luvluv

It was not intended to be rude, and if you interpreted it as such I apologize. There was very little in your response that was not covered in my first few posts.

Specifically, someone asked me, almost verbatim, about why the presence of his mother would bother him, and we went a few threads on that issue. From the fact that you seem not to have read that, I concluded that you hadn't read much of the post. If that's not the case I apologize.

luvluv

"1. God’s direct presence could only inspire terror, or be psychologically disabling in some fashion, if He had chosen to make us that way, so this just pushes the mystery of His “hiddenness” back a step rather than explaining it."

I don't know that you can make a rational finite being which is not intimidated by the Infinite. But even if he were to so tinker with our construction, that would involve Him tinkering with our free will.

"2. The fact that you might feel obligated to God for the good things He has done for you could not be considered coercion."

Kind of a semantic argument. Coercion, bribery, creating a sense of obligation. It all interferes with our ability to freely choose to serve God or not.

"If in telling us about Heaven and Hell God is simply warning us of the natural and unavoidable consequences of our choices (rather than telling us what He intends to do to us if we make certain choices), this can in no sense be considered coercive."

It is inasmuch as your decision to follow Him would be based on the results of not following Him, not on your free decision to follow him. Again, God wants people to decide to serve him with no positive or negative coercion on His part. He does indeed inform us of Hell, but He remains hidden from us to allow us the freedom to disbelieve in the consequences if we wish. To confirm His existence would be to confirm the consequences of not serving him: if the Christian God is real, the logical assumption is that the Christian Hell is real and to be avoided. Thus, many would serve God simply out of self-preservation, unacceptable grounds to Him.

". If I tell Jones what his likely future will be if he decides to start using cocaine, am I thereby “coercing” him or infringing on his free will? Of course not!"

No, but partially because Jones is not compelled to believe you. He may think you are wrong about either cocaine or his will power. He has the freedom to believe you may be wrong about that, because you are not omniscient. But if God told Him the same thing, He would not have that choice. His next decsion would be coerced because He would have no grounds to disbelieve.

"I’d be coercing him if I told him that I personally would kill him if he started using cocaine, but I am not coercing him by merely providing him with information about the natural, foreseeable consequences of his actions independently of how I might respond to them."

You are if your informing him leaves him no capacity to disagree with you or to conceieve of the possibility of any alternative consequence. If God told Jones he was going to die if he used cocaine, and God was actually in the room and easily seen to be omnipotent and omniscient at the time, that would have a coercive effect on Jones's decision to use or not use drugs.

But keep in mind we are not talking about an isolated decsion, we are talking about the ultimate decision: whether or not to serve God, if He exists. Informing Jones of the consequences of hell and compelling Him to believe them would be coercive. Informing Jones of the consequences of hell but not compelling him to believe them would not be coercive.

You get entirely carried away by what was actually a very casual mention of the word virtue. You could subtract the word virtue from the statement and substitute "love for God":

It would take no "love for God" to obey an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent Deity if you could SEE him, it would only take an instinct for self-preservation.

As such, your questions about "degree" don't really apply. In terms of love for God, as opposed to virtue, there is no degree. You either love Him or you don't.

"since God “knows our hearts” – i.e., knows our motives – He can easily distinguish between those who accept Him out of love or gratitude or whatever, and those who “accept” Him out of fear of Hell. This knowledge would in no way prevent us from freely worshiping God, nor would it prevent God from knowing who is worshiping Him freely"

He might be able to distinguish the difference but it would interfere with the free decisions of His people. I did not argue that He remanis hidden so that He would know who was serving Him with the proper motives, being omniscient He would know whatever the case. I argued that He remains hidden because He does not want to coerce us at all. Certainly, He would know who was being phony, but He wants to create a world which eliminates as much of the possibility for that phoniness to exist from the outset.

Also, there is the possibility that some of those who would chose to follow God out of self-preservation might be capable of following God out of love, but would have been deprived of the opportunity to try to follow God out of love because of the coercion of the immediate "threats" or "blessings". His ability to make a free decision would have been forever tainted by the presence of the coercion, so that some people who would have followed God out of good motives are denied the ability to develop good motives for their relationship with Him because of the influence of the immediate threats or benefits. It entails a lessening of free choice regardless.

Hope this helps.

bd-from-kg

luvluv:

Your last post “helped” me understand your position better, but it certainly ddn’t help me see how it is in any way reasonable.

I can’t, but God is omnipotent.

But in any case, there is simply no problem in making a truly rational being not be intimidated by God. There is no rational reason for any creature to be intimidated by your God (you know, the one who doesn’t punish you by sending you to Hell) in the first place.

If making us one way rather than another is “tinkering” with our free will, God necessarily tinkers with our free will in any case. How would this be any different?

This is not a “semantic argument”. It goes to the heart of the question. Apparently you think that anything that God does that influences our decisions in any way is an infringement on our free will. This is ridiculous. By this standard God’s creation of the universe, and of us, was an infringement on our free will. His inspiring the Bible was an infringement on our free will. His becoming incarnate was an infringement on our free will. His dying for our sins was an infringement on our free will.

Christianity is totally incompatible with the idea that God must not do anything to influence our decisions in order to avoid interfering with our free will. The only kind of influence that poses a problem for any halfway reasonable theodicy is coercion. The article <a href="http://members.tripod.com/enoch2112/MurrayDivHid.htm" target="_blank">Coercion and the Hiddenness of God</a> (cited early on by tercel) explains clearly why Divine coercion is problematic for a God who values free moral agency. There appear to be no similar problems relating to “benign” forms of influence (i.e., any that do not involve force or the threat of force).

This makes no sense. A rational person chooses to do A rather than B because he prefers the expected results of doing A over the expected results of doing B. If a decision to serve God based on the expected results is “unacceptable”, God must want us to serve Him without having any intelligible motive for doing so.

This is nonsense. Even if Jones is absolutely certain that you’re telling the truth, you are not “coercing” him in the slightest. Providing information is not coercion. Your continued assertions to the contrary only serve to show that you don’t have the slightest idea what “coercion” means, or why it is thought to infringe on one’s freedom as a moral agent. To act as a moral agent, it is absolutely necessary to have some rational basis for believing that the consequences of one choice will be different from the consequences of another. Providing such information, far from infringing on one’s ability to act as a moral agent, enables one to act more effectively as one. In other words, information does not reduce or infringe on free will; it enhances it.

