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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: Would you look in the box?
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IntellectByProxy
Larger than you think
# 3185
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Posted
Someone gives you a box. In the box is definitive, incontrovertible proof that God either exists or does not exist.
You can't show the box to anyone else, nor will you ever be able to satisfactorily explain the proof to them.
For this thought experiment, we don't need to discuss what the proof might consist of - you just have to accept that it is absolute.
Do you open the box?
[ 15. June 2016, 18:50: Message edited by: Belisarius ]
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www.zambiadiaries.blogspot.com
Posts: 3482 | From: The opposite | Registered: Aug 2002
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Ender's Shadow
Shipmate
# 2272
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Posted
Of course - given the degree of commitment that living as a Christian means for me, 'proof' that I am right or wrong about it would be amazingly significant.
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Test everything. Hold on to the good.
Please don't refer to me as 'Ender' - the whole point of Ender's Shadow is that he isn't Ender.
Posts: 5018 | From: Manchester, England | Registered: Feb 2002
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
As you would expect, it's the existence of the box I'm having trouble with!
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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PhilA
shipocaster
# 8792
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Posted
Yes.
Does it change my life? Not really. It will just be one more question answered.
I personally go more for Tillich's version of what God is rather than seeing God as an existent being anyway, so if I found out that God did not exist and that there was no such being as God, it wouldn't change my faith very much anyway.
Again personally, I have no time at all for the type of 'Christian' who believes the Gospel as 100% fact but it doesn't affect their life beyond a Sunday morning. I have a lot more time for the type of Christian who throws it all up in the air and says 'I don't know' but spends their whole life trying to live it out.
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To err is human. To arr takes a pirate.
Posts: 3121 | From: Sofa | Registered: Nov 2004
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Paul.
Shipmate
# 37
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Posted
Yes I'd open it. I don't think information is a bad thing. I'd rather deal with reality as it is than the way I wish it were.
However this:
quote:
You can't show the box to anyone else, nor will you ever be able to satisfactorily explain the proof to them.
is an interesting stipulation because with this condition then for all practical purposes I had looked in the box when I was an Evangelical. I couldn't have felt more sure if had some external proof.
Of course the fact that I am no longer so sure is sobering.
Posts: 3689 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2004
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Herrick
Shipmate
# 15226
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Posted
Of course I would open the box, but I think It wouldn't change much about how I live and relate.
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A careless shoestring in whose tie
I see a wild civility
Posts: 1194 | From: NSW | Registered: Oct 2009
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MrAlpen
Shipmate
# 12858
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Posted
It's got to be "yes." Whatever I _expect_ the answer to be, more data is better than fewer.
For me, if the answer were "no God" then it would change my life radically. Not because of the "degree of commitment" issue - the stuff I do is not an effort expended out of fear or in pursuit of approval, but just the outworked consequence of Theistic life-view along with the other usual personality, experience and situational stuff.
No, the change for me would be in my sense of identity. It would take time to echo up into behaviour, which is moderated by friendship networks, habits and so forth. But underneath I would feel it to be the deepest possible shifting of sand.
Posts: 68 | From: Yuk | Registered: Jul 2007
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
No. Unless I was very drunk.
I believe that "God exists" (whatever that means). But it's my believing it that affects my life, not whether he actually does or not.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
Certainly not. I'll let the "proof" kick in when they put me in my own box: in the meantime, the supernatural gift of faith will have to suffice.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
Of course - given the degree of commitment that living as a Christian means for me, 'proof' that I am right or wrong about it would be amazingly significant.
Seconded. I can't think of any reason not to.
Of course, I don't need to look in the box given the premises of the OP. For there to be guaranteed, absolute and compelling proof of an ultimate truth, which can be infallibly conveyed to me but never communicated by me, would require some impressive supernatural contrivance to set up. Ergo, God exists.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Merchant Trader
Shipmate
# 9007
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Posted
Boxes can contain nasty surprises, just think of the Pandorica. You may be expecting an answer to a simple question but you may find something that you were not expecting. God chose to reveal himself through Jesus Christ and in him we can trust. I feel rather more comfortable with that than trusting a box given to me by a dodgy stranger.
