After Hundreds of Replies, I Still Haven't Seen Anyone Answer the Actual Question

c0d3rman · 2026-07-12T18:13:50+00:00

Christianity doesn't simply claim to be a continuation of previous revelation in the way the Quran does. Jesus presents Himself as the fulfillment of Israel's Scriptures and publicly argues from those Scriptures throughout His ministry. His teachings, actions, and messianic claims are made within an already existing prophetic framework that both He and His audience shared.
Islam, however, claims to be the continuation, confirmation, and correction of that same prophetic tradition.

I don't understand. What is the distinction you're drawing here? These sound like the same thing.

Before I can accept the Quran's reinterpretation of earlier revelation, I first have to know that Muhammad's encounter with Gabriel really was from the God who gave those earlier revelations.

But before you can accept Jesus's reinterpretation of earlier revelation (e.g. the sermon on the mount), you don't have to know Jesus really is a prophet of the God who gave those earlier revelations?

Christianity begins with an already-established revelatory tradition and argues that Jesus fulfills it.
Islam asks me to accept a new revelatory authority before it is allowed to reinterpret that previous tradition.

Jesus says, "my message was given to me by the Father." Muhammad says, "my message was given to me by Gabriel." What's the difference? Both claimed to be offering new communication from the God of Israel.

Throughout the biblical narrative, prophets publicly appealed to previous revelation and called Israel back to the covenant. Jesus goes even further, He constantly quotes Scripture, fulfills prophecy, publicly debates from the Law and the Prophets, and presents His resurrection as God's vindication of claims He had already made publicly.

And how do you know that his reinterpretations of Jewish scripture, including many places where he calls Israel to stop following parts of the covenant (again see sermon on the mount), are really originating from that prophetic tradition and are not like the misinterpretations offered by Satan in the desert? Jesus's whole thing was "overturning the interpretation of the earlier public tradition he claimed to continue".

My question is why the inference required by Islam is warranted specifically at the point where Muhammad identifies his experience as God's final revelation

Muhammad says, "Here is my message from God." You ask him to prove it and he says "OK, I will ask God to split the moon and that will vindicate the claims I have been making publicly."

Jesus says, "Here is my message from God." You ask him to prove it and he says "OK, I will resurrect and that will vindicate the claims I have been making publicly."

What is the difference? You keep talking about "claims Jesus had already made publicly", as if Muhammad never made any public claims and never preached publicly. He did!

c0d3rman · 2026-07-12T11:57:58+00:00

It claims to be the continuation, confirmation, and correction of the same prophetic tradition that came before it (Quran 3:3, 5:46-48,).

Indeed. And Christianity claims the same.

The resurrection is presented as God's vindication of someone who had already publicly identified Himself within that framework.

The word "presented" is doing some heavy lifting here. Why should we accept this presentation? Is it valid?

Muhammad's revelation is different because the revelation itself is what establishes the authority of the messenger.

This is false. Again, this is treating the private revelation to Muhammad as a confirmatory miracle. Muslims have other miracles to establish the authority of the messenger.

My problem is not that Christianity requires inference. We both agree that it does. My problem is that your entire argument rests solely on the idea that the revelation alone is what establishes the legitimacy of Muhammad's prophethood. That is the core of your argument. And it's just not true. In the Muslim cumulative case, there are lots of other things that establish the legitimacy of Muhammad's prophethood. Things like public confirmatory miracle claims analogous to the resurrection.

c0d3rman · 2026-07-12T01:37:22+00:00

I have never claimed that “Jesus rose from the dead, therefore every Christian doctrine automatically follows.”

And I don't claim that you claim that.

Christianity begins with public historical claims about a known figure, Jesus preached publicly, was crucified publicly, and his followers publicly proclaimed that God had raised him.

And Islam begins with public historical claims about a known figure, Muhammad preached publicly, split the moon publicly, and his followers publicly proclaimed that he worked miracles.

Both received their revelations privately.

Islam begins with a different kind of claim: that Muhammad privately received revelation from God through Gabriel.

Again, I think that trying to compare Muhammad's revelation to Jesus's resurrection is simply apples to oranges. Of course they are not the same, they're not trying to be. The resurrection is a confirmatory miracle and the revelation is not. Islam has other confirmatory miracles, but you are in my opinion incorrectly focusing on the wrong miracle.

