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In academic philosophy, there is a whole realm of issues and arguments that can be generally referred to as "The Problem of Divine Hiddenness." The basic idea is that the existence of non-believers counts as evidence against the existence of God as conceived in traditional theism - i.e., as a divine personality who is an all-powerful and loving creator. This quote might help:
The most important of these is defended by J. L. Schellenberg. Schellenberg claims that a loving God would ensure that there is no reasonable or inculpable nonbelief in his existence, since this belief is required for human beings to enter into a relationship with God, and since (according to theism) having such a relationship with creatures is a great good, and indeed is one of God’s most important goals. But, Schellenberg argues, since such nonbelief occurs among those capable of belief in God, theism should be rejected. (From: The Problem of Divine Hiddenness - Philosophy - Oxford Bibliographies )
To me, this has always seemed like a powerful argument in favor of atheism relative to traditional forms of theism. (I don't think it has much impact on non-traditional forms of theism, such as "Cosmic Mind" philosophies, or "God is just the totality of Reality" etc.) I would like to hear what this forum has to offer on the subject.
I'd especially like to hear the best ideas that theists can offer (extra-specially I'd like to hear ideas that don't ultimately boil down to the classic "God works in mysterious ways" type of response).
Personally, I don't feel that I am simply being stubborn, or rebellious, etc. I feel as though I am a paradigm example of what philosophers call "nonresistant nonbelief". If there is a traditional type of God, and this God wants me to believe, then I should be an easy sell. Continued "divine hiddenness" comes close to proof, for me, that no such God exists. Thus I remain atheist relative to traditional holy-scripture-based conceptions of a personal God, but agnostic relative to various non-traditional conceptions of God.
Bottom line: If God exists and He wants me to believe, then why does He stack logic and empirical evidence so heavily against belief in the holy scriptures that are supposed to reveal His actions and commandments to the world? (Especially: why are the holy scriptures so full of examples of God acting like a vengeful, tantrum-prone 2 year old?)
Bottom line: If God exists and He wants me to believe, then why does He stack logic and empirical evidence so heavily against belief in the holy scriptures that are supposed to reveal His actions and commandments to the world? (Especially: why are the holy scriptures so full of examples of God acting like a vengeful, tantrum-prone 2 year old?)
Perhaps this falls under "non-traditional" but that idea assumes that God is interested in results as opposed to process. An interest in results by a traditional "God" would be quickly resolved and, frankly, boring.
On another note, it also assumes that scripture is from God, as opposed to records 9more or less reliable) of peoples experience and/or beliefs about God.
Last edited by nateswift; 03-08-2016 at 09:39 AM..
In academic philosophy, there is a whole realm of issues and arguments that can be generally referred to as "The Problem of Divine Hiddenness." The basic idea is that the existence of non-believers counts as evidence against the existence of God as conceived in traditional theism - i.e., as a divine personality who is an all-powerful and loving creator. This quote might help:
The most important of these is defended by J. L. Schellenberg. Schellenberg claims that a loving God would ensure that there is no reasonable or inculpable nonbelief in his existence, since this belief is required for human beings to enter into a relationship with God, and since (according to theism) having such a relationship with creatures is a great good, and indeed is one of God’s most important goals. But, Schellenberg argues, since such nonbelief occurs among those capable of belief in God, theism should be rejected. (From: The Problem of Divine Hiddenness - Philosophy - Oxford Bibliographies )
To me, this has always seemed like a powerful argument in favor of atheism relative to traditional forms of theism. (I don't think it has much impact on non-traditional forms of theism, such as "Cosmic Mind" philosophies, or "God is just the totality of Reality" etc.) I would like to hear what this forum has to offer on the subject.
I'd especially like to hear the best ideas that theists can offer (extra-specially I'd like to hear ideas that don't ultimately boil down to the classic "God works in mysterious ways" type of response).
Personally, I don't feel that I am simply being stubborn, or rebellious, etc. I feel as though I am a paradigm example of what philosophers call "nonresistant nonbelief". If there is a traditional type of God, and this God wants me to believe, then I should be an easy sell. Continued "divine hiddenness" comes close to proof, for me, that no such God exists. Thus I remain atheist relative to traditional holy-scripture-based conceptions of a personal God, but agnostic relative to various non-traditional conceptions of God.
Bottom line: If God exists and He wants me to believe, then why does He stack logic and empirical evidence so heavily against belief in the holy scriptures that are supposed to reveal His actions and commandments to the world? (Especially: why are the holy scriptures so full of examples of God acting like a vengeful, tantrum-prone 2 year old?)
