If God exists, why does He hide from us?

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Because if I choose something else, God is wrong, and therefore is not omniscient.

What there is,is not what we think it is.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD9og3ylAzg&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/youtube]

If I were God I would hide from people, too.

No such thing. Quantum mechanics agrees very well at scales relevant to human beings. In any case quantum mechanics says humans are just as 'connected' to the universe as a rock or other objects do, and we don't find any magic form the later. There is no reason to think of a human as anything other than a lump of atoms.

I always wonder how is it rational that threads about the existence of an narrative fictional character end up debating about Quatum mechanics...

Two things I'd add to that:

1) There's no such thing as magic, or the supernatural - ie. in all cases they're pejorative labels of 'we don't know' which people generally tend to also use synonymously with 'fictitious'.

2) The hypothesis is that space and time are both illusion, the universe is holographic (this being an increasingly popular notion on the speculative edge of science), the additional step not really being taken by scientists at the moment as they don't have the means to make such claims - consciousness is the fundamental essence which shapes and edifies what we'd consider the baryonic material of the universe let alone such things we call dark matter, dark energy, etc.. The full time dilation of light also has its own implications. In a holographic universe you would have metrics or parameters existing more as data. As such both time and space are variables, ie. attributes, which we interpret into having the value that we experience. In that sense though all of this still folds up into the big bang from beginning to end, we'd rather interpret the explosion of the big bang as the initiating/boot sequence or the moment when the 'play' button was hit.

Albeit my fundamental religious views differ from what Misslizard just posted, I'd actually agree with the bulk of what's there - albeit I'd attribute such creation to a Christian Trinity rather than a Hindu deity. In truth not only do I think that science and religion cannot conflict but I'd lend my support to the notion that when it looks like science and religion are at odds you either have one, two, or all three of the following under consideration: 1) incomplete science, 2) a dogmatized and thus blinded scientific community, 3) a false religion being held up against the science.

Its amazing, particularly in the world of science, where anytime we think we've found the bottom of the rabbit hole it turns out to only get deeper. It makes me wonder how those who'd constantly claim that we know all there is to know feel comfortable in that assertion - particularly as they look back into history and see that time and progress have never been kind to the realities and dogmas that they were trying to enforce (ie. sometimes they'd be proven utterly wrong in a thousand years, one hundred years, as of now with our accelerated rate sometimes its mere decades).

No that's some old drunken wino that AspieOtaku found lying in an alley somewhere.

Something else I should add:

There's a very different nature of things between trying to talk to the God of the bible vs. trying to talk to ascended masters, spirit guides, etc.. That's to say spirit guides and ascended masters will be considerably more easy to get a hold of, as in they'll be much quicker to offer you proof that they exist if it will make a new ager or theosophist of you - which is their goal. On the other hand, with the God of the bible, you have to dedicate yourself to him, grow in faith, pray often for furthering yourself into his vision and will, and as you put that work in you'll see more favorable circumstances so long as you're asking for things that edify the salvation tract.

Of course the reasons for the differences in the behavior of the above are directly related, or a better way to phrase it would be that they're in direct competition - one has what you should want with everything you've got. The other group fouled some things up, are butt-hurt, and are trying to take out schadenfreude so we also can spend the next half of eternity enjoying the fruit of their mistakes along with them.

Not really


In other words the uttering below are made by people with little understanding in science but want to make their utterance look more impressive.


What 'consciousness' is supposed to mean here? How 'consciousness' is supposed to shape things? Like spoon bending?


If there is no such thing as time then the term 'initiating/boot sequence' is completely meaningless. Fail.


How do you define 'true' vs 'false' religion? It is funny how little your 'consciousness' sound like 'God' in the Christian bible.


We are comfortable because any new theory are necessarily compatible with our current observations.Speculating some magical scientific theory confirming 'god' is bound to be a fruitless exercise.

I believe you are misunderstanding how scientists generally think. You seem to be under the impression that scientists are claiming to have found THE ANSWER that explains the universe. Perhaps it looks that way if you only read popular media accounts of scientific discoveries, but if you listen to scientists, they are usually careful to point out that each advance in science is just a small addition to the collection of knowledge. Our understanding of the universe is always subject to reevaluation in light of new evidence.

