Hello Talquin, this is an interesting topic, and one that should contain a pot of gold when you get there.
Why does God show himself to the believers but not to the skeptics?
This is probably where the best place to look for errors is. You have presented this statement as an assumption. That assumption actually does not fit with the way God operates in the world. When I say this, it is because I understand God to be active in everyone's lives, yet not everyone is aware of it. Those who are aware of it have decided to attribute things in their life to His action, whereas those who are not aware of it have chosen to attribute things in their life to other causes. To say that everyone who believes the things in their life are God's action are always right is not a reliable statement. Sometimes people can be more inclined to paranoia, and could possibly attribute a car honking at the same time as a thought in their mind, to be God's emphasis on that thought, and therefore significant. They would go ahead to assume God was giving them a message. On the other hand, someone who is uncomfortable with feeling paranoid might actively resist any such significant actions in their life, in favour of alternative explanations (eg coincidence). There is a phrase which is nice to think about: "coincidence is when God chooses to remain anonymous". The relevant question to this topic is "why do the faithless always put God down as coincidence?".
.. So what this shows us is that people who have faith that God is active in their lives, will choose to often attribute significant events to Him, whereas those who do not have such faith will choose to never attribute significant events to Him.
At this point, we should look at motives for actively denying God's activity in our lives. I did mention already that one possible reason for this is being uncomfortable with the idea of making paranoid sense. There are other common, strong motives too, for example the feeling of being isolated from present social norms, resentment and mockery from peers (I have suffered that, though I did not really expect it), resistance to the idea of having to change given habits and beliefs wrt moral judgements on sin (eg, enjoying freedom to sleep around, and knowing that this will need to be sacrificed), etc. All these things indicate that the decision to acknowledge God is somehow in conflict with other desires.
But now that I have said this, I still do want to know if you do have a reasonable explanation for having made this assumption, and if so, I would quite like to understand that reason.
When you ask a Christian how they know their belief is true, they'll often say through personal revelation or that they have directly observed God. However, it's usually the case that they were Christians prior to this occurring. So why would an all-loving God show himself to those who already believe he exists but not show himself to skeptics?
I am pretty certain at this time, that it is about the recipient's willingness to recognise Him. However, you might be able to explain why you think otherwise, so that I can understand too, and maybe then my point of view will be different.
There are only two reconciliations to this that I can think of:
1) God wants for there to be skeptics
2) God doesn't really exist
Can I adjust the first one to be more consistent with what I think is likely to be true, and then let's see if we can agree:
1. God often allows skeptics to be skeptics.
2. God does not exist.
If you agree to those words, then I will agree too.
.. BTW, please take another look at
post #9.
If God knows everything, then he knows precisely what it would take to get each and every atheist to believe he exists. He would know that my lack of belief isn't due to some hatred or negative feeling toward God or the concept of God. He would know that my lack of belief - as is the case with most atheists - is simply due to lack of evidence. For more on this, I suggest you watch this video by Scott Clifton.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXzlMblBQpQ
Hey, thanks for this, Scott looks in this video like a nice guy who really would love to know God, and who has suffered pretty badly from poor instruction on matters pertaining to Jesus Christ. I will consider watching more of his thoughts. However, I have a few observations to make here, which from a critic's perspective in support of Christian faith, can give rise to serious discrediting of his position. See what you think of these observations, and let me know since I would like to know the way you tend to respond:
2.00 - morality and sin
"to approach religious claims critically and prudently than to approach them at face value on faith".
What this says essentially is that he does not agree with the moral and ethical claims made by some religious people (who specificaly he must have in mind as he says this). Obviously with such a broad and ambiguous statement as this, has no specification as to which moral and ethical statements he disagrees with, we do not have enough information to make judgements. However, I do feel comfortable to loosely speculate to make a general point. I am sure that Scott would agree with some moral and ethical statements that the same religious people he is referring to, would make. So that means that there are only some moral and ethical statements that he does not agree with. If we did have enough information to investigate this fully, I would expect to find out that ultimately Scott thinks that some religious moral judgements are unfair and impede on a person's freedom when it is not reasonable. If that is the case, and I invite you to correct me if you can, then all we are looking at is a different opinion of what is reasonable. Whenever there is disagreement in what is reasonable, I believe, it is due to one or more parties having insufficient information. What results is that one party is basing their reasons on information that another party does not have, or does not consider. It follows to my thinking then, that Scott could very well be lacking sufficient information to be able to form a reasonable view on the moral statements that he disagrees with.
However, we must remember that we have no idea which statements he is referring to, so it is just as reasonable to believe that the person making the statement he is objecting to, could be lacking sufficient information to be reasonable.
4.50 - too many holes, contradictions etc, requiring circular reasoning, ad-hock speculation
Again, this is an issue with having not had sufficient information to be able to understand. It is no surprise really that Scott has encountered these problems while discussing these matters, because many people do believe without understanding. What happens in those cases, is they listen to someone preaching to them something that the preacher understands, and the preacher conveys it to them well enough that it makes sense to them, so they believe it. Then enthusiastically, they encourage everyone else to believe it too. The problem comes when they try to relate their second-hand knowledge to someone with a greater threshold of information than their own understanding is able to provide, such as Scott. Then what we find is that Scott is trying to learn from people who do not have the level of understanding that he is seeking.
If we extrapolate this to the extreme, we can quite safely assume that there really is no person out there who has sufficient understanding to be able to give us the understanding we need. I expect totally consciously that you will be facing that situation now with me. So this would bring us to ask the question, if nobody has sufficient ability to explain to us what we need, in order to understand these concepts, then how is it that the concepts have been understood by such a vast number of people through the ages? I would encourage you to think critically and prudently about the idea that those who have faith have a lower threshold for understanding than those who don't, because that is not a relaible pattern. There are people of faith and non-faith at equal placement on that sort of chart.
5.09 - cognitive faculties do not allow him to choose what he believes is and is not true about reality
.. is immediately contradicted by his following statement:
5.27 - he thought it insufficient and immoral to believe without understanding - that is the cognitive faculty that enables him to choose to believe in a being simply because he sought reward or feared punishment.
.. However, what we see is that he is choosing to disbelieve. Now, you possibly might not see this as a contradiction yet, and if that is the case, I would like to discuss it until it becomes clear that we have enough information to be able to form a reasonable understanding to which we both agree. I would begin by asking you, what reward do you think Scott gets from choosing to not believe?
5.56 - "pleased with the way I have employed the intelect and moral sense with which He has endowed me"
On a large part, I think Scott is quite right. He obviously thinks a lot, thinks quite fairly, seems like someone who values good treatment of others and who if was able to understand why those sins he thinks are unreasonable are sins, would probably agree. But, (and I do expect you will probably apply an inaccurate stereotype to me here), we all do things at times which let God down. Scott is doing that here too, in presenting to the world his point of view and looking to win support for the idea that God is wrong or non-existent etc, and because he is likable and bound to gain that support, is actually working against God's interests.
Now, I am not going to begin accusing that he is not doing so innocently, or that God will not be willing to forgive him for it, because of the correct statements he has made here, that I am not omnicient, and I am not the decider of God's response. But I do think that if he is denying some of God's activity in his life (and I am suspicious from having read his body language while observing the thoughts he has had during this conversation), then it definitely would be dishonest.
7.25 - sick to stomach with an image of God based on insufficient understanding - "Good thing I'm not wrong" - defense strategy against obvious deep hurt
Yes, thank you for showing me this video, I would like to see more of this guy's developments. Yours too, please let me know how this finds you.
