The Sensory Basis Of Divine "Hiddenness"

An immaterial thing, simply because it has no tangible presence, might be incapable of detection by the senses.  This is not to say that immateriality renders sensory detection of a thing impossible.  Sound, after all, is immaterial, yet it cannot be registered apart from the sense of hearing.  However, that something is inaccessible to the senses does not mean that it does not exist, just as the fact that something is perceived with the senses does not mean it does not exist.

Although sensory evidences are of no epistemological value beyond proving that the evidences themselves exist, they are often sought when a person contemplates the issue of God's existence.  Since the very nature of a purely spiritual being is one of non-physicality, however, this leaves many people searching in the wrong places for confirmation of God's existence, a major example being when they focus on irrelevant scientific matters.  Some partially grasp this only to end up denying the truth or verifiability of mere theism on grounds of "divine hiddenness."

The senses are useful for collecting information about how one perceives one's physical surroundings, but logic allows access to a plethora of abstract metaphysical truths that anyone can know without ever investigating the external world.  Among these is the logical fact that there is an uncaused cause that existed before the universe, whether it directly brought the universe into existence or started a causal chain that eventually resulted in the universe's creation [1].  Because the uncaused cause had to exist prior to the material world, it must be immaterial.

To object to mere theism, which does not itself even demonstrate that amoral deism is false, because of a lack of sensory evidence is therefore a completely erroneous approach to epistemology.  Even if there was direct sensory evidence that God exists, such as visions of a deity that all humans shared on a regular basis, sensory evidence proves nothing more than that the perceptions exist!  That God can only be proven to exist by logically discovering the necessity of an uncaused cause makes the senses irrelevant to almost the entirety of theological metaphysics, but it also is the only reason why anyone can have absolute certainty that a deity of some kind exists, even oneself was the uncaused cause[2].

Not even the most popular Christian apologists (who are mostly fallacy machines) ever seem to get so specific when discussing God's existence, yet the Bible does not contradict any of the aforementioned logical facts.  John 4:24 describes Yahweh--not Jesus, but the being Jesus refers to as "the Father"--as a spirit.  In other words, the Biblical deity is a consciousness without a body, a strictly immaterial entity that could not be detected by the senses on its own.  Since the uncaused cause must be immaterial by virtue of preceding the physical cosmos, John 4 is consistent with the logical fact that that there is an immaterial uncaused cause.

The existence of an uncaused cause does not prove the veracity of Christianity as a whole, but it does demonstrate that the intangibility of a purely spiritual being is not a barrier to proving its existence if it exists by logical necessity.  Ironically, one can prove that a deity exists, but it is impossible to prove that other human minds exist!  An erroneous emphasis on the senses has led people to the inverse conclusion, leaving them with the fallacious idea that truths about God's existence are hidden and unknowable.  Divine hiddenness only seems thoroughly problematic to someone who looks to the senses to ground epistemology when it is reason alone that can do such a thing.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/12/metaphysics-and-absolute-certainty.html