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

Angie7F

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My dog. My dog is so cute and loving and perfect that he has to be heaven sent.
But I do not believe in god or religion.
 

Unia

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Well I'm an atheist but there is one small occurrence I can't explain. Years back I had a dream that was pretty mundane at first glance. I saw our backyard as if I was sitting in a tree. I moved across the yard, or more like the camera panned over the yard (I often have dreams that are more like films, without my persona even having real part in them). There was something odd about the way the view moved, and I had no control over it. Rather than usual head height it would swoop really close to the ground and then high into the branches again. Also there were other...beings around that I recognized as "my posse". Only after I woke up did I realize I just dreamt I was a bird.

So where's the odd bit, you ask. Well the thing that made my dream so alien while I was having it was how everything looked supercontrasted, and something like the lawn looked more like it was made up of thousands of individual stalks of different shades of green and even colors I couldn't name. Which is true, but normally you look at a neat lawn and it looks like a pretty uniform field of green, right. Well years later I had a minor epiphany in biology class. Supposedly birds' eyes can discern far more colors than those of humans.

Seeing as this all relies on my memory and a dream I had no means of recording anywhere to share, it's impossible to prove or disprove. No major world events here, I won't comment on something I have no personal experience of.
 

qeinar

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Schadrach said:
VonKlaw said:
To the OP: Please pick your favorite breed of cat. You are not allowed to include any breeds of cat that actual exists. Go.
Easier than the duck-fucking question. Grimalkin, 3rd edition Monster Manual II, page 122. In their natural form they resemble a larger than average grey house cat, but are shapeshifters and can adopt the form of any animal up to size category Large (basically things around the size of a bull). Also capable of speech and of roughly human intelligence.

It's the best cat, because it is *all* the cats.

How many more of these do I need to answer?
that breed of cat doesn't exist so you didn't answer it. ^^ you'd have to breed a new species of cat and call it that, but then you wouldn't be allowed to use that as a answer. it would be the same as answering unicorns to your question.
 

qeinar

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Tanakh said:
I know there is no God, just as I know I need air to live or that computers work, yet you can't prove any of those.
i can easily prove the last one: if something works or not depends on if you can use it for what you want to, you are using a computer so obviously it works. we can also prove you need air (or oxygen to be specific) because you would die if we denied you access to it. proving if computers are working or not just depends on your definition of working, we also know exactly how computers work. computers and oxygen are not made up so we can prove things about them, god on the other hand..
 

qeinar

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LiberalSquirrel said:
As an atheist, I feel as though I have somehow failed by not being offended by this question. I think it's actually an interesting hypothetical.

So I vote for Rasputin. The man (supposedly) survived being poisoned, shot repeatedly, beaten, and tossed in an icy river. He died from drowning. That's pretty intense.
the problem with the question is why would you rate that more likely than anything else? to me the answer of the question is just everything. everything is as likely to be influenced by something supernatural if it did exist.
 

Tanakh

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qeinar said:
i can easily prove the last one: if something works or not depends on if you can use it for what you want to, you are using a computer so obviously it works. we can also prove you need air (or oxygen to be specific) because you would die if we denied you access to it. proving if computers are working or not just depends on your definition of working, we also know exactly how computers work. computers and oxygen are not made up so we can prove things about them, god on the other hand..
That is however not a proof, the first is a syllogism, the second is a fallacy (you need A to B therefore not A then not B is what you are using, it doesn't work that way brah).

A proof, one that gives you 100% confidence, must be a math proof, I suggest you to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_proof to know what is that.
 

happyninja42

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Schadrach said:
If you were forced to choose some person, place, thing, or event throughout all of human history as "most likely to have been the result of supernatural or divine influence (christian or otherwise)", what would it be?

No, you aren't allowed to choose "nothing, because I don't believe in that shit" as the whole point is to see what people end up picking when forced to actually choose, and that isn't an answer, it's a refusal to answer.
I think the one thing in human history that I would say has to be due to a supernatural entity, is people's belief in a supernatural entity....because it sure as hell isn't based on evidence and facts.
 

Aurora Firestorm

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Sigh.

