Classical Theism vs. Neo-Theism I: Divine Simplicity

In contemporary debates about the existence of God it is common to hear reference to 'the traditional divine attributes.' These include properties like omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, immateriality, eternality, and personality. It is supposed that if God exists he 'exemplifies all of these great-making properties'. This is the 'orthodox' conception of God in contemporary philosophy of religion and philosophical theology as heard from Craig, Plantinga, Swinburne, and most others.

Unfortunately, right from the get-go, there is a perfectly good sense in which this conception of God is unorthodox. According to the Fourth Lateran and First Vatican Councils of the Catholic Church, the doctrine that God is a perfectly simple being--one without any composition--is defined as infallible, binding dogma, denial of which amounts to heresy. Hence, the doctrine has some degree of pedigree in that it has been held by billions of Christians to be a very important doctrine. But even aside from this I would argue that the contemporary view--what I will call 'neo-theism'--is directly contrary to the truly 'classical theistic' view of God's nature. Classical theism has been the majority opinion for thousands of years. It is the view of the great pagan philosophers like Aristotle and Plotinus, the Christian Saints Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and Bl. Duns Scotus, as well as other monotheistic thinkers like Maimonides, Averroes, and Avicenna. Such classical theists would deny that God is 'personal' or 'perfectly good' or 'eternal' in the sense that neo-theists take God to be. Distinctively classical theistic doctrines which are unpopular among the neo-theists of today include divine immutability, timelessness, and simplicity. I will focus on this last doctrine as an example of a fundamental difference between the two views, and argue that the classical theist view maintains God's perfection in a way which the neo-theist view does not.

The way that God's attributes are defined in contemporary philosophy of religion as above implicitly contradicts divine simplicity from the start. According to the contemporary view, when we predicate perfect moral goodness of God as in the sentence 'God is good', the referent of the term 'God's goodness' is the property of goodness. Likewise, if we say 'God is omniscient', the referent of the term 'God's omniscience' is the property of omniscience, and similarly for omnipotence, immateriality, and so on. However divine simplicity says that the referents of all intrinsic predications about God are identical, for to say otherwise would be to introduce metaphysical complexity into God. Hence, it is common to hear classical theists saying that God's goodness IS his omniscience, which IS his omnipotence, and so on. But it would seem to follow that omnipotence and goodness are the same property, which is clearly false; indeed, it would follow that God is himself a property!

Obviously the classical theist doesn't want to commit himself to such seemingly absurd claims, and it would be stupid to suppose 2,000 years of great thinkers were simply willing to accept a manifest falsehood. The more reasonable inference is that contemporary and classical thinkers are working with very different metaphysical presuppositions, and this is correct.

One neo-theist assumption is the Platonist, relational ontology within which Plantinga phrases the objection presented above. For Plantinga and other contemporary detractors reality consists of concrete individuals, platonic properties, and relations of exemplification. The platonic properties are abstract objects, which means they lack efficient causal power, while the causally efficacious concrete individuals exemplify these properties. Clearly God is an individual, since as creator of the universe he possesses causal power, in which case it follows he could not be an abstract object; hence he could not be identical to any of his properties, and thus divine simplicity is false. But certainly none of the classical presenters of simplicity accepted this ontological framework. Rather, following Aristotle, they would take a thing's features to be ontological constituents of a subject. This is the picture found in Aristotle's Categories for instance, where accidents such as color or size are said to be 'present in' a subject. Among contemporary philosophers D.M. Armstrong's theory of universals seems to be an example of a constituent ontology as well. Within such a framework it's not obviously incoherent to suppose that God is identical with his constituents so long as we can admit the idea of an improper constituent (analogous to an improper part or improper subset), since it doesn't follow from the very meaning of the term 'ontological constituent' that the constituent in question is a property; 'ontological constituent' is a category-neutral term, and doesn't necessarily imply Plantinga's relational ontology.

