There would be one heck of a big flood and no boat.Then I would start all over with monkeys who seem to understand how to get along with each other in a social group. The creator only made one mistake as I see it-he/she gave humans the ability to logic both rational and irrational and humans have been fighting each other every since.

The answer seems obvious:

Destroy all tribes but one on the island, in the most violent, clearly apocalyptical-yet-inhuman way possible. Ideally, people should be left in large lumps of smouldering flesh, except for a handfull of survivors who are forced to come to the last tribe for subsistance help.

Wait a few years, perhaps three generations. Let the remaining tribe capitalize on the huge rush of resource access.

Now, ruthlessly crush and destroy the majority of the survivors. Create an extremely difficult environment to survive in. If need be, import predatory species from off-island.

Now, step back for ten generations.

This methodology should result in an inheritor culture which is toughened by deprivation but has needed to develop coordination and social organization to survive. It'll also be likely highly xenophobic, but that's not our problem. Having been set up to develop overweening pride, then crushing it like a bug in 75 years or so, you've created a negative tropism toward it.

The result should make an excellent Praetorian Guard.

I'd ignore the primary consideration and reveal my presence.

I mean, shoot, the entire point of the exercise is to destroy their entire culture. It's, by the parameters of the exercise, a nasty culture that causes much grief to its people.

Plenty of war, poverty, and prejudice? The first I can end by fiat, given that I've got essentially unlimited power compared to the natives. I can alleviate poverty to whatever degree I'm interested in doing so; if I'm concerned about maintaining the independence of the culture of the natives, I can just not do a whole lot of that. Prejudice is tougher, but I can make it clear that I don't care much, and hey, I'm in charge.

The exercise as stipulated assumes the question, that revelation of the divine would reduce the populace to vassalage. Presumably this is to account for the fact that God has not, in fact, demonstrated his existence directly? But that's stupid. If you care about the suffering of the people at all, if any of it matters to you, then letting them rip at each other while you trick them into making themselves more like you prefer is incalculably cruel. This is especially the case when you've got the ability to remove most of the direct physical afflictions afflicting the populace.

But if you don't care about that suffering, what the heck are you bothering with the whole exercise for in the first place? Just call it a day and let 'em go at it. Sell tickets.

You can't simultaneously give a crap about the individual's suffering AND condemn the vast majority of them to painful death, just because the rules say you have to.

Pick the smallest tribe and give them this Deal:

1. they are the recipient of higher knowlege of the ways of the universe and
2. give them the assurance that if they follow your instructions they will never die out and in fact will be favored above all others who do not keep the Deal (be vague here concerning "favor").

Prove the Deal works by periodically inciting the other six tribes to kill off most of the smallest tribe and in particular various subsets of the smallest tribe that annoys you by not keeping the Deal. At other intervals aid and abet the smallest tribe's revenge on such depredations so that their leadership becomes fervently convinced that the Deal is something real and not just their fevered imaginings.

Eventually get them to shuck off the initial supernatural superstitions concerning your activities by providing gratuitous miracles for exemplary keepers of the Deal. Don't encourage magical invocation of your favor as that just gives such sorcerors an apparent angle on your favor that is contrary to your generally benevolent long term plans. You really care about those who keep the Deal or don't; mediums only confuse matters.

Finally, once you get the smallest tribe fairly convinced of the Deal, start the idea around that the Deal isn't just for that tribe. Make sure that this is more or less logical from the first descriptions of the Deal and that those keeping the Deal are equal, independent of tribe. For it is the Deal which is important, and not one's parentage.

It might take an eon or two... and mating with one of the tribal woman to produce a real spokesman in the flesh probably is outside of the Rabbi's paradigm. An interesting concept though...

Avatar- Perhaps you care enough about the individuals so that you expect them to eventually need to help each other. You know, grow up and be real adults instead of kids just killing each other.

1. I would use every means available to encourage cross-breading, always and continually, first and foremost.

2. I would implement or foster an existing spiritual "culture of life" in as many tribes as possible.

3. I would bestow all technological advancement, especially in media saturation, to those cultures and factions that have taken on a spiritual "culture of life".

4. I would unleash a series of natural disasters to threaten the island and its inhabitants.

There, a perfect world.

Tom, but presumably we're not actually talking about children. Nowhere in the exercise was it stated that the natives are inferior in reasoning capabilities. They may lack the sophistication of our culture in the realm of philosophy, sure. But if we're talking about actual sub-humans here - inferior beings, not because they lack knowledge and technology, but in an actual lack of capacity to reason - then it's a completely different ball game, isn't it?

I shouldn't have thought it would be necessary to specify that. ;p

So, assuming the natives ARE human or other but intellectually as capable as humans, what's the issue? I've got the capability of translating our works of philosophy into their language, let their scholar-equivalents go through it to examine the reasoning. I'm not going to lose a debate on philosophy with a savage culture. On the other hand, they can't just tell me to take a hike and continue on their merry savage way, now can they? After all, how are they going to revolt against my enlightened rule when I can hear anything they say, observe anything they do, and drop a lightning bolt wherever I want?

One of the keys to making children into adults, you have to remember, is SHOWING THEM ADULTS. You must have read Lord of the Flies, you've got no reason to believe that humans are inherently anti-savage and cooperative by default. It's a whole heck of a lot easier to transition to mature, responsible adulthood if you've got a mature, responsible adult to look up to. That task is greatly complicated if you can't actually demonstrate the existence of adults.

Now, sure, you could do it the hard way, but why beat around the bush? Does the possibility of a philosophical innovation based on the uniqueness of their culture outweigh the lives, and quality of life, of generations of the natives?

The obvious answer is to do nothing. That is what God would do. If there were a God.

I would burn the insolent, and all others who attached my name to their vanities.

You know, folks, I find my complints about the job The Big Guy is doing up there getting much smaller now....

Avatar, perhaps there is another way to show them adults without creating killer culture shock?

It's possible, though you DO want at least some culture shock. In fact it's nearly required! Their current practices are brutish, their philosophy weak or even absent, no respect for law or for other people. Efforts to preserve their culture will preserve a lot more evil than good...

You could, of course, take the Yahweh tack. Pick out a group of people, tell them that they're chosen, give them law and be strict with them to make sure it's upheld. It would be useful to be a bit more aggressive in expansion, so you can avoid the racial identification of Judaism.

You have an advantage that Yahweh did not (well, okay, besides the fact that you definitely exist!) Not only can you prescribe moral and effective systems of law and government, but you can bootstrap your "chosen people" in the technology department something fierce. Instead of manna from heaven, drop a few bags of GM seeds; instead of leading them to a land of milk and honey, find a land of abundant natural resources. DON'T settle people on a plain with virtually no natural defenses, unless you want to be making with the holy wrath for the next thousand years...

Early on, you'll be performing miracles regularly to keep the people alive and in line. As their sophistication starts to pull ahead of their competition, direct intervention will become less and less necessary. It's one thing to knock down a city wall when your armies are a bunch of spearmen and bowmen, another thing when they've got siege artillery. Eventually you'll be doing little but providing political advice and ameliorating natural disasters - you know, tsunami prevention stuff.

All that said, why would you possibly want to hide your existence? It's easy for me to look at a cruel world and infer that there is no God, certainly not one that cares about humanity. But you can't argue with the big voice, the burning bush, the pillar of flame...

Not to mention, uh, if you DO proceed in anonymity, and succeed, eventually the people are going to reach your level of sophistication and figure out that you WERE there. Is that going to make them happy? That every time something bad has ever happened in their entire history, you watched and said nothing? That untold millions died for nothing more than to satisfy your own paranoia about discovery?