First off, I notice that you did not simply substitute “love of God” for “virtue”. You also were forced to replace “little” with “no”. Otherwise you’d have “It would take little love of God...”, which you go on to say is meaningless, since “in terms of love for God, as opposed to virtue, there is no degree.” Now the notion that there are no degrees of love of God is so completely incomprehensible and contrary to Christian theology that one suspects that it was a desperate expedient to rescue your argument. And certainly it wipes out my counterargument, but at the cost of wiping out any point you were trying to make. Obviously if there is no “degree” of love of God – if it’s all or nothing – then anyone who loves God will choose to follow Him. There’s really no choice left to make at this point.

In reality your argument has things completely backward. We do not choose to accept and follow God because we love Him; we come to love Him as a result of accepting and following Him. This must certainly be true of the kind of love you’re talking about: how could one be considering whether to follow God if one already has an all-out, no-holds-barred love for Him? Surely one needs God’s help to attain this kind of love? And surely this kind of help will only be forthcoming to those who have chosen to accept and follow Him? So your argument here, after making this substitution, has become completely incoherent.

Thus your attempt to explain why God would prefer that we not know about Heaven and Hell when we’re deciding whether to accept and follow Him collapses if you substitute “love of God” for “virtue”. And I submit that any attempt to reformulate it in any way that makes sense will run into essentially the same argument that I made against the “virtue” formulation.

We’ve been through this several times by now. It would not impact on the free decisions of His people. Knowledge is not inimical to moral freedom, period.

According to your way of thinking, in order to avoid coercing us at all He would have to remain completely hidden.

Why? He doesn’t seem to be especially concerned about eliminating as much of the possibility for evil of other kinds; why should He be so concerned with eliminating the possibility of this particular kind of evil? Why not treat it the way He does other kinds: let it happen, and then deal with it appropriately?

We’ve already seen the problem with “love of God” as a motive for accepting and following God. What you seem to want (or think God wants) is for people to seek Him out solely from the most pure, virtuous motives imaginable. But this is neither possible nor necessary. It’s not possible because anyone who acts only from such pure, virtuous motives has already found God: we have a Catch-22. And it’s not necessary because, once you seek out God for whatever reason, He can guide you to an understanding that will lead you to the kind of higher, purer motives that you’re talking about. It would be unusual for anyone to seek God from a motive as pure and virtuous as gratitude, but you say that’s not good enough. It would be extremely unusual for anyone to seek Him out of a sense of obligation, but you say even that isn’t good enough. In effect you’re saying that no one can begin the journey until they’ve already reached the destination.

Now let’s consider just how “unworthy” the motive of wanting to go to Heaven and avoid Hell really is. You say that Hell is nothing more than separation from God. Very well; then wanting to avoid Hell is nothing more than not wanting to be separated from God. Is this an unworthy motive?

But, you say, someone might want to avoid being separated from God because of the consequences this would have for him. And what are these consequences? Well, according to you (from the “Divine hiddenness and free will” thread):

Now let’s suppose that Smith, foreseeing this future if he rejects God, decides to accept God. Wouldn’t you say that he has come to understand his own true nature, and the real nature of his baser impulses, and has chosen to reject them as a result of this understanding? In fact, couldn’t it be said that in rejecting this future he is rejecting himself (as he now sees that he really is) – that he is rejecting the base nature of his unredeemed soul? Why is this an unworthy reason for accepting God? It’s in the nature of things that accepting one’s true nature and acting accordingly will lead to happiness while rejecting it will lead to misery; why should a recognition of this fundamental truth be considered a base motive?

To be sure, if one understood only that Hell was an eternal torment and wanted to avoid it only on this basis, it would be understandable that God would consider this an inadequate or unworthy reason for accepting Him. But accepting Him based on a complete understanding of the nature of Hell – of why and in what way it is an eternal torment – would seem to be as worthy a motive as any.

Similarly, suppose that one understands that Heaven is an eternal bliss because one’s true nature is progressively fulfilled, and that this happiness will not be the result of getting the things you now lust after but of getting the things that you should be lusting after, and that your happiness would consist in becoming more like God. And suppose that on this basis you decide to accept and follow God. What exactly is unworthy about this? Why would God consider this an unacceptable reason for choosing Him?

In fact, in choosing Heaven over Hell for these reasons, is one not really rejecting wickedness itself in favor of goodness itself on the basis of a true, complete understanding of the nature of each? And is this not the best possible motive for choosing to accept and follow God?

[ April 11, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

Typhon

As other posters pointed out, this is the same thing, and you are either being disingenuous or are hopelessly muddle-headed on the topic.

1. I created a place called Umple.
2. I am the sole, omnipotent power in the universe of Shipow that can send/decide if you go to Umple.
3. I tell you, if you do not do Fargle, and follow Xingxing-yop!, you will end up in Umple.
4. You end up in Umple.
5. Who is the party who sent you to Umple?

A. Me B. You

The answer is clearly A. It CAN NOT be B, because regardless of your knowledge, of your actions, you could do anything you want AND still, YOU can not send anyone, not even yourself, to Umple. Only I, the omnipotent creator of Umple, can send/place anyone in Umple. I can say you deserve to go to Umple, but I can't ever pass the buck that I didn't personally send you there. In fact, even if I make it a cosmic, automatic "law" in the universe of Shipow, where you reside, that those not following the course of Xingxing-yop!, who do not Fargel, go directly to Umple, I still am the force responsible for sending you there, because I have constructed both the rules which govern your selection for Umple, and used my sole power to create the law/force that sends you there.

Add in the fact that before I even created Umple, and the laws of Shipow, Fargle, and Xingxing-yop!, I KNEW, that you would reject Xingxing-yop!, un-Fargle, trigger the law of Shipow, and go straight to Umple.

This still makes the answer A, but it DOES make me an even bigger cosmic a-hole on top of it all.

It's the same as an argument where I'm holding the ONLY gun that exists and I say "don't move! If you do, you'll be shot with a gun!" You ask, "Uh, you mean that you'll shoot me?" I say, "I didn't say that." You retort "But if I move, I'll still get 'shot,' right?" I, "Yes, move an inch or even a twitch and you'll be shot with a gun!" You move, you get shot, and the police ask me what happened, I say "Oh, I told this *&^%$ moron that he'd get shot if he moved, and the fool went on ahead moved, and got shot."

Who do you arrest, the guy with the smoking gun (which is the ONLY gun left in the universe), or the dead guy with the bullet hole through his skull?

Do the math, learn to think, come back for another round of "stupid theists tricks on parade" same place, next post…

Ah, doesn't that feel better? Cheers.

.T.

[ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: Typhon ]</p>

luvluv

"I can’t, but God is omnipotent."

As I've said repeatedly, omnipotence does not entail the ability to do the mutually exclusive. Also, by choosing to make us in a certain way, we'll call it "A", this cancels out the possibility of God making us anyway that is contradictory to A.

