IS GOD SILENT? A PRELUDE TO THE WEBSITE "COMMUNICATION WITH GOD"
I have decided to include a chapter from a book by an atheist, an honest atheist, Richard Carrier. His book is entitled Why I Am Not A Christian (Richmond, CA: Philosophy Press, 2011). Carrier's first chapter is called "God Is Silent" and it provides a steppingstone that helps the seeker re-evaluate his or her position on the way God deals with humans today in the 21st century. As many of you know, the Bible records God's communications, both in the Old and in the New Testaments. The communications were of varying ways, for example, through prophets, dreams, visions, technical divination, etc. A perusal of this website will clarify the way in which God communicated in the past. But now, Christians believe that God communicates with us "through His Word," that is, the Bible. The cult of the Book (present-day Christianity) has usurped the Voice of God. For this very reason, we have people like Richard Carrier who give an honest appraisal of God's silence today. But God is not silent. It has been the task of this website to show how God's Voice was heard in times past, and how God's Voice can be heard today. But as long the Bible and doctrines based on passages therein are held to be the Standard of God's Word, then God's True Voice will not be heard and Carrier's appraisal of present-day Christianity will continue to be as follows:
"God is Silent," in Richard Carrier, Why I Am Not A Christian, pp. 7-17.
If God wants something from me, he would tell me. He wouldn't leave someone else to do this, as if an infinite being were short on time. And he would certainly not leave fallible, sinful humans to deliver an endless plethora of confused and contradictory messages. God would deliver the message himself, directly, to each and every one of us, and with such clarity as the most brilliant being in the universe could accomplish. We would all hear him out and shout "Eureka!" So obvious and well-demonstrated would his message be. It would be spoken to each of us in exactly those terms we each would understand. And we would all agree on what that message was. Even if we rejected it, we would all at least admit to each other, "Yes, that's what this God fellow told me." I came to this conclusion on my own, from obvious common sense, but it has been thoroughly demonstrated by renowned philosophers as well: see J. L. Schellenberg's Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (1993) as well as Ted Drange's Nonbelief and Evil (1998) and Nicholas Everitt's The Non-Existence of God (2003).
Excuses don't fly. The Christian proposes that a supremely powerful being exists who wants us to set things right, and he doesn't want us to get things even more wrong. This is certainly an intelligible hypothesis, which predicts there should be no more confusion about which religion or doctrine is true than there is about the fundametals of medicine, engineering, physics, chemistry, or even meteorology. It should be indisputably clear what God wants us to do, and what he doesn't want us to do. Any disputes that might still arise about that would be as easily and decisively resolved as any dispute between two doctors, chemists, or engineers as to the right course to follow in curing a patient, identifying a chemical, or designing a bridge. Yet, this is not what we observe. Instead, we observe exactly the opposite: unresolvable disagreement and confusion. That is clearly a failed prediction. A failed prediction means a false theory. Therefore, Christianity is false.
Typically, Christians try to make excuses for God that "protect our free will." Either the human will is more powerful than the will of God, and therefore can actually block his words from being heard despite all his best and mighty efforts, or God cares more about our free choice not to hear him than about saving our souls, and so God himself "chooses" to be silent. Of course, there is no independent evidence of either this remarkable human power to thwart God or this peculiar desire in God, and so this is a completely ad hoc theory: something just "made up" out of thin air in order to rescue the actual theory that continually fails to fit the evidence. But for reasons I'll explore in a later chapter, such "added elements" are never worthy of belief unless independently confirmed: you have to know they are true. You can't just "claim" they are true. Truth is not invented. It can only be discovered. Otherwise, Christianity is just a hypothesis that has yet to find sufficient confirmation in actual evidence. And no such hypothesis should be believed in, until that required evidence appears.
