Posted: Nov 13, 2018 11:14 am
by TopCat
Cito di Pense wrote:
TopCat wrote:
laklak wrote:All amputees spontaneously regrow limbs overnight. All cancer sufferers are healed. My fucking arthritis goes away.

Actually, if we all woke up one morning, and, with no warning, the above had happened, I don't think it would at all be evidence of the existence of a deity, much less any of the deities currently believed in by adherents of the world's current religions.

It would be extremely out of character for said deities, especially given the supposedly immutable nature of their sacred texts.

It would be much more likely to signal the arrival of a very benevolent, very advanced alien civilisation, fixing something very wrong, that any deity worth its salt would never have allowed to go wrong in the first place.


Would it be better if there had been a warning that something was about to happen? Written in fiery letters? "In the sky. Lord, in the sky."

Well, of course. If you have prior knowledge that something extremely unlikely is about to happen, and you predict it, and it happens, then it's a lot more impressive than if you hadn't predicted it. It's at least a suggestion that the unlikely thing wasn't random.

'Better', but not necessarily good enough. If someone started successfully predicting lottery numbers, we'd initially put it down to skulduggery before we thought they could actually predict the future. But if it was genuine, then eventually the efforts to falsify would fail enough for actual future prediction to be the best explanation of the observations.

Immutability of sacred texts? Why take on the burden of history? Because you want to? Great!

Not sure what you mean here - I said 'supposedly' immutable - as claimed by the religious adherents. If God hasn't been regrowing amputated limbs for the last 4000 years, why would he start now?