CelticBear’s Musings

Last week’s podcast/public TV show from Austin, The Atheist Experience, has a very interesting exchange with a caller to the program. (Interesting, for one reason, because he was very well-spoken and well-mannered and humble–unlike the show’s usual evangelical callers.) It’s show number 609 in the archives, and the call starts around 32 minutes in.

About 40 minutes into the show, they start talking about personal experience and revelation, and how revelation is inherently a personal experience and can not be transferable to other people. That is, one person’s experience is not proof that another person who has not had the same experience should believe them and take up their beliefs–especially the more extraordinary the experience. Test this: Pick any belief system you completely disagree with, whether it’s Islam, Wicca, fundamental Christianity, Hindu, whatever. Now imagine someone from that belief gave their testimony to you, very sincerely and emotionally, of their experience of communing with The Goddess, or Vishnu, or Krishna, or Mohammad, the Virgin Mary, etc. Would you just on the power of their telling of their personal experience, no matter how emotional and powerful it was for them, convince you to believe their religion? Didn’t think so.

That’s a little off the subject, but what the caller and the hosts began talking about was Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus and why he received a rare and unique vision to the exclusion of nearly everyone else in the world. The caller tried to offer that he thought it was because Paul was in a position to do the most good to spread Christianity at that time and place. But that raises the question: Why give that transcendent conversion experience to just Paul and not give it to everyone? Forget the middle-man, the books with contradictions and translation debates, the traveling prophets who’s stories are indistinguishable from mad ravings, and just make yourself known, truly known without question, to everyone.

The caller (you really should listen to the show; it’s quite good…but in case you don’t have that time, and I’d love to see some responses here…) suggested that perhaps God has a reason to stay distant, hidden for the most part, because the relationship he wants with us is more important than proving he really exists. That maybe removing that doubt would change or force the relationship.

Here’s where it starts to get good. (Go listen.) The host then suggests if you received a letter that said, “I love you; I want you to love me,” from someone you don’t know…would you love that person? To love and adore another requires that you know that other person. (He, and I agree, suggests that love and adoration also should be earned, not demanded.) You can’t even begin to have a relationship with someone if the other person doesn’t even know you exist. By revealing yourself to a handful (at the very best, currently 1.5 billion out of 6.5 billion–but how many of that 1.5B have actually “known” God and how many just check the box “Christian” on the census form?) you don’t put everyone on an equal ground, the same chance to know you. That’s at best shortsighted and thoughtless, and at worst a clear sign that “loving the world” is not a factor in this deity’s interests.

Just revealing one’s self, unambiguously, to the entire planet, would not force people to truly love you and have respect for and adoration for you any more than a thug who reveals himself from around your curtains and shows you he’s capable of killing you at his whim would elicit respect and adoration for him either. This God would still have to deal with people who honestly love him, those who only say they do to avoid the threat of hell, and those who feel that he’s unworthy of respect even though he’s shown to exist. (For example, it’s one thing for me to find out (a) God really exists–but if it was really Yahweh/El from the Old and New Testaments who existed who I found out really was real, there’s no way I’d worship and love that blood-thirsty, deceptive, callous, racist, sexist, amoral psychopath. The best he’d get out of me is the kind of “Yeah, OK, whatever you say, man–just don’t pull the trigger” you’d get if a deranged psycho had a gun to my head.)

Anyway, what is it for an all-powerful everything creator to give everyone a road to Damascus experience? At least that’d eliminate the grand majority of the world for the last 2,000-6,000 years from having died never having even heard of Jesus/Yahweh/Elohim/etc. and thus not even having the opportunity to have that relationship this God evidently so desperately wants–if you believe, say, Ray Comfort.