Will a sign from God will convince us of his existence?

[Tonus]

But what if ask god to send a sign to believe in him.If you pray to him and suddenly a plate of food comes to you from nothing.The food is what was never cooked in your home or you never ate it.Some oil or anything which would leave stain on your clothes falls on your clothes.You get up in the morning and say that it was a dream but really the stain is there on your clothes.Then will you believe.If not what will be your argument.

My argument would be that theists need to come up with something better than "what if" questions. Because "what if" and "you can't prove it isn't" aren't evidence for anything except desperation.

[bluhatpill]

Dear friends,
We are atheist because there is no proof of god's existence or whatsoever.But what if ask god to send a sign to believe in him.If you pray to him and suddenly a plate of food comes to you from nothing.The food is what was never cooked in your home or you never ate it.Some oil or anything which would leave stain on your clothes falls on your clothes.You get up in the morning and say that it was a dream but really the stain is there on your clothes.Then will you believe.If not what will be your argument.

As long as one holds the Christian value that god is a man (or any gender) the god from the bible, and is some vague angry entity out 'there' who sends signs....I'm going to say no, you won't get a sign.

I'd not call that atheist either. Waiting for signs from God is more like "I'm angry at God for not proving His existence to me." You are still believing and expecting something from a God that doesn't exist as anymore than a thought that people have dumped a ton of energy into.

An archonic value of a really unwholesome nature that really only exists for Christians and those with Abrahamic values because they believe. Belief alters one's perception so they see god in everything. I like horses so I see horses in everything but I don't try to convince anyone that is evidence that a horse is is actually in a debris pile or a horse gave me a sign from above.

At the end of the day you'd get all the signs you demanded from people but you'd just deny them as something else ...so its sort of waste of energy. I've provided outright concrete evidence of certain psychological matters to people and they deny it even though other people could see it so did that evidence exist or not? Not for the person demanding it, it didn't.

If you Chose to alter your perspective from the Christian one (which is more like possession than a 'god') and viewed God as a energy, a cosmic force, that could be directed by your unfiltered consciousness then you might get your sign. If its that important to you that is. Some people might refer to that as a higher power but they haven't explained in cosmic terms where 3 dimensional laws get suspended what 'higher than' is. Higher than what? Well then its no longer God... but more of a common everyday phenom that is so much our normal we don't and can't notice it.

Miracles and signs from that origin would be more like....You think of someone you hadn't seen in 30 years and then five minutes later they call. A small manifestation of that force moving through us.

Those 'signs' tend to be more satisfactory then oil stains. Or you could choose to believe its just merely coincidence--it doesn't matter how you chose to believe it--it still happened. A choice of label just doesn't turn one thing into another.

How would you feel about that coincidence? Would you like or would it make you angry, frightened or would you think it was cool?

[CapnAwesome]

Dear friends,
We are atheist because there is no proof of god's existence or whatsoever.But what if ask god to send a sign to believe in him.If you pray to him and suddenly a plate of food comes to you from nothing.The food is what was never cooked in your home or you never ate it.Some oil or anything which would leave stain on your clothes falls on your clothes.You get up in the morning and say that it was a dream but really the stain is there on your clothes.Then will you believe.If not what will be your argument.

From a dream and a stain on my clothes? No.

[FifthElement]

From all the above it is clear that when an atheist asks for evidence he is lying. They won't even consider it.

Consider what ?

Even if it was the evidence for higher power, so what, how that would change anything ?

I STILL would no get on my knees and worship and ask for things and life eternal, why in the world I would do that, what would be the possible reason for that ?

I would show IT a respect maybe, but LOVE ? WHY ?

[Whateverist]

From all the above it is clear that when an atheist asks for evidence he is lying. They won't even consider it.

Nope. They're right. Spurious, unexplained happenings do not point to any particular god or genie. Nor do they rule out stage magicians or aliens using teleportation.

You're right though that it is hard to know what would really count as evidence. Apparently, if you're looking for evidence of God, almost anything can count. But if you're not even sure what a god is supposed to be or how they function, it can be very hard to anticipate what evidence would point that way.

[bluhatpill]

What if you prayed for food and some friend or neighbor showed up with food, would that qualify as having your wishes/prayers fulfilled or does it have to come from some supernatural force or show up from thin air?

