I’m currently reading a book where the author said that God remains hidden from us today so that we may freely choose to love him or not. You can’t generate love through compulsion, he argued. And he’s right about that. As an illustration, he gave Kierkegaard’s story about a king in disguise:
Once upon a time, there was a king who longed to marry. One day, as he was riding through his kingdom, he happened to see a very beautiful young lady in a poorer section of the kingdom. He was struck by her beauty, so he found reasons to travel through there more often, even getting the chance to speak to her on occasion. As time went by, he realized he wanted to pursue a relationship with the woman, but how should he go about it?
As king, he could have her brought to the palace so that he could court her, or even propose marriage immediately. It would be very hard for her to refuse the king, but he wanted to marry for love. So he also considered dressing as a peasant in order to get to know her, and only revealing his true identity if she genuinely fell in love with him. But the dishonesty inherent in that approach was unappealing.
He finally thought of a real solution. He would give up his station as king and move into her neighborhood as a regular citizen, perhaps taking up a profession like carpentry [wink, wink]. Then, if she came to love him, they could marry, and he would know that her love was truly for him and not his position.
It’s a nice story, and its application is clear. God loves us and wants us to love him. Because of his position, he could command our love, but then it would not be genuine. His solution was to come in the flesh as Jesus, giving up his position in Heaven so that we could come to know him and love him legitimately.
But when you think about it, this isn’t an accurate illustration at all. In the story, the young woman only stands to gain. If she never meets the king, or if she never falls in love with him, then her life is no worse than it was before. But this is not what Christianity teaches. It claims that all humans are sinful, and we need saving. A better illustration would be a story where people on a cruise have fallen overboard. Someone still on the ship offers to throw the people a life preserver. Will those people first try to get to know him before they accept his offer? Of course not! They’ll happily take any help they can get. All that they really needed was to understand how serious their situation was.
To show the effectiveness of this, consider so many of the conversion accounts in the Book of Acts, especially chapter 2. Peter preaches to the crowd on the Day of Pentecost, and (supposedly) about 3000 of them were converted to Christ that day because of Peter’s message. Did they really know who Jesus was? Did they really have a deep relationship with him at that point? No. The implication is that they simply became convinced that they needed what only he could offer. They were drowning, and they needed rescue. According to that passage, that’s all that was required.
But since God is so well hidden that we can question his very existence, many of us don’t even know we need saving. Oh sure, there are people from a thousand different faiths telling us we need salvation, but the evidence they give to support this claim is woefully inadequate. Why doesn’t God give us a bigger sign, if we’re really in trouble? Why doesn’t he just tell us directly? Why aren’t all these people who are so ready to believe in God united by a single religion? It’s hard to believe there’s a fire when there’s no trace of smoke.
The most glaring problem with this story is Hell. Not all Christians believe in a literal, torturous Hell, but many do, including the author of this book I’ve been reading. How is Hell not compulsion? To fit it into the illustration, we’d need to change a few details. Instead of the king passively waiting to see if the maiden will accept him, he promises his love, but also promises to roast her alive if she refuses his advances. It’s not quite so nice a story when we add in that detail.
When you get right down to it, Christianity is all about compulsion. God loves you, and he doesn’t want to force you to love him or serve him. Of course if you don’t, you’ll be tortured forever.
This only shows that the problem of God’s hiddenness hasn’t been solved at all. The author of this book, as well as many other Christians, say that God is hidden so we can have the “freedom” to either believe in him or not. But their reasoning is faulty, since Christianity gives us no such freedom. It’s like saying you’re free to commit murder in the US, even though it could earn you the death penalty in most states. The fact that there are laws prohibiting it means you aren’t free to do it. When you consider that the Christian God has every reason to let us all know he exists and that he expects certain things from us, the fact that he doesn’t do this is really all the evidence you need to see that he’s either not real, or he’s not all-loving and all-good.
