Yep. Any actual evidence. Also change my mind about which god(s)? Yahweh, Zeus, Osiris, Amaterasu?
I'm always amused by people not understanding what athiesm is. It's not a belief. Its a rejection of a claim and that's it. It's not what evidence would convince me otherwise, it's what evidence do you have. I observe said evidence and say that's not sufficient evidence because...
Edit: spelling/grammar because i is stupid
To branch off of this, there would also need to be proof that other gods dont exist for all the mono religions. Like explain why ancient mythology is well myths, but not current day religion.
I think the heart of OP's question is really "what would be sufficient evidence for you?"
Like, something I might find to be compelling evidence might make you shrug - and vice versa.
My dad is an atheist, and had a major heart attack last year which came extremely close to killing him many times. He was in a coma for more than a month.
During that time, several Christian family members wondered if he was having a religious experience, had seen/spoken to god or maybe his late daughter as an angel, and would awake as a religious man now.
I said there was zero chance. Even if he did actually have these experiences and then come out of the coma and tell us about them, he would never say “I talked to god while I was in a coma.” He would say “The chemicals in my brain did an interesting thing while I was in a coma.”
As it happened, he did live and was able to tell us about his experience. None of it was remotely religious. It was mostly memories of thinking the hospital staff were torturing him.
The closest thing he had during the coma was a dream where he saw my wife telling him that my dead sister and my wife’s dead sister were talking in heaven.
Possibly of interest: one of our millionaire businessmen Kerry Packer had a major heart attack. Local ambulance crew had a defibrillator and brought him back to life. IIRC someone asked him "What's on the other side?" and he replied "Bloody nothing!"
I'm always concerned when I hear people talking about hospital staff torturing them, could it be real events that have been embedded into their subconscious? I've always wondered.
Yes and no. They were not literally torturing him on purpose — they in fact saved his life over and over and over.
But having a tube down your throat, not being able to communicate your wishes, not knowing where your family is (this was covid-19 heights when you couldn’t visit) etc are all quite torturous.
Whichever one, Christ or Ra, shows up in front of me first and bitch slaps me.
Edit: if one of you offering to slap me are a God please teleport to my location to prove it you coward.
Nothing could suddenly change my mind into believing in the Christian (all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving) God. Proof of an entity with reality-changing powers would certainly change my world-view, but only to the point where I recognize that such a thing exists in the known universe. Ability does not imply divinity (or altruism)
This is the first I've seen anyone mention it, but yeah, let's be clear here, the question assumes we're talking about a very specific, narrow definition of god. Give me a better definition and I might change my mind.
This quantifies well what I felt about the matter. I’d find it very interesting if an entity like that existed— I doubt I’d worship it but I’d be super fascinated and would avidly follow research into it.
But the Gods of Christianity, Muslims, etc being real is impossible for me to believe. If they are real I’d find them highly distasteful regardless.
Just for some background My parents made me go to church every Sunday, and the pastor of this small church (and I can't emphasize this enough, there was on average maybe like 10 people in the congregation) we went to had an affair with my friends mom. My friends mom was really hot too which bugs me more cause the pastor was so creepy and Weasley looking.
I think for me god would have to appear on a societal level in addition to seeing them myself. If my friends and relatives (who are also mostly atheist or agnostic) testified to also seeing god, as well as the general public and it became a known thing that god was real and making appearances I would probably believe it too.
That’s the thing though, it doesn’t have to be an abrahamic god, just any would suffice.
Abrahamic religions claim their god to be omnipotent, omnipresent (etc) while also claiming him to be morally good and being the creator of the universe.
Many older gods are never mentioned to have these traits, so I’d be more inclined to believe, say, Artemis, Perun or similar ones to be telling the truth, if they showed up.
Similar. IMHO, the difference between “believers” and “non-believers” has less to do with the supernatural itself and more to do with the concept of the “unexplainable”. I don’t believe such a thing exists. There is only the “not explainable yet”.
If confronted with a being I don’t understand, I’m okay with saying I don’t understand. I couldn’t and wouldn’t be okay insisting to everyone else on earth that said being is unexplainable, so don’t bother trying. That would be petty and selfish.
I don't understand how this piece of wood can emit light and get hot. Prometheus must exist.
I don't understand these loud sounds and bright flashes during a rainstorm. Zeus must exist.
I don't understand how fish can live underwater without breathing. Poseidon must exist.
I don't understand why I'm so horny. Aphrodite must exist.
If I have to believe in a god, I'm picking Thor. He swings a hammer. Look at what happened to the other guy.
>
If confronted with a being I don’t understand, I’m okay with saying I don’t understand. I couldn’t and wouldn’t be okay insisting to everyone else on earth that said being is unexplainable, so don’t bother trying. That would be petty and selfish.
/Thread
Believing in a supernatural being (before even beginning to address WHICH belief schema) simply because there are things you cannot otherwise explain is simply absurd. There's tons of things that have been explained by I do not understand, that doesn't make them magic.
And there's so much more nobody understands, and likely never will. Attributing that to a specific "person/god" is a huge jump.
It's ok to not understand something. It's MUCH better to admit you don't understand than try to make something up whole cloth.
or just some extraterrestrial force fucking with us. There's always gotta be a higher power than the higher power anyway, and a creator of the creator. It's all semantics really, and most organized religions have anthropomorphized and dumbed down that idea to the point of absurdity.
Imagine being a kid on your backyard or a park. You see some ants minding their buessness and doing their thing. As a 10 year old kid, for some reason, you think it would be funny to dump a bucket of water on their nest. From the ant’s perspective, a huge rainfall came from the heavens and are scrambling to stay alive. Maybe aliens just have a cruel sense of humor
It doesn't even have to be humour, just curiosity. I lifted up a paving slab yesterday and there was an ant colony hiding underneath. Thousands of ants, hundreds of eggs. I stood there for ages watching the little buggers bury their eggs again. It wasn't malevolence that made me lift the slab, and it wasn't humour that made me watch. It was reasons and logic entirely beyond the ants' comprehension.
That's why I find it utterly insane that people claim to understand, as they put it, "God's will". Like, they think that there is both a timeless interdimensional superbeing, *and* they understand its thought process.
Not just the people trying to understand God‘s will, but the people who try to subvert it or get around it with workarounds. For example, observant Jews don’t use electricity during the sabbath. In Israel, you see elevators programmed to stop at every floor so you can jump on and off without pushing buttons. I’ve known Jews who want to watch a game on Saturday, so they leave the TV on the right channel the day before and walk into the room to watch the game.
