On the Coyness of God
I’m fairly certain, if God is indeed maximally good and therefore would do everything he could to draw people, free agents, towards him, the greatest good, that logically, the best option would be to reveal himself not just occasionally, but always so that there can be no doubt as to his existence.
For though the heart of the atheist and other non-believers may be hard, and their minds closed off, I’m fairly certain even Dawkins and Osama Bin-Laden would have gotten on their knees and prayed for forgiveness and most likely would NOT have even needed to do so if God was always undeniably present.
What deficiencies, if any, are there on this option
Have you ever been an atheist? I was. I would have defied God to his face, and blasphemed the Holy Spirit. I solemnly assure you that I would have. The coyness of God is the only thing that saved from the one thing the Bible clearly says is an unforgivable sin.
The only real doubts about God’s existence come from sin, from a psychological unwillingness to face facts. God is abundantly, transcendentally, painfully obvious even to pagans — because otherwise they would not have bothered inventing gods if they did not know, deep down, that they were made for worship, designed by a designer, built by a builder.
Modern atheism springs from the wealth and plenty of the industrial revolution, men who think they can live without God, who then go looking for excuses, flimsy ones, not to believe in Him: Marx, Darwin, Freud.
1. Marxism looks for an unthinking and inanimate set of forces, call the material dialectic, to explain the fall of man, the progress of history, and the eventual restoration of paradise, all without God. But history is either an unplanned and undirected series of events, or it is a story. Marx attempted to make it a story, with a beginning (primitive communism) a middle (capitalism) and an end (worker’s paradise of socialism) but without a storyteller. That is a contradiction in terms a child can see.
2. Darwin looks for an explanation of the origin of species and the teleology of the parts of animals, that is, to explain their design and the perfect fittedness of each organ to its purpose without a designer. He wants creation without a Creator in the same way Marx wants a story without a storyteller. What his theory predicts is not borne out by the evidence around us: where are the birds who only build half a nest, or the newt with only half an eye, who are halfway to evolving real nests and real eyes? Those things that are presented as transitional or preevolutionary halfway marks, such as light-sensitive spots or bird who mash down grass without weaving a proper nest, still evince a teleology, a that-for-the-sake-of-which, which the bird or critter in question did not himself decide or determine. Either the organs and instincts are purposeless, or there is purpose in nature. But nature cannot hold a purpose unless nature is an intelligent being, that is, a being capable of making self aware decisions, which is what a purpose is.
3. Freud thought to explain, or, rather, explain away the conscience, sin and soul of men by means of fairy tales given austere Greek names. The concept of a ‘subconscious’ is a contradiction in terms: it means the part of our awareness of which we are unaware. Rather than speak of sin, be spoke of Id; rather than speak of soul, he spoke of Ego; rather than speak of conscience, he spoke of Superego, which he characterized as merely tyrannous, unthinking, negative, the source of all mental illness. His solution for madness was to urge people to indulge their impulses whether good or bad. What a boatload of rot.
Marxism and Darwinism and Freudianism are science fiction stories just as much as anything penned by HG Wells.
That not quite fair to Darwin, who stands above these other two crackpots.
Darwin, unlike Marx and Freud, was at least trying to be rigorous in his theory. Darwinism can explain, by natural selection, the changes in certain inherited characteristics. It is something like breeding for show dogs, except as if nature, without any purposeful design, allows some breeds to prosper and others to dwindle. But no dogbreeder has ever bred a new species which stands to dogs as eohippus or Merrychippus is alleged to stand to modern horses. No one has created a new species with new organs, a superdog who stands to dogs as Man is alleged to stand to prehuman apemen.
Darwin’s explanation is philosophical, not scientific, because it is not open to proof or disproof by observation or experiment, and more than attributing men’s fortunes to their natal stars is.
(I myself think it is the most robust and satisfactory explanation currently available to explain the origin of species, but only because Lamarckianism is even feebler, but it is a philosophical, not a scientific explanation. I challenge anyone who doubts me to devise a thought experiment with proper controls which would prove that natural selection, as oppose to some other factor, transmorigrified the Merrychippus into the Modern Horse. My fellow Christians who say that ‘God did it’ are answering a different question than the one asked. They are explaining why species were created, was done, not how. God also made the sun and moon, but this does not mean we cannot investigate mathematically the epicycles and orbits of their motions so as to predict them precisely, or speculate in an educated fashion concerning their history.)
Anyone who assumes God making Himself even more obvious would increase the number of souls saved and brought to love quite simply underestimates the greatness and glory of man, including how much we are like angels. We are also like fallen angels, and we cannot be brought God against our will. He has made us too much like Him, and so, like Him, we cannot be forced, not intimidated, not impressed.
If God could not cow Satan into loving Him, what makes you think He could cow us?
God is as visible as He can possibly make himself. We are blind. He put a conscience in each man’s heart which speaks with undeniable authority. We pretend that this is the voice of custom, or our own inclinations, or we drink or swear or invent Leftwing philosophies to drown it out. How much more obvious can He be? He will put the Holy Spirit into any soul that asks. How much more obvious can you get?
Should He make Himself visible to the eye? But the Buddha, who is the noblest of natural man and not the basest, says everything seen with the eye is the illusion of maya.
So, with all due respect, no. If the body of Christ were incarnated on Earth in front of everyone’s eyes in the form of, let us say, the Catholic Church, where Christ is routinely called down from heaven in the form of bread and wine and eaten by the living members of his living body, they would not see it. If Christendom were blessed with world domination, they would not see it. If I were healed of a heart attack while I lay dying, and changed my life dramatically for the better, they would not see it. If there were a thousand sick healed at Lourdes, they would not see it. If God Almighty spangled the night sky with stars for no other reason than to proclaim His glory, or bestowed upon us the blessing of marriage and the miracle of childbirth, they would not see it.
And if He showed them His naked face, they would see themselves as they really are, and die on the spot, consumed to ash like Semele.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
