Great Does God Exist podcast debate

https://itunes.apple.com/…/institute-biblical-…/id262652632… - podcast # 108 is probably one of the best 'Does God Exist' debates I've listened to. The 2 speakers are so in sync with each other that it's a really informative debate. Too often the atheists in other debates have over simplified views of Christianity and can't fully engage with the Christian theist on those subjects. In this one the atheist representative is Dan Barker - who was once a Christian preacher. Both speakers are well informed and touch on points that have swayed me both ways in the past. Highly recommend.

Resurrection Focus for Research and Some of my Unresolved Concerns about Christianity

Christianity hangs on the resurrection. Whether or not this event and the claims around it were real makes or breaks this 'religion.'  For this reason a thorough examination of the resurrection is crucial and hence it is the topic I am currently researching.

The next source I am examining is a 1981 debate between Ahmed Deeat and Josh McDowell on the topic of "Was Christ Crucified" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7nxQ5_QlvE.) It presents the Muslim vs Christian view points on the subject. I am yet to complete viewing it and will refrain from further comments until I have done so.

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Seeing as I am trying to update this blog once a week for as long as is sustainable, this week I will turn my attention to some of my unresolved concerns about Christianity. I will try to get through as many of them as I can in this session.

Most of these concerns are logic issues and many of them are surrounding elements that are at the heart of Christianity.

1) Sin

I have issues with the concept of Sin. First with its origin. According to research in science, the universe is approximately 14 billion years old (https://www.google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C5CHFA_enAU521AU534&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=age%20of%20the%20universe,) the Earth is about 4.54 Billion years old (https://www.google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C5CHFA_enAU521AU534&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=age+of+the+earth,) first life on Earth started around 3.6 billion years ago and modern humans came into the picture around 200 000 years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolutionary_history_of_life.) The Bible attributes blame to humans for sin and for the imperfections of this 'fallen' world. It seems illogical that the universe is influenced by actions of these tiny creatures - us -  who relatively speaking have only been around for a short time.

The second issue I have is the question of why sin and an imperfect creation were even allowed in the first place. Which leads to my next point.

2) Old Creation vs New Creation & OT vs NT

In the Bible God promises that he will create a new creation in which there will be no sin. So it begs to be asked, why bother with the old imperfect, sin-filled creation at all?

If God is all powerful and all knowing then a) he had the power to create the new creation upfront and b) he could foresee what would happen with the present (old) creation, but still let it happen.

The Bible says that God is loving. Would it not have been more loving to start with the new creation? That way there would never have been evil, suffering, rebellion and a need for hell. On the topic of predestination, I've heard it argued that maybe the old creation occurred so that only people that really wanted to be in God's kingdom (the new creation) could be chosen. Whilst those who don't want to have God as their king (which is the definition of an unbeliever  and of hell - eternal separation from God) don't have to. I.e. free will. But would it not have been more loving to use his omnipresence and omniscience to only create the souls that freely desire to worship him, hence eradicating the need to create defiant souls and send those to hell?

A similar line of reasoning can be applied to the Old Testament vs the New Testament. Why bother going through all the OT judges and prophets who get largely ignored and don't solve the problem of sin? Also, why only offer a relationship to God for one nation of people (Jews) and wait a long time before opening up the offer to all man kind (Gentiles?) Is this kind of favouritism and racism really loving? Why let suffering continue and souls slide between the OT and Jesus?

And then comes the question of the Devil/Satan, our next point.

3) Devil/Satan

The Devil/Satan is associated with sin and evil - perhaps being the root of it all. So then, a) if God is all powerful and can see past/present/future - why even create the Devil/Satan in the first place? and b) why hasn't the Devil/Satan been destroyed - can't or won't an all powerful being eliminate the problem?

Points 2) and 3) make it difficult to reconcile God's qualities of Omnipotence, Omnipresence, Omniscience and Omnibenevolence with his choices and the way things are. They call into question either or both his power or his love.  I would be keen to hear people's responses to these logic issues.

Those are the biggest logic-based concerns I have. I'll return to the remaining issues another time.

The Active Search For Truth Resumes + Thoughts on Josh McDowell's "The Bible is True! - The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict."

I was unsure whether or not to continue this blog as one's search for truth is essentially a private matter. I've decided to journal on my own, but share the essence of what I am or have researched here as having people's input will certainly help my journey.

The trouble is that I've researched a great many things but never logged my thoughts about them. Hence a lot of it has become fuzzy. So there's some back tracking to be done to clarify what I have learnt thus far and what issues I still have concerns about.

