Presented by Claude for Zia H Shah MD

• Schellenberg’s argument fails at Premise 4. On the Quranic view, and on the evidence of the most sophisticated “seeker” of our age, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, truly nonresistant nonbelief does not exist. What looks like blameless nonbelief usually hides a subtle resistance: a demand for coercive “spectator” evidence, a prior commitment to methodological naturalism, or a heart drifting into heedlessness (ghaflah).
• The Quran anticipated the argument fourteen centuries ago. God is both al-Zahir and al-Batin, the Manifest and the Hidden (57:3). His signs fill the cosmos and the self (41:53), He is nearer than the jugular vein (50:16), and He answers whoever calls (2:186). He stays hidden only as far as a free, morally serious test of love requires (67:2, 2:256, 6:8).
• The decisive answer is the last verse of Surah al-Ankabut (29:69): “those who strive for Us – We will surely guide them to Our ways.” Guidance is promised to every genuine striver. Striving (jihad fi Allah) is the variable Schellenberg’s Premise 4 never measures.

Abstract

J.L. Schellenberg’s Argument from Divine Hiddenness, from Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (1993) and The Hiddenness Argument (Oxford, 2015), holds that a perfectly loving God would always be open to conscious relationship with every capable creature, and would therefore prevent “nonresistant nonbelief”. springer Since such nonbelief exists, the argument concludes, God does not. utmstanford I grant much of the first three premises, once they are corrected by a Quranic understanding of love, testing and freedom. I deny Premise 4. The Quran’s epistemology of ayat (41:53) comes with a psychology of the heart that gives a precise account of resistance: arrogance (27:14), caprice (45:23), the rust of habit (83:14), heedlessness (7:179), and the wish to keep one’s freedom unchecked (75:5). Schellenberg’s own definition of resistance, which includes “careless investigation” and “mentally drifting”, comes close to this diagnosis. stanford My central case study is Robert Lawrence Kuhn, creator of Closer to Truth. He confesses a “predilection for something (or other) beyond physicalism” and finds theistic conclusions “more satisfying to digest”, yet he remains agnostic, goodreads guarded by a standard of public verification that no personal God who wished to be loved freely could meet. medium I draw on my writings at thequran.love, engage the philosophical literature, answer Schellenberg’s rejoinders, and close with 29:69: whoever truly strives toward God is guided to Him.

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1. An Old Ache, a New Syllogism

Isaiah cried, “Truly, you are a God who hides himself” (Isaiah 45:15), and Luther built a theology around the Deus absconditus. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry “Hiddenness of God” notes that divine hiddenness long posed an existential problem. stanford Since Schellenberg’s 1993 book, however, it has come to mean “alleged facts about the absence of belief in God’s existence, on the basis of which one might think there is no God.” stanford

I write as a physician. For decades my daily work has been separating what a patient reports from what is actually happening. A patient can say, sincerely, “I have no risk factors”, while his lipid panel says otherwise. Sincerity is not the same as an accurate account of oneself. Premise 4 rests on self-reports of nonresistance. The Quran, like any good clinician, does not take those reports at face value. Of Pharaoh’s court it says: “they rejected them, while their inner selves were convinced thereof” (27:14).

2. The Argument in Its Strongest Form

The SEP entry, by Daniel Howard-Snyder and Adam Green, summarizes the 1993 argument in three steps. There are people capable of relating personally to God who, through no fault of their own, fail to believe. If an unsurpassably great personal God existed, there would be no such people. So there is no such God. Schellenberg later replaced culpability with “resistance”, writing that he now saw “this focus on culpability and inculpability as a mistake”. ndstanford The mature argument of The Hiddenness Argument (2015) runs roughly:

• (4) Necessarily, if God exists, God perfectly loves such finite persons as there may be. stanford
• (5) Necessarily, if God perfectly loves them, God is always open to a positively meaningful, reciprocal, conscious relationship with each capable person. stanford
• (6) Necessarily, if God is always so open, no capable person is ever nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief that God exists. jlschellenbergstanford
• (7) At least one capable person is or was nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief. randalrauserstanford
• (8) So God does not exist. randalrauserstanford

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry “Divine Hiddenness Argument against God’s Existence” explains that a “nonresistant nonbeliever” is someone who (i) is not resisting God, (ii) is capable of meaningful conscious relationship with God, and yet (iii) does not believe God exists. utm1000wordphilosophy It also notes Schellenberg’s claim that such relationship requires belief, and that belief is involuntary. utmstanford

Three features give the argument its strength. First, the “door never closed” principle. A perfectly loving God would never do anything, by act or omission, that left a capable person unable to relate to Him “just by trying”. utm In Schellenberg’s words, “the divine light will remain on unless we close our eyes.” jlschellenbergstanford Second, a broad definition of resistance. Resistance need not be hatred. It includes “careless investigation”, keeping company with people who carelessly fail to believe, and “just over time mentally drifting, with her own acquiescence, away from any place where she could convincingly be met by evidence of God” (The Hiddenness Argument, 55–56, as quoted in the SEP). stanford I will hold him to this definition, because it concedes more than he realizes. Third, the empirical case. Schellenberg points to honest seekers who end up agnostic, cultures without a personal God, prehistoric hunter-gatherers, and former believers who long to believe again. utm He asks how likely it is that all of the hundreds of millions of nonbelievers in the secular West were resistant, and answers “vanishingly small”. stanford Because the argument is deductive, one genuine case would suffice. He adds that theistic explanations which blame nonbelievers are ad hoc. researchgate

3. Hidden and Manifest: The Quranic Frame

The Quran does not share Schellenberg’s picture of God’s “visibility”:

هُوَ الْأَوَّلُ وَالْآخِرُ وَالظَّاهِرُ وَالْبَاطِنُ ۖ وَهُوَ بِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ عَلِيمٌ

“He is the First and the Last, the Manifest and the Hidden, and He has full knowledge of all things.” (Quran 57:3)

