This post is tracking a general intuition I’m coming towards which is that there are serious higher order worries about theism that aren’t *exactly* the hiddenness worry, but either spill out from hiddenness considerations, or cluster around the same concept. Great post.
Shooting from the hip: One thing I've noticed is that people assume God (of religion x) making himself known with sufficient evidence somehow means everyone would necessarily believe in him or follow religion x. I don't think this is necessarily true! There are many truths that are pretty obvious for anyone sufficiently open to evidence, thinking logically, etc (say: the world being round), but some people don't accept that truth.
One of the implications of your post here (and I'll admit I'm not taking shots at your conclusion because I honestly don't follow your reasoning - that's probably my fault and not yours, but it's okay because I'm not criticizing it!) is that God's divine hiddenness is for the moral/personal growth of believers, but this implies people react to reality/known facts uniformly. I don't think that's true.
I'm also trying to figure out my position on divine hiddenness because (assuming God exists - which I don't believe, but nevertheless suspend doubt for the sake of exploring the question) I think the question of the benefit of hiddenness is interesting. But to make that case that hiddenness is superior to non-hiddenness, people have to make the case that people can or would react to non-hiddenness the same.
I mean if religion x being true would be as obvious as the world being round we should expect the vast majority of people to follow it, just as the vast majority of people believe that the world is round, right?
Good point. I set the bar too low. Replace that with the theory of evolution or some other, I dunno, middle school level science fact? My point is that behavior doesn’t necessarily follow from facts in themselves. What’s more, many tenants of religion are open to interpretation, and in a Humean sense you can’t really go from “God exists” to “Christianity is true” to “Catholicism is the one true path” with natural evidence. I’m not sure where I’m going with this (hence shooting from the hip), I just see (and am trying to figure out) some assumptions about human behavior in relation to knowing facts about the world (at a certain level of rationality), that underly the conversation, and I’m not sure if they’re true or if I agree with them.
I agree, I would just say that if God exists we should expect, ceteris paribus, to find super compelling evidence like the evidence for the roundness of the earth. So, imo, a theist should believe either that God has sufficient reasons to stay hidden or that the evidences for his existence are really *that* compelling. The first alternative seems far more reasonable to me
Yeah, this may sound derogatory, but if God is real, you’d almost expect something of a magic system when it came to miracles. Or at least that’s what the Humean/atheist seemingly expects. IIRC the philosopher who first formulated the problem of Divine Hiddenness talked about how it’s a problem for theists, not atheists (obviously) and theologians/Christian Apologists formulate their responses not in a manner that will be satisfactory for atheists, but that fits with a priori theology.
I'm getting a little confused. And it might be because I just got two meningitis vaccines at once (boom, I officially one-up your flu thing [but do get better though]), or it could be that I don't understand what you mean by "proof," and why the anthropic argument shouldn't count as one.
Like, initially it seems limited to "a particularly irresistible and straightforward argument for theism." But then later you write that "if you find some super compelling proof for theism, then that disconfirms theism-1, which claims that God would never want his existence to be obvious; but it confirms theism-2 which claims that God generally prefers himself to be hidden."
And that seems like a Bayesian argument! Which would apply to all kinds of evidence, not just the irresistible and straightforward kind. I don't see why God would classify evidence hidden in the patterns and fabric of the universe (fine-tuning or anthropics or all the other philosophical arguments) differently from things like the visual confirmation of miracles. Is the argument, then, that God intentionally restricts His hiddenness only to people who are too ignorant or dishonest to take philosophy seriously?
That seems extremely arbitrarily "gerrymandered," as you put it, to the point that it just doesn't make sense to me! But if we want a definition of hiddenness that makes more universal sense, then all the philosophical arguments that make theism likely are evidence *against* hiddenness, which makes any degree of hiddenness that *does* exist into evidence for atheism again.
I guess my point is: Bayes' Theorem doesn't let you cheat. You don't get to create evidence for a theory out of nothing by pretending it's made of two separate, unconditional probabilities, because you also need to give me a number for how likely that division is to be true. Obviousness is too fuzzy a criterion, I think—you've either got to divide theism-1 and theism-2 by evidence in general, or not at all.
Then again, this really might all be the double-meningitis talking...
