Board index › Topical Discussion › Politics, Philosophy, and Religion

If God exists, why does He hide from us?

Page 5 of 15 [ 235 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ... 15  Next

Previous topic | Next topic

DeaconBlues
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Apr 2007
Age: 62
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,661
Location: Earth, mostly

26 Mar 2013, 10:51 am

Declension wrote:
cubedemon6073 wrote:
Well, what does omnipotence mean then?


"Omnipotence" means that you can do anything which is "logically possible". For example, God certainly can't create a blue non-blue object. So maybe God can't even impregnate a virgin.

Impregnating a virgin isn't impossible. You could do it yourself, given the necessary equipment. Doing it non-surgically is certainly a lot trickier, and might require supernatural intervention, but it's not "logically impossible".


_________________
Sodium is a metal that reacts explosively when exposed to water. Chlorine is a gas that'll kill you dead in moments. Together they make my fries taste good.


The_Walrus
Forum Moderator
Forum Moderator

User avatar

Joined: 27 Jan 2010
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Posts: 8,878
Location: London

26 Mar 2013, 11:00 am

Tensu wrote:
I don't believe God is hiding. Miracles are reported all the time. They are dismissed as hallucinations, coincidences, or hoaxes, and many of them probably are, but that doesn't mean they all are. I once heard that the medical community keeps a list of miraculous recoveries that defy the laws of physics, but since "medical miracle" is used to describe ANY against-the-odds recovery these days, searching for more info quickly proved an exercise in futility. :roll:

http://en.lourdes-france.org/deepen/cures-and-miracles

It isn't so much "the laws of physics" which are defied, because gravity doesn't have much to say about human disease, but our current understanding of medical science.

Whilst I am open to the possibility that these events are caused by a deity, I think they raise serious questions about the nature of the deity. Why does he cure some diseases in a small number of people, but allow the detonation of nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Holocaust? There are many ways he could have intervened without making it obvious he was intervening- for example, he could have stopped any nuclear bombs from detonating when tested, which would have made the Americans think their idea didn't work, or he could have stopped conscious thought of exterminating the Jews from entering the minds of the Nazis.



CaptainTrips222
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Mar 2009
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,100

26 Mar 2013, 8:22 pm

Schneekugel wrote:
CaptainTrips222 wrote:
Fnord wrote:
d. We see Him all of the time, and we just don't realize it.


God is invisible?


Or the guy before the supermarket, who asks you for some cents. :)


I hope not. I usually assume he's buying drugs with it.



ripped
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 5 Jan 2013
Gender: Male
Posts: 651

26 Mar 2013, 11:02 pm

DeaconBlues wrote:
You know, if the Old Testament and the Torah are to be believed, there would seem to be a very good reason why God should hide from His creation.

Because in those old stories, every time God revealed Himself directly, His people started acting like idiots.


To my knowledge people have never needed the qualification of a personal revelation of God to begin acting like idiots.



ripped
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 5 Jan 2013
Gender: Male
Posts: 651

26 Mar 2013, 11:17 pm

Tensu wrote:
I don't believe God is hiding.

It was just a simple way to put it.
How about; why isn't God personally and physically available, like on youtube for example.

Tensu wrote:
As for why the "light touch" approach, who can understand the mind of God? But if you want me to guess, I could think of several reasons...

... We are not worthy.

I have got a guess myself;

That He loves and respects us all so much that He won't reveal Himself here without our permission?



Tensu
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Dec 2009
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,661
Location: Nixa, MO, USA

26 Mar 2013, 11:35 pm

The_Walrus wrote:
Tensu wrote:
I don't believe God is hiding. Miracles are reported all the time. They are dismissed as hallucinations, coincidences, or hoaxes, and many of them probably are, but that doesn't mean they all are. I once heard that the medical community keeps a list of miraculous recoveries that defy the laws of physics, but since "medical miracle" is used to describe ANY against-the-odds recovery these days, searching for more info quickly proved an exercise in futility. :roll:

http://en.lourdes-france.org/deepen/cures-and-miracles

It isn't so much "the laws of physics" which are defied, because gravity doesn't have much to say about human disease, but our current understanding of medical science.

