Question for (AM) atheists and those not initiated?

Question

What would you quantify as evidence of a personal Creator (not deistic philosophy)

Would it be, a world without suffering?
Would this creator have to reveal himself to you, on your terms even if he didn't reveal himself to the rest of the world or is personal "revelation" sufficient.? [Revelation meaning that you were divinely shown proof, perhaps a being appeared to you professing God's love as many have claimed]

If you find offense in this question, there was none intended at all, I'm merely interested in hearing diverse responses as to what the "evidence" should/would be.....

Sara - you missed the point of the question entirely

Alan....some thoughts on your points
1. This is an irrelevant statement
2.According to text, he did and it was witnessed and recorded
3. It is not meant to be a mathematical book without error.
4. That may very well be evidence of extraterrestrials at play.....

Green - thank you, coming from you that is quite the compliment. (((hugs)))

Sara - I believe you may still be confused at the question at hand, I never, even remotely, asked why a creator would be the only plausible reason for design. No one else seemed to have misinterpreted it but you. And as for my question that you copied on your edit, yes, this question was intended for everyone. How does that confuse you?

Answer 1

I think this is an excellent question and difficult to answer. The key is to set up an experiment such that a positive result from the experiment could only come from a creator God. For example, observing the beauty of babies isn't really sufficient, because our understanding of the universe suggests that babies could exist without a personal God. Therefore, we need to set up an experiment such that the only explanation for a positive result is the existence of God.

I believe that the best such experiment would require God to violate the First Law of Thermodynamics, which says that matter/energy is conserved. The way God could do this would be to create particles in a vacuum while leaving out the corresponding antiparticles (to ensure that the particle creation was genuine creation and not a quantum fluctuation). This would prove that God has the capability to create matter and energy from scratch.

However, this would only be evidence of a creator and not a personal creator. A personal creator (one who takes an interest in our lives) should be able to do this for someone who asks for it. (As opposed to letting it randomly happen somewhere).

I hope this helps you to understand some of my skepticism. There are other experiments that would potentially verify God's existence, but I think that creating particles from scratch would be the easiest and most definite.

Answer 2

I think that this is a surprisingly good question, and one that both believers and nonbelievers should think about.

Notice that Fireball's answer is "if there are things that exist that people cannot make, there must be a personal creator". Obviously she's completely wrong about that.

Many other believers here refer to their belief as evidence that the belief is true ("I KNOW there's a God, therefore there is a God"). That's also obviously completely wrong - lots of people "know" lots of things that are not true.

But what should convince us? I'd be convinced, I think, if I were to meet God, and God were to perform some dramatic miracles while holding a personal conversation with me, and let's just make it in a couple of different languages at the same time. For example, if he were to appear, tell me that he was going to make the house across the street rise up from its foundation, spin around in the air, and then settle back completely undamaged - and then actually do so - while at the same time he told me something I didn't already know about how to build sounding rockets, then predict a few specific events in advance (like when a sparrow would fly overhead), while speaking in English, French, and Spanish - that might well convince me.

If God were real, this would be extremely easy for him to do. Yet we get nothing of the sort. Instead, we're asked to take as evidence of god's existence essentially nothing more than the say-so of a wide variety of usually rude people who can't seem to put together a simple sentence let alone a coherent argument.

Why, if God is real, is he represented by only the kinds of people who obviously couldn't tell whether or not he was real? Isn't it a LOT more reasonable to conclude that those people are wrong?

Answer 3

- Agnostic

This is one of the more interesting questions. By personal creator, I assume you are talking about the kind that rules over men and not talking about general start of the universe.

Well, I would have to see extremely hard to dispute evidence of mercy love and justice, those which I see little of.

Human free will causes much of the suffering on the planet, but yet you see "uncontrollable" forces like natural disasters, droughts, and plagues seems to affect people who are already down and hopeless. I just don't see how it's merciful and resembles justice.

