Why Doesn't God Explain In Person?

Rowan Atkinson (best known for Mr. Bean, I imagine) once did a very funny little skit on TV. Forgive me if I retell it inaccurately; it was a very long time ago. Basically, he is the demon who the damned first meet on arrival in Hell. He's done this speech a million times. He's like a bored tour guide. While they walk, he explains some of the finer points of the inferno's bureaucracy to his group. After a while, they reach a particularly large cavern swarming with other lost souls in transit. They halt, and he starts to divide his little group up. "Could the Jews join that queue there please?" he begins, pointing off a way. "Hindus there, Buddhists there and Christians there." He starts ticking off his clipboard, then sadly adds with the practiced air of someone who is used to giving difficult news: "I'm afraid the Muslims were right."My point is that until we are dead, its going to be really difficult to know which religion to follow. For some time now, it's seemed to me that holy texts are a pretty useless way for a god to communicate with the people of the world. This uselessness stems primarily from the fact that anyone can (and does) write a holy text. If a real God were to decide to communicate to humankind through a book, s/he/it would be drowned out by all the bogus ones.Then this morning when I was lying in bed, it hit me. Unless God doesn't exist of course, what's to stop it from appearing to each and every person when they have reached a relatively mature age, and explaining which religion is the right one to follow? It wouldn't have to take very long: five minutes at most. (And what's a few minutes to a being of infinite knowledge and power anyway?) He could even offer a couple of cryptic little hints about upcoming highlights of that person's existence. But that's optional. The personal appearance and the clarification about religion is the main thing. It would give us clarity where there is so much confusion, and allow people to make an informed decision.Then I started thinking about the objections that people might have to this - and I'm glad you have borne with me this far, because those objections are what this topic is meant to be about.You might say:1) God does make himself known to you, if only you open your ears/eyes/heart.I don't think this one helps at all, because if he is so explicit, why are there so many sincere followers of conflicting notions of God around the world? Also, this attitude is a little bit insulting towards those who are sincerely looking for answers but aren't finding any.Another might be:2) If God appeared to us, that would mess up free will, because then people would be scared to do bad things.If you think this, then how do you explain the fact that believing Christians occasionally do premeditatedly destructive - hell, sometimes just plain stupid and brutal - things in their personal or public lives?A third could be:3) Ha ha ha, this is all irrelevant.But I don't think it is, because we are talking about billions of eternal souls (if they exist).4) Don't ask God to prove things to you, puny mortal.The reason I'm not convinced by this one is that it seems unfair that in biblical accounts, God was doing miracles left right and centre, like a nervous magician at a kid's party. Why has he stopped? Why do we have to rely on accounts of miracles, when two thousand years ago he was popping them off like champagne corks?By all means object to my question on any of these grounds, but explain to me why my objections are unfounded, heinous, ill-informed etc...Okay. I realize that this topic might sounds a little bit like an enthusiastic newbie trying to impress people, and maybe I am - who knows? But that's not what it's meant to be; I sincerely want to learn. I want to see how people with faith address this question. I imagine its easy for you to brush this line of argument to one side, or else you wouldn't be religious. I just want you to explain to me WHY it isn't a problem.Phew! Thanks for bearing with me!This message has been edited by Tusko, 11-13-2004 09:50 AM

I think I understand what you are saying here, but there is something in your position that I don't understand. You are saying that theists aren't actually 100% sure that there is a god, and that unceretainty is what's making things interesting. I've got two problems with this really.1) Why does uncertainty help? I'd argue that choice is pretty irrelevant now, because you don't know which choices are the right ones. You just arbitrarily (or through birth and circumstance) find a set of rules for choices and adhere or ignore them. If we actually knew what choices were the right ones, and what would happen if we didn't do them, then every choice we made in our lives would become terribly relevant.2) Maybe I've been hanging around hardcore christians too much, but my experience of theists is that to all intents and purposes, their faith is right, and god exists. If you believe in God, you actually think he exists and that you are playing for real stakes when you are making choices in the real world. If you do something that could put your immortal soul in jeopardy, you start to sweat real sweat, don't you? I didn't think there were many Christians who thought "eck! I might not actually matter what I do, he might not even exist!"I don't want to come of ranty here, I know you are a thoughtful individual. I just want to see whether its reasonable to push at this issue a bit more to get the kind of answers that even a dimbo like me can understand.

