Thanks for writing. I took the examples from Bible stories because the question was asked "Why won't god reveal scientific knowledge?", which I presumed meant "in the Bible." And he/she asked "Why are his 'revelations' always moral...", which I again presumed was asking: in the Bible. That's why all my examples are taken from Bible stories.

> To me, the fact that these characters can react the way they do in the face of such better evidence than anything we have today is a good reason for thinking the stories are made up.

To me it's more logical to assume that if they were going to make up stories, they would make them up with a positive spin: God did this super thing, and everyone was awed, and they all believed!! God judged the people and they were SOOOO sorry for what they did! Then God revealed himself again and all the people obeyed.

To me it's a little odd to make up a story where God does all this miraculous stuff and people just give him the finger. It speaks of a greater chance the stories are real rather than made up, in my mind.

> it's a little hard to believe God would put us modern folk at such an evidentiary disadvantage for salvation...

I disagree. First of all, we have the entire and completed book, something no one had until after 400 AD, and people really didn't have until after the Gutenberg press, and didn't REALLY have until public education raised literacy levels in the late 1800s and even later. The entire book gives us material to work with that others did not have the advantage of. Matthew 13.17: "For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it." In addition (and a subset of what I just said): we have the whole story of Jesus, which Heb. 1.1-2ff. says is all anybody needs to know (also Heb. 2.1-2). You may feel we're at an "evidentiary disadvantage," but in actuality the immediate miracles were more of a distraction than a selling point, and other evidences for Christianity (radically changed lives and the advocating for the poor) do more to bring people to salvation than visual evidences.

> I don't think anyone would mistake the divine hand at work if prayers to Yahweh predictably resulted in miracles and prayers to anyone or anything else didn't.

I wrote this answer to someone else, and have copied and pasted it here for you, hopefully as the honest answer to your question:

The book of Job deals with this very issue, but a slightly different nuance of it. The philosophical/theological question of the book of the Job is the Retribution Principle: Do all righteous people get rewarded for their righteousness in this life, and do all wicked people get punished? Can we expect and even plan that if I do good, I'll get good stuff in return, and if I'm bad, I'll get bad? Stay with me because it pertains to your comments about prayer.

If it's true that the good people are going to prosper and the wicked people suffer, the motives of all good people come under scrutiny, since we could be corrupted so easily by the lure of prosperity, and if we only prosper because we're good, then true goodness is just an illusion. People will only do good and be good to get good things, which means rewarding goodness actually subverts goodness. We turn into "What's in it for me?" Therefore, it becomes realistically counter-productive for God to reward good and punish bad in this life, because it makes us all less-than-good. But then we find out that it's counter-productive for good people to suffer, too, because then we think, "How is this fair?" So God is caught in the middle: he gets criticized for blessing people for being good, and actually ruins them in the process, or he gets criticized for allowing suffering. That's what the book of Job then sorts out. The book wants to transform how we think about God's work in the world and about our responses in times of suffering.

Now let's go to your question about prayer. "I don't think anyone would mistake the divine hand at work if prayers to Yahweh predictably resulted in miracles and prayers to anyone or anything else didn't." Wouldn't it cause a great and godly stir around the world if God would answer the sincere prayer of the child who is dying of malaria? Indeed it would, especially if we could count on the fact that God would answer every such prayer. The power to manipulate God just by asking would be the most corrupting power known to humanity. If Christians got answers to prayer (especially about illness and suffering) more than non-Christians, people would flock to Christ, not out of of love or devotion, or even out of sincerity, but to get what they wanted. It would be a travesty to end all travesties.

On the other hand, when God DOESN'T answer such prayers, he is pilloried for being callous, not omnipotent, and that he doesn't even exist. "What kind of a cruel beast is he to not answer the prayers of an innocent child?" It turns out he creates a monster if he blesses, and gets accused of being a monster if he doesn't. We clearly have to overhaul our way of thinking about this.

> Lots of people, apparently, witnesses the abilities of miracle workers and were nonplussed. It didn't convince them, didn't even seem to change the way they were thinking, and even made them more hostile in some situations. I'm confident, based on the evidence, that predictable and miraculous answers to prayer would fall into the same categories, especially if it happened all the time. People would start to take it for granted and say, "Well, that's just the way things work!"

