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

[Something Amyss]

How else do you explain becoming such a smash hit while rockin' a haircut like this?

It worked for the Indigo Girls. >.>

He's since moved onto a more "I'm Dylan from 90210" haircut, but that just further proves my point.

So he's gone form baby's first haircut to looking like a 40 year old? Damn.

 

[Cozmo1]

Everything unexplained is equally possible to have the explanation of the divine or supernatural. However once it is proved that this is case, it will, by definition, cease to be divine or supernatural and become classified as natural and part of science.

But it is also equally possible the explanation for any or all of said things is my fart being caught in an inexplicably brief and acute wormhole, whisking it away, having it upset the delicate chemical structure of a far away planet causing a chain of events which end with (or even, a part of which is) said unexplained event.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Probably yesterday when everyone was violently burned and mutilated and then were all replaced with different people who have full lifetimes of memories. Happy 1st day of life everyone! I wonder if we burn tomorrow!

Last Thursday-ism, huh? [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Last_Thursdayism] Especially given that today is Friday, at least locally. =p

Ha! I'd never actually heard of that. I just thought of something completely random. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there's an actual belief for that.

 

[Tanakh]

For me being skeptical means that i accept that there's no way to know certain things (like: does god exist?), which in turn means that i would never assume that the probability of any kind of divine intervention is zero, as it is just not testable and therefore neither verifiable nor disprovable. But then again, skepticism means different things to different people.

This is a common mistake, there is no way to prove God doesn't exist because it is not a scientific concept. In the same sense you cannot prove that all the ideal mathematical structures called circles don't taste like gummi bears, that clitoridectomy doesn't increase the fidelity in women by making them more pure or that witches weight the same as a duck, yet I would guess you wouldn't believe either of those tree.

This confusion is mainly caused by:

- Misuse of the word "proof", you can only prove and be 100% confident very basic mathematics (no, not even with numbers, even more basic than that), everything else, even physics and chem, are based on observation and belief. God is not a mathematical object, and honestly it's so ill defined that can't enter in any sense at all, but that doesn't mean there is a probability higher than 0 that it exists, as a general rule of thumb if you use a mathematical concept and then God it renders the sentence itself meaningless, because it's like you are trying to nail with a piece of soft cheese, does that mean nails are un-nailable? Nahh, just that what you are trying to do makes zero sense.

- Thinking that because something can't be proven mathematically to be non existent then it does, or can, because NOTHING AT ALL IN THIS UNIVERSE CAN BE MATHEMATICALLY PROVED, did you knew that not even arithmetic of numbers can be proved? Do you think there's a chance it "doesn't exist" then?

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.

Everything unexplained is equally possible to have the explanation of the divine or supernatural.

And this is why I disagree with this BS. So far events found being made by divine intervention? Zero... then either you don't know what "equally possible" means or... dunno, not sure what's the other possibility, ohh right, you don't deduct knowledge from past experiences to the next.

 

[RJ 17]

He's since moved onto a more "I'm Dylan from 90210" haircut, but that just further proves my point.

So he's gone form baby's first haircut to looking like a 40 year old? Damn.

Pretty much...at least that's what I saw when I google searched an image of Bieber to make my joke.

 

[Silvanus]

I'm going to go for quantum superpositioning [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition].


Certain particles, including photons, can exist in each of their possible positions simultaneously, until they're observed.


Wut.

 

[templar1138a]

Hmm, that's a toughie... I'd have to say that the thing that I know to have happened that's most likely to have been influenced supernaturally would have to be that bit of dirt I scraped out from under my toenail the other day.

 

[Frezzato]

That people sponsored Uwe Boll's kickstarter is almost certainly the work of Satan.

This guy gets it.

There's a lot of serious/silly events to pick from (the father and son who survived riding a megatsunami in Alaska, the perfection of the moon covering the sun in a solar eclipse, the continued existence of North Korea's non-irradiated landscape, etc), but I'm going to go with the guy who got struck by lightning seven times, and the one time he dodged it, it struck his wife. Clearly someone is trying to get his attention.

Alternatively, the Bloop was actually Cthulhu turning over in his sleep.

I'm not sure why people are having such a hard time with this, but I'm religious, so maybe I'm just out of touch with my inner furious skeptic.

This guy gets it.

As far as more serious answers, I was not at all surprised that "creation of the universe" came up, for example. Another one I was kind of expecting was the whole "the right mix of elements in the right proportions happened to end up in an environment that would cause the particular series of reactions and following events necessary to result in the existence of living beings capable of wondering exactly how unlikely it was for the chain of events leading to their existence to happen in the first place."



-snip-

This guy gets it.

On a more serious note, I can't think of anything really. I dunno. Derren Brown perhaps? It's the perfect disguise: a man debunks anyone claiming to have divine or supernatural powers--by using his supernatural powers! All the while disguised as a regular human being. Such a twist.

To the OP: Please pick your favorite breed of cat. You are not allowed to include any breeds of cat that actual exists. Go.

I'm so glad I have a (poor) reason to post this:

Spoiler: SUPER EXCELLENT

Murder time, fun time

 

[Canadamus Prime]

The extinction of the Dinosaurs. That was clearly caused by Q when he was bored.

 

[Signa]

Since no one seems to want to take the question seriously (Honestly guys, just don't post if you're not going to play along), I'm going to answer Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

College screw-offs making funny voices who wanted to be musicians that became animators that inspired a very large cultural movement around a show they made with no other concepts behind it than kids swearing and talking poop. How they became millionaires "has[footnote]Not really[/footnote]" to be divine intervention.

