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

Chanakya said:
Well then, in that case it's like I said, in my post back when.

If you're not going to define God yourself, and leave people to define God as they like: well then, there's folks there who actually think God is all of nature, or that God is all of the universe.

(For instance, there's this guy: https://steve-patterson.com/understanding-god-as-nature-or-the-universe/
...And I've seen this sort of thing in New Age books as well, I mean specifically where God is defined as the Universe, or as nature.)

So, if you're working with that kind of a definition of God personally, when then God doesn't have to do anything at all. It already exists, evidently so. You already believe. Everybody already believes, given that definition.
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I agree. Hell, all some folks need to believe is the bible itself, but that's boring.

What I was looking for was some crazy answers, and some folks even obliged me. Thank you to those folks.

Other folks tried to be all clever about it, using philosophy and other crap like that, but they were boring too. I have nothing against it, but that didn't make a lot of them any less yawn inducing.


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welshdean said:
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
A.C. Clarke
Any 'proof' would need to counter this possibility too. I'm afraid that I'm not intelligent enough to differentiate.
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There's an even bigger problem.

Let's even assume that one can demonstrate that something occurs that is "magical," or "miraculous," and, ultimately has to be an outcome that happened because of a higher power.

How do you know that higher power is God?

Back in the old days on the usenet group alt.atheism, there was a guy there named Wen-King Su, and every once in a while he'd pop in and ask the question that stopped every theist in their tracks: How do you know the being you are calling God is actually God and not a Powerful Deceiver?

The short answer: it cannot be done. Not that "I don't know how to do it" but that it is basically impossible. As soon as you acknowledge the possibility of a supernatural being, you cannot distinguish between truth and lies.

I always think it is funny. Christians are the ones who love to proclaim how "Satan is the Father of Lies," but when it comes to Satan's behavior, they treat him as an honest character. I have always said, if I were Satan and wanted to corrupt the world, the first thing I would do would be to convince everyone I was God so that they follow me. Therefore, I'd do everything I could to make them think I was God. Perform miracles? You bet, including raising people from the dead. Dazzle them with power.
 
pgwenthold said:
There's an even bigger problem.

Let's even assume that one can demonstrate that something occurs that is "magical," or "miraculous," and, ultimately has to be an outcome that happened because of a higher power.

How do you know that higher power is God?

Back in the old days on the usenet group alt.atheism, there was a guy there named Wen-King Su, and every once in a while he'd pop in and ask the question that stopped every theist in their tracks: How do you know the being you are calling God is actually God and not a Powerful Deceiver?

The short answer: it cannot be done. Not that "I don't know how to do it" but that it is basically impossible. As soon as you acknowledge the possibility of a supernatural being, you cannot distinguish between truth and lies.

I always think it is funny. Christians are the ones who love to proclaim how "Satan is the Father of Lies," but when it comes to Satan's behavior, they treat him as an honest character. I have always said, if I were Satan and wanted to corrupt the world, the first thing I would do would be to convince everyone I was God so that they follow me. Therefore, I'd do everything I could to make them think I was God. Perform miracles? You bet, including raising people from the dead. Dazzle them with power.
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Now, this is the kind philosophizing that I don't find boring. Thank you, pgwenthold.


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Darat said:
The gnostics believed that the material world was created by the great deceiver and they often associated the deceiver with Yahweh.
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Yup, and if life after death is true, wouldn't it be interesting to find out that hell was really heaven and vice versa.


ETA: I believe in life after death for one reason, I can never be proven wrong, although, I'm sure some folks will probably try arguing the point.

As a matter of fact, if god were to bring back everyone that was dead, that would be another way to convince me that she was the real deal.

Of course, it might get a little crowded, but I'm sure trump would probably try to have them all deported anyway, and that alone would be interesting to watch.


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AmyStrange said:
... there are many people out there who believe in god just by reading the bible.
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You keep saying this, but is it true? Plenty are brought up believing in god from before they can even read, but how many are not believers but then later read a bible and suddenly find they believe?
 
AmyStrange said:
I agree. Hell, all some folks need to believe is the bible itself, but that's boring.

What I was looking for was some crazy answers, and some folks even obliged me. Thank you to those folks.

Other folks tried to be all clever about it, using philosophy and other crap like that, but they were boring too. I have nothing against it, but that didn't make a lot of them any less yawn inducing.


