How should the universe look like if there is a God?

[Whitney]

If something like the Christian God were real we should expect the world around us to frequently act in unpredictable ways as he is going about his business granting prayers for the devout.

[Croaker]

Since God loves everyone the same, he'd make it as obvious to us as he did to Thomas. Thomas got to stick his hand in Jesus' side, and that makes believing in Jesus pretty damn easy, so God would be cool enough in his omnipotence to allow everyone the ability to do something similar. Maybe Jesus could do a mall tour, go around and offer people the ability to do the same thing as Thomas.

As for the universe, I think it would have to be such that we couldn't discover anything about it - God wouldn't design a universe that looks, for all intents and purposes, like he had nothing to do with making it. That's deception - if God made the moon 'look' like it was old, that's fraudulent, and a perfect God wouldn't do that. 'Science' could still exist, but it just wouldn't discover anything useful. Earth is flat, sun rotates around us, stars are just lights in the sky, etc. etc.

Like the above poster noted with the picture, we wouldn't have been able to progress beyond the age from which God sprang.

[Inevitable Droid]

Why not put an obelisk on the Moon that says "I am the Lord your God"?

Even that wouldn't convince me, as I (sort of) discussed on another thread.

Heck, if I were walking across a desert, and suddenly found myself surrounded by cactuses that apparently had uprooted themselves and now were dancing in a circle around me, using mouths and apparently vocal chords to sing, "Onward Christian Soldiers," my reaction would be to run through the following hypotheses in this order:

1. I'm dreaming.
2. I'm hallucinating.
3. These apparent cactuses are robots.
4. These apparent cactuses are a previously undiscovered species of animal.
5. These cactuses are real cactuses but are being manipulated by nanotech.
6. These cactuses are real cactuses but are being manipulated by tractor beam.
7. These cactuses are real cactuses but are being manipulated by telekinesis.

I would never entertain a hypothesis about a divine miracle because that hypothesis implies the existence of something whose existence cannot be falsified empirically.  In any case, the likelihood that I was dreaming or hallucinating would be so high as to drown out any other hypothesis until I had tested these first two, to the extent I reasonably could.  It would actually be kind of fun to find myself unable to falsify the first two, as I would then find myself investigating the apparent cactuses to learn if they were robots - or if, at least in my dream or hallucination, they were robots.  Does anyone doubt that I am exactly such a person as would dream or hallucinate robot cactuses?  

[Inevitable Droid]

I like the watch on the beach argument when a theist tries it. I have to ask them why they notice the watch when they believe the whole world is designed. As far as they're concerned, they're walking on a beach made of watches, under a sky of watches, as the tide of watches comes in, and I'm supposed to believe they'll look down and exclaim, "Oh look! A watch!"

For the theist it would presumably be similar to you or me happening upon a beaver's dam in a stream in the woods.  We might be carrying knapsacks full of all sorts of manmade artifacts, yet nevertheless, the sight of a beaver's dam would excite us (or at least it would excite me) because it was made by a beaver.  This underscores a strange aspect of theist psychology as contrasted with mine or yours.  The theist doesn't see man as the greatest designer known to have ever existed.  You and I do.  The theist looks at man as a paltry pretender.  Man, for the theist, can never be a titan.  For me, and perhaps for you, man towers above the landscape, a mighty Paul Bunyan, made taller than the tallest trees by virtue of his tremendous creativity and indomitable will to employ it.  Yet never does man stop being a beast.  He is merely the king thereof.

[Inevitable Droid]

If something like the Christian God were real we should expect the world around us to frequently act in unpredictable ways as he is going about his business granting prayers for the devout.

Given the outrageous assumptions of omnipotence and omniscience, he could have set the universe in motion in such a way from the beginning so as to ensure that all devout prayers were answered without once violating the usual laws of nature.  This is precisely what is believed by Christians who accept determinism and who are smart enough to realize they must therefore believe in predestination and all that goes with it.  Of course there's a glitch here.  Omnipotence and omniscience would solve every problem for the Christian, if not for that pesky omnibenevolence claim.  I really think Christians should drop omnibenevolence, at least for the Father.  Let God the Father be a mean-spirited ogre and let God the Son be the omnibenevolent one.  Oh, and let the two be two different guys entirely, an actual father and son.  The moment Christians put that in place, their theology becomes much more logically consistent.  God the Son would be doing the best he could, given the savage barbarism of God the Father.  The cruelty of nature, the prevalence of suffering, would be God the Father's idea, of course.

[Inevitable Droid]

As for the universe, I think it would have to be such that we couldn't discover anything about it - God wouldn't design a universe that looks, for all intents and purposes, like he had nothing to do with making it.

He couldn't make an orderly universe that doesn't look designed to those with a tendency to infer such.  Even a flat Earth with sun and stars orbiting it would look designed to people willing to entertain unfalsifiable hypotheses.  Put angels in the sky and demons underground and it would still look designed, to people willing to so hypothesize.  To appear undesigned, it would have to lack all order.

[The Magic Pudding]

Does anyone doubt that I am exactly such a person as would dream or hallucinate robot cactuses?  

No I wouldn't, but the matter of robot dreams is subject to much conjecture.

[Croaker]

As for the universe, I think it would have to be such that we couldn't discover anything about it - God wouldn't design a universe that looks, for all intents and purposes, like he had nothing to do with making it.

He couldn't make an orderly universe that doesn't look designed to those with a tendency to infer such.  Even a flat Earth with sun and stars orbiting it would look designed to people willing to entertain unfalsifiable hypotheses.  Put angels in the sky and demons underground and it would still look designed, to people willing to so hypothesize.  To appear undesigned, it would have to lack all order.

Does this mean that a theist will always infer exterior design and that an atheist will always reject design outright, regardless of whatever is found? That seems likely to me.

This makes me think of geocentrism, and the question "Well, what would the sun need to do in the sky to look like it was not rotating us?"

[Recusant]

If we're talking about the Christian god, the "Kingdom" would already have arrived, and if the Bible is to be believed, the universe would look a lot different than it does now (Matthew 24:34, Luke 21:32).

The cruelty of nature, the prevalence of suffering, would be God the Father's idea, of course.

Mr. Deity says you're right!

[Inevitable Droid]

Does this mean that a theist will always infer exterior design and that an atheist will always reject design outright, regardless of whatever is found? That seems likely to me.

Likely to me too.

I'll toss in a prospect I look forward to.  If humanity doesn't annihilate itself, the day will surely come when it won't be very unusual for a molecular biologist to design and create a new species*, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom - even domain.  The day will surely come when molecular biologists improve on DNA itself.  As days like these arrive, it will be more and more true that an organism may in fact be the result of intelligent design.  

* New breeds within a species have of course for thousands of years been the handiwork of man.