Why doesn't God reveal himself to those who doubt?

[tonyrey]

This is a common apologetic claim, but it is false. If you read the actual prophecies in context in the OT, most of them don’t refer to the Messiah at all, and hardly any to Jesus. The few that are plausible could easily have been written into the Gospel accounts afterward to make it look like he had fulfilled them, or deliberately engineered by Jesus to verify his claim, as at the entry into Jerusalem.

You need to explain His motive for doing so - in addition to accounting for the discrepancy with His moral teaching which is the basis of modern civilised values and explaining where the latter originated - with concrete evidence for your hypotheses…

 

[tonyrey]

A lot of people I have read on this and other threads pretend to know the mind of God, as you do when you say: “God has a plan and the author can not pretend to know it.” How do you know God has a plan?

Because we are free to choose what to believe and how to live - which is far beyongd the capacity of robots produced by mindless particles of energy.

Because he is loving?

In you scheme of things “love” is a term which doesn’t correspond to reality for it is an intangible illusion - like truth, freedom and justice.

How do you know that? Well, look at how he saved Jane Roe from that plane crash. Well, what about the other 29 people that died in it? Why didn’t God love them? If God’s love is why he saved somebody, God’s lack of love must be why he didn’t save others. Oh, but I’m forgetting; he had a plan for them, too, right?

You assume without justification that everyone must be given the same opportunities regardless of the immense complexity of life.

How do you know God has a good reason for little Katie’s cancer or little Johnny’s spina bifida or the tornado that destroyed John Doe’s house but left the one next door untouched, or so on and so on?

How do you know that a universe in which there is an immense number of living organisms totally devoid of disease, disasters and deformities is feasible? Please supply a blueprint if you believe it is…

People who claim God is incomprehensible suddenly acquire a detailed knowledge of his intentions and motives whenever they need to, the same way everybody else does: by assuming them, because life is too unbearable otherwise. But that doesn’t make them true, just useful.

An equally facile reply:

People who claim God doesn’t exist suddenly acquire a detailed knowledge of all the reasons why He doesn’t exist whenever they need to, the same way as other atheists do, because life would be too unbearable otherwise - with the prospect of knowing that none of your most private thoughts, desires, intentions and escapades are private!

 

[tonyrey]

As usual…etc…

NB I delete all irrelevant personal comments on principle.

The portion I quoted specifically mentioned cells, brain, hearing, and sight. Unless you are prepared to put all these in the “spirit” category, they are anatomical features. Nothing was said about “personal.” He followed his anatomical list by saying, “It is inconceivabl[e] that we can or do exist by luck, by evolution ALONE, or by chance.” If by “we” he meant something spiritual that transcends our bodies, his objection is irrelevant.

How do consider cells, brain, hearing, and sight in isolation from a person? Are they two isolated compartments?

Otherwise, it is not only conceivable, it is considered a fact by millions, that we came into being by evolution.

There is more than one type of evolution. NeoDarwinism has been rejected by many biologists…

As long as the objection is that our “bodies” make evolution ALONE inconceivable as the method by which we came to be, the only way to refute that false assertion is to show exactly how evolution can, and does, explain how our bodies came to be, which requires some detail.

Your equation of “we” with our “bodies” reveals that your next objection is baseless.It requires no details of evolution whatsoever to explain how the brain performs all the functions of the mind. We are concerned with what is occurring now not with a mythical past…

Nor did he mention “mind,” only “brain.”

Can you explain how he (or you) differentiate the mind from the brain?

 

[emisher]

Hi everyone,

As a non-believer who has often been on the receiving end of evangilization attempts by various people of faith, I have often wondered why God does not simply reveal himself to me, or any other doubter, so as to simply remove the doubt.

I’ve been given many reasons as to why he cannot, but none of them ever really seem to hold up. For instance, I’ve been told that if God were to reveal himself to me, it would violate my free will. But this seems nonsensical to me, and in any case, throughout the Bible God constantly appears to people, such as Moses, Abraham, Peter, and even those who were outright hostile towards him, such as Paul. Presumably he did not violate their free will by doing so?

What I’m saying is, if God could save my soul, and the souls of people like me, by simply appearing to us, why has he refrained from doing so? It seems like in our increasingly secular world, he would be willing to take any help that he could get.