I've got two thoughts about this.

First, I'm noticing that all these examples are taken from Bible stories. To me, the fact that these characters can react the way they do in the face of such better evidence than anything we have today is a good reason for thinking the stories are made up. If nothing else, it's a little hard to believe God would put us modern folk at such an evidentiary disadvantage for salvation just because a few people in Bronze and Iron Age Palestine rejected him despite having good reason to believe.

Second, I don't think anyone would mistake the divine hand at work if prayers to Yahweh predictably resulted in miracles and prayers to anyone or anything else didn't. The reason we currently reject the notion that prayer is effective is because we've statistically established that praying has no impact on what happens, no matter who or what you pray to.

> But then you also must understand that an omnibenovolent god would not need bronze age theatre (in the form of blood sacrifice, scapegoating, and vicarious redemption) in order to forgive its creation. We are "sinful" because of the very things we need answers for. Unlike god (who does not suffer from our problems), we are forced to deal with mental illness, physical handicaps, disease, emotions, sexual urges, hunger, thirst, finite resources, finite abilities, finite knowledge, and ultimately death. Heaven (and god) are free of these issues, presumably, which is why we want to go there so badly.

The Bronze-age theater and all the cultic practices were physical ways to express spiritual truths, letting people see in concrete terms unseeable spiritual realities. They all had a meaning to point to a greater meaning. Why the blood? Our life is in the blood. Why did God have to become human? Humanity had created the breach; only a human could bridge the breach. Why a sacrificial death? Because justice is a real thing and there had to be legitimate juridical payment for a legal break of contract. Why death? Only death with life can beat death. I'm obviously being very brief. I've been typing a long time. In a universe where justice is not a concept but a principle part of the very make-up of reality, then it's not just a game that's being played, or a theatrical production to make a point, but the only legitimate way to deal with a legitimate imbalance in the system.

> "Long answers...and resisting the temptation to explain things in detail..."
> Don't hold back. I am a fast reader, so let me have it.

OK, we'll give a shot at it. If God is going to get rid of all suffering, he has to control our bodies. We can be contacting any viruses or bacteria—we might get sick. We can't stub our toe or crack into the corner of the table. We certainly can never fall, hit our heads, or any of that stuff. Every organ and cell in our bodies would always work perfectly. So God has to control us like robots. After all, we might hurt ourselves if we're left to our own devices. When Ip lay basketball of volleyball, he'll prevent me from jamming a finger or twisting an ankle. I'll never get hit with a baseball. We're all robots.

But we also cause each other emotional pain from the way we treat each other. Harsh words said that would have to be controlled. He'd have to control our tongues. But sometimes people say things innocently and I misconstrue them and feel hurt by them. So he's have to control the way I think. We'd always have to be loving and kind. But if someone was loving to me I wouldn't believe it because I'll know they didn't choose it. They were being made to do it. They were made to say those things. So now there's no such thing as love. But would that hurt my feelings? No, it couldn't. God would have to make it so that I wasn't hurt by that. You know what? At this point we aren't even human anymore. I have a robot body, a mechanistic mind, and a determined life. We're all Stepford Wives. This is not life. This is not desirable.

The elimination of suffering from the world creates a world of mind-numbing stupidity. I shouldn't say mind-numbing because we really wouldn't have minds.

> I would be happy to see death and suffering from disease "ruined". The idea that revealing the cure to a disease would invalidate science is not to understand science. Christianity would become the new science. Medical science (all science, in fact) would resort to fervent prayer and meditation rather than the slow process of empirical research. After all, god rewarding faithful "scientists" with answers would go a lot farther toward his goal of "saving souls" than allowing secular scientists to chip away at the mysteries of the universe on their own.

OK, let's talk about this. Some people get sick as a result of their own choices: sexually transmitted diseases, too much alcohol consumption, cigarette smoking, eating the wrong things. In your "Better world," would these things just not exist? Would people never get sick or ill from overeating, over-drinking, eating just candy, keeping rodents in the house as pets? Just wondering. God would always take care of these, answer the prayers, and bingo they're better? No such thing as disease—people could do whatever they wanted? I predict a world rampant with self-abusive behavior and asinine indulgence. There would certainly be no need for doctors: Do whatever you want, pray to God, and it'll go away. And how would people perceive God? As the loving Father who wants a relationship with them, or as the omnipresent pharmacy to endorse whatever behavior they choose? I foresee option "B".