Finding Truth 
Hey Ark – yeah I think the lines in burden of proof do get sort of twisted when we have these discussions. Nobody even seems to want to agree on where the lines really exist with burden of proof anyways so I just live with it.
I ended up deciding discussions with Debilis weren’t very productive because it seemed like there truly was absolutely nothing he would ever concede on or even give a reasonable “you may be right on that”. Unklee does sometimes concede things though. I don’t think anyone is good at conceding including myself so maybe that’s not a reason to stop the effort anyways.
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No atheist that I am aware of ( since entering into the fray) has ever convinced a believer that their position is untenable.
I don’t know your own personal story, but most deconvertees tend to experience disquiet over issues such as evil, Yahweh’s hiddenness and the fallacious nature of the bible.
They decide for themselves using common sense and intellect that religion and god belief is hogwash.
The believer, no matter how sincere they appear, will always consider the deconvertee some sort of aberration; were not ever a proper Christian.
I have seen unklee, for example, use the phrase , ”we Christians”, toward Nate or Marcus (?)
As if a person like Nate would not be aware of every apologist argument.
Read the comments on this thread.
It illustrates perfectly the points I raise re the ‘god’ issue.
http://www.is-there-a-god.info/blog/clues/why-does-the-universe-exist-god-vs-science/
For the playing fields to be level, the believer, and in this case, the Christian , should be obliged to demonstrate without relying on faith how the man, Yeshua is the Creator of the universe.
While they cite this as immutable, irrespective of the evidence (or complete lack of), how are you going to mount any argument to the contrary?
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@Howie
I know what you mean Howie, I try to avoid these kinds of discussions with people in my area because they usually just end up badly. UnkleE is such a good sport about it though! The only hard part is keeping track of all the comments in this long page format. Oh well, here we go again:
@UnkleE
That’s a matter of opinion I guess. I think consciousness and the big bang are physical questions. We know that our self-awareness is located within our brains and we know how to turn it off and on. I think it’s just a matter of time until we figure out how it works or recreate it artificially. If the big bang theory is true, I think it was a physical event, how could it be non-physical? Science does have a proven track record and philosophical arguments do not that I’m aware of.
On Jesus and Muhammad… You’re basically saying that it comes down to whether we believe they were telling the truth or not (I would add “and whether those who wrote about them were telling the truth or not”). But my question is: How do we know if they are telling the truth or not? Is making radical claims part of the reason to trust someone?
Hold on. Why should we set that limit? If we had said that our Milky Way galaxy was the only galaxy we would have been dead wrong. Why should we think that our universe is the only universe?
I am of the opinion that both time and space go on forever. If we started traveling in one direction how could we ever reach the end of space? Would we hit a wall? What’s on the other side? If we could travel backward (or forward) through time would we reach an end? I don’t think so. That’s just a theory of mine, I don’t assume it to be true and I think this is where you and I are different. I’m okay with saying “I don’t know”, but you’ve taken your theory “God did it” and you believe it to be absolute truth. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
The Bible is a big part of Christianity, no doubt. Like Nan said a while ago – take away the Bible and what are we left with? Deism perhaps? Some other factors in my deconversion were: realizing that faith was not a good way to seek truth, realizing that if I had been born into a muslim family I would have been a muslim, realizing I was guilty of a double-standard of being skeptical of all other extraordinary claims except those of Christianity, realizing that the trinity was a logical contradiction, realizing that there was no unity in discernment for Christians from the “holy spirit”. Those are some of the main ones, but really things relating to the Bible were at the forefront.
I think you are trying to downplay suffering. Try to imagine having your baby die of an awful disease or try to imagine having an earthquake or tsunami destroy your home and family. Calling that merely unpleasant could be a real slap in the face to someone who has gone through it.
There are finely-tuned diseases that wipe out populations, is that by design or blind evolutionary selection? If it’s by design then what is the motive? There are billions of stars with planets and our earth just happened to be the right distance from our star – if this was all designed for us then what was the motive for making billions of other solar systems and billions of other galaxies? If there is a God and his ultimate purpose was just to confuse us as much as possible then I’d say he’s done a very good job of that.