Epircurean,

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that painting of Jesus knocking on the door with no knob. The crux being that the person on the other side is the one that has to answer the knock on the door from the Lord. I wouldn’t be so quick to assume that he isn’t knocking. He’s obviously got you curious, after all you’re here asking.

I remember asking myself this question years ago too. But the fact seems to be this: The people from the Bible that you mentioned are the “faith heroes” for lack of a better term. They had specific and dramatic missions to fulfill. But for most us, the call is much more subtle. I’ve read many stories of various people’s faith journey and they all relate similar experiences. He has already made the first move by putting on your heart and in your mind to seek answers. The ball is now in your court so to speak. That free will thing is really true, He’s not going to move into your life, until you ask him too. He wants you to invite him in.
And he needs to see an effort to try to live his life:

Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him"
John 14:21

That’s not what many people want to hear, especially if you have trouble with the concept of sin, but from a Christian perspective, that’s the way it seems to be. (That doesn’t mean that you need to be perfectly following them, you only need to start the journey. Once He sees your will is engaged, his grace will be there to meet you. That is the common experience of most Christians.

There are many questions we may have, that is understandable. There are satisfying answers to many of them. Many others we will never understand completely, just like love. We can’t analyze or even understand everything in this world. Faith and love are intimately connected to each other.

Take Care

 

[SGWessells]

I refer you to CS Lewis: Mere Christianity. Logically, there are only 3 possibilities to explain the phenomenon of Jesus of Nazareth: None of these include a mistake by Jesus, nor can he merely be a “wise man,” or a “prophet.” Prophets and wise men did not act nor speak the way Jesus did.

1. He was crazy (because the things he said were rather insane at the time, only a crazy man would say such things)
2. Or, he was lying (about all the things he said as well as the miracles)
3. Or, he really was the Son of God.

CS Lewis proves in a very brief expository that answers 1 & 2 cannot fit the reality, so the answer must be 3.

As I wrote before (but maybe you missed it), this argument depends on the Gospels being reliable reports of what Jesus really said and did. However, there are many reasons to doubt this, so before you can invoke the Lewis argument, you have to prove the historical reliability of the Gospel accounts.
Lewis also left out the possibility that Jesus was a human being with such extraordinary charisma that his followers gradually developed a legend about his divinity. It would be fun to write a book to this effect and call it “Mere Humanity.”

 

[SGWessells]

I have no problem with your asking. What happened was I saw a show on PBS which had a section on the fly’s eye–very complex.

Since you brought it up, I will venture a simple summary, in the interest of promoting knowledge, not acrimony.
The fly’s eye did not spring into being all at once. Evolution does not teach that a fly with no eyes hatched a fly with the complex eyes they have today. But a light-sensitive cell gives an advantage to an organism when all the others are totally blind. Then a slight modification can make the cell able to tell from what direction the light is coming, conferring another advantage. More slight improvements follow, each surviving because it gives its possessor a survival advantage, and each builds on those that went before. Organisms have been observed which have “eyes” at gradual stages of development. That is how, over millions of years, evolution produces a complex eye. I din’t find it hard to understand at all.

The materialist evolutionists give us theories about how this or that could have evolved, and they have not a shred of evidence

Fossils? Geology? Microbiology? Embryology? Genetics? Biology? Geology? All these provide huge amounts of evidence for those who will look. It’s easy to believe in creationism if that’s the only side you ever read. I did it for years. But when I read Isaak’s Counter-Creationist Handbook, Shubin’s Your Inner Fish, Prothero’s Fossils, Petto and Godfrey’s Scientists Confront Creationism, and Dawkins’ Greatest Show on Earth, and many other works, I realized that the evidence (not just-so stories) for evolution is overwhelming.
BTW, almost all scientists have the same reaction to “pan-spermia” that you did. I do as well. It is not taken seriously by the scientific community.

 

[SGWessells]

In a way you’re right to say that “‘Believable’ is a rather subjective term.” But to believe as an atheist subjectively believes, people would have to believe in the unscientific assertion that matter was made without a cause by “nothing,” and that it came all ready to go and fully energized from nowhere. They would have to believe that chance, instead of design, is the reason for the complexities of the universe. They would have to believe that order comes from chaos. And they would have to believe that the objective morality of mankind (choosing between right and wrong) is just an accident of nature.

