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The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
#26

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
(12-11-2020, 07:05 PM)Dānu Wrote:
(12-11-2020, 05:41 PM)Bucky Ball Wrote:
(12-11-2020, 05:31 PM)Dānu Wrote: That appears to be the argument that Link is referring to here.  Bucky appears acquainted with some other argument with which I'm not familiar.

I provided a link to it in my post.

Actually what you provided was a link to a press release about a book that uses "The Hiddenness Of God" as a title.  If the book review linked below is accurate, the book you linked to is an author addressing arguments of the type offered by Schellenberg, so I'm rather confused as to what Christian argument for the existence of God you are referring to there, and what relation it bears to the book whose press release you linked.

Quote:Some people seek God, but seem not to find him. To others, God seems distant or absent. In one way or another, God seems hidden to many people. This is unexpected if there is a God who wants us to know that he exists, and even more puzzling if there is a God that loves us. Not only is the situation puzzling, but it causes some people significant pain. In various ways, divine hiddenness has been thought to pose a challenge to traditional Christian theism. Michael C. Rea's book offers a multifaceted response to phenomena related to God's apparent hiddenness and the family of philosophical problems it raises.

The version of the hiddenness problem most discussed in current literature Rea calls 'the Schellenberg problem.' The Schellenberg problem suffers from an important drawback: it does not target the God of Christian theism, according to Rea. But the Schellenberg problem is just one among many problems of divine hiddenness. Rea prefers to think of the problem as a family of problems and advances his own characterization of what unites them: in general, the problem of divine hiddenness is "fundamentally a problem of violated expectations." People have various expectations of what a loving God would be like -- they might expect him to have provided more religious experience than they have, or stronger evidence, or expect that theistic belief would be more widespread than it is. Hiddenness arguments take the violation of these expectations as reasons to conclude that God does not exist. Rather than respond to just one particular hiddenness argument, Rea addresses hiddenness arguments that take this general form.

Rea's solution to the problem is two-tiered. The first step is to argue that the hiddenness problem rests on unwarranted assumptions and expectations about God's love. He offers two different arguments to this end (the first in Ch. 3-4 and the second in Ch. 5).

~ Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: The Hiddenness of God, by Michael C. Rea

How about you read the fucking book and find out. 
If all you know is Schellenberg, (and apparently it is), OF COURSE everything looks like Schellenberg. 
How about you list the other books you've read on the subject. 
About 5 will do. Oh wait ... never mind, you already said you were unfamiliar with the topic.
You have it backwards. Schellenberg sounds like ALL THE OTHER hiddenness BS.
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#27

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
(12-10-2020, 01:44 PM)Link Wrote: I wish to talk about the Atheistic argument of God's hiddenness and the Quranic response in detail.

I don't like your terminology.

Atheists may argue flippantly about god's hiddenness in response to theistic bullshit, but your opening sentence makes it sound as though you think that our only argument is "we can't see him so he doesn't exist." We don't need to make any kind of argument to support our disbelief, we are not the one's making unsubstantiated claims.

And quite frankly who gives a shit what the quran says or is interpreted to say.
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#28

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
(12-11-2020, 01:36 AM)mordant Wrote: Weirdly however, it's bad form to expect god to REVEAL himself in the present day.

That's why it's so popular for theists to place their god "outside of space and time" these days. It's an imaginary place they know is "un-findable". Their god used to hand out rules and regulations from mountain tops or he lived up in the clouds or on the other side of the moon but with space exploration and no god ever turning up they've had to push their god to far away from earth that he's now "outside of space and time".  It's the perfect answer to their god dilemma.  The trouble is there's as much evidence that an Invisible Donut or a Magical Unicorn live outside of space and time as there is for Allah, Yahweh or Lord Vishnu.
                                                         T4618
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#29

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
(12-11-2020, 08:21 PM)Dancefortwo Wrote:
(12-11-2020, 01:36 AM)mordant Wrote: Weirdly however, it's bad form to expect god to REVEAL himself in the present day.

That's why it's so popular for theists to place their god "outside of space and time" these days. It's an imaginary place they know is "un-findable". Their god used to hand out rules and regulations from mountain tops or he lived up in the clouds or on the other side of the moon but with space exploration and no god ever turning up they've had to push their god to far away from earth that he's now "outside of space and time".  It's the perfect answer to their god dilemma.  The trouble is there's as much evidence that an Invisible Donut or a Magical Unicorn live outside of space and time as there is for Allah, Yahweh or Lord Vishnu.

