Question

[Edwardo Piet]

Even if that explicit miracle happened and it fell in line exactly with what, say, most Christians believe about God. Let's say God showed up and it was clearly the Christian God.

Still not evidence of God for me: The most plausible explanation was that a highly advanced alien visited earth and talked to people thousands of years ago to tell them to write a book. And that alien is powermad and wants us to think it is God.

The way I see it, a natural explanation is always more parsimonious and always makes sense. The chances of there being a highly powerful and advanced alien, thousands upon thousands of years ahead of us in technology, and capable of producing the most grandiose of illusions, is extremely low. And extremely improbable. But it still makes more sense than some "supernatural" being "outside of the universe" showing up and talking like a human.

Any being that showed itself in nature, would have a natural explanation... and the natural explanation would always make more sense than the supernatural one.

You're right. It wouldn't be conclusive evidence that the Christian god exists, but it would make Christianity far more plausible than it is now. And I mean far more plausible. But again, like you said, it could be aliens playing games with us, or Descartes' demon continually deceiving us, or we are all really Boltzmann brains, or we really do live in a simulated world, or we happen to live in one of those universes where Christianity just happens to be true in a naturalistic manner (e.g., Jesus did rise from the dead, but only because particles were fascinatingly arranged in such a way as to lead to such an outcome). Only Odin knows.

Yeah it would mean that either it's an alien or it really is God. It would be far more likely that it's an alien, on my view, but the fact something apparently God-like showed up, would be at least very weak evidence that it's more likely that such a being really is God than if such a being hadn't shown up at all.

But this is the problem with how God is defined... as supernatural... he's defined in such a way that even if he showed up and threatened us with hellfire if we didn't believe we couldn't be certain that he was really God.

To be honest there's also the simulation argument. The idea that we're in a computer simulation. So that God could merely be a simulated God created by advanced humans tens or hundreds of thousands of years into the future... and this is just a simulation of the past.

Even that is far more likely, the simulated God in the simulated universe, in my mind, than God.

There's even a valid argument for the simulation argument. At least, as far as I can see it's completely valid: meaning if all the premises are true then the conclusion is. The only reason I don't believe in it, is I don't accept some of the premises. For starters, I think humanity will die out well before we get to that level of technology.