The FWD argument is only one component of my response.  I won't have time to defend more, but possibly I may become more interested as time goes on.  (Nothing further on the Jesus Exists threads?)

In actuality, the FWD is a minor component of my response.  The primary response has to do with epistemology.   You seem to think it would be easy for God (monotheistic, panetheistic, Christian God) to reveal himself in a way that respects a robust epistemology.  Its tricky business, actually.  And if the world is fallen and corrupted as Christians believe, the problem is even more complicated.

However, speaking from the Christian POV, I don't really think any kind of argument derived on perceived 'divine silence' has much merit.  You mentioned 'prophets' but completely ignored the central claim of Christianity:  God incarnated himself in his creation in order to directly interact with it- his name was Jesus.

You were aware that Christians believe Jesus to be God?    So, it can hardly be suggested with a straight face that the Christian God has been so detached as you have made out.  Christianity is nearly a flat-out rejection of your premise here.  That means that your objection (against Christianity, anyway) really boils down to your subjective preference.  That is, you think God ought to have or could have done more.  

Copernicus thinks God should do x,y, and z.
Heretic thinks God should do a,b, and z.
sntjohnny thinks God should do e,f,g.

There are 6 billion people on the planet, each with their own preferences on how God ought interact with them.  I suppose God should just give into all these whims, despite the fact that many of them are likely to be mutually contradictory?

A more important point would be that as the higher authority, God gets to set the terms of the relationship.  Again, you may not like his terms, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.  A man who wishes to see the President may have to give up his gun.  Those are the terms.  You may not like them, but he's the one making them.  Possibly if we were in his position we'd see exactly why certain rules are made.  If you don't like the terms, you can always NOT see the president.  Your call.

FWD.

On the other hand, what I have read doesn't leap out at me as compelling evidence for the historicity of Christ.

Historicity? Since sntjohnny's post above says the thread in question is titled "Jesus Exists" (not "Jesus Existed"), I assume that he's offering strong evidence not for the historicity of Jesus, but for Jesus' existence in today's world.

Of course, it could be a typo. Perhaps he meant to type "Jesus Existed."

"I may burn in hell for his flawed craftsmanship."



"I do not think that it would be easy for just any god to reveal himself, but I do think that it would be incredibly easy for the Christian god to do so. The problem is that Christians have usually insisted on an omnimax god. So it seems difficult to imagine insurmountable odds for such a being."

It is a fair concern.  My response to that, as indicated in my thread with Pete about free will, is that expecting a God in the nature that I think him to be to do certain things are actually nonsense statements.  Example, even many atheists acknowledge that asking an omnimax God to create a rock he can't lift is asking something nonsensical.  Or, can God create a God that can kick his own a$$.  Or, can God create a square triangle.   Asking God to create free will (for example) but at the same time make it impossible for these 'free-will' endowed beings to choose against God or what not is in the same category of nonsensical requests.  

"The tricky business is just in how to explain this god's strange inability to communicate. The FWD is the only defense that Christians seem capable of mounting in the face of such a conundrum,"

The FWD is only one aspect of the defense, depending on where the particular atheist is coming from.  But the 'strange inability to communicate' goes to my epistemology points, not to free will.

"Uh, yeah. If you ignore the entire Old Testament, in which God intervened all the time in very direct ways."

Did he?  I thought you were arguing for Divine Silence.

Your other questions are not without merit, but they seem to fly in the face of your premise in this thread.  Although, its worth mentioning, you asked if God expected people to fail... I again point out that from the beginning of the OT to the end of the NT the race of man is deemed a fallen race.  So yea, God expected people to fail.  That too is the point of Christianity.

"Nonsense. From what we can tell, there is plenty of evidence that lots of Christians, if not the majority before the 4th century, believed that Christ was a mere mortal."

