Peter Boghossian on Divine hiddenness
Boghossian frames divine hiddenness as an epistemological indictment — a God who wants to be known but remains hidden has created an unreliable system of knowledge.
Boghossian's treatment of divine hiddenness flows naturally from his epistemological framework. If God exists and wants a relationship with human beings, then the most basic requirement is that humans be able to know God exists. Yet the evidence for God's existence is, at best, ambiguous — intelligent, honest people disagree profoundly about it. This is not what we would expect from an omnipotent being who desires to be known.
He connects this to his concept of 'doxastic closure' — the state in which a person's beliefs are immune to revision. A God who provides clear, unambiguous evidence of his existence would not need faith. But the Christian tradition elevates faith as a virtue precisely because the evidence is insufficient. Boghossian finds this incoherent: a loving God who punishes nonbelief while providing inadequate evidence is either incompetent or unjust.
Boghossian also notes that the problem of divine hiddenness is especially acute given religious diversity. God has apparently revealed himself to different cultures in contradictory ways — or not at all. The Muslim, the Hindu, and the Christian cannot all be receiving accurate divine communication. The simplest explanation for God's hiddenness, Boghossian argues, is that there is no God hiding.
“Faith is pretending to know things you don't know. If God existed and wanted to be known, faith would be unnecessary.”