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

[St_Francis]

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.

No, This is how scientists think it could have happened. There is no actual evidence that it did happen; instead we have a story about how it might have happened.

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.

My main point is not that evolution didn’t occur–I believe some evolution has occurred, and that it is quite likely that loys of evolution occurred.*

My main point is that evolution does not prove, show, or even hint at the non-existence of a Director, if you will, of these changes, and in fact, that evolution would actually point to or indicate a Director.

The odds are so very high for each step of evolution occurring, and the unnaturalness of evolving from simplicity to complexity so great that it seems, as I heard someone say years ago, to require a lot more faith to believe in materialist evolution than to believe in a Director.

**

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.

I am so happy to hear that

 

[tonyrey]

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

To be precise just over two thousand…

 

[albarker1]

Ask Him to show himself strong see judges ch 6 Gideon was not rebellious in doubt he was unsure of real true god and his calling God is not a respector of person if he proved it to Gideon just believe if he’s real he will prove it to you . He will

 

[steph_86]

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.

You ask a very profound question, I think. In truth, it can be asked, why did Christ appear to St. Paul, who was persecuting the Christians, and not perhaps, to a pagan, or better yet, to a non-believer? In my understanding, I would say that in reality, it is a mystery.

According to Catholic theology, every human person is given sufficient grace for conversion. As you already know, God does not do violence to human free will, even when a supernatural intervention is involved. As such, St. Paul, even though he was “struck” by a supernatural intervention, an “illumination” of sort, he was still in the end free to follow Christ or to reject him. In the end, he chose the former.

If I understand well, you want reasons in order to believe. I think, more intelligent and more capable individuals than I, have argued with you. However, it is part of our Catholic faith that man can come to the knowledge of God’s existence through reason. On the other hand, in order to actually reach Him, takes an act of faith.

To be a rational creature is a great thing. But to be a spiritual creature is greater. You are free to believe or not to believe. At the same time, you will be held responsible for your decision. In the end, God loves you, and, that is all.

 

[SGWessells]

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.

By “authentic,” do you mean “accurate perceptions of reality, interpreted with equal accuracy” or do you mean “genuine experiences of an ineffable or mysterious nature which the mystic then interpreted according to his or her current theological system”? I would agree with the second sense but not with the first.

 

[SGWessells]

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

A Wikipedia article on Matthew 5:44 contains these sentences:
"The Babylonian text the Counsels of Wisdom contains a similar call as does the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope. In Greek and Roman philosophy the idea of loving ones enemies had been advanced by writers such as Cicero, Seneca, and the Cynics.[2]

The Greek stoics expressed similar dicta of universal love. It is theoretically possible that Jesus could have been influenced by these ideas, but unlikely. The eastern faiths of Buddhism and Taoism also share this outlook."

There are even more parallels for the “golden rule”, though many of them are stated negatively, as in “do not do to your neighbor…”

 

[SGWessells]

The fundamental values of all religions are identical …

As in, for example, love your enemies ?

…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…

Funny that Christianity should provide the motto for the ferociously anti-Christian French Revolution. Also that it took Christian civilization (of all denominations) so long to realize and embody these basic principles, and needed all the help of the Enlightenment to do it. Maybe they were too distracted by persecuting heretics, warring with each other, invading the Holy Land, and enslaving the Indians and Africans.
I know you will say that a religion can’t be blamed if people don’t follow its teachings, but if the failure is so pervasive and long-lasting as it is, you have to wonder whether you have stated the principles accurately. Jesus also said to judge the tree by its fruit. If the fruit of Christian nations has been so deficient in promoting liberty, equality, and fraternity as it has, maybe that’s because its real principles were more often dogma, hierarchy, and subservience.

 

[SGWessells]

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”.

Physician, heal thyself. You criticize the extent of my knowledge, which you don’t know. I was a devoted Christian for sixteen years of my adult life, both as a Catholic and Protestant. Not all atheists are so by default, because they haven’t investigated Christianity. Some have weighed it in the balance and found it wanting.

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.