If we are finite, we cannot fail to be in awe of the infinite. In order to have us not be in awe of the infinite, we would need significantly more "power" if that's the right word. In order to make one who was not intimidated by Himself, He would have to make one as powerful as Himself. (Heck, as far as I know, even Jesus and the archangels are intimidated by God). But such power might disqualify us from our finiteness. All in all, God did have to deal with trade-offs for the greater goals he was trying to accomplish.

The omnipotence argument is wearing a little thin. Most Christian theologians I've read do not state that omnipotence includes the ability to do the mutually exclusive, or the ability to eliminate logical consequences of a specific choice (ex: free will given to all means free will shall eventually be abused).

As far as the degrees of love go, you really are going way off the deep end with a small quote that was not at all central to my argument. I can't make that any planer. You simply took me to be meaning much more than I was meaning.

I simply meant; very, very casually, that to serve God out of intimidation would not require us to have anything other than a sense for self-preservation. By that token everyone, Hitler, Stalin, Satan himself, cockroaches... everybody who has the ability to look out for number one, would be saved. We would not need virtue, love, intelligence, compassion... only a vague sense of "me" and a strong desire to keep on living.

". Apparently you think that anything that God does that influences our decisions in any way is an infringement on our free will."

Nope. I said that any way in which God directly and clearly reveals himself objectively and undeniably is an infringement on our free will.

"Christianity is totally incompatible with the idea that God must not do anything to influence our decisions in order to avoid interfering with our free will."

That's good, because I never suggested otherwise. I think God can provide us with information, thus the Bible and the religion of Christianity, but that we must receive that by faith. Again, the prophets are exceptions, but by and large God works with people through faith only. I never said that God could not do anything to interfere with our decisions. I don't know where you got the idea that I did. I said He did not reveal Himself because His presence would be coercive. You are taking my argument places I never took it.

"This makes no sense. A rational person chooses to do A rather than B because he prefers the expected results of doing A over the expected results of doing B. If a decision to serve God based on the expected results is “unacceptable”, God must want us to serve Him without having any intelligible motive for doing so."

As has been pointed out before on this thread (I believe), God wants people to choose Him. To decide for God because one did not want to "go to Hell" would not be to decide for God, it would be to decide not to go to Hell. The vote for God would not have been cast freely, but under coercion. This is true whether God created Hell or whether Hell is a natural consequence: to confirm it's existence objectively would be to use coercion.

"This is nonsense. Even if Jones is absolutely certain that you’re telling the truth, you are not “coercing” him in the slightest. Providing information is not coercion. Your continued assertions to the contrary only serve to show that you don’t have the slightest idea what “coercion” means, or why it is thought to infringe on one’s freedom as a moral agent"

I probably shouldn't have answered that particular part of your argument at all, except to say that there is a very big difference between the adverse consequences of cocaine and the risks of Hell. It's kind of a bogus analogy. The threat of Hell, if objectively substantiated, would have an effect on EVERY DECISION THE MAN MAKES, making free will in effect impossible. He would walk around daily with the threat of hell in his head. That is why God cannot objectively reveal it. Every analogy that does not entail that kind of life-altering threat is invalid. God can't do it because what he would be revealing would not be a nose bleed or the loss of a job, but of everlasting torment. Again, many people would simply choose God as a side effect of choosing not to go to Hell, and that is not acceptable to God.

"It would not impact on the free decisions of His people. Knowledge is not inimical to moral freedom, period."

It depends on what the knowledge is ABOUT my friend. Knowledge that you will be brutally tortured if you do not give a homeless man a dollar would interfere with your free choice to help the man or not. If you didn't know about the torture, your decision will not be coerced. With the existence of God, comes the implied existence of Hell (whether imposed state or natural consequence). The knowledge of HELL, as opposed to knowledge in the abstract, is certainly coercive.

"We’ve already seen the problem with “love of God” as a motive for accepting and following God."

I think you are mixing things a bit here. Firstly I have said before that what it takes to establish a relationship with God is faith, and that faith only entails a willingness to believe. That is how you accept God. That willingness to believe can be motivated by all things, and truthfully 9/10 of the people who have ever lived have never had any trouble believing, they have had trouble obeying. Also, many of the people who do not obey God, or follow Him as you say, have already heard about His charcter through general revelation. In fact, they cannot accept God, the real God, until they have heard things about Him. (As the Bible says, "How can they know unless they are told...") So the love for God can come through the stories about Him that the unbeliever hears if He is willing to listen. I think the problems you are enumerating are your problems. Clearly, these aren't problems for most of the people in the world who don't have a problem loving or accepting their Gods. But keep in mind that people already know things about God, if indirectly, before they know Him personally. At least that was the case with me. But I follow Him out of love for Him and not out of intimidation, and my love for Him began from what I heard about Him from the Bible and others who served Him. It's more of a process than you are making it out to be, obedience is progressive. The more one knows God, the more one loves Him, and the more obedient one is. It's not all one big step.

"Now let’s consider just how “unworthy” the motive of wanting to go to Heaven and avoid Hell really is. You say that Hell is nothing more than separation from God. Very well; then wanting to avoid Hell is nothing more than not wanting to be separated from God. Is this an unworthy motive?"

No, because God is central to the decision, not the consequences of being without Him. If a person is in love with God Himself and does not want to be seperated from Him, this is the right reason to want to avoid Hell.

"Similarly, suppose that one understands that Heaven is an eternal bliss because one’s true nature is progressively fulfilled, and that this happiness will not be the result of getting the things you now lust after but of getting the things that you should be lusting after, and that your happiness would consist in becoming more like God. And suppose that on this basis you decide to accept and follow God. What exactly is unworthy about this? Why would God consider this an unacceptable reason for choosing Him?

Firstly, I'll say that is a suprisingly beautiful articulation of what heaven is. I'm thinking about printing that out and passing it around. Secondly, though, how exactly do you prove all of that about Heaven and not imply the converse about Hell. How do you objectively reveal what Heaven is and why it is what it is and not imply the reverse about Hell to anyone who is paying attention. To thus reveal Heaven would be to reveal Hell.And I think it is a lesser motive, certainly, to obey God because of any self-gain. Certainly, Heaven involves the best possible type of self-gain, the kind God is most interested in us pursuing. But still to choose Heaven for what it can gain for the self would be lesser than getting Heaven as a consequence or as a fringe benefit of one's love for God. And a still further objection would be that the objective revelation of such information is not totally necessary. Plenty of people follow God for just the reasons you have so beautifully ennumerated and do so without having seen Heaven or Hell. I'd say God is already very succesful at doing it His way.