[ 25. June 2010, 09:21: Message edited by: Merchant Trader ]
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... formerly of Muscovy, Lombardy & the Low Countries; travelling through diverse trading stations in the New and Olde Worlds
Posts: 1328 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Sandemaniac
Shipmate
# 12829
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Posted
I would be very wary of opening a box, simply because I am all to aware of the third state in which a cat enclosed in a box may be in... MAD!
AG
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"It becomes soon pleasantly apparent that change-ringing is by no means merely an excuse for beer" Charles Dickens gets it wrong, 1869
Posts: 3574 | From: The wardrobe of my soul | Registered: Jul 2007
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
Yes
1. I am very impulsive
2. I am impossibly curious
3. I feel like I've looked in the box already as I can't believe that God doesn't exist (hard 'tho I have tried)
4. If I found S/he definitely didn't exist I would change very little of what I do and say.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
Would this boxed God be everyone else’s God too? It’s just that there seem to be almost as many ideas of what God actually is as there are people believing/disbelieving in Him. Therefore, I don’t see much point in knowing for certainty that my God doesn’t exist (or does), since it would leave every other God question unanswered- and those are the important ones.
No, I’d only open the box if it would answer for me the question about everyone else’s God too. But then, I would, yeah. It would be very cool to have me that certainty some around here seem to enjoy.
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IntellectByProxy:
Do you open the box?
Yes, without the slightest hesitation. And the idea that someone wouldn't be excited about this, or worse, would not want to open the box is utterly alien to me.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Unjust Stuart
Shipmate
# 13953
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Posted
So long as it's not Noel Edmonds offering me the box...
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Forty years long was I grieved with this generation and said.
Posts: 281 | From: Hendon. Finchley. Around there. | Registered: Jul 2008
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IntellectByProxy:
Do you open the box?
Yes. Simply because knowing that one answer would raise so many other questions.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Squibs
Shipmate
# 14408
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Posted
Without hesitation.
Also, if I had a time machine that could go just one place, it would not be forward in time, it would be back to Jerusalem 2000 or so years ago. This reminds me of a book I read when I was younger - the name escapes me. Apparently Jesus was neither God nor anything else you would readily imagine. He was actually a time traveller who went back 2000 years in time to find that there was no Christ yet for some reason he felt the need to keep the legend going by becoming Christ - execution and all.
Posts: 1124 | From: Here, there and everywhere | Registered: Dec 2008
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by IntellectByProxy:
Do you open the box?
Yes, without the slightest hesitation. And the idea that someone wouldn't be excited about this, or worse, would not want to open the box is utterly alien to me.
Precisely. I'd be very excited and very curious. Which is why I said "only if I was drunk" - i.e. if I wasn't thinking rationally. Rationally, irrefutable proof is the negation of faith. Knowing God exists would destroy my faith, and destroy me too most likely.
(And I like Sandemaniac's idea of "Schroedinger's God"!)
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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IntellectByProxy
Larger than you think
# 3185
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Would this boxed God be everyone else’s God too? It’s just that there seem to be almost as many ideas of what God actually is as there are people believing/disbelieving in Him.
Let's make the assumption that there is only one God, and every single human conceptualisation of God (Thor, Yahweh, Flying Spaghetti Monster) is an imperfect attempt to define the divine.
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www.zambiadiaries.blogspot.com
Posts: 3482 | From: The opposite | Registered: Aug 2002
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Squibs:
Without hesitation.
Also, if I had a time machine that could go just one place, it would not be forward in time, it would be back to Jerusalem 2000 or so years ago. This reminds me of a book I read when I was younger - the name escapes me. Apparently Jesus was neither God nor anything else you would readily imagine. He was actually a time traveller who went back 2000 years in time to find that there was no Christ yet for some reason he felt the need to keep the legend going by becoming Christ - execution and all.
