Dan Barker on Divine hiddenness

Dan Barker's treatment of divine hiddenness is deeply personal. He did not leave Christianity casually or rebelliously — he spent years trying to hold onto his faith, praying earnestly for God to confirm his existence, searching scripture for reassurance, and pleading for some sign that the God he had preached for nineteen years was real. The silence was total.

This experience, Barker argues, is precisely what the hiddenness argument predicts. If a loving God exists and desires a relationship with his creatures, sincere seeking should not be met with silence. Barker was not a hostile sceptic but a devoted minister who wanted nothing more than to continue believing. If God would not reveal himself to such a person, the most parsimonious explanation is that there was no one to reveal.

Barker extends the argument beyond his personal experience. Billions of people throughout history have lived in cultures that never encountered Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. They had no opportunity to form a relationship with the Abrahamic God. If belief is necessary for salvation, these people were condemned by the accident of their birth — which is incompatible with any meaningful sense of divine love or justice.