If the Existence of the Christian God were Obvious

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If the Existence of the Christian God were Obvious

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Post by Dimmesdale »

I have thought about what would happen if the Christian God's existence were obvious, that this were plain to everyone in society.

In my mind, I think anarchy or totalitarianism would result.

This is because all the "sinners" who truly "hate God" in their hearts... would realize they were going to hell, but would still be stubborn enough not to repent. This brings up the issue of free will as well, but let's assume they would still have some "sliver" of free will even if God revealed Himself perfectly.

I think we would see a dramatic rise in mass shootings, and suicides would increase, among other things. The really bad people in society would be more brazen in terms of their wickedness. In other words, their true selves would emerge, because they themselves would think "I'm not going to change even if this is the truth; I hate God and I'm going to make the most of it." Knowing that they would go to hell would only spur them on to even worse acts of heinousness. Of course, some of them would be cowards and plea for mercy, but a lot nevertheless wouldn't.

There would be effectively hell on earth for all people. Starting from the power-hungry elites, going down.

That is one scenario. On the other hand, perhaps the better part of humanity would band together. Perhaps real unity would be evoked and the bad people would be supplanted.

But humans have believed in the supernatural for millennia, so why assume that kind of unity would instantly materialize? Perhaps some of the doctrinal minutiae would still be stumblingblocks to perfect unity. There would also be anti-theists who simply despise God and think he's the real tyrant even if he does exist.

All in all, it makes more sense to me that God should remain hidden, even on the Christian view.

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Re: If the Existence of the Christian God were Obvious

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Post by nobspeople »

Dimmesdale wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 7:00 pm I have thought about what would happen if the Christian God's existence were obvious, that this were plain to everyone in society.

In my mind, I think anarchy or totalitarianism would result.

This is because all the "sinners" who truly "hate God" in their hearts... would realize they were going to hell, but would still be stubborn enough not to repent. This brings up the issue of free will as well, but let's assume they would still have some "sliver" of free will even if God revealed Himself perfectly.

I think we would see a dramatic rise in mass shootings, and suicides would increase, among other things. The really bad people in society would be more brazen in terms of their wickedness. In other words, their true selves would emerge, because they themselves would think "I'm not going to change even if this is the truth; I hate God and I'm going to make the most of it." Knowing that they would go to hell would only spur them on to even worse acts of heinousness. Of course, some of them would be cowards and plea for mercy, but a lot nevertheless wouldn't.

There would be effectively hell on earth for all people. Starting from the power-hungry elites, going down.

That is one scenario. On the other hand, perhaps the better part of humanity would band together. Perhaps real unity would be evoked and the bad people would be supplanted.

But humans have believed in the supernatural for millennia, so why assume that kind of unity would instantly materialize? Perhaps some of the doctrinal minutiae would still be stumblingblocks to perfect unity. There would also be anti-theists who simply despise God and think he's the real tyrant even if he does exist.

All in all, it makes more sense to me that God should remain hidden, even on the Christian view.
This reminds me of a short I watched a few years back. The details are fuzzy, but it was about a society where robots become sentient, basically, and are superior to humans. Normally, these stories show robots trying to eliminate humans. But in this one, the humans were fighting each other and the robots were the ones saving innocent people from the fighting basically.
It went against the grain of 'evil robots rising up to eliminate the inferior human race' - the robots appeared more human than the humans.
You scenario reminded me of that short. It went right to the mass shooting, et al. It makes me wonder about our inner selves - why we always seem to accentuate the negative and ignore the positive. Many years ago I had a customer service job where we were told (and they were right), 99% of your customer contact will be about things negative: wrong bills, things not working, misunderstandings and on and on.

That aside, I would disagree with your last sentence. If God were to come and present himself totally, surely there will be disarray within society - maybe for a small length of time. I don't believe it would benefit humanity for God to remain hidden. If God's a loving being, it seems counter to its desire to show humanity its love.

Hiding does nothing but promote doubt to curious people IMO.
Have a great, potentially godless, day!

