WTxDaddy
Community Member
Member # 7227
|
posted
I wrote this last year in response to questions about the existence of God, the validity of Christianity & outright claims that there is no God in a college BBS. As I am no scholar, I wrote mostly from the heart. I would be interested in hearing your opinions of this writing, as it was my first attempt at apologetics:
Faith & Evidence
People who doubt the existence of God, or who claim there is absolutely no God, no divine being, or no divine intelligence often point to the lack of physical evidence for such a proposition. I presume this has been an inquiry since the first humans were able to think abstractly. Why are we here? Who, if anybody, put us here? How did we come to exist? What is faith and why do people have faith in a Divine Being?
Agnostics & atheists dislike the use of Scripture when employed as proof of the very thing Scripture purports to reveal. I suppose Scripture is viewed as the written propaganda contrived to support the proposition that there is one God, that He created the universe, that humanity fell from grace by following its own path and that God redeemed humanity (or offered redemption) through Himself manifested as the Christ, His only begotten Son. I will quote Scripture here, not to prove the point, but to make the proposition and demonstrate the difficulty of this entire inquiry.
Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (KJV)
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (NIV
And faith is of things hoped for a confidence, of matters not seen a conviction, (Young’s Literal translation)
So the difficulty here is that the very thing sought to be proved - the reason or basis for faith, purports to be proved by the existence of faith itself. So we will have to look elsewhere for the basis of faith.
Some people clamor for proof of the existence of God. Some argue that faith would be meaningless if God were to provide proof of His power and authority over the universe, because their devotion to Him would not be voluntary, or of their own free will, but coerced out of fear. It probably would be easier for us to believe, if God indeed worked great feats in our presence, but historically, this has not been much help to humans and their loyalty to God. The Scripture indicates, God did all sorts of great things for the people before their very eyes, we call them “miracles”, but the people always seemed to forget about them. When He parted the waters of the Red Sea, when He made a pillar of fire protect the Israelites from the Egyptians, when He caused water to flow out of a rock, when He caused bread (manna) to fall from heaven to feed the Israelites - after witnessing all of these wonderful things, they still turned away from Him and His ways. How fickle is humanity. Even when given unmitigated proof of His power, they managed to forget about Him. They turned back to their petty bickering and jockeying for political power, their interest in material wealth and pursuit of physical pleasures. The impression made on their minds was short-lived and they did not amend their lives, or live as if they’d learned, or seen the power of a Divine Being demonstrated. Why is that? I cannot say. As a human, I know only too well my own failings and falling from a state of grace back into the pettiness of everyday life and temporal concerns. I am astonished that I can experience the very real influence of the Holy Spirit (what I perceive to be the Spirit of God touching me, body & soul) when at prayer, or when in church, or where-ever and then in a few hours, I get bogged down in my earthly life, disagreements with family members or co-workers, bills needing to be paid, chores needing to be done, dissatisfaction with a product or service. And I do all this, knowing - being confident that there is so much more waiting for me, yet I let myself be beaten down by life’s daily difficulties and inconveniences. This joy and happiness I experience from time to time, welling up inside me and seeming to overflow, making my whole body tingle with elation - and I fall right back into the hum-drum existence of the average human. So, although I have not witnessed these great miracles, I can understand how it is possible that humans can experienced something marvelous at the hand of God and yet, easily get distracted by earthly matters & disputes and desires and not be mindful of the wonderful thing(s) already experienced. For this reason, I believe that God is reluctant to exercise His power in this manner - to demonstrate to any particular human, or group of humans, that He is in fact God and has power over everything. It just doesn’t have a lasting effect on us. It causes some immediate excitement, but then, we forget about it and go on with our routine. There is also the admonition not to tempt the Lord your God.
