Why does God seem silent today?

[Magnavox]

We have numerous examples in the Old Testament of people dying for their sins.

Why is it today we have priests molesting children, child rapists, etc…that live long lives with seemingly no punishment whatsoever? Millions of aborted babies happen constantly everyday all of the world, and the abortionists receive no punishment?

We also have examples of prophets proving God’s existence by mocking the other religions of the day stating “Maybe your god is on vacation or asleep?”

I have heard atheist debates where the contenders say “God we want you to show yourself?” If the Christian debater were to use the same, why wouldn’t God show himself today?

I do understand that God does not have to listen humans and obey us when we ask to him to give us a sign or a proof that he is there, but it would be comforting.

When we pray for healing like Jesus taught us to do. In faith believing that we will receive what we ask, it appears that nothing happens, even for the simplest and minor of ailments.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to why they think God is remaining so silent? Humankind is in utter downfall. Morals are declining at an alarming rate and people are openly and proud of it. Homosexual so-called self-proclaimed bishops in the other denominations read from the Scriptures, preach in Gods name, and perform “abominable” acts later in the homes after doing so just to return to their church the following day and proclaim His word. If this would have happened in the Old Testament times it seems that God would have struck them dead, but today there is nothing.

 

[Barbkw]

It’s far better that we humbly show our inner selves to God, to receive Jesus’ forgiveness and mercy and to accept the grace of the Holy Spirit.

“Does anyone have any suggestions as to why they think God is remaining so silent?”

They haven’t mastered humility. They either are their own god or they have remade God into their own person image.

 

[Thoughtfulone]

I don’t think God is necessarily silent. Look at the miracle of Fatima. 100,000 people witnessed it firsthand. The problem is that about 30 seconds after something like this occurs, people’s hearts begin to harden again and they begin to look for scientific explanations or to look for the next miracle.

Remember, God was PHYSICALLY present with the Jews for 40 years in the desert, feeding them manna from heaven on a daily basis and they STILL fell away from Him over and over and over again.

It is our fallen nature, not the fact that God is not present, that prevents us from seeing His presence and goodness even when He is right there in front of us.

 

[edwest2]

The President of the former Godless Soviet Union now goes to Eastern Orthodox Church. God works in the fullness of time.

Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. It is appointed for man once to die and then the judgment. All of us fall into this category. God is no respector of persons. It won’t matter if you were a General or owned a multi-billion dollar corporation - we will all be judged.

Pope Benedict just elevated a man to sainthood. The media has turned silent and is either silent about the work of God or criticizes it. The Pope has been telling the world to stop being Indifferent to sin. To spend at least a few minutes each day with God.

Get a Catholic source of news:

ncregister.com/

That way, you’ll be able to keep track of what the Holy Spirit of God is doing today.

God bless,
Ed

 

[AntiTheist]

What you raise is a very serious question. If this “god” does not act in any ways that are detectable at all, on what grounds can a person claim that he or she thinks that this god exists?

If your god did exist and act in the world, it would be, one would think, quite possible to demonstrate. For example:

You could assemble groups of Catholics in various areas around the country to gather together and pray for rain (you would especially do this in areas that typically get very little rain, but you would also place groups in more rain-heavy areas). You could assemble control groups of people who profess other religions and get them to pray for rain in different areas, and you could also assemble groups of atheists to think really hard for rain.

You have them all pray for rain and then measure the results, seeing whether any areas had rainfall significantly outside of the range that we would expect to see based on the history of the region, known weather patterns, etc. You have them repeat this experiment, again and again and again, until you have hundreds of instances of measured results, and you see which areas – if any – consistently had rainfall outside of the range that we would expect.

Then you repeat the same experiment a few dozen more times.

Now imagine if there were areas that consistently had record amounts of rainfall – way more than the typical range of deviation predicted by weather patterns – when this experiment was performed and only in areas where Catholics were praying. And imagine if this happened consistently – no matter where you moved the groups, the statistically significant increased rainfall only happens when the Catholic groups pray.

While that wouldn’t instantly prove that all of your religion’s supernatural claims are true, it would be one heck of a start, and it would sure shut the mouths of skeptics like me. It would tell us beyond all doubt that there is something special about this one particular religion, something special that the other religions don’t have. We would have to do further studies to determine exactly what it is, and naturally, every scientist on earth would want to study it. Research grant money would pour in like crazy.

What do you think would actually happen if you tried this experiment? Do you think it would actually produce results that were statistically significant? Now, sure, you can say, “God doesn’t have to answer prayers,” but if you claim that prayers actually have effects, then those effects have to be measurable (otherwise, you couldn’t make the claim).

If you can’t measure the effects of prayer, it’s effectively the same thing as prayer having no effects at all. And this brings us right back to your thread title – your god certainly seems to be silent.

 

[vz71]

We have numerous examples in the Old Testament of…
Does anyone have any suggestions as to why they think God is remaining so silent?
…If this would have happened in the Old Testament times it seems that God would have struck them dead, but today there is nothing.

The examples within the old testament are single examples among thousands of years of history.

Do not make the mistake of believing the frequency of the miraculous is less because the examples are not all listed in a nice little book.

 

[NE_Catholic]

What you raise is a very serious question. If this “god” does not act in any ways that are detectable at all, on what grounds can a person claim that he or she thinks that this god exists?

blah blah blah blah

If you can’t measure the effects of prayer, it’s effectively the same thing as prayer having no effects at all. And this brings us right back to your thread title – your god certainly seems to be silent.

what was the point of that?

 

[patg]

God seems silent because we are looking for God in the wrong way. I don’t think God has retired, I think we need to adjust our interpretation of what God is based on thousands of years of knowledge instead of clinging to the image of God based on ancient superstitions. As John Shelby Spong once said:

The primary myth around which traditional Christianity has organized itself has become inoperative. The supernatural, external deity who lives somewhere beyond the sky, watching over this planet, keeping a record book on the basis of which the final judgment will occur and periodically invading the world to accomplish the divine will has become unbelievable. This theistic God is the victim of an expanded human knowledge which has emerged in the western world over the last 400 years.

Many forces have conspired to destroy this theistic deity. Theism was wounded when human beings began to embrace the vastness of the universe. Theism became all but irrelevant when the laws of cause and effect that seem to govern the natural order were discovered. Theism’s mortality became apparent when such things as the weather and the causes of sickness were secularized and when that secular mentality then created such curative agents as antibiotics, surgery, and chemotherapy, all of which were morally neutral, working as effectively on sinners as they did on saints. When the weather was understood not as the result of God’s wrath, but as the result of such things as El Nino winds and low pressure systems, or when the victory or defeat of a nation in military conflict was explained not on the basis of divine intervention, but rather on which nation had the larger army and the greater military capability, the theistic was clearly fading from view. So many of the things we once attributed to this theistic deity we now explain with no mention of supernatural power at all. Indeed, English theologian Michael Donald Goulder, New Testament Professor at the University of Birmingham, explaining his withdrawal from the Christian Church, said that the theistic God of traditional Christianity no longer had any real work to do. He was unwilling to worship what he called an “unemployed God”.

*This faith tradition can no longer rest on the fading theistic claims of yesterday. The presuppositions upon which Christianity was built are not today sustainable. *

When one listens to the guardians of the various ecclesiastical establishments, as they seek to explain these statistical realities (loss of members, few clergy), one is amazed at the capacity for self-deception.

*The current drastic decline in the power of institutional Christianity is occurring not because of liberal compromises with the ancient verities, but because the traditional basis upon which the faith system has been erected can no longer be sustained. **The heart will never worship what the mind rejects. ***

Now I understand that no “good” catholic would ever agree with any of this so please don’t waste typing trying to show me the numerous “errors” in the above. I understand. I also think this is a darn good explanation.

 

[vz71]

What do you think would actually happen if you tried this experiment? Do you think it would actually produce results that were statistically significant? Now, sure, you can say, “God doesn’t have to answer prayers,” but if you claim that prayers actually have effects, then those effects have to be measurable (otherwise, you couldn’t make the claim).

There is no wasted prayer.
All prayer effects the one doing the praying.

If you can’t measure the effects of prayer, it’s effectively the same thing as prayer having no effects at all. And this brings us right back to your thread title – your god certainly seems to be silent.

Until Archimedes came along, we had no way to measure the volume of irregular objects.
Are we to believe there was no volume to measure for our failure to be able to measure it?

 

[NE_Catholic]

I see God working through people every day.

The world really hasn’t changed much through history. God let’s control our own mortal destiny. Every thing you have mentioned has been happening on and off for centuries.

 

[edwest2]

What you raise is a very serious question. If this “god” does not act in any ways that are detectable at all, on what grounds can a person claim that he or she thinks that this god exists?

If your god did exist and act in the world, it would be, one would think, quite possible to demonstrate. For example:

You could assemble groups of Catholics in various areas around the country to gather together and pray for rain (you would especially do this in areas that typically get very little rain, but you would also place groups in more rain-heavy areas). You could assemble control groups of people who profess other religions and get them to pray for rain in different areas, and you could also assemble groups of atheists to think really hard for rain.

You have them all pray for rain and then measure the results, seeing whether any areas had rainfall significantly outside of the range that we would expect to see based on the history of the region, known weather patterns, etc. You have them repeat this experiment, again and again and again, until you have hundreds of instances of measured results, and you see which areas – if any – consistently had rainfall outside of the range that we would expect.

Then you repeat the same experiment a few dozen more times.

Now imagine if there were areas that consistently had record amounts of rainfall – way more than the typical range of deviation predicted by weather patterns – when this experiment was performed and only in areas where Catholics were praying. And imagine if this happened consistently – no matter where you moved the groups, the statistically significant increased rainfall only happens when the Catholic groups pray.

While that wouldn’t instantly prove that all of your religion’s supernatural claims are true, it would be one heck of a start, and it would sure shut the mouths of skeptics like me. It would tell us beyond all doubt that there is something special about this one particular religion, something special that the other religions don’t have. We would have to do further studies to determine exactly what it is, and naturally, every scientist on earth would want to study it. Research grant money would pour in like crazy.

What do you think would actually happen if you tried this experiment? Do you think it would actually produce results that were statistically significant? Now, sure, you can say, “God doesn’t have to answer prayers,” but if you claim that prayers actually have effects, then those effects have to be measurable (otherwise, you couldn’t make the claim).

If you can’t measure the effects of prayer, it’s effectively the same thing as prayer having no effects at all. And this brings us right back to your thread title – your god certainly seems to be silent.

This is just a variation of something I heard in the 1970s: “Show me god. If you can show me god I might believe in him.”

Here is an artifact that is not explainable. It is an image somehow made on a rough cactus cloak dating back many years:

miraclehunter.com/marian_apparitions/approved_apparitions/guadalupe/index.html

As you can see by the timeline, it was not just left off as a miracle by default but was examined in later years as certain technologies became available.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Barbkw]

P.S. The “retired God” principle is called Deism.

“deism n. The belief, based solely on reason, in a God who created the universe and then abandoned it, assuming no control over life…”

 

[Barbkw]

“God is dead.” Nietzsche

“Nietzsche is dead.” God

 

[AntiTheist]

what was the point of that?

Well, the OP raised the point that prayer appears not to work. I was saying that one can indeed test prayer to see whether or not it works – since “prayer works” is a claim about the world – and I provided a specific protocol for testing it.

I feel very confident that if the experiment I proposed were conducted, it would fail spectacularly, and we would see rainfall well within the ranges predicted by weather patterns, with only a few slight variations that have no correlation to the prayer groups at all.

I’m sorry you had problems following my point. Does that help?

vz71:

Until Archimedes came along, we had no way to measure the volume of irregular objects.
Are we to believe there was no volume to measure for our failure to be able to measure it?

No, but until someone came along and demonstrated how to do it, nobody had any basis for claiming that they knew how to do it.

Similarly, if your god exists, yet there’s no measurable evidence for his existence, then you don’t have any basis to claim that you believe he exists.

 

[NE_Catholic]

Well, the OP raised the point that prayer appears not to work. I was saying that one can indeed test prayer to see whether or not it works – since “prayer works” is a claim about the world – and I provided a specific protocol for testing it.

I feel very confident that if the experiment I proposed were conducted, it would fail spectacularly, and we would see rainfall well within the ranges predicted by weather patterns, with only a few slight variations that have no correlation to the prayer groups at all.

I’m sorry you had problems following my point. Does that help?

not really

 

[Barbkw]

In opposition to the “prosperity gospel” - God is not a slot machine.

You want water, find where God supplied it, and dig a well.

 

[tomarin]

If this would have happened in the Old Testament times it seems that God would have struck them dead, but today there is nothing.

Bad things happen to good people all the time. That’s the message of the Book of Job (in a nutshell).

 

[vz71]

vz71:No, but until someone came along and demonstrated how to do it, nobody had any basis for claiming that they knew how to do it.

Very wise.
I propose to you that we simply have not found the proper method for scientifically measuring the effect of prayer.

To claim otherwise is to leap beyond what is scientifically known and into the realm of faith.

 

[_Locke]

Very wise.
I propose to you that we simply have not found the proper method for scientifically measuring the effect of prayer.

To claim otherwise is to leap beyond what is scientifically known and into the realm of faith.

There have been studies of the efficacy of prayer. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer)

You may debate the conclusions to draw from the studies, but the results are pretty clear.

 

[Pieman333272]

There have been studies of the efficacy of prayer. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer)

You may debate the conclusions to draw from the studies, but the results are pretty clear.

I read about a study where there were 2 people in a hospital, neither they nor their doctors were told who was being prayed for, and a collection of people prayed for one and he felt better faster and in a way healing alone wouldn’t work. Kinda small, but still. I found a link on efficacy of prayer by a Christian Apologist and I’ll try to reproduce it for you later. BTW, prayer CANNOT hurt unless one gives prayer instead of proper medical attention, which is getting more and more rare.