Jayjay

In another thread, someone asked what it would take to convince atheists that they're wrong, and some people answered that if God did exist and inspired a Holy Book, it would be nothing like the Bible we have now. This discussion made me think, what would be the easiest way for a deity to incorporate a "proof" of his existence in a book? For sake of the argument, let's assume that the deity in question only inspires the original authors, and then sits back and watches.

The obvious solution is to include knowledge about physics or biology that is impossible for ancient people to know... description of DNA or the periodic table might be enough. So I guess this is the easy way out.

Another thing that crossed my mind was mathematics... the deity could "inspire" the author to write down some complex mathematical insight that neither the author or his contemporaries understand, but which is yet detailed enough as to not raise any doubts to a modern mathematician. It seems to me that this is a lot harder to do than simply including physics or chemistry tidbits; if we did have ancient writings having deep mathematical insights, the logical explanation would not be divine intervention but simply that the people figured things out by themselves.

So, the thought experiment is: if you were to include a strictly "mathematical proof" of your godhood in a holy text, say, at least a couple of thousand years ago, what would be the best way to do it when taking into account imperfect copying and perhaps translations to other languages (that rules out "bible codes" and the like, I think...)?

Lots of digits of pi?
Number theory, e.g. Fermat's theorems?
Gödel's theorem (just the result)?
Hmm?

(Edit: it just occurred to me that this question should've been posted under Science & Skepticism, as it as little to do with religion...)

Shadowy Man

How would you know that a several thousand year old "holy" book with advanced mathematics wan't delivered by aliens from another planet?

Jayjay

It's always an option, I guess. But the whole point is to put something in the book that serves as a justification for the rest of it, and if it's said someplace "we're not aliens, dammit" that should make the divine inspiration a more plausible explanation.

Anyway, the question still remains even if the book is inspired/given by aliens instead of supernatural deities.

Marduk

“How would you know that a several thousand year old "holy" book with advanced mathematics wan't delivered by aliens from another planet?”


Good point!!! Now what is the difference between “God or Gods” and an advanced alien species? Neither would be from Earth so by definition they would all be extraterrestrial. How could we tell the difference? Especially if the aliens were so far ahead of us on an evolutionary scale unknown to us at this point.
“my thoughts are not your thoughts” from somewhere in the Bible.
“Let US create man in OUR image”
What IS the difference???

Infinity Lover

I'd think the source code for windows, that is if God is truelly sincere about defeating the devil.

Jayjay

I thought the source code of windows is the work of the devil...? Anyway, this kind of plan has two holes:

1) The goat herders who propagate the Book won't have a clue as to what the thousands and thousands of lines of gibberish are supposed to mean, and it's more than likely that they edit it extensively while trying to make sense of it. Or drop it altogether.

2) In a world where source code of windows (written in C, I presume) is a revered sacred text, nobody will develop C language syntax, let alone write windows in it. So the text will remain gibberish. Maybe computer scientists will manage to see that there is some sort of algorithmic structure to the text, but after millenia of theological interpretations I'm not convinced it would be the obviously only way to look at it.

jayh

Probably 'simple'. Look at the alleged spectacular prophecies, such as the reference to Cyrus in Isaiah. But the only copies of Isaiah are hundreds of years after Cyrus. Just produce an un-tampered pre-Cyrus copy, that would be helpful. (Apparently the God of the Universe hasn't caught the habit of saving his receipts)

-RRH-

First up, even if you can't prove whether it was God or aliens, proving unequivocally that it came from a non-human source would put your hypothetical book head and shoulders above everything else out there.

To this end:

Write the book in the stars. Anyone with a telescope could look into the night sky and read passages from your book.



But, if the rules of the game say your proof has to be contained in the book itself, it's a little trickier. If you include scientific knowledge, how will later historians know whether the book was the source of the knowledge, or if the book just became a way to dispense knowledge that was discovered by humans.

As for including computer programs, you are in a strange place if you write something for a language that hasn't been invented yet. If you write it in C, does that mean the creator of C is divinely inspired? Will priests be the first to invent the idea of programming? I admit that would be more useful (and more impressive) than the usual gematria stuff.