"In fact, in choosing Heaven over Hell for these reasons, is one not really rejecting wickedness itself in favor of goodness itself on the basis of a true, complete understanding of the nature of each?"

No, in the end, it would be choosing what works out better for you.

Typhon:

But what if there is no other possible universe, given the constraints of free will, except the one in which if one moves one gets shot.

As I listed above, if free-will IN AND OF ITSELF necessitates that the abuse of free-will entails negative consequences for the person who abuses it, then the only way to remove the harm from the abuse of free will is to remove free will.

Abused free will has consequences upon the individual. We see that today in terms of bigotry, hatred, revenge, etc. To give in to such urges entails a spiritual destruction of the self. The only way to remove the consequences of abused free will may be to remove free will. I can't imagine a world in which the side effect of hatred are fresh breath or healthy white teeth. If choices do not have consequences choices are not real. To remove consequences would remove the moral benefits of choice.

bd-from-kg

luvluv:

1. On omnipotence and intimidation

To be sure, but in this case we’re talking about being a rational finite being and not being intimidated by the infinite. These two things are self-evidently logically compatible. There is no rational reason to be intimidated by the infinite as such. I made this point before, and as usual when confronted with an inconvenient point, you simply ignored it.

Once again, you simply assume without argument that an entity more powerful that oneself will necessarily be perceived as a threat even in the face of certain knowledge that it isn’t. You’re confusing a survival instinct produced by natural selection with a logical necessity or cosmic principle of some kind. If I’m perfectly rational and know for a fact that the infinite entity in question bears me no ill will and poses no threat, but in fact has nothing but boundless love for me and wishes me nothing but good, why should I feel intimidated? Why would I not rather feel inspired, reassured, secure, joyful with the knowledge that the ultimate nature of things is perfectly good?

2. On ‘love of God’

But this “small quote” is central to your argument. Let’s look at this more closely.

The statement in question was:

As I’m sure you recall, the original version of this statement used the word “virtue” instead of “love of God”. After I demolished that version of the argument, you claimed . that your use of the word “virtue” was “casual” (meaning, presumably, that it was not well-considered) and claimed that substituting the term “love of God” would capture your intended meaning. Are you now saying that the new version is also not what you meant to say? If so, you really need to try to state your argument more carefully. And as I said last time:

As this paragraph makes clear, the statement “It would take no [???] to obey an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent Deity if you could SEE him” is central to your argument; it goes directly to the question of why God chooses to remain “hidden”. As we have seen, by revealing Himself God would not be infringing on our free will, nor would He be coercing us. The real problem is that He would be influencing our decision in a way that you think would be unacceptable. And the statement that “it would take no...” is your last attempt to explain just what it is that would make it unacceptable. What could be more central to your argument than that?

This is very well illustrated by a later argument:

Once again you’re inconsistently referring to Hell as a “threat” when your position is that God is not threatening us with Hell, but that it is a natural and unavoidable consequence of the decision to reject God. The fact that one of two choices is unacceptable to you does not mean that your choice is not “free”, nor does informing someone that he will find the consequences of a choice unacceptable constitute “coercion”. Thus to make this argument work you need to explain just why choosing God as a “side effect” of choosing not to go to Hell is not “acceptable to God”. So far you haven’t done it.

By the way, here’s yet another example showing that providing information cannot be regarded as “coercion” or an infringement of “free will” even if it leaves you with only one acceptable choice. Say that you must take a certain medication to stay alive (and you want desperately to stay alive). You have two bottles before you. The label on one identifies it as the medication you need; the label on the other identifies the contents as cyanide. Just before you take a pill from the first bottle, someone informs you that the bottles are mislabeled; actually the first one contains cyanide and the second contains your medication. You believe him, take a pill from the second bottle, and live. Has this information infringed on your free will? Were you coerced into taking a pill from the second bottle? Hardly. Providing information does not constitute coercion, nor does it infringe on one’s free will. So you really do need an explanation of why choosing to obey God because of a knowledge of Heaven and Hell is unacceptable to God. Appealing to the concepts of coercion and free will just won’t cut it.

3. God’s “influence”

Well, admittedly you’ve said that it is acceptable for God to influence our decisions in some ways, but even after reviewing what you’ve had to say on the subject I am still unable to form any clear impression of what kinds of influence you think would be acceptable. So let’s see just what you’ve said on this subject. The exchange to which I was responding above was:

Earlier you said:

Madmax2976 was apparently just as taken aback by this argument as I was. He said:

Your reply was:

But it is very difficult to make sense of this answer. The original point, as I understand it, was that God doesn’t want us to act on the basis of motives such as gratitude or a sense of obligation. God’s love and compassion cannot be motives for human action. If such things as gratitude and a sense of obligation are not “acceptable” motives for seeking God, what are acceptable motives, and what are acceptable ways for God to influence us to have these motives?

So far as I can make out, the rationale behind God’s supposed unwillingness to influence us by providing motives of gratitude or obligation for following Him is that this would require us to know (or at least have rational grounds for believing) that He exists. But it isn’t at all clear what moral principle is involved here. Would it be more acceptable for Him to influence us - i.e., cause us to have motives for following Him – in ways such that we don’t know that He is the one responsible for our having those motives, or even that He exists? It seems to me that this would be manipulation. In extreme cases (as in The Manchurian Candidate), this sort of thing is considered to absolve the person so manipulated of all responsibility for his actions – i.e., it eliminates his freedom as a moral agent. And even in relatively benign cases it is regarded with some disapproval. For example, if a woman finds out what a man’s tastes are in clothes, hairstyles and the like without his knowing about it and then arranges her appearance accordingly, we regard her actions as being not entirely honest and aboveboard. But if she does the same thing while letting the man know what she’s doing, no one has the slightest objection to it. So it would seem that if God is to act completely honorably toward us, He must not try to influence us to love Him in ways that we are not aware of, but must do so openly.

4. Heaven and Hell as reasons for accepting God

Thanks for the compliment regarding my description of Heaven. I think that I understand Christianity pretty well. It’s just that I don’t believe it.

It’s unfortunate that you chose to ignore my corresponding argument regarding Hell. To jog your memory I’ll repeat it now:

Your only response to all of this was a curt reply to the final paragraph:

But this completely ignores my point that a complete understanding of “Hell” would include an understanding that in the nature of things “choosing what works out better for you” is identical to “doing the right thing”. And it seems clear to me that rejecting a future without God is identical to choosing God over oneself. It’s choosing to “remake” oneself – to be “reborn”, as it were, because in the face of this knowledge of the true nature of one’s present self, one can no longer tolerate this self. So I ask again: in what way is this a “base” motive? Why should choosing God over one’s present self on the basis of a more complete understanding of the nature of this present self be unacceptable to God?