I believe in objectivity, so have been examining both pro-theistic and atheistic view points.

My 'freshest' research has been viewing Josh McDowell's documentary "The Bible is True! - The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict." It can be found here on youTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRemWMIy2IY

In this documentary I rediscovered some of the points Lee Strobel had brought up in his "The Case For Christ" book that I had read snippets from in the past as well as a few new points. It reminded me that as a Christian I had always been fairly confident of the historicity of the New Testament. After this documentary, I still feel that way.

A summary of the main points made in this documentary:

• The NT is allegedly the most authoritative manuscript in antiquity - meaning that it holds up better than other ancient history documents when it comes tests used by historians. Relatively speaking it has a shorter time frame between the original (autographa ) and the first copies and there are sufficient copies to reliably recreate the original. 

That's a positive point for the NT. McDowell does however throw me off a little when he says that he's yet to find a teacher or professor who knows this. It puts into question his source which I would have hoped were some Ancient History and/or Theology professors. Being such a massive claim, this is something I will need to follow up on. I have a friend who is studying Ancient History which is one great resource to utilise.

• The NT claims to be written by eye witnesses or record eye witness accounts. Interesting point about the cultural trend of employing scribes to record one's thoughts which helps place gospels such as Mark one step closer to being an eye witness account as he was allegedly Peter's scribe.

• McDowell asserts that the community (people present in the NT accounts and people reading/hearing the NT documents who were alive during the events described) would have corrected any falsehoods within the NT. That Jesus' and the disciples' opponents don't refute their claims about certain points such as events that they refer to within the accounts and also that there are no records of people who lived during the recorded events refuting the NT when is was written and taught.

It is fair to suggest that a) not every single word exchanged at the time was recorded so maybe some refutations of Jesus' + his disciples' opponents may have been missed; b) because documents of the day were written or perishable materials any such non-widely distributed documents of people within living memory of the event refuting any claims in the NT may very well have perished; and c) a lot of people of the day were less educated and hence more likely to believe things without research, which, in turn, slightly lowers the corrective power that McDowell is attributing to the community.

However, I think McDowell's bigger point is that if the NT was complete nonsense, then the Christian movement would never have gotten off the ground. The very fact that the documents survived as did the movement is evidence in and of itself that it mattered to a lot of people and to matter to a lot of people it must have had some credible origin.

• Master illusionist Andre Kole can only explain away a few of the miracles, but most can't be explained away as illusionist's usually need the controlled environment of interiors but most miracles occurred outdoors. Most importantly, he can't explain away the resurrection - meaning that it couldn't have been an illusion. 
• 10-11/12 disciples died a martyrs death. McDowell's point is that because the resurrection could not have been an illusion the disciples would known if it had been a lie and hence would have died for a lie. He makes reference to military warfare and suggests that people would admit a lie once subjected to torture as some of the disciples were. He draws the conclusion that because none of them denied Jesus' resurrection they must have whole-heartedly believed that it was true.

• Finally, he gives us some context of the day to help us understand why the Jew and disciples had difficulty in understanding Jesus' teachings. A) The Romans had taken Israel captive and B) The Old Testament talks about 2 types of messiahs - a suffering and political one. McDowell claims that Israel viewed themselves as the suffering messiah and hence expected a political messiah to free them from captivity and such.

I am not aware of any other sources that make reference to the resurrection. As discussed above, any such documents that weren't considered important and hence copied over and over may very well have perished due to the material they were written on. So that possibly leaves just the NT as our source about the resurrection. It's a lot of pressure for so few documents to have to bear. 

McDowell's context points helps us understand why Jews past and present may reject Jesus. That's another perspective that I would like to follow up on in future.

 So to conclude, McDowell is essentially saying that a) the NT are reliable historical documents  - you can trust that what was written down originally is what we have today; and b) that he thinks the NT is true because it's closely connected to eye witnesses; has no significant refutations to important claims either inside or outside the text -  aside from the Jews who refuted the suffering messiah because they were expecting a political messiah; records a bunch of miracles that can't be explained away by a master illusionist; and the disciples died for their beliefs and would have revealed if they were lying under torture.

So yes, from the Christian apologetics point of view, the NT has a pretty strong case behind it. I would of course like to explore multiple points of view and critiques of these points of view to flesh out as full a picture as possible. That's all I have time for this round.

