AJ113

Here goes with my first thread, be gentle with me!

Many of the threads I read, especially in EOG, have a similar type of recurring post. It goes something like this: "If God exists, why doesn't he show himself to me/us? Why doesn't he reveal himself in all his glory in front of me, and then there would be no problem in believing!

Yet in other threads, I read posts something like: "Even if God were to appear to me, I would judge that I was hallucinating, and therefore his revelation to me would be invalid."

Any thoughts?

Clutch

Yep. Those are different people.

Gentle enough?

TooBad

Good observation.

This is why an affirmative answer to the question "Is there a God?" requires a clear definition of God and a reliable criterion as to what would count as evidence for his existence. But I've rattled on about this in other EoG threads, so I won't bore you with it here.

phlebas

Well, I think you'll find that most atheists would require more than God just making an appearance. He would have to do something Godlike.

The hallucination thing is always there, but who is to say you're not hallucinating right now?

I don't know exactly what it would take to make me believe. Presumably, God would know. He hasn't done it yet, so at the moment, I assume:

a) he doesn't care if I believe
b) he doesn't want me to believe
c) he is, despite claims to the contrary, incapable of proving himself to me
d) there is no "he" to believe in

Not quite Clutch-gentle, but not too bad, I hope

sir drinks-a-lot

I am one of those who think that it would be painfully easy for god to convince alot of people to believe.

For example, appearing as a great face in the sky above NYC or above the superbowl. He could extend his hand and pull up a few trees or something. If a large number of people saw it, the suspicion of hallucinations would go away.

AJ113

Hmm, conflicting views already. This brings me to a related subject that I have been wrestling with for some time:

Another phrase I often read is "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

And yet there are those that would dismiss extraordinary evidence on the basis that it is, - well, - extraordinary.

Personally I think that any claim should backed up by any kind of good evidence or reason. Why should the basis of acceptability change according to the claim?

What criteria would you use to decide that the claim is extrordinary, and how would you decide that the evidence presented in support of the claim matched the "extraordinariness" of the claim?

Automaton

What you need to do is understand the difference between mundane and extraordinary vision. The first would fall into the category of standard hallucinations. I would not judge the existence of entity X based on what I saw during an acid trip, and I would still have reason to believe a moment of "religious experience" was nothing more than a hallucination. The second however, would involve actual interaction with celestial beings, especially some particular God, such an experience would be so overwhelming to me, that I would simply have no possible way to judge it as a hallucination. There we have it.

hinduwoman

As I keep saying even a small miracle would satisfy me.

Just have a HUGE chocolate sundae materialize out of nowhere and I eat it. This is proof of something really weird going on.

But so far the christian God is indifferent to my pleas, made several times already on this board. <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" />

Theli

AJ113...

I would have to be complex and informative. If this is an existencial claim (trying to prove the existence of a thing), I should be able comfirm all attributes applied to that thing.

Koyaanisqatsi

Look, we have scaled standards of contact with extraterrestrials that delineate what is and is not considered more reliable evidence of contact, so why in the world wouldn't we have a scaled standard (or any standard, for that matter) for the existence of an anthropomorphic, omnimax, supernatural fairy god king who magically blinked the entire universe into existence ex nihilo?

That's an extraordinary claim from any rational perspective. It therefore requires extraordinary evidence to support it.

It's a perfectly reasonable assessment of both, yes?

And as for "what evidence is good enough?" That's just theist posturing; an attempt to dismiss the legitimate observation and fatal criticism that cult members believe based on no evidence and that demanding anything of God is an affront to him, which is just pathetically childish, yet it works.

Thus, it is employed.