Hypothetically, if there were some pattern to these kind of events that seemed to play beyond cruel luck and randomness, I would have at least consider it


Also if a religious nut just...exploded once in a while, that might work - kidding...sorta

Answer 4

To accept an omnipotent creator deity, I would need him/her to appear all around the world simultaneously while speaking to each person in their own language or dialect, news reports of this to prove I wasn't high when I saw it, and some impossible deed being done. When I say impossible, I don't mean something that we can't do, such as creating a new mountain or a sign in the sky, these could be done by advanced aliens or time travelers with better technology. I mean something like transmuting the moon into cheese. And I would of course need confirmation of this deed from a reliable source.

Personal revelation is not sufficient because I am unfortunately fallible. I could have had too much too drink or even simply be dreaming. I need physical proof and confirmation of this proof.

Answer 5

I appreciate that Many concerns Are Very impossible, I Used to invite Myself, "How feasible is it that a Rain Drop, From a detailed Cloud Will Land On My right significant Toe?", Many concerns Are Astoundingly impossible, they develop to be way more feasible, to Have a targeted outcome, if an scan is implemented a couple of situations. A Single generation is exceptionally impossible, however nevertheless would arise, Like moneymaking the Lottery, There Are large Improbabilities going down normally, nonetheless they arise, they're typical. It is a question of Statistical Mechanics.

Answer 6

I'm not sure what (AM) is but as to proof:

1. If Jesus had just walked off the cross in front of all those people and continued his work and had been doing it for the last 2000 years - that would be evidence.

2. If god came down out of the sky and did some miracles that were undeniable and witnessed by millions and billions of people - that would be evidence.

3. If book such as the bible where written without errors and atrocites - that would be evidence.

4. If a few billion stars in the sky suddenly arranged themselves into the shape of a Jewish Star, for example, - that would be evidence.

Answer 7

No offense taken--it's an honest question! I would guess that one example of evidence of a supernatural creator would be something that points out that life has a specific direction for which biology could not be held accountable--for example, if the "barnyard miracle" really did take place and was verifiable to scientific inquiry.

Answer 8

I'm not certain what you mean by a "personal creator." If I'm interpretting it correctly, it involves a much more intimately involved deity, one that breaks natural laws willy-nilly in order to bring about his/her/its whims.

Either way, the evidence for a creator would not be evident to only me, but to absolutely everyone. It would need to be as evident as the presence of gravity. The reason is that the present reality has such pawltry evidence for any creator god that the new evidence would have to outweigh the overwhelming evidence against it. That's quite a large bill to fill.

^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^

Answer 9

Your god would have to manifest at my command, within the presence of 10 others people of my choosing, and then perform 10 miracles of my choosing which were witnessed by the people with me, as well as independently verified by random people whom I did not know, all around the world.

Some examples I would request would be for some laws of physics to be temporarily suspended. For example, if gravity reversed itself for a few minutes, and we all sat around hovering in the air. I would demand that he manipulate the weather. I would demand that he bring some long dead people I knew back to life. I would demand that he rearrange the constellations. I would demand that he stop time or make it go backwards. I would demand that he read my thoughts, and the thoughts of others. I would demand that he stand next to a hydrogen bomb explosion and walk away unscathed, etc, etc, etc.

Only then would I *consider* believing.

Answer 10

FIREBALL, prove of babies a sperm and a egg that's how i was conceived and you! YOU CANNOT PROVE GOD WAS THE CREATOR mountains the sea etc are not prove why they are there, Christians have a thousands of years to prove its god and ain't got any closer to doing so, science {as we know it} is relatively new, and its technology and intelligence is advancing all the time, so i think you owe us a thousand years or so. unless you have fact pointing towards god creating you don't have a case the big bang theory if you have actually studied it as more fact in it than god { i have studied the bible as i was once a christian and i have studied the big bang theory, and i know which one makes more sense