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If God exists, why does He hide from us?

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AspieOtaku
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01 Apr 2013, 6:19 am

MCalavera wrote:
Because God only exists in the mind.
And in some cases your gut when your about to pass gas!!


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01 Apr 2013, 9:40 am

Go ask god



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01 Apr 2013, 1:49 pm

MCalavera wrote:
Because God only exists in the mind.

The question posited is, "IF God exists..."

Responses along the lines of, "He doesn't," are non-responsive at best. What, you can't even come up with a snarky/funny reason why He might hide? Maybe there are cosmic bill collectors after Him to pay for all the energy used in the Big Bang...


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01 Apr 2013, 2:31 pm

SHE has bigger fish to fry :lol:


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01 Apr 2013, 6:13 pm

Misslizard wrote:
SHE has bigger fish to fry :lol:


That's silly. Everybody knows God is genderless.



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01 Apr 2013, 6:55 pm

^^^^^Ok,SHIM has bigger fish to fry :lol:


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Sosiologismus
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02 Apr 2013, 2:29 pm

Cei wrote:
Thom_Fuleri wrote:
Cei wrote:
If we deny the existence of God, it's a way to avoid responsibility.


How is the idea that an omnipotent being with a plan that has control over your life and soul NOT avoiding responsibility? Praying for guidance and declaring something was "God's will" are both absolving responsibility.

This is the irony of altruism and atheism. A Christian does good works because they are told to, or because they want to get the "good" afterlife. This is not altruism, as there's a payoff (whether it's a real payoff or not is irrelevant). An atheist has no reason to do good works beyond the desire to do good works. So is it possible to be an altruistic believer?


The believer should ideally do more than that. Not working and just praying for money, for example, is obviously avoiding responsibility as well, yes. You should do whatever you can, besides just trusting in God.

Of course it is possible. That's kind of a stupid question, IMO. Many times I find myself having trouble remembering to do things with God in mind, instead of just helping people first and considering my intentions later. Besides, does doing something because you are told to mean you did not act altruistically? If someone tells you to donate money to a charity, will it not be altruistic for you to do so, even if that person has at that point no way of knowing whether you did or not? On top of that, I consider religion to be not as much a reason to do good works, as a guide on what is good. If someone is totally selfish, will the threat of Hell really deter them? Or will they just convince themselves not to believe in it?


Wasn't "Hell" invented by the hawks in the authoritarian church decades after the Bible was written? To solidify the concept of religion and to make/force people to follow it. Why do you believe in that? Isn't it just an example of the incredibly numerous cases of human flaws and irrational actions made by its followers and leaders? (with the flaw/irrational action being an evident case of power abuse, propaganda and social control).

And, believers may be altruistic, but they are altruistic in a much lesser form than those that are not believers. Altruism dependant upon a given object or a written/traditional concept is an exterior influence that has very limited, interdependant potential - as well as it being artificial, forced, pretended, affected, unnatural, and maybe also limiting and burdening. Isn't that a lesser version of what you could have if the altruism was based on yourself and your own incentive, with biological foundations that every human being can share and develop?



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02 Apr 2013, 6:17 pm

The question is: if god made us, why is he hiding from us?

Ok, let's play along with some of Christian mythology. We will stipulate that there is a creator god and a destroyer god; in this case Yaweh and Satan. But what if Yaweh were the destroyer and Satan was the creator?

Maybe what happened was Yaweh and Satan were battling it out for superemecy and Yaweh got the upper hand. He won the battle so it's his history we are reading. Now this destroyer god likes chaos and strife. He enjoys seeing people fight amongst themselves. He enjoys watching war and hatred among people. So what does he do? He hides and then demands that his followers rely on faith to "know" him.

Faith is the belief in a thing for which there is no evidence. Think about the consequences of relying on faith to know the "truth". It means you can elevate any preferred idea to the status of truth without requiring any evidence or proof. That means any group can decide their god is the one true god. Much fighting will ensue.

