Why is God so secretive about his existence?

[Peter_Plato]

Likewise, the projectionist could show something on the screen to communicate to on-screen beings that he exists. Say, project a prophet and a miracle.

How can those on the screen prove that the prophet and miracle are actually legit, without looking outside the screen, which the cannot do?

So it comes down to trusting that the projectionist is not deceptive in the least, right?

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. The truth is right in front of us provided the clouds of deception are brushed away or simply ignored.

 

[ColdComfort]

Incorrect in a way it is used in (counter-)apologetics.

The main claim of theism is that since something cannot come out of nothing, then universe cannot come out of nothing by itself, and you need God to create universe.

Then, someone discovered that it is possible for a universe to be spontaneously generated out of quantum vacuum. This is a scientific fact. Since quantum vacuum is the closest thing to nothingness there is (although, remember, vacuum at quantum level is not empty!), this was called “universe from nothing”.

At this point, the idea was seized by the atheist camp, which claimed that since universe can be generated out of nothing, then the main proposition of theism is falsified. (Krauss and Dawkins being the main offenders here). Of course, this is a straw man, because, as you have observed, vacuum + laws > nothing.

But, once that straw man was set up, the apologetic crowd countered that the “universe from nothing” proposition is absurd. In reality, this is another straw man. The problem is that the apologists use the word “nothing” to mean philosophical non-existence, while Krauss etc. use it to describe quantum vacuum. That leads to both sides attacking their own straw men.

I agree with everything up to this point. I misunderstood your original meaning.

In reality, it is trivial to reconcile “universe from nothing” with theism. Just say that God made the laws in the first place, and you’re fine. Well, almost: generation of universe through a quantum process involves statistics, so instead of God creating the universe in a conscious act, you have God playing dice and winning a universe

Not so much but maybe another time.

 

[kelner]

So it comes down to trusting that the projectionist is not deceptive in the least, right?

That’s one thing, but that’s quite easy. The only group which believes in divine deception are the young earth creationists.

But what I meant is: how to authenticate that the revelation indeed comes from the projectionist, and is not a fabrication made entirely by someone else also on the screen, for their own purposes?

 

[123Strontium]

If there was solid evidence for God, would there be such a thing as faith? Faith is only faith if one takes a leap. If you do not have faith, then perhaps that was pre-ordained?

 

[surritter]

If there was proof that could be from God, then there’d be no reason not to exclude intelligent aliens.

What nonsense! This is someone’s basis for not believing in God?
It’s an illogical statement because the person or concept of God is that of a “first cause,” who created everything around us. Perhaps you don’t believe that things around us were created but merely came out of nothingness, which itself is another illogical position to hold.

Or, if the implication of the statement is that the intelligent aliens were the ones who created our world (as we claim God did), then we can conclude one of two things: the original intelligent alien is God, or that those intelligent aliens were themselves created by a higher being, who is God, and we are their colony, in a sense. That fact would still not remove God from the equation, because those aliens came from a higher source.

Either way, the statement you gave is not a sound argument; it needs to be pursued to the first cause.

 

[shoe]

Why is believing in a proposition (that God exists) without evidence ( faith is different then knowing) more important then knowing?

I don’t think that God keeps His existence a secret from anyone. As Blaise Pascal says, “God has given us evidence sufficiently clear to convince those with an open heart and mind, yet evidence sufficiently vague so as not to compel those whose hearts and minds are closed.”

Why (just one example) didn’t God simply describe DNA in the Bible? Even a small paragraph would be irrefutable evidence of his existence since no one 2,000 years ago could possibly have known about the double helix.
I expect to be misunderstood and attacked. I do not care, except that I want answers and not name calling (I’m an evil atheist etc. Actually I’m neither.).
Is it because if we know ( rather then merely believe). that God exists, we cannot be good. Because all our actions instead of being altruistic would be done out of a desire for reward and a fear of punishment?