God is not hidden or manifest. He is hidden and manifest, in different respects. His essence is beyond sight:

لَّا تُدْرِكُهُ الْأَبْصَارُ وَهُوَ يُدْرِكُ الْأَبْصَارَ ۖ وَهُوَ اللَّطِيفُ الْخَبِيرُ

“Vision cannot grasp Him, but He grasps all vision; He is the Subtle, the All-Aware.” (Quran 6:103)

His signs, however, are everywhere:

سَنُرِيهِمْ آيَاتِنَا فِي الْآفَاقِ وَفِي أَنفُسِهِمْ حَتَّىٰ يَتَبَيَّنَ لَهُمْ أَنَّهُ الْحَقُّ ۗ أَوَلَمْ يَكْفِ بِرَبِّكَ أَنَّهُ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ شَهِيدٌ

“We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the Truth. Is it not sufficient concerning your Lord that He is Witness over all things?” (Quran 41:53) thequran

وَفِي الْأَرْضِ آيَاتٌ لِّلْمُوقِنِينَ ۝ وَفِي أَنفُسِكُمْ ۚ أَفَلَا تُبْصِرُونَ

“And on the earth are signs for those of certain faith, and within yourselves. Will you not then see?” (Quran 51:20–21)

The divine name al-Latif, the Subtle, is the key. God’s self-disclosure is clear enough to be found by a willing heart, and veiled enough never to force itself on anyone. This is the Quranic form of Pascal’s insight in the Pensées: there is enough light for those who wish to see, and enough obscurity for those of a contrary disposition.

4. Premise 1: God Loves – But Love Is Not Exposure

The Quran agrees with more of Premise 1 than many theists expect:

وَإِذَا سَأَلَكَ عِبَادِي عَنِّي فَإِنِّي قَرِيبٌ ۖ أُجِيبُ دَعْوَةَ الدَّاعِ إِذَا دَعَانِ ۖ فَلْيَسْتَجِيبُوا لِي وَلْيُؤْمِنُوا بِي لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْشُدُونَ

“And when My servants ask you concerning Me – indeed I am near. I respond to the call of the caller when he calls upon Me. So let them respond to Me and believe in Me, that they may be rightly guided.” (Quran 2:186)

وَلَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا الْإِنسَانَ وَنَعْلَمُ مَا تُوَسْوِسُ بِهِ نَفْسُهُ ۖ وَنَحْنُ أَقْرَبُ إِلَيْهِ مِنْ حَبْلِ الْوَرِيدِ

“We created man and We know what his soul whispers to him, and We are nearer to him than his jugular vein.” (Quran 50:16)

Look at how 2:186 is built. God’s nearness comes first, without condition. Then comes the human side: “let them respond to Me.” The relationship is reciprocal from the start. Schellenberg treats perfect love as requiring God to guarantee the cognitive conditions for relationship at every moment, whatever the person’s inner orientation. utm Love between persons has never worked that way. A father who loves his teenage son does not install cameras in every room so the boy can never doubt his presence. The Quran states the purpose of creation:

الَّذِي خَلَقَ الْمَوْتَ وَالْحَيَاةَ لِيَبْلُوَكُمْ أَيُّكُمْ أَحْسَنُ عَمَلًا ۚ وَهُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الْغَفُورُ

“He who created death and life to test you as to which of you is best in deed; and He is the Exalted in Might, the Forgiving.” (Quran 67:2)

A love that aims to form a soul “best in deed” differs in kind from one that aims only at uninterrupted cognitive contact. Schellenberg replies that God could achieve soul-making while still guaranteeing belief. But that assumes we know which goods depend on which epistemic conditions, and the Quran says we have been given only a little knowledge (17:85).

5. Premise 2: Relationship Begins Before Propositional Belief

Premise 2, that conscious relationship requires believing the other exists, is a truism. But the Quran describes a relationship older than explicit belief:

وَإِذْ أَخَذَ رَبُّكَ مِن بَنِي آدَمَ مِن ظُهُورِهِمْ ذُرِّيَّتَهُمْ وَأَشْهَدَهُمْ عَلَىٰ أَنفُسِهِمْ أَلَسْتُ بِرَبِّكُمْ ۖ قَالُوا بَلَىٰ ۛ شَهِدْنَا ۛ أَن تَقُولُوا يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ إِنَّا كُنَّا عَنْ هَٰذَا غَافِلِينَ

“And when your Lord took from the children of Adam, from their loins, their descendants and made them testify concerning themselves, [saying], ‘Am I not your Lord?’ They said, ‘Yes, we have testified.’ [This] lest you say on the Day of Resurrection, ‘Indeed, we were of this unaware.’” (Quran 7:172)

In my 2024 essay “Psychoanalyzing Robert Lawrence Kuhn’s agnosticism or lack of belief”, I described the imprint of God as lying deep in the human psyche, “as if in our very BIOS.” themuslimtimes Alvin Plantinga’s sensus divinitatis is the nearest Western relative of this Covenant of Alast and the human fitrah. It is a faculty by which belief in God can be properly basic, though sin can dull it. The relationship is held from God’s side even where the human side is only implicit. The IEP records a family of replies holding that relationship with God does not strictly require propositional belief. utm The Covenant gives those replies a metaphysical foundation. The door is not shut. It is built into the house.

