Quote:
Originally Posted by Original Position
It is maybe true that God couldn't convince everyone, and it is probably also true that God couldn't overcome Cartesian skepticism through direct observations. But science and direct observations don't do either of those things for any claim, so that is not really relevant.
Again, given the gospel accounts, it's not just that not everyone was convinced. People had other motivations that drove their way of viewing things *in spite of* empirical evidence. Those underlying psychological effects play a role beyond the merely intellectual component that you're putting forth.
Quote:
I just find it is difficult to accept that anyone sincerely thinks that God is able to create a universe, but isn't able to persuade some measly humans that he exists by using empirical evidence, something any human can easily do. God, if he exists, has to have chosen not to do so, not have failed to do so because of its difficulty.
You might find it difficult to accept, but that's not an argument. The issue is not just the empirical evidence, but the whole structure by which people combine empirical evidence with their internal logic to reach conclusions.
For example, I suspect that if God took corporeal form and walked up to certain atheists and told them, "I'm God. Watch me move the stars around to prove it to you" that they would more likely believe that it was some optical illusion or a hoax of some type instead of actually concluding that the being in front of them was God. And this isn't even classifiable as a "cognitive failure" of some sort (as if they're being illogical). It's just the mental framework that they start with is not giving them access to the particular conclusion.
But again, I'll note that your point stands. I have not addressed every single empirical possibility and shown that there's absolutely no way for purely empirical observations to conclude God's existence.
And I'll also concede that there could be a "choice" of some type involved, but the parameters of the choice are vague and unclear and I'm not sure how one would make those parameters precise. For example, I can write a computer program in such a way that it never prints the phrase "I AM GOD." Once that program is written and running, the print output will never read "I AM GOD" but that's not because of any active choice I'm making within the program. It's simply not within the program's ability to do that particular task even though it's hypothetically possible for me to write a different program in which I *CAN* do that.