If the deity exists why can't it makes its presence clear in such a way that no one could ever disbelieve in it?
Without (presumably) being aware of it you've hit upon a very respectable argument for atheism (divine hiddenness) advanced by some top-flight philosophers - J. L. Schellenberg springs to mind.
Yes, it's a powerful argument. I think that Schellenberg and others add the point that an all-loving God would inevitably make his presence clear. I suppose the counter-arguments are 1), he does, and we're too stupid and/or sinful to notice; 2), he has a very good reason not to appear clearly.
Both these arguments seem feeble.
That's only opinion.
The counter to that is that most people through the ages have caught the divine and it's only those of a a philosophical materialist bent who demand signs and wonders. In fact I suppose philosophical materialism the equivalent of putting on spiritual blindfold
I think it's yer actual Dawkins who in one part of his jumbled corpus accuses the masses of jumping to conclusions about the universe having a creator....That is an admission that people see the divine quite naturally.
I think you're answering a different argument. This is asking why God is hidden.
If you take someone who has no belief in God, but is reasonably open to arguments and evidence, let's call her Claire, then in the Christian formulation, God is omniscient, so he knows what would convince Claire of his existence. He is omnipotent, so he can arrange this; he is all-loving, so he wants to be in a relationship with Claire.
So why does he not do this? Possible answers are that he does, (he is not hidden), that Claire is not persuadable, that God leaves space for faith, that God gives Claire free will, and so on, but for me, they don't answer the problem, which flows from the 3 omnis.