Interesting! I read a short story when I was a kid where time-travelling holiday makers could travel anywhere to witness historic events, but they had to 'blend in' with the natives. A little girl's family went back to the crucifiction, and they'd all been told to shout 'crucify him' etc. as they couldn't change history. She couldn't bear to stay in the crowd shouting, so she wandered off around Jerusalem, where she saw everyone sitting in their houses looking sad. She then realises that none of the local people actually wanted Jesus dead, and the crowd shouting 'crucify him' are in fact ALL holiday makers from the future.
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"Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole." - David Lynch
Posts: 2098 | From: Midlands | Registered: Mar 2008
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Anselmina
Ship's barmaid
# 3032
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Posted
What a great OP!
quote:
Originally posted by IntellectByProxy:
Someone gives you a box. In the box is definitive, incontrovertible proof that God either exists or does not exist.
You can't show the box to anyone else, nor will you ever be able to satisfactorily explain the proof to them.
For this thought experiment, we don't need to discuss what the proof might consist of - you just have to accept that it is absolute.
Do you open the box?
Someone places a tree in your garden which grows lovely fruit. Someone else tells you that if you access this fruit you will become like God knowing all things. You know you've been warned off the tree, rather contrarily, by the person who put it within reach in the first place.
Do you eat the fruit?
I would open the box. Just call me Eve.
Posts: 10002 | From: Scotland the Brave | Registered: Jul 2002
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IntellectByProxy:
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Would this boxed God be everyone else’s God too? It’s just that there seem to be almost as many ideas of what God actually is as there are people believing/disbelieving in Him.
Let's make the assumption that there is only one God, and every single human conceptualisation of God (Thor, Yahweh, Flying Spaghetti Monster) is an imperfect attempt to define the divine.
My feeling exactly.
If we reach out to God we can only reach out to what we know of him/her. And since all knowledge is ultimately subjective it figures that our perceptions of God will be subjective too.
And that's fine by me.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Paul.
Shipmate
# 37
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Posted
I still think that there's no real difference between "proof" that you can't share with anyone else and faith. In the end their both forms of revelation if you will - personal, subjective knowledge. There may be a degree of difference in the perceived certainty but that's not a qualitative difference IMO.
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Rationally, irrefutable proof is the negation of faith. Knowing God exists would destroy my faith, and destroy me too most likely.
Will it destroy you at the Resurrection?
If it wasn't a box but a time machine taking you back to meet Jesus would that destroy you too?
I really can't get my head round the idea that proof is the negation of faith. Faith in God is trust as well as belief in the fact of Him isn't it? Surely trust wouldn't be destroyed by proof.
I trust my best friend all the more because I'm sure she exists.
Posts: 3689 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2004
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
Would proof remove the ability to suspend disbelief - which is what some Christians seem to do (IMO)?
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
It seems to me people are confusing two aspects of faith: one is holding something as true in spite of lacking compelling evidence, the other is staying true to a pledge or allegiance.
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Rationally, irrefutable proof is the negation of faith.
Knowledge is better than faith as far as truth is concerned (first aspect). After all, that's what we are heading for: the beatific vision will negate all faith concerning truths about God, because we will know God to the limits of our capacity.
How can one possibly reject an advance on the beatific vision?
Faith as staying true (second aspect) isn't negatively affected by knowing that God exists. Why should one have less allegiance with God just because it has become undeniable that He is there? To the contrary, likely one's allegiance would increase. And if God did not exist, then one's faith would have been false, and it is good that it be destroyed.
How can one possibly reject an increase in one's allegiance to God or being disabused?
I see one possible negative effect, and one only: Faith that God exists is not meritorious anymore, once one knows that He does. But frankly, this faith is not particularly meritorious per se. The bible calls people who do not believe in God fools (e.g., Ps 14.1), and we do not get a medal for not being stupid. The faith so meritorious in Abraham is of the second, allegiance kind.
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Knowing God exists would destroy my faith, and destroy me too most likely.