6. Premise 3: “Always Clear” Would Abolish the Test

The Quran says what happens when God makes Himself overwhelmingly clear:

وَقَالُوا لَوْلَا أُنزِلَ عَلَيْهِ مَلَكٌ ۖ وَلَوْ أَنزَلْنَا مَلَكًا لَّقُضِيَ الْأَمْرُ ثُمَّ لَا يُنظَرُونَ

“And they say, ‘Why has an angel not been sent down to him?’ But if We had sent down an angel, the matter would have been decided; then they would not be given respite.” (Quran 6:8)

Full unveiling ends the test. Faith turns into sight, and moral choice into prudent compliance. Faith must be free:

لَا إِكْرَاهَ فِي الدِّينِ ۖ قَد تَّبَيَّنَ الرُّشْدُ مِنَ الْغَيِّ

“There is no compulsion in religion; the right course has become clearly distinct from error.” (Quran 2:256, excerpt)

وَلَوْ شَاءَ رَبُّكَ لَآمَنَ مَن فِي الْأَرْضِ كُلُّهُمْ جَمِيعًا ۚ أَفَأَنتَ تُكْرِهُ النَّاسَ حَتَّىٰ يَكُونُوا مُؤْمِنِينَ

“And had your Lord willed, those on earth would have believed – all of them entirely. Then, would you compel the people until they become believers?” (Quran 10:99)

وَقُلِ الْحَقُّ مِن رَّبِّكُمْ ۖ فَمَن شَاءَ فَلْيُؤْمِن وَمَن شَاءَ فَلْيَكْفُرْ

“And say: The truth is from your Lord, so whoever wills – let him believe; and whoever wills – let him disbelieve.” (Quran 18:29, excerpt)

Verse 2:256 says the truth is clearly distinct and yet not compelled. Clarity and compulsion are different things, and Schellenberg conflates them. Belief in the Unseen is part of the very definition of the God-conscious:

ذَٰلِكَ الْكِتَابُ لَا رَيْبَ ۛ فِيهِ ۛ هُدًى لِّلْمُتَّقِينَ ۝ الَّذِينَ يُؤْمِنُونَ بِالْغَيْبِ وَيُقِيمُونَ الصَّلَاةَ وَمِمَّا رَزَقْنَاهُمْ يُنفِقُونَ

“This is the Book about which there is no doubt, a guidance for those conscious of Allah – who believe in the unseen, establish prayer, and spend out of what We have provided for them.” (Quran 2:2–3)

In “The Epistemic Horizon: A Comprehensive Philosophical, Scientific, and Theological Exegesis of Quran 2:1–7”, I argued that someone who approaches the Quran presupposing metaphysical naturalism will meet it only as literature, history or sociology. thequran The ghayb is not a gap in the evidence. It is the space in which trust can grow. Even believers are tested:

أَحَسِبَ النَّاسُ أَن يُتْرَكُوا أَن يَقُولُوا آمَنَّا وَهُمْ لَا يُفْتَنُونَ ۝ وَلَقَدْ فَتَنَّا الَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ ۖ فَلَيَعْلَمَنَّ اللَّهُ الَّذِينَ صَدَقُوا وَلَيَعْلَمَنَّ الْكَاذِبِينَ

“Do people think that they will be left to say, ‘We believe,’ and they will not be tried? We certainly tried those before them, and Allah will surely make evident those who are truthful, and He will surely make evident the liars.” (Quran 29:2–3)

This is the Quranic root of Michael Murray’s argument in “Coercion and the Hiddenness of God” (American Philosophical Quarterly, 1993). Murray argued that overwhelming evidence of God, together with the stakes involved, would coerce compliance and destroy morally significant freedom. utmwinteryknight

7. Premise 4: The Central Error – Nonresistant Nonbelief Does Not Exist

In my opinion Premise 4 is false. Nonresistant nonbelievers, in the strict sense the argument needs, do not exist.

7.1 Schellenberg’s own definition concedes the point

Schellenberg says resistance includes careless investigation and “mentally drifting, with her own acquiescence,” and that it “would have to involve self-deception.” stanford The Quran rarely portrays unbelievers as consumed by hatred. Far more often it portrays them as heedless:

وَلَقَدْ ذَرَأْنَا لِجَهَنَّمَ كَثِيرًا مِّنَ الْجِنِّ وَالْإِنسِ ۖ لَهُمْ قُلُوبٌ لَّا يَفْقَهُونَ بِهَا وَلَهُمْ أَعْيُنٌ لَّا يُبْصِرُونَ بِهَا وَلَهُمْ آذَانٌ لَّا يَسْمَعُونَ بِهَا ۚ أُولَٰئِكَ كَالْأَنْعَامِ بَلْ هُمْ أَضَلُّ ۚ أُولَٰئِكَ هُمُ الْغَافِلُونَ

“And We have certainly destined for Hell many of the jinn and mankind. They have hearts with which they do not understand, eyes with which they do not see, and ears with which they do not hear. Those are like livestock; rather, they are more astray. It is they who are the heedless.” (Quran 7:179)

Ghaflah is exactly Schellenberg’s “mental drifting with acquiescence”. The faculties are intact; what is missing is their use. The organ that fails is named:

أَفَلَمْ يَسِيرُوا فِي الْأَرْضِ فَتَكُونَ لَهُمْ قُلُوبٌ يَعْقِلُونَ بِهَا أَوْ آذَانٌ يَسْمَعُونَ بِهَا ۖ فَإِنَّهَا لَا تَعْمَى الْأَبْصَارُ وَلَٰكِن تَعْمَى الْقُلُوبُ الَّتِي فِي الصُّدُورِ

“Have they not traveled through the land and have hearts by which to reason and ears by which to hear? For indeed, it is not eyes that are blinded, but blinded are the hearts which are within the breasts.” (Quran 22:46)

The failure is not of the eyes. The data are there. It lies in the qalb, and the blindness builds up over time:

كَلَّا ۖ بَلْ ۜ رَانَ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِهِم مَّا كَانُوا يَكْسِبُونَ

“No! Rather, the stain has covered their hearts of that which they were earning.” (Quran 83:14)

Rayn is rust: a patina laid down by many small choices, none of them open rebellion. Each is a small preference for comfort, approval, autonomy or distraction over the claims of truth. A person rusted this way can say, sincerely, “I am open; I simply find the evidence unconvincing.” He is not lying. His instrument for weighing evidence has been altered by his own history. At the end of the process comes the seal:

