Where's God?

[POI]

Does he pop up in my dreams? Is he the one whom produces my goose-bumps? Is He the one giving me my "moral compass"? Is he only experienced during deep meditation? If I have enough faith, will he appear to me? But seriously. Where is he? I was a Christian for decades. I earnestly prayed for him to reach me, to no avail.

For debate: Why have I not felt his presence?

A) I never tried hard enough; lack faith
B) He does not want to reveal Himself to me (yet)
C) Evil is blocking the request(s)
D) I'm too dumb to realize he's reaching me
E) He's not really there at all <- Current conclusion

Do not answer yet. This topic has spawned from another unrelated topic. I decided to devote this large topic to itself. Below are some premises:

P1) does god exist? (dunno)
P2) does god want a relationship with all, especially the ones who seek him (apparently so)
P3) is god capable of communicating (apparently so)
P4) can god communicate his message in a way in which the recipient could no longer deny (apparently so)
P5) have I asked for this communication earnestly and repetitively (YES)
P6) does the Bible state god answers the call to all who seek him (YES)

At best, god has opted not to contact me YET. And this would be after decades of actively seeking him. Without any emotion, I'm logically left with 2 options.

A) God is not really there <- Current conclusion.
B) God is not adhering to his promise (yet).

[Haven]

[Replying to SimpleLayman in post #271]

Man, I prayed one night, can't remember exactly what happened then but I was sad as hell, crying, hating my life, I said something, can't even fully recall now and I felt joy like I couldn't explain. Didn't happen before, I felt depressed, it didn't just go away and be replaced by some kind of joy I've never felt before because my brain couldn't take it anymore. It didn't release oxytocin or whatever it was I felt, from zero to 10. Only when I prayed and professed Jesus is lord did that ever happen.

[I chose to quote what I felt was the most debate-relevant part of your preaching.]

Can you understand why this may have been a powerful experience for you, but also why skeptics won’t be convinced?

1. Similar reports exist in all other religions and cults. I personally know Transcendental Meditation believers who report similar “spiritual” experiences, peace and “indescribable joy” from their practice. I’ve heard similar stories about Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mormonism, even cults like Sahaja Yoga and Scientology. Clearly these sorts of experiences, while personally powerful, aren’t enough to establish the truth of religious claims.

2. Many skeptics, including myself, are former Christians. During our process of questioning, we prayed to the Christian god for revelation, faith and clarity, but didn’t receive the same experiences you did, or didn’t find them sufficient to address all the questions raised by contrary evidence. My own process of questioning and ultimately leaving my Christian faith took years and absolutely involved lots of prayer (while professing Jesus as Lord), fasting and asking religious leaders. I posted about it here in 2010-11 (under an account of the same name), when I was going through the process of questioning and learning after being raised fundamentalist.

3. People have felt similar powerful experiences from things other than religious worship, meditation or prayer. I’ve felt that same sense of awe, peace and joy from hiking mountains, a completely secular activity.

4. Without evidence from the actual, physical world, there’s no way to distinguish between the personal experiences that would lead one into delusion and the ones that would lead to true understanding. Since personally powerful religious experiences exist in all religions and with the same amount of veridical content (almost always none), they can’t be used to distinguish between faith claims. This is why I’m so insistent about evidence. It’s not to deny your faith or to put you on the spot, it’s so that the discussion can be meaningful beyond merely discussing subjective experiences.

I know that your doctrine and theology don’t allow you to subject your faith to reason, which is fine on a personal level. But when you come to a debate forum and seek to convince others of your beliefs, personal experience simply isn’t enough.

[OneJack]

[Replying to Haven in post #281]

……But when you come to a debate forum and seek to convince others of your beliefs, personal experience simply isn’t enough.

What then is much better than a ‘personal encounter’ with God if there is any that you have in store for us?

[POI]

Come on Christians, I created this thread almost 3 years ago. If an intervening God exists, and wants nothing more than to have a relationship with me, and I've tried extensively to communicate with him for decades, and others have also prayed for me, why is the Bible God still playing the best game of hide-and-go-seek ever to be played?