More generally though we can make sense of divine simplicity in terms of truthmakers. The neo-theist assumes that the referents of abstract singular terms like 'Alfredo's audacity', or in our case 'God's goodness', are platonic properties. This is what makes it impossible for God's to be identical with his goodness, for this to be identical to his omniscience, and so on. However, those who embrace divine simplicity can deny this account of predication. Rather, a classical theist will accept a truthmaker account, which says that if an intrinsic predication of the form 'a is F' is true, then a’s F-ness exists, where this entity is to be understood as the truthmaker for 'a is F.' So divine simplicity says God is identical with the truthmakers for each of his intrinsic predications. This makes sense because a truthmaker is an entity in the world in virtue of which a proposition is true. Clearly by this understanding truthmakers need not be properties (they can sometimes be). They can also be substances, as is the case with God--to deny this would at least have to be argued for and such a denial is on the face of it implausible. Hence, it is perfectly coherent to say God is his omniscience, which is his omnipotence, and so on. All this is saying is that God is identical to that in virtue of which he is omnipotent, that he is identical to that in virtue of which he is omniscient, and so on; and moreover, by the transitivity of identity, these things are each identical to each other. This picture shows that divine simplicity is not obviously contradictory and deserves much more than the charges of 'unintelligibility' and 'incoherence' ignorantly thrown at it today.

With these charges of absurdity put to one side we can see that divine simplicity is at least prima facie coherent. Certainly we will need to be given better arguments than Plantinga's cavalier dismissal of 2000 years of philosophy based on the presupposition of his own anachronistic ontology. But to argue something is logically coherent isn't to argue that it's true. In another post I will provide an argument to the effect that only a  simple God can truly be said to exist of himself and thus be perfect.

Naturalness in the World

I'm currently taking a course on a newly concocted discipline in analytic philosophy called metametaphysics. For Aristotle or Aquinas the topics grouped under this heading would probably just fall under the science of metaphysics. We are primarily reading from the recent Chalmers volume and Ted Sider's new book Writing the Book of the World. In the latter book quite a bit turns on a distinction which Sider calls variously 'naturalness', 'fundamentality', 'structure', and 'carving at the joints'. My professors claim to not understand what Sider is talking about. Admittedly, Sider could be quite a bit more clear. However, I think that an Aristotelian would want to agree at least in some respects with his general point insofar as we'd admit some boundaries in reality to be privileged over others.

Consider an example Sider gives which is represented in the figure above (I'll paraphrase these examples a little bit). Suppose there is a world filled with red and blue liquid. There are many true ways that we can divide this world up when we describe it. We can divide it into those parts satisfying the normal understanding of our predicates 'red' and 'blue' as in the first figure. We could also divide it into those parts satisfying different predicates, call them 'bled' and 'rue', which correspond respectively to the portions left and right of the diagonal in the second figure. Both of these ways of describing the world are true. There are indeed bled and rue portions of the world just as much as there are red and blue ones; or, to put it another way, there are divisions of the world along the lines of both the first and the second figure. Yet the first way of speaking seems in some way to be natural while the second seems bizarre. Sider wants to assert that the first way of dividing up the world, i.e. dividing it up along the lines of our 'red' and 'blue' predicates, is better because it describes those features of reality which are in some way privileged; to put it in his terms, it describes those features which are natural/ fundamental/carve at the joints/are part of the structure of reality.

It seems like Sider gets a lot of his account from David Lewis's work. It is at least similar to the natural vs. non-natural distinction Lewis makes in his paper "New Work for a Theory of Universals." Consider two properties: being green and being grue, where grue is defined here as the property of being green and observed before 3000 A.D. or blue and not examined before 3000 A.D. This property which we have called grue appears "gerrymandered" in a way the property green is not. In Lewis's term grue is a "less natural" property than green is. Sider agrees on this point with Lewis. It should be noted that what makes grue a less natural property is not the syntactic complexity of its definition--after all, we can just give it a simple name like grue--but rather that it is in some way privileged over these other properties as being a more fundamental feature of reality. (Lewis may actually disagree here but I think his view is highly implausible and Sider does not seem to endorse it.)

Take a final example. Consider two classes of things: the electrons, and the electron-or-cows (EoC's), the latter class consisting of everything which has the property of being an electron or a cow. The things in the first group seem to go together quite well in a way which the objects in the latter group do not. The electrons do not go together better simply because they share many properties. For one, the EoC's share many properties. In fact, the EoC's share infinitely many properties: they each have the property of being an EoC or four feet long, the property of being an EoC or five feet long, the property of being an EoC or six feet long...and so on.  So it's not simply the number of properties shared which distinguishes the two. It's the fact that a grouping of things into electrons and cows gets the way reality fundamentally is, whereas a grouping of things into electron-or-cows does not.

