Evaluating the Assent Principles of the “Divine Hiddenness Argument”, in Schellenberg's Thought

"Divine Hiddenness Argument" is one of the arguments against the existence of God, which has attracted the attention of some religious philosophers in the contemporary era. The introducers of this argument, by referring to some important attributes of the God of monotheistic religions, and the requirements and consequences of accepting these attributes in human life, especially His complete and absolute love for His creatures, try to convince that the real world is devoid of the existence of God, or at least make the possibility of His non-existence appear weaker than the possibility of His existence.
John L. Schellenberg, the Canadian philosopher, has tried to present this matter in the form of various logical arguments in his works, and in his opinion, has tried to make it appear as complete proof against the existence of God. On the other hand, a range of theistic thinkers and philosophers have tried to criticize this argument and show its inadequacy in proving the non-existence of God. This argument is based on the concept and assent principles, whose discussion and analysis will be helpful in the correct understanding of the argument, and the continuation of its criticism.
Although in the works that criticized Schellenberg's “Divine Hiddenness Argument”, useful information about the principles and presuppositions of Schellenberg's argument has been stated, and we have also taken advantage of this information, none of them have discussed this argument from the perspective of assent principles and they have not examined and corrected. In this paper, we are going to investigate Schellenberg's “Divine Hiddenness Argument”.
Principles are the contents and materials on which the problems of science are based, and they can be divided into two parts: concepts and assents. Assent principles refer to propositions that come as an introduction to the arguments and analogies used in a science, and to prove the problems and rules of that science. These propositions are also of two categories: some of them are self-evident, and therefore, do not need proof; while some others are theoretical and need proof, and of course this is done in another science other than assent principles.
The type of assent principles are confirmation and they are propositional and indicate the assent of existence, the truth and reality of propositions, and the issues and subjects of science; in other words, assent principles are issues and reasons that lead to the acceptance of the existence predicables of science problems. In this research, by examining Schellenberg's works, we have tried to extract the assent principles of his interpretations of the “Divine Hiddenness Argument”.

According to the search of valid and indexed scientific documents in scientific sites, so far eight scientific-research articles and two books have been written about the “Divine Hiddenness Argument”. In all of them, the authors have either taken steps in the direction of presenting the “Divine Hiddenness Argument”, or they have mentioned the presuppositions of Schellenberg's argument, but as we will indicate in our research, the assent principles of this argument have not been mentioned by those authors; it is why referring to these principles is considered as the originality of this research, although some researchers have indirectly referred to these principles in their works.

This paper using a descriptive-analytical method, refers to the assent principles of Schellenberg's argument and analyzes them. In the analysis, data is collected from Western and Islamic sources, and rational and descriptive-analytical analysis is used (If necessary).

By examining Schellenberg's works, one can find four assent principles for his argument: 1. the involuntary nature of the belief formation process in humans; 2. God's finality, His incomparability, unsurpassable, and inaccessibility; 3. Ultimism theory; 4. Human free will. The explanation of these matters, along with considerations based on them, will be presented in this research.