I find that completely baffling. How can knowing that God exists be anything but occasion for dancing with joy? OK, perhaps after rushing to the nearest confession booth, but still...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
I see one possible negative effect, and one only:
I could suggest another one: that there is spiritual benefit to be had in the process of looking for God while you are still uncertain. There may be occasions where someone who is unsure of God's existence and yet tries to obey him learns or practices a virtue more effectively than they would have done if they had proof that there was a God.
That wouldn't stop me looking in the box, though, because it seems to me that that sort of benefit comes from not knowing, but desperately wanting to know. An unsatisfied hunger for truth (or food) might make me work harder, but only because I want the hunger to be satisfied. So it seems to me that God might hold back full knowledge while we still have work to do, but that does not provide any sort of justification for us not snapping up any increased knowledge that he might put before us.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
It might have a negative effect on my sense of freedom if I looked and the answer was 'yes'
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
Posts: 5235 | From: a prefecture | Registered: Jul 2008
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IconiumBound
Shipmate
# 754
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Posted
I've opened the box. In it is a fortune cookie that reads:
"There is no God and He is eternal"
Posts: 1318 | From: Philadelphia, PA, USA | Registered: Jul 2001
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Bullfrog.
Prophetic Amphibian
# 11014
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Posted
I'd be more interested in how the box defined God and existence.
Without these nailed down, "yes" or "no" is kind of meaningless.
Posts: 7522 | From: Chicago | Registered: Feb 2006
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
IngoB and wilson, I refer you to the (CofE) post-communion prayer for the 3rd Sunday after Trinity:
quote:
O God, whose beauty is beyond our imagining
and whose power we cannot comprehend:
show us your glory as far as we can grasp it,
and shield us from knowing more than we can bear
until we may look upon you without fear;
through (etc.)
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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Sparrow
Shipmate
# 2458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by goperryrevs:
I read a short story when I was a kid where time-travelling holiday makers could travel anywhere to witness historic events, but they had to 'blend in' with the natives. A little girl's family went back to the crucifiction, and they'd all been told to shout 'crucify him' etc. as they couldn't change history. She couldn't bear to stay in the crowd shouting, so she wandered off around Jerusalem, where she saw everyone sitting in their houses looking sad. She then realises that none of the local people actually wanted Jesus dead, and the crowd shouting 'crucify him' are in fact ALL holiday makers from the future.
"Let's go to Golgotha" by Garry Kilworth. Amazing, chilling story.
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For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life,nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Posts: 3149 | From: Bottom right hand corner of the UK | Registered: Mar 2002
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MiceElf
Not your average mouse
# 4389
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Posted
My immediate response was to say YES of course I would open the box, but my second response moved in quickly to question whether or not I would believe the 'irreputable truth' ... more so if the price of knowing was the fact I could not share it with any other person.
I am just reminded that Jesus said (dont quote me - cos I havent got a bible to hand) that many have seen the miracles and even seen the dead brought back to life, yet still don't believe.
Maybe just maybe if the box contained Elvis Presley,still singing the Blues, then some might believe... but then again he is often found working in a McDonalds near you alongside Michael Jackson.
If the box contained a video link to heaven and I had a conversation with people I have loved and lost... I would probably just ask my psychiatrist to increase my medication.
On reflection, I would not open the box, because I do not want to be faced with my stubborn refusal to embrace all that believing in an Immortal Invisible God only Wise would involve - especially the Worship and Adore demands from a God who is picky choosy whom he will bless with health wealth and happiness, while leaving others to question WHY if he can do it for them, then why not for me, or those I love too.
The flip side is the dilema of knowing that life is hard enough with just a flickering candle light of hope; if that small flame were extinguished there would be a darkness - so absolute and final, it would be like death itself.
But what I fear most is knowing one way or another and not caring a damm.
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What do we want.... Cure for Obesity
When do we want it.... After Dessert.
Posts: 1032 | From: OILOVWOIGHT | Registered: Apr 2003
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Paul.
Shipmate
# 37
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
IngoB and wilson, I refer you to the (CofE) post-communion prayer for the 3rd Sunday after Trinity:
quote:
O God, whose beauty is beyond our imagining
and whose power we cannot comprehend:
show us your glory as far as we can grasp it,
and shield us from knowing more than we can bear
until we may look upon you without fear;
through (etc.)