Be that as it may. Though "maybe, therefore probably" is not a logical way to arrive at any belief, let's assume the Christian can somehow "prove" (with objective evidence everyone can agree is relevant and true) that we have this power or God has this desire. Even on that presumption, there are unsolvable problems with this "additional" hypothesis. Right from the start, it fails to explain why believers disagree. The fact that believers can't agree on the content of God's message or desires also refutes the theory that he wants us to be clear on these things. This failed prediction cannot be explained away by any appeal to free will--for these people have chosen to hear God, and not only hear him, but to accept Jesus Christ as the shepherd of their very soul. So no one can claim these people chose not to hear God. Therefore, either God is telling them different things, or there is no Christian God. Those are the only options left. [Tibbs's note: another option might lie in the earliest Christian belief that confused and contradictory doctrines would be sown at a later date by "demons" and "evil spirits"; see 1 Tim 4:1]. Yet if there is a God who is deliberately sowing confusion, this contradicts what Christianity predicts to be God's desire, which entails Christianity is the wrong religion. And if God isn't telling his willing believers different things, then he isn't telling them anything, which also contradicts what Christianity predicts to be God's desire, which also entails Christianity is the wrong religion. So either way, Christianity is false.
So this excuse doesn't work. It fails to predict what we actually observe. You migth still insist "I hear God!" But do you? How is your "inner voice of God" any more God's actual voice than a Muslim's or a Hindu's or a Catholic's or a Mormon's or a Lutheran's or a Calvinist's? Or anyone else's? God is either sowing confusion (or allowing it to be sowed), and therefore in no way the Christian God [Tibbs's note: but see 1 Tim 4:1], or none of you are hearing God, but just your own inner voice, which you have mistaken for God's (and if they all make this mistake, so can you). Which the Christian God would never in good conscience allow. So again, there can be no Christian God.
You can't escape this by claiming we have to persuade ourselves that God exists before we can hear him, for that's the very method of self-delusion that produces this result: universal disagreement and confusion over what God is actually saying. God would never require you to deploy a method "to know him" that demonstrably leads everyone else into error, because he would know that you would know (or would some day discover) that this proves such a method is wholly unreliable. A loving God would demand instead a method actually capable of distinguishing the true God from false. Which means if this self-persuasion is the only method you know, then there is no God who cares whether you get it right, but only a method of deluding yourself into believing there is--the very same method by which everyone else (Muslim, Hindu, Moonie, Mormon, Calvinist) is as deluded as you.
That follows just from observing the confusion and disagreement of willing believers. But even considering atheists like me, this ad hoc excuse for God's silence still fails to save Christianity from the evidence. When I doubted the Big Bang theory, I voiced the reasons for my doubts but continued to pursue the evidence, frequently speaking with several physicists who were "believers." Eventually, they presented all the logic and evidence in terms I understood, and I realized I was wrong: the Big Bang theory is well-supported by the evidence and is at present the best explanation of all the facts by far. Did these physicists violate my free will? Certainly not. I chose to pursue the truth and hear them out. So, too, I and countless others have chosen to give God a fair hearing--if only he would speak. I would listen to him even now, at this very moment. Yet he remains silent. Therefore, it cannot be claimed that I am "choosing" not to hear him. And therefore, the fact that he still does not speak refutes the hypothesis. Nothing about free will can save the theory here. Christianity is simply refuted by the plain facts.
Even when we might actually credit free will with resisting God's voice--like the occasional irrational atheist, or the stubbornly mistaken theist--Christianity is still not compatible with the premise that God would not or could not overcome this resistance. Essential to the Christian hypothesis, as C.S. Lewis says, is the proposition that God is "quite definitely good" and "loves love and hates hatred." Unless these statements are completely meaningless, they entail that God would behave like anyone else who is "quite definitely good" and "loves love and hates hatred." And such people don't give up on someone until their resistance becomes intolerable--until then, they will readily violate someone's free will to save them, because they know darned well it's the right thing to do. God would do the same. He would not let the choise of fallible, imperfect beings thwart his own good will.
I know this for a fact. Back in my days as a flight-deck firefighter, when our ship's helicopter was on rescue missions, we had to stand around in our gear in case of a crash. There was actually very little to do, so we told stories. One I heard was about a rescue swimmer. She had to pull a family out of the water from a capsized boat, but by the time the chopper got there, it appeared everyone had drowned except the mother, who was for that reason shedding her life vest and trying to drown herself. The swimmer dove in to rescue her, but the woman kicked and screamed and yelled to let her die. She even gave the swimmer a whopping black eye. But the swimmer said to hell with that, I'm bringing you in! And she did, enduring her curses and blows all the way.