If you rely on truths that comes with no evidence to support your beliefs then you are at grave risk of believing something false to be true because it is what you would like to believe not because it is actually the truth. If it serves your interests to believe you are god's chosen people and he said you could have a particular plot of land and since your faith requires no proof, you can simply say "God said I could have that land!" And when people fight back, you can happily believe that god is on your side and you go in and slaughter them. And who can say you are wrong? After all, you have faith.

If I were an evil, destroyer god, I would encourage people to rely on faith. It would result in a mighty fine show of violence and anger between different people.

So if there is a god, the reason why he hides is that if we saw him for what he was, we would all rise up and destroy him.


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Cei
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02 Apr 2013, 9:50 pm

Sosiologismus wrote:
Cei wrote:
Thom_Fuleri wrote:
Cei wrote:
If we deny the existence of God, it's a way to avoid responsibility.


How is the idea that an omnipotent being with a plan that has control over your life and soul NOT avoiding responsibility? Praying for guidance and declaring something was "God's will" are both absolving responsibility.

This is the irony of altruism and atheism. A Christian does good works because they are told to, or because they want to get the "good" afterlife. This is not altruism, as there's a payoff (whether it's a real payoff or not is irrelevant). An atheist has no reason to do good works beyond the desire to do good works. So is it possible to be an altruistic believer?


The believer should ideally do more than that. Not working and just praying for money, for example, is obviously avoiding responsibility as well, yes. You should do whatever you can, besides just trusting in God.

Of course it is possible. That's kind of a stupid question, IMO. Many times I find myself having trouble remembering to do things with God in mind, instead of just helping people first and considering my intentions later. Besides, does doing something because you are told to mean you did not act altruistically? If someone tells you to donate money to a charity, will it not be altruistic for you to do so, even if that person has at that point no way of knowing whether you did or not? On top of that, I consider religion to be not as much a reason to do good works, as a guide on what is good. If someone is totally selfish, will the threat of Hell really deter them? Or will they just convince themselves not to believe in it?


Wasn't "Hell" invented by the hawks in the authoritarian church decades after the Bible was written? To solidify the concept of religion and to make/force people to follow it. Why do you believe in that? Isn't it just an example of the incredibly numerous cases of human flaws and irrational actions made by its followers and leaders? (with the flaw/irrational action being an evident case of power abuse, propaganda and social control).

And, believers may be altruistic, but they are altruistic in a much lesser form than those that are not believers. Altruism dependant upon a given object or a written/traditional concept is an exterior influence that has very limited, interdependant potential - as well as it being artificial, forced, pretended, affected, unnatural, and maybe also limiting and burdening. Isn't that a lesser version of what you could have if the altruism was based on yourself and your own incentive, with biological foundations that every human being can share and develop?


I don't know that much about the history of Christianity. I believe in that because a: Life would be meaningless if we all ended up in the same place no matter what, and b: it's been in the Qur'an all along.


That's a pretty stupid generalization. If Atheist Bob makes a donation to charity and gets a tax deduction, is he necessarily doing it because of the tax deduction, or is it possible that he is acting out of complete altruism, and is only taking the tax deduction so he can save money so that he can keep giving it away? Does the existence of the tax deduction make him less altruistic? Would it affect his motives behind the donation if he forgot about the tax deduction after considering it when giving away the money? Or if he found out that he was eligible for a tax deduction after he had already donated the money? Would it make him less altruistic if he got his name written on a wall or a plaque or something because of his donation?

Obviously rewards can influence motivation but do not necessarily influence it. How then is Christian Joe who makes the same donation automatically acting selfishly just to get to Heaven? Maybe it's just a nice bonus, or he didn't even think about it, just the same as Atheist Bob's tax donation.



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02 Apr 2013, 9:57 pm

Sosiologismus wrote:
And, believers may be altruistic, but they are altruistic in a much lesser form than those that are not believers. Altruism dependant upon a given object or a written/traditional concept is an exterior influence that has very limited, interdependant potential - as well as it being artificial, forced, pretended, affected, unnatural, and maybe also limiting and burdening. Isn't that a lesser version of what you could have if the altruism was based on yourself and your own incentive, with biological foundations that every human being can share and develop?