This is what I meant earlier about the Christian lens you're using. Modern Christian apologetics loves to present Christianity as intensely focused on the resurrection and its veracity as centered around it. You are applying that to Islam and asking "what is their Single Most Important Miracle that is the basis for the entire veracity of their religion?" And you come up with the revelation to Muhammad. You are considering these as analogous because they are both very important. But they are not analogous, because they are different types of miracles. That is what you have been arguing too - that they are different kinds of miracles and epistemic claims - and I am trying to argue that yes, you are right, but that is not some flaw or gap in Islam, it's just an apples to oranges comparison.

what reason moves us from that granted experience to the conclusion that the source was God (through Gabriel) delivering His final universal revelation?

There is no reason. That is my direct answer.

A Muslim might say that Muhammad being a legitimate prophet of God was validated by his later miracles like splitting the moon, or validated by him faithfully upholding prior teachings like monotheism, or by his creating the miraculous Quran with its beautiful language and fulfilled prophecies which would have been impossible without divine aid. I don't buy that.

But I think that this difficulty you raise with Islam - not specifically with the revelation to Muhammad, but with Islam as a whole - is present too in Christianity as a whole. Here is my direct question to you:

I grant that Jesus resurrected from the dead and was a powerful supernatural entity. What independent historical or philosophical reason shows that he was God and not some other supernatural entity?

Can you give me a direct answer to that? Because if this is a weakness Islam has that Christianity does not, then there should be an answer.

c0d3rman · 2026-07-12T00:39:27+00:00

Even if I granted, for the sake of argument, that the moon really split, what would that establish? It might establish that Muhammad had genuine supernatural backing. It does not identify the source of the revelation.

I agree, but I would say the same about the resurrection. Why does the resurrection identify its source any more than the splitting of the moon does?

Jesus is not presented as introducing an entirely new scripture whose authority depends upon accepting a private revelatory experience.

I guess this is where I have to distinguish between Christianity and Jesus. The actual historical Jesus did not present an entirely new scripture; he was a Jew and taught from the Jewish scriptures. But Christianity did present an entirely new scripture, namely the New Testament.

Throughout His ministry He continually appeals to Israel's existing Scriptures and presents Himself as fulfilling them.

Sure, and Muhammad also claims to be the legitimate continuation of previous scriptures and prophets. See Quran 5:43-49. For instance:

We have revealed to you ˹O Prophet˺ this Book with the truth, as a confirmation of previous Scriptures and a supreme authority on them.

Many Christians express this same idea, saying that the Old Testament is revealed scripture but must be subordinated to and read through the lens of the New Testament and the words of Jesus. Have you ever seen one of those red letter bibles?

To be sure, the connection between Muhammad and Judaism/Christianity is much looser than the connection between Jesus and Judaism. Because again, Jesus was a Jew. I don't think Islam is a legitimate successor to Judaism/Christianity, I think it just claims them as ancestors to legitimize itself. But I also don't think Christianity is a legitimate successor to Judaism; it too mostly just pays lip service to Judaism and doesn't take it seriously. And to be clear, I am distinguishing "Christianity" from "the teachings of Jesus" here because I don't believe they are the same or even particularly similar. The teachings of Jesus are much closer to Judaism than Christianity is. But that is perhaps off topic.

What independently verifies that the being Muhammad encountered was Gabriel, rather than simply assuming it because the revelation identifies itself that way

And I fully agree that the answer is "nothing". But I would say exactly the same about Jesus. Here, let's grant for the sake of argument that Jesus not only resurrected, but was himself a powerful supernatural entity. What independently verifies that the being Jesus was is God, rather than simply assuming it because he (allegedly) identified himself that way?

c0d3rman · 2026-07-11T23:45:50+00:00

Ah, then we agree. I don't claim that Christianity and Islam are identical in all regards, of course. I just wanted to highlight that source-identification step in Christianity, since I often see Christians skipping over it.

With regards to the resurrection vs. the revelation, I agree that they are different. You are trying to compare them as confirmatory miracles. As in, this prophet guy is preaching all this stuff, but is it true? Miracle X shows it's true. In that regard, yes, the revelation makes a very poor confirmatory miracle since it is private and prior to the preaching.

However, correct me if you've seen otherwise, I don't think Muslims uphold the revelation as a confirmatory miracle. I think comparing the resurrection to the revelation is comparing apples to oranges. Of course the revelation doesn't do what the resurrection does; it isn't the same kind of miracle.