To switch a perspective if you wanted evidence of my existence and you set all these huge parameters on the expression of that evidence.... Like in order for you to believe in me I must fly to NY, climb to the top of the Empire State Building at Midnight dressed in purple with mini cheesecakes in hand....

I would ignore you. Nothing personal. I just would. Your belief in my existence is just not important enough to me for me to jump through hoops like that. The god of the bible behaved as if it were VERY important everyone believed in him and basically provided miracles when someone was pissing him off or he otherwise wasn't getting his way.

Or..some random interesting event happened and people people said it was god or god took credit for it.

Me on the other hand if you wanted a cheesecake that badly I'd send you one..obligation free. I wouldn't care if you believed in me. It's not important that you do.

In this respect humans have the ability to be more god like than the God of the bible.

For this 'experiment' there isn't really enough information by itself to make me believe. At least not without further research.

I mean, granted, praying for a plate of food, and then having that plate of food appear out of nowhere would be a unique and unusual event. It would definitely warrant consideration and further study.

But, some other things I would also consider right off the bat:

- I'm hallucinating the food. Yes, I see it, feel it, even might be 'eating' it, but serious hallucinations are that real to the people hallucinating them.
- My own mind/brain holds the power to generate that food out of nothing. I have some type of ESP/super power.
- If it's food that I normally cook and eat, maybe I cooked this dish one year from now, and my home was hit with a massive dose of electromagnetic energy that caused this plate to time shift back to today.
- Mean spirited aliens are having fun with me.

As ridiculous as some of these sound, there's no specific reason why they can't be any more possible than a deity answering my prayer. And will the possibility that it was a god doing this enter my mind? Of course. But I'm not going to go right to that as "the answer" while rejecting everything else. Until I have more info, I have to allow for all possibilities. And if I never get any more info, then I just have to live with the fact that 'I don't know' what happened.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Okay try this one...suppose the name Jesus was found inscribed on the cell walls of a bacteria presumed to have been present since the dawn of creation...

[Esquilax]

Okay try this one...suppose the name Jesus was found inscribed on the cell walls of a bacteria presumed to have been present since the dawn of creation...

Well, that'd lead to some interesting experiments, I'd bet. For example, we could search for the genes that cause that bacteria to manifest the writing, see what those are for. We'd have to know if all iterations of this bacteria sport the same writing, or if it was just a single mutation. Lots of things.

Honestly, the perspective of most of the atheists here, I would bet, would be that one should rigorously interrogate any claim one comes across for veracity, especially when it comes to scientific claims. Why do you think that having the same response when it comes to supposedly miraculous or divine claims is somehow dishonest?

Oh, and incidentally, would the word "Jesus" be written in english, or some other language? English would be kind of a weird choice, given that Jesus himself never spoke it.

[*Deidre*]

From following faith for as long as I did, it was never about trying to prove anything to anyone else. Or even myself. I just ‘chose’ to believe. I had ‘faith.’

Faith is not about proof. Now on the other side of the fence, I see that even more clearly, now. I imagine there might be ‘’something’’ that would cause me to believe without refutation. But, what that ‘something’ might be, don’t know. Since there really is no solid evidence whatsoever to support the assertions that a number of religions make about god's existence...it would be better if people of faith would stop trying to pretend that there is, and just accept that what causes their faith...is a choice to believe in the first place.

[SteelCurtain]

Sure. 'Jesus' being inscribed clearly on a cell wall, where we can watch the bacteria reproduce and recreate the phenomena, where there is no evidence of gene tampering, where there is no other explanation. And where the bacterium has not been present 'since the dawn of creation,' but rather about 3.8bya. And I would still be skeptical, especially as your great and mighty Jesus god chose a medium to reveal himself that seems patetntly ridiculous. But I guess if we are talking about ridiculous hypotheses...

It does go along the lines of something that I would consider to be evidence of a higher power. Sagan proposed it in his book Contact. If, buried within an irrational constant---like pi---billions of decimal places in, there was a message of sorts, or even a non-random pattern, that would speak to me of some sentient order. Not even close to the Jesus skydaddy, but I would probably have to label myself a deist.