How would God reveal Himself to you?

That’s God’s problem, not mine.

GQ I don’t know what it would take to make me believe he exists. Maybe show up and clear up some major suffering?

Similar question was asked by @ETpro last week. I’ll use my answer again…

I don’t know what it would take, to be honest. But that’s not the point. An omnipotent, omniscient deity would know what it would take for me to believe.

@Adirondackwannabe: Completely hypothetical question, the answer to which I’m truly curious: What if a person, like a politician, famous pastor or priest, or a celebrity, were to use their good standing, money, and influence to alleviate suffering? What if they proclaimed as loud as they could, “God told me to and God gave me the means to do it.”? Would people simply put them in the category with other religious philanthropists and say, “Thanks, but you’re crazy.”? What if He did come down and declared His true identity while fixing the world’s problems? Would we still say, “Thanks, but you’re crazy.”?

@RandomGirl That’s an excellent question. God comes down and I put him in with the other people doing work in his name. That’s going to take some thought. Jeez, you’re not supposed to make me think so much.

A voice from the heavens that everyone can hear and then a miraculous type of event seen by the world would probably work. In history it seems God did things in a single locale and relied on the locals to spread the word across the world. That really makes no sense to me.

That depends on the definition of “god” and the parameters of the specific god in question.

For Biblegod, I’ve often said I’d take a repeat of the Yahweh reality show that took place in 1 Kings – where they waterlogged a wooden altar, then called fire down from heaven.

I mean, conceivably, he’s already done it once. Doing it again couldn’t be that hard.

But then, god’s been pretty silent since the invention of recording media.

If someone stood in my face and said “I’m god”, I’d direct them to the nearest psychological institution.

@RandomGirl Many people do good things, for their own reasons or in the “name of god”. But it is not the god doing the act – it is the person. If the thought of a deity’s pleasure makes a person do a good deed, that’s fantastic. I’m happy they’re happy. The issue comes in when the pleasure of the deity makes people do evil things. And in this case, I’ll define evil as “restricting the capability of consenting adults to do that which makes them happy without causing harm to the unwilling”.

Through illnesses, accidents, problems and other misfortunes!

In my frivolous moments, I imagine an alien coming from some planet far away, and saying that it was revealed to them that God appeared on our planet 2000 years ago.
At that point, lots of people would try to explain it away…

Let me follow this up with a true story that may or may not add to this discussion. Note: I am changing the name of the person involved (for obvious reasons), but the rest of the details are real.

When I was in college I used to work with adult schizophrenics. They had their own apartments, but needed assistance with daily activities and informal counseling. Much of my time was spent with a guy named Dave. Dave was convinced that the FBI and Robert Redford (the actor) were conspiring against him. Robert Redford had visited him multiple times and sexually violated him, and it was done with the approval of the FBI. The FBI would read his mail, and had inserted an electronic device in his brain so that they could communicate with him in the form of incessant voices.

During some of our most enlightening conversations, Dave would acknowledge that he was mentally ill. He would refer to a specific date, 25 years prior, that was the point where his illness started. When he would discuss the FBI’s plans, I would ask him if he thought there was a possibility that the voices, the paranoid FBI and Robert Redford visions could be mere symptoms of his illness, he was open to the possibility. But he would invariably follow it up with, “But I know that the FBI is communicating with me via this device. That’s the thing. I might have schizophrenia, but that doesn’t change the fact that these things are happening. In fact, it makes sense that people wouldn’t believe me. Maybe that’s why the FBI and Robert Redford are doing this. They know people won’t believe me.”

God(ness) reveals himself to me in the goodness—and the desire to do good—in myself and others. For me it’s that simple.

Fun question, something to ruminate on.

I don’t know for certain what, if anything, would convince me.
I
do know that it would have to be something actually done by the god and not through an intermediary. There have been too many questionable actions done “in Gods name” or through “Gods divine inspiration”, for me to accept a third party miracle.