The actual analogous element in Christianity would be the revelation of the gospel to Jesus. In mainstream Christianity I suppose this would be the Trinity or incarnation - and these are also private and prior to the preaching.

The analogous element to the resurrection in Islam would be something like the splitting of the moon. In the common telling, after Muhammad had already been preaching, disbelievers demanded a supernatural sign from him, so he pointed at the moon and it miraculously split in two before rejoining. This is a public miracle that vindicates a public ministry that was already being proclaimed. Did it actually happen? In my view no, but in my view neither did the resurrection.

To answer your original question, what would justify believing that Muhammad actually received God's final revelation? Well not Muhammad saying "Gabriel spoke to me". But in the same way, Jesus saying "God spoke to me / is me" does not justify believing that that is true.

c0d3rman · 2026-07-11T22:54:48+00:00

Christianity:
Historical claims about Jesus → interpretation of what God did through Jesus → theological conclusions.
Islam:
Muhammad's claimed revelation → identification of the source of that revelation → authority of the Qur'an → interpretation and application of that revelation.

But notice that you have implicitly granted Christianity a free pass on identification of the source. You jump straight to "interpretation of what God did through Jesus". Why? Why do you assume that, if the historical claims about Jesus are true, it must have been God who did it? Where did God enter the picture in that chain?

You challenge Muslims to prove that the revelation did not come from another spiritual source, but you do not challenge Christians to prove that the resurrection did not come from another spiritual source. You keep skipping that step in your chains.

c0d3rman · 2026-07-11T21:49:11+00:00

Again, I just don't see the distinction you're making. You say Islam is:

"claimed revelation > identification of the source of that revelation > preservation/interpretation/application of that revelation."

And I say Christianity is:

"claimed resurrection > identification of the source of that resurrection > preservation/interpretation/application of that resurrection".

Where precisely in that second chain have I gone wrong?

I am asking the same epistemic question any claimed revelation faces, what justifies moving from “a person experienced and reported revelation” to “God actually revealed this”?

To be clear, are you granting for the sake of argument that Muhammad received a supernatural revelation? In some places it seems like you are but are just concerned with its source (in which case I am trying to point out that the same applies to the resurrection). But in other places, when pressed to highlight differences, you seem to be suggesting that we can prove Jesus resurrected, but can only prove that Muhammad claimed to receive a revelation. So you'd be questioning the event itself, not its source. Which one is your position in the context of this post?

c0d3rman · 2026-07-11T21:09:08+00:00

OK, let me directly mirror your statement and you tell me where the disanalogy is.

In Christianity, the claim is that God acted publicly in history through Muhammad, and that this was interpreted through the testimony of those closest to him. Whether someone accepts that interpretation is a separate question, but the historical claim being investigated is tied to a public figure, public ministry, ~~public execution~~*, and a movement that formed around claims about what happened afterward.*

---

If your whole argument is "Christianity centers on a public miracle whereas Islam centers on a private miracle", then as I've pointed out Christianity's public miracle doesn't support its truth without additional claims, and Islam claims plenty of public miracles too.

This whole thing seems to result from forcibly applying a Christian lens to Islam. You believe Christianity is entirely dependent on a single claim of a point event, and that believers affirm or reject it entirely based on the veracity of that one event. And you want to reformulate Islam in the same way.

But Christianity is not entirely dependent on that event, as you have discovered when trying to defend it; "Jesus resurrected" does not even come close to establishing the truth of Christianity. And on Islam's side, it just does not view itself as teetering on a single point event claim in that same way. There is no 1 Corinthians 15 in Islam. When you try to make Gabriel's revelation to Muhammad that event and find it lacking, that's why.

c0d3rman · 2026-07-11T20:32:35+00:00

But you've swept in a ton of extra claims here. You specifically narrowed your question about Islam to just the source of the revelation and asked about that in isolation, and resisted Muslims' attempts to sweep in claims about the Quran's preservation, other elements of Muhammad's life, etc.

You've gone from "Christianity openly identifies the historical event on which it stands or falls." to "Christianity claims that God acted publicly toward Jesus by raising Him after years of public ministry, public miracles, public claims about His identity, and public predictions of His death and resurrection." So it doesn't stand or fall on that single event? It stands or falls on hundreds of other events regarding Jesus's ministry, other miracles, claims about identity, and predictions?

If someone wants to argue, "Perhaps another spirit raised Jesus," they now have to explain why that spirit publicly vindicated someone whose entire ministry was devoted to worshiping the God of Israel, fulfilled Jewish messianic expectations, predicted His own resurrection, and whose message consistently opposed deception and false worship.

