Weblog of a Christian philosophy student

Weblog of a Christian philosophy student. Please feel free to comment. All of my posts are public domain. Subscribe to posts [Atom]. Email me at countaltair [at] yahoo.com.au. I also run a Chinese to English translation business at www.willfanyi.com.

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Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Nonbelief And Divine Hiddenness

Nonbelief And Divine Hiddenness
Will G
12/19/07

My defense against the argument from nonbelief has the following structure, which I will comment on with a paragraph per argument point.

1. By making himself divinely obvious God couldn't reduce the amount of any kind of evil.
2. If God was divinely obvious instead of hidden, then it wouldn't help him save one extra person.
3. It may violate the free will of certain people for God to be divinely obvious.
4. Therefore, there is no reason for God not to hide himself to the level he does in this world.


1. By making himself divinely obvious God couldn't reduce the amount of any kind of evil.

See this article here for a fuller explanation of what follows. In my theology, I argue that evil - evolutionary, natural and moral, essentially comes from one thing: that humans are imperfect. And as long as humans are imperfect then evolutionary, natural and moral evil will necessarily exist, due to the peculiar 'nature' of reality. And this imperfection necessarily exists in any person outside of God. Now, I say that God can only fix this imperfection by getting people to accept the Holy Spirit, which to bypass the imperfection will involve accepting an enormous loss of individuality and autonomy. Not everyone will freely choose to accept this. Therefore God has created all humans who will ever live, and in the afterlife will separate those who can accept it from those who cannot. Those who can accept it will eventually live in a perfectly good reality forever, since they can now be perfect with the Holy Spirit which entails a reality of no evil. The world we see is the process of this creation, with all the evil we see being an unfortunate but necessary byproduct of putting imperfect humans into existence, to then separate from each other. God can't avoid this process by creating only the right people, as the imperfection is distributed out of people God creates. Therefore, if God made himself divinely obvious, it couldn't decrease the amount or types of evil, because God has to create imperfect people to even get to a stage where reality can be perfect.

2. If God was divinely obvious instead of hidden, then it wouldn't help him save one extra person.

The imperfection we all have affects everybody who will live in different ways. Some people are affected in the way that they would necessarily prefer an eternity of no pain or joy over an eternity where they would possess much less autonomy and individuality but have perfect happiness. This is a choice that we all have to face to be in a perfect reality due to our necessary imperfection, and unless a person chooses to accept the Holy Spirit they inevitably get separated from God to go to an eternity of nothingness (hell). The loss of autonomy/individuality should be conceived of as great enough to make it plausible that heaven/hell is a difficult choice. God has already created everyone who will ever live and knows what they will choose, and has allocated them into history according to his mysterious will. Since I am a Christian, I think Christianity is the crucial determinant as to whether one is saved or lost. But because God allocates people into history according to his will, it's not true under my view that a person who rejects Christianity would have accepted Christianity if they had perfect knowledge, since they are a person who will never accept the Holy Spirit. For under my view, they are a person who would prefer hell-limbo over this kind of heaven. Therefore God does not hinder anyone's chances of salvation by not making everyone believe in Christianity, although he certainly could, because even if they did believe, they would choose not to go to this heaven. This is because their choice is not ultimately based on their knowledge of heaven, which is lacking now, but on a rational and informed calculation regarding what should properly be conceived of as a very difficult decision, which they will make in time (i.e. the afterlife.)

3. It may violate the free will of certain people for God to be divinely obvious.

Assuming the previous points are right, then one can also say that believing in Christianity cognitively in this life enforces the choice to go to heaven. Therefore, if people who do not wish to go to heaven believed in Christianity, it might violate their free will to some extent. This is a positive reason for God not to reveal himself in addition to it not accomplishing anything.

Conclusion

12/19/07

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