(July 23, 2013 at 7:29 pm)Kim Wrote: Let me rephrase that again, for the sake of argument, what evidence would make you believe in the existing of a supernatural being that created the universe?
I am going to copy/paste my reply from the last time a topic like this was posted here (which is a copy/paste of my reply from the same question in another forum):
Quote:Quote:What specifically would the evidence have to be?
I would think that a being who could demonstrate the supernatural would at least convince me of the existence of the supernatural. Someone who could read thoughts, or levitate, or miraculously heal the sick and change the weather and feed the world and make the world's nuclear stockpile turn into soap bubbles. Proof of being an honest-to-goodness deity might follow from that, as well.
The problem I see with the question is that often it implies that there might be something that would convince me that the god of the Bible, or of any of our major religious movements, is real. But those gods, as envisioned, make little or no sense and the way they are described makes me terrified at the thought that they would ever be real. I don't WANT for Yahweh to present himself to us and tell us that he's real. He's a miserable and angry and bitter person with a penchant for capricious decisions to massacre people wholesale. He can't possibly exist, and I don't want him to.
I could imagine a god who created the universe and then went on to some other reality in order to create a universe there. And maybe he stops by to see how we're getting along, and he manifests as something truly godlike in stature and capabilities, and he gives us a guidebook that is so amazing that it doesn't take long for us to cure AIDS and cancer and stop fighting wars. And then he apologizes for waiting so long to check up on us, and he tips his cap and moves on to the next reality. That's a god that I can stomach.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould