Why does God seem silent?

[Mersenne]

You mean that, because of your understandings, the analogy makes no sense to you otherwise. The analogy makes fine sense to me.

No, it objectively doesn’t make any sense otherwise, for reasons I already laid out. It only makes sense to you because you’re refusing to listen to what I’m saying. Certain conditions are necessary for the fleas not to understand the dog is there. Those conditions also must be present in god otherwise it’s a flawed analogy, logically. It doesn’t matter what does and does not make sense to you.

Since you have placed something of a challenge out there, let us continue it.

Let us assume tha tthe Dog is smart enough to concider the option of making himself known to the fleas.
How should he go about it?

Well, sense we’re talking about something that is suppose to be analogous to god, we have to assume the dog is also all powerful and all knowing and created the fleas. Then it would be incredibly easy.

 

[JRKH]

No, it objectively doesn’t make any sense otherwise, for reasons I already laid out. It only makes sense to you because you’re refusing to listen to what I’m saying. Certain conditions are necessary for the fleas not to understand the dog is there. Those conditions also must be present in god otherwise it’s a flawed analogy, logically. It doesn’t matter what does and does not make sense to you.

As you wish.
I will freely admit my inadequacy in discussing the ins and outs of “Logical philosophy” etc. I probably didn’t even express this term correctly.

Well, sense we’re talking about something that is suppose to be analogous to god, we have to assume the dog is also all powerful and all knowing and created the fleas. Then it would be incredibly easy.

Yes. So let us look at how God is NOT silent. What evidence - Profound evidence - that he has given us.
The most direct communication that He has given us are the messages He has sent. Like Moses and the Burning bush, He has addressed us through visitiations by the Virgin to Bernadette and the Children at Fatima. Christ Himself appeared to St Faustina. Many other examples can be given. Others have been marked by the sign of the stigmata and other signs. Such messages are visible throughout Christian history.
Otherwise ordinary people who are seen as extraordinary, not by virtue of their worldiness or education, but because of their humility and willingness to give all for God.

Now - I do not necessarily expect that you will accept my evidence above but, it directly relates to the OP. God is only silent to those who stop up their ears and their hearts.

Lest we forget, there were many witnesseswho SAW Jesus perform miracles, even pharisees, and yet the Sanhedrin would not believe. Even one of Jesus own chosen apostles woud not believe the resurection until he saw and touched. There will always be those who do not believe no matter what.

Peace
James

 

[Mersenne]

The most direct communication that He has given us are the messages He has sent. Like Moses and the Burning bush, He has addressed us through visitiations by the Virgin to Bernadette and the Children at Fatima. Christ Himself appeared to St Faustina. Many other examples can be given. Others have been marked by the sign of the stigmata and other signs. Such messages are visible throughout Christian history.

You don’t know that any of these things happened.

Otherwise ordinary people who are seen as extraordinary, not by virtue of their worldiness or education, but because of their humility and willingness to give all for God.

So sometimes people do good things because they believe in god, therefore god must exist? That’s silly. I could do all kinds of good things because I think I’m the king of the moon, that doesn’t make me king of the moon.

Now - I do not necessarily expect that you will accept my evidence above but, it directly relates to the OP. God is only silent to those who stop up their ears and their hearts.

I’m not dropping my ears, I’m just not willing to interpret every bump in the night as the hammer of Thor. You want to believe so you’re using a criteria for evidence that you’d never use in any other context. If your friend and you were driving in a car, you came to a cliff, you did not see any bridge, but you had a 2000 year old book that said a bridge should be there and you once heard about a guy from another guy who heard it from another guy that the bridge was there, would you drive off the cliff?

Lest we forget, there were many witnesseswho SAW Jesus perform miracles, even pharisees, and yet the Sanhedrin would not believe.

Maybe because in real life he was a trickster, like the dozens of claimed messiahs walking around at the time, whose tricks were not very convincing to people who were not gullible.

 

[Galand]

Wow. I read these posts with great interest. I have no clue about logic or debate or establishing proof or anything along those lines. I just believe God is at work in my life . When I forget or ignore that he calls me by a name known only to Him or that he knows me so well he even knows the number of hairs on my head I’m maybe not such a great person to have to deal with. Heck, I don’t even like me. When I take some time each day first to be thankful and then just to attempt in my own way to be in the presence of God or offer up a difficulty that is bigger than me or feels like more than I can handle my burden becomes light. I have a need to keep it simple. I would like to be among the most knowledgeable but I don’t think it is going to happen. Ironic my Confirmation name is Iranaeus. Truly…

I would like to know what the deep thinkers can tell me about what we mean by hearing or listening to God. Our pastor talks about this all the time and how we need quiet for it to be possible. I would love to hear Him. I suspect the expression of hearing God is among the few ways humans can express the need for belief in our lives. Any thoughts about what this means? Is it literal or figurative? From the above posting I guess we might interpret supernatural events in ths way but what about the natural beauty we see every day? Got any thoughts for me?

Galand

 

[Snerticus]

I thought I’d give the poster a chance to retract a statement that implies got is stupid, powerless, and malevolent towards us.

No retraction is necessary for someone who deliberately uses faulty logic in an argument to ‘prove’ their views. Sorry, but you don’t deserve a response other than this one.

 

[Snerticus]

I would like to know what the deep thinkers can tell me about what we mean by hearing or listening to God. Our pastor talks about this all the time and how we need quiet for it to be possible. I would love to hear Him. I suspect the expression of hearing God is among the few ways humans can express the need for belief in our lives. Any thoughts about what this means? Is it literal or figurative? From the above posting I guess we might interpret supernatural events in ths way but what about the natural beauty we see every day? Got any thoughts for me? Galand

My advice? Use the silence that you see in God. When meditating or reflecting, the quieter the better. Just pick an event that you would like to think about in Jesus’ life and in a quiet place when you have ample time, relax and just think about it. Try to imagine the surroundings, the people, what their society is like, how they are reacting to Him (good or bad), what you would have been doing if you had existed at the time, etc… Just try to get lost in that moment of time in your thoughts. I think if you do this seriously , God will speak. And you’ll understand that Gods’ speech does not necessarily mean verbal words.

 

[Mersenne]

No retraction is necessary for someone who deliberately uses faulty logic in an argument to ‘prove’ their views. Sorry, but you don’t deserve a response other than this one.

it’s not faulty, it’s clear as day. You won’t respond with anything else because you don’t have anything else. Just because you don’t like the conclusions doesn’t mean that it’s “faulty logic”

 

[Snerticus]

Has anyone else here noticed that there are some people who argue just to argue and will disagree just because they can? They have a position, don’t really care about anyone else’s, and will argue till the cows come home using irrelevant arguments and faulty logic so they can try and make an opponent look bad and themselves good. And since they don’t really care about anyone else’s position and just want to diatribe on and on, anyone who are against them will never win. There are those who are sincere in their beliefs and will defend them. There are those who could care less. It’s one thing to debate with someone who vehemently opposes your views, because views can be either sympathized with or swayed. It’s totally another thing trying to debate with someone who could care less what you think and will pick an argument out of thin air. As God infers in Revelation, woe to those who are lukewarm.

“I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,’ and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white garments to put on so that your shameful nakedness may not be exposed, and buy ointment to smear on your eyes so that you may see.”

It is easier to reason with someone who is willing to hear another side so they may understand your point of view. It is pointless to try to reason with someone not even willing to listen.

 

[lil_flower_luv]

Hi Mersenne!

I hope you’ll stop living in such a childish fantasy.

It’s funny that you say this. Jesus said, (Luke 18:16-17) “Let the children come to me and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.” God’s love for us is so profound yet it is so simple. He does not desire we keep searching and searching for “why” or “how”…but just to love Him and allow Him to love us - that’s all He wants. Just a child-like approach; doing everything with simple love.

 

[Spirithound]

How exactly does it do that?

A Rube Goldberg machine is a very complicated machine that does a relatively simple task. If a scientist could only see certain parts of the machine, using Occam’s razor, he or she would conclude erroneously that those are the only parts of it.

 

[JRKH]

You don’t know that any of these things happened.

So sometimes people do good things because they believe in god, therefore god must exist? That’s silly. I could do all kinds of good things because I think I’m the king of the moon, that doesn’t make me king of the moon.

I’m not dropping my ears, I’m just not willing to interpret every bump in the night as the hammer of Thor. You want to believe so you’re using a criteria for evidence that you’d never use in any other context. If your friend and you were driving in a car, you came to a cliff, you did not see any bridge, but you had a 2000 year old book that said a bridge should be there and you once heard about a guy from another guy who heard it from another guy that the bridge was there, would you drive off the cliff?

Maybe because in real life he was a trickster, like the dozens of claimed messiahs walking around at the time, whose tricks were not very convincing to people who were not gullible.

Need I say more??

Peace
James

 

[sdtouchton]

What looks like silence and inactivity to us is God allowing us the opportunity to listen to “the still small voice” and to see the provisions that He has made for us by faith. God is involved in every area of a believer’s life–the very hairs on our heads are numbered (Mark 10:30; Luke 12:7). However, there are times when we have to walk in obedience to the light that God has given us before He sheds more light on our path, because in this age of grace God speaks to us through His Word.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isaiah 55:8-11).

Therefore, when God seems silent to us as believers, it may mean that we have stopped listening to His voice, we have allowed the cares of this world to plug our spiritual ears, or we have neglected His Word. God does not speak to us today in signs, wonders, fire or wind, His Spirit speaks to us through the Word, and in that Word we have the “words of life.”

 

[Mersenne]

A Rube Goldberg machine is a very complicated machine that does a relatively simple task. If a scientist could only see certain parts of the machine, using Occam’s razor, he or she would conclude erroneously that those are the only parts of it.

Not really true, if I saw, for example, the first half of the machine I would have to wonder about what was going on in the second half. If I saw the over complexity in the first half, it would be simpler to assume the designer was building a Rube Goldberg machine for fun then to assume he made the first half really complex for no reason and built the second half simple for no reason. Of course, either way I could still be wrong. No amount of good reasoning can make you omniscient, but just because a conclusion could possibly be wrong, is no reason to believe a conclusion that is almost certainly wrong.

Occam’s razor is probably the most unappreciated and important ideas in reasoning and philosophy of science.

 

[Mersenne]

What looks like silence and inactivity to us is God allowing us the opportunity to listen to “the still small voice” and to see the provisions that He has made for us by faith. God is involved in every area of a believer’s life–the very hairs on our heads are numbered (Mark 10:30; Luke 12:7). However, there are times when we have to walk in obedience to the light that God has given us before He sheds more light on our path, because in this age of grace God speaks to us through His Word.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isaiah 55:8-11).

Therefore, when God seems silent to us as believers, it may mean that we have stopped listening to His voice, we have allowed the cares of this world to plug our spiritual ears, or we have neglected His Word. God does not speak to us today in signs, wonders, fire or wind, His Spirit speaks to us through the Word, and in that Word we have the “words of life.”

why does it have to be that way? Why does he have to communicate with us in a way that we could easily misinterpret our own imagination, wishful thinking, or a mental illness for the “soft still voice”

 

[Janechantal53]

Unless we have a thread about how silly it is to believe without evidence, then all of sudden all religious people are claiming that is most certainly not what faith is.

So it’s your fault and god’s fault if I don’t have faith I take it?

I thought faith didn’t require proof, and that if god proved himself that would take away free will? That has been the theological position lately as to why god doesn’t prove himself. So I guess sense god has proven himself to you, you don’t have free will, and you cannot be redeemed. Such a shame.

I hope you’ll stop living in such a childish fantasy.

I will pray for you and thank you for saying that I am childish. It is the nicest thing you could have said to me.

 

[Mersenne]

I will pray for you and thank you for saying that I am childish. It is the nicest thing you could have said to me.