Deut. 6:16
You shall not tempt and try the Lord your God...... (Amplified Bible)
Ye shall not tempt the LORD your God... (KJV)
"You shall not put the LORD your God to the test... (ESV)
Matt 4:7
Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. (KJV)
So then, we are not permitted to test Him, or challenge Him, to ask Him to prove He is who He claims to be and to do some sign, or work for us to prove it. Indeed, if there is a God and He is revealed to us in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures and in Yeshua, how can we as mere creatures of His endeavor rightfully require that He prove himself to us? So, we are going to have to make this inquiry without any physical proof, as far as human intelligence can discern physical proof.
In science, many theories are put forth over the centuries, which have observation as their basis in formation. Scientists have often known that mixing one agent with another will cause a certain result, but for a long, long time, they knew the result, that it was constant under the same conditions, but yet had no way to explain it, because they did not really know what was happening, or how it happened.
Similarly, we as every day humans make assessments of events based on what we perceive ourselves and how we interpret the reactions & behavior of others. When we approach a stadium full of sports fans, or concert-goers and we hear a roar from the crowd, we assume that something has occurred inside the stadium, which either pleased or displeased the crowd, depending on what we hear. We can discern that a team has scored, or a particularly popular song was just played. We need not experience it ourselves for us to become convinced that the event actually took place.
This is the approach I think we must take when discerning whether the events of the Bible, specifically the New Testament, are in fact true, or at least were believed to have been true by the writers. Face it, a lot of the events described in the Bible are out-of-this-world fantastic, or from a purely logical perspective, the accounts of events are preposterous.
As for what we humans would consider evidence today, I’d have to point to creation itself. The complexities of living organisms & the ecosystems in which they function are, to my mind, too vast to have been random results of random phenomena. We can even scientifically observe the regularity with which certain phenomena occur: the seasons change, the weather patterns bring rain, drought, wind or heat. We even refer to weather systems. We refer to ecosystems. There seems to be some design to it all. We understand - to the extent we humans can understand at this point - how much of nature works and interacts. We see symbiotic relationships between different species - even some involving us humans! We know, through empirical evidence, that biological life on this planet has at its foundation DNA and various chemical reactions which cause the DNA to regulate the growth of a creature and maintain its form and cause it to follow a certain pattern, or blueprint. We also know that DNA undergoes processes, leading to other living organisms, some of which are identical or similar to the parent(s) and some of which involve mutations and cause the offspring to resemble the parents less. For me, this is some physical evidence that some intelligent entity set the process in motion. It has regularity, predictability (as far as we can predict) and we can prove to our satisfaction that these processes occur in a particular way, with regularity and result in a particular end. Let me say that this intelligent entity is “God”. If “God” created all of this and set the processes in motion (I will not get into the evolution v. creationism argument here), how could it be that this “God” would not be able to intervene in the very processes He set up? If He can intervene, then he can reveal Himself to His creatures and can cause them to acknowledge His existence, or at least provide them with the ability to perceive His existence in some manner.
Since nothing occurring in the natural world appears to be pointless, i.e. having no discernible purpose, it would seem that all the things which exist in nature and all the events in nature have some purpose. Some events destroy living creatures, some of them encourage and sustain life. Some of them destroy existing life and make way for new. Since the world is full of creatures, which appear to run simply on instinct: eat, reproduce, protect the young, it is possible to argue that life could sustain itself on this planet indefinitely without the life forms “evolving” higher intellect, or developing the ability to think abstractly, or becoming sentient beings. What purpose would emotion play in such a system? Our own experience teaches us that emotion and emotional reactions to events often cause our own demise. But they often cause us to achieve that which we should not be able to also. There must be a reason that humans are aware of their own being and feel emotion and are aware that their physical bodies may not necessarily contain all that makes up the self.
