orleander

what i want to know is what would god's motive be? there are easier, more believable ways which he could prove himself such as appearing in front of loads of people. in answer to the question i would probably take a photo of it and phone all my friends to see if they could see it as well. then i would either convert or just be very confused!

John A. Broussard

Someone earlier mentioned a better way. When she/he/it shows up just say, "Make me believe." That's a much easier solution, and it cuts out all the in between stuff. That way, god doesn't have to appear in a pretzel or on a pizza--god just makes you believe that god exists.

capsaicin67

Yes----flaming letters on the moon would just make me more suspicious about what was going on. That sounds like technological trickery. And it's so lame.

I'd require one or probably more personal visits of an extraordinary nature, along with some sort of major intervention ["one wish" sort of thing], a family healing [each person gets one] etc. It would and should require profound evidence in light of the hundreds of years of absence and neglect.

Sultanist

That's easy. If I see flaming letters as big as the moon, and they say 1+1=7,
then buddy I'm gonna start refiguring my checkbook right then and there.

Goes without saying. When the whole fucking Moon turns into a Coke logo,
you'll see me drinking a case a day of that pisswater. And bowing before the Coke polar bear in worship. And from that moment on my ten commandments will be "Thou Coca Cola it's the real thing".
At least until the Sun says "Pepsi".

Avatar

I'd want to know: Which version of which Bible?

Aethari

I'm a bit confused by all of the responses that say "well, shit, if something is written in flaming letters on the moon, I'll believe whatever is up there." To me, at least, the only rational response would be to ask: "God DAMN, how did someone write in flaming letters on the moon?!" After all, there are infinitely many possible beings, many not even supernatural, that could have written such a message, for an infinite variety of reasons-- I fail to see why I would pick out "Snap, God must be sending me a message" as the most probable, especially when the moon-writing could be done by a highly advanced alien civilization that doesn't require invoking the supernatural. Of course, those are just specific problems with THAT case.

A better situation might be if I was sitting chatting with my friends, a man appeared out of thin air, claimed to be God, performed a number of obvious breaches of physical law, and then disappeared again. Then, yes, I would think I would have to believe that whoever I had met was in fact God, and he did exist. On the other handing, posing the similar hypothetical where the man tells me he is in fact that God of the Bible makes a more interesting question-- many atheists, myself included, question whether God as described in the Bible is even logically coherent. After all, it doesn't make much sense to ask someone "if you met a square circle, would you believe in it?" It reminds me of those skits from SNL: "If the moon was made of spare ribs...would you eat it?" "If the...what?" "Just say yes and we'll move on!"

Fencesitter

But then wouldn't you wonder if this was some magic trick done with cameras and/or mirrors?

What's an obvious breach of a physical law? Sometimes magic tricks look like that. How would you know it wasn't a very clever hoax?

Fence

Aethari

Nah. Tricks are good, but when you're standing right next to them, as opposed to having them 'on the surface of the moon,' it's hard to get fooled that easily. Think the later Matrix movies-- the digital trickery is orders of magnitudes better than what someone could set up with 'smoke and mirrors' right in front of you, and even that was obviously fake.

A compelling breach of nature law would be, hmm...

-Transforming my pants into moss. That would be nifty, and impossible to stage. Any number of similar transformations would work-- turning my friend into a seal, my car into a postage stamp.

-Teleportation of almost any sort-- especially places I've never been or could not go to. Space almost anywhere would be nifty.

-Mind-reading of a compelling nature. Telling me things that I've thought but never spoken without any verbal response from me, and no leading questions! Such as, "Remember that time in seventh grade when you thought you could....?," etc.

-Mental manipulation. Granting me knowledge that I previously did not or could not have. Such as handing me an arcane text on quantum physics I couldn't grasp, then suddenly giving me full and lasting mastery of the subject.

All sorts of things work. As a skeptic, at least IMHO, it's much easier to think of compelling demonstrations than a non-skeptic, because people who aren't naturally dubious about events don't have a good grasp of what can and can not be faked.

Fencesitter

Interesting. As you mentioned each one, I was thinking about how they could be faked. (not that I figured out how, just that I was thinking about it)

I like that transforming pants into moss and the teleportation, but some of the others, I thought might not as easily be verifiable.

I've seen some good magic tricks where the audience was close, but I wasn't in the audience, so I couldn't vouch if the audience was tricked.

Fence

Corona688

Why? Evolution's a fact of life, sure, but so's farting. The mere fact of evolution's existence does not compel me to build my philosophy around it.