Divine Hiddenness and Nonresistant Nonbelievers
P1: if God exists, nonresistant nonbelievers would not exist
P1: nonresistant nonbelievers do exist
C: God does not exist
Defense of P1:
A relationship with God would be the highest good in the world if God exists, and God would want to, and have the power to achieve this good. The reason this is the highest good is the same reason why any relationship is good, (because it is intrinsically good, or mutually beneficial etc.) And surely a relationship with good would be the best relationship of all.
Defense of P2:
There are at least some nonbelievers who love the idea of God, and would have a relationship with God if it exists. I like to think I am one of them.
P1: nonresistant nonbelievers do exist
C: God does not exist
Defense of P1:
A relationship with God would be the highest good in the world if God exists, and God would want to, and have the power to achieve this good. The reason this is the highest good is the same reason why any relationship is good, (because it is intrinsically good, or mutually beneficial etc.) And surely a relationship with good would be the best relationship of all.
Defense of P2:
There are at least some nonbelievers who love the idea of God, and would have a relationship with God if it exists. I like to think I am one of them.
Comments (51)
Explain.
Passive atheists.
What do I win?
1. If there's evidence for God (God exists), nonresistant nonbelievers would not exist.
I believe protestants are dead against natural theology (purportedly evidence-based), relying solely on their faith (sola fidei).
"P1" is not true, ergo "C" does not follow. :point:
e.g.
p1. If the round Earth exists, then "nonresistant" flat earthers would not exist.
p2. "Nonresistant" flat earthers do exist.
c. The round Earth does not exist.
:roll:
I sense a disturbance in the Force.
The argument form the OP is using is modus tollens and it's valid. Your counterexample is not a counterexample. If p1 and p2 are true, c follows. c (The round Earth does not exist) just happens to be false, independent of the premises and that probably threw you off.
As for the OP itself, drawing from my past 30 years of life on earth during which I learned people love games - god could simply be playing hide-and-seek with us!
I don't think this premise can be demonstrated to be true.
Quoting aminima
You need to make the case that god is good first, which is not a given. Or that your definition of good corresponds with a deity's. It also doesn't distinguish between theist or a potential deist account. It presupposes in specific terms what a particular account of a god would want - how can anyone demonstrate this?
Yeah. The argument in the OP is likely unsound (P1 is doubtful), but valid. I'm baffled by this simple mistake of 180's.
Premise 1 is where the problem lies. Belief is independent of proof/evidence. Flat-earthers exist because they're quite clearly ignoring the evidence; hence it's false that If the round Earth exists, then "nonresistant" flat-earthers wouldn't exist.
As for the OP's argument, God & "nonresistant nonbelievers" can coexist if evidence is concealed (hidden God) and so the premise if God exists, nonresistant nonbelievers would not exist is false.
In the first case (flat-earthers) evidence is ignored and in the second (atheism) evidence is hidden.
I believe this is the point of contention.
Why would nonresistant nonbelievers necessarily not exist if God exists?
Quoting 180 Proof
Hmm, are you sure? The flat earthers I have observed online seem very resistant to evidence of round earth.
@aminima, I think what you are saying is that if God exists, he would be readily knowable to people that aren't opposed to the idea of him.
Like 1+1 equaling 2, God should be easy to deduce if he were a necessary being.
I think you are right.
However, like @Tom Storm pointed out, it depends on what the essential qualities of God are.
One of the major issues I observe is when atheists and/or theists conflate or equivocate between God as some necessary ultimate metaphysical ground of being and God as some being existing within reality. Eg, the Greek and Hindu pantheon of deities.
I only attempt to argue against an all-good God, so any evil Gods are not part of the scope of the argument
Quoting Tom Storm
If the theist claims that even though we cannot think of a reason for God allowing evil, this does not entail that there is none, they are similarly entailed to believe that even though we cannot think of a reason for God lying to us, this does not entail that there is none. So, the theist would not be able to rule out the possibility of divine lies, and has to concede that God could be lying about any number of things, like the eternal world, and even though we cannot think of a reason for his lying, this does not entail that there is none.
P2 God has not proven he exists
P3 It is not necessary to believe God exists
P4 If God exists it would be necessary to believe God exists
P5 It is not necessary to believe god exists
C God does not exist
We have no access to a god in order to determine what god's nature actually is. Is Yahweh, say, good or evil? Discuss. I would say this is unclear from the text. Unlikely to be good. Plus there is the issue of what appears good to humans may look very different to a god. I don't think we build any argument on premises we cannot know to be true.
:ok:
When Sarah forms a relationship with utterly absurd William, then I conclude that Sarah is flawed, for William is an ignorant and morally flawed person and he seems beneath her.
Needless to say, we are ignorant and morally flawed people. Why on earth would God want a relationship with us? He would want 'not' to have one with us, it seems to me.
Good question! PSR.
Quoting Bartricks
The same question but now with hints in the sentence preceding the query.
PSR again.
A relationship with God is not the highest good. This is because possessing a good is higher than knowing it (having a relation with it). God gave us free will for a good which is greater than the good of knowing Him (having a relationship with Him). This is justified because possessing a good falls into a category of more benefit than knowing that good.
So the possession of free will, (as a good), which allows us to freely judge the evidence, is more important for God to grant us, as a higher good for us, than the good of us knowing Him, or having a relationship with Him. That is the nature of love, it must be freely chosen rather than imposed. Incidentally, this is also the case with all the suffering and evil in the world, which comes about as the result of human beings having free will. Possessing the good, (free will), is superior to knowing the good. And not knowing the good results in suffering and evil.