We humans see color. We laugh. We developed language and the words & phrases we use can have literal and figurative meanings. It is more than mere existence and subsistence we strive for & experience. We seek pleasures. We seek enjoyment. We seek happiness. The fact that we can even conceive of such a thing as happiness, or joy seems to fly in the face of what the natural world demonstrates to us - it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with sustaining life. (I know there is some evidence that other creatures feel happiness & sadness: chimpanzees, cetaceans - and I know dogs can feel happiness, due to the way my old dog would react when I’d come home from college to visit. Her reaction was different when I’d just been gone for a few minutes or hours, from when I’d been gone for weeks. My family used to love to be present when I came in the door just to see the dog’s reaction to my arrival! This made me think, dogs can perceive time too!) But in the natural systems we observe, happiness & the experience thereof doesn’t seem to serve any biological purpose. If the random occurrence & development of biological & geological systems seems preposterous, how much more preposterous is experiencing happiness? Laughter? Does seeing color serve a purpose? Many creatures apparently do not, but then a lot of them have smell, or hearing as their chief sense. Some creatures do not see at all, but live on oblivious to the lack of sight.
To me, one of the things which tends to indicate something more than random chemical reactions causing life on earth is music and art. Every human culture in homo sapiens - and perhaps others - seems to have produced music and art of some sort. Rhythmic noise produced for pleasure, sometimes for a specific purpose - worship of deities, praise of bravery of individual members of the group, or as a manner to remember the deeds & events occurring to & within the group. Renderings of images of animals, people, plants, landscapes, events - some for simple pleasure for their aesthetic properties and some to commemorate persons, events or other things - why? What possible biological purpose could this serve? And as music developed into the complex “system” it is today, what function does that serve? Why is it that we listen to particular genres of music? It does not sustain our lives (unless you’re making a living at it). Why do some of us like “classical” music and others rock-n-roll? Why do we individuals like some genres of art and not others? Why do some of us produce works of art that the rest of us deem “better” than others? Why are some of us gifted with the ability to produce art, which others find aesthetically pleasing, while others have no such gift? Again, we’re getting into happiness & enjoyment, the biological function of which, I submit, cannot be ascertained.
Another thing which causes me to think, there is something more out there than simple chemistry & biological function - human perception of beauty. What biological, life-sustaining purpose does this serve? And it varies so greatly from individual to individual and culture to culture. What purpose could perceiving beauty have for humanity?
And the chief item I think indicates some sort of intelligence behind life on earth is love. Not erotic love (for that certainly has some instinctive characteristics common to all life forms and is arguably driven by chemistry), but the caritas love. Love that causes one to value the life of another human more than the life of one’s self. To be sure, animals will put themselves at risk to protect their young, to ensure the continuation of the species - that is logical and has an obvious purpose or biological function. But even in these instances, we see situations in which the maternal or paternal animal will give up & allow the offspring to be devoured by a predator, in order to preserve its own life. The biological function here would be, better to preserve the individual, who has reached sexual maturity & can reproduce than to sacrifice it over one, which has not yet shown itself strong enough to survive, or to reproduce & benefit the continuation of the species. In some antelope, if a female is pursued by a predator while pregnant, she can spontaneously abort the fetus while running, giving the predator its reward for predation and preserving the life and future reproductive capabilities of the maternal adult. Sometimes, the weak will be sacrificed to preserve the strong. Yet in the human race, depending on particular individuals, of course, our inclination (I don’t want to call it an instinct) is to protect the weak from others who are strong. The pure, selfless, devotional love which causes us to sacrifice our own comfort, well-being even our own life is the most powerful force we encounter. This is the kind of love a human parent feels for a child. I myself believed that, as a relatively intelligent person, I knew an awful lot and one of the things I knew was love. I’d loved my family, I’d loved romantically, I’d loved pets and I’d loved my country. But upon becoming a father, I was overwhelmed by the love I felt for my daughter. It is the single-most powerful emotion I’ve ever experienced. And I found it remarkably like the upswelling of emotion and “joy” I experience from time to time while worshipping, or while praying to, or reading the Scriptures of this supposed divine, immortal intelligence I identify as “God”. To be sure, this parental love could have a definite biological purpose to sustain the species - I would do what I could to ensure the survival of my offspring, but it is more than this. The joy I feel when my daughter makes me laugh, or when she hugs me, or when she figures something out for the first time and I am assured of her intellect - the joy felt in these moments cannot have a biological function. It has nothing whatsoever to do with her survival, or mine. It is pure non-physical pleasure, but for me it has physical effects. I can feel it rising in my chest - sometimes to the point I think I might burst. Like the joy is so overwhelming, I cannot possibly contain it. I believe many scientists can point to chemical reactions in the brains of humans, who experience pleasures of all sorts, but even if this one has some relation to brain chemistry, I am at a loss to ascertain its function in preserving life and the continuation of the species.