The traditional God as portrayed in so-called scripture is untenable and should never form the basis of expectations or belief about God. When I learned that God exists, I was faced with this very dilemma. Where can I find anything to explain this reality to my intellect? Given my atheist expectations for 30+ years, I turned to science for ANY conceivable basis for this new reality, NOT the traditional religious sources which had NO credibility with me whatsoever. So I would suggest that you abandon looking for traditional answers, Gaylen.
My experiences removed the "Hidden" aspect from the equation for ME, so I turned to science for possible explanations for my experiences. The "It is all in your mind" nonsense was easily rejected because EVERYTHING is all in our mind. There had to be more salient explanations. Philosophy added dimensions to my quest. Combined with intriguing implications in the mathematical representations of our efforts to measure and explain reality, the combination provided the launch pad for my eventual views. Unlike those who use mathematics and are enamored with it as a tool to model our reality, I was fascinated by the possibility that the representations themselves were valuable indices of the real underlying reality that produced the outcomes being modeled.
This is an unusual use of the mathematics and those who use and understand them typically cannot make the transition to the representations themselves as clues to the actual composition of reality. Too many mathematicians do not understand that the world is NOT mathematical despite the utility of the models to mirror measured outcomes. But since the measures and their manipulations are drawn from reality their structure and outcomes provide clues to the actual nature of our reality.
That is why the two alternate representations of the field phenomenon we call energy/mass are so revealing. The equations E-MC^2 and E=hf suggest that whatever the field manifestation known as energy/mass IS it is vibratory and related to what we measure as the speed of light and mass. Most who do not speak philosophy or engage in such thinking see no special relevance in this information. But I DO. These measures are taken by our consciousness and they reflect the characteristics of our consciousness as much as they reflect the characteristics of our reality.
Our consciousness takes time to form but we experience it as instantaneous so the formation time would necessarily need to be called something else. I use "quantum time" for the formation time. Obviously, since it is the time that forms the consciousness we use to measure time, we do not have direct access to it. Similarly, since the formation time is our actual consciousness in-process, what we experience as our consciousness is a "delayed rebroadcast" of it, further complicating things.
Minkowski's invariant interval formulation of the Topological Constancy of the World Interval is: I = SQRT[S^2 - C^2(T2-T1)^2] where S= the Spatial interval, C= speed of light, T2-T1 is the time interval. In presenting this equation from memory I had previously left off the squaring of the time interval leading to error and confusion in interpreting its implications (Senioritis). Nevertheless the central point is that it reveals the sharacteristics of our consciousness formation in the measures themselves. No matter what spatial interval we measure, (that is the value of the Lorentz invariant interval), the time interval we measure is always a function of the constant speed of light. This suggests to my philosophical mind that our consciousness is forming at the speed of light and that is why it is always the constant applied to the time intervals in our measures. ((Anything forming (vibrating) at the speed of light cannot be compriseed of "matter." Materialists take note.)
The ensuing path toward my Synthesis was driven by this understanding of the composition of consciousness and its relationship to reality itself. It was a long and tedious trek, but I am pleased with the outcome. YMMV.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nateswift
Perhaps this falls under "non-traditional" but that idea assumes that God is interested in results as opposed to process. An interest in results by a traditional "God" would be quickly resolved and, frankly, boring.
On another note, it also assumes that scripture is from God, as opposed to records (more or less reliable) of people's experience and/or beliefs about God.
to assume we base all the traits of a "god" on human understanding, let alone "emotional needs", is the problem. So this philosopher based a stance "atheism" on BS against another stance of BS. To the more precocious pragmatic types I usually say "fighting a fairytale with another fairytale". so once we are in this realm of philosophy we can make up anything we want to self justify.
I love how philosophers continue to erroneously toss out "material world" like it actually has anything to counter it. Show me one trait of the universe that we know of that isn't part of the standard model and is not "frozen" energy?
Literal religion is short sighted and immature. But try telling a 14 year with all the answers that they are just "young". How about a teenaged brain in the body of a 35 year old? I myself find myself very short with these types.
Bottom line: If God exists and He wants me to believe, then why does He stack logic and empirical evidence so heavily against belief in the holy scriptures that are supposed to reveal His actions and commandments to the world? (Especially: why are the holy scriptures so full of examples of God acting like a vengeful, tantrum-prone 2 year old?)
This is really to me just a variation on the Problem of Evil's insistence that to construct a theodicy one must throw omnibenevolence, omniscience and/or omnipotence out. When you say "He wants me to believe" you are assuming omnibenevolence and when you say he stacks the deck against logic and empirical evidence you are suggesting he has unlimited potency to stack it otherwise, and knows how to do so.