So these are just a few examples where we can contrast fundamental/natural features of reality in opposition to gerrymandered or non-natural ones. It is necessary to use such illustrations since fundamentality is taken to be a primitive distinction which is likely not definable in more basic terms. There are a lot of questions that can be asked here: is fundamentality/naturalness/carving at the joints/structure of reality/etc. itself fundamental? Is fundamentality supposed to be a property? Is fundamentality a feature of our thoughts and concepts, of entities, or both? What is fundamental? How can we know? Is the same notion at work in each case? These are all good questions, some of which are discussed in the book.

However my primary concern is this: Is Sider really getting at some objective distinction or not? What I mean by 'objective' is whether his distinction between the fundamental/non-fundamental really corresponds to something in the external world. Personally I think he is onto something and makes an interesting case regardless as to the connections with Aristotelianism. However, I think an Aristotelian would want to admit the distinction even if he might disagree about what the fundamental things are. I will try to explain why in later posts.

If anyone is reading, I'd especially like to hear your thoughts on (1) whether you think Sider's distinction makes any sense and (2) whether the examples illustrate the point.

Aristotelian-Thomism vs. Quineanism on Ontological Commitment

I recently got the Chalmers volume dealing with the foundations of ontology. I've been interested in this question for the last few months, and here are some of my thoughts on the matter.

Most philosophers these days accept the Quinean view that one is committed to whatever one quantifies over. If I say there are colors, i.e. (Ex)(x is a color),  and I think my saying is true, then I am committed to the existence of colors, end of story. Most contemporary debates as in the Chalmers volume are between those who hold to this Quinean view and a few people who want to revive some of the distinctions of Carnap.

From an Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective, the dominant Quinean view is incorrect for a few reasons. First of all it is wrong to say that metaphysics is just about finding what there is or listing an ontology. As this volume shows, many if not most philosophers these days accept this definition. Rather, ontology is just one part of metaphysics, the ultimate purpose of metaphysics being, in the spirit of Aristotle, the study of being qua being, i.e. the study of the fundamental nature of reality. This involves not only ontology, but also finding the essences of things and finding the various relations of ontological dependence these things stand in to each other.

Also, I think there is some confusion in the modern Quinean conception of existence, where being quantified over is taken to be being simpliciter (in Thomistic terms). On the contrary, there is being simpliciter, then the various diminished senses of being (being secundum quid, in Thomistic terms), as for example the being privations have or being in potentiality. Many of the things we quantify over might have being in one of these imperfect and diminished senses, but just because we quantify over them doesn't mean we have to conclude they have being simpliciter. This makes ontological questions quite trivial. For instance, of course there are numbers and numbers have being; one need only observe the fact that 2 is a number. The real question is finding out whether they have being simpliciter or being secundum quid, what categories of being they fall under, and in what relations of ontological dependence do they stand? Interestingly, in this volume, Kit Fine and Jonathan Schaffer seem to come to similar conclusions, though I don't think Fine is rigorous enough to be convincing to other philosophers already steeped in Quineanism. I'd like to write a paper on this at some point so as to make the Aristotelian position a bit more clear than Fine does.

Liberalism, Neutrality, and Christianity

Until now the Analytic Scholastic has had little to say which is politically incorrect. Here's my post originally posted at The Rational Gang. Please direct any comments there:

Modern left-liberalism is not neutral toward competing visions of the good life or to competing religions. It takes a decided stance against the notion that Christ is King (Rev. 1:5).  First, consider if Christianity is actually true. In that case, many claims about what are due to God in terms of worship are true; many claims about the future of the world are true; many claims about the roles of husband and wife, claims about the nature of marriage, claims about what is essentially good for humanity are all true. All these claims are embodied in a revelation and religious tradition. This is a comprehensive world view. Liberalism holds that such religious claims cannot serve as the basis for any law which would use the state for enforcement.

What of this understanding that no religious claim can be the basis for law? To put the question in perspective, consider the following scenario. Suppose, per impossibile, that a time-traveler comes to us from an alternate universe 1,000 years from now where, rather than taking action to preserve the wolf population in Yellowstone National Park,  we instead allow it to be decimated. The bison population, no longer controlled by hungry wolves, expands at incredible rates. The bison quickly turn rabid unleashing heretofore unknown powers against the human population in retaliation for past injustices. Suppose, moreover, that we have some reason to believe our temporal voyager’s claims–e.g. as proof he has a laser gun which is impossible to replicate with current technology–and we can rule out ulterior motives. Most of the citizens see this taking place before their very eyes. Clearly the state ought to heed his warnings and preserve the wolves despite the unhappy consequences for those who like hunting and for the way of life of certain agrarians. Yet this is a very odd situation. It is not, however, ruled out in principle. So evidence coming from very odd situations doesn’t rule it out as evidence for a course of legislation.