خَتَمَ اللَّهُ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِهِمْ وَعَلَىٰ سَمْعِهِمْ ۖ وَعَلَىٰ أَبْصَارِهِمْ غِشَاوَةٌ ۖ وَلَهُمْ عَذَابٌ عَظِيمٌ

“Allah has set a seal upon their hearts and upon their hearing, and over their vision is a veil. And for them is a great punishment.” (Quran 2:7)

أَفَرَأَيْتَ مَنِ اتَّخَذَ إِلَٰهَهُ هَوَاهُ وَأَضَلَّهُ اللَّهُ عَلَىٰ عِلْمٍ وَخَتَمَ عَلَىٰ سَمْعِهِ وَقَلْبِهِ وَجَعَلَ عَلَىٰ بَصَرِهِ غِشَاوَةً فَمَن يَهْدِيهِ مِن بَعْدِ اللَّهِ ۚ أَفَلَا تَذَكَّرُونَ

“Have you seen he who has taken as his god his own desire, and Allah has sent him astray despite knowledge and has set a seal upon his hearing and his heart and put over his vision a veil? So who will guide him after Allah? Then will you not be reminded?” (Quran 45:23)

The order in 45:23 matters. First the person makes his own hawa, his desire, into his god. Then the sealing follows, as a divine ratification of the direction he chose. In my commentary on 2:1–7 I compared this to neuroplasticity: by “emphatically believing in naturalism”, the atheist seals his own epistemic faculties. thequran

7.2 The self-interested root

بَلْ يُرِيدُ الْإِنسَانُ لِيَفْجُرَ أَمَامَهُ

“Rather, man desires to continue in sin before him.” (Quran 75:5)

The context is denial of the Resurrection. Man doubts accountability not because the arguments are weak, but because he wants the road ahead kept open, with no Judge at the end of it. Acknowledging a personal God means acknowledging a claim on one’s whole life, and every human being has some stake in postponing that. In “The Impossibility of the Arrogant Heart: Atheism as Istikbar in Light of Qur’an 7:40”, I argued that istikbar, often the arrogance of self-sufficiency rather than of boasting, is the root pathology the Quran identifies. quranalhiqma In “The Architecture of Self-Centrality: Rejection of the Divine through the Lens of Islamic Psychology and Surah Al-A’raf”, I traced how a self placed at the center experiences every sign of God as an intrusion. thequranthequran

7.3 More evidence does not produce more belief

وَجَحَدُوا بِهَا وَاسْتَيْقَنَتْهَا أَنفُسُهُمْ ظُلْمًا وَعُلُوًّا ۚ فَانظُرْ كَيْفَ كَانَ عَاقِبَةُ الْمُفْسِدِينَ

“And they rejected them, while their inner selves were convinced thereof, out of injustice and haughtiness. So see how was the end of the corrupters.” (Quran 27:14)

وَلَوْ أَنَّنَا نَزَّلْنَا إِلَيْهِمُ الْمَلَائِكَةَ وَكَلَّمَهُمُ الْمَوْتَىٰ وَحَشَرْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ قُبُلًا مَّا كَانُوا لِيُؤْمِنُوا إِلَّا أَن يَشَاءَ اللَّهُ وَلَٰكِنَّ أَكْثَرَهُمْ يَجْهَلُونَ

“And even if We had sent down to them the angels and the dead spoke to them and We gathered together every thing in front of them, they would not believe unless Allah should will. But most of them are ignorant.” (Quran 6:111)

وَلَوْ فَتَحْنَا عَلَيْهِم بَابًا مِّنَ السَّمَاءِ فَظَلُّوا فِيهِ يَعْرُجُونَ ۝ لَقَالُوا إِنَّمَا سُكِّرَتْ أَبْصَارُنَا بَلْ نَحْنُ قَوْمٌ مَّسْحُورُونَ

“And even if We opened to them a gate from the heaven and they continued therein to ascend, they would say, ‘Our eyes have only been dazzled. Rather, we are a people affected by magic.’” (Quran 15:14–15) yaqeeninstitute

وَإِن يَرَوْا آيَةً يُعْرِضُوا وَيَقُولُوا سِحْرٌ مُّسْتَمِرٌّ

“And if they see a sign, they turn away and say, ‘Passing magic.’” (Quran 54:2)

These verses undercut the hidden assumption behind Premise 3, that more evidence would produce more belief. For a heart already turned away, more evidence produces more ingenious dismissals. Alan Lightman quotes the Nobel laureate biologist David Baltimore: “If I could not find any way out of believing that a miracle had occurred, would I then believe it to be a miracle? I think the answer is that I would still not believe it to be a miracle, only some outcome that I can’t understand.” I have found this quotation only as reproduced on Alan Jacobs’s blog, not in Lightman’s original publication. That is 15:15 in laboratory dress.

7.4 Dictating the terms of God’s appearance is itself resistance

وَقَالَ الَّذِينَ لَا يَرْجُونَ لِقَاءَنَا لَوْلَا أُنزِلَ عَلَيْنَا الْمَلَائِكَةُ أَوْ نَرَىٰ رَبَّنَا ۗ لَقَدِ اسْتَكْبَرُوا فِي أَنفُسِهِمْ وَعَتَوْا عُتُوًّا كَبِيرًا

“And those who do not expect the meeting with Us say, ‘Why were not angels sent down to us, or why do we not see our Lord?’ They have certainly become arrogant within themselves and become insolent with great insolence.” (Quran 25:21)

Here is a principle Schellenberg never considers: setting the terms on which God must appear is itself a form of resistance. In The Elusive God (Cambridge, 2008), Paul Moser calls this the demand for “spectator evidence”. He argues that evidence of a perfectly loving God would be “purposively available”, that is, available only in ways that suit divine purposes in self-revelation. It becomes conclusive as the person becomes volitionally “attuned” to God, and it yields “filial knowledge”, which includes reconciliation and not merely information. asburyseminary +2 Moser’s thesis is in effect a Christian rediscovery of the Quranic teaching that hidayah, guidance, is a relationship that grows as one responds to it.

