If you were a divine or superhuman entity, and you wanted to communicate with humans, what kind of person would you contact? How would you prove your existence?
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I’d find the guy on cable TV with the biggest, worst haircut, and talk exclusively to him.
I would pick a rather obscure desert tribe of goat herders and……oh wait, that has already been tried.
Taking the question seriously: Everyone, everywhere, at once. Those in precarious or unsafe positions (driving/piloting/etc) would experience it quieter and less consuming of their attention.
Otherwise: A illiterate, preferablly toothless older male who has a known history of alcohol abuse, located somewhere in the deep south or midwest. Hey, works for the aliens.
Well, there’s always the approach in one of the Valdemar books (one of the Mage Storms books, I think) by Mercedes Lackey – when the deity of a neighboring kingdom has had enough (and has found an appropriate person to be his new head priest), he inhabits a huge (crowned) statue of himself, gets up, takes the crown off his head, put it (resizing as he goes) on the head of his choice, and goes back and sits back down – in full view of tons of witnesses.
Surely there’s some suitable image of any real-world deity that could be used for something similar…
I suddenly imagined the image of Cristo Redentor doing that.
It would be so f-ing awesome.
Bah, no link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_the_Redeemer_(statue)
It would be just like a Jesus Transformer.
I’d contact everyone. I’d create an immaterial but visible message in a high equatorial orbit that says something like “I am . I exist. This message will disappear in days”. The message would be at least detectable if not readable with the naked eye from the ground, and easily readable with small telescopes or binoculars. The message would persist long enough for several independent teams to confirm that it is not a hoax and that it truly is immaterial (possibly by passing a probe through it). The message would be repeated around the orbit in all the major languages of the world. Extra points to the god that puts it in a non-geosynchronous orbit and yet the message appears stationary.
Aw, drat. My message got garbled because I used angle brackets. That message should have read something like “I am (god’s name). I exist. This message will disappear in (x) days”.
In Terry Pratchet’s Small gods (one of the best views on religion I read) there is a scene where they describe what happen when a philosopher question the existence of the gods. Apparently there’s a bolt of lightning and you are left with a pair of sandals with smoke comming out of and a note that says YES WE DO. now that what I will call clear evidence.
I would reveal myself to Bronze Age desert dwellers with a 0.5-1% literacy rate, and little knowledge of anything beyond a 15 km radius of their hovel. This way I could piece together various excerpts of previous mythological tales, and pass them off as my own with little chance of my fraud being discovered.
Then I’d make sure that 60 years after I appeared, a few people who never saw me directly wrote conflicting reports about my existence, and then use the unsubstantiated hearsay to scare ignorant, gullible people by way of torture and death and guilt and isolation into accepting them for the next 2000 years.
There is only one fair, reasonable and ethical revelatory process — communicating consistently to all people, across all cultures, through all time.
It also brings up the question of why Jesus supposedly flew off into space. If he had stuck around, continued to perform miracles, etc. interacting personally with folks all over the world it would be reasonable to accept his uniqueness. Apparently, he decided instead to go sit on a throne somewhere in Alpha Centauri.
I am trying to take this seriously. Even if I could reveal myself as god, was my message heaven or how to behave righteously? Would everyone have to admit I was real and to be taken seriously? If you get an effect where supernatural was normal, wouldn’t people still take it on as a matter of taste, like what’s offered on television? Yeah, I don’t watch American Idol, it’s a stupid show, and then this god thing keeps popping up, I think he’s perverted. I keep trying to ignore it but he’s there telling me which cereal to eat and to cut down on my coffee and not beat my kids. Oh whoops.
I don’t know. I don’t think god is real, but people who believe in it are still so taken with doing whatever they want to do and defining a god who agrees with them to justify their behaviors and attitudes that I don’t think the one true god, ME, could influence them even if there were no dispute who I was and what I stood for, and even what I promised and what the conditions were. I have definitely had thoughts about what if I could be a ghost and who would I haunt and what would I do to mess with their heads.