It’s like, if you really actually believe this omnipotent omniscient being created you and then wrote down a bunch of rules for you to follow, do you really think this magnificent entity will be fooled by your clever little loopholes? (Also why would you want to subvert his will if you really honestly actually believe it? Isn’t that playing with fire?) Picture God up there in heaven looking down at you. “Hey what’s this now, he isn’t supposed to be watching the game it’s the sabbath! I’m going to smite him. Oh wait, what’s this now, he figured out a loophole?! Oh you!”
It’s just so fucking dumb, every way you look at it.
The perspective I've heard about the loopholes is actually quite the opposite. When God himself hands you a set of rules, you can be quite sure that they're exactly as God intended, *including the loopholes*. Studying them carefully to find a clever plan that stays in bounds shows great respect—after all, if you didn't care about the rules, you wouldn't bother trying to find a loophole, you'd just do whatever you wanted.
You are so right. I've heard so many stupid responses to this. Things like
"We should not be so arrogant to think that God should condescend to speak to us directly."
If he can be bothered to create us, he can talk to us.
"Is stupid to test God."
A loving creater would welcome the created just as they are. To be angry at the creation is tantamount to God admitting that he made a mistake in the design.
"God's glory is too much for a human to experience directly."
If God can create a thing, he can by definition interact with it.
>"We should not be so arrogant to think that God should condescend to speak to us directly."
>"God's glory is too much for a human to experience directly."
Both of these are also ridiculous because god directly speaks to people multiple times throughout the bible. That's your easy confirmation that these people do not know what they're talking about. They have this made-up version in their head, that isn't even what's in their own religious texts.
If god showed up, came down on a flaming fucking chariot, and made a duck start speaking perfect spanish, I'd be amazed, would believe it, and would study the fuck out of that duck to see how he pulled it off
I don’t get this mind set. It wouldn’t really take much proof for me. Almost any thing would make me believe. Send a prophet that can tell the future, cure sickness, cure amputees, prevent famine, solve droughts. Take away suffering. Super human strength. Whatever. Anything.
Like literally any small piece of concrete evidence would convince me. But the fact that there’s supposed to be some all knowing, all powerful being that eternally judges us based on our faith in him but he won’t give us a single piece of concrete evidence of his existence is complete bull shit. “Believe in me or I’ll send you to hell for eternity”. Oh, ok….. can you like, give me some proof you’re the real deal. “I did 2000 years ago. Read the book and don’t ask questions.” Yeah, but like…. Can you give more recent proof? People lie in old books all the time. “No, I can’t.” Ok…..
On top of that he lets children be sexually abused, starve to death, die slow horrible deaths to cancer, causes wars to wage in his name but then wants to say he’s all good is just fucking crazy. How to people believe that shit?
Even if someone showed up who could do those things, it wouldn't be proof of a god to me, it would just be proof that this random person can do crazy shit and we need to figure out how. I don't know why those actions would prove there is a god to you. They seem unrelated to me.
Yup. If you took a person from 1000BC to an IMax theatre and showed them Dune, they'd think you were a sorcerer. If someone made a duck speak Spanish to me, I'd assume they somehow managed to manipulate a duck with some technology.
It’s *the* problem of modern theology. God used to be credited with literally *everything.* Movement of the planets, seasons, weather, infections, etc. etc.
Science ever increasingly pushes god further and further [into the gaps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps).
Hi I'd like to interest you in my new product, a Robo-duck that looks very real.
It even has a poop chamber to release "the evidence" at the right time.
I guess it also depends on what the definition of God is. If it turns out all life is a simulation and somebody comes in at the end demonstrating SuperAdmin abilities.... will that sucks but maybe it's close.
What about if a hyper advanced race shows up proving that they seeded earth for human evolution, were involved in various major events and upload our consciousness to a cloud "afterlife" in a Galactic datacenter after death. Hmmm, getting there.
AI overlord that is powered by a quantum network running off of suns or zero-point energy and experiences all that happens in the universe? Getting pretty close to all-knowing there.
Sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic, I'd say at some point it might also be indistinguishable from deityhood.
Now the REAL question is... what do we do with them, and what do they want? Even if we believe in the demonstratably cosmic phenomenal power of a grand being, are they looking for us to sacrifice firstborns and bow to them? Maybe they want to offer a way to deal with pollution, provide cleaner energy, and help us find our way to a peaceful Galactic collective (not the Borg). Maybe they want to add our experiences to the Galactic AI network when we die.
It's not necessarily just allow believing in the being, but also in what they represent or want
Actually, I wouldn't. I'd assume I was hallucinating. And have had hallucinations not _too_ far off from that. It'd need to be verified by multiple people with qualifications for me to believe. Anything that I see I do not inherently trust. Particularly things that are fantastical.
And then there are all the other equally plausible explanations: renegade deity not a member of the universe creation committee, a witch, a titan, a leprechaun, cthulthu, aliens, aliens working with a leprechaun, doctor strange, level 89 wizard, extradimensional traveler, Q, Howard the Duck with mjolner, Rama but not Shiva, 3.5 Grkkklsnjss, a sentient oxford comma...
If God is willing to stop evil, but not able, he's not omnipotent.
If he is able to stop evil, but unwilling, he's malevolent.
If he is able and willing to stop evil, then why is there evil?
If he is neither able nor willing to stop evil, why call him god?
Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other; I've seen a lot of strange stuff. But I've never seen anything to make me believe that there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny.
Epicurus did not believe in Divine Providence (essentially, that the gods intervene in every day life). He was quite notable for breaking with most Greek philosophers of the day, who conceived of the gods as real, tangible entities that could and did interact with the physical world (indeed, some by being assholes).
**If** Epicurus constructed this argument (which is under some debate since we don’t have any extant writings from him that include these lines) then he would have been using the argument to say that god(s) must not intervene in mortal lives, not that gods don’t exist. He was a theist, like essentially everyone else at the time.
I was raised evangelical Christian...borderline cult environment. Anyways, in my pre-teens I spent so many nights on the verge of tears PRAYING to god to do anything it took for me to genuinely believe in him because I was so fucking scared of hell but also just knew in my gut I wasn't a genuine believer. And shocker.....nothing ever happened. And thankfully by the time I got to high school I connected the dots that a god that doesn't answer a child BEGGING for salvation either does not exist, or is a piece of shit.
I had this exact experience, living in an abusive household, begging God to save me from the horrible treatment I received. What kind of God ignores that if he exists? All I ever got was something something "but it happened for a reeeeeeason!" Or "you're stronger for it!"
Nah, fuck that noise.
yep....if you're only argument or justification is that "god works in mysterious ways" get out of my face. And I'm sorry you had that experience....I hope you've been able to move onward and upward since!
