The Divine Hiddenness Argument for Atheism

[9-10ths_Penguin]

It becomes a false choice. Free-will is greatly reduced if the Abrahamic God is obvious and overt?

False dilemma - Wikipedia

I know what a false dilemma is. I'm not sure you do, though.

Example: A Homeless person is dying of hunger. They walk passed a 20 dollar bill on the ground. No one is watching. Do they really have a choice whether or not to pick it up? No, it's a false choice.

Yes, they do have a choice.

The question of which choice is best may be obvious, but that doesn't mean that the person didn't make a decision to pick up the money.

... but just to play Devil's Advocate: let's go with your (IMO wonky) approach to free will. By that standard, our free will is violated all the time... so why would you assume that God is interested in preserving free will?

It's the same if the Abrahamic God is proven to exist and that the blessings and curses are real if each person chooses to obey. There really isn't choice at that point. The blessings are too tempting, and the curses are too painful. As soon as those become real and obvious for everyone, there is no choice.

No, there still is a choice. A choice where one option is the obvious choice is still a choice.

"No choice" would be a scenario where, say, someone managed to control your body remotely and made you do something without you deciding to do it.

 

[Revoltingest]

'coz, if so......

It was about his analogy.
Belief in unseen gods is like belief that unseen elephants are in the room.

 

[Audie]

I think that raising Jesus from the dead was enough

Perhaps it might be if God raised Jesus from the dead every generation and in front of everyone, instead of just a handful of people in one corner of the world. But for God to do it just once 2000 years ago for a small select group of people and expect it to be 'enough' for anyone other than that small group of people, suggests that God is extremely naive.

Now, if this here "Jesus" would have just gone back to Pilate
and asked if he'd care to try again!

Sometime During Eternity . . .
BY LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI
Sometime during eternity
some guys show up
and one of them
who shows up real late
is a kind of carpenter
from some square-type place
like Galilee
and he starts wailing
and claiming he is hip
to who made heaven
and earth
and that the cat
who really laid it on us
is his Dad

And moreover
he adds
It’s all writ down
on some scroll-type parchments
which some henchmen
leave lying around the Dead Sea somewheres
a long time ago
and which you won’t even find
for a coupla thousand years or so
or at least for
nineteen hundred and fortyseven
of them
to be exact
and even then
nobody really believes them
or me
for that matter
You’re hot
they tell him
And they cool him

They stretch him on the Tree to cool

And everybody after that
is always making models
of this Tree
with Him hung up
and always crooning His name
and calling Him to come down
and sit in
on their combo
as if he is the king cat
who’s got to blow
or they can’t quite make it

Only he don’t come down
from His Tree
Him just hang there
on His Tree
looking real Petered out
and real cool
and also
according to a roundup
of late world news
from the usual unreliable sources
real dead

 

[dybmh]

I know what a false dilemma is. I'm not sure you do, though.


Yes, they do have a choice.

The question of which choice is best may be obvious, but that doesn't mean that the person didn't make a decision to pick up the money.

... but just to play Devil's Advocate: let's go with your (IMO wonky) approach to free will. By that standard, our free will is violated all the time... so why would you assume that God is interested in preserving free will?


No, there still is a choice. A choice where one option is the obvious choice is still a choice.

"No choice" would be a scenario where, say, someone managed to control your body remotely and made you do something without you deciding to do it.

Before moving on, if the choice you are talking about is "live or die"; that is a false dilemma. Remember, the person is dying of hunger, there is a 20 dollar bill on the ground, and there are no negative consequences for picking it up.

If you don't think that this is a false choice, we can agree to disagree.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Before moving on, if the choice you are talking about is "live or die"; that is a false dilemma. Remember, the person is dying of hunger, there is a 20 dollar bill on the ground, and there are no negative consequences for picking it up.

If you don't think that this is a false choice, we can agree to disagree.

I think you're wrong, if that's what you mean.

And I think you're still wrong even if I concede your premise that these sorts of obvious choices have anything to do with free will.

