If GOD HIMSELF showed up and wanted to prove his existence, could he?

Seriously, if an entity were to present itself to humanity as God, offering to answer all questions about it, its motivations, immortal souls, the afterlife, what he wants us to do... And offered to make all sorts of miracles and blatant violations of everything we know on demand. How could it prove it's God and not, say, Alien Teenagers or the Bat-Mite?

edited 15th Sep '10 11:31:29 PM by RawPower

He could possible FORCE us to believe, but where would be the fun in that?

He's omnipotent. I'm sure he could work something out.

^ That was lazy.

I suspect he can't, actually, but I haven't gotten aroud to justify that intuition...

Why do you ask, Raw? Genuine curiosity? Or for the sake of a mere debate? I can answer curiosity, to a degree.. But I'm not too keen about having a religious debate on the internet,as I doubt anyone would change their stances if all we're doing is debating for the sake of debate. (I'd much rather debate more mundane matters, instead)

And even if He were to do such a thing, would you believe...? Kind of defeats the whole faith thing. Blessed are those who believe, and have not seen, and all that.

Just my two cents.

It is a thought experiment. I am wondering if that God could convince atheists to believe in it, that is, to believe in Him being what He says He is: will they always be able to make a reductionist explanation that makes the friendly humourous moody moralizing Eldritch Abomination out to be Not-God?

Also, if that God came claiming such a thing as "Muslims are right", or even worse, "Muslims were right, but now aren't" (replace Muslims with the faith of your choice), how many people would say "THIS ISN'T OUR GOD!". If he were to call out the current religious leaders on their shit (and they might all have been wrong), how many would relinquish Him and claim He is an imposter, a demon, etc, etc.

What if he came and told us: "Actually, most metaphysics I told you were lies to children: THERE IS NO AFTERLIFE! I'M NOT SAVING YOUR DATA!. Or THERE IS NO HELL! I ONLY SAVE THE DATA OF WHOEVER I WANT!

Do you see what I am getting at?

edited 16th Sep '10 12:44:24 AM by RawPower

First of all - how do you define God? What makes God God? I, as an atheist, believe in that which i can quantify. The universe works in a certain way, events cause events which cause events and so on; humanity has struggled for millenia to understand the relations between them and if "God" were to spontaneously appear different kinds of people would react differently:

- Most religious people would reject him/it, claiming this is not God, their god - after all for every one religion there are twenty others that contradict it, whichever one's version God chooses to manifest himself as he'll inevitably piss the others off. So they will either go like "Meh, this isn't God, it's some other supernatural phenomena that i can't explain, but it's most certainly NOT God, The God", or have a total faith failure.

- Atheists that aren't such just for the sake of being "cool" and whatnot i think would just subject the claiming-to-be-God to the scientific method - if God indeed decides he wants to prove his existance he can say something like "Look - i'll make a star go supernova" or "Check it out, i can turn water into wine/cure cancer/make every child molester on the face of the planet spontaneously turn to jello" - all things that can be easily validated. So if God indeed does perform the said feats atheists i think would try to explain them, searching for the way God and his abilities tie into our current understanding of the universe around us. Cue 5 more millenia of humanity clawing for answers.

It would certainly be a massive worldwide status quo disruption though. But in any case there will most certainly be people who are pissed - humanity in it's myriad of perspectives is insanely diverse and i don't think there exists a single answer that every human being in existance would accept. It would just be another cornerstone in our history, a major one at that, but it would still pass. We humans are just too good at adapting. I hypothesize people in the year "Manifestation day +100" would look at it as casually as we look at the pyramids today - sure, we can't really explain it, but it's there, it's been there for hundreds of years and noone really cares more than to take a picture with it anymore.

Just my opinion.

edited 16th Sep '10 1:47:37 AM by maledicted

Proof? As in axiomatically, mathematical, Pythagorean theorem esque proof? Well, maybe, I'd imagine if it was possible it'd involve a lot of math I don't understand.

However, if God showed up, said hi, did some bible editing, performed a few miracles observed by scientist and James Randi, then we'd have evidence, and I'd find the request for faith- the type of trust we have between fellow human beings- to be much more reasonable.

I suppose he could..He could, for example, make thousands of suns go supernova and spell "GOD" in the night sky. I suppose he could do enough miracels to convince most people on the planet, but there will always be those who will rather believe they are in a matrix, rather than God.

But what about their childrens children? Will they believe? Or will they just consider their parents crazy?

I suppose many would believe.

But many would just not care. It's the way we are.

His existence, maybe - although I can't think of a demonstration that would convince me he wasn't lying, off the top of my head. His omnipotence, I doubt it. I can't even imagine the kind of evidence you would need to confirm that someone is literally all-powerful.

The existence of a truly omnipotent being is an inherently meaningless proposition.

There is no possible way to even test it, assuming the idea was even logically valid in the first place.

edited 16th Sep '10 6:05:59 AM by storyyeller

But what about their childrens children? Will they believe? Or will they just consider their parents crazy?

If he convinced the vast majority of the world, who previously strongly held widely disparate beliefs, by force of evidence, and that evidence was documented throughout the world, then there might be some who would later consider their parents crazy, but they would be analogues of conspiracy theorists rather than skeptics, and their numbers would reflect that.

We chrisians belive in God not becuase he is omnipotent.

We even care about God becuase he loved us first;therefore we love him

being God(for us christians)is more than having "superpowers".

The existence of a truly omnipotent being is an inherently meaningless proposition.

There is no possible way to even test it, assuming the idea was even logically valid in the first place.