My disagreement has nothing to do with it. Christians vary in the degree to which they value reason and base their conclusions on it, but even in the more rational, reasoning only goes so far, because they claim that God is so far beyond its limits. When a Christian gets to the end of where reason can take him, he barges on ahead by faith, not by sight, and bases doctrines and precepts on the assertion that God’s thoughts are as far above ours as the heavens are above the earth. Judging from the extent to which Christians in my experience take refuge behind the convenient incomprehensibility of God (otherwise known as the “shield of faith”), I conclude that reason, in the hands of many Christians, mostly serves to rationalize beliefs which they accept largely on other grounds. When reason and faith collide, nine times out of ten, the Christian follows faith.
Atheists, as you say, fall prey to the same flaws in logical reasoning as any other people, and recognize its limitations as others do, but they do not exalt those failings into a virtue, or dogmatize beyond those limitations. I do agree that Dawkins is often childish when he ventures into theology.

 

[SGWessells]

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.

The distortion of the prophecies is obvious to anyone who reads them in context. I raise the possibility of the other explanations not to assert them as fact, but to point out that they are just as likely as the assertion that the prophecies are genuine. Given the inappropriateness of some prophetic claims, I look on others as dubious at best. Many Christians of my acquaintance use scripture as a kind of verbal garnish, sprinkling its phrases into writing and conversation to add spice and flavor, as I did in my previous post. Maybe Matthew, when he wrote “this happened to fulfill the word of the prophet,” took this tendency a step further. But test every spirit, as the Bible says. Look up every OT quotation that Luke or Matthew cites as a prophecy and read the context carefully. See how few of them have anything to do with Jesus or the Messiah.

 

[SGWessells]

No, This is how scientists think it could have happened. There is no actual evidence that it did happen; instead we have a story about how it might have happened.

Substitute “theologians” for “scientists” and you could say the same thing about Genesis. But I think the evidence is better than that. In any case, you complained that the evolution of a complex organ like the eye could not be explained by evolution, so all I had to do to answer your objection is to show how it could happen, in a way consonant with how evolution has been observed to happen in other cases. Organisms have been observed with every stage of eye development, from rudimentary to the eagle, whose eyesight is vastly superior to ours.

My main point is that evolution does not prove, show, or even hint at the non-existence of a Director, if you will, of these changes, and in fact, that evolution would actually point to or indicate a Director.

Even if this were so – and the Director would have to be exceedingly careless in his procedures, or cruel in his methods, judging from the amount of randomness in mutation and violence in predation – it would seem unlikely, for these and other reasons, that the Director would be the Christian God. There is no evidence that evolution was intended to reach, or is being guided toward, any ultimate goal. There are parasitical insects that lay their eggs in other insects; when the larvae hatch, they slowly eat their host alive from within, genetically programmed to preserve the vital organs for as long as possible. Would a God of love, who called everything he had made very good, have created such a creature? Darwin didn’t think so, and neither do I.

The odds are so very high for each step of evolution occurring, and the unnaturalness of evolving from simplicity to complexity so great that it seems, as I heard someone say years ago, to require a lot more faith to believe in materialist evolution than to believe in a Director.

I hear this a lot too, and all it tells me is that the people saying it need to learn how science works. No scientific theory based in any way on faith will be accepted. Not everyone who practices materialism as methodology accepts it as philosophy. It’s odd that science is criticized for being a faith, and then criticized for relying on material investigation instead of faith.

 

[tonyrey]

The fundamental values of all religions are identical …

Love for those who do not harm you is fundamental.

.

…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…

Funny that Christianity should provide the motto for the ferociously anti-Christian French Revolution.

Corruptio optima pessima.

Also that it took Christian civilization (of all denominations) so long to realize and embody these basic principles… and needed all the help of the Enlightenment to do it.

It has been practised by many Christians and non-Christians who were influenced by the teaching of Jesus since He was on earth.

… and needed all the help of the Enlightenment to do it.

The Enlightenment simply formulated His principles in secular terms. Liberty, equality and fraternity have no rational basis if we are not members of one family created by God but simply biological robots.

Maybe they were too distracted by persecuting heretics, warring with each other, invading the Holy Land, and enslaving the Indians and Africans.

Corruptio optima pessima.

I know you will say that a religion can’t be blamed if people don’t follow its teachings, but if the failure is so pervasive and long-lasting as it is, you have to wonder whether you have stated the principles accurately.

Can you give another interpretation of Christ’s teaching?

Jesus also said to judge the tree by its fruit. If the fruit of Christian nations has been so deficient in promoting liberty, equality, and fraternity as it has, maybe that’s because its real principles were more often dogma, hierarchy, and subservience.