Whilst I am open to the possibility that these events are caused by a deity, I think they raise serious questions about the nature of the deity. Why does he cure some diseases in a small number of people, but allow the detonation of nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Holocaust? There are many ways he could have intervened without making it obvious he was intervening- for example, he could have stopped any nuclear bombs from detonating when tested, which would have made the Americans think their idea didn't work, or he could have stopped conscious thought of exterminating the Jews from entering the minds of the Nazis.


I am aware that a few of the recoveries have been explained and removed from the list, but the documentary that mentioned it suggested that that had only happened a few times relative to how many were being added.

Since you don't know if things would have been better if those people had recovered and things almost certainly wouldn't have been better had those bombs not gone off, asking "why didn't he X?" is sort of arguing from ignorance. I don't believe that this world is the best of all possible worlds, but it is possible that a change we might think of as better would actually make things worse.

I would prefer atrocities happen than free will not, although one thing confuses me. Most of the new testament writers strongly imply that free will exists, but Paul seems to alternate between saying that it does exist and saying it doesn't exist.



Declension
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 20 Jan 2012
Age: 38
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,807

27 Mar 2013, 3:36 am

DeaconBlues wrote:
Impregnating a virgin isn't impossible. You could do it yourself, given the necessary equipment. Doing it non-surgically is certainly a lot trickier, and might require supernatural intervention, but it's not "logically impossible".


Sorry, I used a misleading example. I didn't mean that it might be logically impossible because "virgins can't get pregnant", I meant that it might be logically impossible simply because it involves God interfering with the physical world. Maybe he just can't do that.



01001011
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 3 Mar 2010
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 991

27 Mar 2013, 4:48 am

Declension wrote:
DeaconBlues wrote:
Impregnating a virgin isn't impossible. You could do it yourself, given the necessary equipment. Doing it non-surgically is certainly a lot trickier, and might require supernatural intervention, but it's not "logically impossible".


Sorry, I used a misleading example. I didn't mean that it might be logically impossible because "virgins can't get pregnant", I meant that it might be logically impossible simply because it involves God interfering with the physical world. Maybe he just can't do that.


'Logically possible' here is just arguing by ignorance. For example it is not clear whether terminating the existence of an eternal 'god' is possible or not. At the end, given so many abstract attributes of the supposed 'god' it is not clear whether any action will contradict one of them. The word 'omnipotent' is again nonsense.



The_Walrus
Forum Moderator
Forum Moderator

User avatar

Joined: 27 Jan 2010
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Posts: 8,878
Location: London

27 Mar 2013, 11:15 am

Tensu wrote:
Since you don't know if things would have been better if those people had recovered and things almost certainly wouldn't have been better had those bombs not gone off, asking "why didn't he X?" is sort of arguing from ignorance. I don't believe that this world is the best of all possible worlds, but it is possible that a change we might think of as better would actually make things worse.

I would prefer atrocities happen than free will not, although one thing confuses me. Most of the new testament writers strongly imply that free will exists, but Paul seems to alternate between saying that it does exist and saying it doesn't exist.

I suppose you can make a utilitarian argument for the nuclear bomb. Personally I don't think the deaths of millions of innocent civilians was worth it.

I certainly think any argument that Auschwitz somehow improved the world is far-fetched in the extreme.

I personally reject any suggestion of "free will". I believe the future is determined. If we accept the existence of God, then he knows the future. If not, then the universe obeys laws. We might not understand them perfectly yet (think Schroedinger), we might not ever be able to measure the precise movements of some sub-atomic particles (think Heisenberg), but nonetheless, the universe obeys mechanical laws, and as such, the future is determined. Put it another way, if you suddenly relived a day from your childhood with nobody having any memory of the time since then, would anything different happen?



Tensu
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Dec 2009
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,661
Location: Nixa, MO, USA

27 Mar 2013, 11:54 pm

The_Walrus wrote:
I suppose you can make a utilitarian argument for the nuclear bomb. Personally I don't think the deaths of millions of innocent civilians was worth it.

I certainly think any argument that Auschwitz somehow improved the world is far-fetched in the extreme.

