“If God is there, then He should make Himself
obvious.” I’ve heard that said many
times. Since we are exploring the idea
of an experiment that directly relates to statements such as this, I thought
it would be worth discussing this issue directly before we go any further.
I hate to
quote from someone I haven’t vetted, but in this case it doesn’t matter
much. I’m just including the following
excerpt to serve as an example of the type of statement I’m considering
here. This is from Greta Christina on
Alternet:
“If the arguments for religion are so
wonderful, why are they so unconvincing to anyone who doesn't already believe?
And why does God need
arguments, anyway? Why does God need people to make his arguments for him? Why
can't he just reveal his true self, clearly and unequivocally, and settle the
question once and for all? If God existed, why wouldn't it just be obvious?
It is not up to atheists to prove that God
does not exist. It is up to believers to prove that he does. And in the absence
of any good, solid evidence or arguments in favor of God's existence -- and in
the presence of a whole lot of solid arguments against it -- I will continue to
be an atheist. God almost certainly does not exist, and it's completely
reasonable to act as if he doesn't.”
First, the
writer says something a bit contradictory at the end, and it is worth
highlighting briefly: “It is up to
believers to prove that he [God] does [exist].”
But earlier she says “Why can’t he [God] just reveal his true self…” Actually, as far as I can see, it is up to God to prove that He exists. I don’t think human beings, whether they
believe in God or not, can prove His existence one way or another. This is why I said last time that “I need
revelation”. If God doesn’t reveal
Himself to me, what chance do I have of figuring Him out? That’s why I am spending so much time on the
idea of a spiritual experiment.
But that’s
not the main reason I’m bringing up this quote at the moment. Rather, I want to consider the question “If
God existed, why wouldn’t it just be obvious?” Of course, as presented in the quote, it is actually
made as a statement, or at best a rhetorical question, not as a real honest question
for consideration. But I think it is a great question (but a foolish statement). That’s what I want to consider today.
So…how would God’s existence be obvious to
humans? I am thinking first here that we
want God to make Himself obvious to all people for all time (as opposed to God
making Himself obvious to me individually today, which is a different kind of
discussion[1]). Well…how about if God creates a universe out
of nothing and let’s man sense it and explore it? Obviously that’s not enough – we have that
already. What if God signed every aspect
of His creation like an artist would sign a painting? Hmmm.
Not sure what God’s signature would look like. Would it be “GOD” in English? Probably not.
I had a friend once who took the Hebrew name for God, “YHWH”, and said
that God had signed everything with the letter “Y” as the “first letter of His
name”. For example, every branch of
every tree forms a “Y”. Everywhere you
look you see “Y”s, so he saw God’s “signature” everywhere. Of course such foolishness breaks down when
you realize that the Hebrew character for the letter “Y” looks nothing like the
English letter “Y”! And besides, when
anything branches off, it can either make a “Y” or a “T”, so the odds of a lot
of “Y”s in nature is pretty high! That’s
probably not what we’re looking for here. Or maybe God’s signature is “GATC” or “TTTGTCT”
or “ATGAAGGTCA”? Who knows? The point is that none of these concepts will
work for the purpose of making God obvious.
If they’ve been there since the beginning of time, we will all just see
them as the natural design of things.
Without revelation of some sort, we won’t be able to separate some “signature”
from the rest of nature. God would have
to say to us “see that rose there? That’s
my signature.” Otherwise, it’s just a
rose.
How about if
God shows up every day as a bright light shining in the sky? So bright that it lights up everything around
you and allows you to see things that you never knew existed? So bright that everyone in the entire world can
see it every day. And God consistently
appears every day, without fail. Oh,
that’s the sun. Humans sometimes worship
the sun, and it makes some sense when you think about it that way. But now we know that the sun is just a big
ball of really hot hydrogen and helium and a few other things. How do we know that’s not God up there? Couldn’t God be really hot? And made of hydrogen? And round?
If we have already decided that God
is not in nature, or demonstrated by nature, then we have already decided some specific characteristics of God
without ever knowing who or what He is.
When we say “make yourself obvious God”, we are talking about a
supernatural God that is outside of nature.
Thus, everything that is normally
obvious to us – nature – is excluded. We are saying “God, make yourself obvious,
but not in a way that is obvious like nature – it has to be some new obvious thing.” What could that possibly be? Again, we’re talking about God making Himself
obvious to all people for all time. And
now we have just excluded everything that has been obvious to all people for
all time, which we call, collectively, nature.
Are we saying that God must make Himself obvious in a way that has not
been obvious until now? Yet that would
mean that the people who lived in the past would have missed out on the new “obvious”
God. How could that work? We are like a child saying to a parent “feed
me…but don’t use food.” “Make yourself
obvious God, but don’t use any of these obvious methods to do it!”
Maybe God isn’t the sun, but is God
in a sunrise? Is God in beauty or
ideas???
Maybe God is
the strong nuclear force? That would
make Him everywhere and in everything at the smallest level. But the strong nuclear force is a natural
thing…so we exclude that.
The point is,
nothing natural will do to answer our question.
OK, so what
is left after we exclude God from making Himself obvious through nature? Well, how about a supernatural miracle? A supernatural miracle is something that
happens outside of nature. But most
atheists, and many scientists, would exclude the possibility of miracles a priori. This leaves us with the final clarification
of our original statement. What we are
really saying is: “God, make yourself obvious, but you can’t use nature to make
yourself obvious, and you can’t use anything supernatural, because supernatural
things don’t exist.” Does my previous
statement about “locking and bolting the door” [here] make sense now? If you exclude miracles – if you exclude the
supernatural – you have locked the door to God.
He cannot get in. If He is there
on the other side, He cannot get in to you.
You cannot blame God for that. You
can’t blame God for not coming in and showing Himself to you. You cannot say “make yourself obvious” when
you’ve locked and bolted the door.[2]
All I’m
hoping for is that you unlock the door…and then stand back! I personally am a strong believer that it is
God’s responsibility to prove Himself to us.
It is not up to the believer in God to prove He does exist, and it is
not up to the atheist to prove He does not exist. It’s up to God. But we
human beings have to allow God an avenue through which to do that. Allow God to make Himself obvious. That’s the journey we are taking with the
idea of a “spiritual experiment”. But if
the door is locked and bolted, you can’t even start. And, in my view of reality, the only way to
unlock the door is to allow for the possibility
of a supernatural event – a miracle – in your own personal concept of reality.
You are
safer, by the way, to keep the door locked.
Conducting experiments is not safe.
But it is exciting.
[1]
I think that, in reality, most of the time when people say “God should make
Himself obvious” they really mean the latter:
that God should make Himself obvious to them personally. But when they make the statement, they make
it sound as if they care about all humanity for all time. So, today I’m addressing that implied aspect
of the statement. We’ll have to pick up
the idea of God making a “personal appearance just for me” issue at a later
time.
[2]
Why doesn’t God just break down the door and barge right on in? Well, that’s a “such a” problem (see here). That’s not an issue of God’s existence – that’s
another issue of God’s character. He
could break down the door, but He chooses not to. And really, how hard do you want to make God
work to get your attention???
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