@rojo: I pose the same question to you as I did to @Adirondackwannabe – How would you know an action was being done by the god in question, and not just a kook? If you saw some sort of a spirit or superhuman being (or events that you couldn’t explain naturally), how would you know you weren’t going crazy?

This has been fun for me to think about, too! Thanks for all the answers :)

@RandomGirl Simple. You wouldn’t. However, you could logically consider the probability of either instance occurring.

We know there are crazy people, and we know we all have the ability to go crazy. We have proof of this every day.

We have no proof that any god has ever directly impacted anyone, ever.

If Milo, suddenly and graciously, allowed me to clip all his nails, including the dew claws and the back paws, I would reconsider considering the existence of a deity.

I believe in him either way, but it would be fun to imagine that he suddenly makes every evil killer, rapist, pimp, drug trafficker, suddenly disappear from the face of the planet. Oh, and some greedy CEO’s. LOL Would be awesome and would make my years!

I doubt that God would reveal himself or herself. Being everywhere and in everything, even with the faintest discernment God is evident, but you have to look. To avoid the trap of personification, I think of God in the third person, the Spirit or Holy Ghost. My ‘goodness’ (or lack there of) is a reflection of the orientation of my spirit with The Spirit.

So now I’m wondering this: How do we explain the millions of people throughout history that have never had any proof, but still lived and died for the cause?

One believes what they want to believe. Given the long history of cultures everywhere evolving superstitious beliefs into religious institutions, having a sure and certain hope has been proven sufficient to sustain most in trying times.

He already did.
Once, when I was getting shot at, I was having a hard time making myself small enough to disappear into the ground. It was looking pretty bad.
Then God revealed himself as a small depression in the earth about ten feet away. I crawled into Him and here I am.

@RandomGirl They willfully (for the most part) participated in the mass delusion that is organized religion.

@RandomGirl you’re talking about Yahweh, he missed a great opportunity back when his chosen people were first putting pen to papyrus and writing the Torah. He could have dropped a few hints in there like the fact that there was a big bang, and that it can be verified even today by the ripples it left in the Cosmic Background Radiation. He might have mentioned the Planck Constant accurately, and given us the exact number for the Hubble Constant, something we are still trying to establish with some level of precision today.

Sadly, we find none of that in early Rabbinical texts. What we instead find is a flat earth floating in a sea held in a bowl. Around the bowl are 8 concentric heavenly domes rotating, one for our Moon, one for the Sun, one for each of the planets the ancients had found with the naked eye and a final one where Yahweh and the stars reside. The heavenly domes were actually seas, which I suppose is where all the water came from to flood the entire Earth including covering Mount Everest’s 5 mile high peak in Noah’s time. And he gave them a genealogy with years lived that asserts the Earth is about 6,000 years old.

So if Yahweh is going to reveal himself to me as the Eternal, Omnipotent, Omniscient Creator; he’s off to a very poor start in the 4,000 or so years he’s had to work out how to reveal himself convincingly. Still, there are plenty of things left to learn about the Universe. I’d be pretty impressed if he came to me, a Web developer with no formal training in high-level physics, maths and quantum mechanics; and revealed to me a Grand Unification Theory that ties relativistic gravity and quantum mechanics together in such an elegant fashion that I, enlightened by His touch on my mind, could sit down and write a paper explaining it well enough that it would withstand peer review and testing.

Probably in some way that could be seen by every person on the planet, with undeniable miraculous events occurring. (Cows materializing from nothing everywhere, all amputees suddenly gaining full healthy limbs, smiting people with lots of lightning bolts or some other pin point method, etc.) Not to mention the deity setting a few things straight regarding what humans assume about them.

Through people saying things I need to hear at odd times.

I think about this somewhat often.

I think I’m pretty easy to convince. A magic carpet ride would be cool or an extended conversation with pyrotechnics, impossible healings and prophecies might work.

But I think what would really really make me believe is if he simply had a sense of humor in conversation amidst all the miracles.

He already has, by saving both my life and my oldest daughter’s life.