Atheists don’t “have to” believe any of these things. I don’t know what you mean by “ready to go and fully energized”, but science says energy can neither be created nor destroyed (first law of thermodynamics). There are other alternatives to design than chance which do not require a supernatural designer. Chance may be a factor in some of them, but I don’t know of any where it is the only factor. And who says the initial state of the universe was chaos? Other than Genesis, which few atheists believe. Morality is not an accident of nature but an informed choice of reason.

Science, however, has never observed anything coming from nothing in nature. Science has never observed an effect without a prior cause. Science has never observed life coming from non-life. Science has never observed chaos creating order. For that matter, science has never observed evolution (macro-evolution, not micro-evolution) taking place anywhere in the universe. Since the worldview of atheism is not grounded in scientific observation then, atheists cannot truly say that their subjective brand of logic is even reasonably believable.

Science has never observed anything coming from God, either. It has observed phenomena on a quantum level that have no discernible cause, though I don’t think you can call them an “effect”, since that word implies causality.
I’m not familiar with chaos theory, but it might provide some insights on the relationship between chaos and order; but again, science does not postulate an initial state of “chaos” in any scientifically defined sense, from which “order” (ditto) emerged.
How do you know “macro-” evolution has not been observed? Have you read anything produced by non-creationist scientists on the subject? Macro-evolution is exactly the same process as micro-evolution; the only difference is an artificial one produced by juggling the meaning of words like “kind” and “species.”
The only “worldview” of atheism as such is the absence of belief in gods or other supernatural entities. Other than that, atheists are just as diverse in their views as Christians are.
Logic is not subjective; it operates by a set of laws that apply equally to all people in all times and circumstances. How much more objective can you get?

 

[SGWessells]

The unconscious is only capable of fabricating ideas based on what we already know. The knowledge that people like Moses, Peter, Abraham, etc. gained is beyond the kind of thing one’s mind can spin out of already-known ideas.

On the contrary, there are many striking parallels between Christian and Pagan religious symbols, such as the many dying and rising god motifs, and between stories in the OT and the surrounding cultures. Even monotheism was anticipated by the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten. As Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun.

 

[Pieman333272]

On the contrary, there are many striking parallels between Christian and Pagan religious symbols, such as the many dying and rising god motifs,

You, my friend, fail to understand the meaning of “resurrection” in a Judeo-Christian context. Even the handful of accounts that actually predate Christianity and teach that the hero was brought back from the dead don’t equate the Christian concept of resurrection.

and between stories in the OT and the surrounding cultures.

Actually, most scholars think there either is no significant amount of copying, or it is an example of the Jews copying the story as a form of refutation and ridicule of the others’ stories but communicating a theological point. See christianthinktank.com/gilgymess.html

Even monotheism was anticipated by the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten. As Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun.

Monotheism was the only real similarity Akhenaten had to Judaism, so the hypothesis is meaningless. tektonics.org/copycat/akhenaten.html

 

[SGWessells]

You need to explain His motive for doing so - in addition to accounting for the discrepancy with His moral teaching which is the basis of modern civilised values and explaining where the latter originated - with concrete evidence for your hypotheses…

If he thought he was the Messiah – which, in historical context, did not necessarily imply union with God – he would have felt it his duty to fulfill the prophecies, insofar as he was able. Why not? It’s easier to borrow somebody’s donkey (with the excuse that “I am the Messiah, so my need of it outweighs yours”) than to stand around waiting for God to miraculously create one out of nothing. As for concrete evidence, study the origins of any religion. Belief makes people do extraordinary things and justify them as God’s will.
Or it could be that the whole entry into Jerusalem was invented to provide a fulfillment of the prophecy, just as, evidently, the flight into Egypt was. Or people who already believed Jesus was the Messiah desperately searched through the OT for proof, and predictably found it. That’s what religious people do: search for reasons to believe what they accepted without reason.
As for accounting for the discrepancy with his moral teaching, what discrepancy would that be? If you mean taking the donkey, see above. If you mean something else, why should Jesus be any different from any other imperfect human who ever lived? It’s only when you assume that he was the sinless Second Person of the Trinity that moral discrepancies would have to be explained away, which has been a Christian cottage industry for thousands of years. The rest of us just point to human nature and try not to laugh.
Christianity is the source of many Western values – ancient Greece and Rome accounting for the others – because for the formative centuries of Western Civilization, it has been generally believed to be the divinely ordained truth. That belief did not make it so, of course, but it did not need to. All that is needed to make a given creed the basis of a civilization’s values is widespread belief in it for a sufficient length of time. That’s why Hinduism is the basis for India’s values and Islam for most of the middle east.