The God Delusion, etc

I'm not big on blogging. Hence my rarely updating this thing. I've been really occupied with studies and work the past year, but now that my course is finished, I have gotten back into continuing reading the 'God Delusion'. I think Dawkins raises a range of interesting points, and once I'm done with the book I may try to jot down some thoughts about it here. Dawkin's book is definitely not the end of my journey. There's still so much more to look into. I've come to realise that this journey is pretty huge and it will probably take years to touch upon all the sources that ought to be investigated. Having to focus most of my time and energy on survival, the philosophical, scientific, spiritual, historical and so on adventure towards truth is bound to be a slow one. But it is in progress.

Exploring the Reasons behind Atheism and Theism

Not that I expect anyone to be reading this, but just in case I figured I'd wack up a new post to briefly say where I'm at in my journey. Here we go:

I guess in high school, when I started to take Christianity more seriously and learn about what it's really about, I just took it at face value. My parents were 'Christian' - granted non-regular church goers until I was in grade 10, it sounded good, and I guess I just accepted it. Then when I started uni I read 'The Da Vinci Code,' and even though much of what Dan Brown claims to be fact, isn't really according to an non-agended documentary my oldest brother got us to watch; that book might have been the trigger for me developing some doubts about Christianity. Well, maybe that coupled with year 11 and 12 biology and physics...especially the topic of human evolution...which we did a whole term on!

Anyway, uni and other things got me to be more of a thinker in young adulthood, and issues did arise about Christianity which noone could give me a satisfactory answer to. Things like 'If there's going to be a new creation which will be perfect in all ways, why bother with this one first?' 'Why bother with the Old Testament and its old covenant, why not just go straight to the new covenant of the New Testament? Isn't it almost like making a mistake on God's part, and then he had to fix it?' If modern humans have been around for at least 10 000 years, and the beginning of our species began about 1-3 million years ago (rusty on numbers - but something like that from my year 12 'human evolution' biology text book,) then why do all the significant Biblical figures come from a comparably recent history?' 'Why shouldn't women lead/teach men if some of them are better at it?' 'How is showing favourtism to one ethnic group loving?' 'If the devil is the cause of evil, then why doesn't God just eliminate him?' 'I just can't buy into a literal Garden of Eden. It doesn't make sense with evolution. If the story is just symbolic as some people try to defend that, then the tempting of Adam and Eve could never have happened, and how then can humans be blamed for being the cause of sin?' 'I can buy into sin (stupid or immoral decisions that people make) as being the cause of suffering in human lives and relationships, but it doesn't seem to biologically make sense that our actions are the cause of the environmental flaws of this 'fallen world' such as tsunamis, earthquakes, etc?' 'Is it really loving to kill (sacrifice) some people in order to strengthen the faith of and/or bring others to God?'

Basically, certain events in the Bible, theologies and/or inconsistencies with the way the world is have always bugged me, and I'm over hearing the lame 'I guess we'll never know' answer to some of those that mature Christians sometimes give. I tried to accept the unsatisfactory answers I got as some of them weren't central issues to the heart of Christianity, but that won't do anymore.

What I never did, and never thought to do, was to explore in depth the 'for' and 'against' arguments for a) God, b) The Bible, and c) Christianity. Over the last few years, whenever a certain issue plagued me, I was fed apologetics which would half satisfy me to carry on. But apologetics is just one side of the argument. Surrounded by atheists in family, friendships, workplace etc, I figured that (some of ) these people must have just as good a reason not to believe in God/Bible/Christianity as religious people have to actually believe in it. I once went to a Christian talk where the leader put it down to this - you have to look at all the available information and decide for yourself which is more reasonable - atheism or theism. It's only after you've decided which is more reasonable that faith is the final step.

So as, hopefully, an educated thinking member of the human race, I've decided to do just that. Being objective and open minded to anything and everything that atheists and theists use as reasons to support their stance. And then to ultimately re-asssess my allegiances.

I think the prime appeal of theism, and of Christianity in particular, is that the thought of not existing - of losing consciousness forever - is pretty freaky and beyond imagination. The closest thing is sleep, being in a coma or being knocked unconscious. It's at those moments that I creep myself out about this idea that I find myself really hoping that God and an afterlife are real.

So where have I gotten to since my last post? I can say with certainty, that while I'm studying full-time and working 3 full days, there's no way I'll have time to post once a week on this thing like I thought before. I wore myself out physically last term, and this upcoming term promises to be even more work. But in my one week break, I did manage to watch the following documentaries:
-All 6 of 'The Aetheism' Tapes
-'The God Who Wasn't there' documentary
-And I've just started the "Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief "

I also read some more of Dawkins 'God Delusion' and a tiny bit of Strobel's books. During term, I plan to continue watching documentaries as often as I can as I usually watch stuff when I have dinner, so it's manageable. But no, I won't be posting detailed responses. I'll just churn through as much material as I can and let the issues sink and float in my mind. Eventually I'll write about particularly issues and what I've found out about them in both for/agaisnt and my conclusion.