The tree refers to **individuals **not nations or sections of society. If the Church hadn’t survived the teaching of Jesus those principles would have disappeared like Roman civilisation…

 

[GreggAlvarez]

Physician, heal thyself.

Haha… That made me laugh. I am not being caustic, it really did make me laugh.

You criticize the extent of my knowledge, which you don’t know. I was a devoted Christian for sixteen years of my adult life, both as a Catholic and Protestant.

Yes, but that does not mean you know the actions of religious people to make that maxim you did. Perhaps, you could say some do what your maxim stated. But to make a hasty generalization based upon your experiences is what I was criticizing.

Sorry that it seemed like I was criticizing the extent of your knowledge. I was criticizing the generalization.

Not all atheists are so by default, because they haven’t investigated Christianity. Some have weighed it in the balance and found it wanting.

Gotcha.

My disagreement has nothing to do with it. Christians vary in the degree to which they value reason and base their conclusions on it, but even in the more rational, reasoning only goes so far, because they claim that God is so far beyond its limits.

Which He is, but that does not mean we stop using reason. Faith doesn’t explain away those things anyway. That’s not what faith is, nor is that what its for.

Faith is not a replacement for reason where reason fails to grasp further mysteries. (It is odd you say that, because even faith can’t grasp those mysteries.) We still use reason, rationality and logic as much as is possible given the limitations of human nature.

Again, faith is not a replacement for reason, or at least, it shouldn’t be. I know of Christian denominations that place reason WAY under faith. This is certainly not true of the Catholic Faith.

(In the same, neither do Catholics believe that reason is a replacement for faith. Just thought I would add that.)

When a Christian gets to the end of where reason can take him, he barges on ahead by faith, not by sight, and bases doctrines and precepts on the assertion that God’s thoughts are as far above ours as the heavens are above the earth.

This is wrong. Perhaps the Christians you encountered in debate (or perhaps the Christian you were) do that.

But this equates to saying that reason alone can only get Christians so far. Then after that point is reached, Christians go on by faith alone. Meaning that reason and faith are mutually exclusive.

This is simply untrue in regards to Catholicism. God’s thoughts have nothing to do with this discussion either.

Well, not with the discussion between me and you. Perhaps with the actual thread topic which we have digressed from (my fault).

Judging from the extent to which Christians in my experience take refuge behind the convenient incomprehensibility of God (otherwise known as the “shield of faith”), I conclude that reason, in the hands of many Christians, mostly serves to rationalize beliefs which they accept largely on other grounds.

Ahh… You generalize. I don’t doubt you have experienced those types. But is it wise to say “many Christians” rationalize on other grounds, rather than the legitimate use of reason?

If so, why? Is it an objective conclusion if you are basing it only on those with which you have had encounters?

When reason and faith collide, nine times out of ten, the Christian follows faith.

Now, here is the crux of your argument. Here is where the fun begins.

Where do reason and faith collide? Personally, I have never had them collide, much less have I chose one over the other. Well, ever since my conversion anyway.

Atheists, as you say, fall prey to the same flaws in logical reasoning as any other people, and recognize its limitations as others do, but they do not exalt those failings into a virtue, or dogmatize beyond those limitations.

True… And neither does the Catholic Church exalt those failings to virtue. The Catholic Church and atheists think a lot alike. Well, so to speak. I am talking about the necessity of reason here.

I do agree that Dawkins is often childish when he ventures into theology.

I would have been content with The Greatest Show on Earth if he had just left out any theological bias. It was a good book with the exception of his opinion of what God would do if He existed. For someone who doesn’t believe in God, he sure mentions Him a lot in scientifically objective writings.

Anyway, I think we’ve gone on a tangent from the thread topic. Send me a Private Message if you wish to continue this discussion (or maybe even start another thread). If not, it was nice chatting with you about this. I don’t want to get too far off the thread topic. Its interesting, no?

 

[tonyrey]

Haha… That made me laugh. I am not being caustic, it really did make me laugh.

Yes, but that does not mean you know the actions of religious people to make that maxim you did. Perhaps, you could say some do what your maxim stated. But to make a hasty generalization based upon your experiences is what I was criticizing.

Sorry that it seemed like I was criticizing the extent of your knowledge. I was criticizing the generalization.

Gotcha.

