WOTMQ: Why God Is Hidden
There's actually a very serious philosophical argument (if you're into that kind of thing) about God's hiddenness. It's called... (can you guess?), "The Argument From Divine Hiddenness." It says that if there were a perfectly loving God (the Christian God), there could be no reasonable unbelievers... like me. People who've really looked into it and just aren't compelled by the evidence (or lack thereof). But if things had gone the way believers thought they would go — the way they should have gone, God wouldn't be hidden at all. Enjoy! And thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!!! More to come! B
Comments (4)
If there was a god, the bible would be a religion focused around soap makers and boiling water. Why? Because it would have saved the lives of a billion people prior to germ theory. "Blessed are the soap makers, for they provide the power to defeat the invisible army of satan. Wash thine hands for the time it takes to say the lord's prayer before eating, before medicine, and after expelling impurities from your body." "And yea I say, should an affliction of the bowls affect you, drink not of the waters until they have been boiled to drive off the devil spawn within it. Should your illness subside, never again drink of that water without first boiling the devil out of it, for it is cursed." Imagine 1800 years later when we discovered germ theory how fucking divine that would have looked. How many billions of lives that would have improved. How even with rudimentary tools mankind could have prevented massive sickness and death.
Spot on. IMO the hiddenness of God is one of the greatest arguments in favor of his/her non-existence. When I was a believing Protestant pastor, which I was for 25 years, I asked, begged, pleaded with God to reveal himself to me and make his will for me clearly understood, because the more I studied the Bible as well as material on the then burgeoning internet, I was coming more and more to the conclusion that there really wasn't a god, at least not the God I was taught to believe in. I figured if God knew all things, including how my brain worked and what would make sense to me, and if he really wanted to have a relationship with me, then he certainly would know how to get through to me. Didn't he do it over and over with people in the Bible? I finally prayed that if he wanted to have a relationship with me, he'd have to connect with me, and that if he didn't, that meant he either didn't want to relate with me or that he didn't exist. I heard nothing. So then no belief (since 2002). I still worked as a pastor for 10 more years. That's another story. Based on the above journey I took I figured "GOD LED ME OUT" of belief. Hallelujah!
So the god goes to extraordinary lengths to remain hidden. And what do apologists do? They try to expose the god, against it's clear wishes to remain hidden.
It reminds me of the time a fundamentalist tried to goad Richard Dawkins because he purports that a belief in god is no different than a belief in Santa Claus… to which Dawkins replied that, with Santa Claus, children… grow up!