WHERE IS GOD?  WHY DOES HE LEAVE US AT THE MERCY OF SUBSTITUTING WISHFUL THINKING FOR HIM?

Religion speaks of the all-powerful creator of all things.  He is seen as all-good.  We are told we owe him everything for he makes all we have.  We are told that he is the same thing as morality in some mysterious way.

For many, their moral views are faulty so their God is going to be faulty too.

For many, God is just a word for a vague something.

For many, evil is a word for a vague something.

If evil is too vague for you, good will be too.  And vice versa.

God belief and the more you are devoted to God are symptoms only of your wish to validate yourself by trying to wish a god that suits you into existence.  His laws are not his laws.  You make them and you project them.

The notion that God hides and guides us to find him forgets that there is more hiding going on than that.  Good and evil and in-between are hiding a lot too.  If they hide, the God who stands for good and opposes evil, hides too in other ways.

In our discussion about God hiding, we are not asking for certain evidence.  Certainty does not exist.  We are asking for enough.  We don't even get that. A conman will tell you his God is hiding.  What else would you expect?

Miracles

Strangely, Christianity says that faith is knowledge (or as good as) and then contradicts this by saying God does miracles as signs. Some go as far as to make out miracles to be proofs as opposed to mere evidences. 

If you know in your heart that the faith is true then what do you need signs for? Are the signs only for the unbelievers? But it is only those who have already decided that miracles are signs - have faith already - that regard miracles as signs.

The way the universe looks like an accident shows if there is a God then he wants to hide and does not want to be found.  Moreover, accidents play a huge and sometimes complete role in everything that happens.  There is so so much - even more than we realise or notice - that is accidental or random and that clearly and unmistakeably shows that it is a sin to want to see a miracle or to see one with faith. What do I mean seeing with faith? The believer talks about the eyes of faith. So those who do not actually see a miracle think they see it through faith.  Faith is their eyes or so they say.  Christians say they see the risen Jesus with the eyes of faith.  They mean seeing in a loose but real sense.  Miracles are meant to be seen with faith meaning the believer has to choose to be biased.  A God who wants to hide would deplore such desperation to "see"  him or his miracles.  And a decent God would deplore it anyway.  And especially when it is not seeing at all.

Believers argue that God has designed all things even if it looks like has not.  God then must design creation to hide his design. But that is design too. An artist has to design a painting to make it look undesigned.  A  God who hides design as undesign is a superstition.  It is like saying that a fairy has let herself be filmed and when you look at the film and see nothing you argue that she has designed it so you cannot make her out.

God as authority and how it impacts on human wellbeing

External authority only exists to curtail freedom of thought and freedom of action. It demands obedience. For the demand to be taken seriously, it has to threaten punishment if you go your own way. If you will always do and believe the right thing you will not need an authority over you. The concept of God arises from religion's need to bully. It sets up a mythical authority so that it can reap the benefits. That is why it give you a God who hides. It is a cop-out for they want power and money in the name of God that they are not entitled to simply because they cannot prove their claims.

God is authority therefore God is force. He has no reason to hide. In fact his authority would be served better if he proved himself.

God means supreme authority and supreme virtue.

A God who cannot prove his authority and virtue is not a God at all. It's his authority and virtue that are supposed to make him God.

The best kind of authority enables us to prove its existence and authority. If God is the supreme virtue, then the more proof we have that he exists and is good the better. We can't believe that there is more virtue in doing the right thing when you are a bit doubtful that it really is right than in doing it when you know it is right. Thus it is a contradiction to say that the being that comes first in your life is one whose authority and virtue you only regard as possible or probable. You need proof to make him really the first. A god who is not first in your mind cannot be first in your heart. It is not true that adoring and serving a God whose existence you have no proof for makes you necessarily a better person. It's a hindrance and can only make you a hypocrite at best.

God and morality

Belief in moral value goes with belief in God or so we are told.  If that is so, then the following will make for interesting reading. God in some sense is considered by believers to be the virtues of compassion and love and kindness and justice etc that he wants us to have. If so, then the more proof he exists the better. To hide himself would be to hide virtue and to want us to fall more into vice. The more hiding God does the less sure we must be of our moral values being correct.

And if morality is a person and that person is God then it follows that if he hides too much a real relationship is impossible. Morality will suffer. Given the human tendency to love how people are perceived instead of what they are it is only going to lead to people worshipping a mental image of God not God. No decent God would want such a state of affairs.

God cannot hide if his love is bloody and sacrificial and his majesty is wiping backsides. Christianity says that God is principally an action word. That is why the Christians should be told they are untruthful when they make excuses for why God avoids leaving evidence for himself and hides.

