One of the reasons I refer specifically to God’s failure to show up in real life is precisely because people do have subjective experiences which they attribute to God even though none of them require any actual existence on God’s part. People pray that something will happen, and it’s inevitable that something will indeed happen. If they like how it turned out, they say, “God granted my prayer,” and if it’s not what they wanted they say, “Oh, this one doesn’t count for some reason”—they were asking from wrong motives, or it wasn’t God’s will, or God had something better. It’s a heads-I-win/tails-you-lose game. You’re guaranteed to get an “answer” you can attribute to God (or Zeus, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or whoever). But there is a strict and absolute limit to what kind of answer God can give: He can never give any answer that would be demonstrably different from what an imaginary friend could do for you. He can be given credit for the normal course of ordinary events, but He cannot do things like show up in real life and say “Hi.”

If God’s existence is outside of my experience, that’s His fault not mine. If He is unwilling or unable to show up in the real world, there’s just not a whole lot I can do about it (except possibly deceive myself, which would not be a good thing). Unless and until He does show up in real life, I have no opportunity to put my faith in Him. The closest I could come to faith in God would be if I decided to believe you—which would be faith in men, not faith in God, since I’m just taking your word for it that God is real when the evidence says otherwise. But believing what men say when the evidence says otherwise is gullibility, not faith, so even if I do believe you I’m still not having genuine faith.

Alethea is a much better God than the Christian deity. She shows up in real life, she exists in all places and at all times, all power, wisdom, and knowledge reside within her, etc. She is greater than any other God, since no God can be greater than Reality, and any God equal to reality is Alethea. So all other Gods must be lesser. And, unlike other gods, Alethea has the genuine power to show up, even for unbelievers.

So while I respect the sincerity of your convictions, I cannot express any confidence that they are actually true. Your God is a deity who only shows up in the stories and feelings and imaginations of men, in ways that are self-contradictory and inconsistent with the real-world evidence. Truth is consistent with itself, and therefore consistency with real-world truth is the ultimate and infallible standard by which we ought to judge the stories and feelings of men. Until God actually shows up in real life, it is mere gullibility to just take human words and feelings for it.

The thread running through most of Duncan’s writings, as I interpret it, is that if your kind of God, as described in your holy books, really existed, none of this discussion would even be necessary. His existence would be as obvious to all as the existence of the sky, and when was the last time you got into an argument about the sky’s existence? All the evidence ever offered for God’s existence is the re-telling of ancient stories, some muddled philosophical reasoning, and tales of the imagination.

Perhaps God IS outside my personal experience; however, it’s just as likely (moreso, IMO), that a sober take on reality is outside of yours. If your God is indeed a ‘lover of mankind’, he’s certainly doing a lousy job of showing it. Seems more like a deadbeat dad, to me.