But what happens if it is God who reveals the same thing in a similarly obvious way? The fact that it is God telling us to conserve the wolves shouldn’t rule out the legality of our doing so. If anything we should be even more prepared to take God’s advice! So that means evidence coming from religious situations doesn’t rule it out as evidence for a course of legislation either.

So what about when God decides to reveal to the world through his divine son that unless we repent of our sins and accept his grace we shall all surely perish? What happens when this is supported by miracles and rational arguments? In short, what happens when Christianity is by all indications true? Clearly we should give at least some kind of acknowledgment as a people, and some sort of preference, to this world view. The liberal seems to want to be able to rule this out a priori. But why should he be able to? If he accepts that we can base legislation on the first example, and accepts that we can base legislation on the second example, then the inherently religious nature of the consequences in this case doesn’t make our evidence any less a basis for legislation.

The liberal, in true egalitarian spirit, might object that we should treat all religions as equal. But why should we? If two propositions have differing degrees of evidence then the one with more evidence should be given preference. The liberal makes an ad hoc restriction when saying the same doesn’t apply to propositions with religious content–unless, of course, he assumes that the strength of evidence for all religions is in fact equal. At this point, however, the liberal has given up neutrality and has begun to make a comprehensive statement about religious claims, viz. that we have no rational basis for preferring one religion over another.
Another objection might be that in my first example we have good evidence which is publicly available to all citizens, whereas in the latter we do not. This is meant to justify the exclusion of religious propositions for legislation and government recognition by saying that we do not have good evidence for them. But read that one more time: “We do not have good evidence for them!” Good evidence is sound evidence. So if we do not have good evidence for religious claims, then we have no sound evidence for religious claims, or at least likely no sound evidence. Notice, however, that the liberal has brought himself to the point of assessing the claims themselves. At this point we’ve left the high seat of neutrality and entered the arena of truth.

The liberal might retort that I am straw-manning his position. By “good evidence” he means something more like “evidence convincing to all citizens.” But this is ambiguous. It could mean either evidence which should convince all citizens or evidence which actually does convince all citizens. If the former then, once again, he must mean evidence which is rational and defensible, at which point he’s come back to assessing the rationality and defensibility of religious claims. If the latter, then he has picked a poor platform for pushing his liberal policies. Such policies as the managerial welfare state, affirmative action, higher taxes, strict separation of church and state, euthanasia, and all the rest are in no wise actually convincing to all citizens. In fact, the liberal system as a whole is not actually convincing to all citizens. Precious little gets done in the liberal state which takes as its maxim that only those policies whose justification actually convince all citizens should be enacted.

Finally, the liberal may argue that the state should not use religious beliefs as bases for legislation because we could be wrong about them. However, the mere fact that we could be wrong about something is not a good reason to think we are wrong about it. We could be wrong about liberalism. I think liberals are in fact wrong about liberalism. But unless good evidence is given to show that something is wrong then it’s not ruled out in principle.

I think the liberal is fundamentally right about a few things. He’s right that if all religions have equal evidence then no single one should be given preference. He’s right to think that if a claim doesn’t have good evidence in favor of it then it ought not serve as a basis for legislation.  When applying these principles he says that religions have equal evidence–likely not very much evidence at all! Or he might say that the evidence is not convincing for any of them. These both require either a certain understanding of the very nature of religious propositions or an assessment of the evidence itself. It’s not for no reason that they are typically accompanied by agnosticism, atheism, or more relativistic flavored views; it’s because these are tied to such fundamentally comprehensive philosophical and religious claims.

What’s the upshot of this? Well, it’s not that either liberalism or Christianity is in fact true. Neither is it the claim that we should base all or even most legislation on religion. It’s simply that liberalism can only claim that such legislation can be ruled out if it makes certain philosophical and religious assumptions which are just as contentious as the religious beliefs themselves. If Christianity is true, and it has evidence in its favor, then there is no in-principle reason why its adherents can't appeal to such evidence for some legislation. The liberal must justify his comprehensive theses and go toe-to-toe with the religious adherent via the same process of rational discernment, rather than presuppose it on the basis of an illusory neutrality.