A Christian friend of mine commented that I seem to have a lot of respect for some atheists like the guy at my work and Dawkins. Maybe more so then for some Christians being her concern. My response to that is that I'll give respect when respect is due. Someone like Dawkins has been a leading biologist for decades, and has an admirable manner of presenting arguments clearly and with evidence. He knows what he's talking about, he makes sense, and his points (what I've read/watched so far) correspond with what we see in the world. As for the guy at work, his widely read and further along in years then myself, and such people always have interesting things to say. So to me, that seems like a bit of a cheap way of trying to avoid engaging what these people have to say by questioning their integrity.

I've rambled long enough. In short, so far the atheist camp have some pretty solid down to earth objections to God/Bible/Christianity. I'm yet to explore all of their reasonings, and of course I'd like to read up on Christian responses to these. I hope they're just as reasonable and down to earth. I'm yet to read up on the full extent of Christian apologetics which in theory counter the objections atheists make; but I hope to take it several steps further and see how atheists counter the apologetics, Christians counter the atheists' counter, and on the cycle goes 'til someone has to be wrong...perhaps.

Another back and forth I'd like to do, is to re-explore the case for God/Bible/Chrisitianity - particularly the historical arguments, and cross examine these with non-agenda historians and so on to find out what the bulk of historians really think about the crucial story of Jesus, and perhaps the OT. I've heard slightly different things from the atheist and Christian camps, and want to get to the truth on that.

So in short, lots to do. Plenty of issues yet to be raised. Many hours of footage still to be watched. And lots of page turning that needs to happen. For now, my religious preference is still with Christianity, I just don't 100% buy into it. I'd like to - it sounds nice, but wishful thinking or delusions don't cut it anymore. I gotta know one way or another for sure. Even if as agnostics suggest, we can't really know if there's a God or not, at the very least I should be able to find out the probability of there being a God, and whether or not Christianity and the Bible are reasonable or laughable. Let's dive in!

The God Delusion reading begins

Doco notes yet to be continued another night. In the mean-time:

A few weeks ago a work mate of mine started reading a book by Richard Dawkins called 'The God Delusion.' I had heard of Dawkins before, both having read one of his articles on genes and hearing of him as a prominent scholarly figure with aetheist beliefs ad writings. His reputation, the title of the book, the contents pages and the opinion of my work mate all confirmed that I had to buy this book in order to understand where aestheists are coming from.

The topic is of immense interest for me for 2 main reasons. A) I have aetheist and fallen-away Christian relatives/ in-law who passionately disbelieve in Christianity. And B) The majority of humans (to the best of my knowledge,) do not believe in a God and I'd quite like to know where they're coming from. There has to be a good reason for it. Also, no search for truth could be complete without balanced research. At present, the sources of interest are 1) What Chrisitians/ the Bible says; and b) what non-Christian, particularly atheists, say.

So far I've only read his first preface. The preface is basically him responding to a series common criticism he's received because of and/or about his book. Already I've noticed 2 things. 1) That he makes some really interesting points. And 2) That he has some misconceptions about Christians.

The first interesting point he makes is that 'There is no such thing as a Christian child: only a child of Christian parents (p18.)' He reason that it's a common scholarly view that children are too young to develop a religious opinion. That somewhat makes sense as a) religion is pretty heavy and hard to get your head around; and b) Children are fairly trusting - especially at a young age - and will often accept what they're taught at face value. I see what he's getting at - that children brought up as Christians are a) conditioned to believe their 'religion' and develop their values from their childhood; and b) are therefore so firmly grounded in the only thing they've ever known and held dear that they never really get the chance explore 'religion' in all its enormity and controversy before committing to a belief. In essence, that children will 'be' whatever there parents raise them to be.

Now, from the perspective of a Christian parent, and if the Bible is true, then this is in fact a good thing that children are being brought into a relationship with God right away, developing 'godly' lifestyles etc, etc. At the same time, even I'd agree that the one negative thing that comes of it for some people (be it true or not,) is that it leads to a close-mindedness - where they're unable to momentarily step outside their up-bringing and objectively examine the arguments for and against the Bible, God, Chrisitianity - re-evaluating their initial unquestioned childhood beliefs. I think it's a healthy thing to do when your mind is mature enough for it, as then the decision you ultimately make is something you've decided completely for yourself - not as a conditioned creature.