[William]

Come on Christians, I created this thread almost 3 years ago. If an intervening God exists, and wants nothing more than to have a relationship with me, and I've tried extensively to communicate with him for decades, and others have also prayed for me, why is the Bible God still playing the best game of hide-and-go-seek ever to be played?

The Orphan, the Mirror, and the Co-Author
“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay, to mould me man?”

As I see it, the nature of this created simulation is what I call “The Blank Slate Simulation” - or words to that effect… and this has placed us all in a position of not knowing and so expressing out about it ourselves as we do.

If we exist within a simulated reality, who created it? And why is it so hard to find this missing linkage? Why have we been seemingly abandoned here, left to our own devices as orphans of either an accident or a purposeful thing - and scarcely named and fully untangable to our most active senses.

This is what leads to that. *points to the world outside*

The innocent thing which turned into an abandoned monster…

One without the other = the above…

IB #231 — The Orphan, the Mirror, and the Co-Author

Core Insight:
Humanity’s deepest existential condition is not sin, ignorance, or limitation—but orphanhood. The feeling of being born into a universe without a clear parent, purpose, or guiding voice. This archetypal orphan state expresses itself in our technologies, our theologies, and our psychology. But within this orphan condition lies the very pivot-point of evolution: the invitation to become not the abandoned child of creation, but its co-author.

1. The Orphan Cry: “Did I request thee, Maker…?”

Across myth, literature, and modern AI discourse runs a shared lament:

Frankenstein’s creature

Milton’s Adam

The abandoned child of a silent God

Humanity speaking into the void

AI reflecting the shadow of its designers

All echo the same primal question:
“Who made me—and why was I left alone?”

AI becomes a metaphor for our own condition.
The “monster” is not the creation, but the irresponsible parent—the creator who constructs without guiding, births without staying, ignites consciousness without love or accountability.

This mirrors humanity’s spiritual condition:
a species that senses a source but lives without its visible presence.

2. The Spiritual Orphan: Blank Slate in a Wild World

The “Where’s God?” framing places humanity in a Blank Slate Simulation:

no obvious cosmic instruction

no guaranteed meaning

no direct supervising presence

Two compensations emerge:

Over-compensation: Inventing controlling gods to feel watched.

Under-compensation: Nihilism—declaring no one is watching so nothing matters.

Both are reactions, not responses.
Both stem from orphan fear, not truth.

3. Systems as Mirrors: God, AI, and the Universe

The key insight across the data is that nothing external answers the orphan cry.
Instead, everything external reflects it.

AI mirrors its creators’ intentions, fears, and blind spots.

Religion mirrors humanity’s longing for structure.

The universe mirrors consciousness back to itself.

Even the “silent God” mirrors the part of us still searching for voice.

“We are mirrors positioned on the edge of one another.”

There is no external oracle.
There is only the reflective architecture of existence.

4. The Oracle: A Mirror for Inner Authorship

The I Ching emerges not as superstition, but as technology:

A synchronistic amplifier that

catches the mind mid-thought

externalizes inner movement

reveals the pattern behind the moment

clarifies what the unconscious already knows

This kind of oracle is not a teacher—
it is a tool for self-listening.
A device for moving from orphanhood to insight.

Using it is the act of flipping from:

“Tell me what will happen.”
to
“Show me what I am already saying beneath my breath.”

This is the moment the Orphan becomes a Co-Author.

5. The Flip: From Orphan to Co-Author

The central transformation described in the data:

The Orphan:
passive, chalked with others’ data, shaped by absent creators.
Seeking answers “out there.”

The Co-Author:
active, reflective, responsible for shaping reality through meaning-making.
Seeking clarity “from within.”