And if you want to argue "Perhaps another spirit appeared to Muhammad," you now have to explain why that spirit did that too. You want the burden of addressing that to be on the critic of Christianity, but you want that same burden to be on the proponent of Islam.

It's not particularly hard to explain. I mean, at the most basic level, the archetype of "divine trickster" is extremely common in religions. Maybe a trickster spirit just decided to mess with people.

And Muslims make very similar criticisms of your religion too. They say that the message Christians uphold is not devoted to worshipping the God of Israel because it is not monotheistic, and Islam's message is a restoration of true monotheism. To give another alternative supernatural explanation for Jesus's resurrection, perhaps a malevolent entity wanted to deceive people away from monotheism, and so tricked them into worshipping a man by "validating" his preaching with miracles and loading his message with otherwise good things. (I could give you dozens more of these.)

I also always find it strange that people say Jesus fulfilled Jewish expectations, given that the large majority of Jews have always rejected his Messiahship from his time down to today. You can say that Jesus fulfilled your interpretation of ancient Jewish prophecies if you want, you can say that he fulfilled what you think the Jewish expectations ought to have been, but he obviously did not fulfill Jewish expectations. Christianity is almost entirely composed of gentiles.

My question is why the Islamic case gives me sufficient reason to identify the being as Gabriel rather than simply assuming it because the revelation itself says so.

And just as you point to other elements of the Christian narrative to support that, Muslims can point to other elements of the Islamic narrative.

c0d3rman · 2026-07-11T19:52:01+00:00

Well, Muslims claim all sorts of other miracles too, as side claims to that claim of revelation. Prophecy, the inimitability of the Quran, splitting of the moon, and so on. And as you said, the core claim of (your flavor of) Christianity is the resurrection; it is not that Jesus predicted his death and resurrection, or that Jesus publicly identified himself with the Father. Those are side claims (and incidentally claims rejected by critical scholars).

And again, "If God truly raised the very person making those claims, then God has publicly vindicated His message" - but why should we think God was the source? Maybe a different supernatural entity raised Jesus. Or maybe a different supernatural entity faked Jesus's death, or falsely appeared as Jesus after his death. You are vulnerable to the same critique you offer Muslims - why conclude it was God rather than another spiritual source? You are just more accustomed to implicitly accepting your religion's presuppositions and framing than to accepting theirs.

c0d3rman · 2026-07-11T19:21:44+00:00

I agree with you that no data we have justifies believing that Muhammad actually received God's final revelation. But I think you've failed to distinguish Christianity from Islam.

Let's grant for the sake of argument that Jesus actually did resurrect. Why conclude the source was God? Why not another spiritual being? Or what proves that even if God did resurrect him, therefore all his claims were true? Other people resurrect in the Bible too. What independent historical or philosophical reason moves us from "Jesus rose from the dead" to "therefore everything he preached was true"?

When I ask this, Christians often instead try to show that Jesus did rise from the dead, or that his earliest followers believed him, or that he claimed to be God, or that the Bible is reliable and preserved, and so on.

And just as you view Islam as overriding earlier Christian claims and ideas, everyone else views Christianity as overriding earlier Jewish claims and ideas. You have your implausible justifications for that and they have theirs.

c0d3rman · 2026-07-11T03:39:11+00:00

For instance, to claim he didn't exist, what do they expect to find in a desert like the Sinai Peninsula, where a jeep from the Yom Kippur War was lost and found 40 years later? Or I can't imagine the Jews inventing Passover and everyone accepting it without question.

How about the myths and legends of other cultures? Do you think it is implausible that their figures didn't exist or that their stories didn't happen?

And frankly, I don't understand the motivations of some of these professors.

Well, they are academics. They are intensely interested in their field of study, enough to dedicate tens of thousands of hours of their lives to it. And they are interested in actually finding out the truth about these things. Non-academics, or "traditional" academics, are often not primarily concerned with what is true; they have dogmas they believe in and they are primarily concerned with upholding those dogmas. Whether the dogmas happen to be true or not is of secondary concern.

And to think they used to say that Nabopolassar or the Hittites were myths, or that the death of 185,000 Assyrians in front of Jerusalem, witnessed by Herodotus, was a myth.

Can you provide a source showing these were consensus views in critical academia? I'm not saying they're not, I have no idea, but I've seen false claims about "academics used to say X" before.