Which He is, but that does not mean we stop using reason. Faith doesn’t explain away those things anyway. That’s not what faith is, nor is that what its for.

Faith is not a replacement for reason where reason fails to grasp further mysteries. (It is odd you say that, because even faith can’t grasp those mysteries.) We still use reason, rationality and logic as much as is possible given the limitations of human nature.

Again, faith is not a replacement for reason, or at least, it shouldn’t be. I know of Christian denominations that place reason WAY under faith. This is certainly not true of the Catholic Faith.

(In the same, neither do Catholics believe that reason is a replacement for faith. Just thought I would add that.)

This is wrong. Perhaps the Christians you encountered in debate (or perhaps the Christian you were) do that.

But this equates to saying that reason alone can only get Christians so far. Then after that point is reached, Christians go on by faith alone. Meaning that reason and faith are mutually exclusive.

This is simply untrue in regards to Catholicism. God’s thoughts have nothing to do with this discussion either.

Well, not with the discussion between me and you. Perhaps with the actual thread topic which we have digressed from (my fault).

Ahh… You generalize. I don’t doubt you have experienced those types. But is it wise to say “many Christians” rationalize on other grounds, rather than the legitimate use of reason?

If so, why? Is it an objective conclusion if you are basing it only on those with which you have had encounters?

Now, here is the crux of your argument. Here is where the fun begins.

Where do reason and faith collide? Personally, I have never had them collide, much less have I chose one over the other. Well, ever since my conversion anyway.

True… And neither does the Catholic Church exalt those failings to virtue. The Catholic Church and atheists think a lot alike. Well, so to speak. I am talking about the necessity of reason here.

I would have been content with The Greatest Show on Earth if he had just left out any theological bias. It was a good book with the exception of his opinion of what God would do if He existed. For someone who doesn’t believe in God, he sure mentions Him a lot in scientifically objective writings.

Anyway, I think we’ve gone on a tangent from the thread topic. Send me a Private Message if you wish to continue this discussion (or maybe even start another thread). If not, it was nice chatting with you about this. I don’t want to get too far off the thread topic. Its interesting, no?

Congratulations on your finely balanced view of faith and reason, Gregg!

 

[Pieman333272]

By “authentic,” do you mean “accurate perceptions of reality, interpreted with equal accuracy” or do you mean “genuine experiences of an ineffable or mysterious nature which the mystic then interpreted according to his or her current theological system”? I would agree with the second sense but not with the first.

I would lean towards something different, in the case of external visions I would go for the first, but for visions in the mind I would define it as being actually from God, which is verifiable on psychological and historical criteria.

 

[Abba]

Hello SGWessells,

Because he is loving? 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?
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? 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.

I appreciate your questioning. Of course, not as a valid response in the discussion, given that it is an argumentum ad misericodiam. (argument or appeal to pity). Nonetheless, some valid questions can be extracted from your comment that merit response, not that they have not already been answered for I think that they have been answered.

It has happened to me at times, as I think it has to many of us at one point or another, that I ask a question about something that I do no quite understand and I do not understand the connection or explanation given and this may not only be for the first answer, but the second and it could go on. Until finally, I get it and it all clicks. I hope, rather you agree or not that at least you will come to understand the response being given here to some of your questions.

I am going to have to extract them later. Sorry. I have to go.

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?

That’s a straw man. Now, that is not at all what I am doing. That is what I said Schellenberg is doing because he is going beyond the knowledge that God has given for us to know of himself. Now, regarding my statement that God has a plan; I know that God has a plan because he has revealed this to be so. Beyond what God has revealed we cannot pretend to know.

 

[St_Francis]

Substitute “theologians” for “scientists” and you could say the same thing about Genesis.

I don’t understand what you mean by this…

But I think the evidence is better than that. In any case, you complained that the evolution of a complex organ like the eye could not be explained by evolution, so all I had to do to answer your objection is to show how it could happen, in a way consonant with how evolution has been observed to happen in other cases. Organisms have been observed with every stage of eye development, from rudimentary to the eagle, whose eyesight is vastly superior to ours.

No, that is not what I meant. I could explain how fairies really do exist, and people who are culturally adept would know it was just a story.

