Hey stu, See ya managed to climb out of your chit-chat hole. In these 'better' threads, don't start preaching about your belief in lill' Gilbert. As many posters here are rather well mannered, don't plaster too many obscenities around either. nono
That's not really true. The problem with proving christianity and the bible true is the method of analysis. People like yourself choose the scientific method, which is like using it to analyze whether to turn the key in the ignition each time you start your car -- it's highly inappropriate. And I bet you still start your car every day without subjecting it to this ridiculous examination, in spite of the fact that car bombs have been known to explode without a hypercritical analysis. It appears that anyone who wants an "out" has one by invoking "you can't prove it's true." It doesn't obviate your responsibility for what you know, however. Based on rules of law used in courts every day, one can prove what you say cannot, based on the preponderance of the evidence. I refer you to Bernard Lonergan's (the great modern philosopher) "Proof of God," and Simon Greenleaf's (one of the founders of the Harvard Law School) treatise, Testimony of the Evangelists: The entire treatise by Simon Greenleaf The bible says that what exists proves that God exists and seeing the world around you eliminates any possible excuse for your ignorance. It seems to me that since you, I, and the universe obviously exist, the onus is on us to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that God does not exist, or failing to do so, to seek him for meaning. Also untrue. What you need to do to make that work is prove the following to be false: "all effects have causes except the ultimate cause." Since you cannot refute that statement, you can't say the ultimate cause must have a cause. Your tautology only exists when you look at the problem in a meaningless way. In other words, it appears reasonable that there is a self-existent cause, but the world and universe as we know it don't possess this cause-less character. Even quantum physics now recognizes that there is no reality without an observer, and that there must be an ultimate observer for there to be an ultimate reality. I refer you to Gerald Schroeder's (PhD from MIT) books about science and the bible. He proves conclusively that science and the bible are in complete agreement about the beginning of the universe, evolution, speciation, and many other things. Not sure what your point is. I agree the bible is a literal document, inspired by God, penned by more than 40 authors from all walks of life over 1500+ years in different places at different times. For the New Testament there are over 24,000 manuscripts whose textual agreement is better than 98%. Try taking 40 different authors and ask them each to write about the same controversial subjects. See whether they create any "harmonious" set of writings, or rather a jumbled anthology. Yet the bible starts and ends with a tree of life, a river of life, the same themes throughout, beginning with the fall of man and ending with man's eternal restoration, all in complete agreement. I can see why you say we should take it literally.
You must be kidding. This is just nonsense. All it says is that they believed it w/utter conviction and were willing to suffer/die/whatever for their beliefs, even though the world was against them. That's it. That's all it says. You don't think the zealots who flew the planes into the twin towers believed in what they were doing and their God as strongly as the Apostles? This is proof of the Christian God? How ridiculous. Har, har. H