Were you agreeing to this part or just the part about theologians? Is your god within time or outside of it? material or immaterial? This is an important issue for me.
By the way, I spent some time last night reading your pages on miracles and still have more reading to do, but a thought occurred to me. If there are as many miracles occurring as you claim from survey data – wouldn’t someone have videotaped something? I don’t mean this facetiously, I am genuinely curious if something exists out there that might be considered very good evidence for a miracle. I watched some Kathryn Kuhlmann videos on YouTube, but I didn’t see anything conclusive yet. What are your thoughts on people like her and Benny Hinn?
UnkleE, we’ve covered a lot topics in this discussion! Thanks for hanging in there.
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Ark, I’ve got several motivations for engaging on these blogs. I’ve listed some on my own blog about page, but there are some more I’ve thought about that I did not list. None of them are that I want to create atheists. I do however want as many people as possible engaged in pursuing what is true about reality and I believe some religious people (probably not UnkleE) have given up on that pursuit in certain areas because they are so sure that they have found the answers. For example, why continue research on what caused the big bang if you already are sure of the answer.
And as far as theists not changing their minds due to discussions like these I think Nate may be a counter example to that. I think it was a discussion he had (maybe on this blog) about the Canaanite genocides that got his search and questioning going.
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@Howie and Ark
I think both of you are right. My research was kicked off by a couple of things I read from unbelievers to which I had no response. But there were some other aspects of my faith that had been bothering me as well. I do think people have to be receptive, either because they’ve already experienced some cognitive dissonance with their position, or they’re just extremely open-minded. But when you find those people, I do think discussion can help make a difference. It may not happen immediately, but it can help the process along.
@unkleE
I still think the notion of a hidden God is counter-intuitive if God wants us to choose him. When people grow up and choose a career, it’s not unheard of for them to get several years down the road and find a career that they would have loved to pursue, if they had only known about it. Hiding choices from people doesn’t help them make the best choice.
And if you believe people lose free will in Heaven, that does resolve that particular problem. Though it makes me wonder why God would want to be surrounded by people who no longer have the ability to change their minds about him. That’s usually why people say he gave us a free will — didn’t want to be worshiped by robots.
Also, you and Josh have both talked about the people who lived before Jesus being saved without knowing him. I guess I should have explained my reasoning on that — I had just assumed we were somewhat on the same page. I always believed (and it still seems reasonable to me) that there’s a clear distinction between how God operated before Christ and how he operated after. Until Moses, it appears that God spoke to various families or individuals. With Moses, the Law was given, and people were to follow that. The New Testament, Hebrews in particular if memory serves, says that all these people were still saved through Jesus, even though Jesus’ sacrifice hadn’t yet occurred. By following the Old Law, the Jews were basically writing checks for forgiveness that Jesus would reconcile. Gentiles during that period were judged on some kind of moral law, as Romans 1-3 and Acts 17 teach.
But after Christ’s death, the Old Law was completed (according to Hebrews and Galatians), and the “New Law” was in effect. As Paul says to the Athenians in Acts 17:
So yes, before Christ people were saved without needing faith in him. But Paul seems to say that this time is over. Acts 4:11-12 says this:
And Hebrews 11:6 says this:
So while it sounds nice to say that God still overlooks ignorance, I’m not sure there are any passages that expressly say that. Furthermore, what kind of ignorance would he overlook? Whatever it is, I doubt any nonbelievers on this blog would qualify. Personally, I think that’s a pretty messed up system, since our unbelief is simply due to lack of compelling evidence.
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@ Howie.
I would never suggest you were motivated to convert theists, as this would contradict my personal belief and my previous statement. Proselytizing is for the religious. They are, after all, commanded to do this, as you are aware no doubt?
I am certainly not casting aspersions on you or anyone’s reason for blogging. I hope I did not convey this impression?