We could war that out historically.  I seem to recall rareairpug chewing somebody up for making that argument.  You are relying on secondary sources.  If you go to the primary sources there are lots of examples to contradict this.  Its not worth arguing about here.  You are not arguing with Christians of the 2nd century.  You are arguing with Christians in 2006.  

To the extent that the point has any merit at all, it should be added that the Christian community itself was aware of all sorts of groups trying to take the Christian label but not really having Christian theology.  As I pointed out to CNM, the NT says that that was coming.  No one reading the epistles of Paul in 110AD should have been surprised to see it.  The response was the establishment of a number of creeds laying out the orthodox POV 'for the record.'

"Gee, I don't know. If God created the entire universe, he might be up to handling the rather tiny human population, don't you think?"

Sure, but that doesn't mean pleasing all of them.  You can't please them all, when they've got mutually exclusive requests.

You're so smart... help God with this one....

Teams A and B are playing against each other in Sport X.  Team A prays to God that Team A will win, Team B prays to God that Team B will win.

Now, how should an omnimax God respond?  Can you think of a response that preserves the point of the competition in the first place?

"I can understand why the President doesn't want to meet people who are carrying guns. I don't think that God can be reasonably said to have the same concerns."

Sure, you can understand the easy example.  But what about a harder example?  It doesn't even have to be the President.  It can be anyone who is in a position of authority who is tasked to take into account all of the facts and then make the final decision.  The President is a good example because he has access to a wider pool of facts that you and I don't have access to.  If he makes a decision that baffles you, it doesn't necessarily mean that he has made a bad decision- perhaps you'd have made the same decision if you had access to the same pool of facts.  But you don't have access to all the facts.  You don't even have a right to them.

We vaccinate our children.  The shots hurt.  What's it seem like from the perspective of the infant?  It looks like we're sitting there letting the doctors hurt them a great deal.  They don't have access to the same facts:  they don't know that we are trying to save them from an even greater pain.

"No, clearly God did not incarnate himself in his creation in order to directly interact with it -- at least, not in order to interact with all of it. If he had, that incarnation would be interacting with it today."

This again is a subjective call. You don't think he went far enough. You're welcome to that POV, but the Christian POV is not guilty of a divine silence accusation. As Copernicus accidentally let slip, in the OT there were a reasonable amount of interventions, and of course in Christianity Jesus is God incarnate. Whatever else this is, its not 'silence.'

You misunderstand the point I'm trying to make. You said, "You mentioned 'prophets' but completely ignored the central claim of Christianity: God incarnated himself in his creation in order to directly interact with it- his name was Jesus."

Since you believe that God did incarnate himself in order to directly interact with his creation, you must believe that God has the ability to incarnate himself in order to interact with his creation without affecting his creation's free will or else the free will of those few first-century Jews and even fewer Romans who directly witnessed the incarnated God would have been affected. This would seem to eliminate the "free will" defense for the divine silence.

No one, I think, can rationally deny that an extraordinary claim that is witnessed first-hand is MUCH more credible than is one merely read about in an account of dubious authorship written decades after the event in question allegedly occurred. Those few early Jews -- those who saw God in the flesh, who touched him, who heard him, who were eye-witnesses to his miracles -- therefore, were in an epistemic privileged position to know that God exists with respect to anyone else who merely heard from those few Jews (or worse, from people even further removed from the alleged events) that God was incarnate, performed miracles, etc.

Since according to you God has appeared incarnate to some humans without affecting their free will and since we both agree that to witness an extraordinary event oneself is MUCH more likely to induce belief than is to read about an extraordinary event from an anonymous author, the burden is upon you to show why God has not revealed himself in the flesh to anyone who has a rational doubt about the existence of God if God truly desires for them to know that he exists.

There are 6 billion people on the planet, each with their own preferences on how God ought interact with them. I suppose God should just give into all these whims, despite the fact that many of them are likely to be mutually contradictory?