Later, it turned out that one of the victim's children, her daughter, had survived. She had drifted pretty far from the wreck, but the rescue team pulled her out, and the woman who had beaten the crap out of her rescuer apologized and thanked the swimmer for saving her against her will. Everyone in my group agreed the rescue swimmer had done the right thing, and we all would have done the same--because that is what a loving, caring being does. It follows that if God is a loving being, he will do no less for us. In the real world, kind people don't act like some stubborn, pouting God who abandons the drowning simply because they don't want to be helped. They act like this rescue swimmer. They act like us. [Tibbs's note: All Christians will agree that this, in fact, agrees with God's saving act Who, in the "fullness of time," sent His only Son even when most did not recognize him and didn't care or want his "help." Yet, unbeknownst to the lot, his help saved all].
So we can be certain God would make sure he told everyone, directly, what his message was. Everyone would then know what God had told them. They can still reject it all they want, and God can leave them alone. Their free will remains. But there would never be, in any possible Christian universe, any confusion or doubt as to what God's message was. And if we had questions, God himself would answer them--just like the Big Bang physicists who were so patient with me. Indeed, the very fact that God gave the same message and answers to everyone would be nearly insurmountable proof that Christianity was true. Provided we had no reason to suspect God of lying to all of us, Christianity would be as certain as the law of gravity or the color of the sky. That is what the Christian hypothesis entails we should observe--for it is what a good and loving God would do, who wanted us all to set right what has gone wrong. And since this is not what we observe, but in fact the exact opposite, the evidence quite soundly refutes Christianity.
Despite this conclusion, Christians still try to hold on to their faith with this nonsense about free will--but they haven't thought it through. Meteorologists can disagree about the weather forecast, but they all agree how weather is made and the conditions that are required for each kind of weather to arise. And they agree about this because the scientific evidence is so vast and secure that it resolves these questions, often decisively. It can't be claimed that God has violated the free will of meterologists by providing them with all this evidence. And yet how much more important is salvation than the physics of weather! If God wants what Christianity says he wants, he would not violate our free will to educate us on the trivial and then refuse to do the same for the most important subject of all. Likewise, if a doctor wants a patient to get well, he is not vague about how he must do this, but as clear as can be. He explains what is needed in terms the patient can understand. He even answers the patient's questions, and whenever asked will present all the evidence for and against the effectiveness of the treatment. He won't hold anything back and declare, "I'm not going to tell you, because that would violate your free will!" Nor would any patient accept such an excuse--to the contrary, he would respond, "But I choose to hear you," leaving the doctor no such excuse.
There can't be any excuse for God, either. There are always disagreements, and there are always people who don't follow what they are told or what they know to be true. But that doesn't matter. Chemists all agree on the fundamental facts of chemistry. Doctors all agree on the fundamental facts of medicine. Engineers all agree on the fundamental facts of engineering. So why can't all humans agree on the fundamental facts of salvation? There is no more reason that they should be confused or in the dark about this than that chemists, doctors, and engineers should be confused or in the dark. [Tibbs's note: We see that the apostles of Christ were warned by him that their message would be viewed as "strange" by some and to expect rebuke. But Christians of today cannot use this as an excuse for the idea that their doctrines and beliefs are true simply because others think that they are "weird" or "funny." The two beliefs that bind all Christians together are really only two: 1) there is an almighty God; and 2) Jesus Christ, God's only-begotten Son, is the Messiah. Beyond these two points, Christians differ and Carrier's criticism remains intanct for modern-day Christianity].
The logically inevitable fact is, if the Christian God existed, we would all hear from God himself the same message of salvation, and we would all hear, straight from God, all the same answers to all the same questions. The Chinese would have heart it. The Native Americans would have heard it. Everyone today, everywhere on Earth, would be hearing it, and their records would show everyone else in history had heard it, too. Sure, maybe some of us would still balk or reject the message. But we would still have the information. Because the only way to make an informed choice is to have the required information. So a God who wanted us to make an informed choice would give us all the information we needed, and not entrust fallible, sinful, contradictory agents to convey a confused mess of ambiguous, poorly supported claims. Therefore, the fact that God hasn't spoken to us directly, and hasn't given us all the same, clear message, and the same clear answers, is enough to prove Christianity false.