Nobody here actually *understood* the original question. Or if they did, they were too busy snarking and trolling. I don't like posting in anti-religion-flamebait threads, but here I go anyway, just to give you the answer I haven't seen other people give without a lot of "hurr hurr hurr religion is stupid but maybe I'll answer your question." (Sorry. I'm bitter, yeah. But really, people, aren't we all tired of taking potshots at some people's entire livelihoods? Oh wait, this is the Internet, nobody cares about anyone.)

I'm religious, but hey, let me put aside my Christian hat for a bit and think, if I had to assume that only one event *ever* was the work of God, I would say the creation of the universe. Even if I take the most utterly soulless (in a literal sense, as in "lack of spirit" and so forth) view of how the universe works, the fact that it's here at all is not something I ever expect science to explain. (And yes, I am also very scientifically educated.) Even if we could explain the whole universe's working, I'm not so sure we'd ever know how it got here and why it has the parameters that it does. Any attempt to explain it to me so far has been...eh, lacking.

So yeah, there you go. :)

(Props from me for trying to get people to look at things from another point of view! Sorry it went so damn poorly.)
 

DaWaffledude

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Human consciousness.

I can understand Earth looking exactly like it does right now without divine intervention, but being able to actually experience it just blows my mind. I mean, I exist, I'm sentient!

I mean, does a rock have some form of consciousness? What about a computer? That has electrical signals running through it. At what point is there a "me" to live? It's completely insane.
 

Demongeneral109

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Schadrach said:
VonKlaw said:
To the OP: Please pick your favorite breed of cat. You are not allowed to include any breeds of cat that actual exists. Go.
Easier than the duck-fucking question. Grimalkin, 3rd edition Monster Manual II, page 122. In their natural form they resemble a larger than average grey house cat, but are shapeshifters and can adopt the form of any animal up to size category Large (basically things around the size of a bull). Also capable of speech and of roughly human intelligence.

It's the best cat, because it is *all* the cats.

How many more of these do I need to answer?

Kged said:
This "hypothetical" question clearly serves an agenda. Or, at best, is a troll.
Nope. Just thought it would be interesting to see what people came up with.

Wasn't really expecting quite the degree of angry responses. It would be like asking this crowd what their favorite astrological sign was, except instead of discussion regarding the stars that made them up, or which one has most aesthetically pleasing symbolism, or which set of traits they claim to represent is best, I got people attacking the very idea of the question being asked in the first place. You don't need to accept something as true in order to discuss it in a hypothetical sense.

If it helps, you can think of the original question in terms of possibly being performed by sufficiently advanced aliens with technology indistinguishable from magic/divine power. It doesn't really change what's being asked in any meaningful sense.
What you are getting in this thread is all the reddit atheists who are so militant about it that they refuse to even work in hypothetical... don't worry too much about it too much.

My answer to this thread would probably have to be Joan of Arc. In midevil society, the chances of a peasant getting an audience with a king, and a woman at that, are so absurdly small that it almost defies belief. Also, Britan had been doing this whole 'war' thing for a while, so the fact she got command of the army... and then proceeded to whip the brits all over the place until her martyrdom through that witch trial... and the fact she then inspired an entire country to finish what she started... if anyone who talked of being blessed by God actually was, it was the maid of Orleans
 

Demongeneral109

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qeinar said:
Tanakh said:
I know there is no God, just as I know I need air to live or that computers work, yet you can't prove any of those.
i can easily prove the last one: if something works or not depends on if you can use it for what you want to, you are using a computer so obviously it works. we can also prove you need air (or oxygen to be specific) because you would die if we denied you access to it. proving if computers are working or not just depends on your definition of working, we also know exactly how computers work. computers and oxygen are not made up so we can prove things about them, god on the other hand..
Now of course, I could argue that it is not oxygen we need, but some hithero unknown subatomic particle that is somehow created or drawn by the exact forces at work in an oxygen atom, its just that the idea that is is oxygen is what we know based on current knowledge. This is why in science almost nothing is fact, these 'facts' might change as our understanding of the universe does. Its like gravity, which we now believe is not an actual force, but... wrinkles in the fabric of space time created by sufficiently large bodies of mass.