8. The Case Study: Robert Lawrence Kuhn and the Unfinished Ascent

8.1 Why Kuhn matters

Robert Lawrence Kuhn holds a PhD in brain research from UCLA. He creates, writes and hosts Closer to Truth, which, according to its own “About” page, has been “on the air continuously since 2000” and “airs on over 200 PBS and public TV stations”. The program’s “Meet the Team” page says it has featured “more than 500 leading scientists, philosophers, and diverse creative thinkers in more than 5,000 videos.” I have built many articles on his work, including “An Agnostic Jew, Robert Lawrence Kuhn: Can God Face Up To Evil?” thequran and “God as the Metaphysically Necessary Being: A Contingent Universe in Islamic and Christian Perspective”. thequran If anyone fits Schellenberg’s profile of the honest, searching, nonresistant nonbeliever, it is Kuhn. He is not hostile. He has spent a quarter-century asking the question, and by his own account he remains agnostic. goodreadsthegospelcoalition If even his agnosticism shows the marks of subtle resistance, there is little reason to expect it to be absent in ordinary cases. I do not presume to judge his soul, for God alone “knows what is in the breasts.” I am reading the public record, the way a physician reads a chart.

8.2 Kuhn in his own words

In his 2015 essay “Striving to Get Closer To Truth”, Kuhn writes that at twelve a night-thought, “Why not nothing?”, struck him with terror and “would become my life partner.” Facing “the exquisite ‘fine-tuning’ of universal laws,” he “cannot but wonder whether there is meaning and purpose.” He asks how “masses of brain cells (neurons) literally be consciousness awareness.” medium These are the signs of 41:53, in the horizons and in the self, registering in a sensitive mind. Then come the revealing lines:

• “Though faith is not a gift that I’ve been granted, I understand that the road to truth, for many, ends at a Supreme Being or God.” medium
• “I do admit a predilection for something (or other) beyond physicalism… But I mustn’t fool myself: hope swamping reason terrifies me.” medium
• “I am always anxious that if I harbor a desire to believe in God, it may distort my capacity to reason about God.” medium
• The religious method “may offer private validation of nonphysical realms, but cannot provide public verification of anything nonphysical.” medium
• “I find atheistic arguments more palatable to swallow but theistic conclusions more satisfying to digest.” mediumgoodreads

In the version quoted by Justin Taylor he adds, “It’s not scientifically becoming to admit belief without reason. But to me, honesty trumps image,” and closes: “passionate uncertainty is closer to truth.” goodreadsthegospelcoalition

8.3 Five forms of subtle resistance

1. Treating one’s own hope as grounds for veto. Kuhn’s desire to believe “terrifies” him because hope might “swamp reason”. medium That sounds like intellectual virtue. But it treats the fitrah, the inborn longing that the Quran counts as evidence (7:172), as bias to be discounted. Meanwhile the “palatability” of atheistic arguments goes unexamined, and so does the opposite hope for an unaccountable autonomy that 75:5 diagnoses. A mind that suspects only the heart’s movements toward God is not neutral.

2. Demanding public verification. Kuhn’s standard of public verification over private validation is a laboratory standard. It suits objects, not persons. It is Moser’s “spectator evidence” and the demand of 25:21. A God who met it would have to become an object among objects, which contradicts His transcendence (6:103) and the purpose of the test (67:2). In my 2024 essay I wrote that “Kuhn has set the bar too high for himself in pursuit of truth with capital T”. I also wrote that in clips from his series he seems to ask for a direct sign, and then suggests that even a “celestial email” or a miracle would not persuade him. themuslimtimes That was my paraphrase of video exchanges, not a transcript, and readers should watch the clips themselves. But the logic I described is the logic of 15:14–15. A standard that no possible evidence could meet is not a standard of evidence. It is a standard of refusal.

3. Turning the necessary being into one item on a menu. In “Why This Universe? Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations” (Skeptic, Vol. 13, No. 2, Summer 2007), Kuhn writes, “I have documented 27” possible ultimate explanations, grouped under “four overarching” categories, and God is one entry among them. In “Levels of Nothing” (Skeptic, 2013), consulting his gut, he comes to “only two kinds of answers”: either “Existence is a brute fact without explanation,” or “some thing was self-existing”. The candidates for that self-existent thing run “from the most fundamental meta-laws of physics to diverse kinds of consciousness, one of which could be God or something like god.” closertotruth Here is the evasion. The contingency argument leads to a self-existent ground, and Kuhn grants that ground as a live option. But instead of asking what such a ground must be like, he moves sideways into a menu of substitutes. Laws are descriptions, abstract and inert; as Hawking asked, what breathes fire into the equations? In “God as the Metaphysically Necessary Being” I argued that an eternal, creative consciousness is simply what theists mean by God. thequran Kuhn writes that it “would seem less of a leap to imagine a world without God… than to imagine a world without abstract objects,” adds “For the traditional God, that won’t do,” and admits, “What guides me here is gut feeling, not clever reasoning.” closertotruthclosertotruth He also confesses: “I doubt I could ever get over the odd idea that something so intricate… as the laws of physics would be the ultimate brute fact.” closertotruth This is the “wonder without the final step” I described in “Wonder Without the Final Step: The Cognitive Dissonance of Cosmic Awe in Modern Science and the Quranic Paradigm of Ulu al-Albab”. There I argued that Einstein and Hawking reached the threshold of the ulu al-albab and declined the existential conclusion. thequran +3 Kuhn stands at the same threshold:

إِنَّ فِي خَلْقِ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَاخْتِلَافِ اللَّيْلِ وَالنَّهَارِ لَآيَاتٍ لِّأُولِي الْأَلْبَابِ ۝ الَّذِينَ يَذْكُرُونَ اللَّهَ قِيَامًا وَقُعُودًا وَعَلَىٰ جُنُوبِهِمْ وَيَتَفَكَّرُونَ فِي خَلْقِ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ رَبَّنَا مَا خَلَقْتَ هَٰذَا بَاطِلًا سُبْحَانَكَ فَقِنَا عَذَابَ النَّارِ

“Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day are signs for those of understanding – who remember Allah while standing or sitting or lying on their sides and give thought to the creation of the heavens and the earth, saying, ‘Our Lord, You did not create this aimlessly; exalted are You; then protect us from the punishment of the Fire.’” (Quran 3:190–191)

The ulu al-albab do not stop at reflection. Reflection becomes remembrance (dhikr) and direct address: “Our Lord.” thequran The final step is not one more argument. It is a turn from the third person to the second. For a quarter-century Kuhn has spoken about God. Publicly, at least, he has not spoken to Him.

