Why God chose to be “hands-off”

Part II of my answer to Question #2 (posted Feb. 8, 2021):

In the first part of my answer to this question, I proposed that the evidence is overwhelming that God is not actively present in our corporeal world of the Universe. That conclusion of course leads straight to the question of why He would have chosen that option, assuming that He had the power to be either “hands-on” or “hands-off.”

If God chose the latter option after (a) intelligent life had evolved in the Universe and (b) He knew such life could suffer intensely and undeservedly, His decision not to help would obviously conflict with our traditional image of a benevolent deity. That suggests to me that His decision not to intervene under any circumstances was made before there was any form of life in the Universe or even before there was a Universe.

The timing of His decision helps us determine why God created a Universe that was capable of generating intelligent life on its own. It would have been  much faster and more predictable for Him to have created countless worlds populated by many kinds of beings designed by God in His own image essentially, but instead of that, perhaps He wanted something more than limited duplications of Himself. For example, if He wished to expand His knowledge and experience beyond that of existing alone in His own world before there was any other, He would have wanted entirely different and independent forms of thinking creatures who might be capable of creating completely new kinds of knowledge and experience. To do that, they would have to exist entirely separate from Him and totally beyond His influence or control. In short, their free will had to be 100% for such a plan to succeed.

That would explain why He created a gigantic Universe with random chance and decay as engines of constant Change, subject to the laws of nature for stability and the ability to organize parts of itself. In essence, to remove Himself entirely from the process of designing cognitive beings, God devised an independent system with the potential to generate different forms of intelligent life by means of undirected and therefore unpredictable Change we know as evolution. And that system, as slow and erratic as it is, has succeeded in producing intelligent life on our own small planet and probably many, many more. 

However, even if I’m correct that God, for His own good reasons, is not now and never has been actively present in the Universe and has never intervened in our affairs, that does not mean that we and others like us are alone in this vast Universe or that God has no interest in our existence, experience, or future, but that’s a topic for another day.