5. On initial reasons and ultimate reasons

You suggest that I’m ignoring the actual process by which one comes to “accept” God:

I see that you are now saying that there are degrees of love for God. But no matter. The point I want to make here is that you’re the one who is ignoring the “progressive” nature of one’s relationship to God. You argue that God cannot reveal His existence because this might induce us to accept and follow Him for the “wrong” reasons – i.e., for unworthy reasons, reasons that are not “virtuous” or “pure” enough to be acceptable to Him. But this argument ignores the fact that what God really wants is for us to ultimately obey Him out of love. Our initial reasons for seeking Him are really irrelevant. I might initially seek out God out of gratitude, or a sense of obligation, or a sense of self-preservation, but what matters is that I have sought Him out. Now He is free to influence me, to guide me to a better understanding of His nature, and in the process to understand the unworthiness of my original motives. But in the meantime my understanding of His nature will lead me to love and obey Him “for His own sake”. Isn’t this the sort of thing that happens to everyone who accepts God? Does anyone really start with pure, virtuous motives? How could they, when (according to Christianity) God created us with natures that are unimaginably debased and depraved? How could God possibly imagine that our initial motives for seeking Him out might be virtuous ones when we can only develop virtuous motives as a result of God’s benign influence, which He will not exercise unless and until we are willing?

Your explanation for God’s “hiddenness” hinges on the notion that a fear of Hell and desire for Heaven are unacceptable as initial motives for seeking out God. But as we have seen, there are no unacceptable initial motives; there are only unacceptable ultimate motives. So this explanation simply doesn't work.

Faux Christian

God isn't hiding. He's merely hanging out. That's why we pray. Praying is like calling God up on the telephone and asking for help. You call God up like a pizza delivery guy. Do you call a pizza delivery guy when you don't need pizza? The same goes for God. You call him up when you need him and then he delivers for you.

luvluv

"To be sure, but in this case we’re talking about being a rational finite being and not being intimidated by the infinite. These two things are self-evidently logically compatible. There is no rational reason to be intimidated by the infinite as such. I made this point before, and as usual when confronted with an inconvenient point, you simply ignored it."

I didn't ignore it, I simply disagreed with it. We aren't talking about a being coming into contact with a more powerful being, we are talking about a being coming into contact with POWER INCARNATE. Can you really conceive of being in the presence of an Almighty and not being intimidated? Heck, you probably don't think George Bush would pose any kind of physical, social, or occupational threat to you, but I bet if he were to stop by your office one day you'd be a bit intimidated. (Okay maybe not by Bush, but maybe a Churchill or a Roosevelt). I don't really see any way I can prove this to you, maybe it would be better if you could present an argument for me how it is possible for human beings who are often intimidated by other more powerful human beings to be unintimidated in the presence of the Almighty without interference from the Almighty.

A good analogy I've heard is this: Say you are submerged in one of those underwater cages. The kind photographers take pictures of sharks in. Now say while submerged, oh say, a mile underneath the ocean you see something enormous appearing on the horizon. So big, in fact, you think it is the horizon. But as it comes closer to you you see it is actually a blue whale. Now, the whale is not near enough to you to hurt you by accident, nor would it hurt you on purpose. But it's size actually blots out the heavens as it passes near you. Now, you have no rational reason to fear it simply because it is large. But would you fear it anyway?

"You’re confusing a survival instinct produced by natural selection with a logical necessity or cosmic principle of some kind"

The hypothetical we are debating here, which if I read the thread correctly states "If God exists" would eliminate your theory of natural selection from being in the argument. If you find yourself in the presence of the Almighty, you can safely assume your idea of where the emotion of "awe" came from to be erroneous. Therefore, I don't see it's relevance to the hypotehtical we are discussing.

"If I’m perfectly rational and know for a fact that the infinite entity in question bears me no ill will and poses no threat, but in fact has nothing but boundless love for me and wishes me nothing but good, why should I feel intimidated? Why would I not rather feel inspired, reassured, secure, joyful with the knowledge that the ultimate nature of things is perfectly good?"

I think you assume you have nothing to fear from God, but that is only true of those who have chosen to obey Him. I don't know that a person who has no intentions of serving God, and who would find doing so difficult and repugnant, would feel joyful in his presence. Rowdy, willful children are seldom raptorous at the sudden appearance of authority, no matter how benign the authority is. To someone who is used to walking in his own way and who has learned to prefer that lifestyle, to suddenly be in the presence of someone who demands your obedience, even if the demand is out of love, would not be a pleasant experience. The second most common reaction to seeing God in the Old Testament, after awe, was a sense of dread at how sinful one felt in his presence. I think no matter how good God is, if you do not want to obey Him, you will not want to see Him. It would be terrifying.

"Once again you’re inconsistently referring to Hell as a “threat” when your position is that God is not threatening us with Hell, but that it is a natural and unavoidable consequence of the decision to reject God."

I have not been inconsistent, I have said repeatedly that whether or not Hell is a natural or imposed state TO SEE IT, or TO HAVE IT OBJECTIVELY CONFIRMED would be coercive. I don't see how that is inconsistent.

"The fact that one of two choices is unacceptable to you does not mean that your choice is not “free”, nor does informing someone that he will find the consequences of a choice unacceptable constitute “coercion”. "

This is entirely my point. God only considers one reason valid for choosing to serve Him: love for Him. Any other reason to Him is unacceptable. That is why your notion of degrees of virtue or degrees of love for God have no relevance. If you do not serve God out of love for Him, then the basis of your service are to God unacceptable. You may not consider them coercive, and perhaps I have been too attached to that word. But if it invokes a decision based not on the love of God, but on some factor, it is coercive in God's eyes in that it was not out of love for Him.

"Thus to make this argument work you need to explain just why choosing God as a “side effect” of choosing not to go to Hell is not “acceptable to God”. "

If your wife chose to marry you simply because if she refused she would face some kind of punishment, would that constitute a real relationship to you? Would you accept friendship or love that was only offered to you out of duress?

Your bottle analogy totally misses my earlier point made to Typhon. Whether or not knowledge is coercive depends on the CONTENT of the knowledge. Knowledge that if you do not form some form of task you will face CERTAIN TORMENT would be coercive. Your argument fails to address the specific CONTENT of the knowledge we are discussing. Can you explain to me why CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE of an agonizing hell (wheter imposed or natural consequence) would not be coercive?

"If such things as gratitude and a sense of obligation are not “acceptable” motives for seeking God, what are acceptable motives, and what are acceptable ways for God to influence us to have these motives?"

