I find it hard to believe that God would demonstrate His existence solely through selective and ambiguous appearances.
How else could He do so? The only way we could ever come to know about God would be something in the world that looked like one would expect given God, and not like one would expect given atheism, i.e. a miracle. Now, one could ask why He doesn’t do blatantly obvious miracles all the time to remove any ambiguity, but if He’s to demonstrate His existence, presumably miracles are going to be involved.
it would be trivially easy for him to arrange a miracle which no other agent could replicate, and for that matter he could allow everybody to see it at once. This would remove all ambiguity and would be a much better way of achieving the goal of making his existence known, or further, of making his will known. If he does indeed use miracles to further his goals, it must be the case that he prioritizes hiding his goals and interventions almost as much as actually achieving them. (after all, nobody can come to an agreement about what God wants or what counts as a miracle) I can’t think of a reason why this would be the case, so at this point I’ve abandoned the project of trying to justify it.
(a standard response would be that God’s ambiguous interventions are a test that only the faithful will interpret as evidence. At that point he is actively discouraging the impartial weighing of evidence, which is another baffling behavior which would need motivation)
I suspect that if there is a God existence itself cannot be explained without reference to Him. Take Peter Kreeft’s “Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God”, for example. Most are concerned not with particular experiences but the fact that there is something to experience, and the fact that we are able to experience it. Philosophy has been where most the great apologists have looked for and, to their minds, found God and if you seek more than personal experience it might be worthwhile to follow them.
To quote text without it being mixed up with one’s own words, incidentally, one can click on “show help” and look down to the bottom.
I find it hard to believe that God would demonstrate His existence solely through selective and ambiguous appearances.
How else could He do so? The only way we could ever come to know about God would be something in the world that looked like one would expect given God, and not like one would expect given atheism, i.e. a miracle. Now, one could ask why He doesn’t do blatantly obvious miracles all the time to remove any ambiguity, but if He’s to demonstrate His existence, presumably miracles are going to be involved.
it would be trivially easy for him to arrange a miracle which no other agent could replicate, and for that matter he could allow everybody to see it at once. This would remove all ambiguity and would be a much better way of achieving the goal of making his existence known, or further, of making his will known. If he does indeed use miracles to further his goals, it must be the case that he prioritizes hiding his goals and interventions almost as much as actually achieving them. (after all, nobody can come to an agreement about what God wants or what counts as a miracle) I can’t think of a reason why this would be the case, so at this point I’ve abandoned the project of trying to justify it.
(a standard response would be that God’s ambiguous interventions are a test that only the faithful will interpret as evidence. At that point he is actively discouraging the impartial weighing of evidence, which is another baffling behavior which would need motivation)
I suspect that if there is a God existence itself cannot be explained without reference to Him. Take Peter Kreeft’s “Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God”, for example. Most are concerned not with particular experiences but the fact that there is something to experience, and the fact that we are able to experience it. Philosophy has been where most the great apologists have looked for and, to their minds, found God and if you seek more than personal experience it might be worthwhile to follow them.
To quote text without it being mixed up with one’s own words, incidentally, one can click on “show help” and look down to the bottom.