Is God hiding? or are our eyes too inferior?

[The Grand Nudger]

It's important to remember that Winter isn't trying to prove anything. He, like all proselytizers, does what he does not to convert people to his faith, but because he's been indoctrinated to preach in order to make it harder for him to leave his own faith.

Which is a shame, imo, because nonsense does nothing but injury to the faith.  

God is either hidden or evident.  Belief in a hidden god is meaningful and moving.  This is expressed many times in old and new magic book.  In many of those cases, this long dark night of the soul is The Event™ that winter is grasping for and failing to describe.  Ultimately, I think it's an undeniable human experience that doesn't even proceed from beliefs in gods in the first place.  The prophets in the ot often wonder why their god, their nation, their people... their friends and family...have failed to show up.  Have failed to help.  Have failed to show proper regard.  Why they have been abandoned.  These are all the same questions- as so brilliantly expressed in the nt when two gospel writers have jesus combining them all into one and crying out to his derelict father, the god of judah.  He resolves this dilemma with respect to his people and nation, exclaiming that they do not know what they do.  Even here, there is no answer from god.  

The fact that islam feels the need to address this apologetically is confirmation that muslims are no different in this regard than their predecessors.  It directly speaks to a great many theological and societal problems.  It's no surprise that they've been taking shots at it for centuries.  That a god would permit, through it's hiddenness, religious conflict..is bewildering to people whose god is purported to be unifying - for starters.  The troubling and very difficult to evade observation that theologies are intrinsically divisive.  Why does god not make itself known..and insomuch as a god is contended to have made itself known, why is it always pear-shaped?  Thankfully, muslims smarter than Mr Bad Eyes over here have an answer to that.  The constant lead ins of "have we not, did we not, can you not see" are not demonstrative arguments or declarations of items in evidence..they are a further exploration of the dark night of the soul - a reminder that we do not, in fact, see these things.  That because we do not see these things we will not believe, and do not obey.  This, in such an understanding, is the main tragedy of our existence.  Forgive us, because we know not what we do...and why would we?