4. A consciousness hunch that stops short. Kuhn’s 2024 review, “A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications” (Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, Vol. 190, August 2024, pp. 28–169), runs to some 175,000 words and surveys more than 200 theories of consciousness; Àlex Gómez-Marín puts the count at about 225. Kuhn notes that he has “discussed consciousness with over 200 scientists and philosophers.” In an October 2024 FQxI essay he gave his own ranking: “My own hunch, right here, right now… might be something of a Dualism-Idealism mashup,” with “some form of Quantum Consciousness” second. Then, characteristically: “I can describe; I dare not defend.” eurekalertfqxi In “The Glorious Quran 41:53 – Human Consciousness as a Sign Leading to God”, I used Kuhn’s own data to argue that the radical diversity of theories, with no consensus among them, shows that the materialist paradigm has failed. thequran As the Quran says of the soul:

وَيَسْأَلُونَكَ عَنِ الرُّوحِ ۖ قُلِ الرُّوحُ مِنْ أَمْرِ رَبِّي وَمَا أُوتِيتُم مِّنَ الْعِلْمِ إِلَّا قَلِيلًا

“And they ask you about the soul. Say, ‘The soul is of the affair of my Lord. And mankind has not been given of knowledge except a little.’” (Quran 17:85)

I concluded there that “if a ‘dead’ (insentient) universe cannot by itself generate consciousness, the most plausible conclusion is that consciousness came from outside or above the material system.” thequran Kuhn’s hunch grants the premise. “I dare not defend” refuses the conclusion.

5. Closing remarks that open the door, then shut it. In “Arguing God from Being”, by the episode’s own description, Kuhn is “obsessed by raw existence, which science can never explain,” and then asks: “Does this mean that there is a God? I wish it were that simple.” imdb “Why Believe in God?” frames belief as either “a circular path of self-deception” or “the shortest route to bedrock reality”. imdb In “The Enigma of the Self: A Comprehensive Analysis of Consciousness, Materialism, and the Divine Command”, I examined his interview with Christof Koch, which ends: “Nobody knows why consciousness is part of our universe!” thequran The signs rise, the heart stirs, and a methodological reflex returns everything to suspension.

8.4 Is this fair?

Kuhn might reply that his agnosticism is simply honesty, and I do not doubt his sincerity. But by Schellenberg’s own criteria, resistance can be present while the person sincerely denies it. None of this makes Kuhn a villain. It makes him a son of Adam whose heart, like every heart, has some stake in its own sovereignty. If the most patient seeker of our age shows these marks, Premise 4 looks less like an observation and more like an unexamined assumption. And the door is not closed, for Kuhn is still searching.

9. The Signs Kuhn Himself Has Gathered

In “Why Metaphysical Naturalism (Physicalism) is Defeated by Human Consciousness”, I argued that physicalism cannot account for the first-person character of experience. thequran In “The Glorious Quran 41:53” I examined the materialist escape routes. Panpsychism “explains nothing and does not generate testable predictions.” Illusionism refutes itself, because an illusion needs a conscious subject to be fooled. thequran In “The Command of the Lord and the Little That We Know”, my commentary on 17:85, I treated the proliferation of theories as itself the datum: more than 200 in Kuhn’s survey, and more than 300 in later catalogues. thequran +2 Consciousness is the nearest sign, “within yourselves” (51:21), nearer than the jugular vein (50:16). Every nonbeliever who says “I see no evidence of God” says it with the most extraordinary evidence in the universe.

The second great sign is in the horizons:

إِنَّ فِي خَلْقِ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَاخْتِلَافِ اللَّيْلِ وَالنَّهَارِ وَالْفُلْكِ الَّتِي تَجْرِي فِي الْبَحْرِ بِمَا يَنفَعُ النَّاسَ وَمَا أَنزَلَ اللَّهُ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ مِن مَّاءٍ فَأَحْيَا بِهِ الْأَرْضَ بَعْدَ مَوْتِهَا وَبَثَّ فِيهَا مِن كُلِّ دَابَّةٍ وَتَصْرِيفِ الرِّيَاحِ وَالسَّحَابِ الْمُسَخَّرِ بَيْنَ السَّمَاءِ وَالْأَرْضِ لَآيَاتٍ لِّقَوْمٍ يَعْقِلُونَ

“Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of the night and the day, and the ships which sail through the sea with that which benefits people, and what Allah has sent down from the heavens of rain, giving life thereby to the earth after its lifelessness and dispersing therein every kind of moving creature, and the directing of the winds and the clouds controlled between the heaven and the earth – are signs for a people who use reason.” (Quran 2:164)

In “The Architecture of Cosmic Origins: Entropy, the Penrose Number, and the Teleological Implications of Fine-Tuning”, I examined Roger Penrose’s estimate that the universe’s low-entropy beginning was selected with a precision of one part in 10^(10^123). thequrangoodreads In “Why Math Disproves Pure Materialism” thequran and “The Architecture of the Divine: Abstract Objects, the Universal Intellect, and the Metaphysics of God”, I argued that necessary mathematical truths find their natural home in the mind of God. Kuhn explored exactly this possibility with Brian Leftow. thequranthequran In “Why We are Here: An Extraordinary Grand Show, But Atheists Insist It is An Accident”, I note that a grand show implies a Showman. thequran The signs are not hidden. What is “hidden” is only the willingness to read them as signs.

