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.