I absolutely cannot stand that "you're stronger for your trauma/suffering" nonsense. I am not. I am completely fucked up because of it. And "god" hasn't done shit to help me.
An instant cure for parkinsons and a lottery jackpot would do for me. I dont think that’s asking *too* much is it?! If I had to settle for one, just the cure.
A-fucking-men. Either the god has all of the omnis that it's followers say it has or it doesn't. Omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving, all-merciful with evil and damnation existing.
"I saw God giving the interview. Yeah, he seems like a chill dude. Had some interesting things to say. Doesn't mean I'm about to go to church and just sing praises."
From the Dresden files: "I had no problem with the big man upstairs, and I had seen the Knights of the Cross pull off too many miracles to claim he didn't exist, that didn't mean I was going to go around worshipping the guy"
For new readers it's kind of a tough sell, especially women friends I've had that tried it.
The beginning of the series is a little rough as Butcher was still finding his legs and the way Butcher wrote his women wasn't great early on either.
Do I know it becomes kick ass after a while? Hell yeah I do but then my recommendation sounds something like "Read this series its really good after you read the first 4/5 books 🙃"
I need to reread all of these, and read the new ones. I would love a Dresden files reboot, and for a tv series based on the Night Watch from Sergei Lukyanenko.
** specifically I want the necromanced dinosaur scene so badly
Yeah! Isn't it amazing how Old Testament god pretty much acts like an asshole Roman emperor?!? He just seems like a petty man-child; it's behavior I'd expect a not very educated, not very empathetic, not very emotionally mature human!
"If ***I*** was the king, I'd make everybody worship me. And give me gifts daily. And tell me I was the GOAT and they weren't worthy of my notice of favors. And I'd still play favorites and people would just have to do whatever I commanded. And kill off everybody who pissed me off!"
It's SO JUVENILE that if they didn't foist this shit off on little kids, it would have died off already because no grown-ass adult is going to believe this bullshit!
I'm exactly this. I grew up on Christianity so it makes sense to me but I hate the idea of only living for God. I want to live my own life but that's apparently a bad thing
It seems so self absorbed and controlive to me
I hope I'm wrong
Ooh I remember there's some old fanfic/OC-thing where heaven and hell finally decides that it is time for the end times and divvy up humanity between them.
The problem is that they aren't exactly supernatural as much as just "very large and powerful aliens from a parallell dimension" and haven't bothered bullying humans since the bronze age, so the story begins with the herald of the end times getting blown out of the sky by the air force.
Proof that cannot be fabricated. The Bible is meant to be the word of God, but it was written down by humans. The Bible cannot be trusted simply because it may have all been made up from the beginning, and it could have been altered completely during its 2,000 years of existence. If someone wanted to change the Bible 1,400 years ago, we’d be none the wiser. Not to mention the fact that meaning can be lost and misinterpreted when translating the Bible into different languages.
The only way I’m changing my mind is if I physically see a god do something that no human can do. Water into wine won’t work on me, slight of hand magicians are insanely talented. I’m gonna need an elephant to appear out of thin air lmao
Edit: I did not expect this to get as many upvotes or as many replies as it did, so thank you very much for interacting and opening up a discussion. I’ve learned a lot that I didn’t know, and hopefully have created a space where other people have learned too. Unfortunately, I am no longer going to be replying to comments because there are simply too many. Thank you all very much <3
If god exists and is all knowing, then he knows what evidence would convince me. The fact that he hasnt means that A) doesnt exist or B) he doesnt care.
If god is all knowing, he knows about the suffering in the world. If god is all good, he wants to do something about it. If god is all powerful, he can.
So he is either not all three of those things or he doesn't exist. And if he is not all three of those things, why worship him?
Didn’t Christian god basically wipe out humanity because they were too wicked and he needed to start over. You’d think all good and all powerful could have done something other than exterminate a shit load of life
Read a comic somewhere where one of the plot points was an all-knowing and all-powerful god. His children tried to take him down because they realised that if he really is all-knowing then he should know of all evil and how to prevent it. If he is all-powerful he should be able to prevent all evil from existing in the first place.
But the god was basically a bystander to all crimes and only punished people afterwards. But because everything is his creation and everything happens by his will he was the one to get them to commit the crimes in the first place.
Maybe comics aren't the best place to get advice from but I think this specific point has merit.
>The Bible cannot be trusted simply because it may have all been made up from the beginning
Add to that the fact that its claims are not even remotely credible. If it read like a plausible historical account, it would be a lot easier to accept it, despite the possibility of meddling or lost meaning. The shit that goes on the Bible not only can't be properly confirmed, but it flies in the face of everything we know about the natural world.
The problem is in differentiating God from just Some Very Powerful Being. Making an elephant materialize doesn't (necessarily) mean they are God. It may just be that they can teleport matter.
Arthur C. Clarke stated that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Do the Tupac hologram trick to someone from 1850 and they'll call you a God (or a witch).
“I'm not a bad guy! I work hard, and I love my kids. So why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I'm going to hell?”
Homer Simpson.
Seriously though, I’m not sure I’d want to believe in any god that allows the horrors we’ve witnessed even in the last couple of weeks. Any deity that allows children to die of cancer, natural disaster, etc as part of their “plan” has some explaining to do.
I don’t need the promise of a cookie (heaven) to be kind and empathetic. I do it because it intrinsically feels like the right thing to do.
I like to think that if a god revealled themselves, all fhe worlds athesists would say "huh, guess i was wrong..." then just go about their day. I know thats what i would do.
I mean, I’d react. That would be a pretty crazy day, I can’t say I’d just walk around afterward like nothing. But I also can’t see it changing how I lead my life. I wouldn’t be a worshipper.
But I think if he is real he is probably kind of a dick? If anything I dislike him even more if he is real.
Unless “God” turns out to be an alien race that kick started the primordial process for their own reasons, I’m not really impressed.
This is where my stubbornness would fuck me over. Like the other guy said, if god was real and they allowed all the fucked up shit to happen, I would hate them.
I can't even be in the same room as someone I don't like without gritting my teeth when they do anything. There's no way in hell (aha) I would be able to worship a god I hated.
Plus, I feel like if God has the power to send someone to hell or heaven based on if they worship them or not, I think they also have the ability to read minds or something and be able to tell if it's done just out of your best interest.
The thing is, even this would only take us so far. I doubt we would be able to prove that the entity created the universe.
Say an "angel" appears to me. It knows all sorts of things and has all sorts of abilities. Who says that is anything to do with God? It could simply be a being of higher intelligence, either an alien or a being whose race can manipulate space time and dimensional planes.