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Re: If the Existence of the Christian God were Obvious

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Post by Dimmesdale »

nobspeople wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 10:18 am This reminds me of a short I watched a few years back. The details are fuzzy, but it was about a society where robots become sentient, basically, and are superior to humans. Normally, these stories show robots trying to eliminate humans. But in this one, the humans were fighting each other and the robots were the ones saving innocent people from the fighting basically.
It went against the grain of 'evil robots rising up to eliminate the inferior human race' - the robots appeared more human than the humans.
You scenario reminded me of that short. It went right to the mass shooting, et al. It makes me wonder about our inner selves - why we always seem to accentuate the negative and ignore the positive. Many years ago I had a customer service job where we were told (and they were right), 99% of your customer contact will be about things negative: wrong bills, things not working, misunderstandings and on and on.
Well, it is noteworthy that Christianity very much does dwell on the negative. That human sinfulness is real and that it infects much of life. Some Christians would even go so far as to say humans are "totally depraved" without the aid of God's grace in our lives. Many would say Hitler and Idi Amin and Pol Pot are not anomalies, but human sin taken to its logical conclusion.

I think, in a Christian universe, sin would take center stage, not love, prior to God "fixing" everything. This is essentially what Revelation is about: a cataclysmic end, before actual restoration.
nobspeople wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 10:18 amThat aside, I would disagree with your last sentence. If God were to come and present himself totally, surely there will be disarray within society - maybe for a small length of time. I don't believe it would benefit humanity for God to remain hidden. If God's a loving being, it seems counter to its desire to show humanity its love.

Hiding does nothing but promote doubt to curious people IMO.
Again, it is hard not to superimpose our own preformed concepts onto the Christian (or Abrahamic) God.

I have offered a scenario of what would happen should God "show up" - and it seems feasible given all that we know about God in Christianity. If God were love in some other sense, maybe things would play out differently. I am just going by the God of the Bible who made the world a certain way, and allows sin to linger in the vessels of his making. In other words, I haven't imported anything extraneous to what mainline Christians teach.

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Re: If the Existence of the Christian God were Obvious

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Post by brunumb »

Dimmesdale wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 7:00 pm In my mind, I think anarchy or totalitarianism would result.

This is because all the "sinners" who truly "hate God" in their hearts... would realize they were going to hell, but would still be stubborn enough not to repent. This brings up the issue of free will as well, but let's assume they would still have some "sliver" of free will even if God revealed Himself perfectly.
Your scenario is very imaginative and completely unwarranted. In all my life I have never encountered anyone who hates God. Atheists do not believe that God exists so for them to hate the non-existent is absurd. Theists believe that their god(s) of choice exist and from what I have observed do not hate them either. Sinners are just an imaginary creation of the religious in order to explain away the sometimes bad behaviour of people. So, if there are any God-haters in reality, they are in the minority and pretty much irrelevant. If the alleged one true God did reveal itself in a way that everyone was compelled to believe, the cause of a lot of the world's conflicts and differences would surely be eliminated. Free will is not an issue either. People can still choose to worship this deity or not. At least all the cards would be on the table and they can make an informed decision. No more reliance on shonky preachers and extremist sects taking advantage of desperate people.
George Orwell:: “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.”
Voltaire: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
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Re: If the Existence of the Christian God were Obvious

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Post by nobspeople »

Dimmesdale wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 4:14 pm
nobspeople wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 10:18 am This reminds me of a short I watched a few years back. The details are fuzzy, but it was about a society where robots become sentient, basically, and are superior to humans. Normally, these stories show robots trying to eliminate humans. But in this one, the humans were fighting each other and the robots were the ones saving innocent people from the fighting basically.
It went against the grain of 'evil robots rising up to eliminate the inferior human race' - the robots appeared more human than the humans.
You scenario reminded me of that short. It went right to the mass shooting, et al. It makes me wonder about our inner selves - why we always seem to accentuate the negative and ignore the positive. Many years ago I had a customer service job where we were told (and they were right), 99% of your customer contact will be about things negative: wrong bills, things not working, misunderstandings and on and on.
Well, it is noteworthy that Christianity very much does dwell on the negative. That human sinfulness is real and that it infects much of life. Some Christians would even go so far as to say humans are "totally depraved" without the aid of God's grace in our lives. Many would say Hitler and Idi Amin and Pol Pot are not anomalies, but human sin taken to its logical conclusion.