I cannot really fully accept God or reject him even if I know he exists

If your freedom is faulty, God needs to give you strong evidence that he is there. Freedom improves with knowledge. Error wastes your energy. Even if truth is painful at least knowing it is a chance to grow. If your freedom is imperfect, you are only going to lose more of it or risk more of it by following a hiding God.

You may learn compassion and love and grace through suffering and loss. But you don’t have comprehension. Thus in so far as you don’t have it you will not have compassion and grace. Suppose I am unable to feel compassion or experience compassion for paedophiles. In so far as I cannot confirm that my neighbour is a non-paedophile I cannot have any true compassion for him. My compassion is imperfect.

We do not have complete control over our feelings. Suppose I know that sitting on the shore makes me happy. If I go to the shore on a sunny day and the feeling comes to me it does not follow that I caused the feeling. If I know the sun will shine on the beach and go to enjoy it, it does not follow that I caused the sun to come out. Same with my feelings. I could be wrong to think that the beach will make me feel happy - maybe I will feel nothing or maybe I will even feel sad. If I feel happy, I cannot make myself feel even better simply by willing it. God can make me feel he is there as a sign and keep me feeling like that but he won't.

We do not have complete control over our thoughts. Try visualising a teabag for a minute. Soon other images will take over.  There is no evidence that God can send us good thoughts that edify us and make us good.  It does not happen enough to justify faith.

Thoughts and feelings are involved every time you do something. They are not free. You cannot then be fully responsible for anything you do.  God is hiding himself when feelings and thoughts are under his thumb not ours and they speak against him or just pass over him.  This only happens for he is not real.

Even if I have personal responsibility, I do not have enough to fully reject God. Or to accept God either. When I am only partly free, it is clear that to say God hides in order to respect my freedom is just to make a fool of oneself. When I am half-forced whenever I act anyway he might as well force faith. He does it anyway. So what is the point of hiding and then forcing faith on people?

The gift of faith doctrine

Even if there is a God the God you worship is not necessarily him for the more we revere somebody we don't know the more we revere a construct of our perception. We adore the image of God not God. Believers need to make out that faith in God is a gift from him in which he supernaturally reveals himself to cover this up. They need to avoid having to prove that their God really is a God and not just what they want to think about God. They need to cover up that it is about their agenda. If you claim to believe in God, you have to prove that it is the real one you try to adore and mean to adore. The burden of proof is on you. You will never prove it for Mormons claim God is a polygamously married man who does not live in your heart while Catholics claim that he is spirit and lives in the hearts of those who love him and both claim their perception of God is a gift of faith that comes from God! They perceive their faith as a gift of revelation from God. But that is in their heads too for if it were really from God they would not disagree on core issues about what God is and about if he is human or not. The doctrine of a hiding God directly forces people to worship a God in their heads. Even if your perception of God is correct, that does not mean you believe in God because of who he is. Your perception could still be the driving force. The sun is shining. I can know this. Or I can perceive this. Knowing means I observe and keep my biased thoughts at bay. Perception means I let them meddle. If I let them meddle, that does not mean they manage to meddle. But it does mean I cannot be sure if my perception has meddled or not. This means that rather than knowing I know I end up unsure.

Finally

People suffer unjustly.  Believers say it is not enough to refute God conclusively.  They say it hints that God may be incompetent. They say it hints that God may be improbable. What one of these is important enough to be the working assumption?  An incompetent God adds to the pain and fear so it is better to assume suffering is not down to a God for there is none.  At least then you can make the effort and feel content that no god can thwart it or mess up your efforts.  And it can be argued that God can be improbable because he is incompetent and not making his presence clearer if he is there.  Anyway suffering hides God more than anything else does.

Being more logical and thoughtful may not save you from being biased but saves you from others who put the bias in you.  The consolation you have is that if you are careful with your reasoning bias becomes less sweeping and less of a threat and will not afflict you for too long.  Most people of faith have a form of faith that even their leaders would find irrational and superstitious and lazy.  It makes sense to hold that this hiding God concept is largely to blame for this idolatrous nonsense.  They end up with a God to suit themselves. 

Assuming free will is real, anybody proving something to you does not violate your free will but honours it. Even if you listen and do not want to hear it that is still respect for free will. It is more than respectful for free will for we freely do not want our free will to be the be all and end all. God does not respect the free will of the person who is on a desert island and who wants to hear him and experience him.  If God and faith in him and his truth is the most important concern of all then God is not only violating our free will but degrading it to the lowest. The observation that people will not follow the truth even when it is obviously the truth is actually irrelevant. That is their concern. It does not entitle God to hide the truth from anybody or to organise the world so that anybody who wants can see the truth and how good the evidence there is for it.

The hidden God of Christianity is a trick. If you invent a God you have to invent reasons for why there is no good or hard evidence that he exists. When you trick like that you give others implicit permission to come up with tricks of their own. Believers are so used to the tricking that they no longer see it as tricking. But it is.

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