Hell, I have learned tons of stuff, but I mainly do it for fun, and would never expect anyone to jump up and yell, “Eureka, I am now an atheist. Thank god for the Ark.” lol….Don’t think so.
I would still maintain though, there is doubt in the believer’s mind before the search begins, whether on the internet, via literature or simply speaking to someone.
This is why engaging a person such as unklee Debilis or suchlike with any thoughts of ”point scoring” is fruitless for the reasons I have already outlined. These folk are not at a stage where any sort of real doubt occupies the mind.
Unklee, for one, is open about this.
Thus his arguments are all finely tuned apologetics, with just enough carefully selected ‘evidence/facts’ to make them sound credible.
You can hardly expect him to countenance a person such as Richard Carrier, no matter how qualified he is, and he will always tailor any response to such Carrier arguments citing credibility, consensus and employment.
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Hey All-
I have really appreciated this discussion, and the few others I’ve had on this blog with you all. I’m going to pull back, and possibly discontinue commenting at this point. Reading over this discussion again, particularly portions I’ve had with people, has made me consider taking my own advice. By that I mean that I am more concerned with sharing God’s grace in Jesus through my actions with people I interact with on a daily basis than I am with the apologetics angle I’ve encountered here. So, I just wanted to thank you all, particularly Nate for hosting an excellent blog and discussions, for the opportunity to try my hand at this type of discussion. After all, I just don’t think it’s for me. While it’s certainly fun and addictive, it’s not as important to me as I thought it would be, and nor am I as good at it as I thought I would be. Peace, All. Thanks again.
-Josh
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I hate to see you go, Josh, but I get it. These kinds of discussions can be aggravating, and they definitely sap away too much time. Still, I hope you’ll consider coming back at some point as I enjoy your comments and value your perspective. I hope there wasn’t anything I said that’s encouraged you to move on — if so, I apologize.
Best wishes! 🙂
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Nate-
No, definitely not anything you said. Not anything anyone said – just my preference after thinking it through. I spend quite a bit of time reading and trying to make sure I’m not missing anything to comment on, and I’d rather spend my time doing other things at this point. I will absolutely continue to read your blog as I enjoy it quite a bit, and I anticipate I’ll comment here and there. But, those comments will likely not be ones that I’ll be trying to engage a debate around. Keep up the good work, Nate.
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Thanks man. I totally understand. See you around! 🙂
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Hey Josh: I’ve really enjoyed my discussions with you quite a bit, and I echo every sentiment Nate just sent to you. I totally understand if you’d prefer not to engage in these time consuming discussions. You actually are pretty good at this and if anything I’ve learned a few new different kinds of interpretations of the bible – some that as I’ve said are very kind and gracious.
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Thanks, Howie.
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Nate
Quite! And who could ever forget this gem from The Number One Son.
As this delightful Christian fellow told me.
http://christophercrandolph.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/jesus-and-the-necessity-of-forgiveness/#comment-1299
Is this really something / someone to be involved with?
I also don’t see any ”benefits” here either.
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Ark, I guess if there were an all powerful god, it wouldn’t mater whether we’d want to be involved with him or not – it would simply just be the way it is.
But trying to determine if that IF has any real weight, or which god we should follow, which brand we should trust, then we’re right back into seeing all the absurdities again.
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@Ark: Yeah, sorry I had misunderstood you. I think maybe you are saying my expectations are too high and you are right – that does come out in my comments. e.g. I probably shouldn’t be very surprised that UnkleE doesn’t see the whole inconsistency thing the way I do.
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Hi Dave,
“If the big bang theory is true, I think it was a physical event, how could it be non-physical?”
Yes, the big bang was physical, but it’s cause may not have been.
“Hold on. Why should we set that limit? If we had said that our Milky Way galaxy was the only galaxy we would have been dead wrong. Why should we think that our universe is the only universe?”
This is where it gets tricky. The big bang was the start of “our universe”, but may not have been the start of “the universe”. The cosmological argument (or some forms of it) considers the cause of the whole thing – everything physical – “the universe”.