Yeah, It's incredible to me that anyone could want to waste their time believing in such nonsense. The only explanation for it is that these people must feel a little bit more comfortable (half believing it) than facing up to the harsh reality of the universe.
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#30

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
(12-11-2020, 08:21 PM)Dancefortwo Wrote: That's why it's so popular for theists to place their god "outside of space and time" these days. It's an imaginary place they know is "un-findable". Their god used to hand out rules and regulations from mountain tops or he lived up in the clouds or on the other side of the moon but with space exploration and no god ever turning up they've had to push their god to far away from earth that he's now "outside of space and time".  It's the perfect answer to their god dilemma.  The trouble is there's as much evidence that an Invisible Donut or a Magical Unicorn live outside of space and time as there is for Allah, Yahweh or Lord Vishnu.

This is also the reason why the religious are so enamoured with the concept of a multiverse. They now have an infinite number of bolt holes for their godman to hide in.
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#31

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
(12-11-2020, 07:05 PM)Dānu Wrote:
Quote:Some people seek God, but seem not to find him. To others, God seems distant or absent. In one way or another, God seems hidden to many people. This is unexpected if there is a God who wants us to know that he exists, and even more puzzling if there is a God that loves us. Not only is the situation puzzling, but it causes some people significant pain. In various ways, divine hiddenness has been thought to pose a challenge to traditional Christian theism. Michael C. Rea's book offers a multifaceted response to phenomena related to God's apparent hiddenness and the family of philosophical problems it raises.

The version of the hiddenness problem most discussed in current literature Rea calls 'the Schellenberg problem.' The Schellenberg problem suffers from an important drawback: it does not target the God of Christian theism, according to Rea. But the Schellenberg problem is just one among many problems of divine hiddenness. Rea prefers to think of the problem as a family of problems and advances his own characterization of what unites them: in general, the problem of divine hiddenness is "fundamentally a problem of violated expectations." People have various expectations of what a loving God would be like -- they might expect him to have provided more religious experience than they have, or stronger evidence, or expect that theistic belief would be more widespread than it is. Hiddenness arguments take the violation of these expectations as reasons to conclude that God does not exist. Rather than respond to just one particular hiddenness argument, Rea addresses hiddenness arguments that take this general form.

Rea's solution to the problem is two-tiered. The first step is to argue that the hiddenness problem rests on unwarranted assumptions and expectations about God's love. He offers two different arguments to this end (the first in Ch. 3-4 and the second in Ch. 5).

~ Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: The Hiddenness of God, by Michael C. Rea

Yeah this is the normal schizophrenic approach to god.

On the one hand, theists come with a value proposition that god is knowable, and desires to be known by us, and that this knowing is of great comfort and significance in living a life of meaning and contentment. Therefore, you should surrender to this god and enjoy these benefits.

On the OTHER hand, given that the first hand is 100% bullshit when the claims are considered literally, and maybe 95% bullshit when the claims are considered metaphorically, after some greater or lesser period of time every believer faces the fact that nothing of real import changed in their life after god came into it, at least nothing for which god is a necessary explanation. THEN suddenly if you expect what was presented in the original value proposition, you're naively and selfishly demanding something that isn't realistic, or which at any rate isn't going to arrive on YOUR puny, unimportant timetable. "The hiddenness of god rests on unwarranted assumptions and [unrealistic] expectations about God's love. I know we presented it as touchy-feely, relieving, comforting and accessible, but you are a complete dolt to take that claim literally. It's only those things in some ultimate or "positional" sense, generally not at all true in this life, and didn't we tell you that this was a journey of faith, not of experience? Did we not promise you trials, tests, tribulations, and the sense of being a stranger in a strange land? Maybe you just heard what you wanted to hear."

Even if this was a valid critique, the problem remains that a god who cannot stand out in some way from the background noise of random happenstance simply does not exist, by definition.
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#32

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
Okay before I go on, is anyone interested in the Quranic response to this? I won't bother if no one says yes.
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#33

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
(12-12-2020, 02:46 PM)Link Wrote: Okay before I go on, is anyone interested in the Quranic response to this? I won't bother if no one says yes.

No. You can stick your fucking Quran up your arse and leave it there.

Or better still... just piss off!
I'm a creationist;   I believe that man created God.
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#34

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
Not particularly.  I prefer to have conversations with people.  If you want to talk about YOUR response to this (perhaps as informed by your interpretation of the Quran)... well, maybe then, so long as it was a civil conversation rather than an internet flame war.  Either way, I'll look at the ideas, talk about how they do or don't hold water, and draw conclusions about the character and wisdom of the people who put those ideas forward, but at the end of the day I can't have a conversation with a book.
"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today." - Isaac Asimov
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#35

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
Quote:The argument goes something like this:

(1) God is a benevolent being who would interact with humans.
(2) God would manifest himself in a clear way to all humans if he wished to interact with them.
(3) God is not manifest to all humans and doesn't make himself clearly known.