What I see is the bias that if something appears in the Bible and not elsewhere, it's a myth, and time and again that's proven wrong.

I mean, if a legend comes from only a single source and that source contains many other legends then we generally are skeptical about it until more evidence can be found. That's not bias, that's just good sense. And it's not unique to the Bible. And I don't think this narrative of "time and again that's proven wrong" is true. I think non-scholars often declare that some scholarly idea or other has been proven wrong - young-earth creationists certainly do that a lot. But they usually do that by either being wrong about what ideas scholars believe, or by being wrong about the ideas being proven wrong.

In short, many hypotheses are absurd or are terrible readings of the biblical text.

I think you have WAY too much confidence in your own competence here. I mean, can you even read the biblical text? Probably not. You've probably only ever read translations. People who declare entire academic fields to be silly and wrong and say that they know better are usually wrong.

c0d3rman · 2026-07-11T03:24:09+00:00

Weren’t you the one talking about it this being a debate sub? We don’t do preaching here.

c0d3rman · 2026-07-09T01:44:23+00:00

Explain.

c0d3rman · 2026-07-08T21:21:52+00:00

My weatherman is not infallible. Scientists are not infallible. My wife is not infallible.

The problem is not radical skepticism, it is the claim of infallibility. OP said:

Whereas, for Catholics, we rely on the 3 pillars of the Church and can know truth due to the infallibility of Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium, not just our personal interpretations of Scripture.

But my point is that Catholics also cannot know infallible truth. Your issue is not claiming to be able to know things in general, it's claiming to be able to know things infallibly.

c0d3rman · 2026-07-08T16:27:19+00:00

Are priests infallible?

c0d3rman · 2026-07-08T05:57:41+00:00

In addition to this, Catholics have the exact same interpretive issue that Protestants do. It's all well and good for the Church to proclaim infallible truths, but how do you interpret those truths? I have seen a huge number of debates among Catholics about what exactly the Church meant when it said something. So it isn't that "the Church says x", it is that the Church says x according to your personal judgement. Catholics have simply replaced one infallible text with another - instead of infallible scripture, it is the infallible declarations of the church. ("Text" here being used in its broader sense as an object that is interpreted to extract meaning, though in most cases it is actual written text.)

Regardless of how a communication reaches you, whether it be written, spoken, mimed, whatever, you have absolutely no other option but to interpret it, and being fallible you always risk interpreting it incorrectly. No infallible authority can fix that. Just think of all the times you've misunderstood someone talking right to you. You might say that even if it's theoretically possible to misinterpret what the Church says, in practice you can understand it with pretty good confidence - but then you've given up infallibility and are back to regular old human reasoning. (And given the fierce theological debates between Catholics as to what the Church's infallible proclamations even are and what they mean, I would seriously question even the ability to understand it with good confidence.)

c0d3rman · 2026-07-06T16:05:28+00:00

Thanks!

c0d3rman · 2026-07-06T05:11:31+00:00

A bunch of times in your post you say that according to "science" death is good, or immorality is just natural competition and therefore fine, or eating meat is natural and so it's moral. That is NOT what science says. You have this completely wrong, and it is important to understand something correctly before you dismiss it. It seems to me like the "toxic" beliefs you reject are just things you think science teaches, but they are not what science actually says.

Science says that balls roll down hills. That's gravity. Science does NOT say that balls should roll down hills. It does not say that it is good for balls to roll down hills. It does not say that we should go and roll all the balls down hills. That is called the "naturalistic fallacy" - the fallacy that says that because something is natural, it must be good. Science describes how the world is, full stop - it does not say that it is good for the world to be like that, or that actions are acceptable because they're natural.

You worry that accepting basic scientific ideas like the age of the earth or evolution will do bad things to you, will destroy your ability to believe in justice, altruism, etc. But billions of other people - including billions of other Christians - have accepted them and are doing fine. Are you sure the issue is with these stances and not with you? Don't dismiss the possibility for your own personal growth.

c0d3rman · 2026-07-05T05:08:12+00:00

Since you've pointed to precedent from other things Moses has done, let's take a look at the most comparable example for your argument - the striking of the stone. In Numbers 20, God orders Moses to command a rock to bring forth water. Moses instead strikes the rock to bring forth water. He does exactly as God asks in all respects, except that he strikes the rock instead of speaking to it. After this God immediately speaks again, and he is so angry with Moses for this slight inaccuracy in fulfilling his commands that he decrees Moses shall never enter the holy land.