So I submit to you that humanity’s ability to be aware of life & death, our own existence & its temporary nature, our ability to experience emotions not related to self-sustenance, or species preservation, our ability to laugh, detect subtleties in color and hue, our ability to experience happiness, our desire to be happy, our creation of & appreciation for music and art and finally our ability to love so strongly, it overwhelms us at times all demonstrate that there is something other than chemistry influencing our lives and life in the world. All of these things seem to have little or no natural purpose that tends to support the existence of our bodies, or lead to biological strength, or perpetuation of the human species. They have some other purpose, but how could such a purpose be achieved at random? These ephemeral experiences, which are so mysterious, yet common to all of us - why?
Perhaps the God mentioned so often in Judeo-Christian Scripture really exists? So we turn to look into the claims of the Christian Scriptures, the crux of which is that God manifested Himself as a human, lived and died as a human, yet kept all the law of God and His physical death and subsequent resurrection enabled humanity to live eternally, if the “gift” is accepted, even after physical death.
Of Yeshua’s Claim to be Immortal/Divine
New Testament Scripture holds a written account of what the early followers of Yeshua witnessed, heard and did, as well as some of the statements and acts of Yeshua Himself. Let’s start with the claims of Christians that Yeshua is divine and that He is omnipotent. Yeshua claimed to be equal to God. He is reported to have made several of these claims Himself.
John 8:58
Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. (KJV)
“I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" (NIV)
This statements made to Jews 2,000 years ago, clearly means to them that Yeshua claims to have existed as long as God and even claims to be God by stating “I Am”. This is the name by which God called Himself when he dealt with Moses on Mt. Sinai.Exodus 3:13-14
13And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?
14And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
Then we get into the claim that this Yeshua would be killed and then come back to life.
Matthew 17:22-23
"The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. 23They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life." (NIV)
Mark 8:31
...that he must be killed and after three days rise again. (NIV)
Mark 9:31
...They will kill him, and after three days he will rise." (NIV)
John 2:19
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." (NASB)
At the transfiguration, Yeshua indicates, He will be dead at some point & come back to life:
Matthew 17:9
Jesus commanded them, saying, "Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man has risen from the dead." (NASB)
Mark 10:34
They will mock Him and spit on Him, and scourge Him and kill Him, and three days later He will rise again." (NASB)
Arguably, any human who claims he can return from the dead is viewed as either a liar, or mentally disturbed. This is a preposterous statement when uttered by any human, but it would not be, if uttered by an immortal being. The desire of humanity to prolong existence is an ancient one and many different peoples have some stories, or accounts in their lore of immortality attained by humans, or at least being extended to humans by truly immortal beings. But in the monotheistic world of Palestine 2,000 years ago and in the Roman Empire, this claim would’ve been received much as it would be today: the claimant is either lying, or mentally disturbed.
Yet one would expect that if anybody, indeed this Yeshua character, were in fact immortal, he would not be subject to physical death as we are. That his powers would either prevent his death, or if a physical body were occupied by him and were killed, he could bring it back to life. This is what Yeshua claimed. He outright told the Jewish people, that He was one with God, that He was sent to redeem the world and that, even if He were put to death, He would live again. How can such a claim be true?