I would build into the universe patterns which would reflect the presence of an orderly divine being; comprehensible physical laws, etc. I would provide people with a drive to find out about how the universe works, and a finely-honed ability to sense patterns. I would probably eventually try to make contact directly, but this would not be necessary for people to find out about me, since along with curiosity and pattern-sensing, I would give people a desire for a spiritual mode of existence along with the physical one.
the desire for a spiritual aspect of life, the evidence of order in the nature of the universe, and people’s curiosity would no doubt lead the majority of intelligent life to conclude that I indeed exist, even if they missed any other communications.
If people arrived at other conclusions even though I had built the universe to lead them to this knowledge, then i’d probably let them work through those conclusions and decide what they think. If people missed it, or got passed faulty info from someone else, i’d no doubt be chill. I wouldn’t need worship, nor would i need every person to acknowledge that i exist.
not trying to be difficult (cross my heart!)
I actually think this would be a good plan. the pattern thing mostly, and the desire to understand. I should think that these would lead people to realize that I existed in some capacity or another.
I’d open my trenchcoat to reveal my glory.
… and you said you missed my charming wit.
HI!!!! :) How ya been?
Torturing the souls of the credulous with my godlessness.
God the Flasher.
Awesome!!
Flash Godot
My gut reactions (in order) are:
1. I wouldn’t. I’d interfere with other peoples lives as little as possible, assuming I need nothing from them, to do so would be solely to stoke my own ego.
2. I’d destroy them utterly. The human race strikes me as pretty unsalvagable.
3. I’d do it Douglas Adams like, find the most isolated soul that no one’s ever going to believe in, and strut up and down in front of him making “beep! beep!” noises.
That probably says more about my current state of mind than anything else.
On deeper reflection, I would first appear to the skeptics. I would go to James Randi and demonstrate my divinity under controlled experimental conditions; providing everyone with clear, unambiguous, reproducible evidence. I would then rank all the organisations in descending order of skepticism, and convince them one at a time.
“We apologise for the inconvenience”.
lol
“Hey! I did my best!”
or maybe
“well, I was experimenting with you. I’ve done far better universes after that”
Both of which are funny, neither of which are Douglas Adams quotes. ;)
Yes. I was also thinking an apology would be in order. Maybe first I would unconfuse the languages so that everyone would be clear on what I was saying. I don’t know what I was thinking with that whole Tower of Babel thing. Then I would explain why I created a world powered by death. You know. Why things would have to kill other things in order to live.
Oh, yeah. And my name would be Ironymous.
I actually wrote a story in which this exact thing happens.
Let me know if you’d like to read it, Daniel.
Oooh, speaking of which, everyone go buy a copy of http://www.amazon.com/Orson-Scott-Cards-InterGalactic-Medicine/dp/0765320002/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246032393&sr=8-1
One of the stories in it is mine!
/thread hijacking
I’d write on the moon “Hey guys, this is Thor. I’m real.”
The big problem is, if you are the REAL Jezus, the religious people will not believe you since you are not some guy that is clearly fake but pretends to be Jezus. Real religious people will always choose the fake one.
Only the Atheists would find it so cool after they have tested you thoroughly and Randi does give you the big price since you are for real! Now that I think about, the real people getting into heaven will probably all be atheists, since they are skeptical enough not to follow false gods and false prophets.
You’re all wasting your time. He has already contacted me.
Me too!
The real God contacted me, and told me that guy who contacts you two is a fake.
The guy who contacted you, did he mention something about needing to move a large amount of funds out of a Nigerian bank?
When SHE contacted me and appointed me Queen Beeatch, SHE told me that you’d all be taken in by some guys with white beards and flowing robes. She was neked by the way…
I had a symilar phantasie… as most males do. Hail the goddess!
1. I would make myself into a human.
2. Break the law so I would be condemned to die in a bloody execution.
3. Become a ritualistic human sacrifice to myself.
4. Cause a bunch of mummies to pop out of the ground and wander around.
5. Tear a cloth in a sacred temple into two pieces.
6. Reappear to a select few people and eat fish with them.
7. Then float off into the sky.
8. Mission accomplished!
You got a timeframe for this?
I think it’d be roughly 33 year and then 3 days post dying. I mean, thats just a hunch
I’ll be on the lookout.