The Bible is not meant to be a book on DNA; rather the Bible is a book about wisdom, love, and revelation from God. The Bible touches upon science here and there, though. In biology, for instance, the Bible mentions that “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11) many years before scientists recognized the value of blood. In regard to astronomy, Job 26:7 describes the suspension of the Earth in space: “He stretched out the north over the empty space, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.” Concerning meteorology, the Bible describes the flow of air that produces weather patterns (Jet Streams): “Southward goes the wind, then turns to the north; it turns and turns again; then back to its circling goes the wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:6).

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Why is believing in a proposition (that God exists) without evidence ( faith is different then knowing) more important then knowing? Why (just one example) didn’t God simply describe DNA in the Bible? Even a small paragraph would be irrefutable evidence of his existence since no one 2,000 years ago could possibly have known about the double helix.
I expect to be misunderstood and attacked. I do not care, except that I want answers and not name calling (I’m an evil atheist etc. Actually I’m neither.).
Is it because if we know ( rather then merely believe). that God exists, we cannot be good. Because all our actions instead of being altruistic would be done out of a desire for reward and a fear of punishment?

Why is God so secretive? Peter Kreeft offers several reasons here, about 8 min.

youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=KN6NKEapPNE&feature=endscreen

 

[aragonjohn1]

Why is believing in a proposition (that God exists) without evidence ( faith is different then knowing) more important then knowing? Why (just one example) didn’t God simply describe DNA in the Bible? Even a small paragraph would be irrefutable evidence of his existence since no one 2,000 years ago could possibly have known about the double helix.
I expect to be misunderstood and attacked. I do not care, except that I want answers and not name calling (I’m an evil atheist etc. Actually I’m neither.).
Is it because if we know ( rather then merely believe). that God exists, we cannot be good. Because all our actions instead of being altruistic would be done out of a desire for reward and a fear of punishment?

Is He?

Merry Christmas and hopefully a blessed new year.

God bless

 

[Bradski]

What nonsense! This is someone’s basis for not believing in God?

I hope not.

Imagine if you were talking to someone a couple of thousand years ago and he said he’d seen Jesus turning water into wine. He must therefore be the son of God. Imagine if that guy then watched you whip out your iPhone and see and talk to someone in real time on the other side of the planet. You’d be perceived as a god yourself.

Now advance that concept a million years or so. Imagine how god-like a person would appear to us in relation to us and our two thousand year old chum.

If he said he was God, how could you be sure?

 

[surritter]

I hope not.

Imagine if you were talking to someone a couple of thousand years ago and he said he’d seen Jesus turning water into wine. He must therefore be the son of God. Imagine if that guy then watched you whip out your iPhone and see and talk to someone in real time on the other side of the planet. You’d be perceived as a god yourself.

Now advance that concept a million years or so. Imagine how god-like a person would appear to us in relation to us and our two thousand year old chum.

If he said he was God, how could you be sure?

True, I wouldn’t have 100% assurance based on that isolated evidence alone. But as I pointed out, we can certainly know that that iPhone was created by an intelligent being, and even if that gadget were created by a human whose technical knowledge seemed god-like to me, I can know that the human was created by a higher intelligence.

So remember, it’s all about the “first cause,” and that can’t be danced around.

 

[kingpomba]

I don’t think the other obvious conclusion has been said yet. I’ll go out on a limb and add a pinch of diversity to the opinions here - it might be because God no longer exists, never existed, doesn’t know about us or doesn’t care.

Lately, i’ve come to think its impossible to prove your position (whatever it may be) in such a way that most people who hear you talk about end up believing it or being convinced. The best we can hope for is to have a justifiable belief in what we believe, i think thats the prime function of a lot of the philosophical arguments on both sides. I’d certainly count this as part of the justification for my case.

What nonsense! This is someone’s basis for not believing in
the original intelligent alien is God

I don’t think thats as absurd as you make out to be, it sounds silly because he uses the word Alien but he raises a serious point. I notice he said aliens (plural) and you changed it to the singular, can you prove its impossible for there to be more than first cause or that there couldn’t be multiple, equal first causes?

The only property the first cause needs to have is literally being the first cause. He doesn’t need to be all knowing, all powerful (just being able to create the universe doesnt mean you have the power to do everything, not by a long shot), all caring or even still exists.