"Christianity would become the new science." Yeah, not to have a relationship with God, but just to get out of him what we wanted. The ultimate dispensary. Souls saved? Nah. Who would care. Eat and drink merrily. Nothing will ever happen to you. After all we've discussed (hopefully you've been able to read the other posts), this is a world of of preposterous unreality.

> This is highly glossed and does nothing to make your point. God first allows "his people" to be enslaved, then sends two guys equipped with magical powers to confront a political leader. Moses and Aaron were not experts in magic in the same sense that a doctor is an expert in medicine. God does not "send doctors" to see patients via telepathy (they call and schedule appointments), nor does he whisper medical knowledge in their ear or endow them with magical healing powers so that they may heal their patients. Doctors work very hard to learn and apply medicine, and to suggest that god simply endows them with magical healing powers is simply a failure to recognize their efforts to educate and better themselves.

"God first allows his people to be enslaved." What's going on here is that God is preserving his people and making them into a people. We have 12 brothers who are hostile, jealous, and violent. If they keep going in the direction they are going, they will certainly and predictably devolve in tribal warfare and stop existing as a people group if they don't kill each other off or send each other into slavery. Instead, God humbles them and put them into the fires of slavery. What better way to bond people together and through the centuries, specifically because of shared oppression, become a nation of people who cry out to God. God "allowing them to become enslaved," as you say, is really God saving them. African-Americans in the US today feel the same bond with each other as having at one time been slaves and abused. Some feel a sense of entitlement because of it; others are vary appreciative of the freedom they have now that their forefathers didn't. But blacks in the US share a bond that whites don't, that's for sure.

> Moses and Aaron were not experts in magic

You're right, and that's exactly the point. They were nobodies. It was clear to all that what was happening was the power of God in them, not their trained expertise and years of practice to become competent.

> God does not "send doctors" to see patients via telepathy (they call and schedule appointments), nor does he whisper medical knowledge in their ear or endow them with magical healing powers so that they may heal their patients. Doctors work very hard to learn and apply medicine...

You're right. In the book of James he talks about praying for people who are sick, but he also endorses medical care (James 5.14-15). "God doesn't send doctors." But he has designed our bodies to heal themselves. Without that, doctors couldn't do diddly. He has also supplied our world with natural elements and chemicals that bring healing, and he has given humans a mandate to pursue scientific inquiry to learn these things for our benefit (Gn. 1.28). He has also created a world with enough regularity and predictability to make science even possible. If God were intervening at every turn, nothing would be predictable, and things such as science and medicine would be completely impossible. Doctors and scientists work very hard to know what the know and do what they do. That our world works the way it does it what enables that to happen.

> Did god consider this when he tampered with the Pharaoh's free will?

God didn't tamper with Pharaoh's free will. When people pursue their own course, ignoring God, God exactly DOESN'T interfere, and he lets them go the way their free will has chosen. The Bible says he turns them over the futility of their minds to do what they want to do (Rom. 1.21ff.).

You'll notice in the Exodus account that Pharaoh hardens his own heart in Ex. 7.13. Then Pharaoh hardens his own heart in Ex. 7.22. Then Pharaoh hardened his own heart in 8.15. Then Pharaoh hardened his own heart in 8.19. Then Pharaoh hardened his own heart in 8.32. Then in 9.12,for the first time, it says the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart. Don't blame God for tampering with Pharaoh's free will.

> Whatever the Bible is, it certainly isn't "clear". The Bible is full of vicarious miracles. Taking your example, just look at Moses and Aaron and the miraculous things they were able to do. If I had witnessed their abilities, I wouldn't need much faith to take them seriously. Unfortunately, no one parts seas for me, or leads me around with pillars of fire.


Obviously, these things were not ultimately convincing. Moses and Aaron did these miracles. There was the pillar of cloud and fire, as you have mentioned. Moses goes up on the mountain to meet with God. He's gone for a while and people turn against him and against God (Ex. 32). He comes back down. There are more miracles. The people rebel (Num. 14 & 16).

Elijah does great miracles. The queen tries to kill him for it (1 Ki. 19.1-2).