 

[SGWessells]

In you scheme of things “love” is a term which doesn’t correspond to reality for it is an intangible illusion - like truth, freedom and justice.

This is not MY scheme of things, it is YOUR IMAGINATION of what my scheme of things has to be in your narrow, black-and-white view of the world, because only your scheme of things is allowed to have anything good in it.

Unless you can quote any post in which I say “love” is a term which doesn’t correspond to reality for it is an intangible illusion - like truth, freedom and justice", I will regard this as a mere personal slur and, following your excellent advice, ignore it and similar comments in the future.

 

[SGWessells]

How do you know that a universe in which there is an immense number of living organisms totally devoid of disease, disasters and deformities is feasible? Please supply a blueprint if you believe it is…

"But Jesus looked at them and said, “with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”. Mat. 19:26

 

[SGWessells]

You assume without justification that everyone must be given the same opportunities regardless of the immense complexity of life.

I would only assume that if I believed in a God of infinite justice who created the world. But since, as you perceptively point out, the world isn’t like that, I don’t believe in such a god.

There is more than one type of evolution. NeoDarwinism has been rejected by many biologists…

My experience has been, first, that a tiny fringe minority is not accurately described as “many”, and second, those who reject it do so because of religious commitments to the contrary, not because NeoDarwinism lacks evidence or is intrinsically improbable. Lots of people can blind themselves to obvious facts to preserve religious feelings.

Can you explain how he (or you) differentiate the mind from the brain?

That’s only a problem for those who believe in such a differentiation.

 

[SGWessells]

You, my friend, fail to understand the meaning of “resurrection” in a Judeo-Christian context. Even the handful of accounts that actually predate Christianity and teach that the hero was brought back from the dead don’t equate the Christian concept of resurrection.

My point was not that Christianity “copied” the idea of the resurrection from paganism, which I think is a silly idea. All I meant to say was that the basics of the Christian faith had echoes in the surrounding culture and did not appear as total novelties out of nowhere to astound everyone with their amazing uniqueness.

 

[Pieman333272]

My point was not that Christianity “copied” the idea of the resurrection from paganism, which I think is a silly idea. All I meant to say was that the basics of the Christian faith had echoes in the surrounding culture and did not appear as total novelties out of nowhere to astound everyone with their amazing uniqueness.

And they didn’t have to. My point was, based on the psychological context and content of various ancient and modern mystic experiences, the statement “some mystic expediences are authentic” is true. Now, a case can be made for the resurrection appearances being authentic based on psychological criteria, but that wasn’t my point.

 

[OMGJ]

Hello.

I’ve only gotten halfway through the thread and the arguments but I wanted to reply directly to the question posted by the OP. So sorry if this has already been mentioned.

I have heard this question asked before. It goes along the line of questioning “Why is it that God isn’t showing Himself, physically, NOW?” Because now we have video cameras and recording devices to document it. I think for you to understand the answer to this question, you’ll have to ask further, “why is it that Jesus came when He did?” and then follow it up by asking, “why didn’t He come during the Middle Ages or during the Depression or during the Holocaust, etc”. If you’re trully interested to know the full detail of the answer then I encourage you to study the Bible through the Catholic Magisterium. You will find that God didn’t do things willy nilly. God has a plan. A plan that was set up during the Old Testament and fulfilled through Jesus and continues through to His second coming. He is following that Divine Plan for our salvation. If He was to show up now contrary to the plan, our salvation will be in jeopardy. But don’t worry, He is going to come back and when He does, there will be no doubt who He is and it will erase all of your doubts about His existence. Just hope it’s not too late for you to change your mind though.

