# What's the minimum-level miracle it would take you to convince you God exists? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 23, 2022, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443 "2022-07-23T16:32:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2022, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/143 "2022-07-29T13:57:22Z")
If God is omnipotent, then why is the world such an awful place to live? The miracle that would make me believe God exists if God would do what God is supposedly capable of. That is, instead of creating random people and sending the good ones to Heaven and the bad ones to Hell, just make everybody good. Everyone becomes benevolent and altruistic, they never lie, they don’t ever hurt anyone, no crime. No disease, no congenital malformations. No terrible experiences that are excused as “God is testing my faith.” No natural disasters. Basically Heaven on Earth. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2022, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/144 "2022-07-29T14:11:41Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Except for the middle you have not thought of. I’m not quite sure how to respond to a flat-out rejection of the definition of logical negation. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > I can think of many others. Let’s say we have a universe in which the scientists have trivially figured out all physical the laws and where it came from and all. In that universe, someone builds a computer, someone else writes a program, and a third person installs that program on their computer and runs “Sim Universe” with our much simpler physics engine installed. Er, isn’t that a simple example of “Existence didn’t start at this point”? To the people in the sim universe, there is an outside context universe which contains its creator. Sure these would be interesting details for a person in the sim universe to learn about (the existential crises alone would be quite entertaining) but it doesn’t change the fundamental fact that while before they didn’t know where their universe came from, now they don’t know where the scientist/programer/gamer universe came from. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > Can you count from 1 to 2? If so, you just actualized an infinite number of real numbers in between. No, you most definitely didn’t. We are _aware_ that there are infinite number of ways to subdivide the space between 1 and 2, and we can do math that tells us what trends are regarding infinities, but you definitely can’t sit down and literally count all the real numbers between 1 and 2. If anybody _claims_ to have recited all the real numbers between 1 and 2, _even if they never age and had all the time they wanted to do it,_ if somebody says “I started with one, and verbally counted all the real numbers between 1 and 2 in order, and I reached 2 and now I’m done”, then you can know with absolute certainty that they’re lying and that never happened. No matter how much time you take, you can’t actualize an infinity. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > There are inflationary models that say that inflation is what is infinite, that it has no beginning, it’s just the state that the universe has always been in, and will always be in. The collapse of inflation in our bubble has a finite past, and nothing “before” that makes any sense within the framework of our universe. There is also the mostly out of favor idea that the big bang singularity is time symmetric, and that it extends both infinitely into the future, as well as infinitely into the past. Whether or not these conjectures pan out to describe the universe we actually live in is debatable, they may or may not, or it may be something entirely different. The point, however, is that there _are_ options other than your dichotomy, even if we don’t know, or may never know, what they are. I’m mostly sticking to models that are possible. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > No one has to actually live through the time for it to have existed. There is no _actualization_ that has to occur, it’s just math and a coordinate system that extends equally as far as the number line does. Theoretically, a number line, including one being used to measure spans of time, extends infinitely into the negative. However, nothing can actually experience an infinite amount of time, counting the days from the start of the infinite span to the end of the infinite span. And it’s not just people who can’t sit there and count up an infinite number of birthdays; it’s the fabric of space itself. You don’t have to be sentient to be passing through time; you just have to be _real_. If the universe has existed infinitely long before now, it never got finished living through the “before” so it’s not here for the “now”. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2022, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/145 "2022-07-29T14:29:16Z")