Daniel is a man of great wisdom and visions. He has helped the king and advisors many times with his wisdom. The other advisors, instead of respecting him, want him out of there, and they plot against him (Dan. 6).

Same thing during the time of Jesus. He does all these miracles and healings and helps people, and the Pharisees plot to have him bumped off (Mt. 12.14). He raises Lazarus from the dead, and they make plans to kill Lazarus too (Jn. 12.10). Then Jesus comes back from the dead, yet "some doubted" (Mt. 28.17).

Lots of people, apparently, witnesses the abilities of miracle workers and were nonplussed. It didn't convince them, didn't even seem to change the way they were thinking, and even made them more hostile in some situations. I'm confident, based on the evidence, that predictable and miraculous answers to prayer would fall into the same categories, especially if it happened all the time. People would start to take it for granted and say, "Well, that's just the way things work!"

Wow, you've asked WAY too much to fit into the 10,000 word limit for a forum like this. I can't possibly comment adequately within the parameters. I will split my answers up into a series of replies to your queries, and hopefully they'll all get through, otherwise I'll be writing for nothing and you won't get to see what I've written. I'll start with this one, and deal with different pieces on different replies.

> You are suggesting that by healing these people, Jesus was making an impact...an impact that would help establish a relationship with Jesus/God and ultimately save their soul (and possible the souls of those who witnessed the event). This is precisely the point I was making when I asked why god doesn't continue to answer the prayers of those who desperately seek his help. If god healed children who were dying of malaria after they prayed and asked for his help, do you not think that would cause a stir around the entire world? If Christians had a significantly lower mortality rates, or rates of illness, wouldn't that be a clear sign that he was the one true god? He was willing to make this apparent in the past...why not now?

The book of Job deals with this very issue,but a slightly different nuance of it. The philosophical/theological question of the book of the Job is the Retribution Principle: Do all righteous people get rewarded for their righteousness in this life, and do all wicked people get punished? Can we expect and even plan that if do good, I'll get good stuff in return, and if I'm bad, I'll get bad? Stay with me because it pertains to your comments about prayer.

If it's true that the good people are going to prosper and the wicked people suffer, the motives of all good people come under scrutiny, since we could be corrupted so easily by the lure of prosperity, and if we only prosper because we're good, then true goodness is just an illusion. People will only do good and be good to get good things, which means rewarding goodness actually subverts goodness. We turn into "What's in it for me?" Therefore, it becomes realistically counter-productive for God to reward good and punish bad in this life, because it makes us all less-than-good. But then we find out that it's counter-productive for good people to suffer, too, because then we think, "How is this fair?" So God is caught in the middle: he gets criticized for blessing people for being good, and actually ruins them in the process, or he gets criticized for allowing suffering. That's what the book of Job then sorts out. The book wants to transform how we think about God's work in the world and about our responses in times of suffering.

Now let's go to your question about prayer. Why doesn't God answer to sincere prayer of the child who is dying of malaria? Wouldn't that cause a stir around the world? Indeed it would, especially if we could count on the fact that God would answer every such prayer. The power to manipulate God just by asking would be the most corrupting power known to humanity. If Christians got answers to prayer (especially about illness and suffering) more than non-Christians, people would flock to Christ, not out of of love or devotion, or even out of sincerity, but to get what they wanted. It would be a travesty to end all travesties.

On the other hand, when God DOESN'T answer such prayers, he is pilloried for being callous, not omnipotent, and that he doesn't even exist. "What kind of a cruel beast is he to not answer the prayers of an innocent child?" It turns out he creates a monster if he blesses, and gets accused of being a monster if he doesn't. We clearly have to overhaul our way of thinking about this.

> Thanks for the clarification. For some odd reason I thought your question was primarily "Why won't god reveal scientific knowledge?" Instead, your question seems to be about the nature of prayer and how God intervenes in our world with the sick. Again, thanks for the clarification. That's a very different question.

It really isn't a "very different question". It is a sub-question of the original post. God reveals things to us through prayer, or some other telepathic means (call it what you will). Disease is directly related to human suffering, so I focused on medical science.