Why not? Besides, we're not talking about 6 billion people. Billions already are convinced that God exists based on nothing more than hearsay. Billions more believe that a god exists. There's no need for God to appear to them. It's really only those relative few who rationally doubt God's existence to whom God might consider dropping by in the flesh to say hello to if he really desires that they know him.

Oh, and in what way might "these whims" be contradictory? To facilitate my understanding, can you illustrate this point?

"Since you believe that God did incarnate himself in order to directly interact with his creation, you must believe that God has the ability to incarnate himself in order to interact with his creation without affecting his creation's free will or else the free will of those few first-century Jews and even fewer Romans who directly witnessed the incarnated God would have been affected. This would seem to eliminate the "free will" defense for the divine silence."

No, I understood you correctly.  This is probably a limitation of the medium. If I were sitting with you face to face I could very easily have pointed out that in no way do I think that the prophets or even the incarnation is without any affect on the free will front.  There are epistemological ramifications to these interventions.  If you are willing to consider for the sake of discussion that the OT and NT scriptures represent real events in history, then you can see what these ramifications are.  Many people recall that God hardened Pharoah's heart and wonder about the justice of it- most don't remember that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, first.  It wasn't as though the evidence of the power of God was absent.

Jesus talked about a 'blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.'  The context of that discussion was Jesus driving demons out of a man in a way that was visible to all.  The Pharisees could not deny what they saw with their own eyes, but they were unwilling to allow it to serve as a validation of Jesus and his message.  Their solution:  attribute Jesus' powers to Satan.  

While you don't have overwhelming evidence, you have some excuse.  In proportion to the amount of evidence you have, the less excuse you have.  As the amount of evidence increases, your personal choice becomes more and more defined.  

If you are blind, you would receive mercy.  But if you claim to be able to see, your guilt remains.

There is another aspect to the issue as well.  I have explained this elsewhere, before you arrived.  I'm sure the thread is archived.  The only way its possible for a supernatural being to validate its claims is to show some mastery over a thing.  That means, first of all, there has to be an observed regularity to our experience.  Indeed, without invoking any supernatural entity at all, our own communications with each other depend on the observed regularity- the so called laws of nature.  

Our ability to communicate on this forum is only possible because the forum software behaves the same way each time.  If our words were sometimes displayed as pictures, or a post was this day in English, and another in Spanish, and yet another in gibberish, or another in Copernican, if you'll pardon the redundancy.  

The laws of the forum do not require that there be a 'supernatural' entity to operate, although the obvious parallel to arguments for intelligent design are here.  In relation to this forum, I am a 'supernatural entity.'  I've been able to communicate with you only by conforming to the same rules that the rest of you minions have to obey.  And no one complains about that, because we all agree that we want to communicate.

The difference is that skeptics look at all the components required for communication between other intelligent agents and wish to believe that because God is 'omnimax' these components still would not be necessary.   The response is that they would be even MORE important.  So much more important, in fact, as I have argued here, that to even ask for certain things is to formulate a nonsense question.  "Can't an 'omnimax' God create free will without there being free will?"

That's nonsense.  Can God make a square circle?  Nonsense.  Can God make a square that is not a square?  Nonsense.  Not 'nonsense' in the pejorative.  'Nonsense' in the sense of simply being unintelligible or meaningless in content.

Its easy to see how nonsensical it is to ask God to create free will where people really don't have free will.  What appears to be difficult for skeptics to grasp is that the invention of various situations that are actually saying the same thing as 'free will' and plugging those inventions into the statement is equally nonsensical.  Just because you re-word 'free-will' and plug your re-wording back into the statement doesn't make it any less nonsensical.

"An omnimax God should be able to give free will while at the same time not allow people to do destructive things."

Nonsense.  That's exactly like saying "An omnimax God should be able to give free will while at the same time not give them free will."

Nonsense.  Omnimax God or not.  God may be omni-logical, but that doesn't mean he is a-logical.