Edit: if providing food or money to a hungry homeless person also violates "free will," would you also say that God never answers the prayer of a homeless person by providing them with food or money?

 

[Rational Agnostic]

Thus the proof in the tasting of the pudding. Doesn't matter what one says, if one doesn't want to accept truth, one won't.

All they had to do was produce the body and the rapid fire tornado would have immediately ceased.

Lee Strobel and J. Warner Wallace didn't believe "because the Bible says so" -- these were atheists who set out to disprove the Bible.

Personally, I went through the approach of "Either the Bible is true or false. I will start with they hypothesis that it is true and test the sucker. I will find out soon enough if it is false".

It's not that I don't want to believe Christianity is true. I already gave a long list of things that could happen that would cause me to immediately convert to Christianity. You ignored this.

I'm not familiar with J. Warner Wallace, but Lee Strobel is certainly *not* an unbiased person. He converted to Christianity shortly after his wife did, probably because he wanted to make her happy, rather than because he actually cared about truth. Besides, he's a lawyer, so he's a professional at only looking at evidence for one side, while ignoring the evidence for the other side.

 

[dybmh]

If you don't think that this is a false choice, we can agree to disagree.

I think you're wrong, if that's what you mean.

Here's what I mean:

Often in debates with anti-religious people, the discourse resolves around an over simplified, black-and-white, approach to the religious topic by the anti-religious person.

In this case, choice is being viewed in an over simplified manner. The consequences ( both constructive and destructive ) are being ignored.

Choice is not black and white; the repercussions matter. Again, if you cannot or will not acknowledge this, then, never mind.

Have a good day, though.

 

[QuestioningMind]

Only one sacrifice for the sins of mankind was enough.

No, apparently it was enough for YOU... but YOU are NOT all mankind.

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

I see divine hiddenness more as an argument for Agnosticism. An atheist may refer to Occam's razor to argue that it is more rational to not believe in a hidden god but the Agnostic can directly deduce ignorance from lack of evidence.

You don't seem to understand what either of these terms mean.

The agnostic admits he can not KNOW.

The atheist does not BELIEVE.

These terms are not mutually exclusive.

 

[Heyo]

You don't seem to understand what either of these terms mean.

The agnostic admits he can not KNOW.

I'm not that humble kind of agnostic. I'm an Agnostic with the position that you don't know about the existence or nature of the divine.

The atheist does not BELIEVE.

These terms are not mutually exclusive.

I can't believe nor disbelieve in the existence of something I don't know what it is.

 

[Seek truth]

It is obvious to anyone (including theists) that if God exists, then he's certainly not doing everything he can to make his existence obvious. For instance, he could write bible verses in the sky, shout in a loud voice, or perform immediate and unambiguous miracles in response to prayers. But, we don't see these things occur, and any event attributed to being an "act of God" is both rare and ambiguous. If God exists and is omnipotent, then it's clear he could be doing more to make his existence an obvious fact. This implies that either God is purposely hiding himself or (the simpler explanation) he doesn't exist. And, when there are two competing explanations for a phenomenon, the simpler one is typically correct.

Some theists attempt to answer this argument by claiming that if God made his existence obvious, then people would no longer have the freedom to make the choice to worship him or rebel against him i.e. everyone would be forced to worship God and free will would no longer exist. But this certainly doesn't follow. Consider the fact that the majority of theists also believe in supernatural beings called demons, as well as a "Satan" which once were angels of God but chose to rebel against him even after observing his unambiguous existence in all of its glory and power. If theists believe that the free will of these demons was not violated by seeing unambiguous evidence for the existence of God, then humans' free will to accept God or rebel against him would not be undermined by God making his existence more obvious. So, this explanation fails.

The only other explanation a theist would offer is that God works in "mysterious ways" and that he must have a good reason for making his existence less than obvious. But, this is not an explanation. A god that acts as if he doesn't exist is functionally equivalent to being non-existent. It is more reasonable to assume that God doesn't exist rather than to assume that God exists and purposely hides his existence, just as it is more reasonable to assume that my closet does *not* contain invisible fairies that hide their existence from me than it is to accept that these invisible fairies exist.

