Have you ever heard someone say that if God existed, he would give us more evidence? This is called the “hiddenness of God” argument. It’s also known as the argument from “rational non-belief”.
Basically the argument is something like this:
- God is all powerful
- God is all loving
- God wants all people to know about him
- Some people don’t know about him
- Therefore, there is no God.
You may hear have heard this argument before, when talking to atheists, as in William Lane Craig’s debate with Theodore Drange, (audio, video).
Basically, the atheist is saying that he’s looked for God real hard and that if God were there, he should have found him by now. After all, God can do anything he wants that’s logically possible, and he wants us to know that he exists. To defeat the argument we need to find a possible explanation of why God would want to remain hidden when our eternal destination depends on our knowledge of his existence.
What reason could God have for remaining hidden?
Dr. Michael Murray, a brilliant professor of philosophy at Franklin & Marshall College, has found a reason for God to remain hidden.
His paper on divine hiddenness is here:
“Coercion and the Hiddenness of God“, American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol 30, 1993.
He argues that if God reveals himself too much to people, he takes away our freedom to make morally-significant decisions, including responding to his self-revelation to us. Murray argues that God stays somewhat hidden, so that he gives people space to either 1) respond to God, or 2) avoid God so we can keep our autonomy from him. God places a higher value on people having the free will to respond to him, and if he shows too much of himself he takes away their free choice to respond to him, because once he is too overt about his existence, people will just feel obligated to belief in him in order to avoid being punished.
But believing in God just to avoid punishment is NOT what God wants for us. If it is too obvious to us that God exists and that he really will judge us, then people will respond to him and behave morally out of self-preservation. But God wants us to respond to him out of interest in him, just like we might try to get to know someone we admire. God has to dial down the immediacy of the threat of judgment, and the probability that the threat is actual. That leaves it up to us to respond to God’s veiled revelation of himself to us, in nature and in Scripture.
(Note: I think that we don’t seek God on our own, and that he must take the initiative to reach out to us and draw us to him. But I do think that we are free to resist his revelation, at which point God stops himself short of coercing our will. We are therefore responsible for our own fate).
The atheist’s argument is a logical/deductive argument. It aims to show that there is a contradiction between God’s will for us and his hiding from us. In order to derive a contradiction, God MUST NOT have any possible reason to remain hidden. If he has a reason for remaining hidden that is consistent with his goodness, then the argument will not go through.
When Murray offers a possible reason for God to remain hidden in order to allow people to freely respond to him, then the argument is defeated. God wants people to respond to him freely so that there is a genuine love relationship – not coercion by overt threat of damnation. To rescue the argument, the atheist has to be able to prove that God could provide more evidence of his existence without interfering with the free choice of his creatures to reject him.
More of Michael Murray’s work
Murray has defended the argument in works published by prestigious academic presses such as Cambridge University Press, (ISBN: 0521006104, 2001) and Routledge (ISBN: 0415380383, 2007). The book chapter from the Cambridge book is here. The book chapter from the Routledge book is here.
Michael Murray’s papers are really fun to read, because he uses hilarious examples. I should mention that I disagree with his view that God’s work of introducing biological information in living creatures has to be front-loaded.
Here’s more terrific stuff from Dr. Murray:
- “Who’s Afraid of Religion?“, Inaugural Lecture delivered March 30, 2006. Franklin and Marshall College.
- “Seek and You Will Find“, in God and the Philosophers. Thomas Morris, editor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1994.
Is there any evidence of God’s existence?
Yes, just watch this lecture by Dr. William Lane Craig. It contains 5 reasons why God exists and 3 reasons why it matters.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
God does give us plenty of evidence, the only problem is that athiests always try to find an answer for things that happen, while people like us know the truth.
Athiests think of God proving he exists is some great big event, such as if we’re fat and people make fun of us He will either stike the mockers dead, or make the weight fall of us overnight. Believers like us recognise His proof in ordinary everyday things such as us having a problem and the person who can help us deal with it ust happen to turn up at the right time and similar things like this.
