On the Hidden Face of God

Why God is hidden from Man? Why not, since all things are possible with God, paint the Ten Commandments on the Moon in letters from the language before the Tower of Babel, which, all men seeing each night and being unable to misread or misunderstand, would give sufficient evidence even to the skeptic that God was real, and that there was only one?

I was just listening to a lecture by the philosopher and theologian Peter Kreeft on this topic (Because good scholars always go to the primary sources, let me point you to where I found this lecture: http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio.htm) Dr. Kreeft proposes that there is only two ways possible for a God to make himself known to man.

Possible Way Number One is by direct evidence that will convince the brain. Intellectuals like myself (and any academics teaching our young in modern and secular institutions) claim and claim loudly that when evidence is presented, we shall, upon our honor, change our opinions and beliefs and ways of life to confirm to what the cold hard facts of reality command.

This claim is not to be believed. I read of case of a prominent atheist in England, A.J. Ayer, who in 1988 had a near-death experience, an experience as obvious and unusual as the vision encountered by St. Paul on the Road to Damascus. Dr. Jeremy George, his physician, reports that Ayer had confided to him: “I saw a Divine Being. I’m afraid I’m going to have to revise all my books and opinions.”

But then he publicly reaffirmed his atheism, steadfastly ignored the evidence, and talked himself into believing that his memory and his senses were faulty. He concluded that he had seen nothing, that his sense and his senses were faulty, on the premise that his speculations could not be faulty. He was also a leader of the Humanist movement, and a public reverse of his beliefs would have inconvenienced or embarrassed him.

If this tale is true, A.J. Ayer is a worm.  Philosophers are supposed to face changes of fortune and the opinions of the world philosophically, hence the name.

On the other hand, how can we fail to pity weakness? This type of repellent intellectual cowardice is not unusual; it is the human condition.

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