Is God Self-Evident

Why? Perhaps it's because he choses not to be self-evident? A common enough view of the Christian God is that he does precisely this as part of an overall plan in which folk are given the opportunity to decide whether they want to spend eternity with God and what he represents or whether they don't. If they could see God exactly as he is then their ability not to believe what he says would be fatally compromised. And along with it, their ability to chose not to spend eternity with him and what he represents.Biblical faith is based on evidence: God reveals his existance to the person that he exists so his existance becomes fact.

Hi there Straggler.. Let's have a look see. We're assuming God exists and we're taking a look at the (posited) mechanism of salvation.Fact: God exists.Fact: There is absolute right and wrong. What he says is right is right and what he says is wrong is wrong.Fact: He lets you know what right is and what wrong is by way of conscience.Fact: you don't need to believe in Gods existance/existance of absolute right and wrong to know what absolute right and wrong is.Fact: This knowledge is suppressible by your will. If you will to suppress it consciences restraining influence is cut and you will do what is evil. If you don't suppress the conscience you will be restrained from doing evil by it.Fact: Your will is a key element in your doing evil or no.Fact: The are two destinations to be arrived at wrt to the evil you (and I) engage in. You can either end up despairing at yourself and the rotteness that you (hopefully) come to realise lies at the core of yourself. Or you can avoid arrival at this conclusion by continued suppression of the fact that evil is central to your actions and motivations.God is the one who's attempting to steer you to the conclusion that you are rotten/hopeless/lost. If, via that mechanism, you come to believe that you are rotten/hopeless/lost then you will believe both God and the facts about yourself. All without having to believe in Gods existance.No blind belief style faith is required. Just the kind of faith that is underscored by the facts. The decision isn't that you believe in God, it's that you believe Gods argument - even though you don't yet believe in God.Later dude...

If you've follow the factual steps down you'll find there is no faith (as normally understood, ie: leap of/blind) involved. The person considers it a fact that they are rotten/hopeless/lost. They are as convinced of this as anyone can be of anything.All hinges on God existing according to classic Christian theological models of course. If he does then the facts listed are facts - including the basis of salvation being factual. If not, then not. Eh..no. I'd imagine it's this way because this way (or something simliar to it by way of mechanics) is the way it had to be in order that God's objective regarding us be achieved.This way appears to be an excellent (if indirect & veiled) means by which to offer a balanced choice to people. The choice effectively asks you whether you want to spend all eternity with God and what he stands for... or whether you don't. The way in which the God-option is made manifest involves placing us in an environment in which we are exposed to the attributes of God and all he stands for - it not mattering whether we believe in God or not in order that we be placed there. Whether believing in God or no or attributing these things to his nature, we are exposed to beauty, kindness, patience, creativity, relationship, majesty, variety, love, joy, peace, etc. In similar fashion, the anti-God option is made manifest, exposed as we are to all that is contrary to God: darkness, ugliness, meanness, impatience, hostility*, boredom, cruelty*, hatred*, anxiety, worry*, fear*.We interact with a world containing all these things, the godly and ungodly, and we manifest our hearts desire regarding them by what we do and think and say. Isn't there a thrill of pure joy when we share a kindness with a stranger and make their day? Don't we replay the event to wring even more pleasure from it. We are showing we love the godly. Isn't there also a thrill of delight when someone we dislike intensely loses out? And don't we replay the clever words we spoke that cause them to lose face in front of their peers. We show too that we love the ungodly.The mechanism of salvation uses our love of both the godly and the ungodly to shake out our final response to God as to which it will be. All without us having to first believe in Gods existance. All without God needing to reveal himself and be in the presence of the ungodly.Thus indirect choice.From your last post: a) I don't hold we have free-will. Left to our own devices we would do only evil all the time. God exerts a restraining influence on us via conscience however and so good gets done. We can say that good gets done by God by extension. And evil gets done by us when we cut the ties that restrain us. Thus we have the appearence of free-will - not actual free-will. I wouldn't worry about this technicality however, it's a detail and really only comes into play when it comes to giving the credit completely to God for our salvation. And the credit to us in the case we are damned.b) If everyone had a true free will and could see God as he is then they would know what happens evil and shirk at the thought of ever doing evil again. You'd have the same situation as you get on the motorway when a marked policecar trundles along in the slow lane at 3mph over the speed limit. The true free will wants to do 'evil' but thinks better of it. Thus a series of automatons. All "choosing" for God. *blush*In your own time or never. Whatever. Edited by iano, : No reason given.

