Why won't God, Jesus, Mary, SOMEONE appear?

[Reality Amplifier]

You hear about visions, apparations, etc. all the time. If that's all it would take to convince non-believers, why does God not appear and convince us? Being all powerful and all...it shouldn't be that much of an inconvenience...right?

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We are told through the bible that miracles were provided on a regular basis to prove God's power and will (and thereby his existence).

 

We are told that an (alleged) resurrected Christ HAD to appear to all the apostles FIRST before they themselves believed. Even after we read the rest of the apostles were convinced...Thomas himself doubted their testimony. Just like us, Thomas and the apostles required physical and visual first-hand evidence as well.

 

Why should we be any different?

 

Our healthy skepticism is no different than the characters we read about in the bible - for they also required extraordinary proofs before they themselves believed.

 

In my opinion, the likeliest reason why we don't see anything to convince us today is that the supernatural and extraordinary stories in the bible never happened. Those stories are thousands of years old, written by superstitious and uneducated men - they have the earmarks of being historical fiction.

 

We do not read the Iliad and the Odyssey and look for proofs and apparitions of Zeus and Athena. Why should we do so with the bible?

 

The fact that we do not see such proofs and apparitions should tell us all something. Picking out the occasional human appearing figure in a window stain, a potato, a peanut, a sidewalk, etc hardly constitutes prove of the divine. Humans are pattern seeking animals. Our ability to see figures in clouds in a cloudy sky points to this ability. If this pattern seeking human facility is the best proof theists can point to today, one must wonder why such proofs of God placing the outlines of human figures on walls or windows as proofs back then were never recorded in the bible.

 

Without direct supernatural, evidence presented to us, we can only scratch our heads and wonder at the seeming delusions and hallucinations claimed by theists.