THE_LEGENDARY_HQB

Bon dia pa tur infidelnan {y non infidelnan pa ser beleefd}, na esaki friu, y, {otra bes!} echt miserabel Diamars.

Since I'm somewhat new to this board, please pardon me if this issue has already been discussed but....

Is there a reason, according to theists, why God refuses to show Himself?

Other than personal opinions, is there a solid, theological basis for God staying forever in the shadows? Does the Bible comment on this?

Atheists and agnostics are constantly told that they have "closed their minds and hearts to God".

"God is waiting to recieve us into His family", or so the story goes.

Problem is, {assuming here that God exists}, if God had even a fraction of the attributes given to Him by theists {omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, ect.}, what could [possibly get in the way of Him revealing Himself?

For example, if God, {at least as defined by Christianity, for example}, wanted to save me from the fires of Hell, since "He is not willing that any should perish", and He knows that nothing less than a full revelation would convert me, why no revelation?

Here are some ground rules.

The alleged life and ministry of Jesus 2000 years ago does not count of evidence of God's revelation, at least for this thread. To allow it to count would cause the thread to quickly get hijacked to become a "Did Jesus exist" or "was Jesus the Son of God?" thread.

The Free Will defense" is also invalid, since it too will quickly become the main focus of the thread. Besides, if a personal revelation by God violated free will, why would He come to earth as Jesus?

I contend that if the God of Christianity was true, there would be absolutely no need to "have faith". If God was so self evident, having faith in Him would be a given, based on solid empirical evidence, like the rising of the sun, or gravity. Also, with the stakes so high {eternal bliss vs eternal torture}, how could one possibly justify believing in a a God that insists on belief without solid evidence? {Note: evidence does not consist of "first cause", or Intelligent Design" for this thread}

The fact that Christianity puts so much emphasis on "faith". places it, IMHO, in the same category as the thousands of other religions who posit a supernatural, all powerful deity, who wants you to submit to Him, and make Him the Lord of your life, then spends obscene ammounts of time trying to explain why this deity is so loathe to come out of hiding.
It promises the stars and delivers nothing.

I mention Christianity, of course, since it is the religion that I have the most experience with, and since most of the theists on this board seem to be some flavour of Christian. However, practicioners of other faiths are also welcome to chime in with their thoughts.

Takk fyrir.
Vid sjaumst,
The Legendary HQB, Esq.
Earl of Oranjestad.

Starboy

As far as I can tell, the only place god currently shows itself is in hearts and minds of adherents. And it takes contact with infected hearts and minds for others to have god manifest in their hearts and minds. This might be evidence but for the fact that this same mechanism also works for fads, conspiracy theories, mass delusions and so forth, most of which are nonsense. Now if god would show itself lets say in a the same way that Harry Potter was accepted to Hogwarts, then that would be evidence of the existence of something other then a mass delusion, since that is **not** how mass delusions are spread. This could be one of the reasons that Christians do not want people to see the Harry Potter movies; since they might figure out that what they experience in their religion has no supernatural in it. Alas, phenomena no different than placebo.

Starboy

seebs

I have no idea. I suspect that it's because the search for truth is good for us.

tdekeyser

This "search" that god has setup just BACKFIRED in the last 100 years.

It has also led to THOUSANDS dead, so I guess he is just a big MURDERER....

THE_LEGENDARY_HQB

Originally posted by Seebs:
"I have no idea. I suspect that it's because the search for truth is good for us."
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Many religions, notably Christianity, say that God, {as defined by them, of course} is Truth {TM}.
What, exactly, is the point of searching for "Truth" if the "Truth" you find leads you into everlasting torment? Is this the best God can do, in your opinion?

HQB

beyelzu

hqb,

i think that your op pretty much robbed christians over there arguments. so i doubt that there is a good argument for them to use. however, kassiana(sp?) is a wiccan who actually argues to have seen the supernatural. so maybe she will respond.

beastmaster

I contend that if the God of Christianity was true, there would be absolutely no need to "have faith". If God was so self evident, having faith in Him would be a given, based on solid empirical evidence, like the rising of the sun, or gravity.

Agreed. This reasoning made perfect sense to me when I was four years old and has continued to this day to be the most intuitive argument against the existence of God, as far as I am concerned.

seebs, I appreciate your honesty. But the "Search for Truth" argument is weak. All I am asking is that God reveal the bare fact of his existence. He can still leave plenty of other questions left unanswered for us to seek out the truth. And, it would seem that if God revealed himself, it would inspire a lot *more* truth-seeking, not less.

Shake

To quote from the movie Dragonslayer:

"Ahh. So it's a test ye want. We don't do tests!"

seebs

A good question, and I'm having trouble phrasing the answer, although it seems "obvious" to me. Heh.

My thinking is, the totality of truth is beyond my ability to comprehend, so all I can do is keep searching; I can always improve, I can always understand *more*, I can always understand *better*. Wherever I am, there's room to grow.

If I believed for sure that I had answers, I might well stop looking - and thus stop learning.

Okay, so I'm a bit Socratic around the edges.

Look at it this way: Which people do you think are learning more, the people who are convinced that they have all the answers, or the people who are never quite sure, and keep thinking and studying?

seebs

I sometimes wonder about that myself, but I'm happy the way things are, and not sure that my ideas about "improvements" would be good ones.