Yeah, I was thinking along those lines when writing this, along with the issues around Pascal’s Mugging/muggle. I still need to do a lot more research on this, as I’m still not sure what the correct thing to do would actually be in such a seemingly convincing situation. It doesn’t seem quite reasonable to say that no evidence whatsoever can possibly prove the existence of God, as that seems to make atheism unfalsifiable. On the other hand, what could possibly count as enough evidence for such an exotic possibility?
Note that just because “God” is one word in English, doesn’t mean it’s one single claim. It’s thousands.
Do there exist any beings more intelligent than humans? We could imagine conclusive evidence for that. Do there exist any beings that can transcend time and space? We could imagine ways to test that. Do there exist beings that can create non-consuming fire? Again we could easily test that. We’d have to do thousands of these tests to verify something as complex as the Judeo-Christian God.
Ask God to perform a miracle in front of thousands of witnesses. You cannot all be hallucinating at the same time. Or if that’s not an option, ask God to give you proof of Riemann hypothesis, then publish it in a peer-reviewed journal to check that it’s true. That wouldn’t exclude the Matrix overlords / alien teenager prank hypotheses, but at least you’d know you’re not hallucinating.
I don’t think anyone could prove they’re omniscient and omnipotent, rather than simply very knowledgeable and powerful, though. Seems like that would require infinite amount of evidence.
A certain chapter of MoR comes to mind. Or as Kripkenstein might ask, how do you know you didn’t hallucinate the memory of reading a letter from the editor of the journal confirming acceptance of your paper?
Proving Riemann hypothesis doesn’t sound that super-human level. Instead, since IP=PSPACE, we can ask God to prove that He can solve some PSPACE-complete problem.
Yeah, I was thinking along those lines when writing this, along with the issues around Pascal’s Mugging/muggle. I still need to do a lot more research on this, as I’m still not sure what the correct thing to do would actually be in such a seemingly convincing situation. It doesn’t seem quite reasonable to say that no evidence whatsoever can possibly prove the existence of God, as that seems to make atheism unfalsifiable. On the other hand, what could possibly count as enough evidence for such an exotic possibility?
Note that just because “God” is one word in English, doesn’t mean it’s one single claim. It’s thousands.
Do there exist any beings more intelligent than humans? We could imagine conclusive evidence for that. Do there exist any beings that can transcend time and space? We could imagine ways to test that. Do there exist beings that can create non-consuming fire? Again we could easily test that. We’d have to do thousands of these tests to verify something as complex as the Judeo-Christian God.
Ask God to perform a miracle in front of thousands of witnesses. You cannot all be hallucinating at the same time. Or if that’s not an option, ask God to give you proof of Riemann hypothesis, then publish it in a peer-reviewed journal to check that it’s true. That wouldn’t exclude the Matrix overlords / alien teenager prank hypotheses, but at least you’d know you’re not hallucinating.
I don’t think anyone could prove they’re omniscient and omnipotent, rather than simply very knowledgeable and powerful, though. Seems like that would require infinite amount of evidence.
A certain chapter of MoR comes to mind. Or as Kripkenstein might ask, how do you know you didn’t hallucinate the memory of reading a letter from the editor of the journal confirming acceptance of your paper?
I’d ask for everyone to be given Wolverine’s healing factor. This would be really helpful and enough to start taking the scenario seriously.
As a side note, Teenage Matrix Overlords are indistinguishable from god from where I am standing.
Proving Riemann hypothesis doesn’t sound that super-human level. Instead, since IP=PSPACE, we can ask God to prove that He can solve some PSPACE-complete problem.