There is also the claim that that we would ignore “direct proof of God”. Well, no. If there were _proof_ of God, then it would not be ignored. It would be studied scientifically, and Brian Cox would be on a BBC documentary explaining it. But there is no _proof_ of god. There are things that people call evidence that are either dubious reports, explainable by natural phenomena, or are outside of our current scientific understanding, but “I don’t know” is not equivalent to “God did it.” One of the reasons that theists claim that those questioning the existence or nature of God would reject actual proof of God is because they _know_ they will never be proven wrong on that claim, as they know they will never produce it. Contrary to @SmartBulbInc’s claim, the argument of the atheist/agnostic/etc. really boils down to, “You are making extraordinary claims, and have presented _no_ evidence for them.” and the claim of the theist always boils down to, “No evidence will be sufficient to convince you, so I don’t have to present any.” ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2022, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/146 "2022-07-29T14:32:23Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Least hypothesis still says it’s aliens rather than God. The difficulties of interstellar travel are such that a deity is almost more plausible. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2022, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/147 "2022-07-29T14:45:22Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > The two options I’m presenting are “Existence started at some point” or “Existence didn’t start at some point”. The lovely thing about negation is that there’s not a middle to exclude. But I would never use modal logic as the sole basis for an empirical claim. It’s too easy for us to include subtle assumptions in the framing / phrasing. > [@begbert2](#): > > And the third option you’re grasping for is bootstrapping, ie, time travel. No it isn’t. I was speaking rhetorically meaning _another_ option than the ones we’re aware of right now. Bootstrapping of course has paradoxes of its own, _on top of_ leaving the question why _this_ reality, which is a key part of the problem. Anyway, I guess we’ve gone too far from the OP anyway. I’ll just summarize my position as this: I don’t agree that the apparent intractable problem of existence itself constitutes a good argument for God. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2022, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/148 "2022-07-29T15:40:05Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > I’m not quite sure how to respond to a flat-out rejection of the definition of logical negation. Exactly. You say that there are only two possibilities. That just means you haven’t thought of any others, that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. > [@begbert2](#): > > Er, isn’t that a simple example of “Existence didn’t start at this point”? To the people in the sim universe, there is an outside context universe which contains its creator. Only if they are aware of that outside world. If they think that the world that they live in is real, as we do, then they would have no such context. If I write a simulator, there is no reason that I have to use _our_ laws of physics or even logic to do so. I can create any sort of arbitrary laws that the sims will be subject to, and that may have absolutely nothing to do with the universe that I, the owner of this video game, am in. > [@begbert2](#): > > We are _aware_ that there are infinite number of ways to subdivide the space between 1 and 2, and we can do math that tells us what trends are regarding infinities, but you definitely can’t sit down and literally count all the real numbers between 1 and 2. If anybody _claims_ to have recited all the real numbers between 1 and 2, _even if they never age and had all the time they wanted to do it,_ if somebody says “I started with one, and verbally counted all the real numbers between 1 and 2 in order, and I reached 2 and now I’m done”, then you can know with absolute certainty that they’re lying and that never happened No one said that they would. You are getting hung up on the idea that an infinite has to be “actualized” in order to exist. Time doesn’t take time to happen, it just is. > [@begbert2](#): > > No matter how much time you take, you can’t actualize an infinity. If I have the function x=y, and I draw a line from 0,0 to 1,1, I have drawn a line through an infinite number of reals. I didn’t have to count them verbally, but they have all become defined by the line that I drew. How long does it take for 1+1 to equal 2? Multiply that by infinity, and you will get how long it takes for an infinite past to exist as a coordinate system. > [@begbert2](#): > > I’m mostly sticking to models that are possible. How do you judge which ones are possible? People that are smarter and more knowledgeable than either of us are proponents of such models, and there are people with the same qualifications that are dubious. Until we know how the universe came into being, and what came before if that means anything, then we can’t rule out anything that is mathematically consistent, and both cyclic cosmology and eternal inflation are. (And eternal inflation is actually a pretty popular model among those who delve deep into such things.) For your perusal, [here is one](https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0111191) that goes from an infinite past to a big crunch to the big bang to what we see today, or to look at it another way, the arrow of time reverses at the singularity. Either way, it has no beginning, it just is and always is. And [here is another](https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9712344) that