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Well okay, if interesting-sounding talk's what you want, and crazy's what you want, I suppose it's crazy enough to suggest that the sky splits open, and a resplendent figure drops down, holding thunderbolts in his massive fist that he throws down, which literally become thunder and boom down, and it starts raining. And does this not just the once, but many times, enough times that people are completely sure this is bona fide lightning and thunder. That should be convincing enough.

For further verisimilitude, and to make the proceedings even more interesting, this God might pick up the hottest woman he can find, and do the deed with her, and leave behind a half-god. That's proof, surely.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
You keep saying this, but is it true? Plenty are brought up believing in god from before they can even read, but how many are not believers but then later read a bible and suddenly find they believe?
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Well ok, but what difference does it make when they started to believe? Some folks seem to believe that everything in the bible is really the word of their god. You should ask them what they think and if that's what actually got them to believe.

As far as myself, I'm just expressing my opinion. Your mileage may vary of course.


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AmyStrange said:
...As a matter of fact, some folks seem to believe that everything in the bible is really the word of their god.
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Those people believe that even if they've never read it. They believe it because they were brought up in a culture which tells them it's so. You only need to firmly believe it's the inerrant word of the creator. You don't need to know the fine details, like what it says. You won't be tested on it. Your grandparents could quote great long passages but they didn't have Tiktok to fill the time.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
Those people believe that even if they've never read it. They believe it because they were brought up in a culture which tells them it's so. You only need to firmly believe it's the inerrant word of the creator. You don't need to know the fine details, like what it says. You won't be tested on it. Your grandparents could quote great long passages but they didn't have Tiktok to fill the time.
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I agree, but you should've seen some of the replies I got when I asked why god was considered male in the MSN and fox forums. OMG, most of them quoted the bible as proof. I also learned a lot about the different religions and their views on god as a female.

I've posted this before (I think I posted it here too), but personally, even if he's fictional or delusional, I always thought Jesus was one of the coolest religious folks in history, because he risked his life to save a woman about to be stoned to death.

Most religious folks seem to ignore that part, but they have no problem when it comes to quoting the parts that allows them to hate people.


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Is there any limit to the size of the miracle?

I think re-arranging all the galaxies (or warping space) so that from our perspective they appear as a message in the sky at night.

Something like:

"I'm not dead, I'm very real, but I promised myself that I wouldn't interfere anymore...

... damn it! I'm interfering again!!!"
 
novaphile said:
Is there any limit to the size of the miracle?
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Nope. Anything that can convince you personally is a legitimate answer in my opinion.

Even if it's something outrageous like all the ants in the world coming to your front door to give you hell for not believing in her.


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pgwenthold said:
There's an even bigger problem.

Let's even assume that one can demonstrate that something occurs that is "magical," or "miraculous," and, ultimately has to be an outcome that happened because of a higher power.

How do you know that higher power is God?

Back in the old days on the usenet group alt.atheism, there was a guy there named Wen-King Su, and every once in a while he'd pop in and ask the question that stopped every theist in their tracks: How do you know the being you are calling God is actually God and not a Powerful Deceiver?

The short answer: it cannot be done. Not that "I don't know how to do it" but that it is basically impossible. As soon as you acknowledge the possibility of a supernatural being, you cannot distinguish between truth and lies.

I always think it is funny. Christians are the ones who love to proclaim how "Satan is the Father of Lies," but when it comes to Satan's behavior, they treat him as an honest character. I have always said, if I were Satan and wanted to corrupt the world, the first thing I would do would be to convince everyone I was God so that they follow me. Therefore, I'd do everything I could to make them think I was God. Perform miracles? You bet, including raising people from the dead. Dazzle them with power.
Click to expand...

Agreed. When you bring a Deceiver or Adversary figure into the scenario, it just underscores the point I made back on page 3. Though individuals' standards and expectations may vary, in general it's possible, using observation and reason, to decide whether an entity claiming to have godlike abilities has in fact demonstrated such. But deciding that said entity is the Creator, the One God of your particular Covenant, or even some particular god of some ancient pantheon, would still require just as much application of faith as just believing in that deity in the first place without any such demonstration. After all, the impressive being could be Satan or Loki or Coyote instead. Or aliens. Or special effects programmed into the Matrix.

As for whether a particular deity is male or female, the only ways to decide are...