A big squishy alien who was the first cause of all things, could just as easily satisfy the first cause definition as could the Christian God.

 

[inomcoke]

Why is believing in a proposition (that God exists) without evidence ( faith is different then knowing) more important then knowing? Why (just one example) didn’t God simply describe DNA in the Bible? Even a small paragraph would be irrefutable evidence of his existence since no one 2,000 years ago could possibly have known about the double helix.
I expect to be misunderstood and attacked. I do not care, except that I want answers and not name calling (I’m an evil atheist etc. Actually I’m neither.).
Is it because if we know ( rather then merely believe). that God exists, we cannot be good. Because all our actions instead of being altruistic would be done out of a desire for reward and a fear of punishment?

Interesting thread. Thanks for starting it!

From what I’ve seen/read/studied God did (and does) FAR more in terms of direct evidence of his existence than simply putting something about DNA in the bible.

For the sake of keeping this post brief I’ll group things together, but within each group of ‘types of evidence for God’ there are anywhere from a few to thousands of individual examples.

1 - Biblical concepts that suggest concepts foreign to them. (things like God being named “I AM” as mentioned in another post, creation meshing quite well with Big Bang Theory, ect)

2 - Miracles (general)
2B - apparitions (Many approved, many not yet approved)
2C - Miraculous Healing (Thousands of examples throughout the last 2000 years)
2D - **Items **like the Shroud of Turin, and many others
2E - **Incorruptibles **

3 - **Science **(intelligible universe, fine tuned, ect)

4 - **Philosophy **(Aquinas’s 5 ways and many other ‘proofs’ for God)

Those are just the few that I could come up with off the top of my head. Now it is important to note that there may be arguments against of these individually, but combined it is significant.

Even just within the Miracles category. There are thousands of examples, and if even one of them is true that is conclusive proof. Many of these miracles have been extensively tested by modern scientists.

If you’re determined enough to not believe in something, no amount of evidence will be sufficient.

 

[Pugsly]

Perhaps, God is not secrative…we are blind. Perhaps, God would violate His own existence to make free beings that He biased toward non-freedom.

 

[kingpomba]

Perhaps, God is not secrative…we are blind. Perhaps, God would violate His own existence to make free beings that He biased toward non-freedom.

Could you explain this a little more? I’m having trouble understanding it.

Free beings biased towards non-freedom seem quite clearly not free. We have lots of animals and other things like that and God seemingly still exists.

It seems like a much less convincing objection as well, why did God not make us robots are always good, the usual answer is because choice is something even higher but to say that he just couldn’t do it, even if he wanted to, seems to suggest some kind of failing.

Interesting thread. Thanks for starting it!
2 - Miracles (general)
2B - apparitions (Many approved, many not yet approved)
2C - Miraculous Healing (Thousands of examples throughout the last 2000 years)
2D - **Items **like the Shroud of Turin, and many others
2E - **Incorruptibles **

Believing in most miracles is kind of predicated in believing in the God you think is working the miracles, especially if you’re getting them from a second hand source.

Many of these miracles have been extensively tested by modern scientists.

I study sciences myself so im fascinated by the claim that there’s scientific proof? Care to share some of the many so i can look over them?

 

[inomcoke]

Believing in most miracles is kind of predicated in believing in the God you think is working the miracles, especially if you’re getting them from a second hand source.

Maybe labeling them miracles is predicated in believing in God, for unbelievers they just say it is ‘unexplained’ or ‘unknown’. So I guess it’s just a matter of vocabulary really. It’s not the term used to describe the event in question though…it is the event itself.

I study sciences myself so im fascinated by the claim that there’s scientific proof? Care to share some of the many so i can look over them?

First, let me re-quote myself…

Many of these miracles have been extensively tested by modern scientists.

Note that I didn’t say there is scientific proof. I said many had been extensively tested, there is a significant difference. Many claimed miracles have been studied and found in-explainable by those who studied them. In many other cases the explanations of skeptics (and I use that term in the most positive way possible) to be dubious at best.