ISTM (and I'm not Anglican but) that prayer is about how there are aspects of God we can't take/bear/understand right now.
However it doesn't say "shield us from knowing that you're really there". In fact prayer sort of assumes God does exist.
Let's not call it proof, let's just say the box contains more knowledge about God - how can that be a bad thing?
Posts: 3689 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2004
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
I know that my Redeemer liveth. Handel said it best. I don't need proof, because I have faith that I will have it anyway, on the Last Day. In the meantime I live my life the best I can.
One of the problems I have with a box is that I think of that of Pandora's.
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Even more so than I was before
Posts: 20466 | From: No longer where I was | Registered: Sep 2005
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sparrow:
"Let's go to Golgotha" by Garry Kilworth. Amazing, chilling story.
Thanks! It was so long ago that I read it, and would never have remembered the title. Might look it up again now!
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"Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole." - David Lynch
Posts: 2098 | From: Midlands | Registered: Mar 2008
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Snags
Utterly socially unrealistic
# 15351
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Squibs:
This reminds me of a book I read when I was younger - the name escapes me. Apparently Jesus was neither God nor anything else you would readily imagine. He was actually a time traveller who went back 2000 years in time to find that there was no Christ yet for some reason he felt the need to keep the legend going by becoming Christ - execution and all.
Sounds like "Behold The Man" by Michael Moorcock. It's quite good, in that it manages to offend almost everyone - Mary's a bit of a slapper, Jesus is a dribbling half-wit, but the protagonist decides that history needs to be kept intact, so steps up to the plate and generates the myth he's familiar with. Thus effectively putting the whole thing in the "It's a sham" bin ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Wikipedia seems vaguely accurate, from what I can remember of the story.
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Vain witterings :-: Vain pretentions :-: The Dog's Blog(locks)
Posts: 1399 | From: just north of That London | Registered: Dec 2009
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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
Shipmate
# 11274
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Posted
My initial response to the OP was "absolutely" - I would open it. However, reading through the responses I feel more hesitant. It's not the answer as to the existance of God one way or the other that's troubling in itself, but rather the nature of the proof - that could be problematic. The nature of the proof provided might be, literally, maddening.
Posts: 7328 | From: Delaware | Registered: Apr 2006
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Jessie Phillips
Shipmate
# 13048
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Posted
To me, this question seems obviously modelled on the myth of Pandora's box in Hesiod - and, as such, it also parallels the biting of the forbidden fruit in Genesis.
Questions you need to ask are - will opening the box kill you? Or do you think you would have died anyway even if you hadn't opened the box? If so, then how does opening the box make any difference?
It also depends how hungry I was. If I hadn't eaten for a few days and was ravenously hungry, then I might go off and find some food to eat before trying to open the box. Unless I thought that the box might have some food in it as well as the proof. But if the catch or the hinges were a bit stiff and it defeated me, I wouldn't persist, I'd just go off and look elsewhere instead, and maybe resolve to come back to the box later on. If the process of finding food turned out to be too complicated, then I'd just give up on the box.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is relevant here.
This might also explain why the Panacea Society is unlikely to get Joanna Southcott's box opened any time soon.
Posts: 2244 | From: Home counties, UK | Registered: Oct 2007
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
I would never have enough faith in the box and the set-up to believe that whatever it revealed would be "the truth" anyway. I'd be tormented by the box, though, thinking "what if it really is a barometer of reality?" That would drive me nuts. But I don't know from this position whether it would drive me to open the box.
And if I did open the box, and it showed that God exists, I would still have the niggling doubt. And if it showed that God doesn't exist, well, I would still have the niggling doubt.
These kinds of thought experiments always involve a set-up that is so unreal that they don't really show much to me. I focus on the set-up because it's too dodgy to be a barometer of what's in my own soul.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
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Posted
I can get that faith as we know it is related to not knowing, but I'm not sure this isn't a reason to look in the box.