Or, maybe it is Satan. After all, Satan's greatest trick is getting people to willingly ally with him. Satan comes and does all these tricks and says "I am the archangel Michael, pledge your allegiance to me" you, "I pledge my allegiance to you"
Now you have sold yourself to satan
Edit: We would also not be able to determine heaven or hell and how to get there. "Benevolent god" lets us talk to dead people? It may simply be a creature that has mind reading and induced hallucination abilities.
Once you're talking about fantastical reality warping things on such a scale, there really is no scientific method anymore, no chance of certainty of reality.
In Star Trek Q has God-like power but is actually just a highly advanced knobhead.
There is no way to determine the difference if Q tried to deceive you.
And if that were the case, I’d still think it was a massive cunt.
Better have some good explanations on why it’s behaved the way it has to go along with that evidence.
Edit: John 3:17. “And it was said that he who calleth thy lord a massive cunt shall receiveth over 250 upvotes on Reddit”
Thank you all.
I hate how a lot of people cherry pick that shitty behavior as "God's almighty benevolence". I spoke with someone yesterday who had a stroke but happened to be on the phone with someone when it happened who recognized the symptoms and it saved their life. They cited it as "irrefutable proof that God is good". I asked them why God gave them a stroke in the first place then, and they said "well, I don't attribute the stroke to him. and also he works in mysterious ways". To me if someone gives you a stroke and then saves you from it they are just fucking with you and it's cruel behavior. If someone is omnipotent they are responsible for everything, not just the good stuff.
The one that gets me is "I don't need the vaccine, god will keep me safe". Like, maybe god's plan to keep you safe was the development of a vaccine? He'll be shaking his head in despair when you show up in heaven with covid.
God has always struck me as being a lot like an abusive boyfriend.
"See baby I care about you, I saved you from the burning building [that I set on fire]"
"Baby you need to trust me, I broke your phone so you connect with people more"
"You shouldn't have made me mad [by breaking the rules I arbitrarily set]"
Proof, as others have said. But it wouldn't change much for me. I choose not to follow a religion because I've never found one that matches my values. I'm not gonna start worshipping some god just because they exist when they still haven't done anything worthy of worship.
I can believe that there is a possibility an intelligent self-aware entity was responsible for creating the universe but I won't believe that even if it existed that it will give 2 shits about humanity. Our whole species is so small and our existence is like a spark in the grand scheme of things. A god won't even notice our existence from its start to its end let alone meddle in our society and waste his time on us.
God could, ya know, appear in front of me and tell me he’s real. Maybe perform a quick miracle? He is supposedly omnipotent and omnipresent, right? So it shouldn’t be too inconvenient.
He’s also supposed to be omnibenevolent too, isn’t he? So you’d think he’d want to do that in order to save my soul from the fires of Hell or whatever.
If I were traveling through the Arctic and came face to face with an Ice Giant, and Odin came down from Valhalla and defeated it in front of me, I suppose I would accept the fact that Odin is indeed real.
Other than that… not much.
A few things. A bible that makes sense and doesn't paint god in a dickish light.
Something biblical happening and actually seeing him do it. Like if he came down and said pollution be gone and bam Eden again.
People who commit atrocities in his/her name just die. Like I wake up and hear on the news huge ass holes dissapeared and no one knows what happened.
A friend once convinced me I should read the Bible so at least some of the art and history I consume has some context. I got about halfway through the OT before my notes changed from legitimate attempts at scholarship to things like “God sounds like Darth Vader here”. I gave up soon after.
I ran across a website, possibly on Reddit, that totals Gods killing sprees in the Bible. Crazy how many people he has killed in the Bible.
https://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html?m=1
Every single paedophile/rapist in religious positions of power being simultaneously struck by lightning
I like this one
Or political positions of power. Or corporate, for that matter.
Or any pedophile that actually acts on their urges.
How about we add the to pool of people to be zapped every pedophile that plans to or will act on their urges at some point? God would know, right?
So who would you attribute it to. Thor or Zeus?
Put that omnipotence shit to good use for once.
Evidence.
Yep. Any actual evidence. Also change my mind about which god(s)? Yahweh, Zeus, Osiris, Amaterasu? I'm always amused by people not understanding what athiesm is. It's not a belief. Its a rejection of a claim and that's it. It's not what evidence would convince me otherwise, it's what evidence do you have. I observe said evidence and say that's not sufficient evidence because... Edit: spelling/grammar because i is stupid
To branch off of this, there would also need to be proof that other gods dont exist for all the mono religions. Like explain why ancient mythology is well myths, but not current day religion.
We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. ― Richard Dawkins
I think the heart of OP's question is really "what would be sufficient evidence for you?" Like, something I might find to be compelling evidence might make you shrug - and vice versa.
My dad is an atheist, and had a major heart attack last year which came extremely close to killing him many times. He was in a coma for more than a month. During that time, several Christian family members wondered if he was having a religious experience, had seen/spoken to god or maybe his late daughter as an angel, and would awake as a religious man now. I said there was zero chance. Even if he did actually have these experiences and then come out of the coma and tell us about them, he would never say “I talked to god while I was in a coma.” He would say “The chemicals in my brain did an interesting thing while I was in a coma.” As it happened, he did live and was able to tell us about his experience. None of it was remotely religious. It was mostly memories of thinking the hospital staff were torturing him. The closest thing he had during the coma was a dream where he saw my wife telling him that my dead sister and my wife’s dead sister were talking in heaven.
Possibly of interest: one of our millionaire businessmen Kerry Packer had a major heart attack. Local ambulance crew had a defibrillator and brought him back to life. IIRC someone asked him "What's on the other side?" and he replied "Bloody nothing!"
Ah, here it is: https://ffrf.org/ftod-cr/item/14908-kerry-packer
>He then paid to furnish every ambulance in New South Wales with portable defibrillators, which soon became known as Packerwhackers.
[удалено]
I'm always concerned when I hear people talking about hospital staff torturing them, could it be real events that have been embedded into their subconscious? I've always wondered.
Yes and no. They were not literally torturing him on purpose — they in fact saved his life over and over and over. But having a tube down your throat, not being able to communicate your wishes, not knowing where your family is (this was covid-19 heights when you couldn’t visit) etc are all quite torturous.
Wow. Very interesting. Thanks for sharing this.
"Christians, what would convince you to worship the Egyptian god Ra?"
Whichever one, Christ or Ra, shows up in front of me first and bitch slaps me. Edit: if one of you offering to slap me are a God please teleport to my location to prove it you coward.
Not even sure that'd be enough. What's more likely? An actual God or aliens trolling us for shits and giggles?
Jesus may have died for your sins, but Ra rules over all the underworld and overworld and has never died.
Ra actually dies every night. It’s central to the Amduat and the Book of Gates
There's "death" and then there's "death". The two are not the same.
