Paul Chamberlain

“Evidentialism, the view that holds that a belief is rationally justified or acceptable only if it is held on the basis of good evidence, has been rejected by many in the field of epistemology, in which such questions are probed deeply, and this rejection is for good reasons. The fact is that for all our talk about evidence, most of us would have a difficult time producing evidence for many of the things we believe and take for granted. We have neither the time nor the resources to track down such evidence, so we simply accept most of our beliefs on the word of others or because we heard them in news reports or documentaries, read them in books, or received them from other sources of information. Are we acting irrationally for holding beliefs in this way? It hardly seems so.”
― Paul Chamberlain, Why People Don't Believe: Confronting Seven Challenges to Christian Faith

“If God overwhelmed people like this with evidence for himself, says Pascal, he would be forcing an intellectual assent to his existence against their will, and that is something he will not do. He guarantees that those who believe in him and enter into a relationship with him do so freely. We may wonder why God does it this way. We may even think he should have done things differently. But Pascal offers a reason for thinking God acted wisely in this matter. He explains it this way: “God wishes to move the will rather than the mind. Perfect clarity would help the mind and harm the will.”[120] This is a rather profound idea that finds agreement today in popular culture as seen in the well-known, popular expression, “A person convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” The idea is that if God provided evidence of himself that is convincing even to people who wish to reject him, it would clarify matters for their minds but in the process run roughshod over their will that still desires to reject God. This is something God will not do, and in a real sense, he is no different from any of us in this regard. Who among us would force relationships on people who deep down wish they could avoid the whole thing but for some reason cannot? It wouldn’t be much of a relationship, would it? Once we see that God, too, is a person, albeit a divine person, who desires real relationships with other persons, this action on his part becomes perfectly intelligible.”
― Paul Chamberlain, Why People Don't Believe: Confronting Seven Challenges to Christian Faith