The Argument from Divine Hiddenness
A Former Atheist’s Perspective on the Psychology of Unbelief
Today, I want to exploring the underlying psychology of the argument from Divine hiddenness—one of the more popular arguments among atheists. They argue that if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, then presumably He wants His creation—humans—to believe in Him. Yet, there seem to be many sincere atheists who are genuinely seeking God, looking for evidence, examining the arguments, and still don’t find it convincing. CosmicSkeptic Alex O’Connor says this is one of his primary arguments for atheism.
Being all-powerful, surely God has it within His capability to create evidence that would overwhelmingly convince these atheists to believe. So, the fact that sincere seekers such as Alex don’t believe seems to be an argument for the lack of God’s existence—precisely because if such a God did exist, out of His love, He would provide the abundant evidence necessary to show that He exists.
My Journey from Atheism to Faith
As someone who was an atheist for over a decade of my life and only recently became convinced of the truth of Christianity, I think I can shed some psychological insight into this phenomenon. First of all, it’s not just a matter of evidence and argument. While the evidence for the historicity of Jesus, Christ’s Resurrection, the philosophical arguments for God’s existence, and all the apologetical material that goes into these debates between atheists and believers is compelling, in my opinion, no atheist is ever going to watch a William Lane Craig debate and instantly convert on the spot. That almost never happens. It’s almost never the case that someone engaged in an intellectual debate with a Christian—or any of these atheist-versus-Christian debates—has a conversion experience right there on the spot.
Conversion Beyond the Intellect
What’s more likely is that the moment of conversion comes when you’re in a deeply introspective and reflective moment—maybe on a long road trip, lost in thought, meditating, or hit with a sudden epiphany out of nowhere. In my experience, it’s almost never about engaging the intellectual mind alone. We can look to scripture for examples of conversion experiences. Take St. Paul on the road to Damascus. That was a sudden conversion experience—an intense, emotional, religious epiphany. I think that’s more typical of how conversion happens: God comes to you and you make a decision to repent in a moment of religious vulnerability.
But there has to be a willingness of the heart. Your heart can’t be too hardened, and hardness of the heart is a matter of will. You have to be open and willing to repent. On the road to Damascus, Paul repents of his sin of persecuting Christians. In these moments of introspection, this moment of conversion, there has to be a willingness and openness to repent. That’s the key emotional move in the conversion experience—you have to see yourself as a broken person truly in need of salvation. You have to be at your emotional rock bottom. And that’s not a matter of the intellect.
The Role of Apologetics in Preparing the Ground
Listening to debates about Christian apologetics, arguments for God’s existence, or the historicity of the Resurrection can make the ground more fertile. Having the knowledge in your head that it’s possible to be an intellectually respectable person and a Christian is important. But that knowledge alone doesn’t make a conversion. It just sets the groundwork for the more emotional, willful process.
Divine Hiddenness and Free Will
With the argument from Divine hiddenness, we have to keep in mind that if God made His existence overwhelmingly obvious, it wouldn’t really be a matter of free choice. Why does God want it to be a free choice? Why does He want us to engage our will? Because God gave us free will. We have absolute libertarian freedom to believe or to choose something. Not even God Himself can force us to make a decision—our will is absolutely free. It’s not conditional to some brain state or whatever; it’s a metaphysically free choice where we genuinely could go either way. One of the most fundamental choices is this: Do we choose to repent of our sins? Do we choose to humble ourselves and love God? If God’s existence was so fundamentally obvious, it would rob us of that free choice of love and the opportunity to turn toward Him freely, repenting of our sins.
The Necessity of Repentance
You can’t turn toward God unless you repent of your sins. In my own experience, my conversion was fundamentally based on acknowledging the metaphysical reality of sin. Many atheists don’t even believe in the concept of sin. They don’t think they’re broken because they don’t have a conception of good and evil. They often hold some form of nihilistic moral relativism—if we’re all just cosmic dust with no intrinsic purpose or meaning, there’s no objective standard of right and wrong. On that view, it’s easy to justify all your mistakes, your brokenness, your sinfulness, and make excuses for why you’ve done what you’ve done. But the key move, in my experience, is a willful turning toward God and away from your sin. To turn away from your sin, you first have to recognize the ontological reality of the category of sin, something many atheists are not ready to acknowledge.
My Moment of Conversion
During my conversion experience, I came to a conviction that sin is real—that there really was a standard, and I was violating that standard that came from God. Prior to that, it was just an intellectual proposition. But my actual moment of conversion came in a moment of repentance. This is why Jesus’ message—starting with John the Baptist and His own first words—is “Repent from your sins, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” The emphasis on repenting from your sins is key. Deep in their hearts, many atheists know that a conversion experience requires repentance. But many aren’t emotionally in a place where they’re able to acknowledge the metaphysical reality of sin.