@WillWorkForChocolate In that case, God drives a green imported car.

@Adirondackwannabe God wears surgical scrubs.

@Seek_Kolinahr Although now I’m thinking if that was just fate or something more. Interesting.

It’s odd when people’s reasons for believing are the exact things I would assume would be reasons for them not to.

First off, my dog who passed away 6 years ago shows up licking my face waking me up tomorrow morning.

@mazingerz88 Maybe you just buried your dog here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Sematary

As a hard atheist (Jew) here, I agree it’s a good question. And truth be told, my answer is a bit of a tautology. In order for something to prove to me they are a god, they’d need hard empirical evidence that can be replicated by scientific testing. But if the evidence can be replicated by scientific testing, then it’s a natural physical phenomenon and therefore not a god.

I have no strong feelings about religion either way. You could call me agnostic, but I’m neither 100% theist or 100% atheist. Because I’m still trying to figure out what I believe, or decide if it even matters either way, it probably wouldn’t take a whole lot to convince me.

Other people’s stories about why they believe don’t convince me. Stories of “miracles” don’t convince me. Little boys who die and are brought back to life, only to tell the world all about how they went to heaven and saw God don’t convince me. The experience would actually have to happen to me, but I wouldn’t need God to stand in front of me and introduce himself. I wouldn’t need some disembodied voice to come from the sky. I’m not sure what exactly it would take, though.

The thing with die-hard atheists is that many of them could probably see God float down from the clouds, show himself to the world, and perform miracles in front of their eyes and they’d probably come up with some other explanation other than proof of the existence of God.

Now, that’s not an insult. Die-hard Christians are constantly given “proof” (aka science) of God’s non-existence and they still believe, right?

That’s the funny thing about our beliefs. We’ll do anything to prove that we’re right to avoid conceding to views we’ve been fighting so wholeheartedly up until that point.

Note to certain jellies: Don’t overthink my quotation marks around “proof.” I’m not implying science isn’t proof. Relax.

@livelaughlove21: “The thing with die-hard atheists is that many of them could probably see God float down from the clouds, show himself to the world, and perform miracles in front of their eyes and they’d probably come up with some other explanation other than proof of the existence of God.”

First of all, what does “die-hard atheist” even mean?
Meaningless term aside, some of us have admitted that it would be difficult to figure out exactly what it would take, because we know way too much about delusion and the human brain at this point. I’m not saying that seeing a “god” float down from the clouds and “perform miracles” wouldn’t convince me. But there would be good reason to assume that I am hallucinating. But since a god (at least the concept of god sold here in the U.S.) is omnipotent, it should be able to determine exactly what it would take to convince me.

@livelaughlove21 “they’d probably come up with some other explanation other than proof of the existence of God.”

If there is another explanation, then it’s not proof. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

@tom_g Sorry my choice of words bothered you. What I meant was that there are atheists that are open to other ideas and ones who aren’t. Just like there are religious people who are open minded and others who aren’t.

And if there is a god, I doubt he’d care what it took to convince you (or anyone else) of his existence because, if Christians are right, those that don’t believe go to hell anyway.

@glacial If there’s another valid explanation, yes, you’re right.

@livelaughlove21: ”@tom_g Sorry my choice of words bothered you. What I meant was that there are atheists that are open to other ideas and ones who aren’t. Just like there religious people who are open minded and others who aren’t.”

The term didn’t bother me as much as the straw-man atheist and assumption that it would be reasonable to assume anything other than mental illness, drug-induced or brain tumor induced hallucination if we think we saw someone float down from the clouds and “perform miracles”.