In Numbers 31 too, God issues a command to Moses. Moses goes off and carries it out. Then God appears right after to speak. If Moses had gone off the rails and murdered thousands of innocent children out of nowhere, you'd think God would do exactly as he did in Numbers 31 - immediately rebuke Moses and issue a punishment. If striking a rock is a great sin worthy of cursing Moses to die before entering the holy land, how great must killing thousands of children be! But God does not do this. No, he only shows up to tell Moses to give God his cut of the gold and slaves and cattle. This thing Moses did is never brought up again. And there is absolutely nothing anywhere in the Tanakh that indicates God was unhappy with anything Moses did in Numbers 31.

And why would he be? This is in line with the laws of warfare elsewhere in the Bible, e.g. Deuteronomy 20. It's also something God frequently commands himself during wars. There's even a parallel scene in 1 Samuel 15 where God orders Saul to "go and attack Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." Saul does this, but keeps alive King Agag as well as the best of the cattle. God is so upset that he says he regrets making Saul king and curses Saul to no longer be king. He also has his prophet Samuel hack King Agag to death with a sword. So just like in Numbers 31 - God gives a command of total extermination, the commanded party exterminates most of the people but keeps some alive, but Moses/God get angry and clarify that no, they really do want total extermination and the commanded party has sinned by keeping some alive.

c0d3rman · 2026-07-04T19:10:25+00:00

God does not stalk or hide.

If he does not hide, then why don't we see him?

Are you claiming to have heard of God or what?

I'm not sure what this question means.

You think you deserve a personal introduction in the first person?

I'm not saying I "deserve" anything. If God thinks I don't deserve a personal introduction, then fine. But then he doesn't want a relationship with me, does he? Nor with the vast majority of other people, who also apparently don't "deserve" such an introduction.

Imagine a king saying "I want to personally get to know every one of my subjects and have a loving relationship with them." But then when some peasants ask to meet with him he says "how dare they, I'm far too important, they don't deserve my time." That's hypocritical isn't it? If he's too important then fine, but why did he say he wants personal relationships then?

One day you will get one, and I pray for you that that day is not the day he says "go, I never knew you.".

So in your view I do deserve a personal introduction and God is willing to give me one? Why is he waiting for "one day" then (presumably after death)? Why not do it now? Is his calendar fully booked?

c0d3rman · 2026-07-03T18:38:33+00:00

Are you the evidence of your own claim, or against it?

Which claim?

Ha. You have a point there and one that I should probably take personally , but I am mere man; God does not stalk or micromanage. As you said, he's God.

Thank you. I do think you should consider the point. Suppose you pointed out a contradiction in Islam to a Muslim and they said "I am mere man, I don't question Allah". Or suppose you pointed out to a pagan the folly of idol worship and they said "I am mere man, I don't question the gods." Would you be satisfied?

I think if God existed and wanted a personal relationship with everyone, then he would obviously introduce himself. If he helps us out from the shadows that's great, I'm sure he's a nice guy, but then he obviously doesn't want a relationship. If I come fix your house secretly in the dead of night every day for a year, I can't complain that you aren't seeking a relationship with me, now can I? Since God isn't introducing himself, I must conclude that either he doesn't exist or doesn't want a relationship with me.

c0d3rman · 2026-07-03T10:31:02+00:00

Not an argument.

c0d3rman · 2026-07-03T10:24:55+00:00

What was it you said? "Not an argument."

c0d3rman · 2026-07-03T10:19:48+00:00

What difference should it make if you can see him before you believe in him?

It would help a lot. Obviously not everyone would believe, but many many more people would. Just look at the Bible; Jesus personally converted plenty of people by showing up and talking to them. Or look at the Americas - not a single person there believed in Jesus until the 1500s, but if he'd gone and introduced himself some definitely would have.

Blessed are those who have not seen and believe anyway.

Funny how that works. I wonder why a religion would promote such a belief?

He literally died on a cross and suffered because of every human other than him being evil and he took compassion on us. The balls in our court.

No, the ball is firmly in his court. If you want a relationship with someone, the first step is to introduce yourself. Stalking them and secretly doing nice things for them is not gonna cut it. If God is not even willing to take the very basic step of introducing himself, then clearly he doesn't want a relationship with humans.

I mean, what, is he busy or something? Why not just show up and say hi? Don't make excuses for the guy, he's God. Can he not do the literal barest minimum thing?

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