Just look at what Christians are saying. They routinely claim that God is your father and best friend. Yet if that were true, we would observe all the same behaviors from God that we observe from our fathers and friends. But we don't observe this. Therefore, there is no God who is our father or our friend. The logic of this is truly unassailable, and no "free will" excuse can escape it. For my father and friends aren't violating my free will when they speak to me, help me, give me advice, and answer my questions. Therefore, God would not violate my free will if he did so. He must be able to do at least as much as they do, even if for some reason he couldn't do more. But God doesn't do anything at all. He doesn't talk to, teach, help, or comfort us, unlike my real father and my real friends. God doesn't tell us when we hold a mistaken belief that shall hurt us. But my father does, and my friends do. Therefore, no God exists who is even remotely like my father or my friends, or anyone at all who loves me. Therefore, Christianity is false.
The conclusion is inescapable. If Christianity were true, then the Gospel would have been preached to each and every one of us directly, and correctly, by God--just as it supposedly was to the disciples who walked and talked and dined with God Himself, or to the Apostle Paul, who claimed to have had actual conversations with God, and to have heard the Gospel directly from God Himself. Was their free will violated? Of course not. Nor would ours be. Thus, if Christianity were really true, there would be no dispute as to what the Gospel is. There would only be our free and informed choice to accept or reject it. At the same time, all our sincere questions would be answered by God, kindly and clearly, and when we compared notes, we would find that the Voice of God gave consistent answers and messages to everyone all over the world, all the time. So if Christianity were true, there would be no point in "choosing" whether God exists anymore than there is a choice whether gravity exists or whether all those other people exist whom we love or hate or help or hurt. We would not face any choice to believe on insufficient and ambiguous evidence, but would know the facts, and face only the choice whether to love and accept the God that does exist. That this is not the reality, yet it would be the reality if Christianity were true, is conclusive proof that Christianity is false.
Commentary:
Carrier is criticizing present-day Christianity without bothering to probe backwards into time and comparing the Christianity of the first Christians with that of the 21st-century Christians. Fair enough, but God's existence DOES NOT depend on whether present-day Christianity is false. Nevertheless, Carrier does a good job with presenting, in brief, the chaos that is Christiainity today. The problem that arises from the assertion "Christianity is true" is, in fact, WHICH Christianity is true? Therefore, one cannot assert today that Christianity is true without deciding which account or version of it you are talking about. Are the Methodists correct? Are the Catholics correct? Are the Baptists correct? Are the Calvinist Presbyterians correct? Are the Jehovah's Witnesses correct? Are the Pentecostals correct? Are the Lutherans correct? Are the Church of Christ correct? Are the Mormons correct? Are any of the non-denominational orders correct? Which of these denominations would God favor most, if any?
God's existence does not depend on whether His message proclaimed to Earthlings remains intact and pure as on the day He proclaimed it. Certainly, if God was said to speak in Old Testament and New Testament days, then, certainly He can speak to us today. Carrier is correct on this point. So, if God does have a Voice, then where is evidence for it today? We can't go to the Bible and say, "God's voice is found in these pages." True, the Bible records the activity of God communicating to people of the past, and, sometimes, his pronouncements were recorded in script and, for this VERY reason, could also be corrupted (see Jeremiah 8:8, "How can you say, 'We are wise, we have the law of the Lord'? Why, that has been changed into falsehood by the lying pen of the scribes!"). God should not have to rely on print media to communicate with us. He certainly didn't rely on it in the past, although, occasionally, God ordered that his pronouncements be written down for the sole purpose of communicating (see Jeremiah 36:2, "this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord: Take a scroll and write on it all the words I have spoken to you against Israel, Judah, and all the nations, from the day I first spoke to you, in the days of Josiah, until today"). But when God was communicating His pronouncements to be written down, how did He communicate this order IN THE FIRST PLACE? Also, Abraham, Moses, Enoch, Saul, Samuel, David, and others did not go to a book when they wanted to consult the word of God. They went directly to God via prophets, dreams, visions, urim and thumim, etc. (see 1 Samuel 28:6, "He therefore consulted the Lord; but the Lord gave no answer, whether in dreams or by the Urim or through prophets." This verse presumes that in times past the Lord was consulted through dreams, Urim, and prophets). Today, the business of prophets, visions, and dreams is seen in a suspicious light by Christians who think that such business comes too close to what is known as "occultism" and dabbling with "spirits" that the Bible clearly condenms (see Deuteronomy 18:10-12, "Let there not be found among you . . . a fortune-teller, soothsayer, charmer, diviner, or caster of spells, or one who consults ghosts and spirits or seeks oracles from the dead"). But this suspicion confuses the mechanism (divination and prophecy) with the Voice. Since both the God of the Old Testament and "other gods" could communicate with humans, this communication was, to all outward appearances, identical. In other words a prophet was necssary to contact a god, whether God or Baal. Divination was the property of both God and other gods (the Hebrew verb nahash, "to perform divination," is both accepted by God and condemend by God in the Old Testament). If the Biblical record is accurate in its depiction of God's (and other gods's) communications with humans of the past, then it will be clear to us that evidence for such communication today can only be found in the area that is studied by those who claim to study the reality of spirits and their communication with humans. For God is a Spirit (John 4:24) and He is often shown to communicate by one of His spirit agents, sometimes called "angels" or simply "spirits." This will bring us into investigating the claims of parapsychologists and those who have made an honest and objective study of "psychic phenomena" and seances and claims of spirit materializations and spirit communications through mediums. For it is here that we can find the evidence today for the existence of what the biblical record reports as divination, prophecy, prophets, and "speaking in a spirit," i.e., God's Voice.
