What’s to explain? The statement is pretty simple and self-explanatory.
I’m an observant Catholic, and I understand the sentiments well enough. Even the most devout Christian must occasionally wish for a tangible sign of God’s presence.
I assume that it means that virtually all major religions rely on the use of a small number of prophets that their gods talks to directly. It is those prophets who go out and proselytize the religion. Therefore their god personally manifests to only a tiny chosen number. Everybody else must infer the existence of a god and rely upon faith for its reality. (Jesus is retrofitted into the god category after death; during life he appeared as another prophet figure. Even if you choose to assume godhood during his seemingly mortal phase it has been 2000 years since his appearance and the rest of the statement attaches.)
Any non-believer in these religions - and this would include a far higher number than atheists - can easily argue that these prophets did not in fact see god (or the True God). Religious believers often make this case about adherents of other religions.
If there were a god, under this reasoning, why would only such a tiny handful of all of the history of humanity be touched by the presence. Why wouldn’t all of humanity, not just thousands of years ago but throughout all history including today, be made aware of the existence of a True God if one truly existed?
The only answer to this argument is the one of faith, which is the element that atheists lack, so it is not a compelling argument to them.
Assume for a second you are omnipotent and omnibenevolent. You therefore want as many people as possible to believe in you and lead a good life, because for whatever reason if they don’t they cant get to heaven (although that itself would contradict one of the omni-s right there. Either you can’t or don’t have the utmost possible compassion.)
So what do you do to make sure the beings you created get to share in eternal bliss with you? You could change their minds directly through your superpowers so they automatically follow the rules you created but for some reason you didnt do that (either you’re a sumbitch or your creation got corrupted, both of which contradict the premises yet again.)
Or, if they need to be convinced, you could make it completely obvious that the laws which govern the universe can and are regularly violated by a supreme being, and it is completely clear that no evidence firmly points in this direction, not even of a being which we would even call a generic deity like Thor or Zeus, much less one with complete power over the Universe.
Again, failure at this point again points to a being who if they do exist either doesn’t really care if we believe or not (in which case it’s not omnibenevolent) or does not have the power for some reason to put on a convincing demonstration which points to lack of omnipotence.
Precisely. I am a man of faith, and believe in God. But in apologetics arguments, I find it extraordinarily difficult to adduce objective proofs of God’s existence that cannot be explained away by coincidence or other natural phenomena. Subjective evidence, we have in spades – but it’s all anecdotal, subject to being rejected as delusional.
Some have conjectured that He declines to give irrefutable proof in order to preserve free will in His creatures – one can hardly help believing in the existence of, say, thunderstorms or mountains; they make themselves obvious. To enable faith in Him to be a real choice, He deigns to hide Himself sufficiently that one is free to choose to believe or not believe.
Anything more than this gets into GD territory, but I hope that much is a GQ-proper response to the question asked.
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So what do you do to make sure the beings you created get to share in eternal bliss with you? You could change their minds directly through your superpowers so they automatically follow the rules you created but for some reason you didnt do that (either you’re a sumbitch or your creation got corrupted, both of which contradict the premises yet again.).
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I have always believed that experiential existence is the greatest gift of all. Whether or not we have free will (what we don’t know can’t hurt us right?)
So being able to experience life and the corresponding afterlife is a magnificent gift.
Something really, really hard to explain without invoking some kind of God-like entity.
For example, if tonight everyone saw the stars spell out “VALGARD - THIS IS GOD. YES, THAT ONE. BELIEVE IN ME. PS - you’ve got $128.37 in change in that big plastic jug on your bookshelf.”
I’d be hard pressed to call it a hallucination or delusion (everyone sees it). It’s not subject to interpretation. There’s not many rational explanations for that event short of (a) God or (b) something with such amazing powers that it’s pretty indistinguishable from God.
[hijack]The problem is very very very few religions teach that everyone gets into the benevolent afterlife. While the best example of love would be letting everyone experience this. If you believe that everyone does, I still feel that there is sufficient suffering in this world to dispute your view, but I could see how we could disagree as eternity is a very long time.[/hijack]
I disagree with this. If God exists and has all of the qualities that have been attributed to it, then I think it would not really be possible to evaluate God’s actions through our own minds.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that it’s strange that God does or does not do something, it is (if it exists) working on a level infinitely beyond our comprehension and it does not make sense to assign human thought processes.
But this is a fantastically limited religious perspective. Heaven or hell? Seriously? It is almost certainly nothing other than Christian beliefs. Why should Christianity be any representative at all of religion? It is merely one of thousands, maybe millions, all with wildly differing beliefs about a god, an afterlife, moral teachings, and notions of good and evil.
If you’re asking about the truth of Christianity, ask that. Don’t hide it behind a generic view of god and then give the Christian perspective as some kind of truth. Or give that as truth in GQ.
Your question has been answered. Atheists say this stuff because they can’t believe in any aspect of Christian eschatology. If you can’t understand that, start (yet another) thread in GD.
I’m struggling with this answer. You say it as if a God would actually want us to have faith for some reason (faith as in “belief without benefit of evidence”). But belief without evidence is so plainly a bad thing, what could possibly be the motivation for God to want us to have it? Does God actually want us to have poor critical thinking skills? That’s the only thing I can make of your statement, and I’m trying to stay out of GD territory, so, uh, can you explain that any better for me?
What does any of that have to do with whether this God would choose to reveal himself to us? I honestly don’t understand your point.