Direct continuation of: Where is God, Part I

In a previous part, I argued that (1) there is a great deal of nonbelief in the world and (2) there is a great deal of confusion in the world about God’s attributes and will. Given that God can reveal himself and solve both these problems, why doesn’t he?

Why won’t God reveal himself to us, given that doing so would help us acknowledge his existence and clarify his will, aiding us on our path to salvation? I present the argument as follows:

1. God, as described by the major religions, wants everyone to know he exists and to know specifically what he expects from us.
2. Not everyone knows God exists.
3. Not everyone agrees on what God expects from us.
4. It is possible for God to reveal himself in a way that everyone would know he exists or all believers would agree on what God expects from us, and quite possibly both.
5. Therefore from 1 and 4, if God exists, he would reveal himself in this way.
6. God has not revealed himself in this way.
7. Therefore since 1 contradicts 6, God cannot exist as described by the major religions.

I already defended the argument from the people who suggest God does not actually want us to know he exists, let alone his attributes and his will. Now I will look at a bunch more objections to the argument.

Is It Possible for God to Reveal Himself?

The second, and by far the most popular critique is to attack premise 4 or 5 and suggest that God has no way to reveal himself in a manner that would make everyone know he exists and know what he expects from us with no bad side effects. These objections come in many popular forms, such as:

• God won’t reveal himself because he doesn’t do tricks for our amusement.
• God won’t reveal himself because such a revelation could never be lasting.
• God won’t reveal himself because that would violate our free will.
• God won’t reveal himself because no one would believe his revelation.
• God won’t reveal himself because it wouldn’t change anyone’s opinion.
• God won’t reveal himself because he wants to be worshipped, not merely acknowledged.

Must God Do Tricks?

The first objection is that it isn’t in God’s nature to demean himself, come down, and do tricks like levitate buildings just so us stubborn atheists would believe in him. This is probably true, but it is also the completely wrong picture of what I am asking.

While coming down to Earth and levitating a New York skyscraper in front of thousands of people would indeed be enough proof to instantly convert me to theism and then to whatever religion the God suggested, it is not necessary.

When I have questions about a theory, I seek out evidence about whether it is true. For example, if I doubt the truth of evolution, I might seek out a biologist and get his or her opinion. If the biologist is nice and I am acting in good faith, the biologist would be patient with me and help answer my questions. The same could easily be true of God — he could walk with us and talk with us and patiently answer all of our questions about his nature, just like Jesus once did.

God need not preform a light show to reveal himself. Am omniscient and omnipotent God can clearly come up with a less clumsy and incompetent revelation. Instead, God could manifest himself the way any of our other friends manifest themselves. Certainly I don’t require my friends to preform light shows or do tricks to announce their presence and existence. I just need to be able to have a two-way conversation with them in order to have a meaningful relationship.

Imagine if God simply caused a book to suddenly appear in every house that contained an updated declaration of his will and satisfying answers to every question asked by atheists. People would be hard-pressed to find any other explanation for the sudden materialization of all of these books and people would be even more startled by the omniscient clarity of the answers. Such a solution wouldn’t be a trick, but a benevolent act to resolve our confusion.

Could a Revelation Be Lasting?

A second objection is that God would have to reveal himself “too much”. It is argued that every revelation would be lost to history, and therefore would require continued revelations in order to keep everyone believing. However, this argument also fails.

First, it assumes that God, an infinite being, is short on time to reveal himself. God, for some reason, is confined to reveal himself as few times as possible. There is no possible explanation for why this should be the case.

Second, it assumes that God is too incompetent to come up with some sort of permanent revelation, and is limited only to revealing himself in short bursts back in time periods with superstitious people and no reliable journalism. Again, there is no possible explanation for why this should be the case. God could, for example, place a floating cross in the sky.

A revelation of the same caliber that was preformed in Biblical times, if preformed now in modern times, would be conclusive. If a revelation was recorded not just in a few books thousands of years ago by authors who were not eyewitnesses but instead recorded in hundreds of different reputable and independent newspapers and broadcast on dozens of different television shows, the evidence would be conclusive. It would be far too difficult to deny that sheer quantity and variety of independent material.

Likewise, if the book revelation I talked about earlier were to occur, the books would last and the event recorded by everyone, forever. No one would be insane enough to doubt such a revelation without some cooky alien conspiracy.

Would a Revelation Violate Our Free Will?

A third objection is that God revealing himself would somehow violate our free will to believe in him. This response is the most common, but also the most bizarre, for this argument is directly contradicted by the scriptures of these religions themselves.

In the Bible, God was not only able to reveal himself to Moses, Noah and various others in the Old Testament, and to many hundreds in the form of Jesus in the New Testament, without violating anyone’s free will. These people who saw God directly were still free to accept or reject him, and as it turned out — many did. Both the rebel angel Satan, Adam, and Eve, all directly saw and experienced God, yet still chose to disobey him.

The Pharoah of Egypt saw many destructive manifestations of God’s power, yet still chose not to release the Israelites (the same Israelites that logically could have been teleported out of Egypt without the need to kill any firstborns). Even the Israelites themselves chose to indulge in idolitry dispite first-hand knowledge of God. The New Testament tells of Pharisees who denied Jesus despite seeing miracles and of a traitor Jesus who betrayed him despite knowing his divinity.

