describe a very conflicted God who is both omnibenevolent and a nasty, arbitrary sonufabich.
You’re obviously incorrect about it always being tongue in cheek. A lot of people buy the ‘mysterious ways’ thing, and then of course there’s a lot of ‘blaming the victim’ going around with this as well. These arguments don’t work with me, but they clearly work with lots of other people.
The OP is very explicit about blaming the victims, in fact.
I think this may have already happened, about 2000 years ago.
also, isn’t this a slightly misleading OP? the shattering of the world’s religious institutions followed by inevitable apocalypse is a step beyond mere “miracle”.
i think a question that would beg a less snarky response from the sdmb would be if the 2nd coming was replaced with a more commonly accepted miracle. Something along the lines of a bleeding statue, a vision, etc.
then again, maybe not. i’m sure a majority of the board would still reject the existence of a judeo-christian God if they had the virgin mary squirt blood all over their faces. i for one, would be a smidge concerned (if hypothetically there was no rational explanation for the blood).
I’m thinking the snark is mostly because the OP has Jesus rolling into town shouting, “I’m real, but now that I’m bothering to prove it, it’s too late for you suckas! Eat damnation, bitches!”
If Jesus came down on a pillar of light and announced, “peace to all - all the world’s religions are wrong: all are saved, without exclusions or conditions! Heaven is upon you, free beer and skittles and a pony for all!” the reaction might be a fair bit different.
Technically, the OP has Jesus rolling into town and shouting “I’m real and Marmite’s particular version of Islam is the only true religion, and also the Jews are total bastards. But now that I’m bothering to prove it, it’s too late for you suckas! Eat damnation, bitches!”
I still don’t get why Jesus is the one announcing the dominion of Marmslam, but hey, I’m obviously not on the soul train to heaven.
I get the distinct impression that Jesus was chosen for the duty specifically to mess with Christians’ heads. You know, to twist the knife a little before packing them all off to hell.
Agreed.
I’m not so sure these are good examples. What you want ideally is something testable, repeatable and with the implication of sentience behind it.
A one-off miracle is always going to have more likely explanations than higher power.
Squirting blood on my face is proof of what precisely?
no, I haven’t been whooshed, I just wanted to respond to that 
But yeah, it would take a lot to convince me. All the more sensible explanations would have to be ruled out.
And not just empirical evidence; the contradictions would also need to be resolved for me before I could begin to accept that reality.
But can they be ruled out? I don’t think so. One can postulate an innumerable variety of powerful beings more plausible than God that could present you with at least the appearance of any evidence you asked for that they were God.
Absorbency?
After a decade or so of contantly and first-hand experiencing agony in hell, I will accept hell’s reality even though I can’t 100% rule out the possiblity that I’m a very unlucky solipsist.
Oh yes, you’re right of course. I think I had in mind the hypothesis of “powerful being” (and that you’d have to rule out hoaxes, hallucinations etc first) when I was writing that line.
Oh, and what begbert2 said.
I think given time I would adapt to just about any bizarre scenario I’m confronted with, and act as though what I was seeing was real.
I could never silence the thought that certain scenarios are irrational though.
Pfft-bhwa-ha ha! (wiping coke from monitor)
You’d also accept that you were actually an agent for the purple bunny overlords, if told that would stop the pain. That doesn’t mean that it’s true.
Hmm? I’m apparently talking past you.
If I find myself first-hand experiencing hell, I will believe in hell, not because my torturers are telling me to to stop the pain but because I’m actually experiencing it.
What else I believe too will depend on what I see, what I’m taking as premises, and what I know. If the experience of hell is riddled with stuff I’d expect from a christian hell, like textbook demons weilding textbook pitchforks, textbook fire, sulfer, and magma, and that textbook large viewing window through which I can see God and the believers observing and laughing at my pain, then I will believe that I’m in the christian hell, and thus that something vaguely approximating some version of christianity is reality. Minus the logically impossible acoutrements, but really once you eliminate benevolence there aren’t many more of those.
If I see carrots and purple fur everywhere, I will conclude that there are purple bunny overlords.
Yes, in either case it could all be an implausibly long-running and comprehensive scam designed to mess with me (as if the torture wasn’t enough on its own), but seriously, what else am I supposed to do but build my beliefs on my observations of reality?