The OT god - the original phony abrahamic nonsense - apparently interacted with humans all the time.  Then he stopped.  Did he get tired of fucking with us?
Robert G. Ingersoll : “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”
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#36

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
I think you'll find the majority of atheists here and at AF have a much greater familiarity with Christianity. The lack of familiarity with Islam is reflected by a general lack of interest. It's just not particularly relevant to most of those here. I certainly wouldn't be opposed to learning more about Islam, but the problem is that someone playing the role of apologist for Islam or any other religion often does not present a fair or balanced presentation of Islam, which makes it even worse: you don't just get an unfamiliar religion, but someone's personal and highly idiosyncratic take on their religion. I think that you've been quite guilty of that in the past in presenting an Islamic view that is heavily slanted toward a specific strain of Islam. That really turns people off.
Mountain-high though the difficulties appear, terrible and gloomy though all things seem, they are but Mâyâ.
Fear not — it is banished. Crush it, and it vanishes. Stamp upon it, and it dies.


Vivekananda
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#37

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
(12-12-2020, 03:20 PM)Minimalist Wrote:
Quote:The argument goes something like this:

(1) God is a benevolent being who would interact with humans.
(2) God would manifest himself in a clear way to all humans if he wished to interact with them.
(3) God is not manifest to all humans and doesn't make himself clearly known.


The OT god - the original phony abrahamic nonsense - apparently interacted with humans all the time.  Then he stopped.  Did he get tired of fucking with us?

This is the most important question all humans should ask themselves when it comes to Torah to Gospels and books between and Quran.   There is also a very simple Quranic response to this and also a very detailed response, both simple and concise as well as a whole theme and repeated detailed explanation.

Of course, miracles not outward right now, should be discussed by all humans, why the hell not, and of course they are meant to come back and Quran talks about why in any given time there weren't miracles in the open and then there is has to be a particular response, why the extra long period right now without miracles in the open.

The Quran would be a false book definitely not from God if it didn't address this issue. Only an idiot would emphasize so much on miracles in the Bible or Quran, and then leave us without them for this long,  and offer not a detailed explained as to why.

There is a verse that is a very concise summary as to why such miracles any time were not in the open among humans but given we are in a extra long time without them,  there has to be also extra details in Quran as to why the latter.
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#38

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
(12-12-2020, 03:36 PM)Dānu Wrote: I think you'll find the majority of atheists here and at AF have a much greater familiarity with Christianity.  The lack of familiarity with Islam is reflected by a general lack of interest.  It's just not particularly relevant to most of those here.  I certainly wouldn't be opposed to learning more about Islam, but the problem is that someone playing the role of apologist for Islam or any other religion often does not present a fair or balanced presentation of Islam, which makes it even worse: you don't just get an unfamiliar religion, but someone's personal and highly idiosyncratic take on their religion.  I think that you've been quite guilty of that in the past in presenting an Islamic view that is heavily slanted toward a specific strain of Islam.  That really turns people off.

The Quran vividly and clearly supports Shiism over Sunnism, and even more so, is clear in the number of Successors to be twelve.    The different interpretations of Quran is due to the evil nature of humans and the sorcery upon the Quran.

In fact, I've repeated and will remind again, by normal language rules, the very fact that people interpret the Quran in the way they do and remove words away from their proper place, cannot be but be explained but by dark magic.   I've explained why bias is not sufficient, it plays a role, but is not sufficient to explain this many times.

The Sunni and Shia issue has nothing to do with either Prophet (s) not explaining clearly nor is that Quran is unclear, both are false. 

I will not talk about Quran as if it there is any ambiguity about the Sunni and Shia issue.  I don't care if makes me look like I am over zealous and sectarian, I sacrificed how I appear to others a long time ago and don't care for it.

One soul benefiting sometimes happens, for example, there was a person who argued with me over 10 years over the Sunni Shia issue, about 5 months ago,  of course, posted a post that not only I was right but encouraged me to teach "them" a lesson like never before, and by "them" , he called who were all these years his comrades in arguing for sunnism against Shiism as Nawasib which means "haters", and particularly means they have hate towards Mohammad's (s) family.   He was not sarcastic and that was his final post on that anti-Shiite forum.

