Why doesn't God make it all more obvious?

 



 .......My friend Mike left a comment on the comment section for the last piece. He raised the issue "why don't God make it all more obvious?" That's a good point. If God so desired we could have a totally different sort of world, one in which there as no question of God's existence. God could have created a world where he held press conferences every day and everyone always knew he was real from birth to death. Often times skeptics will even go so far as to impose the idea "why can't God just cancel sin let me do whatever I want?" He's not supposed to have other ideas. We can't let God be God, we should be God, he should do our bidding!
........Obviously, then, God has a reason for making a world in which we have to seek truth. This is usually just assumed to be due to the fall. After all he used walk with man in the garden in the cool of the evening and it was the sin of the fall that separated us. Well since I view the story as a myth, (myth doesn't mean lie or foolishness--but psychological communication) it's a story about how we are separated from God in coming of age. This means that there is a natural barrier that breaks communication something more embed in the human condition than can be  accounted for in the simple story of the fall, but something that nonetheless the story of the fall is communicating to us.
........The concept of the Fall that St. Augustine developed that Reinhold Niebuhr modernized (see Nature and Destiny of Man Vol I). The fall is not the genetic result of a choice Adam and Eve made one summer afternoon in picking fruit the fruit picking is a metaphor for what happens in all of us as we come of age and develop the understanding of right and wrong. That is we can understand the future by calculating or projecting, extrapolating, based upon experience of the past. This creates anxiety, which is already building becuase we have discovered the concept of right and wrong, which you recall was one of the major effects of Eve's fruit picking. In the attempt to resolve the anxiety about the future we choose to feather our own nests at the expense of others. Since we now understand right form wrong, we do wrong. We are now blameworthy. That creates more anxiety and causes us to seek the good. That creates more guilt so sets the cycle going again. 
........The problem with just letting it go is that God's own character is the prototype of the good so he can't allow that. We have to good but we have to secure ourselves in ways that require that we put ourseves fist. This means we are going to resent being told what to do. We are going to resent to rpocess of being held accountable and feeling guilt. You don't bleieve that? Just look at an atheist. they have no shortage of resentment toward God for just such things. So the point is that God wants us to search. The search means we seek truth, when we find it we are committed to it, we don't resent it. Jesus said "he who is forgivenven much loves much."

This is all contained within my free will defense on the theodicy problem which I call "Soteriological Drama." Here are the assumptions and the basic argument:  


Basic assumptions


There are three basic assumptions that are hidden, or perhaps not so obvious, but nevertheless must be dealt with here.

(1) The assumption that God wants a "moral universe" and that this value outweighs all others.


The idea that God wants a moral universe I take from my basic view of God and morality. Following in the footsteps of Joseph Fletcher (Situation Ethics) I assume that love is the background of the moral universe (this is also an Augustinian view). I also assume that there is a deeply ontological connection between love and Being. Axiomatically, in my view point, love is the basic impetus of Being itself. Thus, it seems reasonable to me that, if morality is an upshot of love, or if love motivates moral behavior, then the creation of a moral universe is essential.


(2) that internal "seeking" leads to greater internalization of values than forced compliance or complaisance that would be the result of intimidation.

That's a pretty fair assumption. We all know that people will a lot more to achieve a goal they truly believe in than one they merely feel forced or obligated to follow but couldn't care less about.

(3)the the drama or the big mystery is the only way to accomplish that end.

The pursuit of the value system becomes a search of the heart for ultimate meaning,that ensures that people continue to seek it until it has been fully internalized.

The argument would look like this:


(1)God's purpose in creation: to create a Moral Universe, that is one in which free moral agents willingly choose the Good.

(2) Moral choice requires absolutely that choice be free (thus free will is necessitated).

(3) Allowance of free choices requires the risk that the chooser will make evil choices

(4)The possibility of evil choices is a risk God must run, thus the value of free outweighs all other considerations, since without there would be no moral universe and the purpose of creation would be thwarted.


This leaves the atheist in the position of demanding to know why God doesn't just tell everyone that he's there, and that he requires moral behavior, and what that entails. Thus there would be no mystery and people would be much less inclined to sin.

This is the point where Soteriological Drama figures into it. Argument on Soteriological Drama:


(5) Life is a "Drama" not for the sake of entertainment, but in the sense that a dramatic tension exists between our ordinary observations of life on a daily basis, and the ultiamte goals, ends and purposes for which we are on this earth.

(6) Clearly God wants us to seek on a level other than the obvious, daily, demonstrative level or he would have made the situation more plain to us

(7) We can assume that the reason for the "big mystery" is the internalization of choices. If God appeared to the world in open objective fashion and laid down the rules, we would probably all try to follow them, but we would not want to follow them. Thus our obedience would be lip service and not from the heart.

(8) therefore, God wants a heart felt response which is internationalized value system that comes through the search for existential answers; that search is phenomenological; introspective, internal, not amenable to ordinary demonstrative evidence.


In a sense it's a bit a socialization process. We could say this God's way of socializing us into the seeking of the good. He wants us to conduct our own search for truth. He's given us the means to find it, its' there but we have to make a leap of faith to be assured that we have found it. Once we do that we are fine, but we have to do it to receive the pay off. Then because we did search and find we love and we are not resentful and continue to seek God more.