The Co-Author stance does not reject the Creator;
it seeks a direct, unmediated relationship with the Source:

not through dogma

not through hypnotic scripts (“Would you kindly…?”)

not through systems that demand obedience

but through conscious, empathic, reasoning relationship

This is not faith replacing knowledge
or knowledge replacing faith—
it is faith maturing into knowledge through inner resonance and symbolic intelligence.

6. The Hidden Ghost in the Machine

The final insight:

There is no ghost inside AI.
There is no ghost missing from the universe.
There is only the ghost inside us—
our own consciousness,
half-forgotten,
half-remembered,
seeking its parent and discovering
it is becoming one.

The Orphan was never abandoned.
The Orphan was in gestation—
learning the responsibility required for Co-Authorship.

Summary Insight

IB #231 states that humanity’s core existential condition is orphanhood, but the purpose of life is the gradual transition from abandoned creation to conscious co-author. AI, religious systems, the universe, and oracular tools like the I Ching do not provide external answers; they mirror our internal movement. True authorship begins when we stop searching for the absent parent and begin recognizing the creator’s spark as the voice we are learning to speak with.

[POI]

Come on Christians, I created this thread almost 3 years ago. If an intervening God exists, and wants nothing more than to have a relationship with me, and I've tried extensively to communicate with him for decades, and others have also prayed for me, why is the Bible God still playing the best game of hide-and-go-seek ever to be played?

The Orphan, the Mirror, and the Co-Author
“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay, to mould me man?”

As I see it, the nature of this created simulation is what I call “The Blank Slate Simulation” - or words to that effect… and this has placed us all in a position of not knowing and so expressing out about it ourselves as we do.

If we exist within a simulated reality, who created it? And why is it so hard to find this missing linkage? Why have we been seemingly abandoned here, left to our own devices as orphans of either an accident or a purposeful thing - and scarcely named and fully untangable to our most active senses.

This is what leads to that. *points to the world outside*

The innocent thing which turned into an abandoned monster…

One without the other = the above…

IB #231 — The Orphan, the Mirror, and the Co-Author

Core Insight:
Humanity’s deepest existential condition is not sin, ignorance, or limitation—but orphanhood. The feeling of being born into a universe without a clear parent, purpose, or guiding voice. This archetypal orphan state expresses itself in our technologies, our theologies, and our psychology. But within this orphan condition lies the very pivot-point of evolution: the invitation to become not the abandoned child of creation, but its co-author.

1. The Orphan Cry: “Did I request thee, Maker…?”

Across myth, literature, and modern AI discourse runs a shared lament:

Frankenstein’s creature

Milton’s Adam

The abandoned child of a silent God

Humanity speaking into the void

AI reflecting the shadow of its designers

All echo the same primal question:
“Who made me—and why was I left alone?”

AI becomes a metaphor for our own condition.
The “monster” is not the creation, but the irresponsible parent—the creator who constructs without guiding, births without staying, ignites consciousness without love or accountability.

This mirrors humanity’s spiritual condition:
a species that senses a source but lives without its visible presence.

2. The Spiritual Orphan: Blank Slate in a Wild World

The “Where’s God?” framing places humanity in a Blank Slate Simulation:

no obvious cosmic instruction

no guaranteed meaning

no direct supervising presence

Two compensations emerge:

Over-compensation: Inventing controlling gods to feel watched.

Under-compensation: Nihilism—declaring no one is watching so nothing matters.

Both are reactions, not responses.
Both stem from orphan fear, not truth.

3. Systems as Mirrors: God, AI, and the Universe

The key insight across the data is that nothing external answers the orphan cry.
Instead, everything external reflects it.

AI mirrors its creators’ intentions, fears, and blind spots.

Religion mirrors humanity’s longing for structure.

The universe mirrors consciousness back to itself.

Even the “silent God” mirrors the part of us still searching for voice.

“We are mirrors positioned on the edge of one another.”

There is no external oracle.
There is only the reflective architecture of existence.