If anyone tends to claim they have THE ANSWER that cannot be challenged and cannot be reevaluated, it is religion. The people who claim they know all there is to know are usually the ones claiming, with absolute self assurance, that there is a god.

The nice thing about science is that if it can be proved wrong, those wrong ideas get thrown away and people move on to improve the state of knowledge. And simply because an idea sounds good, that does not mean it is immediately accepted as true. That is inherent in the nature of science; to keep working to refine our understanding of things. Never assume things are true because it fits a preferred concept. Question everything, even established ideas. But do it with carefully thought out experiments so that you are testing what you think you are testing, not some other factor that you haven't controlled for. Sometimes scientists get it wrong. But the scientific process is self correcting and over time, we gain a better and better understanding of reality.

And as we understand the universe more and more, the idea of a conscious creator of the universe seems less and less likely. And yet there are people who cling to the idea of a god. They twist scientific concepts, of which they have only the most tenuous grasp, and try to suggest that these concepts imply the existence of a god. Over and over, they make a "god of the gaps" leap and assume that if there is something strange and unknown in the universe, it must mean there is a god. Scientists, on the other hand, conclude only that there is something strange and unknown and more work must be done to understand it.

If science is on a path to prove the existence of a god, then great. But things appear to be heading in the opposite direction. Over and over, the dogmas of religion become more and more ridiculous in the light of what we know about the universe. The concept of a god, invented in a scientifically unsophisticated time and place, is still held up as an inerrant description of reality even though everything we see around us suggests there is no validity to that concept.

Actually there are two terms that rather inconveniently become 'scientist' when applied to the holder because they're two completely different things a) those who do/perform/practice science and b) those who ascribe to scientism. Its the latter largely, those who ascribe to scientism, who will jump up and down screaming about magick, unicorns, and fairy dust if one suggests something that hasn't yet been confirmed several times over by a panel of particular peer reviewers who hold all of their beliefs about reality. Its the same hoi pelloi crowd who back when Galileo told them that he had literally everything set up in his telescope to prove to them that the earth rotated the sun they refused and said that if they did see what he claimed they'd see that they would be hallucinating. Its only perhaps called scientism today because it revolves around the misuse of science to support reductive materialism which has been the flavor of the week for the last two two centuries.

Yeah... That's the standard reaction. Crying "scientism" when scientific thinking implies you are wrong and holding up scientists when you think it supports your world view.

My point is that we can only know things for which we have evidence. Everything else is just guessing.

I'm not sure you really understand the nature of our ideological conflict. I'm one of 'those' people who's been pretty well convinced that miracles happen, that there are faith healers and hands on healers who really can do what people claim they do, and that there are psychics who really do both get impossible things right over the phone without anything more than a 'hi' out of you (which I also believe when they claim to channel that they are infact speaking to something other than their own imaginations). For anyone who'd point me to the periodic table of nonsense by knee-jerk reflex the conversation regarding the above is already ended - I'm a lunatic.

What I'm doing is looking at what the people who can actually do these things say about what they can do and how it works. There's a particular neurologist and catholic faith healer for one who I've heard talk at length about a unified field being real, I've read a whole onslaught of books such as the Seth series which Yale found fascinating enough to give its own library, and when you hear interviews online of any people who are writing new age books or who are probing that direction, it all starts sounding uncannily the same. All of that, to the people who'd label that lunacy, is inadmissible evidence.

What I will admit is that my claim isn't science, ie. I'd have to be taking where science is already at and connect the dots. What I'm offering instead is taking point A and point B and pointing out where they've been cited to connect.

With the above you just burned your 'reasonable agnostic skeptic' card right before my eyes.

TY, a little honesty goes a long way.

He is being reasonable.

But isn't that what you are doing? As far as I can tell, my comment is a reasonable assessment of your argument. If I'm wrong, please clearly point out how and why I am wrong.