That’s also why I went on to say that if some or even most of the claimed miracles aren’t actually true, it only takes one of the thousands of claims to be authentic to show conclusive evidence of a god.

I found this site to be useful in finding miracles. This site is biased toward believing in God so feel free to find a miracle on the site and then do additional research if you want.
miraclehunter.com/marian_apparitions/approved_apparitions/lourdes/miracles1.html
Those are just on claimed miracles from the apparition at Lourdes, the site has many many others.

Here’s something to get you started learning about the Miracle of Lanciano which has been well studied I believe.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Lanciano

Also, I’m sure if you do a search for miracles here on CAF there will be dozens of other threads discussing them in much more detail than I can. If you’re actually interested I’d do that since further discussion of any specific miracle would be derailing the topic of this thread and possibly end up removed or split off anyway.

And finally, note that miracles aren’t (in my opinion) the only, nor the best reason to believe in God, but for the purpose of answering the OP in this specific thread they illustrate that God isn’t hiding himself.

 

[Peter_Plato]

**Is it because if we know ( rather then merely believe). that God exists, we cannot be good. **Because all our actions instead of being altruistic would be done out of a desire for reward and a fear of punishment?

This question caught my attention and reminded me of a comment by Jesus about his own credibility based upon his own certain knowledge that God attests to him. To ask your question in this context, it would be something like: ”If Jesus knew (rather than merely believed) that God exists then could he not be truthful?”

If I testify about myself, my testimony is not valid. There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is valid. (John 5:31-32)

What is interesting here is how your underlying belief about justification when speaking about action seems to relate to but actually conflicts with Jesus’ thoughts about verification when he speaks about truth.

It appears that justification is the issue for you in your question. You suggest, or perhaps merely question the idea, that if we knew God existed, as a matter of fact, then all our actions would be done because of fear or desire and could not be “altruistic.” However, one could ask, in reply to you: “Why could actions not be done simply out of love for who or what God is?”

I find it rather paradoxical, at least on the surface, that acting for the sake of another could not be altruistic precisely because the idea of altruism is founded on doing things for the sake of other rather than merely from our own desires. It would seem that doing an action to please God would fit quite well into the notion of altruism.

Where your point collapses is assuming that where God is concerned, humans can only act out of fear or for reward and not simply out of a desire to please God without other, less than worthy, attendant motives.

The problem, it seems to me, comes up when you surreptitiously add the idea of justification into your analysis. If our actions are done in order to be justified in God’s eyes (desire for reward or fear of punishment) and not simply to please God, that seems to presume that no option for acting justly before God is possible. This difficulty may arise because of a presumption that the rightness or wrongness of our actions can never fix a fallen nature and therefore we can only act from a being and motives that are essentially fallen or broken.

Part of the confusion may also be between doing things in order, simply, to 1) please God or in order to 2) be pleasing to God. The first relates to an action, the second to the being or will of the agent carrying out the action.

It is clear from Scripture that God is not “pleased” by actions that do not originate from a being that has not been made “right.” A liar is not truthful simply because they happen to say things that are true some of the times, in particular, when they are saying truthful things merely to appear “truthful” to others. Just as God would not be fooled by a liar telling the truth sometimes, he would not be pleased by an unjust individual doing just things some times, but not seeing the need to actually become a fully just being.

How the quote of Jesus from John applies here is that we do not “justify,” or make ourselves just merely by doing just things (a leopard can not change his spots) in the same way that Jesus saying truthful things and claiming himself to be truthful does not necessarily make him trustworthy. It is God, as the authentic source of all being, that makes things what they are, in truth. It is God alone that makes us just and truthful, capable of acting rightly and speaking truthfully. Jesus was claiming authenticity because of God bearing witness to him.

We cannot fool God into thinking we are right and just by our actions, we must be made right and just by God order to be capable of doing right and just things. Our works do not justify or make us right before God. We must be made right and just by God in order to be capable of doing right and just actions.