Assuming for the sake of argument that there is an afterlife, then at that stage many of think that we will know definitely what it was all about and whether God was real. Would Heaven going be misery because we have certainty about the divine?
Don't think that consideration would stop me looking.
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Rent my holiday home in the South of France
Posts: 3696 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
Shipmate
# 11274
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Posted
I think mousethief is onto something quite fundamental about the psychology of most persons - the so-called irrefutable proof still wouldn't provide certainty for most people. The set-up ignores the reality that most people harbour all sorts of doubts about the accuracy and truth of their own perceptions and beliefs about a variety of things (at least I should hope they do). Internet fora tend to hide this fact, with people coming across with much greater certainty about issues than they actually possess (IMO -- I tend to do it too, of course). My other thought about the OP is that we may get into a definitional problem about God and discriminating God from Processes-Within-the-Universe-Giving-Rise-to-Creation.
Posts: 7328 | From: Delaware | Registered: Apr 2006
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Spiffy
Ship's WonderSheep
# 5267
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IntellectByProxy:
Someone gives you a box. In the box is definitive, incontrovertible proof that God either exists or does not exist.
You can't show the box to anyone else, nor will you ever be able to satisfactorily explain the proof to them.
For this thought experiment, we don't need to discuss what the proof might consist of - you just have to accept that it is absolute.
Do you open the box?
Too late. Already did open it. Nowadays I miss having the luxury of doubt.
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Looking for a simple solution to all life's problems? We are proud to present obstinate denial. Accept no substitute. Accept nothing.
--Night Vale Radio Twitter Account
Posts: 10281 | From: Beervana | Registered: Dec 2003
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Jessie Phillips
Shipmate
# 13048
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Posted
mousethief says
quote:
I'd be tormented by the box, though, thinking "what if it really is a barometer of reality?" That would drive me nuts. But I don't know from this position whether it would drive me to open the box.
Funny you mention that. I used to think the same way about the Bible - and, in particular, the book of Revelation.
Nowadays, I don't think that the Bible is any more a barometer of reality than the literature of the Trojan War legend, or the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Well, okay, it might be, but then who's to tell? Is there any such thing as an objective reality anyway? And what would be the purpose of our knowing it?
In practical terms, though, I find that my own ability to study simply can't keep pace with my developing curiosity. But meanwhile, work needs to be done and bills need to be paid - or at least, I think so anyway.
la vie en rouge says quote:
Assuming for the sake of argument that there is an afterlife, then at that stage many of think that we will know definitely what it was all about and whether God was real. Would Heaven going be misery because we have certainty about the divine?
Well, I for one am convinced that there's an afterlife - and I'm also convinced that getting into heaven would be a good thing. What's up for debate, though, is whether heaven is what conservative evangelical Christians say it is or not.
How do you get into heaven? Is it by (a) trying to avert your eyes from the top shelf? Or is it by (b) being a chivalrous knight and martyr, prepared to die for king and country? Or is it by (c) hob-nobbing with media industry interns? Or (d) paying money to Rupert Murdoch?
Incidentally, I don't see how the answers to those questions depends on the answer to the question of whether God actually exists or not. God doesn't necessarily need to exist in order for an afterlife to exist.
Posts: 2244 | From: Home counties, UK | Registered: Oct 2007
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
Yes, I'd open it. I'd want to know either way, to set my mind at rest. Given how things are generally in the world and that I'd abandoned the idea of God a while ago, I don't think I'd find this a particularly welcome discovery - but it would satisfy some curiosity.
It would leave me with something of a dilemma though, because although it had proved the existence of one deity it didn't mean I knew what was in store for me in the afterlife or whether there were any more deities. There might have to be a few more boxes around. I'd be asking a lot of questions at this point.
quote:
Originally posted by Anselmina:
Someone places a tree in your garden which grows lovely fruit. Someone else tells you that if you access this fruit you will become like God knowing all things. You know you've been warned off the tree, rather contrarily, by the person who put it within reach in the first place.
Do you eat the fruit?