But if you don't believe in God, why believe altruism is good? Humans have both altruistic and selfish instincts, and there isn't any logical reason to favor one over the other.

jagatai wrote:
The question is: if god made us, why is he hiding from us?

Ok, let's play along with some of Christian mythology. We will stipulate that there is a creator god and a destroyer god; in this case Yaweh and Satan. But what if Yaweh were the destroyer and Satan was the creator?

Maybe what happened was Yaweh and Satan were battling it out for superemecy and Yaweh got the upper hand. He won the battle so it's his history we are reading. Now this destroyer god likes chaos and strife. He enjoys seeing people fight amongst themselves. He enjoys watching war and hatred among people. So what does he do? He hides and then demands that his followers rely on faith to "know" him.

Faith is the belief in a thing for which there is no evidence. Think about the consequences of relying on faith to know the "truth". It means you can elevate any preferred idea to the status of truth without requiring any evidence or proof. That means any group can decide their god is the one true god. Much fighting will ensue.

If you rely on truths that comes with no evidence to support your beliefs then you are at grave risk of believing something false to be true because it is what you would like to believe not because it is actually the truth. If it serves your interests to believe you are god's chosen people and he said you could have a particular plot of land and since your faith requires no proof, you can simply say "God said I could have that land!" And when people fight back, you can happily believe that god is on your side and you go in and slaughter them. And who can say you are wrong? After all, you have faith.

If I were an evil, destroyer god, I would encourage people to rely on faith. It would result in a mighty fine show of violence and anger between different people.

So if there is a god, the reason why he hides is that if we saw him for what he was, we would all rise up and destroy him.


Technically, very little can be "known". Since our senses can lie to us, we don't really "know" that the physical world exists, we accept it does on faith because we don't really have much reason to believe in something else. Now it doesn't take much faith to believe the physical world exists, but it still requires faith. Faith doesn't necessarily mean the absence of any evidence. The more evidence, the less faith. But ultimately most of what we "know" is really what we believe. Knowledge is rare. What humans experience is varying levels of faith.

Also, what makes you think destroying an all-knowing, all-powerful, immortal being is possible?



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02 Apr 2013, 10:13 pm

Tensu wrote:
Also, what makes you think destroying an all-knowing, all-powerful, immortal being is possible?

If the Being is all-knowing, then It knows when, where, and how you plan to attack It. If It is all-powerful, foiling your attack is nothing to It. Therefore, destroying It is impossible.


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02 Apr 2013, 10:30 pm

Tensu wrote:
jagatai wrote:
The question is: if god made us, why is he hiding from us?

Ok, let's play along with some of Christian mythology. We will stipulate that there is a creator god and a destroyer god; in this case Yaweh and Satan. But what if Yaweh were the destroyer and Satan was the creator?

Maybe what happened was Yaweh and Satan were battling it out for superemecy and Yaweh got the upper hand. He won the battle so it's his history we are reading. Now this destroyer god likes chaos and strife. He enjoys seeing people fight amongst themselves. He enjoys watching war and hatred among people. So what does he do? He hides and then demands that his followers rely on faith to "know" him.

Faith is the belief in a thing for which there is no evidence. Think about the consequences of relying on faith to know the "truth". It means you can elevate any preferred idea to the status of truth without requiring any evidence or proof. That means any group can decide their god is the one true god. Much fighting will ensue.

If you rely on truths that comes with no evidence to support your beliefs then you are at grave risk of believing something false to be true because it is what you would like to believe not because it is actually the truth. If it serves your interests to believe you are god's chosen people and he said you could have a particular plot of land and since your faith requires no proof, you can simply say "God said I could have that land!" And when people fight back, you can happily believe that god is on your side and you go in and slaughter them. And who can say you are wrong? After all, you have faith.

If I were an evil, destroyer god, I would encourage people to rely on faith. It would result in a mighty fine show of violence and anger between different people.

So if there is a god, the reason why he hides is that if we saw him for what he was, we would all rise up and destroy him.


