Does God Really Hate Evidence THAT Much?

A fairly lighthearted discussion of the somewhat fringe Christian belief (I think/hope!) that God holds back on the old evidential front on the grounds that to make His existence too apparent, seemingly to remove the guesswork and leaps of faith involved, would somehow be to remove our free will.

00:00 Introduction
05:18 Packaging nonsense up as common sense
10:24 I thought worship = salvation, not mere belief?
15:32 An argument of convenience ?
20:08 In conclusion

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[tonydarcy]

"Tide goes in, tide goes out. Nobody can explain that". 😃

[FractalMachine]

This has always been a fascinating topic to me.

My response to this, which I even made a video about, is:
This seems to go only in one direction.
God will not give you evidence for his existence, so as to not infringe on your "free will", but on the other hand, allows the devil to directly mess with people's free will, so as to make them more likely to sin rather than follow god, and therefore lower your odds of getting into heaven.

In other words God will, and does, violate people's free will, but only to tip the scales in favor of them going to hell for all eternity, not towards belief in him which is arguably the only way to escape that fate.
If God truly wanted "free will" to be "free", at least based on this argument where "free" has to mean "perfectly centered and neutral"...then he would have to intervene and actively push people towards belief, to counterbalance the devil's work which god allows to continue despite it's effects on "free will".

Not to mention that those same believers will use the existence of "stuff" in general, as irrefutable evidence that Jesus Christ died on the cross.
"Look at the sky, the trees, the stars, the mountains... Clearly this couldn't have come about by random chance" etc.

Well that seems to serve the role of "evidence" for these people.
So apparently God hates only good evidence.

[lemonflavouredquark]

If god exists follow the rules to the technical minimum to survive the bastard.

[Fanny-Fanny]

This video is genius. Its the sort of simple, common sense refutation if apologetics that would have William Lane Craig huffing and puffing and gibbering about a lack of formal this, or a deficit in the study of navel gazing.

I think that's because you, Mr Plum, have shown the Emperors 'Philosophy' and 'Apologetics' to have no clothes. I for one am happy to stand beside you and agree you have shown the nonsense in front of us.

So glad to see you posting more often again. This stuff is gold. Thank you.

[GuusJanssen]

Fantastic argument that's going to stick with me for a long time.

I never understood the "I can't show myself, believing in me has to be on no evidence" thing for a simpler reason: this hypothetical god prefers to not show his face, and tortures everybody for eternity that doesn't believe in him. So his anonymity has more value for him than torturing 7 billion innocent people for eternity. That guy is pretty self centered of you ask me.

[jojo]

I want to say thank you for helping me lose my fath. I'm glad your back

[FourthRoot]

Providing us with evidence compromises our free will, but threatening us with unimaginable agony for all eternity doesn't.

[laus]

"You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Freewill"
Copyright goes to Rush!
Your videos are refreshingly deep and profound, Jim :)

[DeconvertedMan]

Its incoherent that a god would not show itself - giving us the free choice to accept it as a friend, or not - but god "wants" faith - that is what the belever is suggesting.

[Thundawich]

They have the entire argument backwards. Choices only matter if you know what the consequences of the choices are going to be. If you are acting off of largely incomplete information, the 'choices' you make with your free will are going to be basically random. Lets use an example. Imagine a situation where you have a binary choice with unknown consequences. There is a button in front of you. You can either push it, or not push it. One of those options blows up the universe, the other one doesn't, you don't know which one does which. Bonus points if you don't even know that one of the options blows up the universe in the first place. How free do you feel when making that choice?

More information about the world INCREASES our ability to make choices and be free, not reduces it.

[fieryimmortal]

Those analogies really put a smile on my face. Very entertaining

[MarkHidden]

I like the argument:
Free will is just a phrase we use to try to describe the metal algorithm that is designed to maximize optionality. It turns out intelligence behavior emerges from trying to maximize optionality. (Alexander Wissner-Gross 2015)

Giving people the freedom to choose in a God does increase the diversity of subjects, those maximizing optionality. So at least in this case it’s consistent with the functional value of free will.

One of the biggest problems any theist faces is that one can not prove God exists, the problem is that a fake God is indistinguishable from the real God. So you are looking for proof we know logically can not exist.
Concept:
If we are living in a simulation, the pimply faced teenager could demonstrate powers as powerful as anything a theoretical God could do. So how do we distinguish the two?

The problem with God is that God is all powerful… You're examples are valid for finite

[garrylove]

Well done, as usual. I like your arguments.. But if you ever are debating, or attempting to persuade someone who finds these arguments to abstract for them to accept, here's a simpler one that I first heard from Matt Dillahunty ( a great, beloved man, may he recover from his infection of intersectionality ). If the person you're dealing with is stuck on God not wanting evidence to stop us from having free will, ask them if they believe in Satan. If he or she does, point out to them that Satan had no doubt at all that God existed, and ask them why this didn't stop Satan from having the ability to choose to disobey God..

[JimRiven]

Fuck all to do with the video, but Merry Christmas fella, to you and all your family.

[thedarknessthatcomesbefore]

Agree with you completely and I don't know why god botherers who say this rubbish can't work it out themselves especially when apparently satan personally knew god but still refused to worship and actually rebelled against god... surely free will despite knowing absolutely that god exists. The whole Christian theology is so riddled with plot holes it's ridiculous.

[MrMattSax]

According to the Bible, satan had full knowledge of god’s existence and still had the free will to rebel.

[nonyabisness]

If you make a contract with someone and they enter into it freely...but you denyied them information, thus making it uninformed consent, that's a scam.

Thus God is a Scammer.

If you're not allowed to make an informed decision you're not having free will.

[DeconvertedMan]

When you have facts you do not need faith, and when you have faith you do not care about facts.

[spacepan]

Also when you're "perfected" in heaven, you lose your free will anyway. It's also bizarre to assume lack of free will is worse than eternal damnation- why not threaten humans with the loss of freedom if that's so much worse than torture?

[MikoDarkblade]

"And then, astromers looking at the sun see a little black spot and ask what is this?"
Police : "It's my soul up there..."