“How do we know if they are telling the truth or not? Is making radical claims part of the reason to trust someone?”
We don’t know (i.e. have absolute certainty) about very much at all. So we make this choice like we make almost every other choice – by considering the evidence and deciding what seems most likely to be correct.
If God exists, knowing him must be personal as well as factual, and the way we get to know a person is to interact with them. So one way we could be more certain God exists could be to actually ask him. I know many people who have done that and found him, though of course I know others who have tried that and not found anything.
“I’m okay with saying “I don’t know”, but you’ve taken your theory “God did it” and you believe it to be absolute truth. Please correct me if I’m wrong.”
That’s not how I see it. Each of the reasons to believe in God can be expressed in a logical valid argument with arguable, and (IMO) plausible premises that lead to the conclusion that God exists. The cosmological and design arguments do this by outlining an exhaustive list (3 or 4 items only) of the possibilities, and then showing that all the non-God options are unlikely. Now obviously their success is a matter of opinion, but the conclusion God exists isn’t arbitrary and is a better conclusion than “I don’t know”.
“Some other factors in my deconversion were: realizing that faith was not a good way to seek truth, realizing that if I had been born into a muslim family I would have been a muslim, realizing I was guilty of a double-standard of being skeptical of all other extraordinary claims except those of Christianity, realizing that the trinity was a logical contradiction, realizing that there was no unity in discernment for Christians from the “holy spirit”. Those are some of the main ones, but really things relating to the Bible were at the forefront.”
Thanks for sharing those. I don’t agree with most of them, but I won’t open up more cans of worms just now, except to say that the argument about religious belief being determined by birth is often repeated without anyone presenting evidence. I decided to check it, and it turns out to only be a half truth. You can read about it in Are many christians converts? and it turns out that:
1. Christian numbers are growing mostly in previously non-christian cultures, and declining mostly in previously christian cultures.
2. The number of christians converted from a non-christian background is about 30-50% (depending on whether you measure christian by culture or behaviour).
So the “fact” you quote isn’t as clear cut as you might think.
“I think you are trying to downplay suffering. Try to imagine having your baby die of an awful disease or try to imagine having an earthquake or tsunami destroy your home and family.”
I think you have misunderstood me. I have said many times that I think the amount of suffering in the world is a terrible thing and it makes it harder to believe in God. But I was then assessing how strong this argument is and pointing out that without objective morality, any assessment of evil (as opposed to unpleasantness) has, by definition, to be subjective.
So let me put the question to you as a non-theist. Is the suffering we see in the world truly and objectively evil? (a) If it is, by what objective and true standard (as opposed to your own subjective feelings, which I understand and share) to you measure it to be evil? (b) If it isn’t, how would you formulate the argument from evil without it being truly evil?
“There are finely-tuned diseases that wipe out populations, is that by design or blind evolutionary selection? If it’s by design then what is the motive?”
This is the problem of evil again. I agree it is a problem, I am distressed by it and I cannot explain it.
“There are billions of stars with planets and our earth just happened to be the right distance from our star – if this was all designed for us then what was the motive for making billions of other solar systems and billions of other galaxies?”
The cosmologists tell us that for our universe to last long enough for planets to form and life to evolve, it had to be this big.
“If there is a God and his ultimate purpose was just to confuse us as much as possible then I’d say he’s done a very good job of that.”
This gets us back to the hiddenness argument again, doesn’t it? I feel the matter is much less confusing than you do.
“Were you agreeing to this part or just the part about theologians? Is your god within time or outside of it? material or immaterial? This is an important issue for me.”
I can’t find where I said this. But I believe God is outside our time, but I couldn’t possibly know whether he is outside all time. I believe “he” is immaterial.
“If there are as many miracles occurring as you claim from survey data – wouldn’t someone have videotaped something?”
I have heard of some, but I think they are less conclusive than medical documentation.
” What are your thoughts on people like her and Benny Hinn?”