Technically, very little can be "known". Since our senses can lie to us, we don't really "know" that the physical world exists, we accept it does on faith because we don't really have much reason to believe in something else. Now it doesn't take much faith to believe the physical world exists, but it still requires faith. Faith doesn't necessarily mean the absence of any evidence. The more evidence, the less faith. But ultimately most of what we "know" is really what we believe. Knowledge is rare. What humans experience is varying levels of faith.

Also, what makes you think destroying an all-knowing, all-powerful, immortal being is possible?

Here it is important to make a distinction between faith and trust.

Faith is the belief in a thing for which there is no evidence.

Trust is a belief that a thing is true despite a lack of direct personal experience of the evidence because a chain of evidence and the agreement of multiple perspectives suggests a strong likelihood that the belief is correct.

You can argue that in the end we have to take it on faith that we even exist, but there is a point where the "we all have to have faith in our own existence" argument just gets silly.

While our senses DO lie to us (which is why taking anything on faith is such a dangerous proposition) we can devise test instruments that can measure the environment in ways that bypass our subjective experience of reality and provide repeatable results that we can analyze without the subjectivity of our senses.

There are in fact things that can be known. This is what science is all about. Scientists work hard to devise testing methods that cannot be fooled by our own subjectivity. If "ultimately most of what we "know" is really what we believe" then technologies like modern electronics and GPS etc would be far more of a crap shoot. These technologies work because we KNOW how certain things in physics work. Not because we have some vague belief.

And by the way, it is very easy to destroy a god. You just stop believing in it.


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02 Apr 2013, 10:38 pm

An answer both a Christian and a New Ager could agree on?

We're in school. We'll see dad when we get off the bus.



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02 Apr 2013, 10:52 pm

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdxeqEoDXco[/youtube]


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03 Apr 2013, 12:03 am

Nobody specified WHICH God.This story is just as likely as the ones in the bible.Prove that the Christian God exists and then prove that Shiva does not.[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtvkTvoPjwY&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/youtube]


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03 Apr 2013, 2:31 am

Cei wrote:
I don't know that much about the history of Christianity. I believe in that because a: Life would be meaningless if we all ended up in the same place no matter what, and b: it's been in the Qur'an all along.


That's a pretty stupid generalization. If Atheist Bob makes a donation to charity and gets a tax deduction, is he necessarily doing it because of the tax deduction, or is it possible that he is acting out of complete altruism, and is only taking the tax deduction so he can save money so that he can keep giving it away? Does the existence of the tax deduction make him less altruistic? Would it affect his motives behind the donation if he forgot about the tax deduction after considering it when giving away the money? Or if he found out that he was eligible for a tax deduction after he had already donated the money? Would it make him less altruistic if he got his name written on a wall or a plaque or something because of his donation?

Obviously rewards can influence motivation but do not necessarily influence it. How then is Christian Joe who makes the same donation automatically acting selfishly just to get to Heaven? Maybe it's just a nice bonus, or he didn't even think about it, just the same as Atheist Bob's tax donation.


I don't think the meaning of life is dependant on where you end up after you die (objective logic.). And if the people on this forum is right, then the Qu'ran is full of tricks similar to that of the church (though I'm curious about the extent of this, and how it is arranged) and should therefore not be taken too seriously. It's just social shananigans, personal sociology / use of social control. People usually explain it by saying that society was different then, and that this is the reason for them saying and writing what they did.

The probability of atheist Bob not being completely altruistic in that case is very substantial. It makes it less probable. The other example, uh, it's a bit unclear, but I think the answer to your question is yes, his motives would cause a bigger challenge and more personal work without an exterior factor like the tax deduction in place - this is of course an example, and consists of the only real alternative in "knowing" about these things: interpretation from an outside point of view. Therefore calculation of probability. This answers the following question as well. And the next (plaque).

The probability. Without a religion (which directly and purposely affects the motives and the probability of the given motive - religion often consists of rules and directions you know) it is much more probable that an act is completely altruistic, because it necessitates it.