So it's been asked here and within philosophy generally, what would qualify as convincing evidence of God to a skeptic not ideologically inclined to believe?
I thought of something that would be rather compelling. Suppose one day every person on the planet simultaneously saw the face and heard the voice of God in the sky. That voice simultaneously declared to every human some personal fact unknown to anyone but that person, then also told them some personal fact unknown to anyone about a total stranger they never met along with that person's contact information so they could verify it. It wouldn't be surprising to for those who already believe to claim both facts they were told are accurate. But this would mean that every non-believing human would also verify their unique facts, which means many millions of people worldwide. While mass hallucinations can occur, they do so b/c all the people are within a particular shared context and frame of mind. That would be impossible for everyone on the planet at the same moment. I can't think of any possible explanation that wouldn't entail some form of supernatural, either God or at least some moment of unified psychic type consciousness.
Would you find this convincing? If not, what alternative explanation could you give?
The existence of an
apparently designed universe like ours.
Living things are also
apparently designed (implying a designer) but it turns out they evolved. No designer needed.
Is the universe even
apparently designed? Apparently not, unless, perhaps, the designer had a liking for empty space. Ninety-nine percent of the universe is empty space, lethal to all life and utterly uninteresting. To be fair, it‘s not really empty — it’s full of virtual particles, fields, etc. — but for human purposes it‘s a void wasteland.
Funny kind of thing to “design.”
It's a trap either way. What is "apparent" is not a good indicator of what "is" because one thing that most certainly "is" is that the sort of interactions even a simulation creator would undertake would still be detectable (and no, this is not the same as 'theism': theism puts their creators in a much smaller box, and also fails to understand various elements of the metaphysics this would imply).
For instance, I can fairly reliably predict that IF there is a god, there should be the occasional gravity wave popping up from the surface of the earth; any sudden appearance of mass would generate a gravity wave and one we would promptly triangulate to an event here, and we would be Very Curious Indeed!
Now, if they decided to rearrange some stuff that's already here, we would have an electromagnetic wave, or possibly a sound wave that originates from a very curious and sudden absence of a large amount of material in one place and it's presence in other places, or it's removal and exchange of something completely different.
Of course, if it changes distribution of mass, that's still going to make some stuff happen that we can watch.
So, still detectable.
In fact, ANY rearrangement of matter will cause this form of gravitational anomaly, and several other forms of anomaly. Further, there would be a LOT of funky bullshit going on at the chemical level. Observable funky bullshit.
We don't see any of it.
Our universe is made of matter and energy in observed fields that have never in any moment acted in such a way to observably engage in uncaused phenomena.
If you wish to demonstrate a 'god' or a 'demon' or whatever the fuck else you think you can trick us into thinking you actually believe in (and if you do so believe, that's cute, good for you!), Then produce it. Shouldn't be too hard, and hey, there are a few Nobel prizes and probably a number of other more "Trololol" prizes offered for the doing.
I can demonstrate the reality of any thing I claim exists, and can generally describe the core model by which it exists as a phenomena.
I would at least find it amusing to watch them scratch their ass at actually trying to describe the nature of a demon, not just what They think it wants and why but
what it actually is or
how it's mind functions as a mechanism, or even if they could deliver a sensible understanding of what they actually think it gets out of its goals and how those goals actually serve it's existence.
But they won't.
These are too difficult of concepts for most religious people I have encountered, and for that matter most backwater internet trolls, to understand. Honestly, they escape a lot of the "rational free thinkers" and "infidels" here.
There are zero or more 'gods'. If anyone wishes to rule out 'zero' you have to produce at least one.
Managing that, you then have to convince me, someone who has actually done exactly the thing you claim was done to create the universe* so as to create a different subordinate one; that the goals of such an entity are necessarily benign, acceptable, or in any way compatible with the rest of the claims.
As far as I see it even "intelligent creator god" just gets you as far as "some selfish shlub who knows how to turn a computer on". Some such schlubs would likely be like me. Some would be demonstrably worse.
*define a set of rules, and a set of algorithmic behaviors to implement those rules on a platform which, when so implemented, provide a general framework for internally driven causality),
Also, sorry
@pood, I may have meandered in my mind from responding to you, to responding to the other one.