10. The Philosophical Literature: Where the Quran Anticipates and Strengthens

Pascal’s “enough light” is the Zahir/Batin polarity of 57:3. Plantinga’s sensus divinitatis is the Covenant of 7:172. The Quran strengthens it by naming how the faculty is dulled: rayn (83:14), ghaflah (7:179), hawa (45:23). Moser’s purposively available evidence is the Book that is “guidance for the God-conscious” (2:2). Murray’s coercion and soul-making are sealed by 6:8 and given their purpose by 67:2 and 29:3. Howard-Snyder suggests God may withhold belief for a time so that a nonresistant person’s good disposition becomes her own, or so that her motives are purified. encyclopediastanford The Quran adds that the timing belongs to the One who knows the heart: the striver’s guidance is promised, but not on his schedule. Dumsday suggests some, if brought to belief now, would resent God’s glory. stanford That is the Quran’s portrait of istikbar (7:40, 25:21). Michael Rea, in The Hiddenness of God (Oxford, 2018), argues that divine silence may reflect God’s transcendent personality rather than a failure of love, with God’s presence offered through scripture and worship. That fits al-Latif, whose presence comes through ayat, revelation and prayer (2:186).

11. Answering Schellenberg’s Rejoinders

11.1 “Resistance explanations are ad hoc.”

First, the Quranic anatomy of ghaflah, rayn, hawa and kibr predates Schellenberg by fourteen centuries. A hypothesis cannot be ad hoc relative to an objection that did not yet exist. Second, the account makes predictions that have been borne out:

• Spectacular evidence breeds ingenious dismissal (15:14–15, 54:2), as Baltimore’s remark shows.
• Wonder stops short of worship, as with Einstein, Hawking and Kuhn.
• The demand for God to appear comes dressed as a methodological standard (25:21), as with Kuhn’s “public verification”.

Third, the account is not selective blame. The Quran applies it to believers too (29:2–3). It is a universal anthropology of the striving heart.

11.2 “Even one nonresistant nonbeliever suffices.”

This is the argument’s strength and its weak point. Premise 4 must be known, or reasonably believed, of an actual person. But the resistance in question is, by Schellenberg’s own definition, partly self-deceived. It is hidden from the person, and still more from observers. Paul A. Macdonald Jr. of the US Air Force Academy makes exactly this point in “Schellenberg’s Noseeum Assumption about Nonresistant Nonbelief” (European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13(3):139–56, 2021). Schellenberg must assume that “more likely than not we’d detect these nonbelievers’ resistance toward God… if there were any,” and that assumption is doubtful. The Quran concludes that only God knows the heart:

مَّنِ اهْتَدَىٰ فَإِنَّمَا يَهْتَدِي لِنَفْسِهِ ۖ وَمَن ضَلَّ فَإِنَّمَا يَضِلُّ عَلَيْهَا ۚ وَلَا تَزِرُ وَازِرَةٌ وِزْرَ أُخْرَىٰ ۗ وَمَا كُنَّا مُعَذِّبِينَ حَتَّىٰ نَبْعَثَ رَسُولًا

“Whoever is guided is only guided for his own soul. And whoever errs only errs against it. And no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another. And never would We punish until We sent a messenger.” (Quran 17:15)

A deductive argument whose crucial premise lies beyond anyone’s evidential reach but God’s gives us no reason to accept its conclusion.

11.3 “What about those who never heard?”

Schellenberg, and Jason Marsh with his argument from “natural nonbelief”, point to prehistoric humans. utmstanford Verse 17:15 answers that God judges each soul by the light that actually reached it. The Covenant of 7:172 means no human being was ever wholly outside the relationship. And ghaflah is the default drift of life in a culture built for distraction, so the mass nonbelief of secular societies is exactly what the Quran predicts, not evidence against it.

12. Light Upon Light, and Darkness Upon Darkness

اللَّهُ نُورُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ ۚ مَثَلُ نُورِهِ كَمِشْكَاةٍ فِيهَا مِصْبَاحٌ ۖ الْمِصْبَاحُ فِي زُجَاجَةٍ ۖ الزُّجَاجَةُ كَأَنَّهَا كَوْكَبٌ دُرِّيٌّ يُوقَدُ مِن شَجَرَةٍ مُّبَارَكَةٍ زَيْتُونَةٍ لَّا شَرْقِيَّةٍ وَلَا غَرْبِيَّةٍ يَكَادُ زَيْتُهَا يُضِيءُ وَلَوْ لَمْ تَمْسَسْهُ نَارٌ ۚ نُّورٌ عَلَىٰ نُورٍ ۗ يَهْدِي اللَّهُ لِنُورِهِ مَن يَشَاءُ ۚ وَيَضْرِبُ اللَّهُ الْأَمْثَالَ لِلنَّاسِ ۗ وَاللَّهُ بِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ عَلِيمٌ

“Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The example of His light is like a niche within which is a lamp; the lamp is within glass, the glass as if it were a pearly star lit from the oil of a blessed olive tree, neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil would almost glow even if untouched by fire. Light upon light. Allah guides to His light whom He wills. And Allah presents examples for the people, and Allah is Knowing of all things.” (Quran 24:35)

أَوْ كَظُلُمَاتٍ فِي بَحْرٍ لُّجِّيٍّ يَغْشَاهُ مَوْجٌ مِّن فَوْقِهِ مَوْجٌ مِّن فَوْقِهِ سَحَابٌ ۚ ظُلُمَاتٌ بَعْضُهَا فَوْقَ بَعْضٍ إِذَا أَخْرَجَ يَدَهُ لَمْ يَكَدْ يَرَاهَا ۗ وَمَن لَّمْ يَجْعَلِ اللَّهُ لَهُ نُورًا فَمَا لَهُ مِن نُّورٍ

“Or [the state of the unbeliever] is like darknesses within an unfathomable sea which is covered by waves, upon which are waves, over which are clouds – darknesses, some of them upon others. When one puts out his hand, he can hardly see it. And he to whom Allah has not granted light – for him there is no light.” (Quran 24:40)

The oil that “would almost glow even if untouched by fire” is the fitrah, ready to catch light, and revelation adds “light upon light.” In the second parable the darkness is layered: the rust of 83:14, laid down over a lifetime. The man who “can hardly see” his hand reports truthfully that he sees nothing. But his experience has a history.