I think God can motivate us non-coercively through faith. I think Jesus death on the cross if it was really an act of supreme sacrifice made for our sake is something that can motivate us to love Him and accept Him because of His love for us. Now this isn't coercive because one has to BELIEVE that Jesus died on the cross for the reasons the Bible and church history say He did. On the other hand, if God were to show up at your doorstep and give you a fruit basket with a return address that said Heaven, you would know without a doubt who you owed the fruitbasket to. Now say instead of a fruitbasket, it was a spouse or the health of your children or your moments of most exteme joy. Now, a Christian like myself credits those moments to God BY FAITH, thefore I am able to recieve those occurances as God's love revealed to me BECAUSE OF MY FAITH. However, you would perhaps credit those same experiences to luck, thus one conduit by which God can express His love to you is shut down because of your lack of faith. However, if all of those came with a return address, you would not have the option of not feeling obligated to God as you do now. Thus, God can communicate His love to us by faith without that love being determinative in whether or not one chooses to serve God because 1)The only people capable of recieving such occurances as the love of God are people who have already chosen to believe in Him, and 2) Those who have not chosen to believe in Him would regard such occurances as luck and would not feel any need to feel obligated to any Deity.

As I referenced before, remember Jesus said to doubting Thomas "Blessed is him who has not seen, yet has believed" which seemed to indicate that Jesus would rather have a faith in Him motivated by trust than by evidence.

"But this completely ignores my point that a complete understanding of “Hell” would include an understanding that in the nature of things “choosing what works out better for you” is identical to “doing the right thing”. And it seems clear to me that rejecting a future without God is identical to choosing God over oneself. It’s choosing to “remake” oneself – to be “reborn”, as it were, because in the face of this knowledge of the true nature of one’s present self, one can no longer tolerate this self."

Motive, motive, motive. God is interested in motives. And if the motive is not LOVE OF GOD it is an unacceptable motive, no matter how close to being "good" it is. To God, there is only one good reason to accept him. The desire to do something because it is the true nature of oneself is at base a selfish motivation. It is the decision to do something based on the positive benefits for oneself. Even if that benefit is virtue, it is not an acceptable reason to serve God.

"I see that you are now saying that there are degrees of love for God."

Yes I did contradict myself there. In retrospect, there are degrees of love for God. But love is the only acceptable grounds for which to accept God. I only mean here that it does not matter if that love is a teaspoonful or an ocean in terms of entering into a relationship with God. If your motivation for entering into a relationship with God is even a LITTLE love, that is acceptable. What I am saying is even a teaspoon of love, if it is actually the ONLY motive, is better than a CRUISE-LINER full of pursuit of virtue.

"God really wants is for us to ultimately obey Him out of love. Our initial reasons for seeking Him are really irrelevant. I might initially seek out God out of gratitude, or a sense of obligation, or a sense of self-preservation, but what matters is that I have sought Him out. Now He is free to influence me, to guide me to a better understanding of His nature, and in the process to understand the unworthiness of my original motives. But in the meantime my understanding of His nature will lead me to love and obey Him “for His own sake”. Isn’t this the sort of thing that happens to everyone who accepts God?"

Good question, it is true that some people seek to find God out of obligation or other motives, but while God may consider those good reasons to pursue Him, at the time it comes to make a commitment to Him I believe He wants that commitment made out of love. In fact, I think it is the only way this commitment can be made. I did, in fact, pursue God out of gratitude or desperation at certain times of my life. This was possible to me because I always had a belief in God. But I was never able to enter into a lasting relationship with God on these grounds. I was one of those "in and out" people for a long time because while I thought God was real and good, I did not have a personal love for Him. So yes, people who ALREADY BELIEVE IN GOD can begin to seek Him with less than pure motives, but to COMMIT to Him is something that can only be done out of love for Him. But I don't see how this would help an unbeliever, for even in these circumstances where someone pursues God out of obligation or gratitude, that person already BELIEVES in God, and is already pursuing God out of faith. So while the pursuit may have been a step towards their relationship, the faith pre-dated it. And again, how does an unbeliever get such faith if they are unwilling to recieve it? If God were to come out of hiding, as is the title of this thread, the initial effort to seek God which even in your hypothetical is done out of faith, would be impossible to seprate from the coercive power of his presence. Even in the example you are quoting, the pursuit of God which emerges in love starts with FAITH, not evidence.

"Your explanation for God’s “hiddenness” hinges on the notion that a fear of Hell and desire for Heaven are unacceptable as initial motives for seeking out God."

I don't think it matters how you seek out God. You could seek him out of a scientific curiousity, or out of a desire to disprove His existence. But what we are talking about is your motive for COMMITING yourself to Him. You're wife might not mind if you pursued her because you thought she was pretty, but she might have a problem with you commiting to her on those grounds. She might only accept a husband who pursued her because he loved her. God is no different.

bd-from-kg

luvluv:

Absolutely. Of course, I probably would be intimidated, but I have no trouble at all conceiving of not being.

All of your examples serve only to demonstrate that human beings, as presently constituted, are intimidated by power. But as you know very well, humans are very far from being perfectly rational. (Your own brother as described on the Divine Hiddenness and free will thread is an excellent illustration, but in fact all of us are quite irrational a great deal of the time.) As I pointed out before, all of our experience with powerful beings is with powerful beings who can and very possibly will hurt us, who do not love us or have our best interests at heart. Both habit (based on experience) and instinct tell us to be intimidated.

Your example of a whale that can’t hurt you and has no intention of doing so is actually a good example of my point. We humans, irrational as we are and creatures of habit and instinct that we are, will probably feel intimidated, but a perfectly rational person wouldn’t.

Oh, sorry. For a moment there I had lapsed into thinking that you based your opinions on evidence. What was I thinking? I’ve tried to restate the point here in a way that does not contradict the creation story in Genesis, whose literal truth is clearly entailed by the assumption that God exists.

So far as I can see, according to you no one has anything to fear from God. But maybe I missed something. If so, please enlighten me. What do I have to fear from God?

You asked other posters to stop annoying you by citing the Bible. I have done so. Among other things, I’ve been ignoring the fact that your notion of Hell is totally unbiblical. So please return the favor and stop citing stuff from the Bible yourself. I have no interest in what the Bible says. I don’t consider anything the Bible says to be evidence of anything other than that someone must have written it at one time. I’m exploring whether your position is inherently reasonable, not whether it’s Biblical.

