That’s basically how it is for me. While listening to an episode of the podcast 3 Pagans And A Cat, I learned the term UPG- Unverifiable Personal Gnosis. I recognize that I’ve made a variation of Pascal’s Wager. So far, it’s really paid off.
If we loosely define God as an intelligent force permeating the Universe, we can speculate whether quantum mechanics could be related to such a concept. However, this idea remains highly speculative.
IANAP, but one intriguing interpretation within quantum mechanics that could potentially harbor an intelligent force is the Hidden Variable Interpretation. In this view, any existing intelligence would inherently influence everything. Both the Hidden Variable and Many Worlds interpretations are deterministic (unlike the Copenhagen interpretation). However, only the Hidden Variable Interpretation posits an intelligence that must remain concealed from observation; otherwise, the quantum wavefunction would collapse and cease to exist in our observed universe.
The Hidden Variable Interpretation of quantum mechanics, while not widely accepted as a leading hypothesis in the world of particle physics, has been supported by heavy-hitter physicists like Einstein, Bohm, Bell, and de Broglie. Not bad company.
The notion of intelligence emerging from inorganic matter remains speculative and lacks empirical evidence. However, we have observed intelligence emerging in organic matter, suggesting the potential for intelligence at even the subatomic level. While highly speculative, the inherent orderliness of the Universe could hint at a hidden intelligence. Quantum mechanics, with its profound mysteries, underscores how much we have yet to comprehend at its deepest levels.
Demonstrating such an intelligence would likely require indirect measurements that avoid collapsing the quantum wavefunction. If future physics advances to the point of revealing an underlying intelligence in the universe, it could profoundly influence belief systems.
At that stage, the concept of universal intelligence or God would transition from the supernatural to a deeper understanding of the natural world—an impressive realization regardless. A God characterized by adherence to the scientific method is no less remarkable than one deemed divine.
I’m open to revising this hypothesis should any of you genuine physicists identify flaws in the reasoning.
Proving that an elephant exists doesn’t make me an elephant.
In any case, any decent God could give us all the evidence we needed to if not prove he exists, at least be extremely confident he does. Doing something like what was done in Exodus would do it - not exactly that, since most of it we could do very easily today, like air dropping manna. Spelling out a message in the stars, confirmed by space telescopes, would do it for me.
He used to prove He existed all the time, in the Old and New Testaments. It’s not hard for a supreme being to make Himself known. If He was serious about trying to get people to worship him, or at least be better people, there are lots of things He could do.
A gentle, loving God would be horrified about all the violence done in his name. Lots of that violence comes from people reading a lot of the same source material and coming up with different interpretations. Maybe clear up the source material – if, suddenly, every Old and New Testament, every Koran, every other religious text in the world were updated with something that would make believers see the light and quit arguing and killing each other over who is right, man, that would be some pretty convincing evidence.
Yeah; the alleged “unprovability” of God is a historically recent reaction to the complete failure of all attempts to find any evidence for it. It’s not something innate to the concept; it’s the last redoubt that the believers have been pushed into by our increasing knowledge of the world leaving no room for God to exist. Until now they take a position that borders on solipsism in order to justify their belief.
But an actual, existing god could simply do things and be seen. If something turned the Moon into a cube we wouldn’t agree on the nature of what was responsible, but we’d definitely know that it existed. An actual god doesn’t need to be shy or rely on “faith”.
Yeah, the Jews kept disobeying the Ten Commandments every time Moses turned around, and they had seen lots of miracles. How could a god expect us to take something totally on faith, when people back then were repeatedly shown miracles and still slipped.
Rather than aligning stars or turning the moon into a cube, how about we wake up tomorrow and every amputee has had their limb(s) grow back and be fully functional. People talk about miracles curing all kinds of diseases, but the poor amputees are always left out. Doing something like that would be pretty impressive.
The God of the Bible could inspire people through visions. How about every human on the planet over the age of, say, 12 wakes up from their next sleep having had the exact same vivid and clearly remembered dream? For bonus points: the dream tells us all to not kill or harrass each other over different interpretations of said dream. Or over any other different interpretations of either the nature of God or disagreements about God’s instructions.
(For further bonus points: the limbs could grow back, and we could all have all our senses functional and at least reasonable health.)
Short answer:
Be kind to them.
Longer answer:
If I have the Holy Spirit, to have the opportunity to demonstrate the fruit of the Holy Spirit would be my part. The larger part is up to God.
In my own experience I have found that the fruit of the Spirit is not in isolation, but somehow coordinated in ways that the ‘giver’ could not possibly know how much such a kind act would mean to the ‘receiver’ of the kind act. And at times in one’s life they seem to link together, random acts of kindness get’s too coincidental that it can become blatantly obvious that it is God who is working through many people.