The number of people who have seen God firsthand in Biblical texts are enormous, and the number of those who have seen angels from God are even larger. If God revealing himself conclusively would remove our free will and compel us to worship him, why has God revealed himself conclusively so many times in Biblical texts and ended up not only violating free will, but still leading people to reject him?

Evidence that something exists does not translate into evidence that something is to be obeyed — I have no will to obey Hitler despite knowing conclusively that Hitler exists. God is simply denying us the ability to make a fully informed choice.

Would People Believe His Revelation?

A fourth objection is that God has no reason to reveal himself because no one would believe his revelation. Yet this also attributes incompetence to those who claim God to be omnipotent. God would have a way to reveal himself in an unquestionable manner, at least to the point where someone would have to be seriously deluded (on the level of a crack conspiracy theorist) to deny his existence.

For instance, God could manifest himself individually to everyone in the universe in a way they could personally understand, and keep doing so until they believe in him. He could have simple understanding one-on-one talks of “Why don’t you believe in me?”. If done to everyone, no one would think they are merely hallucinating. Even appearing once and doing something as unquestionable as reviving John F. Kennedy from the dead to be confirmed and recorded by every credible doctor and historian would be enough to convert many.

Would His Revelation Change Opinions?

A fifth objection is that God has no reason to reveal himself because, while people would accept that he revealed himself, no one would change their opinions — atheists would still be atheists. However, this assumes atheists are people who are dead set in their ways, unable to think critically or accept even the most blindly obvious of things.

This is simply not true of most, if not all, atheists. The myth of atheists as dogmatic immoral fools who believe what they want exists only in Christian fiction of what they want the world to be — a conversation with any atheist would reveal this to not be the case.

Perhaps it could be said that God does not want atheists to merely become theists and accept his existence, but wants them to actually worship him. Though this too is silly, since one needs to accept his existence in order to worship him, and a one-on-one conversation would be the best way to convince any person to worship God. A revelation would not only change opinions, but would be the best way to change opinions.

Has God Revealed Himself Already?

The third and final critique is to attack premise 6 and say that God has indeed revealed himself in a way that is undeniable, yet people still… somehow… deny it. However, this immediately fails as an objection, because God could have revealed himself in a different way that was truly undeniable. Thus this simply becomes yet another “God’s revelation is impossible” because atheists are all allegedly too deluded to accept his existence under any circumstances.

Though, again, this is not the case. Most atheists would happily accept any good evidence that God exists, and would jump at a revelation. A revelation would be more than enough evidence for God.

Again, these people who say that God’s existence is obvious for some sort of reason still must concede that his existence is not as obvious as it could be. God could make his existence absolutely unquestionable to the point where it wouldn’t even need to be debated — it would be as obvious as my Dad, or Mt. Everest. Why would we expect God to not reveal himself in this way, but instead require his believers to deliver inferences of his existence on his behalf? Why would he not want to communicate directly?

Is All This Confusion Inconsequential?

One might also offer a final objection against premise 1 and suggest that while God does desire us to know he exists and know his will, he only desires this once we get to Heaven. This objection goes along the lines of “what’s a little confusion when everything will make sense in heaven, where we will live for eternity?”.

It might also be said that God owes us nothing and that the current revelations we get should be “good enough”, and how dare we ask for more. But just as a parent can’t have a baby and then abandon him or her on the street, God can’t “owe us nothing” and still be considered moral.

In addition to providing no evidence to suggest that Heaven exists, both of these objections miss the point and fail to defend the major religions, since these religions suggest God is making judgement based on how well people accept his existence and will in this life prior to Heaven. Therefore, all this religious confusion is causing people to not be able to get into Heaven, since they end up in the wrong religion, or end up not believing in God at all. Unless God is evil and wants people to go to Hell, he would be motivated to fix this situation immediately.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the fact remains that God knows exactly what would convince me to believe in him and would be able to provide this evidence, but chooses not to. God allows millions to live in nonbelief and billions to practice the wrong religion. God allows millions to live and die without ever hearing of the true religion, whichever one that might be. God allows his faithful to fall to nagging doubts and leave the fold. God allows everyone to be so hopelessly confused over his existence and will.

If God truly existed, truly was not evil, and truly had a specific will, he would not allow this to happen. Since the major religions entail that God does truly exist, is truly not evil, and truly has a specific will, this leads to a contradiction, and therefore the major religions are false.

If these religions were true, then God’s will would have been communicated to each and every one us directly and correctly, by God himself. We would all be entitled to be Doubting Thomas, asking for just a little bit of proof so we don’t have to blindly commit our life to something that may not exist. There would be no confusion over what God’s will is just like there is no confusion over the fundamentals of chemistry, and there would be no confusion over God’s existence just like there is no confusion over the existence of gravity.

If God is so loving, compassionate, and wants the best for us, why would he hide himself away and deny us his wisdom when we could so easily benefit from it? Why would God doom those who fail to accept him to Hell, but yet not give people the proper evidence to make an informed choice?

Not even the most stubborn atheist could deny a personal revelation of God and there’s no reason to expect why we wouldn’t get one. And even if there is a reason, there is also no reason why God wouldn’t reveal himself to believers and set the record straight about his nature and will. It is more reasonable to believe God doesn’t exist than it is to believe God does exist, but wants to remain coy and hidden.

Therefore, there is strong evidence against believing in the God of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam; and we must conclude that God is either (1) morally evil, (2) not omnipotent, or (3) nonexistent.

Followed up in There Are No Religious Facts

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