A hypothetical question, especially for the atheists and skeptics in the audience...

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Uuuuugghh, another silly thread turned into "atheists and agnostics at war with even remotely religious concepts #23479" by people who just can't chill out.

OT: If I'm allowed to stretch this into a series of events instead of just one single event, I'd probably pick colonialism and its eventual culmination into WWI. It would seem logical for Satan, the embodiment of all evil, to make up a centuries long scheme of limitless suffering and exploitation, and end it with the greatest wave of death and destruction the world had ever seen up until that point. Makes it even more delicious that before WWI there'd been almost no war in Europe close to a 100 years, which meant that when the war started, nobody knew what it was going to be like and was actually pretty excited about it.

And then, oooh boy.

captcha: collaborate and listen. Yes, that would be pretty good advice for this thread.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

How about Religion itself? If there is some supernatural-nonsense, then the founding of religion is probably those occurences fault.

 

[SwagLordYoloson]

INB4 Westboro Baptist Church founding.

The founding of Electronic Arts, obviously satanists summoned a demon to haunt their publishing.

 

[Longstreet]

I can only think of one answer here.

Otherwise, To the OP, although i get what you are saying, try and pick a better wording for it next time.

 

[Nooh]

The Russian winter defeating both Napoleon and Hitler. Two of the biggest wars in Russian history just happened to occur during winters where it was exceptionally cold, and neither of the two attackers remembered to accommodate for that. Probably as close to divine intervention as I can think of.

 

[Knife]

Uuuuugghh, another silly thread turned into "atheists and agnostics at war with even remotely religious concepts #23479" by people who just can't chill out.

No it's more "Bad phrasing on part of the OP, and us not being mind readers trying to truthfully answer what he wrote and not what he thought. Considering the question was unanswerable it was pretty hard and seemed more like an insult than an honest question. And when when we answered to the best of our abilities, people started demonizing us for being liers, having no imagination or having some sort of agenda against religious folk.". I urge you to actually read the original question at face value - it's like asking a person with no pets "What's the colour of your dog?" (saying something is hypothetical doesn't make it hypothetical, in order for something to be hypothetical you need to establish some basic ground for what the hypothetical situation is - which the OP didn't do, maybe he thought it was obvious, but it was not) instead of "What would the colour of your dog be if you hypothetically had a dog?".

OT: If I'm allowed to stretch this into a series of events instead of just one single event, I'd probably pick colonialism and its eventual culmination into WWI. It would seem logical for Satan, the embodiment of all evil, to make up a centuries long scheme of limitless suffering and exploitation, and end it with the greatest wave of death and destruction the world had ever seen up until that point. Makes it even more delicious that before WWI there'd been almost no war in Europe close to a 100 years, which meant that when the war started, nobody knew what it was going to be like and was actually pretty excited about it.

And then, oooh boy.

captcha: collaborate and listen. Yes, that would be pretty good advice for this thread.

Look up the Franco?Prussian War of 1870?1871, one of the major causes for WW1 that happened roughly 40 years before WW1 (and that's just France and Germany, Europe has plenty of wars in the 19th century).

 

[Olas]

That's the thing though, defend unicorns... present an argument that would rationally allow for even a minute chance that they exist. If there are no reasons then it can logically be said that there is 0% chance of them being involved with 9/11.

What? The existence of horses with horns on their head? You think that would be a difficult proposition to invent? Quite easy actually. Give me time and I could come up with a thousand stories explaining how unicorns caused 9/11. We know horses exist, and we know of creatures growing horns, we even know of creatures that look like horses growing things similar to horns (antlers), so the prospect of something like unicorns evolving in nature is quite easy to believe. Alternatively maybe they were genetically engineered in a lab by a mad scientist. Or maybe they're from another planet and the fact that they look like horses is coincidental. Perhaps they teleported onto the airplanes mid flight to hijack them with advanced technology we haven't invented yet, or perhaps they used cloaking technology to board the planes. Perhaps they framed Al Queda to hide their existence from mankind.

And even if I was remarkably uncreative and couldn't think of a single explanation for how unicorns could plot 9/11, it still wouldn't discount the possibility of it being true. The possibilities of the universe are not limited what humans can think up or imagine. I doubt that if you tried to explain what causes sickness to someone in ancient Mesopotamia that they'd even listen to you for more than a few seconds. Often what we find to be true about the universe exceeds our wildest dreams.