Well, I really think this will come down to the specifics of how you actually explain hiddenness, which I didn't really wanna touch too much. Thus it's also sort of vague what counts as a "irresistible proof" in the relevant sense, rather than a good abstract argument. But I think the reason why something like the anthropic argument, and other arguments that might actually be good, don't fall under the category of "irresistible proof" is that they just clearly aren't forcing everyone to the conclusion of theism--even if they are sound and should convince an ideal rational person. This can be seen by the fact that almost everyone in the world has never heard of it (and probably never will), and out of the people who have heard of it, still few understand it fully, and even fewer find it convincing.
Thus whatever goals God may have with hiddenness, something like the anthropic argument (and perhaps the fine tuning argument) doesn't conflict very much with it. Now it is still *somewhat* unexpected that we find these arguments on hiddenness, but given that we do, it's not very hard to come up with a not-too-implausible explanation of why (e.g. that it should not be actively irrational to believe for someone who searches, or that you should be able to find God if you honestly put in the intellectual effort, or something), which fits the data. And I think the best of these that both fit the abstract philosophical arguments being good, and hiddenness being a fact overall, will predict that we very likely never find a bona fide "proof."
What I think hiddenness *should* make us very skeptical of ever finding, is an argument which can be briefly stated and understood, and upon understanding it, most reasonable people would be convinces (like what WLC seems to think the Kalam is). Likewise with very well attested miracles or something, which would compel very large numbers of people to belief. The borders of this category are of course vague, but the closer a hypothetical argument is to being perfectly convincing in this way, the lower the likelihood of ever finding it on theism+hiddenness.
Theism-1 and 2 were not supposed to be final statements of hypotheses, but placeholders for whatever hypotheses you might consider most likely given hiddenness, before and after finding the "proof" respectively. The thing is, if we ever do find a super compelling proof, it will... well, be super compelling. Thus it will make atheism super unlikely. But it will also make whatever explanations of theism that are incompatible with or strongly predict against finding such a proof relatively much less likely than other theistic hypotheses. Thus they will support these (the theism-1's) much less than alternatives (the theism-2's) or maybe even disconfirm them. But the proof will also disconfirm atheism, so you should end up with some sort of theism-2, even if seems gerrymandered and unlikely prior to finding the proof (given that the proof is strong enough).
I'm not sure this addresses your worry, but feel free to clarify!
Right, ok, I think this makes sense, thanks. Particularly appreciate the "it should not be actively irrational to believe for someone who searches" bit, I think that jives with a reasonably likely account of hiddenness.
This post is tracking a general intuition I’m coming towards which is that there are serious higher order worries about theism that aren’t *exactly* the hiddenness worry, but either spill out from hiddenness considerations, or cluster around the same concept. Great post.
Shooting from the hip: One thing I've noticed is that people assume God (of religion x) making himself known with sufficient evidence somehow means everyone would necessarily believe in him or follow religion x. I don't think this is necessarily true! There are many truths that are pretty obvious for anyone sufficiently open to evidence, thinking logically, etc (say: the world being round), but some people don't accept that truth.
One of the implications of your post here (and I'll admit I'm not taking shots at your conclusion because I honestly don't follow your reasoning - that's probably my fault and not yours, but it's okay because I'm not criticizing it!) is that God's divine hiddenness is for the moral/personal growth of believers, but this implies people react to reality/known facts uniformly. I don't think that's true.
I'm also trying to figure out my position on divine hiddenness because (assuming God exists - which I don't believe, but nevertheless suspend doubt for the sake of exploring the question) I think the question of the benefit of hiddenness is interesting. But to make that case that hiddenness is superior to non-hiddenness, people have to make the case that people can or would react to non-hiddenness the same.
I mean if religion x being true would be as obvious as the world being round we should expect the vast majority of people to follow it, just as the vast majority of people believe that the world is round, right?
Good point. I set the bar too low. Replace that with the theory of evolution or some other, I dunno, middle school level science fact? My point is that behavior doesn’t necessarily follow from facts in themselves. What’s more, many tenants of religion are open to interpretation, and in a Humean sense you can’t really go from “God exists” to “Christianity is true” to “Catholicism is the one true path” with natural evidence. I’m not sure where I’m going with this (hence shooting from the hip), I just see (and am trying to figure out) some assumptions about human behavior in relation to knowing facts about the world (at a certain level of rationality), that underly the conversation, and I’m not sure if they’re true or if I agree with them.