But remember – this question is about how god could reveal himself to you. What would it take for you – a nonbeliever (psst – agnostic atheist) to be convinced that you were not hallucinating? Why does this middle way that you’re positioning yourself in prepare you in a way that the “die-hards” aren’t? Note: The middle way with regards to questions about reality doesn’t end up being as reasonable as many people assume. I have a dragon in my backyard that poops gold. What is the middle way with regards to my claim? Well, the “atheist” position is to withhold belief until there is sufficient evidence. The believer position is to translate everything into evidence to support that claim (well, I did hear thunder last night, and the price of gold is going up, or something). But where exactly is that middle ground that is supposed to be avoiding the “die-hard” nature of the existing positions? I don’t think it exists. Or, if it exists, it’s so intellectually dishonest it’s hardly worth discussing.

^^ Edit: I went back and read your response again, @livelaughlove21, and it reads just like the rest of us atheists…

@livelaughlove21: “I’m not sure what exactly it would take, though.”

I think we’re in complete agreement.

Perhaps if I were to be smitten with the faith bolt, or whatever it is that makes people believe in God.

@tom_g I just don’t believe religious belief (or non-belief) is that black and white.

And I haven’t revealed enough for anyone to label me an agnostic atheist. As I said, I’m straddling the line, still trying to figure that out.

If you don’t have an active belief in a deity, then you are an atheist. You are without a god or gods. Most people are atheists with respect to most of the gods of man. You are an atheist with respect to Viracocha or Quetzalcoatl, for instance.

If you maintain a stance of unknowing, then you are agnostic.

I’m about a 9.8 on the scale. Agnostic atheist, but hardcore. For all intents and purposes, I am convinced there is no god, and if there is a god, it’s not concerned with whether I know it’s there.

@livelaughlove21: ”@tom_g I just don’t believe religious belief (or non-belief) is that black and white.”

It’s binary – even if it feels uncomfortable. If you don’t currently hold a belief in a god or gods, you are an atheist (or nontheist if you prefer). There’s nothing else about the belief (motivation, certainty, etc) that is required.

After being on Fluther so long I have come to the conclusion that I do believe that God exists. After all if it wasn’t for all the jellies in space telling me that “there is no God” which I find most certain is hypocritical because everyday us jellies come and bow down to the big kahuna jellie. Thanks be to Fluther. I will now put on my wings and fly away to an unknown location and await for the 10k arrival because I am certain He will show His face to me then.~

@nofurbelowsbatgirl Dr. J is my homie, not my deity. We’re buds. If anything, we give him a reason for existing.

@tom_g You saying that doesn’t make me believe it. Perhaps the labels are black and white, but not once you get down to the nitty gritty. Not for me, anyways.

@livelaughlove21 Put it this way: you can’t kinda not believe in something, and you can’t make yourself believe in something that you find unbelievable. Just try to believe in Odin. Go ahead. Right now. The world is a flat disc nestled in the tangled branches of the Great Tree Yggdrasil, and Odin is the only thing standing between you and a horde of ice giants that want to eat you. Believe it yet? No?

@livelaughlove21: ”@tom_g You saying that doesn’t make me believe it. Perhaps the labels are black and white, but not once you get down to the nitty gritty. Not for me, anyways.”

Of course. We’re talking about labels. We’re way off topic, but your post was all about labels (the tired “die-hard” labels, as well as trying to carve out a little space in between those labels that I don’t think necessarily exists – conceptually.

If you are holding a rock in your hand, you are holding a rock in your hand. If you are not holding a rock in your hand, you’re not holding a rock in your hand. If you are deciding whether or not to pick up the rock, you are not holding a rock in your hand.

I like that rock thing, @tom_g

I don’t believe in rocks.

@Seek_Kolinahr I get that many people here disagree with me; no need to re-word the same message as if I don’t understand your argument. I could go into why I feel that way based on my own beliefs and experiences, but I doubt that would make sense to you, or anyone here, either. And I’d rather not have those feelings and beliefs torn apart and made fun of, so I shall refrain. I’m at a stage in my life where I’m still exploring, and it’s not just one or the other for me. Okay, I’m an atheist because I can’t say definitively, “I believe God exists,” but that’s simply not where it ends for me.

@livelaughlove21 It’s fine to search. Searching is a good thing. Gather all the knowledge and wisdom you can and make your own decisions.