I think, in a Christian universe, sin would take center stage, not love, prior to God "fixing" everything. This is essentially what Revelation is about: a cataclysmic end, before actual restoration.
nobspeople wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 10:18 amThat aside, I would disagree with your last sentence. If God were to come and present himself totally, surely there will be disarray within society - maybe for a small length of time. I don't believe it would benefit humanity for God to remain hidden. If God's a loving being, it seems counter to its desire to show humanity its love.

Hiding does nothing but promote doubt to curious people IMO.
Again, it is hard not to superimpose our own preformed concepts onto the Christian (or Abrahamic) God.

I have offered a scenario of what would happen should God "show up" - and it seems feasible given all that we know about God in Christianity. If God were love in some other sense, maybe things would play out differently. I am just going by the God of the Bible who made the world a certain way, and allows sin to linger in the vessels of his making. In other words, I haven't imported anything extraneous to what mainline Christians teach.
Ah. I understand your POV now - thanks for clarifying.
It does seem that Christianity portrays the 'love' thing more than the 'sin' thing. But I suspect that's due to the seemingly two different gods of the bible: the Old Testament grumpy angry vengeful smiting killing god and the New's loving forgiving god.
Have a great, potentially godless, day!

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Re: If the Existence of the Christian God were Obvious

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Post by Dimmesdale »

brunumb wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 6:16 pm
Your scenario is very imaginative and completely unwarranted. In all my life I have never encountered anyone who hates God. Atheists do not believe that God exists so for them to hate the non-existent is absurd. Theists believe that their god(s) of choice exist and from what I have observed do not hate them either.
I am taking the Christian POV. I am rather ambivalent regarding whether anyone actually hates the God of the Bible, though I'm confident some people think they do. I think a lot of people hate an idea or image of God in their minds.
brunumb wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 6:16 pmSinners are just an imaginary creation of the religious in order to explain away the sometimes bad behaviour of people. So, if there are any God-haters in reality, they are in the minority and pretty much irrelevant.
Perhaps you are right. I myself don't really believe in "sin" the way Christians do, or that anyone can be utterly sinful - that's why I put it in quotes in the OP. I think the Christian notion of "sin" makes out bad behavior to be more real/serious/significant than it is. I believe people can be immoral - but the Christian idea throws it into a larger-than-life "dark side of the force" thing. I actually think that's a bit of a caricature. It is actually gratifying to the ego to make your bad actions seem more real, more significant than they really are.
brunumb wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 6:16 pmIf the alleged one true God did reveal itself in a way that everyone was compelled to believe, the cause of a lot of the world's conflicts and differences would surely be eliminated. Free will is not an issue either. People can still choose to worship this deity or not. At least all the cards would be on the table and they can make an informed decision. No more reliance on shonky preachers and extremist sects taking advantage of desperate people.
People may still have free will even in a God utopia, but their free will would be severely curtailed if 99 out 100 people were pious, magnanimous souls with zero interest in worldly things. You wouldn't have as much opportunity to carouse or indulge in debauchery with your peers if such was the case. You would have much more limited movement - and that might put into the question the value of your "free will."

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Re: If the Existence of the Christian God were Obvious

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Post by Purple Knight »

Dimmesdale wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 7:00 pmKnowing that they would go to hell would only spur them on to even worse acts of heinousness.
This is true. Those of us who actually have no hope of being good have to be lied to, or at least given false hope.

Lutherans and Jehovah's Witnesses believe that only a select number of people are going to Heaven, and that that number is very, very low. If Christianity is true my guess would be that they are overestimating. A handful of people in history are good, truly. We all know that. And if I'm honest with myself, I know I have no hope of being good.

I don't care so much about the reward. I just want to be good. I begin to care about the reward if it's a lie presented so that someone who can never reach it tries his best anyway, when he never had any hope of success. I dislike being lied to.