I agree, I would just say that if God exists we should expect, ceteris paribus, to find super compelling evidence like the evidence for the roundness of the earth. So, imo, a theist should believe either that God has sufficient reasons to stay hidden or that the evidences for his existence are really *that* compelling. The first alternative seems far more reasonable to me
Yeah, this may sound derogatory, but if God is real, you’d almost expect something of a magic system when it came to miracles. Or at least that’s what the Humean/atheist seemingly expects. IIRC the philosopher who first formulated the problem of Divine Hiddenness talked about how it’s a problem for theists, not atheists (obviously) and theologians/Christian Apologists formulate their responses not in a manner that will be satisfactory for atheists, but that fits with a priori theology.
I'm getting a little confused. And it might be because I just got two meningitis vaccines at once (boom, I officially one-up your flu thing [but do get better though]), or it could be that I don't understand what you mean by "proof," and why the anthropic argument shouldn't count as one.
Like, initially it seems limited to "a particularly irresistible and straightforward argument for theism." But then later you write that "if you find some super compelling proof for theism, then that disconfirms theism-1, which claims that God would never want his existence to be obvious; but it confirms theism-2 which claims that God generally prefers himself to be hidden."
And that seems like a Bayesian argument! Which would apply to all kinds of evidence, not just the irresistible and straightforward kind. I don't see why God would classify evidence hidden in the patterns and fabric of the universe (fine-tuning or anthropics or all the other philosophical arguments) differently from things like the visual confirmation of miracles. Is the argument, then, that God intentionally restricts His hiddenness only to people who are too ignorant or dishonest to take philosophy seriously?
That seems extremely arbitrarily "gerrymandered," as you put it, to the point that it just doesn't make sense to me! But if we want a definition of hiddenness that makes more universal sense, then all the philosophical arguments that make theism likely are evidence *against* hiddenness, which makes any degree of hiddenness that *does* exist into evidence for atheism again.
I guess my point is: Bayes' Theorem doesn't let you cheat. You don't get to create evidence for a theory out of nothing by pretending it's made of two separate, unconditional probabilities, because you also need to give me a number for how likely that division is to be true. Obviousness is too fuzzy a criterion, I think—you've either got to divide theism-1 and theism-2 by evidence in general, or not at all.
Then again, this really might all be the double-meningitis talking...
Well, I really think this will come down to the specifics of how you actually explain hiddenness, which I didn't really wanna touch too much. Thus it's also sort of vague what counts as a "irresistible proof" in the relevant sense, rather than a good abstract argument. But I think the reason why something like the anthropic argument, and other arguments that might actually be good, don't fall under the category of "irresistible proof" is that they just clearly aren't forcing everyone to the conclusion of theism--even if they are sound and should convince an ideal rational person. This can be seen by the fact that almost everyone in the world has never heard of it (and probably never will), and out of the people who have heard of it, still few understand it fully, and even fewer find it convincing.
Thus whatever goals God may have with hiddenness, something like the anthropic argument (and perhaps the fine tuning argument) doesn't conflict very much with it. Now it is still *somewhat* unexpected that we find these arguments on hiddenness, but given that we do, it's not very hard to come up with a not-too-implausible explanation of why (e.g. that it should not be actively irrational to believe for someone who searches, or that you should be able to find God if you honestly put in the intellectual effort, or something), which fits the data. And I think the best of these that both fit the abstract philosophical arguments being good, and hiddenness being a fact overall, will predict that we very likely never find a bona fide "proof."
What I think hiddenness *should* make us very skeptical of ever finding, is an argument which can be briefly stated and understood, and upon understanding it, most reasonable people would be convinces (like what WLC seems to think the Kalam is). Likewise with very well attested miracles or something, which would compel very large numbers of people to belief. The borders of this category are of course vague, but the closer a hypothetical argument is to being perfectly convincing in this way, the lower the likelihood of ever finding it on theism+hiddenness.
Theism-1 and 2 were not supposed to be final statements of hypotheses, but placeholders for whatever hypotheses you might consider most likely given hiddenness, before and after finding the "proof" respectively. The thing is, if we ever do find a super compelling proof, it will... well, be super compelling. Thus it will make atheism super unlikely. But it will also make whatever explanations of theism that are incompatible with or strongly predict against finding such a proof relatively much less likely than other theistic hypotheses. Thus they will support these (the theism-1's) much less than alternatives (the theism-2's) or maybe even disconfirm them. But the proof will also disconfirm atheism, so you should end up with some sort of theism-2, even if seems gerrymandered and unlikely prior to finding the proof (given that the proof is strong enough).
I'm not sure this addresses your worry, but feel free to clarify!
Right, ok, I think this makes sense, thanks. Particularly appreciate the "it should not be actively irrational to believe for someone who searches" bit, I think that jives with a reasonably likely account of hiddenness.