> You'll notice in the gospels that people lined up to be healed by Jesus. Why didn't he just wave his hand over the whole line, heal them all in a flash, and be done with it? For that matter, why not wave his hand over the whole town (even those who didn't come), or the whole COUNTRY, aw, heck, why not over the whole WORLD? It makes sense to look at this.

Yes, now you are getting it.

> It's because the healing wasn't really the issue at hand; it was people's relationship with him. The "healing" provided an opportunity for him to meet each one personally, to talk to them, to establish some kind of relationship. What matters to Jesus is the relationship. Now, he did heal them while they were there (he wasn't a jerk about it), but the healing was peripheral. What matters is people's souls. You'll notice the guy that was let down through the roof (Mark 2.1-12), the first thing Jesus said was, "Your sins are forgiven." That's what really matters, even if the guy never walked again.

You are making my point for me. You are suggesting that by healing these people, Jesus was making an impact...an impact that would help establish a relationship with Jesus/God and ultimately save their soul (and possible the souls of those who witnessed the event). This is precisely the point I was making when I asked why god doesn't continue to answer the prayers of those who desperately seek his help. If god healed children who were dying of malaria after they prayed and asked for his help, do you not think that would cause a stir around the entire world? If Christians had a significantly lower mortality rates, or rates of illness, wouldn't that be a clear sign that he was the one true god? He was willing to make this apparent in the past...why not now?

> You dis the idea that God often works through people and very normal and natural processes, but you shouldn't brush that aside so quickly and easily.

Only if "dis" is shorthand for "dismiss", because I certainly meant no disrespect. I dismiss it because it is indistinguishable from ordinary human achievement.

> The Bible is clear that most of what God does on this earth he accomplishes through normal people in normal ways.

Whatever the Bible is, it certainly isn't "clear". The Bible is full of vicarious miracles. Taking your example, just look at Moses and Aaron and the miraculous things they were able to do. If I had witnessed their abilities, I wouldn't need much faith to take them seriously. Unfortunately, no one parts seas for me, or leads me around with pillars of fire.

> When he wants to get his people out of Egypt, he doesn't just get them out, he sends Moses and says, "Get them out. I'll help ya." Generally when he wants to heal people, he sends a doctor. It's not a cop-out answer; it's the way things work. God works through normal people doing normal things.

This is highly glossed and does nothing to make your point. God first allows "his people" to be enslaved, then sends two guys equipped with magical powers to confront a political leader. Moses and Aaron were not experts in magic in the same sense that a doctor is an expert in medicine. God does not "send doctors" to see patients via telepathy (they call and schedule appointments), nor does he whisper medical knowledge in their ear or endow them with magical healing powers so that they may heal their patients. Doctors work very hard to learn and apply medicine, and to suggest that god simply endows them with magical healing powers is simply a failure to recognize their efforts to educate and better themselves.

> Why didn't he just heal all the lepers? Why not rid the earth of all disease? There are LONG answers to these questions, so I'll try to keep it short: God messing with the cause-and-effect processes of the earth to that extent would ruin life as we know it, steal away our humanity, and invalidate science as a discipline.

Back to your example... Did god consider this when he tampered with the Pharaoh's free will? Furthermore, I fully hope that curing disease will ruin life as we know it. I would be happy to see death and suffering from disease "ruined". The idea that revealing the cure to a disease would invalidate science is not to understand science. Christianity would become the new science. Medical science (all science, in fact) would resort to fervent prayer and meditation rather than the slow process of empirical research. After all, god rewarding faithful "scientists" with answers would go a lot farther toward his goal of "saving souls" than allowing secular scientists to chip away at the mysteries of the universe on their own.

> ...Long answers...and resisting the temptation to explain things in detail...

Don't hold back. I am a fast reader, so let me have it.

> And why not bring back every child from the dead?

Doesn't this beg the question of why Jesus brought any back at all? If it were to "save souls" then, why wouldn't it continue to be effective at "saving souls" now?

> You mean, get rid of death for everyone for all time so that there is no such thing?

I wasn't asking that specifically, but we can explore it. Although, I assume that overcoming the "heat death" of the universe would then become humanity's major concern.

> Can you imagine what our planet would be like if that were the case? Disastrous.