Finally, to return to the forum analogy, from an epistemological POV your ability to KNOW that I am the forum owner positively hinges on whether or not I have powers over the forum that you do not.  If I constantly make use of those powers in order to validate that claim, I threaten the very 'observed regularities' that are required for communication in the first place.   As smart as I am, there is no way to avoid that reality.  Even if I were omnimax, it could not be avoided.  Which leads to:

"Oh, and in what way might "these whims" be contradictory? To facilitate my understanding, can you illustrate this point?"

I gave an example of this to Copernicus and he, .... , well, he ignored how it very easily destroyed his point.  The idea of two teams competing against each other each praying to God to win puts God in a situation where to answer each prayer he'd have to do something that is in principle nonsensical.   Now, to the extent that he could give each of them the victory, it could only be achieved by changing the rules of the game, or changing the purpose of the competition in the first place.  He cannot preserve the integrity of the event AND give each person their requested desires.

Copernicus stupidly thinks that an omnimax God could do all these things, again telling Christians what they ought to mean by 'omnimax' instead of letting Christians inform others what they mean.   When we talk about God's reasoning being beyond our own, we do not think he has no reasoning.  'Super'reasoning, yes, and 'super' in the Latin sense (super, sub), not the comic book sense.  Not a-reasoning.

And in conclusion, if once again we take the OT and NT as recording real historical events, it cannot be argued that God is silent.

Perhaps it could be said that God has not spoken specifically to this person or that, to Cogito or to Copernicus.... but are you so sure you want the opportunity?  That did not turn out so well for certain historical figures.   If you are not prepared to fully give in to that autocratic bloodthirsty powermongering (and yet somehow also silent?) God, you will have no excuse.  You may be worse off than had you never had that opportunity.

Go ahead and read the Gospels, and you will see that what I am saying is not a new invention, or an invention of the Christian church.  Jesus often made reference to such things.

I gave an example of this to Copernicus and he, .... , well, he ignored how it very easily destroyed his point.  The idea of two teams competing against each other each praying to God to win puts God in a situation where to answer each prayer he'd have to do something that is in principle nonsensical.   Now, to the extent that he could give each of them the victory, it could only be achieved by changing the rules of the game, or changing the purpose of the competition in the first place.  He cannot preserve the integrity of the event AND give each person their requested desires.

I responded to your point, and you ignored my response.  Now you are claiming that I ignored your point.    Look at the last sentence in your paragraph.  "[God] cannot preserve the integrity of the event AND give each person their requested desires."  Nobody said that he had to give each person their requested desires.   Free will is not having your desires fulfilled.  It is allowing you the freedom to choose a course of action, GIVEN THE LIMITATIONS OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES.  Knowing that God exists in no way limits the freedom to choose how to play the game.  If you look back at my earlier post, you will see that this was how I responded--to question the presupposition that God was obligated to fulfill desires when he communicated.  That's not an issue.

Copernicus stupidly thinks that...

Again with the ad hominem attacks.  Do you really need to descend to that level?

...an omnimax God could do all these things, again telling Christians what they ought to mean by 'omnimax' instead of letting Christians inform others what they mean.   When we talk about God's reasoning being beyond our own, we do not think he has no reasoning.  'Super'reasoning, yes, and 'super' in the Latin sense (super, sub), not the comic book sense.  Not a-reasoning.

I have asked for a plausible explanation of why an omnimax god could not communicate directly with us, as he is described as doing in the Bible.  Your response has been that we can't really know what God's motives are.  An argument from ignorance.  OK.  Fine.  Alternatively, he isn't there to have a motive.  Nobody is asking God to create a squared circle, just to repeat some behavior that he has been described as doing in the past.  If all you can do is say that his motives are unfathomable, then enough said on this issue.

And in conclusion, if once again we take the OT and NT as recording real historical events, it cannot be argued that God is silent.