Hi all. Thanks for your responses. I haven't been able to get to a computer for a day or two, or I would have replied earlier.Arachnophilia writes: I just want to unpack this a bit because it seems as though there are a couple of things going on here. I'm going to talk about the first bit more, because I think I understood it better. Firstly there is the stuff about choices. Although it would seem a coersive act if God did appear, I personally I don't think that its a foregone conclusion that if he did appear to explain stuff, no-one would ever make a selfish or destructive choice ever again. I don't think it would stop "crimes of passion". In a way, I think this highlights a serious problem with the whole Christian worldview of sin and forgiveness, which is predecated to a certain degree on a free agent able to make rational decisions. (Incidentally, and also more off topic, I think that people who have difficultly make informed rational choices, like those who suffer from severe mental illness, are pretty much excluded from any Christian narrative.)I guess you don't mean it, but you make it sound as though if we knew which religious teachings to follow then there wouldn't be any choices to make in life because one would always be "obviously correct". I think life is much more ambiguous than this, and I think you do too. Knowing which set of religious teachings to follow would just be a foundation on which we could build a spiritual life. It would be giving us the rulebook. How we played the game would then be up to us. If we don't have the rules, how can we be expected to play the game, and even worse, judged harshly if we play poorly?Now I want to talk about the next bit from that quote above. I take it when you are talking about the sun rising tomorrow, you are talking about knowledge and belief. Clearly, whether I believe that rocks drop or not, their probably going to drop anyway. We see some things so many times that it would make our days pretty un-livable if we were going to worry about basic physical laws, or chemistry. I'm just not sure how this relates to your point. Could you explain the connection with the choice stuff a bit more explicitly for me please?The overwhelming problem for me is that I haven't got a clue which set of rules to follow. Which religion is it? It seems pointless picking the one that seems nearest to hand, because the place of birth is effectively random. It also seems suspect to choose one on personal preference, or a "feeling" deep within, because observation tells us that these powerful internal feelings lead people in so many different directions they don't seem to be helpful at picking out "the one". Either of these methods for arriving at a set of rules seem comparable to throwing a die with a cross, a wheel, a star, a cresent, a yin-yang and a cute kitten on each of its sides in order to determine your faith.Cheers

I don't know. If it was totally normal to see God at some point on your eighteenth birthday, and he always said "the genuine religious faith is X" consistently to everyone, I don't think that would force anyone to do anything. If God's chosen faith was something without an eternal hell for instance, then there wouldn't be a strong imperative to obey each and every rule of that faith. If it was one of the "everlasting underground oven" faiths, then people would have to think pretty hard before wearing a cotton T-shirt and polyester slacks: but they could if they wanted to.I'm being a bit silly In proposing this whole God appearng thing, I know. Its just that it still seems more sensible to me than how religion works in our universe.Cheers.

I guess what I'm saying is why appear only to a select few? If you only demonstrate your awesome power to a few goatherds in the desert, you are in danger of being forgotten about. Even if you are remembered, how are you going to distinguish your claims from those of all the other made up religions that have flourished in the meantime, who all claim their god(s) did miraculous things in antiquity.Now if he had stuck with things like they were in the OT, then we'd all have know where we were, for three thousand years. As you say, people chose to obey or ignore his laws, and he acted acordingly. It made a kind of horrible sense.But the way things are are very different. The clamour of religions reporting miraculous incidents from antiquity is so loud and so varied, it appears to me to be nothing more than the scared noise of humans contemplating infinity and not liking what they see.

Sure its hypothetical, but I'd still get a kick out of seeing the TV coverage!I'm probably being dense here, but I'm not quite getting your point yet. You are saying that it would be a bad thing if everyone became Muslim if God appeared and said that was the right religion, I think. I just want to know why.Lets put to one side the fact that in this modern age we probably wouldn't believe God if he did appear, and instead think he was a hologram sent by the American government.

Arachnophilia said: Ooops, I was picking Islam at random too. I was just confused that you were saying that if a God actually set up his stall and told us which was the right religion this would be a bit of a problem. I think I get it now though: you are saying that the choice to believe, and what you choose to believe is an important power to leave in the hands of people.That makes sense. But the problem I have with it is that I'd question whether people really get much of a choice about what they believe in. By no means does the religion you are raised in necessarily become your lifelong faith, because people born Christian end up believing in Amazonian tree-spirits every once in a while. However, the religion in which you are raised certainly has a significant influence on your lifelong spiritual outlook and beliefs. So if your belief, in many instances, chooses you, rather than the other way round, how is that helpful?

Will you bear with me if I just preface my reply with a bit of whimsy? Because humans are visual animals, and because your avatar is a big ape, and because you (Jar) often do these fantastic little Socratic dialogue thingys with people, I have this picture of this wise old Orangutang typing away at the other end of the wires - perhaps from a zoo or jungle outpost with satellite link-up. Is this in fact the case?In answer to your question, I think that it is a fantastic idea for children to be given moral awareness. Personally, I think it would be a grand idea if young children (3+, I guess) were properly introduced to the idea if morality through carefully structured philosophy classes in the same way that they do maths and language. Unfortunately, this hardly happens at all in this country, apart from when the damn hippies are let loose on the kids. I dunno about the states.