Read Quran: surah Al Baqarah: verse 208-214

 

[McBell]

I can't believe nor disbelieve in the existence of something I don't know what it is.

So then you lack a belief either way, right?

 

[Kenny]

It's not that I don't want to believe Christianity is true. I already gave a long list of things that could happen that would cause me to immediately convert to Christianity. You ignored this.

I'm not familiar with J. Warner Wallace, but Lee Strobel is certainly *not* an unbiased person. He converted to Christianity shortly after his wife did, probably because he wanted to make her happy, rather than because he actually cared about truth. Besides, he's a lawyer, so he's a professional at only looking at evidence for one side, while ignoring the evidence for the other side.

No, I didn't ignore it, Jesus already answered it.

J. Warner Wallace is a renown "cold-case investigator". As an atheist, he decided to investigate the cold-case death of Jesus and realized it actually happened.

As far as Lee Strobel, you just validated what I said. One just explains away why it can't be true.

 

[Heyo]

So then you lack a belief either way, right?

I should. I'm still catching myself too often not believing in "god(s)". And sometimes it is clear that someone is talking about a specific god fantasy that simply can't exist, without calling it/her/him by the proper name.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Here's what I mean:

Often in debates with anti-religious people, the discourse resolves around an over simplified, black-and-white, approach to the religious topic by the anti-religious person.

In this case, choice is being viewed in an over simplified manner. The consequences ( both constructive and destructive ) are being ignored.

Choice is not black and white; the repercussions matter. Again, if you cannot or will not acknowledge this, then, never mind.

Have a good day, though.

Funny - I saw your position as the black and white one.

In any case, questions of what "free will" and "choice" mean aside, if I understand your argument correctly, you were explaining the motives behind God's actions, and that God is purposely denying convincing evidence of his existence to humanity... right?

But if all that's the case, then we're still left with the fact that the evidence for God's existence is unconvincing... right? So why believe in God, then?

I mean, I'd have to accept that God exists before I could accept that God is doing what you say he is, but what reason do we have to accept that God exists?

 

[dybmh]

Funny - I saw your position as the black and white one.

In any case, questions of what "free will" and "choice" mean aside, if I understand your argument correctly, you were explaining the motives behind God's actions, and that God is purposely denying convincing evidence of his existence to humanity... right?

But if all that's the case, then we're still left with the fact that the evidence for God's existence is unconvincing... right? So why believe in God, then?

I mean, I'd have to accept that God exists before I could accept that God is doing what you say he is, but what reason do we have to accept that God exists?

Well, that's a different question than posed in the OP.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Well, that's a different question than posed in the OP.

I think that I just rephrased the main point of the OP: while you might have a different explanation than I do, it seems that you do agree that the available - or at least apparent - evidence for God isn't convincing. No?

 

[GoodbyeDave]

It is obvious to anyone (including theists) that if God exists, then he's certainly not doing everything he can to make his existence obvious. … This implies that either God is purposely hiding himself or (the simpler explanation) he doesn't exist. And, when there are two competing explanations for a phenomenon, the simpler one is typically correct.

A good point, but it doesn't have any bearing on either Deism or Polytheism and so offers no comfort to atheists.

It's certainly a problem for Abrahamics and the like, though. It's rather like one of the "explanations" for suffering being permitted by an omnipotent and omnibenevolent god — there is a reason, but we aren't allowed to know it!

 

[dybmh]

I think that I just rephrased the main point of the OP: while you might have a different explanation than I do, it seems that you do agree that the available - or at least apparent - evidence for God isn't convincing. No?

Yes, I agree. I thought that this was included in the OP. For this discussion, God is hidden. Once evidence for God becomes convincing, IMHO, Free-will is compromised.

 

[McBell]

Yes, I agree. I thought that this was included in the OP. For this discussion, God is hidden. Once evidence for God becomes convincing, IMHO, Free-will is compromised.

define "free-will"

I ask because some loons take it to such extremes as to claim there is no free will because if you choose to fly and cannot fly you cannot have free will.