First of all, this is nonresponsive. My point was: “The fact that one of two choices is unacceptable to you does not mean that your choice is not ‘free’, nor does informing someone that he will find the consequences of a choice unacceptable constitute ‘coercion’.” You’ve been disputing this vigorously for some time. In fact, you’ve been claiming that even making one of the choices appear significantly less acceptable, much less totally unacceptable, constitutes coercion. Now you say it’s your point that it doesn’t?

Second, once again you’re conflating initial motives with final ones. Any reasons for God to remain hidden must be related to initial motives for seeking Him, not ultimate reasons for accepting Him. He is hardly “hidden” to those who have developed a relationship with Him. More on this later.

Third, as I pointed out before, the notion of love for God as a motive for accepting Him is logically incoherent. If one loves God, one has by definition already accepted Him. The real question is: what motives does God find acceptable for choosing to love Him?

The notion that “degrees of virtue” are relevant was yours, not mine. As I pointed out, your argument based on “degrees of virtue” is untenable and must be abandoned. I’m glad to see that you’ve abandoned it. I never based any argument on “degrees of love”.

Luvluv, you cannot argue on the one hand that Hell is not a punishment and then use examples based on the idea that Hell is a punishment. You cannot deny that there is any duress involved and then use examples that only make sense if there is duress involved.

So let’s revise your example to make it roughly analogous to the actual situation as you conceive it. Suppose that my wife chose to marry me because she came to understand that, because of her fundamental nature and mine, life without me would be an infinite misery, whereas life with me would be an infinite joy. Would I accept her under these conditions? You bet. Without a moment’s hesitation. In fact, this is pretty close (in reverse) to what I told my wife-to-be when I proposed to her, and oddly enough she found it more than acceptable.

I have no idea what you’re talking about.

I find this whole paragraph utterly astonishing. The desire to serve God because on an understanding that serving God is the realization and fulfillment of one’s true nature is a “selfish motivation”? The desire to become virtuous (i.e., like God) is not an “acceptable reason to serve God”? Any decision to serve God based on any “positive benefits to oneself” is unacceptable to God? Luvluv, no one ever does anything for any reason other than that one expects “positive benefits to oneself”. As I pointed out earlier, “love of God” cannot be a motive for loving God. so what’s left? Once again, it appears that you’re saying that God wants us to serve Him for no motive whatsoever.

Not necessarily. One might start with a belief that God might exist, and that if He does one owes Him gratitude or whatever. How does this involve faith? Or perhaps this isn’t good enough for God; perhaps you have to believe in His existence wholeheartedly before He considers you to be “seeking” or “pursuing” Him, and therefore will not respond to you unless you already have this wholehearted belief? But in that case, what exactly is this “gift of faith” that you talk about elsewhere?

This raises another point. If we’re really talking about faith, there must not be sufficient evidence of God’s existence before taking this “leap of faith” to justify rational belief. But believing something for which there is not enough evidence to justify rational belief is – well, irrational. So God wants us to make an irrational commitment before He’s willing to guide us toward Him? He gave us the gift of reason so that we would abandon it at the crucial moment?

You say:

I really wish that someone would offer a single sensible reason why God would prefer this. I don’t get it. God finds a belief based on nothing in particular (or perhaps on wishful thinking, or on a desperate desire to believe that one will never die) preferable to a belief based on evidence? WHY?

Indeed. Isn’t this the really crucial step: the step of being “willing” to “receive” faith? And are “unworthy” motives acceptable at this step? Surely they must be, because it seems impossible to explain how the unbeliever could have worthy motives at this point. But if so, why would He take such extreme (and otherwise extremely undesirable) measures as remaining “hidden” to avoid giving us “unworthy” motives such as gratitude or a sense of obligation for taking this step, since all of our motives for doing anything will necessarily be “unworthy” at this point?

Which raises another conundrum. We have two unbelievers. One becomes “willing” to “receive” faith, the other does not. Neither, it would seem, had rational reasons for being willing to receive faith, nor did either of them have “worthy” motives. Yet the first ultimately enjoys eternal bliss, while the other rots in Hell. Where is the justice here? Why has God so arranged things so that a decision with no rational basis, made for unworthy motives, ultimately makes the difference between going to Heaven and going to Hell?

Now let’s look at how this is all supposed to work. First we have a “willingness” to “receive” faith (coming from who-knows-where). Next, we have faith itself, given to us by God. Now at this point we do not have a “love of God”: God is not going to “give” us that or it would be meaningless. But we do have a belief in His existence. Now this belief, it would seem, is necessarily accompanied by a belief in Heaven and Hell. One might imagine that this knowledge would be (according to the way you use the word) “coercive” – that is, it would be a strong motivation for continuing along the path leading to “love of God” rather than backsliding. Now as we move along the path to salvation, our belief in God, and therefore in the reality of Heaven and Hell, will become more and more robust, so that this “coercive” element becomes stronger and stronger. Presumably at some point along the line we will be virtually certain of God’s existence, which means that the coercive element will be operating with virtually its maximum possible force. Finally, we take the plunge and commit to God irrevocably, with the certain knowledge of Heaven and Hell staring us right in the face.

Now what I don’t understand is, how has God avoided the “coercion” problem? Surely the soul working his way up the ladder to ultimate salvation is not going to be completely oblivious to the attraction of Heaven or the terror of Hell? Surely this knowledge cannot fail to exercise some influence on his decisions along the way? For the believer, God may start by hiding Himself, but long before the end of the long road to salvation is reached He ceases to be “hidden” in any meaningful sense, and that old bogeyman “coercion” rears its ugly head.

This point was raised much earlier when Mike G asked:

The only part of your reply that was to the point was:

Well, that’s true enough, I guess. But it doesn’t seem to answer. So perhaps you’d like to take another stab at it. How is the “fear factor” different for one with strong faith – i.e., a strong belief in God not based on evidence – different from what it would have been for the same person if he had an equally strong belief in God based on evidence that would have been available if God had not withheld it? How does the fact that the belief is not based on evidence, but on faith, remove the fear factor, or make the knowledge of the consequences of the choice one is ultimately faced with “non-coercive”?

[ April 18, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

luvluv

"First of all, this is nonresponsive. My point was: “The fact that one of two choices is unacceptable to you does not mean that your choice is not ‘free’, nor does informing someone that he will find the consequences of a choice unacceptable constitute ‘coercion’.” "

That last statment is, frankly, incredible. Does the phenomenon of coercion exist? You've just listed the dictionary definition of coercion and then said that it doesn't constitute coercion. If coercion is not informing (or implying) that he will find the consequences of a choice unacceptable, then, pray tell, what is coercion?