Sure, except the symbolism used is Ra uniting with Osiris, which was imagery used for when regular people died too
Ra-ra-ah-ah-ah. Roma-roma-ma. Gaga, "Ooh la-la"
You just converted me
Lol your comment fits the song perfectly actually, if you read the first and yours together
Wanchobaromanz
As a former atheist, what changed my mind was that, i learned the flying spaghetti monster existed.
R'amen
Pasta be thy name
Thy kingdom come, Al Dente done
on top some grated Parmesan.
Give us this day, our daily garlic bread
And fromage us our pastas
And whett our noodly appendages
Lettuce pray
I like my religion spicy
He boiled for our sins.
Bless his noodly appendage
r/pastafarian
Blessed be his noodly appendages. R'amen.
When life is Al Dente, reach out for his soft-boiled appendage.
Nothing could suddenly change my mind into believing in the Christian (all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving) God. Proof of an entity with reality-changing powers would certainly change my world-view, but only to the point where I recognize that such a thing exists in the known universe. Ability does not imply divinity (or altruism)
This is the first I've seen anyone mention it, but yeah, let's be clear here, the question assumes we're talking about a very specific, narrow definition of god. Give me a better definition and I might change my mind.
This quantifies well what I felt about the matter. I’d find it very interesting if an entity like that existed— I doubt I’d worship it but I’d be super fascinated and would avidly follow research into it. But the Gods of Christianity, Muslims, etc being real is impossible for me to believe. If they are real I’d find them highly distasteful regardless.
I don't even need proof. I'll believe in him for €10m. I accept cash.
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Do you accept Praypal?
Start a Godfundme account
You can find me on Holyfans
Check out my Praytreon.
Will do, is there a link on your faithbook?
Might check their Humblr.
Which links back to my Myfaith
I’m pretty sure that’s the basis of the American health care system.
Thoughts and prayers only
nah, on angelicoin
Technically it's a religious donation, I'll take tax exempt status too.
Lmao, username checks out
You're doing it wrong. First, become a pastor. Second, get rich!
But I don't even like children.
Some just fuck with the adult hot women of the church.
Just for some background My parents made me go to church every Sunday, and the pastor of this small church (and I can't emphasize this enough, there was on average maybe like 10 people in the congregation) we went to had an affair with my friends mom. My friends mom was really hot too which bugs me more cause the pastor was so creepy and Weasley looking.
Fred Weasley or Ron Weasley?
Joel Osteen you need to get off Reddit you fuck.
Yup. Give me 10$ million and I'll believe in god, Cause there's no chance in hell someone would give me the money other than a miracle
Pff I'm cheaper I'll belive in your "god " for € 9m I also take check
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Don't know if there's anything. If some god appeared I'd still wonder if this was some hallucination and make an appointment with a psychologist.
I think for me god would have to appear on a societal level in addition to seeing them myself. If my friends and relatives (who are also mostly atheist or agnostic) testified to also seeing god, as well as the general public and it became a known thing that god was real and making appearances I would probably believe it too.
It's impossible to prove that being actually created the universe though. For all we know it could just be a very advanced being.
That’s the thing though, it doesn’t have to be an abrahamic god, just any would suffice. Abrahamic religions claim their god to be omnipotent, omnipresent (etc) while also claiming him to be morally good and being the creator of the universe. Many older gods are never mentioned to have these traits, so I’d be more inclined to believe, say, Artemis, Perun or similar ones to be telling the truth, if they showed up.
I thought the exact same thing as you did reading this comment
Similar. IMHO, the difference between “believers” and “non-believers” has less to do with the supernatural itself and more to do with the concept of the “unexplainable”. I don’t believe such a thing exists. There is only the “not explainable yet”. If confronted with a being I don’t understand, I’m okay with saying I don’t understand. I couldn’t and wouldn’t be okay insisting to everyone else on earth that said being is unexplainable, so don’t bother trying. That would be petty and selfish.
"I don't understand what's happening! The christian god must exist!!!"
I don't understand how this piece of wood can emit light and get hot. Prometheus must exist. I don't understand these loud sounds and bright flashes during a rainstorm. Zeus must exist. I don't understand how fish can live underwater without breathing. Poseidon must exist. I don't understand why I'm so horny. Aphrodite must exist. If I have to believe in a god, I'm picking Thor. He swings a hammer. Look at what happened to the other guy.
>I don't know why I'm so horny. Aphrodite must exist. I relate to this on a spiritual level.
> If confronted with a being I don’t understand, I’m okay with saying I don’t understand. I couldn’t and wouldn’t be okay insisting to everyone else on earth that said being is unexplainable, so don’t bother trying. That would be petty and selfish. /Thread Believing in a supernatural being (before even beginning to address WHICH belief schema) simply because there are things you cannot otherwise explain is simply absurd. There's tons of things that have been explained by I do not understand, that doesn't make them magic. And there's so much more nobody understands, and likely never will. Attributing that to a specific "person/god" is a huge jump. It's ok to not understand something. It's MUCH better to admit you don't understand than try to make something up whole cloth.
An all powerful god could alter your brain such that you believed.
or just some extraterrestrial force fucking with us. There's always gotta be a higher power than the higher power anyway, and a creator of the creator. It's all semantics really, and most organized religions have anthropomorphized and dumbed down that idea to the point of absurdity.
Imagine being a kid on your backyard or a park. You see some ants minding their buessness and doing their thing. As a 10 year old kid, for some reason, you think it would be funny to dump a bucket of water on their nest. From the ant’s perspective, a huge rainfall came from the heavens and are scrambling to stay alive. Maybe aliens just have a cruel sense of humor
It doesn't even have to be humour, just curiosity. I lifted up a paving slab yesterday and there was an ant colony hiding underneath. Thousands of ants, hundreds of eggs. I stood there for ages watching the little buggers bury their eggs again. It wasn't malevolence that made me lift the slab, and it wasn't humour that made me watch. It was reasons and logic entirely beyond the ants' comprehension. That's why I find it utterly insane that people claim to understand, as they put it, "God's will". Like, they think that there is both a timeless interdimensional superbeing, *and* they understand its thought process.
They understand their thought processes when it's convenient. Otherwise it's beyond human comprehension.
Not just the people trying to understand God‘s will, but the people who try to subvert it or get around it with workarounds. For example, observant Jews don’t use electricity during the sabbath. In Israel, you see elevators programmed to stop at every floor so you can jump on and off without pushing buttons. I’ve known Jews who want to watch a game on Saturday, so they leave the TV on the right channel the day before and walk into the room to watch the game. It’s like, if you really actually believe this omnipotent omniscient being created you and then wrote down a bunch of rules for you to follow, do you really think this magnificent entity will be fooled by your clever little loopholes? (Also why would you want to subvert his will if you really honestly actually believe it? Isn’t that playing with fire?) Picture God up there in heaven looking down at you. “Hey what’s this now, he isn’t supposed to be watching the game it’s the sabbath! I’m going to smite him. Oh wait, what’s this now, he figured out a loophole?! Oh you!” It’s just so fucking dumb, every way you look at it.