Number 4: so you’re saying that Michael Jackson is God?
And does that mean he’ll be back in a couple of days?
Mashed potato. Gotta be mashed potato.
There’s no way that could be faked.
Close Encounters of the Jesus Kind…
Jesus? Pah! What a rubbish god he was. His best tech a couple of donkeys. Antigrav and superlightspeed travel FTW!
It would kinda depend on what I, as God, would want, from my creation. If I go with the Christian concept of wanting a relationship with my created then I would physically reveal myself to each individual on both a one on one and collective basis. Maybe have like the God Concert Tour 2009. If in addition to that, I was concerned about humans obeying some kind of law, I’d make it physically or physiologically impossible for anyone to break them.
They say the superego is the part of the mind where you “know” things that are true. Your strongest held beliefs. Therefore I think this god should sear the knowledge of him into the part of the brain that controls the superego.
“If you were a divine or superhuman entity, and you wanted to communicate with humans, what kind of person would you contact? How would you prove your existence?”
Planetary Orgasm.
Nothing destructive would happen, no car accidents, everyone would freeze in the middle of what they were doing and experience a 5 minute orgasm.
I would permanently levitate decently sized object 10 above the current ground level in every city and village. I would then link everyone’s minds for 5 minutes and let them know everything about their neighbors. Then I’d reveal myself and what I’ve done. I’d repeat this every year to let them know I’m still out there even if I’m not taking an active hand in things by responding to requests.
planetary orgasms for the WIN
Can’t believe no one has yet said the obvious: appear in plates of spaghetti
rAmen!
Well, the grilled cheese thing has already been done, so there goes my answer.
Like the Vogons in Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe. A Voice everyone on earth can hear in their on language.
Then some splashy miracle everyone can see and point to forever. Maybe a mountain made of Diamond with the the Ten Commandments v2.0 etched into the side in letters 100 tall. Something no human could possibly have made.
Divine Bling!
Assuming I want to communicate with mankind, and care what what people do with their lives, here’s what I would do.
1. Use my super god powers to make sure that all humanity was safely outside and looking up.
2. Appear in the sky to all mankind at once in a ginormous but actual physical form.
3. In a clear voice I would tell people I exist, and clearly deliver whatever other messages I thought important. (Of course each person would hear it in a language they understand.)
4. I would then hold daily briefings in the same format clearly telling people what my “will” is and why they should follow it, with particularl emphasis on ways that are screwing things up and ways to correct said screw ups.
Again, all of this assumes I actually care about what humanity does and want them to follow my instructions.
That’s a lot of work. I simply would put those memories in their brains ;-)
I’d go on television and start off by apologizing for dropping the ball for the last 10,000 years.
I must have been busy walking my dog, or something.
Big dog.
I’d manifest physically as Zod from superman 2.
I would be a willing minion.
Do you need some jack-booted thugs? I’ve always wanted to get into thuggery.
Watch out for oversize mirrors.
Giant penis in the sky. Nothing more, nothing less and no need to contact anyone.
hmm. I’d move all the constellations to form words like “Hey down there! It’s me, God!” in every known language. Then I’d go all Dr. Manhattan on humanity, and just appear as incomplete organ systems.
I remember one specific organ above all others on Dr. Manhattan.
It’s the glowing skin, right?
I would suddenly make every single copy of the bible around the world disappear, then over the next 24 hours gradually fill bookstores with a new book containing very exact, very detailed predictions of major future events with names and dates for verification, and spread out over the next 100,000 years. This book would also correct major fallacies, for example “Jesus is not my son,” “it’s okay to be gay,” “I’m not going to answer any prayers, you people are responsible for yourselves,” etc.
All of the ways I can think of still could be explained scientifically if a race like Q from Star Trek existed.
Q was not a scientific explanation.
But almost as viciously capricious as that Yahweh dude.
Like the folks in Childhood’s End: giant overseeing “eyes” watching the world while not interacting with it at all, just creeping the hell out of everyone.
And casually turning wine to water just to f-k with people’s brains.
Damn. I was going for my picture in grilled cheese.
Sorta politically correct mixed-race with long hair and some fashion-statement facial hair for the sexist bigot quarter-wits and the broads who unthinkingly accept their spare-rib, helpmate status in life.