I can tell you with 100% certainty that to continue living you need to inhale oxygen, you will also need to exhale carbon dioxide. I can also tell you with 100% certainty that if your head is removed from your body for a period of time longer then 10 minutes you will die. That's 3 facts that I am willing to stand behind with 100% certainty,

You may be certain that all 3 of those "facts" are true, not only am I not certain, I bet within your lifetime there will be people who are alive in every meaningful sense who's brains are attached to something other than a standard human body and who violate all three of your rules.

Inhaling oxygen? We can already oxygenate blood directly without getting the lungs involved? Exhaling CO2? You're joking right?

It's true that it appears the brain requires oxygen to function, but maybe someday we'll create a chemical substitute that works better than oxygen. Or maybe we'll find an even more direct way of bringing energy to neurons entirely.

so as above if I can give you examples of absolutes doesn't that mean that some things are actually factual and not just opinions? Or are you 100% certain that there are no 100% certainties?

I didn't say there were no certainties, only that idiots have them. Wise people have beliefs. I suppose some smart people who are simply misguided could have them too. However it is the nature of science to be skeptical, not rigid and certain.

And as far as your attempt at finding a logical contradiction in my argument is concerned. It would have been easier to just ask if I wasn't certain that 2+2=4. I am certain of that, however I'm not talking about the purely conceptual, I'm talking about the real observable world around us.

 

[Joccaren]

If someone far smarter than me can explain how the universe just pooped into being I may very well give up on higher powers existing. Until then I chose to believe in a non-interfering deity because to accept that the universe simply came into being messes up a huge part of my understanding of the world. Once the universe can exist from nothing then so could anything. So instead of evolving from apes a group of humans large enough to sustain a population just appeared on the Earth, after all while we may be living and intelligent we are made mass just like the self-creating universe.

I pose a question to you; How did this non-interfering deity pop into existence?
Why is a non-interfering deity's magical appearance out of nothingness easier to believe that the universe doing the same thing?
This is where it becomes somewhat circular logic. "The universe had to have a creator, it couldn't have spontaneously popped into existence or existed forever, so I'll invent a creator that needed no creator and spontaneously existed/always existed to create universe".
Its adding in an extra step that doesn't need to exist.
Even following the logic that if the singularity that spawned the universe can appear out of nothing then anything can, we have evidence that the universe exists. It either existed forever or was at some point created/spontaneously appeared. We do not have evidence of a deity ever existing. Logically one would find it easier to believe that the singularity popped into existence than a deity popped into existence, created the singularity, then disappeared.

 

[Eddie the head]

The thing with the most evidence to back it up as being divine. I'll believe in the divine, I'll believe in anything no matter how absurd, if there is evidence for it.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

I am sceptical of the claims of Alternative medicines and celebrity diets. I am not sceptical of how a specialist doctor can find out my genetic illnesses that can be past onto my progeny from a vial of my blood or why processed carbohydrates are going to put me in an early grave if I don't monitor my diet.

This isn't so. Skeptics are actually more concerned with questions of the supernatural than anything else. Real actual skeptical thought is not concerned with evidence, it's concerned with that for which there is no available evidence. Skeptical of whether or not reality is what it appears to be. Why can't you just be an NPC in a video game? And why can't the real you be dreaming in a dream in a dream in a dream, how would you know the difference? Is each dream a virtual reality program invented by an inventor in a virtual reality program? These are questions a skeptic ask, and they are not useless questions.

There is a difference between being skeptical, and being a skeptic. One is an adjective, the other is a school of thought, which leads to useful and ever novel ways of understanding. People talk a lot but they don't understand what they talk of. Skepticism is concerned with deep philosophical conclusions that are only rivaled by the likes of religious belief. It doesn't mean that you don't believe in imaginary father figures for the hell of it and you do believe that the sun will rise whether you'd like it to or not. Those aren't interesting dilemmas.

You are right that there is philosophical scepticism. But Scepticism has multiple modern meanings and I am speaking entirely of its most common modern usage, which is a common element to modern atheists and a fundamental element in the scientific process, and that is:

"an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object"

or equally valid to my standing:

"the method of suspended judgement, systematic doubt, or criticism"

It is not exclusively focused on the supernatural, just on unproven claims. Hence why I'm sceptical of unproven alternative medicines (but not totally dismissive of them) but not sceptical of modern medicine derived from genetic studies, as in my original example. It can also extend to supernatural claims, though I have very little reason to even consider the possibility of a supernatural reality so I'm mostly dismissive of it, not doubtful.