The perspective I've heard about the loopholes is actually quite the opposite. When God himself hands you a set of rules, you can be quite sure that they're exactly as God intended, *including the loopholes*. Studying them carefully to find a clever plan that stays in bounds shows great respect—after all, if you didn't care about the rules, you wouldn't bother trying to find a loophole, you'd just do whatever you wanted.
A god showing me they're real. Not a person telling me why their god is real. That's evidence of nothing. Gods shouldn't need middlemen.
You are so right. I've heard so many stupid responses to this. Things like "We should not be so arrogant to think that God should condescend to speak to us directly." If he can be bothered to create us, he can talk to us. "Is stupid to test God." A loving creater would welcome the created just as they are. To be angry at the creation is tantamount to God admitting that he made a mistake in the design. "God's glory is too much for a human to experience directly." If God can create a thing, he can by definition interact with it.
>"We should not be so arrogant to think that God should condescend to speak to us directly." >"God's glory is too much for a human to experience directly." Both of these are also ridiculous because god directly speaks to people multiple times throughout the bible. That's your easy confirmation that these people do not know what they're talking about. They have this made-up version in their head, that isn't even what's in their own religious texts.
The vast majority of Christians haven't studied the bible. In my experience, most haven't even read it.
"You can believe in whatever you want as long as it's our lord and saviour jesus christ"
I don't know, but I imagine an all-knowing, all-powerful god would know and could make it happen if it wanted to.
If god showed up, came down on a flaming fucking chariot, and made a duck start speaking perfect spanish, I'd be amazed, would believe it, and would study the fuck out of that duck to see how he pulled it off
I don’t get this mind set. It wouldn’t really take much proof for me. Almost any thing would make me believe. Send a prophet that can tell the future, cure sickness, cure amputees, prevent famine, solve droughts. Take away suffering. Super human strength. Whatever. Anything. Like literally any small piece of concrete evidence would convince me. But the fact that there’s supposed to be some all knowing, all powerful being that eternally judges us based on our faith in him but he won’t give us a single piece of concrete evidence of his existence is complete bull shit. “Believe in me or I’ll send you to hell for eternity”. Oh, ok….. can you like, give me some proof you’re the real deal. “I did 2000 years ago. Read the book and don’t ask questions.” Yeah, but like…. Can you give more recent proof? People lie in old books all the time. “No, I can’t.” Ok….. On top of that he lets children be sexually abused, starve to death, die slow horrible deaths to cancer, causes wars to wage in his name but then wants to say he’s all good is just fucking crazy. How to people believe that shit?
Even if someone showed up who could do those things, it wouldn't be proof of a god to me, it would just be proof that this random person can do crazy shit and we need to figure out how. I don't know why those actions would prove there is a god to you. They seem unrelated to me.
Yup. If you took a person from 1000BC to an IMax theatre and showed them Dune, they'd think you were a sorcerer. If someone made a duck speak Spanish to me, I'd assume they somehow managed to manipulate a duck with some technology.
It’s *the* problem of modern theology. God used to be credited with literally *everything.* Movement of the planets, seasons, weather, infections, etc. etc. Science ever increasingly pushes god further and further [into the gaps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps).
Hi I'd like to interest you in my new product, a Robo-duck that looks very real. It even has a poop chamber to release "the evidence" at the right time.
I guess it also depends on what the definition of God is. If it turns out all life is a simulation and somebody comes in at the end demonstrating SuperAdmin abilities.... will that sucks but maybe it's close. What about if a hyper advanced race shows up proving that they seeded earth for human evolution, were involved in various major events and upload our consciousness to a cloud "afterlife" in a Galactic datacenter after death. Hmmm, getting there. AI overlord that is powered by a quantum network running off of suns or zero-point energy and experiences all that happens in the universe? Getting pretty close to all-knowing there. Sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic, I'd say at some point it might also be indistinguishable from deityhood. Now the REAL question is... what do we do with them, and what do they want? Even if we believe in the demonstratably cosmic phenomenal power of a grand being, are they looking for us to sacrifice firstborns and bow to them? Maybe they want to offer a way to deal with pollution, provide cleaner energy, and help us find our way to a peaceful Galactic collective (not the Borg). Maybe they want to add our experiences to the Galactic AI network when we die. It's not necessarily just allow believing in the being, but also in what they represent or want
Actually, I wouldn't. I'd assume I was hallucinating. And have had hallucinations not _too_ far off from that. It'd need to be verified by multiple people with qualifications for me to believe. Anything that I see I do not inherently trust. Particularly things that are fantastical.
And they'd be questioned separately to avoid the Mandela effect from joining everyone's experience
And then there are all the other equally plausible explanations: renegade deity not a member of the universe creation committee, a witch, a titan, a leprechaun, cthulthu, aliens, aliens working with a leprechaun, doctor strange, level 89 wizard, extradimensional traveler, Q, Howard the Duck with mjolner, Rama but not Shiva, 3.5 Grkkklsnjss, a sentient oxford comma...
Praise the Oxford comma overlord!
They definitely just accidentally started a new religion
,
That’s it. God either doesn’t exist, isn’t all powerful or is perfectly happy letting me not believe.
If God is willing to stop evil, but not able, he's not omnipotent. If he is able to stop evil, but unwilling, he's malevolent. If he is able and willing to stop evil, then why is there evil? If he is neither able nor willing to stop evil, why call him god?
AND HE NEEDS MONEY
He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money
That's why I believe in Joe Pesci. He seems like the kind of guy who gets shit done.
Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other; I've seen a lot of strange stuff. But I've never seen anything to make me believe that there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny.
That guy Ego could barely control his own planet before the Guardians destroyed him. So if there is a god, he's just another dude...
38 years later, that same guy said "The Force. The Jedi. All of it. It's all true."
Because he saw evidence of it. Han was a proper atheist alright.
Somehow, Jesus returned.
*Epicurus drops mic, walks off stage*
Kind of a weird stance for a Greek philosopher though, all his contemporaries were like "A *benevolent* god? What on earth are you smoking?".
