If a god existed, and it was somehow up to me to decide the traits this god would have, no, I wouldn’t ask for kindness. I’d prefer indifference to humanity.
If god isn’t going to interfere with humanity, I’d rather it not hang out on Earth. Nothing good will come of that. Better still, the god could refrain from revealing it’s existence to humanity; though if it’s a real thing, there’s a chance we could discover it on our own.
That’s hard to answer unless it were to actually happen to me, but without any way to independently verify my experiences, yes, I think I’d be inclined to ascribe them to biological factors (i.e., hallucination) over some kind of aspect of reality that I alone can perceive. Then again, I might find it so persuasive that I form a church around my experience. Very difficult to say in the abstract.
The religious often ask questions like this, which has the weird underlying assumption that one CHOOSES one’s beliefs. I don’t disbelieve in your God because I’m a sinner or a bad person or because I don’t like authority figures. That belief could be changed or strengthened by evidence, but it is in no way a choice. No amount of “trait” assigning will help.
However, there’s an easier way. As I’ve posted in other threads, an omnipotent god is fully capable of simply making me believe in him/her. They don’t need to produce any evidence at all – they can simply instill belief directly. I further state (and repeat here) that I willingly give up my free will in this instance, and allow him/her to do so…
Imagine a god more perfect than which cannot be conceived…
St. Anselm aside, I think the “believe in” has been pretty damn well covered. As for “follow”, I’d rather like one on the model of what I understand Milton’s Satan to be like–all about independence, freedom, reason and the like. Of course, a fellow like that probably wouldn’t really be demanding obedience, so what could constitute “following” him or her gets a bit odd. Perhaps it’d be more like “God is my personal hero” or something. o.O
If there was a god who was a perfect god, god would have created everything perfectly, and not longer be needed in this universe. Clearly there is no perfect god unless sadism is a ‘perfect’ trait. And if there’s an imperfect god, well, that’s just a being with more power than humans, and is also a sadist. How is that worth worship?
You’d have to define what you meant by “God” in the first place. I wouldn’t consider a being “God” just because it created the universe for example.* “God” to me is pretty much defined as “a being composed of various impossible traits”. And even beings far less powerful could create false evidence that I could never prove was wrong, so ultimately I could never get past “I can’t tell if you’re faking it or not”.
As for the other question, there’s no god I would “follow”, just because I’m not interested in following anyone, god or human. And I wouldn’t willingly worship anything whatsoever.
Probably no point to that, since it won’t work against a mind reader. That would only work if it’s satisfied with people faking worship. You might as well have the satisfaction of dissing it to the face before it throws you into eternal torture.
An example from the novel *Calculating God *(major spoilers)
[spoiler]“God” aka the Creator of our universe is believed to be an alien intelligence from another universe, the sole entity that ever existed there. There’s a large amount of in-universe evidence for this, known to the aliens who contact Earth.
The atheist protagonist is convinced of its existence when xenophobic aliens detonate a supernova to sterilize all nearby stars, including ours, and light years away a vast shadowy mass of…something suddenly appears between the exploding star and Earth, keeping us in shadow. “Yes. That is the Creator”.
But is that God? Not by my standards. It’s “just” a vastly powerful extrauniversal alien. I’d acknowledge it as the Creator, but not as God.[/spoiler]
I’d easily believe in a god if we had irrefutable physical evidence. I am open-minded, and even though I’m a scientist and consider science to be the foremost way of knowing, I concede the possibility that the material world may not be the end-all, be-all of reality. Give me something clear and concrete and I promise I’ll jump on the god bandwagon too.
I am not convinced anything in this world or beyond is clear and concrete.
I believe this is a world of possibilities whether material or spiritual. Everything has
its moment.