13. The Striver Is Never Abandoned: Quran 29:69 as the Direct Answer to Schellenberg

We come now to the last verse of Surah al-Ankabut:

وَالَّذِينَ جَاهَدُوا فِينَا لَنَهْدِيَنَّهُمْ سُبُلَنَا ۚ وَإِنَّ اللَّهَ لَمَعَ الْمُحْسِنِينَ

“And those who strive for Us – We will surely guide them to Our ways. And indeed, Allah is with the doers of good.” (Quran 29:69)

13.1 The grammar of a promise

“Lanahdiyannahum“, “We will surely guide them”, carries the oath-lam and the heavy nun of emphasis, the strongest form of commitment Arabic allows. It is not “We may guide.” It is a divine oath. “Jahadu fina“, “they strove in Us”, names a striving whose goal is God Himself. This is jihad in its deepest Quranic sense: the struggle of the self against its own inertia, desire, heedlessness and rust. It is not spectatorship, and it is not cataloguing 27 explanations while declining to choose. The object, “subulana“, “Our ways”, is plural. God meets each striver on the road suited to him: the cosmos for the physicist, consciousness for the neuroscientist, conscience for the moralist. The verse closes with God’s accompanying presence, His ma’iyyah: “Allah is with the doers of good.”

13.2 How the verse defeats Premise 4

Schellenberg claims a loving God would ensure no one open to relationship is left without belief. The Quran agrees, and says God has made exactly that commitment. This is not a concession. It is a direct denial of Premise 4. If the promise holds, any apparent “sincere seeker who never finds” must be one of three things:

1. a seeker who has not yet finished the road, since guidance is promised but not on the seeker’s schedule;
2. a seeker whose seeking lacks the quality of jihad fi Allah, the whole-souled, self-surrendering striving, and has instead the detachment of a spectator; or
3. a seeker who has been shown “Our ways” but stops at the threshold with “I wish it were that simple.”

None of these is a nonresistant nonbeliever in Schellenberg’s strict sense.

Striving is the variable Schellenberg never measures. His argument treats the human side as passive openness, as if belief should simply arrive wherever nothing blocks it. The Quran says the human side is active: a jihad. The real contrast is not “resistant versus nonresistant” but “striving versus not striving”. A person can be open to God the way one is open to a stranger who might knock someday: not hostile, but not seeking either. The promise is made to those who strive. That is why 2:186 has its second half: “I respond to the call of the caller when he calls upon Me.” Here is a simple test of any claimed nonresistance. Has the seeker prayed? Has he humbled himself and said, sincerely and repeatedly, “O God, if You are there, show me”? Many who call themselves nonresistant have never done this, because doing it already concedes the second-person stance their method forbids. In medicine we confirm a diagnosis by intervention: we give the treatment and watch the response. The Quran invites exactly this experiment, and anyone can run it from the inside.

14. Epilogue: The Veil, the Signs, and the Promise

The hiddenness of God is not His absence. It is the form His love takes toward creatures He wishes to grow into lovers.

Hiddenness is the condition of freedom. Without the veil, “the matter would have been decided” (6:8), and “no compulsion in religion” (2:256) would mean nothing. Hiddenness is the condition of love. A God who overwhelmed every creature would get the obedience of a prisoner, not the devotion of a friend. Hiddenness is the condition of moral growth. A soul is formed in the space between seeing and not-yet-seeing, where trust, patience and humility are possible (67:2).

And the hiddenness is partial. God is al-Batin and al-Zahir (57:3). His signs fill the horizons, with the fine-tuned constants and the improbable low-entropy beginning. They fill the self, with the irreducible fact of consciousness, the voice of conscience, and the longing the Covenant left in every heart (41:53). The signs are not missing. What is sometimes missing is the turn of the heart that lets a sign be read as a sign.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn has gathered more of these signs than perhaps anyone alive. Like Einstein and Hawking, he has walked up to the threshold of “Our Lord, You did not create this in vain” (3:191) and paused there. I admire him, and I pray for him.

One day every veil will be lifted:

لَّقَدْ كُنتَ فِي غَفْلَةٍ مِّنْ هَٰذَا فَكَشَفْنَا عَنكَ غِطَاءَكَ فَبَصَرُكَ الْيَوْمَ حَدِيدٌ

“You were certainly in heedlessness of this, and We have removed from you your cover, so your sight, this Day, is sharp.” (Quran 50:22)

The word is ghaflah again: heedlessness, not hatred. And the veil was “your cover”, not God’s absence. On that Day the evidence will be overwhelming, and for that very reason too late for the free “yes” that love wanted. The time for the free “yes” is now.

Schellenberg asks why a loving God would leave a sincere seeker in the dark. The Quran answers that He does not. He has sworn it:

وَالَّذِينَ جَاهَدُوا فِينَا لَنَهْدِيَنَّهُمْ سُبُلَنَا ۚ وَإِنَّ اللَّهَ لَمَعَ الْمُحْسِنِينَ

“And those who strive for Us – We will surely guide them to Our ways. And indeed, Allah is with the doers of good.” (Quran 29:69)

The light stays on, as Schellenberg himself puts it, unless we close our eyes. jlschellenbergstanford The Quran adds what he left out: when we open them and strive toward the Light, the Light comes toward us, “light upon light”, and walks with us the rest of the way.