Sin in a Secular Worldview
When I was an atheist, I thought the concept of sin was metaphysical mumbo jumbo. The secular ethical system is framed in terms of deontology, utilitarianism, consequentialism, or maximizing happiness. The concept of sin is very Christian, very metaphysical, tied into a theistic Christian framework—being off the mark from God’s ideal, His commandments, the Ten Commandments. It’s theological in its implications, which is very different from evaluating morality based on maximizing happiness, satisfying desires, or adopting a hedonistic philosophy. If you’re a nihilist, there’s no ultimate meaning, no ultimate morality, no ultimate normativity, no rulebook in the universe. The universe is just dead matter and cosmic dust; we’re just organic meat machines with no real purpose or meaning. In that naturalistic framework, the concept of sin isn’t possible. Without that concept, you can’t turn away from it.
Love, Humility, and Seeking God
When we think about the argument from Divine hiddenness, we have to remember that God wants us to make a free choice. But it’s not just a free choice to believe—you have to want to love God. You have to want to believe in Him. Despite atheists saying they’re sincerely seeking God’s existence and looking at all the intellectual arguments, that’s not the same as having a sincere love born out of a desire to love the one who saves you from your brokenness. Coming into a relationship with God is just that—a relationship. It’s an emotional, loving thing. You have to be at an emotional level where you sincerely want to love, you’re ready to love, you’re freely giving your love. That love has to come in a self-sacrificial way, and that requires humility.
The Barrier of Intellectual Pride
I think a lot of atheists who are looking for evidence, examining arguments, and watching intellectual debates have intellectual pride. They think believing in God isn’t sophisticated. Many take pride in being atheists because atheists are a minority. But when you become a Christian, at least in America, you’re joining the majority. You lose your position as part of the intellectual elite—the skeptics, the freethinkers, the atheists who aren’t buying into the religion of the common man. Christianity is the religion of the common man in America. There’s a certain amount of intellectual humility required to submit yourself to God, to Christianity. You have to conquer that intellectual pride before you’re willing to love God and sincerely seek Him.
Letting Go of Atheist Identity
Many atheists also have an emotional attachment to their identity as atheists. To submit yourself to God’s will, to love God sincerely, to want to believe in Him, you have to give up that pride in being the atheist who has all the answers. Atheists often say Christians are deluded, believing fairy tales, nonsense, and miracles. You have to give up that pride in your intellectual elitism to submit yourself to the mystery of God, the mystery of reality—to say, “I don’t understand everything.” That requires humility.
Emotional Readiness and Divine Hiddenness
In combination with that need for intellectual humility, the need to acknowledge the reality of sin, the need to turn away from your sins, and the need to be emotionally vulnerable—I think many atheists aren’t in that sincere mental and emotional humble state necessary for conversion. In that sense, it doesn’t satisfy the criteria of the Divine hiddenness problem, where they say, “I’m genuinely seeking God, and yet God isn’t making Himself available to me.” That’s not true. God is always calling us. He’s always searching for us. He’s always looking for lost sinners. The Father is always looking for the Prodigal Son to come back. But we have to be in the right place emotionally and intellectually—in terms of our will, our freedom, our choices. You have to make a choice to humble yourself, a choice to repent, a choice to love. If God overwhelmingly imposed Himself on us, I don’t think many atheists would even be willing to repent. You still have that freedom of choice. God can never take that away.
Pride Even in the Face of Evidence
Even Christopher Hitchens once said that if God existed, he still wouldn’t want to bend the knee because he thought the idea of groveling before God was beneath him. He had that intellectual pride—that pride in his humanity, in being part of the intellectual elite, a glorification of humanity above that of God. Overcoming that pride in humanity is key in my experience.
Why Divine Hiddenness Isn’t a Refutation
Hopefully, this answers why I think the argument from Divine hiddenness isn’t a refutation of God’s existence. Atheists would have a hard time establishing that they’ve really met the criteria—emotionally and intellectually—in terms of humility and willingness to repent when it comes to showing they are truly sincere in their desire for God. When you repent, you’re going to have to change your life. You’re going to have to genuinely give up your bad habits, your sinful ways of the world. Many atheists aren’t ready to do that because they’re so tied to the truth and validity of the secular ethical system. To turn to God, to Christianity, would require a genuine change in their lifestyle, their attitude toward life and morality—particularly issues of sexual ethics. They’d have to give up sinful sexual activities. That’s hard for people to come to grips with. It requires genuine repentance, genuine freedom, a genuine choice to turn away from that secular lifestyle and adopt an ethical framework understood from the perspective of Christian ethics, which sets a higher standard than the secular world does.