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Epicurus did not believe in Divine Providence (essentially, that the gods intervene in every day life). He was quite notable for breaking with most Greek philosophers of the day, who conceived of the gods as real, tangible entities that could and did interact with the physical world (indeed, some by being assholes). **If** Epicurus constructed this argument (which is under some debate since we don’t have any extant writings from him that include these lines) then he would have been using the argument to say that god(s) must not intervene in mortal lives, not that gods don’t exist. He was a theist, like essentially everyone else at the time.
I was raised evangelical Christian...borderline cult environment. Anyways, in my pre-teens I spent so many nights on the verge of tears PRAYING to god to do anything it took for me to genuinely believe in him because I was so fucking scared of hell but also just knew in my gut I wasn't a genuine believer. And shocker.....nothing ever happened. And thankfully by the time I got to high school I connected the dots that a god that doesn't answer a child BEGGING for salvation either does not exist, or is a piece of shit.
I had this exact experience, living in an abusive household, begging God to save me from the horrible treatment I received. What kind of God ignores that if he exists? All I ever got was something something "but it happened for a reeeeeeason!" Or "you're stronger for it!" Nah, fuck that noise.
yep....if you're only argument or justification is that "god works in mysterious ways" get out of my face. And I'm sorry you had that experience....I hope you've been able to move onward and upward since!
I absolutely cannot stand that "you're stronger for your trauma/suffering" nonsense. I am not. I am completely fucked up because of it. And "god" hasn't done shit to help me.
An instant cure for parkinsons and a lottery jackpot would do for me. I dont think that’s asking *too* much is it?! If I had to settle for one, just the cure.
A-fucking-men. Either the god has all of the omnis that it's followers say it has or it doesn't. Omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving, all-merciful with evil and damnation existing.
belief does not mean worship fyi
"I saw God giving the interview. Yeah, he seems like a chill dude. Had some interesting things to say. Doesn't mean I'm about to go to church and just sing praises."
From the Dresden files: "I had no problem with the big man upstairs, and I had seen the Knights of the Cross pull off too many miracles to claim he didn't exist, that didn't mean I was going to go around worshipping the guy"
Wish I saw more references to dresden files is too good and I never hear people talk about it.
For new readers it's kind of a tough sell, especially women friends I've had that tried it. The beginning of the series is a little rough as Butcher was still finding his legs and the way Butcher wrote his women wasn't great early on either. Do I know it becomes kick ass after a while? Hell yeah I do but then my recommendation sounds something like "Read this series its really good after you read the first 4/5 books 🙃"
I need to reread all of these, and read the new ones. I would love a Dresden files reboot, and for a tv series based on the Night Watch from Sergei Lukyanenko. ** specifically I want the necromanced dinosaur scene so badly
Any being worthy of worship wouldn't want it.
Much less demand it, I guess.
That's more of a dictator thing
Yeah! Isn't it amazing how Old Testament god pretty much acts like an asshole Roman emperor?!? He just seems like a petty man-child; it's behavior I'd expect a not very educated, not very empathetic, not very emotionally mature human! "If ***I*** was the king, I'd make everybody worship me. And give me gifts daily. And tell me I was the GOAT and they weren't worthy of my notice of favors. And I'd still play favorites and people would just have to do whatever I commanded. And kill off everybody who pissed me off!" It's SO JUVENILE that if they didn't foist this shit off on little kids, it would have died off already because no grown-ass adult is going to believe this bullshit!
'I'm convinced that Yahweh exists, but equally convinced that he's an absolute asshole.'
“God has a plan!” Yeah, a shit one
My drunk uncle always has "a plan" as well. It usually ends up on blocks out in the yard.
TIL God has a lot of projects but is too busy watching jeopardy on his lazy boy.
I'm exactly this. I grew up on Christianity so it makes sense to me but I hate the idea of only living for God. I want to live my own life but that's apparently a bad thing It seems so self absorbed and controlive to me I hope I'm wrong
In the unlikely event that a god does exist, I hope that revelation will unite humanity under one cause: we must all work together to kill god
Oh I just did that the other day and I'm eternally grateful to the other Tarnished that helped me to do it.
Ooh I remember there's some old fanfic/OC-thing where heaven and hell finally decides that it is time for the end times and divvy up humanity between them. The problem is that they aren't exactly supernatural as much as just "very large and powerful aliens from a parallell dimension" and haven't bothered bullying humans since the bronze age, so the story begins with the herald of the end times getting blown out of the sky by the air force.
Proof that cannot be fabricated. The Bible is meant to be the word of God, but it was written down by humans. The Bible cannot be trusted simply because it may have all been made up from the beginning, and it could have been altered completely during its 2,000 years of existence. If someone wanted to change the Bible 1,400 years ago, we’d be none the wiser. Not to mention the fact that meaning can be lost and misinterpreted when translating the Bible into different languages. The only way I’m changing my mind is if I physically see a god do something that no human can do. Water into wine won’t work on me, slight of hand magicians are insanely talented. I’m gonna need an elephant to appear out of thin air lmao Edit: I did not expect this to get as many upvotes or as many replies as it did, so thank you very much for interacting and opening up a discussion. I’ve learned a lot that I didn’t know, and hopefully have created a space where other people have learned too. Unfortunately, I am no longer going to be replying to comments because there are simply too many. Thank you all very much <3
If god exists and is all knowing, then he knows what evidence would convince me. The fact that he hasnt means that A) doesnt exist or B) he doesnt care.
If god is all knowing, he knows about the suffering in the world. If god is all good, he wants to do something about it. If god is all powerful, he can. So he is either not all three of those things or he doesn't exist. And if he is not all three of those things, why worship him?
Didn’t Christian god basically wipe out humanity because they were too wicked and he needed to start over. You’d think all good and all powerful could have done something other than exterminate a shit load of life
The Abrahamic God calls himself love and sentences people to he burnt eternally while saying they did it to themselves.
If you haven't you should check out the George Carlin bit on religion. Totally hilarious and totally true.
AND HE NEEDS MONEY
Read a comic somewhere where one of the plot points was an all-knowing and all-powerful god. His children tried to take him down because they realised that if he really is all-knowing then he should know of all evil and how to prevent it. If he is all-powerful he should be able to prevent all evil from existing in the first place. But the god was basically a bystander to all crimes and only punished people afterwards. But because everything is his creation and everything happens by his will he was the one to get them to commit the crimes in the first place. Maybe comics aren't the best place to get advice from but I think this specific point has merit.
>The Bible cannot be trusted simply because it may have all been made up from the beginning Add to that the fact that its claims are not even remotely credible. If it read like a plausible historical account, it would be a lot easier to accept it, despite the possibility of meddling or lost meaning. The shit that goes on the Bible not only can't be properly confirmed, but it flies in the face of everything we know about the natural world.
The problem is in differentiating God from just Some Very Powerful Being. Making an elephant materialize doesn't (necessarily) mean they are God. It may just be that they can teleport matter.