No. I'd probably chop the tree down, as well. Imagine how awful it would be if you were completely omniscient: how boring it would be, there would be no mystery left, nothing to discover. All intellectual curiosity would be totally stultified. You'd know the outcome of every course of action, everything would be completely predictable. You'd know what people were going to say before they said it, you'd know all their motives, see straight through them, have no illusions about anyone or anything. You'd become something of a puppet of Fate, living out a timeline only you could see in all its awful clarity, every action predestined. Nothing would be a pleasure any more.
However, before I chopped the tree down, I might press some of the fruit for juice, which if diluted with a lot of water, might give partial knowledge. You could possibly then know, as it might be, the cure for cancer, but not the 6800 languages currently spoken in the world, what your neighbours are doing, who will win the next 12 World Cups, or when an asteroid will wipe out life on the earth (=information overload and burnout).
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
Shipmate
# 11274
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Posted
But there seems to be some conflation of the question of the existance of a Deity with the issue of an "afterlife" going on here. They are really separate issues. The OP is only addressing the former.
Posts: 7328 | From: Delaware | Registered: Apr 2006
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Squibs
Shipmate
# 14408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Snags:
quote:
Originally posted by Squibs:
This reminds me of a book I read when I was younger - the name escapes me. Apparently Jesus was neither God nor anything else you would readily imagine. He was actually a time traveller who went back 2000 years in time to find that there was no Christ yet for some reason he felt the need to keep the legend going by becoming Christ - execution and all.
Sounds like "Behold The Man" by Michael Moorcock. It's quite good, in that it manages to offend almost everyone - Mary's a bit of a slapper, Jesus is a dribbling half-wit, but the protagonist decides that history needs to be kept intact, so steps up to the plate and generates the myth he's familiar with. Thus effectively putting the whole thing in the "It's a sham" bin
Wikipedia seems vaguely accurate, from what I can remember of the story.
Yeah, that's the one. I remember that even though I wasn't a particularly committed teenage Christian (I was actually along the road to a type of agnosticism at that stage) the story offended me. Job done, I guess.
Posts: 1124 | From: Here, there and everywhere | Registered: Dec 2008
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Anselmina
Ship's barmaid
# 3032
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Posted
Ariel, I like the fruit juice idea ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) . So do you reckon God, too, is bored, what with knowing everything?
Posts: 10002 | From: Scotland the Brave | Registered: Jul 2002
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anselmina:
Do you eat the fruit? I would open the box. Just call me Eve.
The setup of the OP has exactly nothing to do with the Fall. There is no indication that God disapproves. There is no serpent influencing the decision. There is also no attempt to "be like God", merely a replacing of what one believes by faith anyway with what one knows by proof.
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
IngoB and wilson, I refer you to the (CofE) post-communion prayer for the 3rd Sunday after Trinity
The mere existence of God is not "more than you can bear knowing". Otherwise your faith is simply a sham. That there is God is a sine qua non of any Christian faith, otherwise it is merely a bizarre and dysfunctional form of humanism.
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
I focus on the set-up because it's too dodgy to be a barometer of what's in my own soul.
Really? I thought it exposed what is in your soul rather well, right in the answer you wrote.
quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
The set-up ignores the reality that most people harbour all sorts of doubts about the accuracy and truth of their own perceptions and beliefs about a variety of things (at least I should hope they do).
I disagree, though I do not know if the OP was intentionally precise about this. Why can you not explain the proof satisfactorily to anyone else? Because it was tailored so precisely to you, making it so truly incontrovertible for you, that everybody else who is not you could still doubt this.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Gwai
Shipmate
# 11076
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Posted
Being who I am, I would open the box. However, unless this box was personally given to me by God, it would probably be the wiser choice not to. Like everyone else, I'll find out eventually and the more I think about such a box, the more I suspect such a box would indeed be maddening.
However, at least for me, opening the box would be an act of faith. If God doesn't exist, I would rather remain convinced that he does. Only if the answer in the box is yes, would I want to know.
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A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.
Posts: 11914 | From: Chicago | Registered: Feb 2006
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