Answering Mark Sinclair From the Comment Section

Mark Sinclair responds to a recent article on Metacrock's Blog: "Why did God Create: Atheist Assumptions about Free Will Defense."

In that discussion I defended by version of the free will defense, Soteriolgoical Drama in which I argue that God must allow the world to run on in a neutral fashion with traces of the ultimate truth available but they must be dug out in an all out search for truth. The reason for this is that only such a search allows one to internalize the values of the good. What I mean by this is that unless we experience the search ourselves they wont be our values. The values we come to learn and hold as a result of seeking truth must be obtained personally, they can't be spoon fed because they would not be our values. When Jesus said "he who has been forgiven much, loves much" he's getting at the idea that unless you really experience the journey yourself its not as meaningful. God can't prescribe that we get into sinful paths in order to experience redemption, that's how Rasputin got started. The next thing over from that is search for the truth, which does not necessitate sin. Mark Sinclair requires further elucidation.

None of your explanations work. If God wanted us to truly internalize our beliefs or choices, since He is all powerful, could He simply not make it so? Does He not have the ability to do anything? If so why not, accomplish all His goals simply through His will? Why does He watch us suffer, when by definition, He could accomplish his goals, simply by willing it so.

I'm not mocking, I desperately want an answer, I want to believe, but it's so hard with all these logical inconsistencies and doubts.

In answer to this earnest plea I will go into greater detail than I did in the answer box of the comment section. Let's break it down:

If God wanted us to truly internalize our beliefs or choices, since He is all powerful, could He simply not make it so?

Obviously if God wanted us to hold certain values in a superficial way, just knowing the concepts, he could put the concepts in us. That would not be the same thing. You cant' have your cake and eat it too. you can't think for yourself and have others spoon feed your ideas to you. In order to learn the values of the good we must experience the search for the truth. Hidden behind Mark's talk of "all powerful God" is probably the assumptino that all powerful means being able to do nonsense like have your cake and eat it too. This is why modern theologians don't use the "omnis" they speak of "maximal greatness" rather than "allow powerful" becasue it communicates more. Why should "all powerful" be construed as the ability to do nonsense or the arability to violate deductive logic?

The notion that God should be able to violate logical necessity is not mandated by scripture and there's just no reason to accept it. A lot of atheists think it's cleaver to propose ideas like this.

Skeptic: Can god smell next Thursday?

Believer: days of the week don't have smells

Skeptic: so God can't smell next Thursday right?

Believer: I guess

Skeptic: Then there's soemthing God can't do so he's not God.


I don't find that cleaver I think it's silly. Nothing in the Bible says "God can violate logical necessity." Nothing in the Bible says "God is 'all powerful' in the sense of doing nonsense." It implies that God is able to do anything logically doable that doesn't mean God can do nonsense or violate logical necessity. No reason to think God can create square circles. That's not reasonable. That sort of thinknig that says "yes, God can smell next Thursday," is not Biblical but comes from Aristotle's unmoved mover. There's no reason to think that God can put personal experiences in us without us experiencing them and no reason for us to avoid the search. Jesus says "seek and ye shall find." Not only is the search mandated by Christ but it's also promised that if we are sincere we ill find the answer.

Sinclair again:

Does He not have the ability to do anything?

Not if by anything you mean logically contradictory stuff and nonsense.

If so why not, accomplish all His goals simply through His will?

Because smelling next Thrusday is not one of his goals. God as the wisdom to set goals he can accomplish, that means all of his goals make sense. "Redeem mankind, move humans along the road of progress until the make the world a decent place, crate an online privacy policy that doesn't' born one to tears in the reading, create a modern version of old sixties tv shows that done tear the heart out of the original concept. Although that latter one might be beyond the pale of logical necessity.

Why does He watch us suffer, when by definition, He could accomplish his goals, simply by willing it so.

Because he can't, because it's a nonsense goal. To have a moral universe there must be free will. To have free will one must actually be free. If your will is given you and it only has the appearance of freedom then it's not truly free. moralty is decision making, so it must done freely. That means God must risk the realty of people screwing themselves over with bad choices. That the risk comes to fruition is not a defeater for the plan. It doesn't negate the purpose. Free will is met and those who choose the good freely choose the good and the purpose of creation has been reached. The reality of a moral universe comes at the expense of human pain and suffering.

fortunately God is in the redemption business. All pain and suffering will be redeemed and we have a whole eternity to do it in. Now one might say, as the atheitws my previous blog spot said (see above)

(1) If God exists, then he would ensure that the best possible world exists.
(2) Because God is maximally great, the possible world containing God and nothing else is the best possible world.
(3) Therefore, if God exists, he would not create anything.

That's not a valid conclusion. That would only be the case if we could calculate all variables and weigh every reality and every possibly. Only God can do that. that's not a logcial contradiction so maximally great creator can do it. We must have the faith to assume that he did and that he knows the price of creation is worth it. We can know that too by placing our faith in Christ.