God's silence might be found to be the case in some (or many) instances, for even during the days when God communicated with humans on a regular basis, God's Voice was, for whatever reason, not always heard (see 1 Samuel 3:1, "During the time young Samuel was minister to the Lord under Eli, a revelation of the Lord was uncommon, and vision infrequent"). God's silence today, as Carrier depicts it, does not mean that God does not exist, but rather because we do not yet quite understand how to listen. This website is meant to show modern Man just how to access God's Voice and listen and, even more importantly, to DISCERN God's Voice from the other voices at work in our world today, and I am referring to what Paul speaks of in 1 Tim 4:1 and what he requires in 1 Thess 5:19-20 and 1 Cor 12:10: discern and distinguish the doctrines of the spirits of error from those of the spirits of God. What is required then is known today as "spirit communication," that is, the honest and concerted effort to communicate with God via one of His spirit agents just as the Old and New Testament people did. How does one do this today? This website is an aid in that direction.
One must also understand what is meant by "FAITH." Too often, and unfortunately so, Christians define faith as "strongly believing in God and in the church that one attends on a weekly basis." It is true that faith in the Person of God is required, that is, faith in the love of God that He will deliver on His promise to speak to us. This is not an intellectual cop out. For even the angels in heaven, in the highest heavens, do not know or FULLY understand the divine thoughts and nature of God as He truly is, and, therefore, even the high archangels must have FAITH in knowing that God has their best interest at heart and God knows what He is doing. On the matter of faith, it must be that the Infinite One is far enough above the spirits of Heaven that, even at that elevated altitude, they do not and cannot possibly understand God or the Divine thoughts (at least not in detail). Therefore, even in the highest Heaven, faith in God is a necessity for a peaceful existence. See Job 4:18, "Behold, he [God] puts no trust in his servants, and with his angels he can find fault"; and Job 15:15, "Even in his holy ones God places no confidence, and even the heavens are not clean in his sight." Even Christ, the Highest of all created spirits, does not have full knowledge of the Divine Thoughts: "But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone" (Matthew 24:36).
Faith in God is one thing. Faith in one's home church and the doctrines therein is quite another. We are NOT required to put faith in doctrines OF ANY KIND. We are required to TEST doctrines in order to tell whether they be of God or not. 1 John 4:1-6 makes this explicitly clear and 1 Tim 4:1 warns of the "doctrines of demons." No church will admit that its doctrines are false or of the Devil. Yet, many Christian churches point to other Christian churches and denominations as being wrong or false. Faith in God is NOT faith in the doctrines of one's church or the interpretations of certain biblical passages by that church's pastor. Faith in God is faith in the fact that, Yes, there is a God and this God will communicate with us, but we need to understand just how this communication can take place. Sure, God is almighty but this does NOT mean that God can do ANYTHING or knows the future. The tests of certain humans recorded in the Bible would have been futile and done in vain if God had known their outcome! If Carrier wants to compare earthly fathers and friends with the way God should act toward us (if he, indeed, existed), then why doesn't Carrier bother to say that if some kind of technology is required for us to communicate with our earthly father or friends at long distances, then God, who resides IN HEAVEN, in another dimension, must also utilize some kind of mechanism or "technology" to communicate with us? And yet, He does, and this website is meant to show you how.