This fits very nicely into Catholic teaching about sanctification by grace, of being made right and just by the grace of God and not by our own efforts or works. Where the idea of salvation by faith alone and without the need for works of any kind is lacking is that it seems to exclude the need for an individual’s being and will to be changed or “made right” at all.

 

[surritter]

I don’t think thats as absurd as you make out to be, it sounds silly because he uses the word Alien but he raises a serious point. I notice he said aliens (plural) and you changed it to the singular, can you prove its impossible for there to be more than first cause or that there couldn’t be multiple, equal first causes?

The only property the first cause needs to have is literally being the first cause. He doesn’t need to be all knowing, all powerful (just being able to create the universe doesnt mean you have the power to do everything, not by a long shot), all caring or even still exists.

A big squishy alien who was the first cause of all things, could just as easily satisfy the first cause definition as could the Christian God.

Take your last sentence: if the big, squishy alien satisfies the definition of “first cause” as I claim the Christian God does, then that alien is God, at least in that sense. So I don’t think the word alien throws things off.

However, while I admit that I’m focusing on the first-cause premise, there is a lot more to it than that. For instance, the first cause itself cannot be a material being (as your big, squishy alien would be), because material matter cannot come from nothing. So the God we know exists must be a being outside of the physical world.

And yes, it can be proven from logic that there cannot be multiple, equal first causes.

 

[Pugsly]

To Kingpomba

God implies everything came into existence from NOTHING (atleast beyond this dimension of time and space)…the Big Bang points to a rapidly expanding Singularity that came from NOWHERE (at least beyond this dimension of time and space)

That is the scientific elephant in the room.

As for God. We notice that stable things do not corrupt so quickly,well, God is absolutely stable. God does not ruin that stability with unstable acts…like contradicting His own intentions. He does not make toys to “love” Him back…He knows that only free beings can love Him back. Hence, God chose to actualize free creatures within His perfect choice of Jesus. (You see God cannot choose you directly…you are imperfect…but God brought all things into being through the perfect choice of Jesus His Perfect Son.)

 

[Ignatius]

I study sciences myself so im fascinated by the claim that there’s scientific proof?

Try New proofs for the existence of God published by Erdmans Publishing. It provides numerous contributions from recent discoveries by notable scholars and scientists in Physics, Mathmatics and Philosophy.

You might want to consider that the situation is similar to someone who does not have the faculty of sight. Even though he cannot sens light, it would be imprudent in the extreme to deny the existence of light given the overwhelming testimony to it’s existence of so many others.Virtually everyone who has ever lived with only a miniscule number of exceptions can clearly see the evidence that God exists. The number of people who have been unable to seethis spiritual reality is far smaller than the number who are unable to see the physical reality of light.

 

[meltzerboy]

I don’t think the other obvious conclusion has been said yet. I’ll go out on a limb and add a pinch of diversity to the opinions here - it might be because God no longer exists, never existed, doesn’t know about us or doesn’t care.

Lately, i’ve come to think its impossible to prove your position (whatever it may be) in such a way that most people who hear you talk about end up believing it or being convinced. The best we can hope for is to have a justifiable belief in what we believe, i think thats the prime function of a lot of the philosophical arguments on both sides. I’d certainly count this as part of the justification for my case.

I don’t think thats as absurd as you make out to be, it sounds silly because he uses the word Alien but he raises a serious point. I notice he said aliens (plural) and you changed it to the singular, can you prove its impossible for there to be more than first cause or that there couldn’t be multiple, equal first causes?

The only property the first cause needs to have is literally being the first cause. He doesn’t need to be all knowing, all powerful (just being able to create the universe doesnt mean you have the power to do everything, not by a long shot), all caring or even still exists.

A big squishy alien who was the first cause of all things, could just as easily satisfy the first cause definition as could the Christian God.

I understand what you’re saying, but it caught me off-guard when you stated “JUST being able to create the universe doesn’t mean you have the power to do everything.” Well, I think one must at least admit that the CREATION of the UNIVERSE from NOTHING is a neat trick. What could be more powerful than that? The other aspects of G-d you mention do give theologians somewhat of a challenge.