I'd like to start out by saying that I think my previous post rambled a bit more than it ought, for which I apologize to my readers. This issue (why is God's existence not obvious?) is a rather difficult question, and I struggled my way through that last post. I did mention, though, that I would attempt to provide my own answer to this question: how is it that the existence of God is so 'non-obvious' when God is the Creator of the world and the world was created to reveal God to humanity?
Well, here is my first stab at explaining this phenomenon. In line with my last post, I will be keeping "in-house" Christian language to a minimum.
To begin, we have to spend some time clearing a little conceptual ground which relates to whether Christianity is a natural or obvious belief structure. Charles Taylor notes in ch. 14 of A Secular Age that it took some time for unbelief/atheism to become an intellectually viable position. Taylor's point is an important one: it is hard to disbelieve when such a conceptual option is culturally unavailable. Not impossible, perhaps, but rare. Again, we ought to keep this idea in mind when we try to understand the decline of faith in our age. However, setting our discussion up in these terms may be misleading. For many in Western culture, Christendom or the Western medieval model of a totally pervasive Christian culture is what they think of when they think of the default position of Christianity. I think, however, that we need to remember that Christendom was not and is not the default position. That is, Christianity has not operated always and everywhere as a totally pervasive, solitary conceptual option for its adherents.
Rather, Christianity began in the Roman Mediterranean as one seriously implausible account of the world among other accounts. Early Christians did not proclaim a message of truth which won converts due to the clarity or, for lack of a better term, "obviousness" of its message. What I mean to say is that Christian proclamation did not result in a bunch of people slapping their foreheads and responding with an, "Of course, that's how the world works! Why, I knew that all along!"
You might be wondering why I bring this point up or if I'm even addressing the original question. What I'm trying to do is start out by saying that, from a Christian perspective, the Christian perspective has not historically been the only conceptual option for those who hear it, and it is admittedly not an immediately obvious position. In other words, though we Christians think the Christian perspective is the true perspective, we are (or ought to be) quite aware of its difficulties, and, historically, we have been since the beginning. The New Testament speaks of Christian proclamation as a "mystery," as something "offensive" and "veiled." This emphasis is not isolated simply in the beginning, either. Even in the High Middle Ages, during Christendom par excellence, Thomas Aquinas could note that reason would never establish or arrive at the conclusion of Christian truth in the events of redemption. Reason could only defend the possibility of its truth-value and defend against charges of irrationality.
To continue my answer, I believe our problem lies in a fairly specific area. We tend to think that the truth of God's existence ought to be obvious, mostly because we often think of truth as something obvious or immediately apparent. We rely on the idea that we understand truth with our minds in the same way that we see objects with our eyes. In this model, "facts" are discovered in a manner not unlike noticing the color of the sky or the proximity of some obstacle. So, we think a truth statement like "God exists" is epistemologically equivalent to "The sky is blue."
However, I think, upon further reflection, that we could admit that the truth is not always obvious, even if it is a "determinative" or "high-impact" truth which affects all our other ideas. There are many examples I could use, but let me point out one fairly easy one. We all agree that the earth rotates around the sun. Why? Is that an obvious truth? If one were to step outside and observe the sun with the naked eye for years, would the conclusion that the earth rotates around the sun be reached? I think we can all admit that, in most cases, this conclusion would not be reached by anyone who watches the "sunrise" and the "sunset" every day. However, I doubt that any of us finds it necessary to object against this truth.
I use this example to demonstrate that something can be clearly true in one sense, i.e. we all accept the idea, and it helps to organize a whole load of other ideas. At the same time, it is not manifestly true, i.e. most of us could not prove it, it took years upon years for this view to pervade our culture, and it does not match up to all of our direct experiences.
I hope this example shows you where I am heading. Namely, I want this illustration to point out that ideas which are true do not need to be obvious or easily reached in order to be true. We accept this idea when it comes to our example above. So, the next question has to be: why do we expect truth concerning God to be more easily reached? That is, why should we discover that God exists in a manner simpler than that involved in discovering an observable fact about the physical universe?
Now, I could make another point in this direction, and I will note it briefly before continuing on to my next main point. First, we should note that observable facts about the universe like knowing the earth rotates around the sun or noticing the someone's hair is red are actually facts which require a great deal of training to notice. For example, one must be taught that "red" denotes a particular observable phenomenon which occurs on the surface of various objects and then realize that the type of "red" which we apply to red brick is somehow related to the "redness" of someone's hair. For the other example, we can see that observable facts of a scientific kind actually require particular theories and methods to be internalized before they can be reached. Once reached, though, they can be disseminated to a more general population rather easily, despite the fact that the general population could not arrive at such conclusions on their own. Follow this line of thought and then ask why the existence of God should be something easy to discover without the internalization of a particular framework.
What I would like to note at this point is the objection that I would imagine many of you are now harboring in your mind. It is likely offensive to you that God's existence should be difficult to ascertain, that it should be as difficult as the discovery that the earth rotates around the sun. Isn't that a little curious? Why should you think that unless you are engaged in speculation concerning the characteristics which God ought to have and how he ought to behave? I have to note something that Pascal also noted so many years ago. He noted, similarly to what I stated above, that ascertaining God's existence is difficult. There is enough evidence to lead the religious seeker eventually to discover the truth of God's existence but there is not enough evidence to guarantee that outcome. When he faced objections from those who did not believe, Pascal pointed out that their objections were rather ridiculous. How could they, who ostensibly do not believe in God, wish to dictate the terms under which God would reveal himself to human beings? By engaging in such debate, the unbeliever has now become one who asks religious questions, i.e. a religious seeker.
But perhaps I am now simply being clever? Please object if I am, for I will admit that I am trying to be somewhat provocative. I am arguing that the existence of God need not be more obvious to any of us than any other truth. It is capable of being denied or affirmed in many of the same ways. It could not be a truth apprehended by human beings if it were any different.
This specter of difficulty, though, can be handled in a couple ways. First of all, if knowledge of God's existence is analogous to other types of knowledge, then people actually can discover it. That discovery of the truth might be difficult, take time and patience, and test our devotion to the question to the uttermost leads us in a rather different direction. Second, though, knowledge of God need not be difficult. Rather like our example above, once something is known and disseminated throughout society, it is no longer necessary for every person to go through the same arduous process to discover it. Clearly, not very many of us need to rediscover the heliocentric model. So, truth can now be apprehended through much easier channels, which deal more with the issues of warrant for belief, trust in sources, and faith in the truthfulness of other person's testimony.
Now, of course, we have opened the door to all sorts of different questions which I have not addressed here in order to keep the discussion from becoming merely "in-house." Yet these questions are actually theological or metaphysical questions. By considering this issue concerning how human beings discover truth, using terms which are common to both Christians and others, we can arrive at a place where we are not simply discussing whether it is difficult to believe in God, but whether it is appropriate that belief in God is so difficult and whether God ought to have behaved differently. We are in a different realm altogether from where we started.
