I thought your last statement was intriguing. For me, I am afraid
that
even if "god" filled the sky with a bright light, spoke to me in my
mind, then split the pacific ocean in half for the whole world to
see, I
would still think it was a hoax, or that aliens did it, or that I
was
totally bonkers. I think proof positive for me could only come after
my
death, to find an afterlife, or rebirth, would be most convincing.
Nate:
When Marie first posted her challenge of what we would accept as
proof I was reminded of Epsilon proofs from calculus .... where you never
quite get to the end of the proof but you prove that you can get as close as
anyone requests.
In William Gibson's Neuromancer Trilogy he posits "downloading"
personalities into virtual reality. During the download the meat computer
flat-lines --- that is the author arbitrarily decided consciousness can't
exist in two containers at the same time. A couple of times character's
consciousness flip-flops between carbon and silicon ..... but for the long
run silicon beats carbon. The point being that we'll always return to
Clarke's dictum that any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be
magic to less advanced cultures.