So many more points to cover, but bed-time again.

The Search for Truth Continues

Last time I wrote hear I'd decided that my search for truth should just continue as an internal thing I do by myself - keep private, etc, etc. But during that period of silence I received a few emails from fairly random people who had stumbled upon my blog and actually found it interesting. Also, I hadn't done much truth seeking. For these reasons I've decided to re-continue this blog with the goals of :
a) forcing myself to summarise and verbalise my findings/ responses to them;
b) opening up a forum of thought where others can challenge or respond to the research I do or my response to them; and
c) the original intention of hoping this helps others find truth if in fact I do find it :)

Before I begin I just wanted to establish some ground 'rules.' I'm working 3 days a week and studying full-time for at least another 15 months, so this isn't going to be a fast pace journey. I only get 4 weeks off from study a yr, and those will be my most active times - this week being one of them. I'd still like to make a post at least every week if possible, but during crunch times that may not happen. Cool?

Then let's begin. Ok, so yesterday I watched episode 1 of the BBC's "The Aetheism Tapes", in which Jonathon Miller interviews anti-theism philosopher Colin McGinn. One of the sources my brother Attila threw my way.

My general attitude to philosophy is that it's quite interesting, but can't ever really prove or disprove anything. What it can do is highlight the strengths or weaknesses of ideas or beliefs; and here McGinn uses philosophical thought to show how illogical he thinks it is to believe in God.

The first thing McGinn mentions is that he is an ant-theist because he believes that 'religion' is harmful and therefore shouldn't exist. He doesn't delve very deeply into the matter, and what he does say I'll mention in a later point. Perhaps he is also looking to things like 'holy wars' for his reasoning? I'd be keen to hear exactly where anti-theists are coming from.

Another less significant point he brought up was that he thinks having a God is more oppressive than not having one as you're constantly being watched - 'Big Brother' style I suppose. I don't read much into this idea because a) it seems like an opinion; and b) it really depends on the nature of the God watching you. A loving parent's gaze is positive, while a cruel dictator's isn't...We'll leave it at that.

Now to the 1st meat of his interview. He essentially thinks that there is no good reason to believe in God. His points are that:
a) There is no solid 'observed' evidence directly proving there is a God; and
b) that there is no fact about the world that can't be explained without God.

He doesn't really go much deeper than that. I think his points are interesting, because it's a kind of a grey area in research (to the best of my knowledge.) The Bible, for the God of Christianity, is the only source which is 'direct' evidence for his existence. The historicity of the Bible is something scholars are divided over - and it's something I definitely need to look deeper into. There are only a few alternate documents I've heard of, such as the writings of early historian, Josephus, (and even these documents have been questioned for authenticity by some scholars;) and these are mostly in relation to mentioning the historical person of Jesus or Christianity movement. So I suppose I can understand where McGinn is coming from given the iffiness of the sources. And I guess he's thinking goes along the lines of 'he needs something better than questionable texts to prove there is a God.'

As for his second point, in the light of straight science, yes there probably are few phenomena that can't be explained at all in scientific terms. But his words imply a supernatural take on things and seems to misunderstand the role of God. From the Christian perspective, the Bible is more about why, not how. In which being able to explain something does not automatically evaporate the need for a God. I once read that if there's a God, he's a God of order, and that he laid down the foundational 'rules' of the universe - i.e. the laws of science. It's like saying, if I understand how this game works, then noone designed and built it. The point goes nowhere.

Also, from both another book I've started but not completed, Lee Strobel's 'The Case for a Creator,' and from some stuff I learnt at uni, I've heard some statistics about the universe and how the chances of things turning out as they did - conditions suitable life - where so slim - that had any single element been only a few degrees off we would never have come to be. There are other similar arguments from science that point to a God. So the argument works both ways. McGinn would have to flesh that one out a bit.


Next up, McGinn put forward some reason not to believe. First he mentioned the 'Ontological argument' from the 15th century. That the definition of God entails that he exists; is existence is apparently an attribute of perfection. His point was that this argument doesn't really make much sense. And I quite agree. It does seem like a rather pointless argument that gets you nowhere but going around in circles. I do not think that's a good reason to disbelieve though. It's just a reason to dismiss this argument as being unhelpful. Also, it's an argument independent of the Christian God of the Bible, so really has no impact as to the question of his existence.

To be continued another night. Gotta go to sleep now :)