If you admire people who ignore reality and instead believe what they want to believe, then I guess you admire the people who flew planes into the twin towers.

 

[Monica4316]

I don’t understand why God seems so silent. If he loves us so much, why doesn’t he make himself more perceptible? The standard argument I get is that it is because he loves us so much and if he did this it would infringe on our free will. This seems flimsy to me…if I wanted someone to love me, I would make sure they knew I did and communicate with them often. I know another argument is that God communicates through the sacraments and during prayer. However, these moments seem open to interpretation–they could be seen as nothing out of the ordinary by the skeptic or those low on faith. Others say we have the bible but these words do not seem to “pop off the page” as truly extraordinary…and it all seems to be set in the distant past. I’ve also heard that our human bodies are not capable of perceiving God if he appeared to us or spoke to us directly. However, in the Old Testament some (Adam, Eve, Moses, etc) are said to have heard God’s voice. Why not a clear communication with His people today?

I think that God does communicate His presence to us but only once we trust Him. The more we trust, the more we receive. For example, we recognize Him more clearly in the Sacraments if we firmly believe He is there. I know this might seem pointless and contradictory - but it’s precisely because He wants us to choose Him… you asked, if God loves us wouldn’t He WANT to communicate His love to us… well He does, but often in greater ways than just giving us consolations. One way He shows us love is helping us reach Heaven…and this requires us to learn to love in return, which is a choice, and we’ll never learn to choose God freely if we can always see Him or feel His presence… because feeling His presence even a little bit is already overwhelming. It would then not be a choice, but the only possible response.

I think the closer we come to God, the more we can understand He is there with us

God bless

 

[Janechantal53]

If you admire people who ignore reality and instead believe what they want to believe, then I guess you admire the people who flew planes into the twin towers.

You are comparing apples and oranges. I am sorry that you feel so alone and powerless. I am praying for you.

 

[Mersenne]

You are comparing apples and oranges. I am sorry that you feel so alone and powerless. I am praying for you.

No, I’m not, and thankfully the number of people who realize the connection are growing. Christians are dangerous, even the moderate ones. You may not directly support terrorism, but you support irrational thinking, and irrational people fly planes into buildings and drown their kids in bathtubs.

 

[Luke_K]

No, I’m not, and thankfully the number of people who realize the connection are growing. Christians are dangerous, even the moderate ones. You may not directly support terrorism, but you support irrational thinking, and irrational people fly planes into buildings and drown their kids in bathtubs.

Irrational people also create atheistic, Marxist regimes which have murdered over 100 million people in the past hundred years or so. When government becomes god, you realize what a terrible god man is to himself.

Christians are dangerous? Have you been polluting your mind with the likes of Hitchens and Dawkins? I suppose you’re just casually ignoring the fact that Christians comprise the most charitable people on the planet:

forbes.com/lists/2005/14/Revenue_1.html Just Catholic Charities, Food for the Poor, Catholic Relief Services, St. Jude’s, and America’s Second Harvest alone total $5,570,000,000, which is greater than #1 on the list for America. Keep going down the list and you find Father Flanagan’s homes, Catholic Medical Mission Board, Covenant House, and more. Add the thousands of other charities, from Missionaries to the Poor, Amigos for Christ, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, to religious orders (like Missionaries of Charity) & individual parishes who often do their work in anonymity, and you will see some of the charitable works of the Catholic Church.

And you of course ignore the testament of history, presuming that the whole Jewish nation’s millenia-long story of salvation, Jesus’ life, the testaments of millions upon millions of Jesus’ followers who have had their lives completely transformed over the past 2000 years, and the Catholic Church that has survived that whole time despite corruption from the inside and attacks from the outside, as all “made up and irrational fantasy.” All of it has been a desperate attempt of our feeble minds to make sense of a frightening and powerful world, but now that we have supposedly gained control over the world through technology, we have no need for religion anymore, is that it? Have I just been a foolish “sheep” that still clings to the comforting fantasy of an invisible man in the sky that watches over me? Am I threatening you by believing that Jesus really did the things that people said he did?