Oh well, I guess it would have to be building all life forms with the ability to sense me and communicate directly. Even easier than hearing or seeing, since hearing and seeing etc. aren’t direct; they are input from the world being translated into electrochemical signals traveling along your little neurons. You don’t have any direct perception of the world, so sorry.
That way no one would have to get it secondhand from some lunatic claiming to have God in his heart and using the lunatic to speak for “him”.
I’d have a planet-wide thunderstorm that started at exactly 12PM GST over every square inch of the planet. Being a benevolent deity, there would only be rain over drought-stricken regions. Over the starving countries, MANNA would rain down, feeding everyone. I would immediately cure every fatal disease. All wars would abruptly end as I flooded every brain with empathy.
I would then appear as both fire and lightning in the sky, forming a gigantic body that was inexplicably viewable simultaneously all over the planet. Then, I’d go on Oprah. And point out that I don’t exist.
Blog.
Cork
I won’t. It may unite people indeed…
But human nature comes to a worse fate: THERE WILL ALWAYS BE PEOPLE THAT HATE. Haters, in other words.
Take this example (alright, I’m being stereotypical here, but please bear with me?), Chinese community, black guy moves in, some chinese will be curious, but some will start hating at this sudden appearance.
“Yay, there’s a god!! Wait, he’s not *my* god… Wait, he’s doing this god-stuff wrong!?! wtf!!”
… yeahh …
I would reveal myself to Megan Fox. Give her divine copulation. I can not think of a better happy ending. :-D
Need any disciples?
Anderson Cooper’s show, The Larry King Show, Penn & Teller, Bill Maher…those would be good places for starters to introduce myself, perform some miracles, and give a little I Dream of Jeannie nod so that everyone everywhere would instantly know I am The One, The True, The Only God. Oh…and then I would go remove Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his band of thugs including Ahmadinejad and Ahmad Khatami from power and and free the people of Iran. George W. would have some serious explaining to do, and Dick Cheney and several member of Congress would suddenly be volunteering as skeets for shooting. Don’t even get me started on the fundies. =P
Everybody at the same time.
Boom. I exist.. deal with it.
Than…
You guys got it all wrong.. and i would indeed also make all the bibles (and korans and torahs and every frelling religious book) dissapear.
Than i would set an ultimatum.
Stop the fricking fighting in my name.. start being nice to eachother.
Stop killing the planet.
You got one year. Make it so, or i’ll resset my civilisation game and start all over.
Not Civilization game, Populous. Definitely Populous.
Or Black & White…
Clearly I -God- would pick a 72 year old virgin and closeted homosexual who likes fancy dresses, who belonged to the Hitler’s youth and who, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Formerly known as “The Inquisition”), helped hundreds of priests avoid being prosecuted for raping hundreds of children. Killing the Liberation Theology movement (the weird notion that it is a christian duty to bring justice to the poor and oppressed through political activism) would be a nice plus.
hold a press conference without cameras but somehow it’ll appear on all tv stations around the world.
areas without tv will see it in the clouds
Kill everybody in the world but a family – let’s call them Noah’s family- who believes in me. Then all humanity would believe in me.
Don’t forget the rainbow.
Creating islands in the middle of the pacific in the shape of the words “I dislike religion” and hang around there until somebody decided to visit me.
Turn the moon into my own private billboard. At first, all they get is my name, just like Chairface Chippendale. Then I start putting messages up there. Including one in real tiny letters that you need to use a telescope to see, and when you use the telescope, it says: “IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU DON’T NEED GLASSES.”
I would use Twitter.
I would fill every single human mind with a voice that constantly says “I am the lord thy god, though shalt not have any god’s before me…” This voice would repeat in the mind of every single human being on the planet over and over and over again randomly until they died. The voice would be so loud and all encompassing that TV anchors and anyone else for that matter would roll their eyes back into their head and go into a state of “Godness” during the voice and be unable to function, speak or do anything at all. Car accidents would be so common that the reason for most accidents would be UID… Under Influence of God. When the voice ends they would feel an amazingly strong FAITH in GOD.