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What would "god" need to do in order to prove that she really existed?

8enotto said:
I picture it to be as portrayed in the Jim Carey movies Oh God./II.
I would hope it to be benevolent and even a bit playful with humans, but also finally just magically eliminate our toys that we off each other with, all at once, instantly. That would convince me. Thats omnipotent.
All of them fail at once. It would be about freakin time we had some useful interference. Much better than hoping it helps our side win.

But if not benevolent, we're screwed and it wouldn't give us a chance to say "oh ◊◊◊◊' as we understood.
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I totally agree, and I love those movies too.

One of my favorite songs is, What if God Were One of Us? by Joan Osborne... just a slob like one of us... just a stranger on the bus.

And that reminds me of that story about a guy who went up to Paul Mccarthy's house, knocked on the door, and when Paul opened it, the stranger told him, "I am the son of god."

Paul thought that probably wasn't true, but he wasn't gonna be the one to send him away, so he invited him in for tea.


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theprestige said:
Depends on your interpretation of God. In my view, your question suggests that you interpret God in an overly literal and narrow fashion. If your interpretation of God is along the lines of Zeus, then yes there's a penis. Also Zeus is male because that's the way he is.

The Judeo-Christian God is usually interpreted as an ideal being of consummate knowledge and power. He is usually described in masculine terms, not because he's male, but because that's as close as our limited understanding can get, to what He really is. Maleness is a mere physical shadow of true Godhood. So no, He doesn't have a penis. What he does have is a generative organ of infinite power and virility, something that probably exists on planes of reality we cannot ever hope to comprehend. The male penis is a mere shadow and feeble metaphor for the true power of creation.

This seems unnecessarily sexist and completely unprovable. Also rude.

Where did this and your other premises come from? Did you just make it up?
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Nope, wrong again, but nice try anyway


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AmyStrange said:
OK, NOW MY QUESTION IS: Let's say she came down to earth to set things straight, now what exactly would she need to do to prove (to you personally) that she was the one and only?
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I don't know. But if she is real, she does. She knows exactly what it would take.

Since she hasn't done that, whatever it is, I reasonably conclude that either she doesn't exist, or she wants me to be an atheist. Either is fine with me.
 
AmyStrange said:
OK, NOW MY QUESTION IS: Let's say she came down to earth to set things straight, now what exactly would she need to do to prove (to you personally) that she was the one and only?
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The essential and crucial characteristic of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God is that it is a being that created the universe. Any miracle(s) that god might demonstrate doesn't get you to that's the being that created the universe, at least not without a bunch of inference. I have no idea how anything could demonstrate that some being in question created the universe? What would that demonstration look like?
 
To be consistent with a claim of omnipotence, the candidate being should be able to learn something. After all, anyone with full human faculties can do that, so an omnipotent being should have no difficulty.

That would then disprove any claim of omniscience, as an omniscient being must already know everything knowable, and therefore should be unable to learn anything.

Having thus demonstrated one way or the other that the candidate is not the omniscient omnipotent being described by most Christians, we could get down to the business of deciding what sort of god, if any, it actually is.

I submit that presented with evidence of some being, the question "is this being God?" is unanswerable by any conceivable demonstration, as is "is this being a god?" The closest we can address is "does this being have god-like abilities?" and even that is a judgment call. Speaking in real time to people on the far side of the world would have been pretty compelling evidence a century or so ago, but not now. (I don't consider myself particularly godlike, after all.) But there are a few things that would, for me, definitely qualify. Freeze time (or vastly speed up my subjective time, equivalently) and show me around a bit. Transport me to Mars in a protective bubble like Dr. Manhattan. Make all cancer go away. Retroactively change the name of the cereal to Fruit Loops and give Mr. Moneybags a monocle.
 
arthwollipot said:
I don't know. But if she is real, she does. She knows exactly what it would take.

Since she hasn't done that, whatever it is, I reasonably conclude that either she doesn't exist, or she wants me to be an atheist. Either is fine with me.
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This. She would know how to make me believe. If my not believing was a problem, she's the one who could most assuredly "set things straight". That she doesn't do so either means my disbelief is part of Her Ineffable Plan, or it means that the reason it looks like nobody's really in charge is that nobody is.
 
Myriad said:
To be consistent with a claim of omnipotence, the candidate being should be able to learn something. After all, anyone with full human faculties can do that, so an omnipotent being should have no difficulty.

That would then disprove any claim of omniscience, as an omniscient being must already know everything knowable, and therefore should be unable to learn anything.

Having thus demonstrated one way or the other that the candidate is not the omniscient omnipotent being described by most Christians, we could get down to the business of deciding what sort of god, if any, it actually is.