 

[Lil_Rimmy]

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.

You are my favourite person on this forum right now. Here's your ArcanaNet Table, draw me some Grimalkin gifs. The world demands it.

Try not to get addicted to an MMO while your on it? We need the barbarian to get his nap-time.

 

[SinisterDeath]

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.

Since I can't say nothing, and since we can't prove either way whether something was divine, or not.
I have to say My Birth would be an event of supernatural awesomeness. Because if I wasn't born. There would be no universe for me to exist in. And if I didn't exist, than by rights, the universe wouldn't exist. Ergo, the Universe Exists, because I exist. Therefore, I am a god.

Course, if there were 'gods' than apparently the one who rules above us all is that fickle *****, lady Luck. Because she's had her size 4 boot up my ass for awhile now...

 

[someonehairy-ish]

As far as more serious answers, I was not at all surprised that "creation of the universe" came up, for example. Another one I was kind of expecting was the whole "the right mix of elements in the right proportions happened to end up in an environment that would cause the particular series of reactions and following events necessary to result in the existence of living beings capable of wondering exactly how unlikely it was for the chain of events leading to their existence to happen in the first place."

Well, that's easy. If the universe does turn out to be infinite, then the probability of that happening is 1. As in, it's entirely certain. If the universe is infinite, every conceivable combination of particles in every conceivable amount of space must exist somewhere.

But even if that's not true, and the universe only extends as far as we currently know it does (around 46 billion light years in radius, I think), that still leaves literally quadrillions of stars. Meaning that there is probably around the same number of extrasolar planets, or more, we just can't observe them so easily.

So even if the chance of any given planet having the right conditions for complex life is something like 0.00000000001%, it's still pretty much inevitable that it will emerge somewhere.

People seem to forget that life is essentially just an extremely complex set of chemicals and chemical reactions. Go back far enough, it gets simpler, until you only need one self replicating molecule to form. For that molecule to form, it has to be chemically viable, and the correct component chemicals have to be present for it to form. That's it...

Oh yeah, I forgot to answer the question.

The fact that people like Ray Comfort actually seem to believe the crap they're spewing does completely mystify me. I'd have to explain it with supernatural 'dumbass demons'.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Please pick your favorite breed of cat. You are not allowed to include any breeds of cat that actual exists. Go.

Kajit win. No question.

If I ignore that it is like asking me "If you were into bestiality, what kind of duck would you have relstions with?"

Oh come on, that one isn't even difficult.

[image/]http://i2.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article1485092.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/A%20giant%2050%20foot%20rubber%20duck%20floats%20down%20the%20Thames%20to%20celebrate%20the%20launch%20of%20Jackpotjoy-1485092.com%27s%20new%20Facebook%20Fundation[/IMG]

Just look at those sexy eyes.

OT:
Despite all the problems people have pointed out I guess I'll go with Hitler so narrowly avoiding so many assassination attempts.

 

[Senare]

It would be nice if the old so-called pagan religions behind that inspired the Christian idea of witchcraft would really be the true ones and the Abrahamitic faiths would just be quackery. Just, you know, not coming from Satan or anything but stuff like Morrigu and what the "pagans" themselves believed. Also Fae and dragons would be cool. Magic please.

 

[runic knight]

I get the question but still find it worded poorly.

Basically, what event in history is most likely only explainable by supernatural force.

the problem with this question is that skeptics and usually atheists represent a way of thinking. That way of thinking involves not making a decision without proper evidence. The very answer of "I don't know" is valid, excepted and outright expected from a true skeptic when asked about something they do not have proper evidence on in order to make a judgement.

So what you have done is asked someone who wont give an answer just to fill in the blanks which question they would most likely just fill in the blanks of just to have it answered.

When talking about a supernatural solution to a skeptic, what you are doing is literally asking them to forgo the honest "I do not know" and instead give an answer they know to be contrary to their fundamental philosophies just to fill in the blank.

So, what question exists that I would rather lie to myself to answer then honestly just say "I do not know"? Well, I don't know what question I would do that about. I suppose I might throw out the "why do bad things happen to good people" or some such crap just for the sake of an answer there. Blaming a dick of a god for the evils in the world is partially tolerable if I am forbidden to otherwise answer "I don't know" or give an answer based in personal thoughts rather then evidence.

 

[lacktheknack]

There's a difference between a hypothetical question and a non-sensical one.

Yours is the equivalent of "If blue didn't exist, what would be blue? And you can't say nothing, because the point is to make you choose".
It's idiotic.

Actually, it's more like "If the colour 'weskel' DID exist, what do you think you have tinges of it?"

He asked you to implement something you believe does NOT exist, not remove something you know exists...

 

[the December King]

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.

I'm glad you clarified your position a bit here, Schadrach, because questions like these often strike me, and perhaps others, as baits to catch up or otherwise fool the unwary non- believer/ atheist/ etc. into a "there, you see? Jesus is Lord" type of verbal asshattery.

I really can't think of an event or situation that is not otherwise at the edges of what science can adequately explain, even to differing theories, like the creation of the universe or the creation of life itself. See? both of those things are bones of contention with the Creationists as well, so it's a tricky area to...

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

Must be a curse of some kind...

Maybe a gypsy.