Why would God want us to need faith to know him instead of making himself readily observable?

Question

understand that many people believe god to exist on faith. But from God's perspective, how would that be more desirable than making himself obvious to everyone? Why request faith when you could give people knowledge? If people could just see God and converse with him (prayer is not a conversation) and interact with him, I think it would draw more followers who were more loyal to the cause. If faith is the path to God, I don't understand why God would want it that way.

Answer 1

Why would there be a God who hides from people and forces them to abandon their ability to reason to demonstrate their loyalty to him? What could possibly the motivation for such a God? That he only wants people who will easily abandon reason and thought and pretend that believing makes things true?

Then that God would actually be seeking to harm the thoughtful, the intelligent, the industrious, the perceptive, the educated and praise the ignorant, the lazy, the ill, the insane, the con artists, and the silly. That sort of God would not be worthy of worship and would actually be a demon himself. By raising those worth less above the worthy, that God would be creating wars, and plagues, more ignorance and hatred, setting one group of people with one set of beliefs against another group with different beliefs.

To say that we should believe unconditionally like children means that we would make the errors that children make. That utopian dream would bring ruin to everyone. Children also believe in unicorns and fairies. And they do that because they have not learned yet that truth has to be verified or else it is not truth. Appealing to people to believe like children is nothing but a dishonest play on their emotions for a simpler life where all our needs, including our thoughts, are supplied by someone else. It is an appeal to abandon responsibility for our lives, our behavior, our ethics, our reasoned understanding.

If you have no way of validating your beliefs, those beliefs are worthless and destructive because you have no way of determining if they are true or not.

Answer 2

Faith is imagination, nothing more. The thought that something is real. God really is observable every day and in every way but He is so simple to see that we over look Him completely. Children see God all the time but not like the Church says. They see love within themselves and they believe in the best possibility for everything. That love is God, that pure energy is God, the spirit that makes every body or thing live is God. We best get to know God by getting to know our own Spirit. Then we see we are never separated from God and everyone and everything is all part of God. Just like thousands of cells make up the flesh thousands of creations all make up God.

Answer 3

1st of all God never had a son, then He would not be God, He would be like one of us and not be ever lasting. Anythign that dies like humans and bugs and plants cannot be God. and Prophet Jesus Peace be Upon him never said He was God or preached for a religion called Christianity. Christianity came into play after the death of Crist, peace be upon him. Crist preached to worship the one true God.

In answer to the main question, How do you know you have a heart? Have you ever seen your heart? Did you ever touch it? What about your brain? How do we know that we have a brain? Likewise, God gave us signs of his eexistence such as the trees, birds etc etc....No human or biologist can give life. Biilogist can just take the copy of the DNA but they cannot make an orignial and give it life. God did apear before mankind such as some of the Prophets. and He will apear before everyone on the day of judghement....visit this video which talks about the descriptions of Allah

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukBX2TvfyQE

Answer 4

He is infact readily noticeable. Just that we don't want to 'see' Him!
Given the nature of His being, there is no better way of making oneself so obviously noticeable ! He is all over the place, overwhelmingly... We are just caught up with the 'wrapper', the decorations, too stuck in His creations! Many great realised beings have emphasised this. When there is a great possibility to experience, why compromise on just blind faith !
Yes, prayer is not a conversation . He is ready to allow 'merger' with him, and yet continue to enjoy our lives. What better form of intimacy can we ever hope for ? And , the place to seek is not very far away... He has to be within us too... Just we have to seek within ourselves.... The wrong use of freedom given to us to prioritise what we 'choose' to be predominantly in our view is the problem, even to reverse the process !

Answer 5

That is why God sent His Son Jesus Christ into the world, so that man could observe Him. Now it does take faith to believe that Jesus was the Son of God. But here's the good news..... unlike the proprietors of other faiths whose founders are not still alive, Jesus Christ is still alive. When God raised him from the dead the Bible says that he ascended into heaven and now he is seated in heaven next to God where he "continually lives to make intercession (or to mediate) for us." If you will sincerely pray to Jesus and ask him to help you see and know Him, you won't have to go on "blind faith". He'll find a way to reveal Himself to you, then you'll have living faith!

Answer 6

First of all beacause God is false, and we created him and if he is merely an illusion, symbolic means must be put forth to continue in maintaining the illusion. But the second interpretation for religious people could be that this is the best means to test a person's true "goodness"(a laughable matter) and inate self. By putting him in a world of darkness and seeing how he reacts to it results in discovering the truth of the person, thereby discovering whether he deserves to live in heaven or hell. Second interpretation is that God is cruel and if he intervened then advancement and natural selection would stop, and the pleasure of seeing men's pains would end, their fear of death and their actions resulting from it.

Answer 7

What does your God want? Not others' God, but your God. Besides, faith is a feeling and not an intellectual thing. Feeling is much more colorful that intellectual wording or visual sensing.

Answer 8

GREAT question!

I think religion is a personal thing. If you don't "discover" its mysticism on your own, then its not really special, so whats the point? if god was just sitting on some street corner, he wouldn't be special, and there would be nothing to discover. not that i really believe in god.

Answer 9

Because Faith is His measuring stick. By becoming observable, he goes down to his creation's level, among other things.

Answer 10

You are offhandedly discounting the mystical possibility that the knowledge of God IS readily available to anyone prepared to do ANYTHING so that they can KNOW.