That's the problem right there.  I do not take the OT and NT as recording real historical events (regarding divine interventions, that is).  You do.  So how can YOU speak out of both sides of your mouth on this issue?  On the one hand, you acknowledge that God has intervened in the past.  On the other, you argue that he cannot do so lest he rob us of our free will.  Which is it?  Can he intervene as reported in the Bible, or can't he?  How do you explain this apparent contradiction in your position?

Perhaps it could be said that God has not spoken specifically to this person or that, to Cogito or to Copernicus.... but are you so sure you want the opportunity?  That did not turn out so well for certain historical figures.   If you are not prepared to fully give in to that autocratic bloodthirsty powermongering (and yet somehow also silent?) God, you will have no excuse.  You may be worse off than had you never had that opportunity.

What nonsense.  You can't come up with a plausible explanation of Divine Silence, so you resort to the ploy of claiming that we don't really want to hear from God anyway.  Speak for yourself.  Maybe God prefers skeptics over those who accept his existence on faith alone.  

Go ahead and read the Gospels, and you will see that what I am saying is not a new invention, or an invention of the Christian church.  Jesus often made reference to such things.

How can you be so sure that the Gospels themselves were not an invention?  Christians were not the first people to put words into the mouths of their gods.

"I responded to your point, and you ignored my response."

Your response was:

"I don't know how God would respond. Why don't we ask him? Doh!"

"Again with the ad hominem attacks. Do you really need to descend to that level?"

That's hard to say.  Probably not.  Do you really think your response there was any thing remotely serious?  I thought it was stupid.  I suppose I just need to use your more polite way of being insulting.  Nonsense.  Silly.  

"I have asked for a plausible explanation of why an omnimax god could not communicate directly with us, as he is described as doing in the Bible. Your response has been that we can't really know what God's motives are. An argument from ignorance."

That wasn't my argument at all.   I'm pretty sure you're just jumbling up arguments of mine, left and right.  Sort of like you did with my vaccination example.  I used it merely to illustrate how a person in authority may make a decision that causes pain to another who themselves is not 'yet' in a position to understand the factors involved in that decision.  It is not heavy intellectual lifting to see how we might use this IN REGARDS TO GOD'S TERMS HE SETS, which was the argument I was making.  Instead, you gave a crap line about how we at least try to comfort the child.  I suppose you thought that was 'dealing' with the point, too.

Let's see if I can insult the way Cop can and maybe it won't be ad hominem this way:

"At least we try to be present to comfort the child. That's more than we can say for your god."

Stupid.  You went for the cheap shot instead of addressing the substance of the analogy.

There, that better?

"That's the problem right there. I do not take the OT and NT as recording real historical events (regarding divine interventions, that is). You do. So how can YOU speak out of both sides of your mouth on this issue?"

What are you talking about?   You're smoking some serious crack.

My bad.

Crack Smoking.  The whole basis of my theology is derived from taking the OT and NT as recording real events.  You know that.  When you ask your question, you are asking the question knowing where I'm coming from, so it only makes plain common sense that my answer is going to come from that basis, too.  It certainly doesn't make any sense for YOU to raise questions derived from taking the OT/NT as real events and then reject the answers which come from the same thing.

Cop:  "So, how can you say that Hamlet doesn't have herpes?  It says right here blah blah blah"
Snt:  "Because right here it says, and I quote, 'Hamlet doesn't have herpes.'
Cop:  "That's the problem right there.  I don't trust Shakespeare, and you do."
Snt:  "Yea ok, so on what basis did you raise your challenge that Hamlet didn't have Herpes?"

Do I have to spell out the analogy?

"What nonsense."

Yea, that's not ad hominem.

"You can't come up with a plausible explanation of Divine Silence, so you resort to the ploy of claiming that we don't really want to hear from God anyway. Speak for yourself. Maybe God prefers skeptics over those who accept his existence on faith alone."

I've already pointed out to you that whatever else, Christianity can't be accused of 'divine silence.'  I don't need to defend against a charge that isn't valid.  Pick some other conception of God, if you like.  You can't say:

"Can he intervene as reported in the Bible"

And then still say he's silent.