Deism and other forms of theism will not necessarily want people to believe in them
God's hiding in plain sight! In other words He's here among us! We can't [s]see[/s] recognize Him due to, some say, karmic defilement of our minds. :snicker:
I assume the reason this is different from OP is because the round earth isn't a person that desires people to know it's a round earth, isn't omnipotent/omniscient (so can't perfectly make that happen).
The argument in OP is that if God desires people to know God exists, that God is omnipotent/omniscient, then non-resistent non-believers wouldn't exist (I am interpreting "nonresistent nonbelievers" as being people that are open to the idea of God existing if given sufficient evidence).
One of my problems with the omnigod posit lies there.
I cant think of a rational reason for an omnipotent/omniscient god to have desires, can you?
I'm a little confused. Can't you resist belief itself? In which case a non-resistent nonbeliever is a total contradiction.
How can one be a non-resistent belief-resister (non-believer)?
As far as I know people believe things exactly because they don't resist it. They accept it. Acceptance is the start of a belief. Whether it's that your loved one passed away, or that your crush doesn't love you, or that you're a bad singer. You can resist it all you want. You can choose not to believe it. But I doubt you can be a non-resistent nonbeliever.
A Non-resistent nonbeliever is like saying "I want to give up drinking alcohol, I think it would be good for me (non-resistent ideation) but I will keep drinking anyways lol. Yolo. Its just hypocrisy.
Obviously if you want something achievable, and continue to behave the opposite way, something stands between you and the goal and that is resistence. Fooling oneself.
Yes. I can. If they're omniscient and omnipotent, they may desire to know what it's like not to be so. Or to at least create the illusion of such for a moment to explore those experiences.
To be less self aware. Perhaps to be multiple selves.
An omniscient god may ask themselves "What is it like to question something without already knowing the answer?" or "what is it like to be restricted, to be unable to do anything and everything at once, what is it like to struggle?"
Of course, to do those things, an omniscient, omnipotent God doesn't have to give up what they are, they need merely compartmentalise some of their consciousness in some temporary mortal agent that is wholly finite, restricted, impotent, and with a low degree of knowledge.
But being omniscient, they already know the answer to these questions.
Asking a question presupposes not knowing something. An omniscient being cannot ask any questions.
Just for background, the Stanford page on Divine Hiddenness includes a couple of arguments for what the OP has termed "P1", from the person traditionally credited with formulating the divine hiddenness argument as we now recognize it-
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/divine-hiddenness/
So, maybe not a slam dunk, but a plausible enough idea (imo). I don't think many people would say that by itself the argument from divine hiddenness constitutes conclusive disproof of the existence of God or anything like that, but I would argue that it adds to the cumulative case for atheism, since the existence of non-resistant non-believers (not to mention the strong correlation between geographical location and cultural situation with particular religious belief) is better and more naturally explained by atheism/naturalism than by theism.
And how can one know what it's like to be ignorant if they have always known everything? It's a paradox.
Which is why I don't personally like to personify the three Omnis. The omni God from my perspective is a conscious universe. Not a person. The confusion lies in referring to an entity that is conscious but not us. It naturally tends to devolve into anthropomorphism. And we end up getting all the paradoxes and contradictions that come with a three omni god that is a person. Which is absurd.
It is possible to conceive of a consciousness that doesn't think in the same way that we do. But by discussing it we merely inject it with more human tropes. The best device we have so far is elucidating the laws of physics and figuring out what that tells us about how tu universe operates (thinks).
And no I'm not saying that a rock is conscious or a clump of metal.
I imagine that the consciousness operates as a system on such a vast magnitude of time and space that its virtually impossible to see anything we typically associate with consciousness in it, because we are totally biased towards our own version of it, and we are so brief and reactive and densely packed complexity within the vast universe.
Hence omniscience is a nonsense.
Quoting Benj96
...and take your argument off on a holiday from reason.
If you are able to recognise that what you have before you is a mind, then it can't be thinking in a way thats so very different to how you think. It must be problem-solving, for example...
But god cannot have any problems... 'cause then he would no be god.
Quoting Benj96
...virtually impossible...
So can you recognise it as a mind, or not? If you can, then it has stuff in common with the minds with which we are familiar; and if you can't , then by that very fact you cannot conclude that it is a mind.
God get's hoisted on his own... omniscience.
Yes it has loads in common with our own minds. The laws of chemistry, physics etc. Our minds aren't just some magically conjured up thing outside of the purview of existence, they come directly out of human evolution, which came out of biogenesis, which came out of prebiotic organic chemistry and so on regressing back systematically into the systems set up universally.
Or is the notion of god am amalgam that cannot be made coherent?
Can human minds do theology, or not?
Strewth! This is all beginning to read like footnotes to the ineffable thread... :razz:
What remains is that much of philosophical discourse has a common error, so it turns up again and again in different areas.
Subjects might include this one, but also idealism, Stove's gem, science and the 'view from nowhere', quantum BS - you know the kind of thing. The threads themselves become so cluttered and desultory.
Quoting Banno
I can but 'ditto' Banno's responses. If you are omniscient then you have no purpose and I cannot perceive why such would have a desire to create and observe the scurryings of creatures such as humans.
Ha! Yes, people are disappointing. I certainly appreciate how you lay out ideas and pose questions for us to work through. It's interesting how quickly people are affronted by this.
Quoting Banno
Appreciate the invite, but I fear the only role I can play in an enterprise like this is as patsy to Socrates
Me too. So we need to find a Socrates...
Fictional, biblical or scientific?
I think 'the bible,' literally translates to 'the book.'
So, yeah, its about time 'the book' or 'thee book,' was reconsidered in the West.
So if things don't make sense they can never make sense? People who want to believe in God already believe in God. There is not always a great rush about it, especially if other areas of life have your attention