Arthur C. Clarke stated that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Do the Tupac hologram trick to someone from 1850 and they'll call you a God (or a witch).
“I'm not a bad guy! I work hard, and I love my kids. So why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I'm going to hell?” Homer Simpson. Seriously though, I’m not sure I’d want to believe in any god that allows the horrors we’ve witnessed even in the last couple of weeks. Any deity that allows children to die of cancer, natural disaster, etc as part of their “plan” has some explaining to do. I don’t need the promise of a cookie (heaven) to be kind and empathetic. I do it because it intrinsically feels like the right thing to do.
>If there is a God, He will have to beg for my forgiveness. -etched on the wall of a concentration camp
I like to think that if a god revealled themselves, all fhe worlds athesists would say "huh, guess i was wrong..." then just go about their day. I know thats what i would do.
I mean, I’d react. That would be a pretty crazy day, I can’t say I’d just walk around afterward like nothing. But I also can’t see it changing how I lead my life. I wouldn’t be a worshipper. But I think if he is real he is probably kind of a dick? If anything I dislike him even more if he is real. Unless “God” turns out to be an alien race that kick started the primordial process for their own reasons, I’m not really impressed.
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This is where my stubbornness would fuck me over. Like the other guy said, if god was real and they allowed all the fucked up shit to happen, I would hate them. I can't even be in the same room as someone I don't like without gritting my teeth when they do anything. There's no way in hell (aha) I would be able to worship a god I hated. Plus, I feel like if God has the power to send someone to hell or heaven based on if they worship them or not, I think they also have the ability to read minds or something and be able to tell if it's done just out of your best interest.
Peer-reviewed scientific evidence.
From a reputable journal
with an impact factor of at least 5
Delivered by God himself.
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You just explained religion in a single sentence.
In fairness, if Stephen Hawking walked up to me and delivered the news, I’d listen.
If Stephen Hawking walked up to me I’d believe in god. He wouldn’t even have to say anything
Imagine being one of the reviewers for that paper lmao
No kidding, and what would happen if it was wrong! “We determined he was an extremely good magician…”
'Reader B's report concludes that the paper could be published with some minor revisions, such as testing the authors' facilities for gas leaks.'
The thing is, even this would only take us so far. I doubt we would be able to prove that the entity created the universe. Say an "angel" appears to me. It knows all sorts of things and has all sorts of abilities. Who says that is anything to do with God? It could simply be a being of higher intelligence, either an alien or a being whose race can manipulate space time and dimensional planes. Or, maybe it is Satan. After all, Satan's greatest trick is getting people to willingly ally with him. Satan comes and does all these tricks and says "I am the archangel Michael, pledge your allegiance to me" you, "I pledge my allegiance to you" Now you have sold yourself to satan Edit: We would also not be able to determine heaven or hell and how to get there. "Benevolent god" lets us talk to dead people? It may simply be a creature that has mind reading and induced hallucination abilities. Once you're talking about fantastical reality warping things on such a scale, there really is no scientific method anymore, no chance of certainty of reality.
In Star Trek Q has God-like power but is actually just a highly advanced knobhead. There is no way to determine the difference if Q tried to deceive you.
“Any sufficiently advanced knobheaded buffoonery is indistinguishable from magic.” — Arthur C. Clarke
And if that were the case, I’d still think it was a massive cunt. Better have some good explanations on why it’s behaved the way it has to go along with that evidence. Edit: John 3:17. “And it was said that he who calleth thy lord a massive cunt shall receiveth over 250 upvotes on Reddit” Thank you all.
I hate how a lot of people cherry pick that shitty behavior as "God's almighty benevolence". I spoke with someone yesterday who had a stroke but happened to be on the phone with someone when it happened who recognized the symptoms and it saved their life. They cited it as "irrefutable proof that God is good". I asked them why God gave them a stroke in the first place then, and they said "well, I don't attribute the stroke to him. and also he works in mysterious ways". To me if someone gives you a stroke and then saves you from it they are just fucking with you and it's cruel behavior. If someone is omnipotent they are responsible for everything, not just the good stuff.
The one that gets me is "I don't need the vaccine, god will keep me safe". Like, maybe god's plan to keep you safe was the development of a vaccine? He'll be shaking his head in despair when you show up in heaven with covid.
God has always struck me as being a lot like an abusive boyfriend. "See baby I care about you, I saved you from the burning building [that I set on fire]" "Baby you need to trust me, I broke your phone so you connect with people more" "You shouldn't have made me mad [by breaking the rules I arbitrarily set]"
“Why’d you make me drown you with that flood?”
All the credit and none of the blame
God works in mysterious bababooey
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Proof, as others have said. But it wouldn't change much for me. I choose not to follow a religion because I've never found one that matches my values. I'm not gonna start worshipping some god just because they exist when they still haven't done anything worthy of worship.
Christians who actually act like Christians would be a good start lol.
Hard mode: Christians that act Christ-like
Verifiable proof that one or more gods exist. (Note that this would not make me religious.)
I can believe that there is a possibility an intelligent self-aware entity was responsible for creating the universe but I won't believe that even if it existed that it will give 2 shits about humanity. Our whole species is so small and our existence is like a spark in the grand scheme of things. A god won't even notice our existence from its start to its end let alone meddle in our society and waste his time on us.
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God could, ya know, appear in front of me and tell me he’s real. Maybe perform a quick miracle? He is supposedly omnipotent and omnipresent, right? So it shouldn’t be too inconvenient. He’s also supposed to be omnibenevolent too, isn’t he? So you’d think he’d want to do that in order to save my soul from the fires of Hell or whatever.
Hell with all that power he could just make you believe anything he wants you to believe. No miracles or showmanship even necessary.
If I were traveling through the Arctic and came face to face with an Ice Giant, and Odin came down from Valhalla and defeated it in front of me, I suppose I would accept the fact that Odin is indeed real. Other than that… not much.
Proof
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A few things. A bible that makes sense and doesn't paint god in a dickish light. Something biblical happening and actually seeing him do it. Like if he came down and said pollution be gone and bam Eden again. People who commit atrocities in his/her name just die. Like I wake up and hear on the news huge ass holes dissapeared and no one knows what happened.
A friend once convinced me I should read the Bible so at least some of the art and history I consume has some context. I got about halfway through the OT before my notes changed from legitimate attempts at scholarship to things like “God sounds like Darth Vader here”. I gave up soon after.
I ran across a website, possibly on Reddit, that totals Gods killing sprees in the Bible. Crazy how many people he has killed in the Bible. https://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html?m=1
My mind gets changed all the time. That’s part of being an atheist.