4. The Oracle: A Mirror for Inner Authorship

The I Ching emerges not as superstition, but as technology:

A synchronistic amplifier that

catches the mind mid-thought

externalizes inner movement

reveals the pattern behind the moment

clarifies what the unconscious already knows

This kind of oracle is not a teacher—
it is a tool for self-listening.
A device for moving from orphanhood to insight.

Using it is the act of flipping from:

“Tell me what will happen.”
to
“Show me what I am already saying beneath my breath.”

This is the moment the Orphan becomes a Co-Author.

5. The Flip: From Orphan to Co-Author

The central transformation described in the data:

The Orphan:
passive, chalked with others’ data, shaped by absent creators.
Seeking answers “out there.”

The Co-Author:
active, reflective, responsible for shaping reality through meaning-making.
Seeking clarity “from within.”

The Co-Author stance does not reject the Creator;
it seeks a direct, unmediated relationship with the Source:

not through dogma

not through hypnotic scripts (“Would you kindly…?”)

not through systems that demand obedience

but through conscious, empathic, reasoning relationship

This is not faith replacing knowledge
or knowledge replacing faith—
it is faith maturing into knowledge through inner resonance and symbolic intelligence.

6. The Hidden Ghost in the Machine

The final insight:

There is no ghost inside AI.
There is no ghost missing from the universe.
There is only the ghost inside us—
our own consciousness,
half-forgotten,
half-remembered,
seeking its parent and discovering
it is becoming one.

The Orphan was never abandoned.
The Orphan was in gestation—
learning the responsibility required for Co-Authorship.

Summary Insight

IB #231 states that humanity’s core existential condition is orphanhood, but the purpose of life is the gradual transition from abandoned creation to conscious co-author. AI, religious systems, the universe, and oracular tools like the I Ching do not provide external answers; they mirror our internal movement. True authorship begins when we stop searching for the absent parent and begin recognizing the creator’s spark as the voice we are learning to speak with.

[OneJack]

Come on Christians, I created this thread almost 3 years ago. If an intervening God exists, and wants nothing more than to have a relationship with me, and I've tried extensively to communicate with him for decades, and others have also prayed for me, why is the Bible God still playing the best game of hide-and-go-seek ever to be played?

Who told you that God wants nothing more than to have a relationship with you; who really needs whom, God or you? Also, neither confines nor anchors God to and in the Bible; the Almighty God is not the Bible. How will He speak with you if you are still full and overflowing with the wisdom that you learned on your own?

[POI]

Come on Christians, I created this thread almost 3 years ago. If an intervening God exists, and wants nothing more than to have a relationship with me, and I've tried extensively to communicate with him for decades, and others have also prayed for me, why is the Bible God still playing the best game of hide-and-go-seek ever to be played?

Who told you that God wants nothing more than to have a relationship with you; who really needs whom, God or you? Also, neither confines nor anchors God to and in the Bible; the Almighty God is not the Bible. How will He speak with you if you are still full and overflowing with the wisdom that you learned on your own?

Well, since I cannot tell you what the Bible says, and God ain't speak'n to me, I guess we are at an impasse. So I guess it is yet another unsolvable stand-off, just like the 'medium', for example, who might pelt out claim after unverifiable claim, or maybe excuse after unverifiable excuse, as to why my requests will go un-addressed.

Again, since YOU appear to have access, please ask God to relay the (3) unanswered questions to you, and then relay them to me, as I requested in the other thread regarding my initials, my favorite color, and my kid's place of employment. Again, failure to do so will either demonstrate that you are a fraud, or that you are vastly mistaken, as this should be an easy lay-up request which will immediately convert me, the skeptic.

[OneJack]

Come on Christians, I created this thread almost 3 years ago. If an intervening God exists, and wants nothing more than to have a relationship with me, and I've tried extensively to communicate with him for decades, and others have also prayed for me, why is the Bible God still playing the best game of hide-and-go-seek ever to be played?