1. The being themself tells you which, and you believe them.
2. Someone or something else tells you which, and you believe them.
3. You assign one or the other attribute to the deity yourself, based upon your own reasoning, preference, or authority.

Note that #1 is moot unless it actually happens, and that #3 is irrelevant to anyone else, unless they believe you.
 
Myriad said:
As for whether a particular deity is male or female, the only ways to decide are...

1. The being themself tells you which, and you believe them.
2. Someone or something else tells you which, and you believe them.
3. You assign one or the other attribute to the deity yourself, based upon your own reasoning, preference, or authority.

Note that #1 is moot unless it actually happens, and that #3 is irrelevant to anyone else, unless they believe you.
Click to expand...


Actually, the thing that bothered me about god being male was that those who believed in this strongly were using the bible as proof, and TBH, I only say god is a female just to be contrary to that belief and the men who think they're better than ALL women, but trust me, a lot of folks in the MSN and fox forums went ballistic over that, and someone even went so far as to tell me that just having real faith made it a fact that god was a male.

I don't even know what that means.

It was also troubling that many religions put men at the top and also in charge of everything, including women (look at the taliban and sharia law), and none of that seemed right to me.

Personally, if she does exist, I tend to think that what Julian of Norwich revealed in her book Revelations of Divine Love is more accurate because in one part (paraphrasing her words) she explained that she felt that god encompassed both the spirit of a man and a woman.


A copy of the book (I'm not sure if it's the long or short version) can be found here (and also at the links at the bottom of my dissertation below):

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Revelations Of Divine Love, by Julian of Norwich.

www.gutenberg.org


You can find my dissertation about the book here (originally written by a friend, but the final version was edited and written by me):

AmyStrange.org > TDIH > MAY-09-1373 [MON] ©Copyrighted by Dave Ayotte & Caty Bergman

www.amystrange.org


FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a male, and my user ID is from the main character (a talking cat) in my novels. I also had a pet cat called AmyStrange, and my avatar is a picture of her.


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pgwenthold said:
There's an even bigger problem.

Let's even assume that one can demonstrate that something occurs that is "magical," or "miraculous," and, ultimately has to be an outcome that happened because of a higher power.

How do you know that higher power is God?

Back in the old days on the usenet group alt.atheism, there was a guy there named Wen-King Su, and every once in a while he'd pop in and ask the question that stopped every theist in their tracks: How do you know the being you are calling God is actually God and not a Powerful Deceiver?

The short answer: it cannot be done. Not that "I don't know how to do it" but that it is basically impossible. As soon as you acknowledge the possibility of a supernatural being, you cannot distinguish between truth and lies.

I always think it is funny. Christians are the ones who love to proclaim how "Satan is the Father of Lies," but when it comes to Satan's behavior, they treat him as an honest character. I have always said, if I were Satan and wanted to corrupt the world, the first thing I would do would be to convince everyone I was God so that they follow me. Therefore, I'd do everything I could to make them think I was God. Perform miracles? You bet, including raising people from the dead. Dazzle them with power.
Click to expand...
I've had and seen similar discussions, and the point apologists often miss is that the "Deceiver" in question wouldn't even need to approximate the power of a supreme God; he need only be resourceful enough to deceive *them*. Insisting that the Deceiver couldn't fool them devolves onto a (frankly rather dubious) contention for their *own* superpowers of discernment, not for God's supremacy.
 

I am pretty confident there's no god at all, and the universe gets by quite nicely without one. If there were, I think it would be so weird and alien and unexpected few theists would acknowledge it and those who did would realize that issues like gender are laughably silly.

If there were a god and if that god cared to make it/him/her self known, I'm sure it would be possible. We don't really need to know how. We're not god after all. This isn't a rock too heavy to lift.

Will all be well again? I hope so, but I think it's going to be a long winter before we get the daffodils again.
 
"Myself, one of the things that would convince me was for her (wearing a body cam) to go right into Gaza (or wherever Hamas has them) and get the hostages with bullets bouncing off her and everything. (Of course, bouncing off the hostages too)."

So in your opinion if there's a God she shouldn't even worry about bouncing bullets hitting the innocent ?
 
Hmm I suspect this is one of those things where OP says "I just love waffles" and someone replies "Oh so pancakes are just ◊◊◊◊ on the ground to you then huh? Real nice"
 
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