I will speculate, the dilemma for God is he wants communication with us, he wants to guide us beyond our behavioral limitations, while remaining uncertain to us without physical certainty. Thus as Halbhh noted, we must have what is referred to as faith. Today though we are flawed with original sin, God may be revealing himself in subtle invisible uncertain ways to those who seek him, pray to him, love him through faith alone, and are obedient to his will as presented in The Bible and especially through his son Jesus Christ.
So God is likely to want we beings that have a mind, intelligence, learning, and conscience to do things from our own free will within our innate nature and not as a consequence of external coercion and fears. Again, if coerced by fears with certainty even many with innate tendencies to be sinful, evil, and criminal would also believe and be obedient.
From the perspective of evolution for the sake of having meaning to those that believe such, one might speculate if descendants of unbelievers who actually saw God or his signs in certainty, if left alone to mere faith, would return to their innate negative natures. Conversely over generations people who believe by faith alone if evolution has effects, will tend to have descendants that have more positive behaviors as a result of their innate nature. In this way, God whose essence is love, sees a future when we fulfill his vision of what we at the pinnacle of creation on his beloved planet, can become. In other words, for we humans to evolve to what God wants us to become he must filter out those of us with those negative sinful tendencies using the same evolutionary process of physically evolved DNA and brain changes that from the secular perspective was used to get us to this point. And such may be deeply dependent on complexities of our minds that are otherwise impossible to change quickly even by a god given limitations.
That God works in such ways, one might consider Abraham's son's Ishmael and Hagar an indication he was seeking positive traits in humans and rewarding such with special favor that might rise over generations through natural human procreative processes...processes one might argue are Gods.
David, I am sorry for joining you late but will try to address your question.
I have over the years gotten into many long discussions with atheists and agnostics and here is what I have found:
The atheist and agnostics I have discussed this with usually have a moral issue with the Christian God and do not defend the science behind the non-existence of a God, since there really is none.
I usually start with by asking them questions like:
If the Christian God as presented in scripture really did make Himself unquestionably known to you:
1. What changes would you make in your life?
2. If you are not going to change, would it not be better for you to not know God existed?
3. Would it make you happy, sad, depressed, angry, apathetic toward Him or what?
4. The lowliest mature adult person on earth can “believe” in a benevolent Creator, so it is a humbling activity, but being gifted with knowledge is not necessarily humbling, so if humility is needed to humbly accept God’s charity, how is knowledge helping with your humility?
5. Do you want to be loved for the way people perceive you to be or in spite of the way you truly are?
6. God is offering you unconditional totally unselfish Love, but it is a transaction and so you have to humbly accept that Love as pure sacrificial charity (the way it is given) to receive it, but that also means you become like God Himself (Loving Him and others with sacrificial unconditional and unselfish Love), so do you want to become like the Christian God Himself?
Most atheists and agnostics really do not like the Christian God, so it is a blessing for them to not know God exists. God certainly is not looking for people to just acknowledge His existence and not change.
Knowledge has its own problems since it tends to puff the person up who has worked to gain knowledge, while having faith in a benevolent Creator is something the lowliest person on earth can do so it is a humbling activity, so does man need more humility or more pride?
As far as “proofing” God exists you can’t, but you can show it is more likely intelligence existed prior to man. To say man was not made with at least the help of intelligence is to say: energy, matter, time and space alone created intelligence (humans). Since something does not come from pure nothing, something has always existed, so for those who do not believe in the existence of God that something at most is: energy, matter, time and space, yet these can produce intelligence, but is there a limit on how large that intelligence can grow to? Man, with the help of computers, appears to have unlimited possibility and could reach super intelligence and even now man with the help of computers seems close to creating separate intelligence. We all agree it would be easier for super intelligence in space and time with energy and matter to create intelligence than it would be for just matter, energy, space and time working alone to create intelligence. So, if there is an infinite amount of time before man came on the scene, what is the likely hood of man being so luck as to be the first intelligence? If super intelligence came into existence half way back in time, that is still an infinite amount of time back, so is this super intelligence’s existence more likely than not?
The atheist and agnostic do not like to get into scientific discussions, since they have a moral issue with God and it really takes more faith to believe we are the first intelligence.