Not necessarily. It may have temporary implications with respect to overpopulation, but humanity is smart enough to adapt. It would also allow single humans to amass immense intellects and problem solving would become much faster. Lifetime's of accumulated knowledge and experience would not be lost upon death. I can see humanity expanding beyond Earth, and developing exciting new technologies to help better manage resources. I like to ponder about trans-humanism as well, so this stuff is right up my alley.

> But then you also must understand that that's what his death and resurrection were all about: to pronounce the death-knell on death itself.

But then you also must understand that an omnibenovolent god would not need bronze age theatre (in the form of blood sacrifice, scapegoating, and vicarious redemption) in order to forgive its creation. We are "sinful" because of the very things we need answers for. Unlike god (who does not suffer from our problems), we are forced to deal with mental illness, physical handicaps, disease, emotions, sexual urges, hunger, thirst, finite resources, finite abilities, finite knowledge, and ultimately death. Heaven (and god) are free of these issues, presumably, which is why we want to go there so badly.

> Second, there actually is some value to suffering in our perspectives and character (that's another very long discussion).

Describe this "value". I don't see any value in a child dying of an otherwise preventable disease.

> Thirdly, we are never informed about the divine rationale for selection in these matters.

This doesn't seem to stop Christians from making assertions about the rationale...as you have about his primary goal of "saving souls". By your logic, god selects individuals to heal or resurrect by the number of souls that will be saved via the impact it has on them, and the eye witnesses.

> Sometimes we can infer it based on the request, the situation, and the context, but often we're left clueless. Almost always, though, Jesus' healings pertain to a person's spiritual condition. If I had to isolate an important factor, that would be it.

This is a game played only by those who do not understand statistics. Christians die, contract diseases, and heal at the same rates as the rest of the human population. There is no indication that praying to Yahweh has any effect on health or longevity. This is evidenced by a number of studies on intercessory prayer.

Thanks for the clarification. For some odd reason I thought your question was primarily "Why won't god reveal scientific knowledge?" Instead, your question seems to be about the nature of prayer and how God intervenes in our world with the sick. Again, thanks for the clarification. That's a very different question.

You'll notice in the gospels that people lined up to be healed by Jesus. Why didn't he just wave his hand over the whole line, heal them all in a flash, and be done with it? For that matter, why not wave his hand over the whole town (even those who didn't come), or the whole COUNTRY, aw, heck, why not over the whole WORLD? It makes sense to look at this. It's because the healing wasn't really the issue at hand; it was people's relationship with him. The "healing" provided an opportunity for him to meet each one personally, to talk to them, to establish some kind of relationship. What matters to Jesus is the relationship. Now, he did heal them while they were there (he wasn't a jerk about it), but the healing was peripheral. What matters is people's souls. You'll notice the guy that was let down through the roof (Mark 2.1-12), the first thing Jesus said was, "Your sins are forgiven." That's what really matters, even if the guy never walked again.

You dis the idea that God often works through people and very normal and natural processes, but you shouldn't brush that aside so quickly and easily. The Bible is clear that most of what God does on this earth he accomplishes through normal people in normal ways. When he wants to get his people out of Egypt, he doesn't just get them out, he sends Moses and says, "Get them out. I'll help ya." Generally when he wants to heal people, he sends a doctor. It's not a cop-out answer; it's the way things work. God works through normal people doing normal things.

Why didn't he just heal all the lepers? Why not rid the earth of all disease? There are LONG answers to these questions, so I'll try to keep it short: God messing with the cause-and-effect processes of the earth to that extent would ruin life as we know it, steal away our humanity, and invalidate science as a discipline. I won't take the time to explain each of these in detail, but we can pursue them if you want. (I'm trying to accommodate my communication to the context.) And why not bring back every child from the dead? You mean, get rid of death for everyone for all time so that there is no such thing? Can you imagine what our planet would be like if that were the case? Disastrous. But then you also must understand that that's what his death and resurrection were all about: to pronounce the death-knell on death itself.

Why does he save some and not others? First of all, as I explained, to rid the world of all disease and death would bring about a disruption of life-ruining proportions. Second, there actually is some value to suffering in our perspectives and character (that's another very long discussion). Thirdly, we are never informed about the divine rationale for selection in these matters. Sometimes we can infer it based on the request, the situation, and the context, but often we're left clueless. Almost always, though, Jesus' healings pertain to a person's spiritual condition. If I had to isolate an important factor, that would be it.