Whatever else it is or means to you, its not silence.

"How can you be so sure that the Gospels themselves were not an invention? Christians were not the first people to put words into the mouths of their gods."

And Balaam isn't the only one who had to deal with ... well, never mind.

There is another aspect to the issue as well. I have explained this elsewhere, before you arrived. I'm sure the thread is archived.

It probably is. The longer I'm here and the more I look around in the various forums at preexisting threads, the more I notice that much of what we've discussed to date has been covered before my arrival. This fact, as you probably guess, has done little to change my personal view, but it does give me an appreciation for the patience that you've displayed here in explaining positions that you've explained before -- and sometimes many times before and oftentimes in great depth before -- and for that patience, I thank you.

Anyway, back to the bloodletting. . . :)

"On the one hand, you acknowledge that God has intervened in the past. On the other, you argue that he cannot do so lest he rob us of our free will. Which is it? Can he intervene as reported in the Bible, or can't he?"

There is no contradiction.

That undeniably is a contradiction. Either God can intervene in the world as reported in the Bible or He cannot. Both to be able to perform an act and to be unable to perform the same act at the same time is a contradiction.

Perhaps you mean that while God can intervene in the world as reported in the Bible, He simply chooses not to do so in order to preserve our illusion of free will.

But if this is so, then God must have destroyed the free will of Moses, Abraham, the apostles, and many other Biblical characters by directly communicating with them. If not, then the free will defense against the argument from Divine silence is refuted.

God seeks to give us sufficient reason to believe and worship Him, but He wants us to do so freely. But, revealing Himself infringes on our free will. So God accepts a reduction in free will for a limited time (and to a limited audience) to achieve His revelation purposes. Once He has completed His revelation, He can then step back and give us the optimal amount of free will (from His perspective).

But why? There is no difference between "free will" and the illusion of "free will." OTOH, the difference between burning in hell for eternity and living in paradise could not be greater.

God could give us the illusion of free will and we'd be none the wiser for it, would we? So why doesn't He? If the choice is between having actual free will and possibly burning in hell for eternity OR having only the illusion of free will with the guarantee of eternal life in paradise, the choice is a no-brainer.

This seems strongly to imply that either God is playing silly games with human lives for his own amusement or there is no God.

I'll let Cimics pick up the other stuff..

"That undeniably is a contradiction. Either God can intervene in the world as reported in the Bible or He cannot."

Sure, what Cop said is a contradiction.  But I know that that is not my position, and I'm pretty sure its not Cimic's, either.

"Perhaps you mean that while God can intervene in the world as reported in the Bible, He simply chooses not to do so in order to preserve our illusion of free will."

As I I tried to explain, the situation is multi-faceted.  On the one hand, constant revelaton robs us of the 'observed generalities' in the world around us that we need, not only for epistemology in general, but even in order for communication with each other to be possible.  Please re-visit my discussion about the nature of this discussion forum.  On the other hand, God is not precluded from interacting.  Rather, any such interacting is going to have an effect on our free will- if it is genuine- in proportion to how explicit that revelation is.

Again, if you can for the sake of discussion take the OT and NT as recording actual historical events, then it is clear that despite all of the great and wonderful miracles that Jesus pulled off, there were still some- many- who either rejected Jesus outright or decided to attribute his powers to Satan.  Jesus could have spared them this hardening of their hearts altogether by not doing any signs, any miracles, or anything else other than discussion or Jedi Mind Tricks to persuade them.  

But then he would have been accused of participating in the "Divine Silence" Conspiracy.

In the immortal words found in the Life of Bryan...

"You just can't please some people!"
"That's just what Jesuh said, suh!"

It may be of interest to note that most of the Jewish anti-Jesus stuff to come down to us in history never challenged Jesus' abilities to do kewl things.  It was explained as sorcery.