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[jimwalton]

> 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.

[God of Mind]

> 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.

[jimwalton]

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.