See my "factually-based-mechanism-of-salvation" post to Straggler.If a person arrives at the point of believing certain facts about themselves then they haven't demonstrated faith but have merely been convinced by those facts. Because God is the one who is 'doing the talking' as it were, the person can also be said to believe God (or believe what God is saying). This, even though they don't believe in God or know that it's God they're believing.This is the very criterion of salvation that must be satisfied: a person must believe God (or believe what God says). Having done this by virtue of believing facts, the person is saved and God reveals his existance to them.First believe the facts - then you'll get the evidence. If God exists then all my faith is, is the evidence God gave me that he exists - and it's completely objective. If he doesn't exist then my faith is the evidence "something else" gave me that God exists and is indeed subjectiveIt all hinges on whether God exists or no.

See my post to Straggler starting msg 11. The posited mechanism of salvation involves the conscience and a persons response to the good and evil they are exposed to (and generate themselves) in this world of ours. There is no specific need to have heard of Jesus or the Bible or God.Consider Old Testament Abraham who is posited as the example of how salvation is wrought. He lived long before Christ lived yet he was saved. He believed God. So can a sheep herder up the side of a mountain in Tibet.

The question isn't so much whether we can make an honest choice. Nor that we have full information about all possible outcomes attaching to our choice. The question is: are the options balanced in terms of attractiveness/consequences.Here's a bit of a post to Straggler outlining how the choice is set up. It's about whether we want what is godly or ungodly. It's not necessary for us to know that there actually is a God attached to either option in order that we chose what we prefer.

quote:

---

This way appears to be an excellent (if indirect & veiled) means by which to offer a balanced choice to people. The choice effectively asks you whether you want to spend all eternity with God and what he stands for... or whether you don't. The way in which the God-option is made manifest involves placing us in an environment in which we are exposed to the attributes of God and all he stands for - it not mattering whether we believe in God or not in order that we be placed there. Whether believing in God or no or attributing these things to his nature, we are exposed to beauty, kindness, patience, creativity, relationship, majesty, variety, love, joy, peace, etc. In similar fashion, the anti-God option is made manifest, exposed as we are to all that is contrary to God: darkness, ugliness, meanness, impatience, hostility*, boredom, cruelty*, hatred*, anxiety, worry*, fear*.

​

We interact with a world containing all these things, the godly and ungodly, and we manifest our hearts desire regarding them by what we do and think and say. Isn't there a thrill of pure joy when we share a kindness with a stranger and make their day? Don't we replay the event to wring even more pleasure from it. We are showing we love the godly. Isn't there also a thrill of delight when someone we dislike intensely loses out? And don't we replay the clever words we spoke that cause them to lose face in front of their peers. We show too that we love the ungodly.

​

The mechanism of salvation uses our love of both the godly and the ungodly to shake out our final response to God as to which it will be. All without us having to first believe in Gods existance. All without God needing to reveal himself and be in the presence of the ungodly.

---

Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Hi PaulK, you'll be relieved to know I've not run out of petrol since we last talked The first fact is indeed an assumption. Necessary to lay out the subsequence mechanism They are the same thing. Absolute zero means there is no place to go to find colder. God is the place to go if you want to find out what's good and evil. Structural and insurmountable flaw-in-your-thinking warning coming up. God eg: killing is not comparable to us killing. We're taking something which doesn't belong to us (a life). God is taking something which does belong to him. Comparing the two is apples and pears territory. Besides, your argument has no absolute basis to stand on and is thus subjective. The only absolute basis available (says fact 1 (assumed)) is going to disagree with you.If God exists (we've assumed) then you're absolutely wrong. Fact: that had nothing to do with the point being made. My fact predicts this very kind of thing...I think we're done here PaulEdited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

I've been posing what I'd suggest is the mechanism whereby people are saved. And part of that mechanism involves people being exposed indirectly to the attributes of God ...and indirectly to the attributes of 'anti-God'. For the purposes of the working of the mechanism there is no need that you believe that you are being exposed to the attributes of God - all that matters is that you are.I'm not trying to prove that this is the mechanism that operates or that God exists at all. What I'm doing is explaining the mechanism to someone who'd ask (as Straggler did) how the mechanism of salvation works. He, and I, are assuming God exists for the purposes of discussion and are looking at a way in which a salvation mechanism can work without God laying all possibl cards out on the table. The above might go a ways to addressing this.There is no need that we know all possible consequences of our choice in order to make a choice - we make choices everyday without having to know all possible consequences. God wants to know do we want, at root, what he stands for or what he doesn't stand for. We'll get either of those root-wants for eternity.We're surrounded by pro-God/anti-God attributes in this world and we make hundreds of choices a day w.r.t. to them - in our thought/word/deeds. If the sum total of a zillion pro-God/anti-God choices made over the average lifetime aren't enough to be parlayed (by the salvation mechanism) into a hearts-desire then I don't know what would be.