When it comes to evolution, the fact that some organisms have what we call more primitive forms of “eyes” and some more complex and some even more complex… does not explain how it happened*

First, we have no explanation of how or evidence that a complex mutation which worked, which occurred in more than one member of the species of opposite sexes who both remained fertile, at the same time and place, has ever occurred.*

What we have is results: lots of different species, but no evidence of how they came to be, just a story of their evolving by an incredibly large number of mutations each of which individually had very high odds against their happening.

The fact that there are lots of different species does not prove evolution, nor does any resemblance among the various species.

Even if this were so – and the Director would have to be exceedingly careless in his procedures, or cruel in his methods, judging from the amount of randomness in mutation and violence in predation – it would seem unlikely, for these and other reasons,

This is, however, explained by Christianity.

that the Director would be the Christian God.

I deliberately used a neutral term so as not to give the impression that I was saying or implying that this indicated God as the God from the Bible.

There is no evidence that evolution was intended to reach, or is being guided toward, any ultimate goal. There are parasitical insects that lay their eggs in other insects; when the larvae hatch, they slowly eat their host alive from within, genetically programmed to preserve the vital organs for as long as possible.Would a God of love, who called everything he had made very good, have created such a creature? Darwin didn’t think so, and neither do I.

As mentioned above, this is explained in Christianity. What God thinks is above what we think.

I hear this a lot too, and all it tells me is that the people saying it need to learn how science works. No scientific theory based in any way on faith will be accepted. Not everyone who practices materialism as methodology accepts it as philosophy. It’s odd that science is criticized for being a faith, and then criticized for relying on material investigation instead of faith.

The problem is that when it comes to evolution, science accepts a lot of things on faith. We can see this because there is no evidence that evolution has occurred. There is nothing to measure.

I called it materialist evolution to differentiate it from theistic evolution, not to imply that acientists have investigated it materially.

 

[djeter]

Hi EpicureanSimba,

I posted a reply to your original post that gave Blaise Pascal’s notions on the “hidden God” of the Bible as well as St. Augustine’s idea in his confessions that knowledge of God is essentially innate.

If there isn’t any God why are atheists at such odds to simply assert their obvious and move on. Yet you linger on Catholic Forums asking asking and asking. Don’t get me wrong, I respect your search, but have you ever confronted the obvious as St. Augustine expressed 1600 some odd years ago “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” Do you deny the restlessness of your heart?

Still waiting for a reply…

dj

 

[djeter]

http://payingattentiontothesky.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/neuroscience.jpg?w=300&h=401

I see we have some blinded by science folks signing on to the discussion. I would be interested in your response to this article by Donald D. Hoffman, a Professor in the Department of Cognitive Science, University of California Irvine, California.

Dr. Hoffman makes a clear case here as to what neuroscience knows and doesn’t know. Give it a whirl and tell me what you think…

dj

 

[SGWessells]

The problem is that when it comes to evolution, science accepts a lot of things on faith.

<sigh…> Once more into the breach, good friends…

Science takes nothing concerning evolution on faith, only evidence, of which there is a huge amount. But don’t take that statement on faith; you can find out for yourself, if you want. But until you read something about the actual evidence for evolution, you will be as I was several years ago, convinced that it was all fiction. Here are some good introductions:

Jeffrey Coyne: Why Evolution is True
Donald Prothero: Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters
Neal Shubin: Your Inner Fish

As long as you keep writing as you are doing, people who actually know something about the evidence for evolution will not take you seriously. Nor should they, any more than you would take seriously someone who said that Catholics worship Mary and think they are saved by works alone. You would rightly conclude that such a person was too ignorant of Catholicism to have a reasonable opinion about it, and you would suggest some sources that would teach them the truth, right? So if you want to influence anyone who doesn’t already think evolution is a fairy story, go learn something about it from a non-creationist source. Then we’ll talk.

 

[tonyrey]

Hi EpicureanSimba,

I posted a reply to your original post that gave Blaise Pascal’s notions on the “hidden God” of the Bible as well as St. Augustine’s idea in his confessions that knowledge of God is essentially innate.

If there isn’t any God why are atheists at such odds to simply assert their obvious and move on. Yet you linger on Catholic Forums asking asking and asking. Don’t get me wrong, I respect your search, but have you ever confronted the obvious as St. Augustine expressed 1600 some odd years ago “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” Do you deny the restlessness of your heart?

Still waiting for a reply…

dj

He seems to have retired from the fray in the face of so much opposition!