Dirty Herry

Since I don't have much time these days for much of anything, rather than write a blog post I've decided to post a little paper I wrote on Heraclitus. My ancient philosophy professor liked it so it must not be too bad. I'm certainly no expert on the pre-socratics and I'm just going on some of Herry's fragments. However, I don't think this interpretation is too far off the mark:

On the face of it, Heraclitus seems to be saying that opposites are one and the same. This is a flat absurdity. However, Heraclitus is one of the first great thinkers, and when it comes to great thinkers we should assume they are making a more profound point than at first sight. I think what he is really trying to say is that it is a curious fact about the universe that the things in it are constituted by having seemingly opposite properties, though not at the same time and in the same respect. For example, water wouldn’t be water unless it was life for some (fish), deadly for others (humans). The most interesting example is the river; a river is a river only if its parts are different over time. Not only does a river retain identity through not having the same parts, its identity depends on not having the same parts at every moment.

Now, if one of the quotes from Aristotle (B8) is genuine, it seems that Heraclitus is making a more general point about the world as a whole. After all, he says, “Everything occurs in accordance with strife,” strife being the seeming tension between opposites. But if strife is a general principle of the universe, how can this be consistent with his claims about the logos? The logos, according to Heraclitus, is a unifying principle of the universe. He says himself in (22B1) that all things come to be in accordance with the logos. So then how can both strife and unity be fundamental principles? I think there are two ways to interpret this, both of which are interesting.

One is the more paradoxical route. If the fundamental principles are strife and unity, then the fundamental principles themselves are in accordance with this law. After all, they unify everything because literally everything is in accordance with them. However, they are also in tension with each other; hence, both strife and unity. While on the one hand this is an interesting thought, on the other it sounds a bit like profound nonsense.

I think there is another, more coherent interpretation of Heraclitus to resolve this tension, and that is to say that the most fundamental principle is really this unifying logos. In fact, although it can’t be proved from the texts, Heraclitus could have made the following argument: (1) Opposites by their very nature do not come together to form coherent wholes. (2) However, the universe is made up of coherent wholes which are constituted by opposites. (3) Therefore, there must be some underlying reason, or logos, which explains the fact that the universe is made up of coherent wholes which are constituted by opposites. If we put this argument into a more rigorous form it would be clearly valid. For its time, I think it would’ve been a good argument, and I would even argue that some form of this argument holds true.

Adam, Eve, Darwin, and Aristotle

There has been a lot of brouhaha lately over an article by John Farrell regarding the doctrine of original sin as understood by Catholics (and I suspect most conservative non-Catholic denominations) and its compatibility with modern theories of the origin of humans. Edward Feser has posted a response which documents the fracas and describes a very good Aristotelian answer to the whole ordeal. I'd suggest it as prerequisite reading for my own post here, as he lays out more fully the metaphysical presuppositions I'm working with.

In the combox of Feser's post, a commenter lays out the following dilemma. Granted what Farrell says about genetics, either
(1) Adam and Eve both mated with non-humans, and all of the organisms we now consider humans are descended from either Adam or Eve
or
(2) Some of the organisms who we now consider human are not in fact metaphysically human. They are merely biologically human.

I think the first option would be the way to go, though I wonder if the existence of certain of Dr. Feser's detractors provides evidence for the second suggestion. ;-) In seriousness though, it seems hard to accept the idea that some people are not metaphysically human. Agere sequitur esse--"action follows being"--and the fact is that, in the absence of any physical deformation, everyone we know of acts like a normal human being, or at least the vast majority of people do. There's not a significant part of the population which is truly brutish. Moreover, we might use the idea that Adam and Eve's descendents mated with non-humans to explain some supposed discrepancies in the Bible. For instance, in Genesis 4:17 Cain has children by his wife. But if Cain and Abel are the only listed descendents of Adam and Eve, where did the woman come from? Well, maybe from some of the hominids who had not been given rational souls. Since it is most consistent with everyday facts as well as theology, the first claim seems the more reasonable view.

