The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

144 The Hiddenness of God
If this was the best God could do in twelfth-century England, it would
seem that he just wasn’t trying! (And, obviously, he hasn’t done any
better since.)
My second observation is that some might find this argument more
persuasive if ‘rational belief’ were substituted for ‘belief’ in it. If this
substitution is made, the first two premises of the argument read:
If God exists, he wants all finite rational beings to believe rationally in
his existence.
If every finite rational being observed signs and wonders of the right
sort, every finite rational being would believe in God rationally.
I am not sure which version of the argument is the more persuasive, but
I mean my remarks to apply equally to either.
Now how should the theist respond to this argument? I propose that
the theist’s response be strictly parallel to Theist’s response to the global
argument from evil. That is, that the theist should attempt to tell a story
that has the following logical consequences:
The world was created and is sustained by a necessary, omnipresent,
omniscient, omnipotent, morally perfect being—that is, by God. There
are rational beings in this world, and God wants these beings, or some
of them at some times, to believe in his existence. The world is devoid
of signs and wonders—of ‘‘special effects’’. Or if the world contains any
such events, they are so rare that very few people have actually observed
one or even encountered anyone who claims to have observed one. (In
the latter case, among those people whom God wants to believe in his
existence are many of the people who are distant in space and time from
any of the very rare signs and wonders.)
And I propose that the doxastic argument should be judged a failure just
in the case that the theist is able to tell a story with these consequences
such that an audience of ideal agnostics (who have been presented
with the doxastic argument and have been trying to decide whether
it is convincing) will respond to it by saying, ‘‘Given that God exists,
the rest of that story may well be true. I don’t see any reason to rule
it out.’’ And, of course, we require that this reaction be achieved in
the presence of an ideal atheist who does everything possible to block
this reaction, everything possible to defend the truth of the premises
of the argument against the doubts raised by the theist’s story. We
may as well call such a story what we called stories that played an
analogous role in relation to the argument from evil: we may as well