And even ignoring that, how can you know there is no God? A lack of evidence is not evidence in and of itself. It is simply a lack of evidence. Unless there is explicit evidence that disproves His existence, we cannot conclude that God does not exist... learn science and then we can have a proper discussion about this.
 

FLSH_BNG

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May 27, 2008
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The first possible thing I could think of is the "beginning" of what we observe as the universe. We have no idea how or why it happened. We have ideas, we have hypotheses, but we are a long way from being able to form theories.

The last thing would have to be the development of sapience. Being aware, not just of our surroundings, but of ourselves... having a sense of self that allows us to ask questions and seek answers to the puzzles we face each day.

I'm not so crass to simply say that there are or aren't any gods. There is no evidence to prove or disprove their existence. But it's this quality we have over other known creatures that allows us to question that keeps me interested in such things.

That's my views on the subject.

I feel I should point out to the OP that refusal to respond is in itself a response as valid as any other. Especially since this topic can be easily considered personal and many people may not be willing to share something that is unique only to themselves.
 

Kinitawowi

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Nov 21, 2012
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I'm not able to answer the question.

This isn't about me being a stubborn shit, it's that being a person that simply does not believe in the divine or the supernatural, I can't possibly fathom a totally opposed viewpoint because it's not something I consider as relevant to my life. Someone on page 1 said it was like asking a straight person "I know you aren't gay, but Johnny Depp or Mark Wahlberg", and it's exactly the same issue. I can't answer that question, because I'm not gay. I'm not attracted to men, I don't find men attractive, I can't look at the world from the viewpoint of finding men attractive because I simply don't. They're both zeroes on my attractive-meter. What event or thing do I think was most likely to be the result of divine intervention, supernatural activity or other imaginary or inexplicable phenomena? None of them. I think they're all equally unlikely.
 

happyninja42

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Aurora Firestorm said:
Sigh.

Nobody here actually *understood* the original question. Or if they did, they were too busy snarking and trolling. I don't like posting in anti-religion-flamebait threads, but here I go anyway, just to give you the answer I haven't seen other people give without a lot of "hurr hurr hurr religion is stupid but maybe I'll answer your question." (Sorry. I'm bitter, yeah. But really, people, aren't we all tired of taking potshots at some people's entire livelihoods? Oh wait, this is the Internet, nobody cares about anyone.)
Actually no we're not tired of it, especially if we feel that your entire livelihood is based around the manipulation and deception of a body of people, in order to milk money out of them. Sorry but I'm going to say that I think your profession (assuming you mean people with religious livelihoods) is dishonest, deceptive, and ultimately detrimental to human society. If you don't like the fact that I am saying that, well, too bad. And I happen to care about a lot of people on the internet, but not people who make silly comments that are worded to be somewhat insulting and confrontational towards me in the general sense, like yours was. That type of post does not engender warm fuzzy feelings from me towards you. Shocking I know.


Aurora Firestorm said:
I'm religious, but hey, let me put aside my Christian hat for a bit and think, if I had to assume that only one event *ever* was the work of God, I would say the creation of the universe. Even if I take the most utterly soulless (in a literal sense, as in "lack of spirit" and so forth) view of how the universe works, the fact that it's here at all is not something I ever expect science to explain. (And yes, I am also very scientifically educated.) Even if we could explain the whole universe's working, I'm not so sure we'd ever know how it got here and why it has the parameters that it does. Any attempt to explain it to me so far has been...eh, lacking.
And that is a typical Argument from Ignorance. The "I don't know how it could've been done, so God Did It" argument.

Aurora Firestorm said:
(Props from me for trying to get people to look at things from another point of view! Sorry it went so damn poorly.)
No, sorry you don't get to give yourself props for this. The OP's post is logically flawed, and since he specifically targeted the question to athiests and skeptics, we're going to call him on the idiocy of his post and it's structure. The very question is illogical, and is contrary to our method of thought. It's like asking "So tell me the one thing you think the Purple Narble Fairy didn't vote into existance by taking a poll of her sentient fingernail clippings." It is a flawed thing to ask, that makes no sense.