However, the commenter brings up the interesting problem that this hypothesis could some day be falsified by genetics. First, we might simply bite this bullet, though as a matter of fact I'm not sure if it's entirely correct to say that we can test this genetically. (I honestly don't know, though I vaguely recall from a biology course this not being how modern genetics works.) But second, there's an interesting point I'd like to make which should make this a little less unappealing. I would say that our first parents could have been even earlier hominids and that this possibility should make our theory nice and unassailable again:

Consider Dr. Feser's conclusions. He shows that even if there were 10,000 members of the biological species homo sapiens, this wouldn't prove that they were all metaphysically human. But we can look at this another way as well:

For all we know, God infused the rational soul into an earlier biological species. Of course, it's open to analysis of the anatomy of earlier species whether it would have been possible to infuse a rational soul into them, since as Feser points out a certain amount of physical development is a necessary condition for having a rational soul. However, I'd suggest that the amount of physical development necessary may be less than one might suspect. Here's why: I think that for every biological species there is some particular form characteristic to that species; after all, the form is the principle of life for any living thing, and the natural ends of a given form determine how a particular organism will develop. Since homo sapiens members develop differently from, say, homo erectus members, it follows that in some sense they have different natural ends (at least with regards to physical development) and we should conclude that they have different forms. This isn't very controversial really. To quote Feser:

"In fact, some A-T philosophers would hold that the specific genetic and phenotypic traits typical of homo sapiens sapiens are not even essential to human beings considered as a metaphysical category: Anything that was both animal and rational would arguably be “human” in the relevant sense, even if it had a body plan radically different from ours. "


But what this means is that having the particular form that we have is not necessary for being a human being metaphysically speaking. The only things necessary and sufficient for being a human person is to be both rational and an animal.

This is an important point. Since having a homo sapiens form isn't strictly necessary for being a human being, this means that the amount of physical development necessary for exercising rational faculties will be different for each form. So having a smaller brain would be an impairment for a member of homo sapiens, since this is a defect relative to the homo sapiens form. But having a smaller brain may not be an impairment for a member of homo erectus. In fact, a brain the size of a very dysfunctional homo sapiens may very well be the brain size of a flourishing homo erectus. I think that this, in conjunction with the fact that the operations of a rational animal's intellect are primarily immaterial and suited by God particularly for that species' form, shows that there could have been fully functioning, rational animals in earlier hominid species. And we could have very well descended from a pair of these.

As an example to make my point clear, consider elephants (dolphins may be a similar case). These animals exhibit some of the most intelligent behavior in the entire animal kingdom. They'd seem to be ideal candidates in case God felt like endowing another species with intellect and will. Now, although elephants have much larger brains than we do (they weigh 11 lbs.!), God could endow them with an intellect which exercised the exact same functions we do, and metaphysically speaking we would all be on the same plane; we'd all be humans--homo sapiens, elephants, and all. In the same way, although we have larger brains, God could have endowed earlier hominid species with intellects particularly suited to their physical form which could have carried on rational functions just like ours do. Since they would have been both rational and animals, they would have counted as humans.

This is in many ways speculation. But in any case, I think the point still stands that we should be able to apply Feser's reasoning backwards. God could have infused rational souls into even earlier hominid species, and all human beings on this God's green earth could have descended from a pair of these hominids who were first endowed with that rational part of human nature. This line of reasoning might help to throw our theology back into the comfortable realm of unfalsifiability and consistency with modern genetics.

Remarks on "Divine Hiddenness"

[Originally posted at the Rational Gang. Please direct any comments there.]

A lot of atheists say that if God were to perform a miracle in front of their eyes, then they would believe. So then, if God is all good, and "wills all men to be saved," then why doesn't he provide such obvious evidence for his existence? Since an all-loving God is expected to reveal himself to all, and there are atheists that have reasonable nonbelief, this is evidence that God does not exist.

1. Coercion and Moral Responsibility:
A first thing to note is that God wants to preserve our moral responsibility and freedom. Now, almost all accept that it is possible to coerce someone into doing something. This can be done, most obviously, by physical force, as when kidnappers pick up a hostage and put him into a van against his will. Clearly in this context the person is not responsible for this event. Another, more interesting case, is where a mother is forced by a cruel killer to choose between her two sons being shot, or else they will both be tortured to death. The mother is not morally responsible, or at least very responsible, if she ultimately chooses one child in order to save at least one; the ultimate responsibility goes to the wicked sadist who is forcing the "choice" upon her. The point here though is that the mother is not literally coerced by force; rather, she is coerced by reasons. She knows that if she doesn't pick one, they will both be lost. In cases of coercion, one loses moral responsibility for one's actions.

But then it's straightforward applying this to the case of God. God wants us to have the freedom to choose him. He doesn't want to coerce us and ultimately remove our responsibility. But if one can be coerced by reasons, and incontrovertible proof would coerce some people into belief, then it's easy to see why God would not provide incontrovertible proof to absolutely everyone in order that they might all have absolute certainty: It removes responsibility on our part.