I submit that presented with evidence of some being, the question "is this being God?" is unanswerable by any conceivable demonstration, as is "is this being a god?" The closest we can address is "does this being have god-like abilities?" and even that is a judgment call. Speaking in real time to people on the far side of the world would have been pretty compelling evidence a century or so ago, but not now. (I don't consider myself particularly godlike, after all.) But there are a few things that would, for me, definitely qualify. Freeze time (or vastly speed up my subjective time, equivalently) and show me around a bit. Transport me to Mars in a protective bubble like Dr. Manhattan. Make all cancer go away. Retroactively change the name of the cereal to Fruit Loops and give Mr. Moneybags a monocle.
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If Dr. Manhattan can do it, how does that qualify as godhood?
 
Olmstead said:
If Dr. Manhattan can do it, how does that qualify as godhood?
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Dr. Manhattan cannot do it, because Dr. Manhattan is fictional and doesn't exist. Any being actually doing it would have to be able to override physical laws that we have reason to believe underlie all of reality.

And anyhow, you seen to have missed my point, that we cannot define or evaluate godhood, only abilities that we might consensually characterize as godlike. That's what actually accomplishing the fictional "Manhattan Transfer" would demonstrate.
 
Say we're talking the Creator God who "spoke and it came to pass."
Demonstration suffice for me:
Immediately reposition the Solar System elsewhere in the galaxy, resulting in an entirely different night sky.

Sure, it wouldn't prove that this particular being was the Creator of our universe or the hazily defined God of the Christians and company.
Or even Mahvairocana, the Cosmic Buddha. But for all practical purposes, such would be a God.
 
A violation of the laws of probability might do it. Good things happening to good people, bad things happening to bad people more often than would be expected by chance. Prayer having a statistically significant effect. Decent people who long for a child and would make wonderful parents not remaining childless whilst feckless women who have already had children taken into care pop out another one. Something like that.
 
There are so many ways to prove godhood that I don’t know where to start. Personally, I would prefer if he* cleaned out all pollution and superfluous CO2 overnight, and announced by writing in the sky in all languages all over the world that he has done this, but he won’t do it a second time. That would certainly convince me.

* I am quite certain that at least the Christian Holy Spirit is a male, from what he did to Mary.
 
AmyStrange said:
True, but all of that is a translation or misinterpretation by humans (mostly men), because the REAL point is that all that killing happens because man muddled the damn book up and translated it to make it so he could be in charge.
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If any of these so-called holy books had come from a god, then it surely wold not have been beyond that god's capabilities to make a book that cannot be misinterpreted, and that can itself talk in any language.
AmyStrange said:
That's why, if she does come down to straighten it all out, she should throw out all that muddled crap and use the one thing that ALL religions have it common, the Golden Rule.
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Again, I dispute that claim. Islam is quite specific about being nice to fellow Muslims, and murderous to everyone else.
AmyStrange said:
Now, getting back on topic, what's your answer to the question? If she came down and straightened all that out, would that convince you that she was god?
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Came down from where? There's an inbuilt assumption in that question, that heaven is "up". That assumption is based on a profound ignorance of the planet. If "she" did come down from the sky, that would say to me that this wasn't god, as any god worth their salt would know about the atmosphere, and about what lies beyond it.
I cannot conceive of any logical or reasonable way a god could exist in reality, so the short answer is that it would take more than I can imagine to prove that freefalling apparition was any of the numerous gods humanity has worshipped throughout the ages.
 
AmyStrange said:
What would "god" need to do in order to prove that she really existed?
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This is not a meaningful question unless you first define what you mean by "God".

([eta] See the last paragraph in this post. [/eta])


Darat said:
Change my mind so I believe in it.
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Haha, good one. Agreed, that's probably the simplest, surest, most direct way.

What I guess OP really meant might probably be better expressed by re-stating the question by affixing a "without fiddling with our free will" onto the question.

...Maybe an even easier and even more direct way of doing this might be to simply define God as the mug of coffee sitting at on my desk; or if we insist on a more 'serious' definition, then by defining God as all of existence. The redefinition directly will mean that I --- and you as well --- believe in God. (Given that OP hasn't defined the term, at least not so far.) (Of course, this works only if the question is taken in the passive voice, without necessarily insisting that God do something --- because in this case it is I, you, we, who are defining of God as a mug of coffee, or as existence, and not God him-her-it-whatever-self.)
 
Some of the problems with this are first we need to come up with a definition of what is a god vs non god being. Does a god have to be omnipotent, omnipresent and or omniscient? What combination of those is acceptable?

Is any being with abilities I can not explain how it was done sufficient or are we looking for something more? Star Trek has hosts of supernaturally powerful beings who are described as godlike who are not considered gods after all. And traditionally there are other beings with supernatural powers.

Lastly there is the creator deity definition where they created the universe. But is the creator of the universe god if they were just running a physics experiment? If a Physicist created a universe would they be a god?

Of course proving that someone is a god(for some definition of god) that does not prove they should be worshipped, I would be worried about anyone claiming to be god who was that insecure to demand all this worship.
 
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