The Problem of Divine Hiddenness

The problem of divine hiddenness is one of the most popular arguments against God's existence.

In this essay I want to explore the argument. But I won't be defending the original version. I don't think that the original version is that good. I also think it's extremely boring.

Here is the version that I will be defending:

1. The world "looks" like God is not present.
2. Either God exists and is hiding, or God doesn't exist.
3. If God existed we would not expect him to hide.
4. Therefore God not existing is a better explanation for why it looks like God is not present.

The original version is about God wanting a "relationship" with everyone because he loves them but some don't experience him, perhaps because they're resisting. It's the ultimate "he loves me, he loves me not" - God never calls or texts. If you're into that, it has been covered ad-nauseum by others, but my particular version has only been mentioned off-hand. As far as I am aware, only Sean Carroll and Richard Carrier this argument.

God is Hidden

Many theists will take issue with this assertion. "Just look in the mirror" "Look at the trees!" "Look at the universe!", "we all feel God!"

But if someone had never heard of God and been told that God did all these things, they don't see God in any of them. It's like being told that we experience dragons and then being pointed to a fire.

When I look at trees, I can trace back the causal process billions of years without ever encountering God. After about 13.8 billion years, I run into a gap which theists claim contains God. But it doesn't look like God to me, just a gap in our knowledge.

Think about things that we know exist. Trees. Your next door neighbour. Your parents. You actually see them. You don't hear fancy philosophical arguments about why they exist despite never seeing them. Then there are things we don't sense directly, but with the aid of physical apparatus and scientific models we can predict and detect. Radar technology. Black holes. We can come up with equations, see which values we expect to find if something is present, and compare it to what we actually find.

God is not like this at all.

When's the last time anyone spoke to God? I'm not talking about prayer. I'm not talking about a feeling. I'm talking about actually speaking to God, like one would to anyone else.

Suppose someone told you they spoke to their uncle yesterday, but upon further examination, find out that they did not actually speak to him physically. Their uncle never actually heard the conversion and did not reply back using his mouth. That would strike you as bizzarre, that's not how conversations work.

And yet this is what people say when they claim that they have experienced Jesus. When you ask them to describe their experience, they almost never actually see a Jewish man born 2,000 years ago talking to them in the flesh. They have some warm and fuzzy feeling, maybe after they were having a rough time and went to a Church and were told Jesus loves them.

In my book, that's hidden. If Jesus really did come back to life, and he loved everyone, and he was omnipresent, he actually could talk to people.

And yet if anyone claimed that he visited them in the flesh, even other Christians would call them crazy.

If Jesus was not actually divine, people can experience the exact same feelings, as evidenced by the fact that people of all sorts of religions (including the "wrong ones") claim to experience very similar feelings. If I take the Christians at their word regarding what they feel, then I should also take members of other religions at their word.

In other words, if God doesn't exist, the world would look almost exactly the same as it does now. Theists only really have one area of ignorance left to insert God - the Big Bang. But almost everything after then works just fine without God.

Either God is hiding, using indirect methods to communicate with people or maybe not even bothering to communicate, or God does not exist. If he wanted to he could be a lot more obviously present.

God's Hiding is Unexpected

In particular, I'm talking about theistic Gods. The ones that place special emphasis on one species of ape in a remote part of the universe. The deistic domino pushers, authors of the simulation, performing their science experiment, are exempt from this.

But Abrahamic Gods want to talk to us. We're special, and they have a message. He's authored multiple books, sent many messengers, all to guide us to the true path, and to fulfill the purpose of his creation.

But how does God choose to communicate? In a way that's indistinguishable from a non-existant God. In the case of the Bible, he "inspires" the writers. And in the Quran, he sends an angel to recite some verses to one guy in the middle East, and tells that guy to tell everyone else and take his word for it.

Just like all the wrong religions.

If God actually existed, he would not need apologists. How many apologists are there arguing for the existence of Beyonce, or the moon?

He could come down and talk to all of us, so we would not have to rely on the word of someone who claimed to talk to him.

If God really had a message for us, if he really cared about us taking it seriously, us believing in him and doing what he wants, then it's really strange that he goes about it in the most indirect way possible, a way that is indistinguishable from what would happen if he doesn't exist.

God Probably Doesn't Exist

If there's something you expect to see if a theory is true, but you don't see it, then the theory is probably false. Similarly, if there are things in the world you expect to see if God exists, but you don't see them, then God probably does not exist.

Now, theists can add more attributes to God that make his hidden state more plausible but this comes at a cost. Explaining the same data now takes even more postulates. These attributes often are also unexpected, so the additional cost makes the problem even worse.

I'll give a few examples of the sorts of responses theists give, and why they're terrible:

• God's presence is so incredible that we don't deserve it / it would blind us.

  There are a few scriptural stories where God decries the arrogance of those asking to see him. This is bizarre to me. In what universe is it arrogant to ask for evidence when someone is asking you to believe in a proposition that requires the dedication of your life? If someone was selling you a car or a house, wouldn't you ask to see it and even try it first? But when it's not merely a sum of money, but your whole life, asking to see it is too much? Extroadinary claims require extroardinary evidence, not very little evidence. Furthermore, the whole we're puny and God is mighty thing also doesn't make sense. God made us. If he's so great and mighty, why would his handiwork be crap? Surely he can make something sturdy enough to withstand his presence?

• Evidence of God would somehow interfere with our free will and mean we can't choose to follow him. Except, the devil is aware of God and disobeys him. And knowing he exists doesn't mean constantly feeling him looking at you. We have evidence of many people and still experience "free will". Giving no evidence of his existence also makes life a giant dice roll. If the things we do in life happen to coincide with what he wants then we go to heaven, otherwise we burn forever. But add in evidence, and we can make informed decisions.

• Atheists don't really exist, we all feel God's existence but atheists just choose not to follow him because they want to sin. No, we don't. That's like pretending the police don't exist because we want to steal.

Conclusion

The problem of divine hideness is not merely a restatement of the claim that belief in God is unjustified absent sufficient evidence. It means that active disbelief in God is unjustified due to the lack of expected evidence, and the explanatory superiority of the non-God hypothesis. In other words, it's an argument for strong "a" atheism. In the same way that not detecting gunpowder residue and blood on someone's clothes and body is evidence that they did not recently shoot someone - enough evidence to rule someone out of a murder investigation - the lack of evidence of God's presence is actually evidence for his non-existance.