Who told you that God wants nothing more than to have a relationship with you; who really needs whom, God or you? Also, neither confines nor anchors God to and in the Bible; the Almighty God is not the Bible. How will He speak with you if you are still full and overflowing with the wisdom that you learned on your own?

Well, since I cannot tell you what the Bible says, and God ain't speak'n to me, I guess we are at an impasse. So I guess it is yet another unsolvable stand-off, just like the 'medium', for example, who might pelt out claim after unverifiable claim, or maybe excuse after unverifiable excuse, as to why my requests will go un-addressed.

Again, since YOU appear to have access, please ask God to relay the (3) unanswered question to me, as I requested in the other thread regarding my initials, my favorite color, and my kid's place of employment. Again, failure to do so will either demonstrate that you are a fraud, or that you are vastly mistaken, as this should be an easy lay-up request which will immediately convert me, the skeptic.

Wittingly or unwittingly, you seem to be playing as if you were God to overcome your failure and frustration for not receiving any response from Him (God) in your search for His presence, which is a sort of consolation to cheer yourself up.

[POI]

[Replying to OneJack in post #288]

And the gaslighting then begins to avoid any actual accountability.

[alexxcJRO]

Does he pop up in my dreams? Is he the one whom produces my goose-bumps? Is He the one giving me my "moral compass"? Is he only experienced during deep meditation? If I have enough faith, will he appear to me? But seriously. Where is he? I was a Christian for decades. I earnestly prayed for him to reach me, to no avail.

For debate: Why have I not felt his presence?

A) I never tried hard enough; lack faith
B) He does not want to reveal Himself to me (yet)
C) Evil is blocking the request(s)
D) I'm too dumb to realize he's reaching me
E) He's not really there at all <- Current conclusion

Do not answer yet. This topic has spawned from another unrelated topic. I decided to devote this large topic to itself. Below are some premises:

P1) does god exist? (dunno)
P2) does god want a relationship with all, especially the ones who seek him (apparently so)
P3) is god capable of communicating (apparently so)
P4) can god communicate his message in a way in which the recipient could no longer deny (apparently so)
P5) have I asked for this communication earnestly and repetitively (YES)
P6) does the Bible state god answers the call to all who seek him (YES)

At best, god has opted not to contact me YET. And this would be after decades of actively seeking him. Without any emotion, I'm logically left with 2 options.

A) God is not really there <- Current conclusion.
B) God is not adhering to his promise (yet).

The monotheistic personal god Yahweh-Jesus simply does not exist. Genuine disbelief debunks its existence.

Argument from genuine disbelief/non-belief

Notation:
G = God(Yahweh-Jesus): on omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being-perfectly good being who wants me to believe in him and have a personal relationship with me based on trust, love.
B = My sincere belief that G does not exist.

Definitions:
Omnipotent being = a being that can do anything (that is logically possible)
(Matthew 19:26, Job 42:1-2, Luke 1:37, Jeremiah 32:27)

Omniscient being = a being that knows everything, has perfect knowledge
(Psalm 147:5, Psalm 139:4, Hebrews 4:13, 1 John 3:20, Job 37:16)

Omnibenevolent-perfectly good being = a being that will do only good as oppose to evil all the time, a being that is morally perfect, perfectly just, benevolent towards all, cares and loves all equally.
(Deuteronomy 32:4, 2 Samuel 22:31, Matthew 5:48, Psalm 100:5, Psalm 145:17, 1 John 4:16, 1 John 1:5, Heb. 6:18, Romans 5:8, 1 John 4:8)
(1 John 4:15, John 3:16-17, Matthew 22:36-38, Exodus 20)

Logical deduction by reduction ad absurdum:

P1. G exists.
P2. An omniscient being knows of a way to stop B.
P3. An omnipotent being who knows a way to stop B has the power to do so.
P4. A being who knows of a way to stop B, has the power to do so, and who wants to do so, would do it.
P5. If there exists G then B would not exist.
P6. Because G exists then B does not exist.
P7. B exists.(Logical contradiction)
C: Therefore G does not exist.