Yes, I agree. Now I'm going to try to explain my position a bit - but I'm not sure if the explanation is going to have any relevance to your line of questioning.For most adults, I think "don't do that because the ten commandments say you can't" (morality from authority?) is a bit shaky. Although the absoluteness of the commands gives clarity, it doesn't offer any guidance when the situation to which they are being applied is complicated. So I'd emphasise moral awareness rather than the strict adherence to moral strictures. It might be a bit different for people who have a hard time grasping the complexities of a moral situation - maybe young children and those with learning difficulties? Maybe then you have to compromise the ideal, and try to get them to do the right thing through fear of authority.So I imagine it depends what kind of moral teaching we are talking about - but on the whole, I think that any old way you can convince members of a society to act with a modicum of respect for each other is probably a good thing.(edited for spelling badness)This message has been edited by Tusko, 11-19-2004 05:38 AMThis message has been edited by Tusko, 11-19-2004 05:39 AM

A bunny? Oh - I see. No, he's just a friend. His name's Jose. I would have used a photo of me, but he's just a hell of a lot more photogenic than I am. Don't worry, he doesn't mind (I think he's actually rather flattered).As for the rest of your response, I think I may have just said exactly the same thing in my response to Jar. Ah well.

Wow, yes - that makes sense. The fact that God doesn't openly pull
rank means that we have to work out the what's right and wrong for
ourselves.(Stunned pause while I try to rally my thoughts.)Although there's a rightness to that answer, something doesn't quite fit for me.1) Over the past few thousand years, there have been a lot of different religions out there with different moral frameworks. The Abramic ones are all much of a muchness, but there have been some others that are seriously out of whack on things like human sacrifice. If the genuine supernatural deity or deities don't offer any guidance at all, then we could be happily carrying on doing something that is very displeasing to them, simply because we had arrived at our morality through either obeying a spurious authority, or because we had followed some kind of "self-evident" reasoning process.2) Doesn't the various holy books just confuse things unneccesarily by LOOKING like they are offering morality from authority?Do you think I'm barking up the wrong tree here?

Jar said: I wasn't necessarily saying that the old-school south american religions and the accompanying practices were BAD as such. I was just saying that the people who believed in those gods and engaged in those practices were probably just doing what felt like the logical thing.Thats why I think that its really hard to arrive at a set of morals through pure logic, uninfluenced by the culture that surrounds us.

In that case, my question is this:If God has a definite idea of what's right and wrong, but humans can only derive a culturally relative morality with their limited powers of reasoning, isn't it impossible for us to please God through our actions unless he tells us what to do?Unfortunately, we both agreed that morality from authority was questionable, so this appears to be something of a double-bind.What's your perspective on this problem? I hope I'm not misrepresenting your views.(editted for totally random thoughts stuck on the end of post!)
(editted again to clarify central argment)This message has been edited by Tusko, 11-23-2004 10:49 AMThis message has been edited by Tusko, 11-23-2004 10:52 AM

Its weird. There seems to be something contradictory about altruism when there is even the vaguest notion of a reward. That's not to say it doesn't make sense to me as a biological or social adaptation that benefits a community; it does. I just can't imagine a truly selfless act.It reminds me of an interview I read with Steven Spielberg once. He was saying to the interviewer that he used to give large amounts to charity, but he always told people about it. Then one day he was sitting next to a rabbi on a plane, and they got talking. The rabbi said, 'You know, Steven, every time that you tell people about your charitable giving, it becomes a boast and so less worthy in the eyes of God.'
Apparently this bothered Mr Speilberg; so now, he told the interviewer for this UK national newspaper (and consequently tens of thousands of British people), he gives large sums of money to charity anonymously. Whoops!This message has been edited by Tusko, 11-24-2004 07:17 AM

I warn you - haven't really thought about this properly. Correct me if I'm talking through my bilge-holes.Aren't there compensations for jumping on a live grenade to save your friends? You may not be around to see them of course. But there are compensations - like they live, and are forever grateful for you, and you are remembered with honour, and if they are a theist, they might be expecting an eternal otherworldly reward too. Maybe these kinds of things would be important to people? I guess you could also be motivated to jump on a grenade for "selfish" reasons, and then people later ascribe a heroic motivation to your actions.It seems my problem is that I'm seeing ANY compensation for an apparently altruistic action as a mitigator of genuine altruism. Is this faulty logically? I think it might be, but can't quite see how. If it does stand up to a modicum of scrutiny, how do you view this problem?