shows how the universe can create itself. Are they correct? Maybe, maybe not. But they are mathematically consistent, and what we know of the universe doesn’t rule them out as impossible. > [@begbert2](#): > > However, nothing can actually experience an infinite amount of time, counting the days from the start of the infinite span to the end of the infinite span. And it’s not just people who can’t sit there and count up an infinite number of birthdays; it’s the fabric of space itself. The passage of time as something that needs to be experienced one second at a time is a quirk of our biology. We are at this second now, and then we’ll be at the next second, and that time has to pass in order for us to progress from one to the next. The universe doesn’t always conform to our intuitions, though, and an infinite past doesn’t take any time to exist, time would only be meaningful for objects experiencing time within it. > [@begbert2](#): > > If the universe has existed infinitely long before now, it never got finished living through the “before” so it’s not here for the “now”. There are arguments made that the universe is also infinite in size. If that is the case, do I have to go through an infinite amount of space in order to get to where I am? > [@Mijin](#): > > Anyway, I guess we’ve gone too far from the OP anyway. I’ll just summarize my position as this: I don’t agree that the apparent intractable problem of existence itself constitutes a good argument for God. Heh, I second this. If we want to do a thread on the universe as science understands it, or at least tries to understand it, that could be fun, but I agree it’s gone a bit far afield. Anyway, I agree entirely on the point, we don’t know, and we may never know how or why or what on the universe coming into existence, but that doesn’t mean that god did it. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2022, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/149 "2022-07-29T17:51:29Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > Take the annual death pool thread. I’d be convinced that something supernatural happened if someone went a perfect 13 of 13, God: _Fuck these thirteen people in particular._ ---
**Author:** ![SmartBulbInc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7cd45c/32.png) [@SmartBulbInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartBulbInc)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2022, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/150 "2022-07-29T21:07:09Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > Well, that’s the fundamental problem, isn’t it? **What exactly** would constitute “irrefutable, unbiased, scientifically proven” evidence for God? Almost anything you can name could just as easily be the function of hyper-advanced aliens. By that logic, anything we don’t understand could just be said that “aliens did it” which is kind of a reverse God of the gaps argument. > [@Horatius](#): > > Except that we’ve _already seen_ things that were “in clear contradiction to natural law”, and it turns out, we just didn’t understand “natural law” as well as we thought we did. The discovery of radiation, and all the nuclear science that came from that, was in clear contradiction of natural law, which at the time held that elemental atoms were the smallest indivisible units of matter. Eh, not so much, it turns out. The difference here is that radiation/atoms/whatever else are mere extensions of natural law and not violations of it. An omnipotent God could be capable of miracles that would be impossible even with advanced technology. Falling back on “its justified to believe something/not believe something because something might exist that might explain it,” is a flawed argument. That sort of argument, if taken as valid, could be used to dismiss anything out of hand. Example: “Well, just because we don’t have an explanation right now for why Santa exists doesn’t mean that one doesn’t exist, we just haven’t found an explanation yet.” ---
**Author:** ![SmartBulbInc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7cd45c/32.png) [@SmartBulbInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartBulbInc)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2022, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/151 "2022-07-29T21:10:17Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Or the “objective evidence” is third hand accounts. I’m not being asked to believe a miracle, I’m being asked to believe someone else’s story of a miracle. In real life, yes, but not in the hypothetical scenario where miracles are a real thing that can be measured, examined, and peer-reviewed. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > Okay, tell you what. If any of those things happen in the next 24 hours, I’ll be a devout man the rest of my life. I’m not arguing for the existence of God. I’m pointing out the out-of-hand rejection of OP’s premise. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2022, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/152 "2022-07-29T21:30:41Z")
> [@SmartBulbInc](#): > > By that logic, anything we don’t understand could just be said that “aliens did it” which is kind of a reverse God of the gaps argument. Right, which is why that logic doesn’t work for the god did it camp. Why are you positing that a god is more likely than aliens? > [@SmartBulbInc](#): > > The difference here is that radiation/atoms/whatever else are mere extensions of natural law and not violations of it. An omnipotent God could be capable of miracles that would be impossible even with advanced technology. How sufficiently advanced are we talking here? Sure, the first conclusion jumped to isn’t going to be god. There are going to be far more mundane and likely conclusions that should be tested out first. And yes, advanced aliens from Rigel 7 is a much more mundane and likely conclusion than god did it. > [@SmartBulbInc](#): > > Example: “Well, just because we don’t have an explanation right now for why Santa exists doesn’t mean that one doesn’t exist, we just haven’t found an explanation yet.” It’s more, “You haven’t provided _any_ evidence that Santa exists, and the properties you claim that he has have no explanation given what we understand of the universe, that’s why I don’t think that Santa exists.” > [@SmartBulbInc](#): > > Falling back on “its justified to believe something/not believe something because something might exist that might explain it,” is a flawed argument. That’s not the argument at all. The argument is, “Just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean that we should believe that god did it.” We would investigate, scientifically, and see what we could learn. The flawed argument is that of the theologian that sees something that they can’t explain, and use that as a justification to believe something. > [@SmartBulbInc](#): > > In real life, yes, but not in the hypothetical scenario where miracles are a real thing that can be measured, examined, and peer-reviewed. A very flawed argument is to say how someone else would react to a hypothetical scenario that will never happen, and then use that as a reason that that person would reject that evidence. Sure, if that happens, then I could probably be persuaded that there is something pretty powerful out there, and if it wants to be called a god, then I should probably call it a god. It still doesn’t say which god, or what rules we should operate under. And, it still has the problem that this isn’t a hypothetical situation, this is real life. > [@SmartBulbInc](#): > > I’m not arguing for the existence of God. I’m pointing out the out-of-hand rejection of OP’s premise. Well, no, you are arguing that the premise of the OP was rejected out of hand, but you are not providing any sort of evidence of that, just claiming to have done so, because you think that you know how others would react to a hypothetical situation that will never and can never happen. You are basically saying that if we don’t immediately kneel down and worship the Christian god at the first sight of something unexpected given our knowledge of the universe, that means that we would reject actual “irrefutable, unbiased, scientifically proven” evidence for God." ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2022, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/153 "2022-07-29T23:18:00Z")
> [@SmartBulbInc](#): > > By that logic, anything we don’t understand could just be said that “aliens did it” which is kind of a reverse God of the gaps argument. Sure, “God did it” and “Aliens did it” are, superficially at least, similar levels of explanation. Either way, I’m essentially admitting that I don’t know how it was _actually_ done. The difference comes down to probabilities, though. What is the probability that god exists with the attributes we’ve ascribed to it, vs. the probability that some super-advanced aliens exist and are messing with us? Well, we know that life exists here, so it’s possible for life to exist in this universe. There are billions of stars in the galaxy, and billions of galaxies in the universe that we can see. Some of those stars and galaxies have been around for far longer than our own, and so it’s possible that life developed there billions of years ago. We know that humanity has gone from banging rocks together to the Moon in about 100,000 years, and we have no indication that our scientific progress has any reason to stop. So it’s possible that aliens that are maybe billions of years old exist somewhere, and have billions of years more development than we do, and so may have abilities that appear virtually miraculous to us. Based on all that, I judge the probability of aliens to be significantly higher than the probability of god. Sufficiently higher than I consider the burden of showing it’s god instead of aliens to be on you. > [@SmartBulbInc](#): > > The difference here is that radiation/atoms/whatever else are mere extensions of natural law and not violations of it. You seem to think that “natural law” is some kind of objective standard that we can recognize, and say, “Oh, this violates natural law, while that’s just an extension of it…” Except that’s not how natural law works. “Natural law” has no meaning beyond “This is how we think the universe works”. “Natural law” was “atoms are indivisible” until it wasn’t. Natural law was “protons are indivisible” until it wasn’t. “Energy can be neither created nor destroyed” was natural law, right up until we realized that mass and energy are interchangeable. > [@SmartBulbInc](#): > > An omnipotent God could be capable of miracles that would be impossible even with advanced technology. Okay, if so, name one. So far, every example that has been suggested, I’ve been able to knock down just with technologies that we’ve speculated about. Give us another billions years and that’s just going to get worse. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > Well, no, you are arguing that the premise of the OP was rejected out of hand And it wasn’t rejected “out of hand”. Almost everyone who has responded has had an explanation for why it was rejected, which is pretty much the exact opposite of doing it “out of hand”: > reject something out of hand > to reject an idea or suggestion without hesitating and without discussing it first > He has rejected out of hand any suggestion that there can be any compromise over the proposals. That he doesn’t like the explanations doesn’t mean they don’t exist. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2022, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/154 "2022-07-29T23:27:35Z")
> [@SmartBulbInc](#): > > By that logic, anything we don’t understand could just be said that “aliens did it” which is kind of a reverse God of the gaps argument. And “aliens did it” and “God did it” are both crappy answers if they’re applied to things where there’s no specific reason to think that aliens are the ones who did, or that god is the one who did it, respectively. For me to be convinced that a miracle was caused by God, I have to have a reason to think it was caused _by God_. Is that so much to ask? I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect me to explain _every_ unexplained event with “God did it”. There should be something about the event that convinces me it was God, specifically. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2022, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/155 "2022-07-29T23:30:39Z")
If a hypothetical God created irrefutable hypothetical miracles, I could hypothetically believe it exists. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2022, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/156 "2022-07-29T23:40:44Z")
If a hypothetical God created irrefutable hypothetical miracles, I could hypothetically believe _something_ strange is going on. If the hypothetical miracles are _also_ irrefutably traceable back to the hypothetical God, my hypothetical belief in the hypothetical God would be a certainty, hypothetically speaking. ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2022, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/157 "2022-07-30T00:15:13Z")
Pants _seemingly_ spontaneously combusting might do the trick. ---
**Author:** ![Morgyn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morgyn/32/3041_2.png) [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2022, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/158 "2022-07-30T00:58:51Z")
I’d be the sole winner of tonight’s MegaMillions lottery jackpot (currently $1.1 BILLION). ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2022, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/159 "2022-07-30T01:25:41Z")
Especially since you didn’t even buy a ticket. It’s quite likely that whoever wins prayed to win. That someone prayed to win and won wouldn’t be evidence for god, even if it were me. ---
**Author:** ![Morgyn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morgyn/32/3041_2.png) [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2022, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/160 "2022-07-30T05:19:42Z")
Given the odds, it would take a miracle for me in specific to win, but I did buy one ticket. I figure if I win, it’s all I needed, and if I lose, it’s all I can afford. Meantime, I get one hell of a daydream. There’s no praying involved, though. ---
**Author:** ![not\_what\_you\_d\_expect](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/not_what_you_d_expect/32/3246_2.png) [@not\_what\_you\_d\_expect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/not_what_you_d_expect)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2022, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/161 "2022-07-30T12:03:42Z")
I asked someone to get $5.00 worth of tickets for me. Unfortunately they bought me tickets for the super lotto plus, which I also didn’t win. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2022, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443/162 "2022-07-30T15:26:32Z")
> [@Morgyn](#): > > Given the odds, it would take a miracle for me in specific to win, Sure, you in specific, but if a hundred million people buy tickets and _somebody_ wins, does that mean that God has been proven to exist to that someone? If it’s a good enough proof for him, shouldn’t it be a good enough proof for everyone who hears about it and knows that it objectively happened? “Some guy in Kansas won the lottery. It really happened, and he wasn’t cheating! I have proof! So, God exists!” Also, I assume that if the odds were just a titch lower, it would still be convincingly miraculous. Or maybe even two titches lower, or three…I don’t see an obvious dividing line, so maybe _lots_ of titches lower? “Some guy in Kansas flipped a coin and it came up heads _three times in a row!!_ It really happened, fair coin and everything! I have proof! So, God exists!” It could even happen to you!! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-minimum-level-miracle-it-would-take-you-to-convince-you-god-exists/968443.md?page=9)