And once you have God working though human flesh, you have the son (child) of Man and Son (child) of God together, thus you have Jesus and thus have salvation as God is One, and it is the same spirit, the Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of the Father, and has be released to us and known as the Holy Spirit, the 3rd person of one God.
So be kind and let God work through you, try not to overstep that we are only part of the body and may serve a very limited function in the work of Christ through us.
A god may not care whether we believe in him or not. It may have no interest in proving itself to us. Our sense of self-importance makes us think that god would want us to believe in it, but that could be totally wrong. And all our beliefs about god could be totally wrong. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter to our lives.
Consider the situation of a kid and an ant farm. The ants might have all kinds of ideas about the kid, but they would likely all be totally wrong. The kid exists whether or not the ants believe in him and regardless of what the ants believe about the kid. The kid may not be able to control the thoughts of the ants or regrow amputated limbs of the ants, but the kid still has immense control over the lives and living conditions of the ants. The kid provides food and water to the ants that allow the to survive and thrive. The kid can kill any ant, or all the ants, on a whim at any time. The ants may consider the kid as a god, but the reality is that the kid is just a very, very advanced being compared to the ants and has many of the same natural constraints on his abilities like the ants do.
I think a lot of religions are wrong because their tenants don’t match reality. A religion which says that god can do anything, is very involved in our lives, and wants the world to be filled with peace and love doesn’t seem to match reality. The real world is filled with lots of pain and suffering. The real world does not seem to align with a religion that says there is a loving god that can do anything. However, the Old Testament does seem to be closer aligned to reality. The god of the Old Testament is spiteful, vengeful, kills people on a whim, commands people to commit genocide, rape, enslave people, etc. That description seems to align better with the world we live in. So if there is a God, the description in the Old Testament is probably more correct than how He’s described in the New Testament.
Seems it would be a lot easier to convince people that lesser gods exist.
Won’t anyone think of the doctors!
It’s only really a problem in religions like Christianity, where not believing in this unevidenced god (and kissing his butt) will lead to eternal punishment.
When I was growing up I was supposed to believe in God, but no one, including God, really cared if my gentile neighbors did or didn’t.
Fear is one helluva motivator. I came to believe in Christ as an adult. And 99% of it had nothing to do with fear of burning in Hell. But I’d be lying if I said that the fear didn’t have some role in it, like around 1%.
I think that God is pretty busy, and doesn’t get into the weeds of our lives too much. But being a God with rules & such, who was tired of us stupid Humans, I think he inserted himself directly into the picture in the form of Jesus. That’s the proof of his existence, except we don’t have any good videos from back then…so, I’m stuck with no proof.
Out of curiosity: what would you do, if you were God?
Would you — upon getting tired of us stupid humans — say, welp, being a god with rules & such, why not insert myself such that plenty of people still end up in a burning-in-hell situation?
Or would you do more?
I don’t know, man. It’s hard to put myself in God’s shoes, since I’m just a micro-speck in the grand scheme of things, while God created the whole thing. I’m not going to suggest to him that he could’ve done this or that better. We’re lucky we’re still here.
I don’t see why it’d be all that hard — the question isn’t whether you can, as a micro-speck, save more people from burning in hell; the question is whether, if you could, you would — but, if you’d like the hypothetical tweaked: instead of suggesting this or that to God on your own initiative, what would your reply be if God Himself asked you whether more people should be, as it were, saved from burning in hell?
If he identified himself as God (and I accepted that it wasn’t a hoax), I imagine I’d be too nervous in front of him to suggest anything. But assuming I got over my initial fear, I’d thank him for sending Jesus. I might ask him why he didn’t intervene on behalf of the Jews during WW2, or on behalf of the Ukrainians in the 1930’s, or on behalf of the Armenians during WW1, or on behalf of the victims of Pol Pot in the 1970’s, or on behalf of the Tutsi’s in the 1990’s. I’d ask him about humanity’s high-tech ways to commit mass-murder, and why he didn’t stop it from happening.
I know that doesn’t necessarily answer your question. But I do worry that God isn’t involved enough when certain atrocities are committed by one group of humans against another.
Well, okay; but: wouldn’t all of those, put together, pale in comparison to, what, billions of people burning in hell for a great deal longer? Wouldn’t that, more than the other stuff, be top of mind and tip of tongue?
Paul explains, and Calvinists love to point this out, God creates some solely for the purpose of populating Hell. The vessels of wrath fitted for destruction.
Romans 9:14-23
For them, would trying to be good be defying God?