It is logical (logical=/=true) Great minds have gave their opinions on the topic , even the fact that atheists have debated the topic is evidence that the topic truly matters and is logical.

edited 16th Sep '10 6:46:22 AM by mysticgohan

Honestly I think religion would be far more profoundly affected than other areas of humanity. Religion has always depended on the ultimate inscrutability of God(s) to enable them to establish power over their fellow men. If God is equally accessible to everyone, with his "rules" plain for all to see, then what need do we have for priests and churches? If nothing else, we'd really quickly see the difference between the priests who are in the job out of genuine reverence for and belief in God, and those who are in it for selfish/hypocritical reasons.

On the skepticism side, God could easily make his presence known in ways that would remove any doubts that he is at least capable of performing supernatural phenomena and altering the established laws of physics. Whether this establishes him as the Supreme Creator of All Things or merely a Sufficiently Advanced Alien becomes a semantic quibble - if he demonstrates the capability to create planets and all life on them, it's sort of a moot point to ask if he's the one who did us originally. I would begin by asking a more interesting question: why?

I still go back to the problems with religion, though. In my mind, having an actual, provable, demonstrable God destroys the fundamental underpinning of religion, which is that people are supposed to have faith in something that they can't tangibly experience. If God's here, now, telling us stuff, then faith becomes irrelevant. Sure, people will continue to have faith, believing in all kinds of crazy nonsense even in the indisputable presence of the genuine article, but it'll be a Silly Season type of affair.

Further, it'll instantly uproot all manner of hypocrisy - for example, the ongoing conflict between Islamic fanatics and the rest of the world. They can justify their martyrdom by claiming to have the One Truth that everyone else lacks, but what if the Truth actually presents itself and it's not theirs? What happens if/when God comes down and says, "Oh, those dudes who blew themselves up in a crowd of innocents? Yeah, they're in Hell, roasting quite nicely! Hey, aren't you the one telling them they were going to Paradise? Not cool, man." It annilihates in one stroke their claim to righteousness. The same goes with [insert other religious fanatics here].

If he convinced the vast majority of the world, who previously strongly held widely disparate beliefs, by force of evidence, and that evidence was documented throughout the world, then there might be some who would later consider their parents crazy, but they would be analogues of conspiracy theorists rather than skeptics, and their numbers would reflect that.

Unless that evidence is eternal, it means little. We have old books and manuscripts that say a lot of things, yet we don't believe half of them. We have fake scientific papers (which were eventually proven as wrong, but still..they were around for a while and some still are)

It basicly boils down to a simple thing - we humans can ALWAYS find an alternate explanation..regardless how silly that explanation might be. We will find it. If we don't want to believe in something, we WILL find a way to explain it a different way. Anything can be falsified.

edited 16th Sep '10 6:58:28 AM by TrashMan

^ Okay, what if He keeps manifesting Himself?

One of the results I expect from this thought experiment is to debunk the idea that "God needs to work In Mysterious Ways because otherwise we would know about Him and his Law and his Eternal Retributions and we would necessarily obey him and we would have no free will: we ould be like the Angels, his puppets". If Iblis (and I say Iblis because Satan/The Devil/Lucifer is confusing both in Christianity and Judaism) was able to muster the courage/hubris to challenge Him knowing full well who he was facing, I don't think humans would eb any different.

In fact, depending on the character God manifests (especially if he behaves like his OT self), humans might decide to dedicate their lives to find a way to destroy Him (or at least beat Him into Submission).

And if He takes the shape of Morgan Freeman and imitates the bullshit rethoric from Bruce Almighty I for one would be very very angry.

Also, as we said here, there is functionally no difference 'we can tell between God and Sufficiently Advanced Aliens. So I think He really can't'' prove he is God. Wait, that would be even worse than him not being able to create a stone so heavy he couldn't lift it! Here is one thing that God can't do: give us 100% certainty of Him being who He claims to be!

Amirite?

edited 16th Sep '10 7:57:01 AM by RawPower

no...

Well, God popping in and laying down The Law wouldn't inherently remove our perception of free will, unless He chose to do that as well. But when dealing with a notionally omnipotent, omniscient being, talk of revolution is kind of silly.

Let's put it this way: If God chooses to manifest Himself and is omnipotent for any purpose humans can imagine, then fighting Him is pointless because He will have already won by default against anything we attempt. If God is not classically omnipotent, then he fails the basic definition of God and is instead a Sufficiently Advanced Alien with mysterious powers and rather grandiose claims. Whether this distinction is operationally meaningful to us Puny Earthlings may be moot, though.

In short, if God exists, manifests, and yet wishes humanity to continue to experience free will, then such will happen, more or less by definition. God manifesting is a Singularity event. We cannot predict what lies beyond because it exists outside our capability to do so.

edited 16th Sep '10 8:43:44 AM by Fighteer

He could convince me he was incredibly powerful. But he couldn't prove he was actually God. Actually, the whole question doesn't make sense to me, because I suspect tales of God were thought up without any actual proof, so if a godlike being exists, he wouldn't be God anymore than a random bunny is Bugs Bunny.

^ That's an interesting perspective to say the least...

edited 16th Sep '10 8:53:49 AM by Raw Power

God, like Death, is whoever does God's job.

I think we're using "godlike being" as a synonym for God in this discussion; I didn't get that the question of the thread is predicated on the God in question being precisely the Judeo-Christian God.

From a practical perspective, how would we humans tell the difference?

edited 16th Sep '10 8:57:53 AM by Fighteer

That was lazy.

Well, it's true. If "God" is an omnipotent entity, it can do literally anything, so the answer is yes.