I personally reject any suggestion of "free will". I believe the future is determined. If we accept the existence of God, then he knows the future. If not, then the universe obeys laws. We might not understand them perfectly yet (think Schroedinger), we might not ever be able to measure the precise movements of some sub-atomic particles (think Heisenberg), but nonetheless, the universe obeys mechanical laws, and as such, the future is determined. Put it another way, if you suddenly relived a day from your childhood with nobody having any memory of the time since then, would anything different happen?


What would you suggest the U.S. had done? Everything I can think of would have ultimately resulted in more casualties, both Military and civilian, on both sides. Well, probably not U.S. civilian casualties, but you get my point.

I wasn't planning on arguing that the nazis somehow improved the world, but I will say that for all any of us know, humanity learned a lesson about racism from the concentration camps that it might not have learned otherwise. And God only knows how history would have played out then.

I never understood why people seemed to think God knowing the future and free will are mutually exclusive. God knowing what we will choose doesn't make it any less our choice.



ruveyn
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Sep 2008
Age: 89
Gender: Male
Posts: 31,502
Location: New Jersey

28 Mar 2013, 5:34 am

ripped wrote:
I believe in God.

So many of the religion threads on this forum boil down to this one argument. The one in this subject title.
Because I believe in God, in order to satisfy my intellect I have to have an answer to it.

So ladies and gentlemen of the WrongPlanet forum;
Why did God place us in this world, and then hide Himself from us?


Why do you torture yourself (and others) with unanswerable questions?

ruveyn



The_Walrus
Forum Moderator
Forum Moderator

User avatar

Joined: 27 Jan 2010
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Posts: 8,878
Location: London

28 Mar 2013, 6:07 pm

Tensu wrote:
I never understood why people seemed to think God knowing the future and free will are mutually exclusive. God knowing what we will choose doesn't make it any less our choice.

If I murder my parents tomorrow, God will have known before I was born. If it is guaranteed that I will murder my parents, then I do not have a choice to make in the matter. If God knows I will or will not murder my parents, then I do not have a choice in the matter.



Jaden
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 May 2012
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,867

28 Mar 2013, 11:56 pm

ripped wrote:
I believe in God.

So many of the religion threads on this forum boil down to this one argument. The one in this subject title.
Because I believe in God, in order to satisfy my intellect I have to have an answer to it.

So ladies and gentlemen of the WrongPlanet forum;
Why did God place us in this world, and then hide Himself from us?


His pressence is everywhere, it's just that people like to ignore Him and call the evidence that he's given the world of His existence, fake/heresay/a book/etc.

If people want to find God then they need to stop ignoring the tools necessary to do so.


_________________
Writer. Author.


auntblabby
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 115,217
Location: the island of defective toy santas

28 Mar 2013, 11:59 pm

Jaden wrote:
If people want to find God then they need to stop ignoring the tools necessary to do so.

pray tell [pun?] what are those "tools"?



Jaden
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 May 2012
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,867

29 Mar 2013, 12:31 am

auntblabby wrote:
Jaden wrote:
If people want to find God then they need to stop ignoring the tools necessary to do so.

pray tell [pun?] what are those "tools"?


Specifically, the Bible, it tells you how to reach God (as well as other things) but people like to shun it because it's a physical thing and not some "almighty sign" (like a burning bush for example). Not to mention prayer, God hears them all. People have to have faith too (which they clearly do not have if they're claiming that God is "hiding" from people).


_________________
Writer. Author.


jekenai
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

User avatar

Joined: 1 Apr 2012
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 70
Location: Czech Republic

29 Mar 2013, 4:52 am

Jaden wrote:
Specifically, the Bible, it tells you how to reach God (as well as other things) but people like to shun it because it's a physical thing and not some "almighty sign" (like a burning bush for example). Not to mention prayer, God hears them all. People have to have faith too (which they clearly do not have if they're claiming that God is "hiding" from people).


If you choose to stop think critically and not to try avoiding psychological biases but strengthen them, then you can start believe it God, but it's not the proof of God's existence. This method works well for other gods too and even for some non-theistic religion-like ideologies.