My guess is that the usual rejoinder (shy, as you note, of blatant deflections of the form "god moves in mysterious ways") is that god wants you to freely choose to believe him by the demonstrably failed epistemology of faith, which is supposedly more virtuous than sight. And he wants you to do so despite giving you a rational mind that you can't simply shut off.
In addition to what others have said....a possible (attempted) rebuttal could be either to blame the nonbelievers for lacking faith (disregarding how one "gets" faith) or that the god is disinterested or in fact, purposely using evil to test mankind.
purposely using evil? listen, omni dude is silly, but omni dude running around tricking people is sick. Beside if it is, it means they are right... its an omni dude doing it.
purposely using evil? listen, omni dude is silly, but omni dude running around tricking people is sick. Beside if it is, it means they are right... its an omni dude doing it.
That's the god of Eusebius for you. Using evil for ultimate good.
In academic philosophy, there is a whole realm of issues and arguments that can be generally referred to as "The Problem of Divine Hiddenness." The basic idea is that the existence of non-believers counts as evidence against the existence of God as conceived in traditional theism - i.e., as a divine personality who is an all-powerful and loving creator. This quote might help:
The most important of these is defended by J. L. Schellenberg. Schellenberg claims that a loving God would ensure that there is no reasonable or inculpable nonbelief in his existence, since this belief is required for human beings to enter into a relationship with God, and since (according to theism) having such a relationship with creatures is a great good, and indeed is one of God’s most important goals. But, Schellenberg argues, since such nonbelief occurs among those capable of belief in God, theism should be rejected. (From: The Problem of Divine Hiddenness - Philosophy - Oxford Bibliographies )
To me, this has always seemed like a powerful argument in favor of atheism relative to traditional forms of theism. (I don't think it has much impact on non-traditional forms of theism, such as "Cosmic Mind" philosophies, or "God is just the totality of Reality" etc.) I would like to hear what this forum has to offer on the subject.
I'd especially like to hear the best ideas that theists can offer (extra-specially I'd like to hear ideas that don't ultimately boil down to the classic "God works in mysterious ways" type of response).
Personally, I don't feel that I am simply being stubborn, or rebellious, etc. I feel as though I am a paradigm example of what philosophers call "nonresistant nonbelief". If there is a traditional type of God, and this God wants me to believe, then I should be an easy sell. Continued "divine hiddenness" comes close to proof, for me, that no such God exists. Thus I remain atheist relative to traditional holy-scripture-based conceptions of a personal God, but agnostic relative to various non-traditional conceptions of God.
Bottom line: If God exists and He wants me to believe, then why does He stack logic and empirical evidence so heavily against belief in the holy scriptures that are supposed to reveal His actions and commandments to the world? (Especially: why are the holy scriptures so full of examples of God acting like a vengeful, tantrum-prone 2 year old?)
This is gonna sound like a cop-out answer, but God desires us to have faith in His existence & His love for mankind. (I would quote the Bible passage, but I assume you don't want to see it)
Approaching God from an academic viewpoint will never work. You need to look within yourself & consider God, life, love, goodness (assuming you have not already done that). Does it make sense that those things can exist without God? It certainly doesn't for me.
Your portrayal of God acting like a vengeful, tantrum-prone 2 year old tells me you haven't actually investigated scripture to find out why God did things like the great flood, etc.
This is gonna sound like a cop-out answer, but God desires us to have faith in His existence & His love for mankind. (I would quote the Bible passage, but I assume you don't want to see it)
Approaching God from an academic viewpoint will never work. You need to look within yourself & consider God, life, love, goodness (assuming you have not already done that). Does it make sense that those things can exist without God? It certainly doesn't for me.
Your portrayal of God acting like a vengeful, tantrum-prone 2 year old tells me you haven't actually investigated scripture to find out why God did things like the great flood, etc.
Best wishes on your path.
Why would you believe that we haven't investigated these things, especially those of us who were once Christians, many likely more fervently than you? An objective look at the God of the OT would conclude nothing other than what you described, justifying genocide and the killing of innocent men, women, and children for the "sins" of others.
Approaching God from an academic viewpoint does work, just not as you would want. Of course the God of the Bible, if he were to exist would not only desire us to have faith but would REQUIRE it, otherwise the belief in his existence could not be justified.
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evidence so heavily against belief in the holy scriptures that are supposed to reveal His actions and commandments to the world? (Especially: why are the holy scriptures so full of examples of God acting like a vengeful, tantrum-prone 2 year old?)