Try it this way then. I'll define " absolute good" as that which conforms to God's will and "absolute evil" as that which doesn't. Clearly God can only do good by this definition (because God can't act counter to Gods' will) and when he decrees x action is good it is good because it conforms to his will. Let's look. You haven't pointed out a flaw here, you've expressed a very subjective and unsubstantiated opinion It's not a question of morality if there was conditions placed on possession of life from the outset. Adam was warned and the consequences rolled out.. The fact that you aren't in a position to objectivize your knowledge of good and evil has no bearing on the objectivity of that knowledge. If God exists then there's objective good/evil as defined above. If you've been given access to this information then you know objective good/evil - even though you don't know it's objective knowledge you've got.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Seeing as your post... and my missing of the point.. relies on this idea, could you give me an example of God's whimsical thinking?Edited by iano, : No reason given.

That kind of thing (let's call the above things 'good') .. as well the choices made in the other direction (let's call them 'evil'). The key thing to hold in mind regarding their place in the mechanism of salvation is that;a) God-powered conscience is the driving force behind our doing good.b) Evil is done when our will suppresses this force for good. In other words, evil done is the default option where it that we had no conscience. You can obtain salvation without believing in God is the correct answer w.r.t the mechanism of salvation I'm suggesting here. It would be the case that God would demonstrate his existance to you (straight?)after you are saved - but the tipping point at which you switch irrevocably into salvation occurs without you necessarily believing in God.There is more to be said on how your choices are dealt with by the mechanism so as to establish whether you be saved or no. But they are a key ingredient because they show your hearts desire to God.Another key ingredient is your response to that which occurs after you make your choices and in this regard, a choice for evil can be just as helpful in saving you as a choice for good. Choices result either a clear conscience or a stricken conscience and these things too are forces we are exposed to and to which we can respond. All without believing in God.For example: what do we do with a guilty conscience after choosing evil? We can either live with the pain of it. Or we can suppress it, perhaps writing things off with a subjective wave of the moral hand. Guilt is painful which exerts an exhausting force on us - it's one of the burdens Jesus was talking about when he said "come to me all ye who are heavily laden and I will give you rest". Suppression too involves force because it takes an act of continuing will to hold the bubble of guilt under the surface of our consciousness.So far so clear?Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

It's an unmentioned part of the original premise. We can either assume free will, with conscience merely telling us what lies on each side of the scales, and us freely choosing. Or we assume man is instrinsically evil and conscience is something that drives him to good or else his own will drives him to evil. It's an assumption either way so I start with what's indicated biblically, ie: the second of the two options. What's self evident is that there is that which we each consider good and evil. It's also self-evident that we can choose between good and evil (even if our choice is made via the mechanism assumed above). It's self-evident that we have conscience and that that can be clear or guilty. All I'm doing is tacking these onto a mechanism that doesn't require God himself to be self-evident. Yet his salvation be just and his wrath warranted. Fair enough. Later..

At one point in time the Prime Minister of England instructed his people to kill Germans. Today the Prime Minister of England would extradite any who tried the same. There is no change in the morality applicable. There's just a change of circumstances. It's fine for God to instruct people to behave in a certain way for a certain purpose for a certain time. And to cease to direct them in that way when the purposes require it.These instructions might be given in the form of law without them being morally related (other than for it to be immoral to disobey an instruction from God) What if the changing of his mind doesn't involve a moral issue?

Fair enough. We're still looking for somewhere where Gods morality changes. Not his purpose-aimed instructions.

Your conflating what God decides to do himself with what God directs us not to do. God deciding to wipe out a nation using the Israelites as his weapon of choice is an altogether different matter to me deciding I'll kill my neighbour because I fancy possessing his goods. The gun (the Israelites in this case) can't be held responsible for the actions of the trigger-puller (God in this case)I see no reason to skip over the righteousness of Gods actions. To repeat: God killing isn't murder (murder being defined as 'unrighteous taking of life') because the life belongs to him. Us killing without Gods say so is murder - the life isn't ours to take.