All jesting aside, this is a compelling question. For example, I am an atheist. I’m trying to imagine how it would change my feelings “knowing” there is a God as described in the Bible. If provided with this evidence I guess I would face the music and convert. It is a matter of looking at the evidence and determining the right course for yourself, I suppose.
On the other hand, I feel certian there would be massive conversions. It also seems likely it would be the advent of the apocalypse. Christianity is currently less popular than the other religions combined so I figure there would be some pissed off people out there. I think it would bring I lot of death and pain and misery, along with a great deal of “see, I told you so’s”.
Well blowero sums it up quite nicely.
But then NASA would also have a lot to explain, since the Sun and Moon are just objects upon the dome of heaven, as are all those stars etc.
All those people who are still alive since Jesus’s time could come out of hiding. I’d still want to know why Noah didn’t allow the dinosaurs onto the arc, when God told him to put 2 of every thing that crawls and breathes air into the arc.
The conversion question would depend greatly on what the ‘history watching’ device saw about the lives and times of other religions prophets and gods. Maybe it shows that Mohammed was right, and that his teachings come direct from God and supplant Jesus’s teachings.
The die-hards of any existing religions that were proved wrong would of course say the ‘history watching’ device was simply being controlled by some Evil that causes it to show a great deal of truth, but to lie in some important areas.
I was taught in Christian school that he did. They just died off from other causes later. My “science” text had a charming drawing of farmers hoeing in their field while brontosauri munched on trees behind them and pterodactyls soared above. (I always laughed at this picture, imagining a tyrannasaurus bursting from the forrest with an earth-shaking roar. The farmers would valiantly try to fend them off with the hoes, but would be snatched up and eaten.) My teachers were very irritated when I asked in all sincerity how Noah had fit a pair of each of these huge beasts into a forty cubit ark.
I really don’t think much would change. Sure, you would have mass conversions for a while, churches would report record attendance, but then things would settle back down. Then the bickering would start.
For while the bible was proven true, no one can prove what was meant. No one would be able to prove without a shadow of doubt that God meant “all Jews” were His chosen people, and not just some select tribe. Did He mean just the decendants of Abraham? or did He mean every Jew that ever knew Abraham and was loosely related? Did he mean Jews as a race or as a religion? What about Sammy Davis Jr. What about the agnositic born to Jewish parents?
Take the recent events of WW2 into consideration. Many people did not believe such atrocities were being commited by Hitler, even when confronted with the cold hard facts. Some eventually believed it, with qualifications. Some still choose to deny it happened at all. Same point with the moon landing.
All in all, it would not make much difference at all. People have and always will, believe what they want to believe.
What if logic and reality were proven not to be true? I guess everyone could do whatever they wanted because no one could ever again accurately predict the outcome.
I think Mangetout has nailed it in his two posts. If the Bible - all of it, at once - were to suddenly become factual, then the entire fabric of reality would have to be different than it is, to accomodate a world in which two or more contradictory facts could be simultaneously true. We’d be too weirded out by the sudden transition to worry about belief or disbelief.