@Seek_Kolinahr It was tongue in cheek my dear. ;)
I was not actually being serious I am tired of being serious about God it is down right exhausting out here, this is my playful side of being a theist.

You’re talking to a girl who had to burn her Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings books (not to mention her own first novel) in front of the entire church at the age of 16, because I spent precious hours of my life reading fantasy stories when I should have been spending that time in prayer, fasting, and converting lost souls, and I had let Tolkien become my god.

I don’t joke about idolatry. It is a seriously personal hurt.

Tim Tebow would need to win a Super Bowl.

@Seek_Kolinahr Well that was completely wrong for them to do. I am sorry that you had to go through that. I have never had any negative experiences when it comes to religion or church. I choose to not go because I know they can be negative and I don’t trust most people.

It all sounds very negative to me. I try not to focus on the negative if I did my life would go down in a whirlwind of calamities because negativity has been my bff and I can’t get rid of him. So usually I will go in the opposite direction of negativity.

And I don’t blame you for feeling the way you do. But I also cannot please everyone out here. I am sorry I said that and I am sorry that religion is a sore spot for you. I will try to hold my tongue when you are around.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl Absolutely you will not. Never censor your speech to spare my feelings.

@Seek_Kolinahr Seriously? You should write a screen play sister, you could make a million. Sounds much nuttier than Footloose-lol

I have also had many bad experiences, but I hold the followers of God responsible, not God.

In the beginning, man created God, and used him to justify their own evils in their lust for power.

@Seek_Kolinahr Well then what else would you like? :( I certainly do not want your feelings hurt at my expense as I do consider you a friend even though we have our differences in the “God” area.

I would have to see him, or hear him, or something. The people in the Bible saw him, or at least heard him. To be expected to believe without any physical evidence isn’t really fair. If I heard a voice from heaven, calling my name, I would pay attention.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl Same here, she’s pretty cool and interesting!! I’ve told her so a few times even though we have argued God as well.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl Simply be yourself.

My mantra is “Seek Kolinahr.” It is a reminder to myself to not let things get to me. If I am made uncomfortable by the words of another, it is by my own choice. It is I who must learn to choose against hurt. Of course, the day I learn that will be the day that my mantra changes. I don’t forsee that change occurring soon. Spock never attained Kolinahr, after all.

@Seek_Kolinahr Ok. And my comments were me being myself. I guess I joke about idolatry then. But I also only believe there is a God, I do not believe in any religion, or even go to church, I do not follow any particular rules set out by any one group. I read the bible and believe there is a God, that’s it.

God doesn’t truly reveal itself to me, until I truly reveal myself to it.

Where G_d reveals Himself, it will be to humankind and everyone will know all at once. Things will happen that humans have been unable to do for many millenia. It has not happened yet, but it I hope it does some day.

I would think it was a trick or a really well planned set up no matter how much effort was put into it.

Stable, reliable natural laws for the past 13.7 billion years.

@mattbrowne That may just be the way a Universe has to be. It doesn’t either reveal a hidden designer, or reveal that one does not exist.

I heard (or maybe read) something that struck a chord with me. I think the question concerned how God communicates with people. The answer (this is God speaking, so I must have read this from the book, “Conversations with God”, by Neale Donald Walsch”)...and I found the quote…

To whom does God communicate? Are there special people? Are there special times?

“All people are special, and all moments are golden. There is no person and there is no time one more special than another. Many people choose to believe that God communicates in special ways and only with special people. This removes the mass of the people from responsibility for hearing My message, much less receiving it (which is another matter), and allows them to take someone else’s word for everything. You don’t have to listen to Me, for you’ve already decided that others have heard from Me on every subject, and you have them to listen to.”

And “God” goes on to say…

“You cannot know God until you’ve stopped telling yourself that you already know God. You cannot hear God until you stop thinking that you’ve already heard God.”

“I cannot tell you My Truth until you stop telling Me yours.”