Now, if someone told me straight, no, you are not going to Heaven, ever, you're just evil, you can never attain the requisite morality, I would be happy with that and do my best anyway. But it does make me angry if I'm being lied to. If God somehow tried to lie and I found out, that's when I'd riot. That's when I'd murder and rape and torture. That's when I just wouldn't care. I'm the outlier, though.

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Re: If the Existence of the Christian God were Obvious

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Post by Paul of Tarsus »

Dimmesdale wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 7:00 pm I have thought about what would happen if the Christian God's existence were obvious, that this were plain to everyone in society.

In my mind, I think anarchy or totalitarianism would result.

This is because all the "sinners" who truly "hate God" in their hearts... would realize they were going to hell, but would still be stubborn enough not to repent. This brings up the issue of free will as well, but let's assume they would still have some "sliver" of free will even if God revealed Himself perfectly.

I think we would see a dramatic rise in mass shootings, and suicides would increase, among other things. The really bad people in society would be more brazen in terms of their wickedness. In other words, their true selves would emerge, because they themselves would think "I'm not going to change even if this is the truth; I hate God and I'm going to make the most of it." Knowing that they would go to hell would only spur them on to even worse acts of heinousness. Of course, some of them would be cowards and plea for mercy, but a lot nevertheless wouldn't.

There would be effectively hell on earth for all people. Starting from the power-hungry elites, going down.

That is one scenario. On the other hand, perhaps the better part of humanity would band together. Perhaps real unity would be evoked and the bad people would be supplanted.

But humans have believed in the supernatural for millennia, so why assume that kind of unity would instantly materialize? Perhaps some of the doctrinal minutiae would still be stumblingblocks to perfect unity. There would also be anti-theists who simply despise God and think he's the real tyrant even if he does exist.

All in all, it makes more sense to me that God should remain hidden, even on the Christian view.
Sheesh--you make humanity seeing God sound really terrible.

I don't believe seeing God would spontaneously unite all people into one faith unless God not only made his existence obvious but made the basic truths about him obvious as well. Of course, there would be no more disputes about his existence at least, and atheists would be out of business.

So why doesn't God make his existence obvious? I think that the Greek idea of the logos answers the question. The logos is God's connection to the world without his entering it. A perfectly holy God has an aversion to a sinful world in the same way that we have aversions to sewers. So God must send prophets into the world to reveal his intentions so that he need not enter the world himself as himself. Of course, God did enter the world as the man Jesus Christ, the logos or "the word." (See John 1.)

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Re: If the Existence of the Christian God were Obvious

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Post by Paul of Tarsus »

brunumb wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 6:16 pmYour scenario is very imaginative and completely unwarranted. In all my life I have never encountered anyone who hates God. Atheists do not believe that God exists so for them to hate the non-existent is absurd. Theists believe that their god(s) of choice exist and from what I have observed do not hate them either. Sinners are just an imaginary creation of the religious in order to explain away the sometimes bad behaviour of people. So, if there are any God-haters in reality, they are in the minority and pretty much irrelevant.
Steven Weinberg, an atheist, has said that he does not like God which he admits is hard to reconcile with his not believing in God. But you don't need to be an atheist to hate God. Martin Luther said he hated God. So some people do apparently hate God.

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Re: If the Existence of the Christian God were Obvious

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Post by Dimmesdale »

Paul of Tarsus wrote: Sat Mar 06, 2021 12:31 pm
brunumb wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 6:16 pmYour scenario is very imaginative and completely unwarranted. In all my life I have never encountered anyone who hates God. Atheists do not believe that God exists so for them to hate the non-existent is absurd. Theists believe that their god(s) of choice exist and from what I have observed do not hate them either. Sinners are just an imaginary creation of the religious in order to explain away the sometimes bad behaviour of people. So, if there are any God-haters in reality, they are in the minority and pretty much irrelevant.
Steven Weinberg, an atheist, has said that he does not like God which he admits is hard to reconcile with his not believing in God. But you don't need to be an atheist to hate God. Martin Luther said he hated God. So some people do apparently hate God.
Why is that something "hard to reconcile?" I hate Morgoth from the Silmarillion. Is my hating Morgoth inconsistent with him not existing?

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