And I don't care if this makes me appear hungry for converts for sake of numbers and I know you guys assume I don't know for certain God exists let alone Mohammad (s) is God's Prophet, let alone in the succession of his family, let alone their exact number, etc.

It doesn't matter to me, I realize I appear opinionated and arrogant in this regard.  But I don't doubt anymore in my religion let alone God.   The degree of insights and my perception of Quran is on a whole new level, that doubt is not even possibly anymore even I wanted to escape God's Authority to follow my desires or please a woman I'm in love with, it's impossible for me to doubt Quran right now.

I can disobey Quranic advice and commands sure, I can even declare myself non-Muslim as if I don't know Quran is from God but there isn't possibility of doubt anymore.

And Sunnism has no place with Quran and Quran condemns it through and through.
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#39

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
Quote:There is also a very simple Quranic response to this and also a very detailed response, both simple and concise as well as a whole theme and repeated detailed explanation.


Oh, Link.  Don't you see?  Every religion has simple responses to complex questions.  In its basic essence apologetics is making excuses for the shortcomings of your fairy tales.

Seriously, man.  Do you REALLY believe that an angel crept up on a guy sleeping in a cave and whispered the words of fucking god in his ear? REALLY???

It's all shit.  From Moses and the burning bush right up to Joey Smith and his Golden Tablets.
Robert G. Ingersoll : “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”
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#40

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
(12-12-2020, 02:46 PM)Link Wrote: Okay before I go on, is anyone interested in the Quranic response to this? I won't bother if no one says yes.

This post just screams troll.

Hanlon's razor states "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

Conversely: Never attribute idiocy to that which is adequately explained by malice. Can we be sure this guy's the real deal?
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#41

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
Oh, yeah.  This is not his first bite at the apple.
Robert G. Ingersoll : “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”
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#42

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
(12-12-2020, 03:51 PM)Link Wrote: bla bla bla ...
It doesn't matter to me, I realize I appear opinionated and arrogant in this regard.  But I don't doubt anymore in my religion let alone God.   The degree of insights and my perception of Quran is on a whole new level, that doubt is not even possibly anymore even I wanted to escape God's Authority to follow my desires or please a woman I'm in love with, it's impossible for me to doubt Quran right now.

I can disobey Quranic advice and commands sure, I can even declare myself non-Muslim as if I don't know Quran is from God but there isn't possibility of doubt anymore.

And Sunnism has no place with Quran and Quran condemns it through and through.

Good for you. Isn't that special. Who gives a shit ? Sounds like YOU are the one you are trying to convince. 
Go post this crap somehwere where they care. This is an atheist community. 
We don't care if your brand of Sparkly unicorn is pink or blue. It's all the same rubbish.

Saying you're determining something by using what believers wrote about, ... what they believed, in a book about that belief,
is THE MOST circular bullshit argument anyone could EVER possibly construct.
It's what you're doing.
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#43

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
(12-12-2020, 02:46 PM)Link Wrote: Okay before I go on, is anyone interested in the Quranic response to this? I won't bother if no one says yes.

Abso-fucking-lutely fucking not. 

Seeing you had returned and posted yet more of your same old bullshit made me shake my head and wonder just how ill you are. 

Fuck off. We're not fucking interested. This is my last fucking reply to you. Fucking *plonk*.
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#44

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
(12-12-2020, 03:51 PM)Link Wrote: The different interpretations of Quran is due to the evil nature of humans and the sorcery upon the Quran.

Oh for Zeus' sake.  Please, NO!   Weeping
No gods necessary
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#45

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
Fuck off Link/MK. Nobody here is interested in your gawd or your prophet (piss be upon him).
[Image: Bastard-Signature.jpg]
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#46

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
...or any other gods or prophets, for that matter.
Robert G. Ingersoll : “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”
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#47

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
"Sorcery upon the Quran".
WTAF
What is this the 9th Century BC ?

Someone is off his meds.
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#48

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
[Image: SimplisticDimwittedArthropods-small.gif]
“We drift down time, clutching at straws. But what good's a brick to a drowning man?” 
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#49

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
(12-12-2020, 02:46 PM)Link Wrote: Okay before I go on, is anyone interested in the Quranic response to this? I won't bother if no one says yes.

It's not something I would think up as a topic myself but I am open to having my curiosity piqued.  I would prefer the, err, less-detailed and concise version, perhaps?  I don't care about exact scripture-and-verse-and-quote, just give the basic reason.   So Allah is hidden.  And according to the Q this is because...?
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#50

The God's hiddenness argument and Quran.
Magic.
Robert G. Ingersoll : “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”
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