 

[FireAza]

OP, your question would be like saying to you "I know you're not Hindu, but if you were forced to say which god created everything, who would it be? And you're not allowed to say "God""

 

[Jux]

Why fried chicken and waffles taste so good together when I don't particularly like either of them individually must be the work of witchcraft.

 

[Vigormortis]

Do you know of another one that'd cause the extinction of the Dinosaurs for his amusement?

I don't know. They're all pretty much colossal dicks.

They're like a collective of internet trolls that were given godlike powers. I imagine even the nicest among them might entertain his or her self by causing mass extinction.

 

[Vigormortis]

Nope, I got one! the fact that Half Life 3 never happened.

Must be a curse of some kind...

Maybe a gypsy.

And Lo! He and His Noodly Goodness appeared before the Gaben, and spoketh to him, "Thou shalt not release Half-Life 3 lest ye desecrate the sanctity of the internet meme! No, thou shalt first fill thine coffers with the wealth made through the exchange of hats and Workshop content. Only once thine thirst for riches is slaked, and thine well of holiday event ideas runs dry, may thou and thine ilk release the third installment. Upon which much praise and adulation will be heaped!

Know, too, that much ire and ridicule thou will face at that time. This will be your test. Your mountain to climb. You foe to face. And, should ye overcome this hatred, thou shalt rise to become a god among men!

His Noodly Appendage has spoken!"

...

It was gospel all along... how could I be so blind?

I am unworthy.

It is okay, my brother. You are not so lost that you can not be saved.

Open yourself and accept His Noodliness into your heart. Recognize Gaben as the living embodiment of His Noodly Appendage and bow before the altar of the crowbar.

You will find yourself freed from your Earthly burdens and happily inundated by gaming content and hats!

 

[direkiller]

no war in Europe close to a 100 years

There was a hundred or so conflicts in those hundred years.

Three major ones off the top of my head
The Spanish civil war~500,000 dead/wounded
the Crimean War~500,000 dead/wounded
The balkan wars ~600,000 dead/wounded between the two

Let alone the random ones that were minor at best like the Cod war

 

[Skeleon]

What, OP, you're limiting us even further by asking about human history? I was going to go with the Deistic notion of the very start of the universe as the one event you could best shove the supernatural into because it's one of the big unknowns (god of the gaps, after all). Certainly a better place to put it if I'm "not allowed" to say "nothing", better than any of the supposed events from the religions humans made up, none of which are really "big enough" in my mind. But since you limit it to human history, that's out the window. Fine. Erm. I have no idea. None of them seem likely in the slightest. I guess at best it'd have to be some cosmic event that happened during human history. Perhaps observations of supernovae that may at some point have been interpreted in a religious way. Maybe the star gods are warring out there. It would be something big at least.

 

[Alssadar]

Indiana Jones surviving the Nuclear explosion in a Refrigerator.
It must be some Karma he earned for the selflessness of abandoning a precious relic to save his fellow man, akin to Jesus.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I suppose I'd go with the start of life on Earth.

 

[oZode]

Genghis Kahn may have been the second coming of Jesus for all it's worth- he had the desire to unite the world as a single empire and did everything he could to make that reality happen.

And he had the divine vision to do it, so obviously there was some divine intervention going there.

 

[TheDarkestDerp]

A refusal to choose is still a choice. Can't deny Rush, my good man.

As for an answer, there's nothing historically I can think of I'd have to say was supernaturally inspired. To do so wouldn't so much fly in the face of reason as it would open up too much room for the entire notion of "good" or "evil" supernatural forces to basically be self-defeating notions of human whimsy and fear.

To accept that any manner of supernatural being CAN intervene on behalf of it's good graces and such would mean that it clearly chooses NOT to a bajillion-jillion more times. For every "act of god(little 'g') people pray and are ever so thankful for, there are far more instances of good people suffering to happenstance and circumstance. So their all-loving supernatural figure just left them to suffer why? "It had a plan"? No good reason and perfectly out of the character we were told to believe in. Not the act of a "good" entity. The same goes for "evil" entities from any religion orspiritual theory.