The hiddenness of God

This discussion, by Loftus, explains a typical atheist response on what good evidence for theism would look like to them. What it does is raise the whole issue of the hiddenness of God. Even if we think there are good reasons to believe there is a God, there are things God could have done to make it more evidence, so that we could more confidently assert that nonbelievers are all irrational. Michael Rea has a nice paper in response to this problem.

Here's a quote from it:

That’s one way of pitching the idea that divine hiddenness might help to preserve our freedom. But here’s another: Suppose Bill Gates were to go back on the dating scene. Wouldn’t it be natural for him to want to be with someone who would love him for himself rather than for his resources? Yet wouldn’t it also be natural for him to worry that even the most virtuous of prospective dating partners would find it difficult to avoid having her judgment clouded by the prospect of living in unimaginable wealth? The worry wouldn’t be that there would be anything coercive about his impressive circumstances; rather, it’s that a certain kind of
genuineness in a person’s response to him is made vastly more difficult by those circumstances. But, of
course, Bill Gates’s impressiveness pales in comparison with God’s; and, unlike Gates, God’s resources
and intrinsic nature are so incredibly impressive as to be not only overwhelmingly and unimaginably
beautiful but also overwhelmingly and unimaginably terrifying. Viewed in this light, it is easy to suppose that God must hide from us if he wants to allow us to develop the right sort of nonself-interested love for him.


This isn't about Loftus and his personality, but the issue at hand, please.