Will atheists believe after getting a sign?

[Lawman123]

Dear friends,I am an atheist but I think if god would send a sign I will truly believe in him.All the people here are very good in science so I have to ask a question to you all-Situation 1 - What if you asked God for a sign and said you will believe after it comes to you.You asked it at night and you suddenly find your self in the holy site of Islam - Mecca and you were in suppose London.You can take a thing from that place which would prove that you visited there after again coming back to London. Dont laugh ,I am not mad.What will you conclude?.If you deny then why?.Thank you.

[ajb]

You would have to discount all other possibilities first.

 

For the situation you describe a logical answer could be that you were drugged and transported to Mecca in a standard way and conned into believing it was a sign. LOL

[pwagen]

For me, it's not about signs, it's about evidence.

 

As for your hypothetical scenario, it would be evidence of a strange event which would be interesting to investigate. God? Not really, as there are likely to be more plausible explanations.

 

All this assuming, of course, that there are evidence of me actually being at home to begin with, so I didn't just imagine it. Also, I'd have to be quite certain someone didn't plant the item without me knowing.

[Lawman123]

You are at home and you ask for a sign.You also write it in a paper that you asked a sign.and a light comes saying that it is a sign for you and you go and come.and about being conned into believing how will someone know what is in your mind.

[Phi for All]

You are at home and you ask for a sign.You also write it in a paper that you asked a sign.and a light comes saying that it is a sign for you and you go and come.and about being conned into believing how will someone know what is in your mind.

 

I'm afraid just about any scenario you can come up with where you're alone, with no credible witnesses to corroborate what you experienced, will never pass scientific inquiry. Results need to be testable, repeatable by anyone who tries it.

 

People have been telling stories like this since before we started recording them. It seems like "proof" to them, but nobody else can repeat what happened. An atheist, or a skeptic even, would have to have a great deal more support for an explanation that seemed supernatural.

[Moontanman]

You are at home and you ask for a sign.You also write it in a paper that you asked a sign.and a light comes saying that it is a sign for you and you go and come.and about being conned into believing how will someone know what is in your mind.

 

 

Unless you can demonstrate it to someone else and show them it happened all you have is personal experience and we have millions of people who have personally experienced alien abduction but cannot show anyone else the validity of it. Is it more likely they dreamed or hallucinated it or that aliens can abduct people from apartment buildings in the middle of major cities with no one else ever seeing anything even the people sleeping in bed with them?

 

Another way to look at this, and this is a loosely copied piece by Aron Ra to which I give full credit.

 

Lets say you walk outside your house a see a gigantic sauropod dinosaur walking down your street, it's the middle of the night and no one else is up. You run up to it and you can smell it hear it see it and touch it. You could even climb up and ride it if you wanted. You run back in your house to get your camcorder but when you come back out side the animal is gone.

 

No trace of it exists, no huge piles of dung, no foot prints, no destruction such a huge beast would surely cause in a major urban center.

 

Some other guy claims to have seen a dinosaur but it was obviously a theropod and not the same one you saw, after weeks of no sight of the animal even you would have to agree that maybe it wasn't real.... You saw it and smelled it and touched it but no one but you saw it and it vanished the minute you went into your house. You can still claim you saw it but could you honestly claim it was real?

[timo]

Who would have though atheists spend their time wondering about what they would do if god sent them a sign.

[Fuzzwood]

Who says that if we got a sign, it's from the Christian god?

[John Cuthber]

A sign sent to any one person (or even a small group) is not going to work very well.

A sign that is "transient" won't really work either.

If God writes "of course I am real" in huge letters on the moon the, then OK, I will have to give it some serious thought.

But I might still think it's more likely to be an alien race with a strange sense of humour.

[Phi for All]

If God writes "of course I am real" in huge letters on the moon the, then OK, I will have to give it some serious thought.

But I might still think it's more likely to be an alien race with a strange sense of humour.

 

Even more likely is that Buzz Aldrin pulled off the ultimate prank.

[EdEarl]

Pray for something, for example lifting a satellite into orbit without a rocket, and if God does it, then my skepticism will be challenged. Do it twice, and I'd definitely believe in God, after double checking that there was nothing done underhanded and behind the scenes.

[Moontanman]

I am in the middle of a little discussion on face book about this very thing, evidently I simply do not believe hard enough...

 

Moving planets around in the wink of an eye with out disturbing the rest of the solar system might make me give it some thought...

 

Let's see, exchanging Venus and Mars would be impressive...

 

The fact remains that which God did it would be the next question, hard to get religious people to even acknowledge that there could be a god other than the one they like...

[Lawman123]

You can take a thing from that place which would prove that you visited there after again coming back to London.

I clearly said that you bring a thing but now I say get a thing which you could only find it there.Now will it make you believe and it is not about making others believe just you.

[pwagen]

If there's something there, which can only be found there, but can be brought back, that means it can also be relocated by other means.

 

Also, even if there was an item that could only be moved by this magical teleportation you suggest, it wouldn't be evidence of a god. It would, at the very best, be evidence of magical teleportations.

[Greg H.]

If there's something there, which can only be found there, but can be brought back, that means it can also be relocated by other means.

 

Also, even if there was an item that could only be moved by this magical teleportation you suggest, it wouldn't be evidence of a god. It would, at the very best, be evidence of magical teleportations.

Actually it would just be evidence of teleportations - they could be scientific as opposed to magical in nature.

[pwagen]

Actually it would just be evidence of teleportations - they could be scientific as opposed to magical in nature.

Quite right, bad wording on my part.

[Greg H.]

Quite right, bad wording on my part.

No harm, no foul. As Arthur C Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

 

At least until it's understood.

Edited April 11, 2014 by Greg H.