I think there are many fakes and disreputable people who maybe started genuine but are in religion for what they can get out of it. But there are others who may seem strange to my standards but who knows? I know nothing about Hinn except he seems dodgy. Kuhlman also seems dodgy except some of “her” miracles are well documented, so what can anyone say about that?
“UnkleE, we’ve covered a lot topics in this discussion! Thanks for hanging in there”
Thanks for your time and patience. Do you think it might be time to wind down?
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Hi Howie, yes, I think I will leave our discussion there. Thanks for your time.
Nate, I think I will begin to exit stage left too. Thanks for your reply, I will only make one brief comment.
“there’s a clear distinction between how God operated before Christ and how he operated after”
Yes this is true, but then we have to ask whether the distinction is one of time (before or after Jesus) or one of position or knowledge (knowing about Jesus vs not).
Romans 2, Acts 17 and a few other places suggest the view that Josh and I hold, and logic supports this. So that’s why I, and many others (including the famous names I mentioned) take this view.
Thanks again and best wishes.
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Hey Dave (and anyone else interested):
Here’s an interesting article (Why we love to lose ourselves in religion) I’ve just come across by Jonathan Haidt, an atheist social psychologist who has studied the social psychology of religion (I’ve read some of his stuff before). It seems relevant to the relationship of religion and morality.
Enjoy!
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That’s a fascinating article, unkleE — thanks for posting it!
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My quote to Howie on the thread above.
Thank you, Unklee, award yourself a Noddy badge. 😉
Nuff said? lol…
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Help each other blow stuff up, perhaps? Fascinating article indeed. Yet it appears to have – though he doesn’t spell it out – a somewhat westernized focus/bias.
No mention of Jihadists or other radical Islamic groups.
No mention of the insidious nature of Ken Ham’s brand of religious ‘togetherness’.
I sometimes wonder if a person like unklee doesn’t scour the internet looking for such ‘one off’ articles and then present them as if this suddenly justifies religion?
It must take a lot of dedicated hard work or be a subscriber to a lot of such news feeds.
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@UnkleE
Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll try to just hit one or two points and then I’m done.
Here are two of my problems with the Kalam cosmological argument: 1. The first premise, “everything that begins to exist has a cause” might seem intuitive but there really is no evidence for this. When have we ever seen new matter or energy ever come into existence? All we really observe is stuff that exists change form. So that first premise is a bold claim for something we’ve never seen happen. 2. The second premise, “The universe began to exist”, well perhaps “our” universe began to exist (big bang), but we don’t actually know if “the universe” (everything physical) began to exist.
I’ve tried this many times. Even asked a few times today, looking at the sun set…, and I was met with pure silence.
I don’t think the argument works this way. I think it goes like this:
If there is NO god (and no objective morals) then all of the suffering in the world makes perfect sense. We would expect to see mindless, heartless evolutionary processes in a cold and very random universe.
On the other hand, if there IS a god (and objective morals) then we would expect to see some kind of meaning and purpose to everything. But when random disasters happen and random animals have to eat each other and random people have mental disabilities and random babies die in the womb… Well it just looks broken. Like an experiment gone bad or something.
Okay, I’m done. UnkleE, thanks for discussing all of this with me.
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Hi Dave, yes thanks to you to for an interesting discussion. My brief sign-off ….
1. Yes, whichever view we take for the cosmological argument, we are dealing with something unique. I think that means that fact shouldn’t bias us towards or away from any view.
2. Yes, I know some people ask God and don’t get what they are hoping for. But Jesus said to “keep on asking” so I hope you don’t give up just yet.
3. Yes, the argument from evil does make it harder to believe in God. I still think it doesn’t work unless you assume objective ethics.
If you were ever interested in discussing anything we missed here, please feel free to drop over to my blog – you know where I live! 🙂
Best wishes.
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Well said! I’m always impressed at how exChristians give a better argument than a Christian or even a non believer. I love hearing deconversion stories.
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Thanks, erica!
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