Talk on why God is not more obvious, given at Reading University Christian Union events week on 2 February 2015.

1. Why does God
hide himself?
#invisible

2. ‘‘
I would certainly begin to believe
in God if I were to witness an
unambiguous manifestation of the
divine, and the vast majority of
atheists probably would as
well . . . What further harm could
it possibly do for him to appear
and attempt to convince them
otherwise?
‘Ebon Musings’

3. ‘Not enough
evidence, God. Not
enough evidence.’
Bertrand Russell

4. Is
absence of evidence
the same as
evidence of absence?

5. Is there a rhinoceros
in the room?
© Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P., used under a Creative Commons licence

6. ‘good epistemic position’
epistemic = relating to knowledge

7. © Kim Carpenter
Is there a mouse
in the room?

8. © Susanne Nilsson, used under a Creative Commons licence
Is there a spider
in the room?

9. © Sankax, used under a Creative Commons licence

10. Why do you believe people
did/didn’t land on the moon?
© NASA. Used by permission.

11. Why do you believe
in the past?
Image from Crestock.com

12. How do you know other
people are real?
Image from Crestock.com

13. Are we in a good enough
epistemic position to say
there’s no God because he’s
not obvious to us?

14. noetic effects of rebellion
against God

15. ‘‘I want atheism to be true and am
made uneasy by the fact that
some of the most intelligent and
well-informed people I know are
religious believers....

16. ‘‘...It isn’t just that I don’t believe in
God and, naturally, hope that I’m
right in my belief. It’s that I hope
there is no God! I don’t want there
to be a God; I don’t want a
universe like that.
Thomas Nagel

17. ‘‘As to why God doesn’t make it
demonstratively clear: are we sure
that He is even interested in the
kind of Theism which [would] be a
compelled logical assent to a
conclusive argument?
C.S. Lewis
letter to Sheldon Vanauken, 23 Dec. 1950

18. God is not like
something one buys
in a shop, or like a
piece of property.
Søren Kierkegaard

19. Is there a lack of
evidence?

20. GODISNOWHERE

21. ‘‘He has willed to make himself
quite recognisable by those; and
thus, willing to appear openly to
those who seek Him with all their
heart, and to be hidden from
those who flee from Him with all
their heart . . .

22. ‘‘There is enough light for those
who only desire to see, and
enough obscurity for those who
have a contrary disposition.
Pascal
Pensées (tr. W.F. Trotter), 430

23. ‘‘Sunlight, though it has no
favourites cannot be reflected in a
dusty mirror as clearly as a clean
one.
C.S. Lewis

24. Something rather than nothing

25. Fine-tuning of the universe

26. Transformed lives

27. God makes himself clear in
Jesus

28. www.tonywatkins.uk
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