2. Divine Obviousness:
A reply inspired by the Thomistic tradition is to say that, as a matter of fact, God isn't hidden at all. Rather, God, as the ultimate source of all being, completely and totally permeates throughout nature. This is how God is omni-present, not in the sense that the universe is God (a la pantheism), but rather that the very existence of things is just one step away from God himself. However, being creatures of habit, and being familiar with the world, we take the awful mystery of existence for granted, and fail to see the divinity which sustains it all. But this is no failure on God's part. It's a failure of us to appreciate God's creation.

3. They're Wrong:
While atheists say they know that if God were to provide them a clear sign such as a miracle then they would convert, that might, for all we (or they) know, not be the case. In fact, this is what we find from the Christian perspective in John 11, where the Pharisees, even upon hearing and accepting that Christ performed miracles, refused to acknowledge him: "So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council, and said, 'What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on thus, every one will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.'" So for these people, even the greatest of miracles would not convince them. How would this apply in the case of others?

According to one theory of the relationship between God's foreknowledge and our freedom, Molinism, God knows infallibly what we would freely do in any given circumstance. Supposing this view is coherent, we can apply it in the case of atheists: God does not give incontrovertible evidence to people who he knows that, in any circumstance where they are given incontrovertible evidence, would not convert. This means that atheists cannot say, "Well, if only God had given me more evidence, then I would have converted." Not necessarily.

If this is too strong, we can even weaken the principle: God does not give reasonable evidence to people who he knows that, in any circumstance where they are given reasonable evidence, would not convert. This seems more plausible anyway. For one, it doesn't seem necessary for God to give everyone incontrovertible evidence. If we are given reasonable evidence and fail to see it, then that is our fault. Moreover, this widens the group of people we are dealing with because, though some may accept God given incontrovertible evidence, fewer will accept God given only reasonable and sufficient evidence, which may explain a large number of unbelievers.

What this ultimately shows is that, even if some atheists are not actually given incontrovertible, or even reasonable, evidence, this doesn't make it the case that God is doing something evil, the reason being that they would not accept the evidence in other feasible circumstances anyhow. It would be for God to cast pearls to swine.

4. Rationality and Reasonableness:
This leads to a further question: are atheists, in fact, given reasonable evidence? Their whole argument may be begging the question here. After all, theists believe that there is reasonable evidence for the existence of God. But then if God has provided everyone with reasonable evidence, the argument fails, because this is precisely what is in question, i.e. whether belief in God is reasonable.

The atheist finds himself in a bit of a pickle. In proposing that there is not enough evidence for Christian belief, he must give us a criterion of reasonable belief that is strong enough such that it supports the reasonableness of atheism, but is not so strong that it begs the question against the theist. To put it another way, there is a tension in the claim that "the reasonableness of atheism entails the unreasonableness of theism," because it is possible that, given the atheist's criterion of reasonableness, the theist can turn right around and say, "Well, it is reasonable to believe that God might not reveal himself to everyone with absolutely convincing evidence."

5. Five points.
To sum up, I think there are five reasons we can give as to why God's existence is not incompatible with "divine hiddenness."
(a) Reasons can coerce. So if one were given incontrovertible reasons to believe in God, then one would be coerced into belief in God. But since coercion is incompatible with significant moral responsibility, and God wants to leave us morally responsible, God does not want to coerce us. Therefore, God does not give incontrovertible evidence.
(b) God is not in fact hidden; rather, God is obvious. However, humans fail to recognize the mystery of their own existence and the creation before them, and fail to see the divine in nature.
(c) For all we know, God does not give those who have a reasonable non-belief in God incontrovertible evidence, because he knows that in all circumstances, they will not believe in God.
(e) For all we know, God does not give those who have a reasonable non-belief in God reasonable evidence, because he knows that in all reasonable circumstances, they will not believe in God.
(e) The atheist begs the question against the theist in two ways: first, by saying that his nonbelief in God is reasonable, since the theist believes there are reasonable grounds for belief, and second, by saying that his reasonable nonbelief implies God's nonexistence, since the the theist can say that, by the atheist's own criteria, it is reasonable to believe that God has reasons to stay hidden.

All in all, this provides a strong cumulative case for believing that the argument from divine hiddenness doesn't work, and that theism is left unharmed.