What I think makes people struggle with this is our false pretense that God thinks like us. We use our limited wisdom and knowledge and say in certain situations “this is what I would do” and conclude that we are right. Essentially your question basically amounts to, “why isn’t God showing Himself to me to erase all my doubts because that’s what I would do if I was in His shoes”. If we can step outside this realm of thinking and accept that God’s wisdom is far greater than ours, then we could begin to understand God’s will.

Hope that helped clarify this for you.

 

[tonyrey]

My point was not that Christianity “copied” the idea of the resurrection from paganism, which I think is a silly idea. All I meant to say was that the basics of the Christian faith had echoes in the surrounding culture and did not appear as total novelties out of nowhere to astound everyone with their amazing uniqueness.

Then please give an example of the precept to love our enemies in another culture.

 

[tonyrey]

You need to explain His motive for doing so - in addition to accounting for the discrepancy with His moral teaching which is the basis of modern civilised values and explaining where the latter originated - with concrete evidence for your hypotheses…

If it had been a well-known prophecy there would have been accounts of other men claiming to be the Messiah riding a donkey yet there are none. It would also have been a ludicrous spectacle for a man claiming to be divine to descend to such a level…

As for concrete evidence, study the origins of any religion. Belief makes people do extraordinary things and justify them as God’s will.

Belief in any cause makes people do extraordinary things and justify them on other grounds - such as genocide.

Or it could be that the whole entry into Jerusalem was invented to provide a fulfillment of the prophecy, just as, evidently, the flight into Egypt was.

Why?

Or people who already believed Jesus was the Messiah desperately searched through the OT for proof, and predictably found it. That’s what religious people do: search for reasons to believe what they accepted without reason.

Anti-religious people are not averse to inventing reasons for their rejection of religion, are they?

As for accounting for the discrepancy with his moral teaching, what discrepancy would that be? If you mean taking the donkey, see above.

If His actions were “deliberately engineered to verify his claim” they would savour of deception…

If you mean something else, why should Jesus be any different from any other imperfect human who ever lived?

I mean that His moral teaching is the noblest known to mankind.

It’s only when you assume that he was the sinless Second Person of the Trinity that moral discrepancies would have to be explained away, which has been a Christian cottage industry for thousands of years. The rest of us just point to human nature and try not to laugh.

It has been the atheists’ cottage industry for thousands of years to denigrate the character of Jesus…

Christianity is the source of many Western values – ancient Greece and Rome accounting for the others – because for the formative centuries of Western Civilization, it has been generally believed to be the divinely ordained truth. That belief did not make it so, of course, but it did not need to. All that is needed to make a given creed the basis of a civilization’s values is widespread belief in it for a sufficient length of time. That’s why Hinduism is the basis for India’s values and Islam for most of the middle east.

The fundamental values of all religions are identical but those of Christianity are the basis of the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity because they stem directly from the teaching of Jesus that God is a loving Father who cares for all His children…

 

[GreggAlvarez]

That’s what religious people do: search for reasons to believe what they accepted without reason.

My friend,

You speak down to us as if atheists are exempt by default from this little maxim of yours. One need only read The God Delusion to agree that atheists are certainly not exempt from your irrational assertion.

What about the religious people who accept what they believe with sound reason?

Or the religious people who have no reason to believe otherwise?

Don’t criticize what you don’t know. What religious people do and don’t do falls into the category of “things you don’t know”.

So, you disagree. Does that fact alone make it a belief “without reason”? No. Then one might say, “The fact that it is ‘without reason’ makes it so.” That needs no response.

Anyway, my point is: be objective. Useless quips like this only hurts your credibility. There is no truth or objectivity in it.

Regardless though, while I disagree, you do make some good points. But perhaps, you should re-read your posts and see that any person can easily notice that what you say can easily be placed under the scrutiny of your above maxim.

 

[St_Francis]

This is a common apologetic claim, but it is false. If you read the actual prophecies in context in the OT, most of them don’t refer to the Messiah at all, and hardly any to Jesus. The few that are plausible could easily have been written into the Gospel accounts afterward to make it look like he had fulfilled them, or deliberately engineered by Jesus to verify his claim, as at the entry into Jerusalem.

do you have any evidence that this happened, that people lied and wrote things in the Gospels to make them conform to the prophecies, or that Christ “engineered” any corelation to those prophecies?

Lack of evidence does not prove a conspiracy, and testimony of unusual events is not evidence that the testifiers are lying.