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Yes, but God seems to have no problem making Himself known and having people obey Him out of fear or self-preservation, the entire Old Testament shows this.
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Have you read Deuteronomy? The whole thing is urging the people to make a choice to obey. And they often make the wrong choice. We are responsible.
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In any case, what’s wrong with motivation through fear of self-preservation? I’ve had plenty of atheists use fear of self-preservation to justify an ordered society.
Jesus does appeal to the danger of going to Hell or losing out on heaven. But so what? Parents do the same with children, telling them not to run out into the road or go near the swimming pool. God also motivates us by love and self-sacrifice.
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I have a question. Satan has first-hand knowledge of God. How come he rebelled, even with this intimate knowledge of God if this theory is true? Why does he continue to rebel at all? He must know that God is capable of destroying him and will do so in time. So why doesn’t he just begrudgingly become obedient? I would appreciate a response, thanks :) God bless
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Andrew,
My own answer to your question would take a lot of time to unfold. I would want, at some point, to deconstruct Murray’s argument, which is actually pretty ridiculous in part and gets us off on the wrong foot for answering your question. This touches on a few different issues in theology. For instance, the noetic effects of sin. Sin isn’t rational. I think the basic assumption behind your question is that there is rational unbelief. Unbelief is rational because God’s presence is hidden. If God’s presence were less hidden unbelief would then become irrational. This is what leads you to wonder why in the world Satan would not just give begrudging obedience to God. Sin is irrational. Unbelief is itself irrational. It’s mistaken to think that there is rational unbelief. And this irrationality in sin makes people blind to God. God isn’t actually hidden. Sure, God’s presence isn’t as obvious as it could be. But then, my mom’s presence isn’t as obvious as it could be either. Neither God nor my mom are hidden–at least not in the way many atheists raise the issue and apologists are responding to. I wouldn’t say God is hidden, I would say we have bad eyesight. Or, rather, irrational eyesight.
Anyway, I would point out that begrudging obedience wouldn’t be sufficient. God requires love (“You shall *love* the Lord your God…”).
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Why does it surprise me that the presuppositionalist thinks that the Oxford University Press published author is “actually pretty ridicuous”.
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Richard Dawkins is an Oxford University Press published author and I also think a lot of what he says is actually pretty ridiculous. And I’m pretty sure neither case has to do with me being a presuppositionalist, though maybe I just haven’t thought it through enough :)
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Satan knew that his time has came, so he want to take everyone with. Like pharaoh he’s hard headed
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So…we have moved from desiring any evidence for His existence (if He doesn’t exist, there should be none, right? Like looking for the FSM.) to desiring a minimum threshold (defined by the one questioning), aka sufficient evidence. How much subjectivity is factored into one’s particular aim in this regard? Well, if the Big Bang, fine tuning, intelligent design, personal revelation, Incarnation, Resurrection, and eyewitness transformation isn’t enough, then what would be? For God to write a letter? Oh wait…
Apologies for sounding dismissive, but I can no longer take this type of objection seriously. Asking for an OBJECTIVE set of evidences to address one SUBJECTIVE decision is a betrayal of reason, because one can potentially say that the set is never sufficient to meet the demands of the skeptic. But I know that people like it that way, because it gives them excuse to never admit what they do not want to admit.
In Wimpy’s immortal words that characterize this objection so much “I’ll pay you next Tuesday for a hamburger today.”
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So Im puzzled, god doesnt want us to accept him through fear of hell,he stays hiding so we can exercise freewill to choose.
But I thought there was a divine plan,and god already knows all future events,so he already knows our choices,if he already knows what we would choose how can it be a free choice?
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Just because you foreknow what a person will freely choose, it doesn’t you determine it.
Here’s a fuller explanation:
https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/does-gods-omniscience-conflict-with-human-free-will-3/
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