So in answer to your question, God reveals Himself to me when I listen.

@woodcutter I am with you to a point. I don’t want to be so closed-minded that even if it was proved to me that God exists, I wouldn’t believe it. Then I would be just as closed-minded at the Christians, who believe in God even if you prove that he doesn’t exist.

But I would have to have tangible proof.

@ETpro – The revelation I mentioned is a belief, not a proof. But atheists can’t explain the world either. “Just the way it has to be is” is a belief. It isn’t a fact. And it isn’t an explanation. Atheists don’t have an ultimate explanation for our world. And such an ultimate explanation will never be found by using science alone. At some point both believers and non-believers have to admit: We don’t know. But we can believe without knowing something for sure. Atheists believe in a self-referential ultimate explanation. An explanation that explains itself. X is true because X is true.

@mattbrowne I think that’s exactly backwards. As an atheist, I’m perfectly comfortable knowing that there are some things about the universe that we don’t know, and may never know. It is the believer who needs an ultimate explanation, and will accept a self-referential explanation even when it is scientifically implausible.

@glacial – As a believer, I’m perfectly comfortable knowing that there is no conclusive evidence about the nature of God and that he might not even exist, but I have faith that he does. It is the atheists who need evidence of God and they keep asking for that evidence. And because there isn’t such evidence, the atheists think that believing in God is ridiculous.

Wow. @mattbrowne – straw man fallacy?

@mattbrowne: “Atheists don’t have an ultimate explanation for our world. And such an ultimate explanation will never be found by using science alone. At some point both believers and non-believers have to admit: We don’t know.”

Um…you do realize that that is the atheist position, right? We have a universe and mathematically and scientifically, all we can say is that its present form started with the big bang, etc. That’s it. That’s all we know. Theists may demand that we explain what was before the big bang, but we do not have any evidence to discuss this. It may be that the question itself is meaningless because of space time. Or it could be that this universe is nothing but the current expanded phase of a perpetually expanding and contracting universe. There’s the whole multiverse thing, etc.

But we do not know. Stating what we know is not a belief. I repeat. Stating what we know is not a belief. That’s the scientific (atheist) position. Don’t try this…

@mattbrowne: “But atheists can’t explain the world either. “Just the way it has to be is” is a belief. It isn’t a fact. And it isn’t an explanation.”

What does this even mean?

@mattbrowne: ”@glacial – As a believer, I’m perfectly comfortable knowing that there is no conclusive evidence about the nature of God and that he might not even exist, but I have faith that he does. It is the atheists who need evidence of God and they keep asking for that evidence. And because there isn’t such evidence, the atheists think that believing in God is ridiculous.”

How comfortable are you knowing that there is no conclusive evidence about the nature of fairies, unicorns, singing invisible bananas, etc? It is the Christian who needs evidence of these things and they keep asking for evidence. And because there isn’t such evidence, the Christians think that believing in them is ridiculous.

I need a break.

@mattbrowne I have no need of evidence for the existence of a god, unless you are going to try to convince me that one exists. I’m quite happy to ignore the entire concept – but if we’re going to have the conversation, then the burden of proof is on the believer.

@mattbrowne Maybe you’ll enjoy reading this. :)

@jonsblond:That would be the last word, as far as I am concerned (except for the lack of paragraphs, the use of which I will defend to my dying breath).

@mattbrowne Enjoy the break. Everything I would have said has been covered by @tom_g & @glacial.

Scientific knowledge, such as we have, supports the idea that there is no god, just scientific actions and reactions of chemicals and matter. That is why I say that I would have to have proof before I believed in a magic guy in the sky that sees all, hears all, knows all.

The commonly accepted concept of god sounds like the Wizard of Oz to me. And if you pull back the curtain, I believe that you will find a mortal man working the controls.

I have been giving this some thought and have come to the personal conclusion that there is nothing that could conclusively prove to me the existence of a supreme being. Of course, being as I am not omnipotent or omniscient I could be proven wrong.