Beyond that, the only relavent application of this theory is in the actual forming of a relationship between a human and God. Repeat after me: God will only accept love as a reason for serving Him. If you serve him solely to avoid negative consequences, that is unacceptable to Him. Nothing else about coercion need be discussed between us. Whatever idiosyncratic definition of coercion you prefer is fine with me, but God will not accept a relationship with Him for any reason other than love.

"Third, as I pointed out before, the notion of love for God as a motive for accepting Him is logically incoherent. If one loves God, one has by definition already accepted Him. The real question is: what motives does God find acceptable for choosing to love Him?"

I think you're confused a bit. By accepting God, I meant entering into a relationship, or a commitment with God. It is very possible to be in love with someone and to nonetheless not commit to them. Christianity does not say that you are saved by a belief in God, you are saved by entering into a relationship with him based on Faith. Not a simple mental acceptance of his existence.

"As I pointed out, your argument based on “degrees of virtue” is untenable and must be abandoned. I’m glad to see that you’ve abandoned it."

I can hardly abandon an argument I have REPEATEDLY SAID was never an argument.

"Luvluv, you cannot argue on the one hand that Hell is not a punishment and then use examples based on the idea that Hell is a punishment. You cannot deny that there is any duress involved and then use examples that only make sense if there is duress involved."

Fine, if you want to change "punishment" in the analogy to "negative consequences" be my guest. I've always maintained that duress WAS involved, I just questioned the source of that duress; whether it was imposed or a natural consequence.

"So let’s revise your example to make it roughly analogous to the actual situation as you conceive it. Suppose that my wife chose to marry me because she came to understand that, because of her fundamental nature and mine, life without me would be an infinite misery, whereas life with me would be an infinite joy."

This is not exactly the hypothetical we were discussing. You asked me why choosing God as a "side effect" of choosing not to go to hell was unacceptable to God. Thus, the only relevant part of your analogy would be that your wife knew that life without you would constitute an infinite misery: she would be choosing you incidentally to avoid suffering. But lets take the argument further to the point you are addressing. You are assuming that your wife is pursuing you because YOU offer her infinite joy. But if you choose God to avoid Hell and to enjoy Heaven, you are doing it because HEAVEN offers you infinite joy. God is just the bitter pill you have to swallow to get what you really want. A more relavent, (and reasonable) analogy would be if you knew your wife proposed to you because her not doing so would entail her being deported and her doing so would give her the rigths to your money. In both cases, you, who should be the object of love, would actually be incidental to the process. Your wife would be going after her own interests. If you did not possess money and if there was no threat to her, she would never have married you. Likewise, if God were to reveal the glories of heaven and hell (which is what we are here discussing), billions would chose Him based solely on how terrible hell is and how incredible heaven is.

"I have no idea what you’re talking about."

You are suggesting that knowledge CANNOT be coercive. I am suggesting that whether or not knowledge is coercive depends on the content of the knowledge. Knowledge of extremely negative consequences is coercive. The specific extremely negative consequence we are here discussing is hell. If we had knowledge of hell, as opposed to a knowledge that some pill is bad for us, we would behave differently. Therefore whether or not knowledge is coercive depends on the nature of the knowledge.

"Any decision to serve God based on any “positive benefits to oneself” is unacceptable to God? Luvluv, no one ever does anything for any reason other than that one expects “positive benefits to oneself”.

This is the nature of Christianity, my friend. The quintessential act of our faith was an act of self-sacrifice, a willingness to obey God not only when it entails benefits to oneself, but when it entails the worst possible suffering. I can assure you, from my own personal experience as a Christian, that being a Christian requires one to be willing to suffer. Jesus said this repeatedly. Christianity even entails the notion that Christians suffer more than most people, we are even told to rejoice when we suffer for Christ's sake. This is not a religion for which selfish motivations or enlightened self interest is a possible motivation.

"As I pointed out earlier, “love of God” cannot be a motive for loving God."

You pointed it out, and I believed I pointed out that it was wrong (though I may be confusing you with Typhon). As I said, faith in God's existence opens the avenue for God to COMMUNICATE HIS LOVE TO ME. My love is a response to his love. As I said before, one can come to love God from the stories he has left us about Him. You seem to be equating love and faith with simple belief in his existence. No, you can't love God into believing in His existence. If you are asking me how one comes to believe in God, I don't know. I think belief in something that cannot be proved or disproved is a decision. But if you do believe in God, you can come to love Him through the scriptures, or personal experience, or the witness of others. God loves us into loving Him, but faith in His (unobjectively proven) existence is a pre-requisite to receiving that love. (Blessed is Him who has not seen, and has believed)

"Not necessarily. One might start with a belief that God might exist, and that if He does one owes Him gratitude or whatever. How does this involve faith?"

If you read carefully, I already said that you could begin your pursuit of God to disprove his existence, but you will have to ENTER INTO A RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM from the motive of love, THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF FAITH. As I said, God does not care WHY you pursue Him, but he cares WHY you enter into a relationship with Him.

"I really wish that someone would offer a single sensible reason why God would prefer this. I don’t get it. God finds a belief based on nothing in particular (or perhaps on wishful thinking, or on a desperate desire to believe that one will never die) preferable to a belief based on evidence? WHY?"

As I have been trying to explain to you in multiple threads, to believe in the presence of objective evidence would be coercive.

"Finally, we take the plunge and commit to God irrevocably, with the certain knowledge of Heaven and Hell staring us right in the face."

Wrong. It still takes faith to believe in Heaven and Hell, God has yet to show either one to me. What you are describing in the lines above this quote as an increase in knowledge are actually an increase in belief. God does not come down and show one all these things, one believes in them. That should answer your questions that follow.

"Well, that’s true enough, I guess. But it doesn’t seem to answer. So perhaps you’d like to take another stab at it. How is the “fear factor” different for one with strong faith – i.e., a strong belief in God not based on evidence – different from what it would have been for the same person if he had an equally strong belief in God based on evidence that would have been available if God had not withheld it? How does the fact that the belief is not based on evidence, but on faith, remove the fear factor, or make the knowledge of the consequences of the choice one is ultimately faced with “non-coercive”?"

Because you can only arrive at that belief by choice. You CHOSE to believe in something which is coercive, and you could chose NOT to believe in it. Even a strong belief in a negative consequence is not as coercive as objective proof of negative evidence, and it is even less so if one is fully capable of disbelieving in the negative consequences due to the lack of evidence. Faith, on this planet, never progresses to knowledge. It is something that must be constantly renewed and maintained. I must continually CHOOSE to believe even when I would prefer not to. So even though I believe in Heaven and Hell, I must continually chose to do so. It has not been objectively proven to me, I can change my mind if I want with no immediate consequences. Now I think we can agree at least that a revealed Hell would be MORE coercive than a strong belief in Hell.