One way we can discern the truth of this claim and the claims of His followers following His crucifixion, is to look at the behavior of those around the events at the time. We know that there was such a person named Yeshua, who came from Nazareth and was executed by the Romans as even the pagan historians of the time document this. We know that the followers of Yeshua claimed that He was alive after the Roman Empire had executed Him. We also have accounts of the followers being filled with fear after His execution. They were afraid of the Roman and Temple authorities and they hid. But something caused them to come out into public and proclaim that Yeshua had risen from the dead and was alive right now.
We know that the authorities had killed the leader of this collection of Jews and that it was very likely, the authorities would seek to imprison, or execute the followers also. Knowing this, why would these relatively unsophisticated people suddenly come out in the open and speak about this Yeshua guy, who’d been convicted of a crime and executed - and claim He was no longer dead at that? Something happened to cause this. Perhaps they all experienced a collective illusion, or hallucination, seeing the risen Yeshua. Or perhaps the Scripture is correct that Yeshua actually came back to life and appeared to them and others, speaking with them and spending time with them. If it is not true, then these people were lying, or under some delusion held as a group.
Why would anybody lie? What is the purpose of lying at all? Well, usually, humans lie to protect themselves or their property, either their reputations, or their families, or their own physical well-being, or their home, or their wealth, or the potential for acquiring wealth. All these things are worth protecting/achieving and sometimes, humans lie to do so. If this is a lie, then there must have been a reason to tell this lie and to tell it all over the Roman Empire. Did they accumulate wealth? It appears they did not, living in poverty and subsisting day-to-day. Did they obtain political power & influence? Absolutely not, as they were persecuted by both Roman & Jewish authorities. Other than a mass-delusion, what could make these people speak in public about Yeshua being alive and rising into heaven? If they themselves were convinced of it, this could cause them to make the statements & tell the story. Why would they do this, knowing that it placed all of them in the sights of the authorities, who sought to stamp out this Yeshua business altogether? So their behavior after the crucifixion may indicate that they were certain, Yeshua, who they’d seen arrested & killed, was alive again and had visited them, as they claimed.
If a lie, why have women be the original witnesses? At that time, women were considered to be so unreliable, they were not even allowed to testify in court. If you’re going to perpetrate a hoax on society, why take steps at the outset, which would bring the claim into doubt from the very beginning? And why have the claim made by people, who were not well-educated, who were simple, unsophisticated laborers?
And if imprisonment, torture and death were known to be the consequences of proclaiming this story to the public, why would these people risk that? And why did so many continue to proclaim it in the face of their persecution, torture & execution? For centuries, these followers of Yeshua were mistreated, hounded by government and periodically imprisoned, tortured & killed. What is the purpose of continuing to tell this tale, knowing that the response from the humans in government would be to kill you, as you’d seen your co-followers killed? No wealth was accumulated by the followers and their reward on earth for their behavior & endeavors was pain and death. Whatever caused them to take the risk was apparently worth it to them. The stimulus for preaching as they did must have been tremendous, given what they knew awaited them for doing so.
And what of Saul of Tarsus? He was one of the chief persecutors of these Yeshua-followers, believing that they were teaching heresy and he sought to put an end to their profession of this belief in a risen Yeshua. Yet in the middle of his mission to destroy these Yeshua-followers, he became convinced that what the Yeshua-followers were saying about Yeshua was true. In Acts 9, you see the encounter Saul had with this Yeshua. Later on in Acts, you see Saul, now called Paul, going about the empire teaching people the very thing, he sought to defeat: the idea that Yeshua was indeed alive after having been killed and that Yeshua was the messiah. Paul then writes numerous letters to various congregations over the years, explaining how they ought to behave and run their churches and revealing to them things revealed to him by God. Many of these letters were copied & distributed to the churches in the empire and some came to be collected in what we call the Bible as the Epistles. We also know that Paul ended up in Rome with Simon-Peter and that both were harassed for years and eventually put to death. Peter was crucified and Paul was beheaded. So in the end of their earthly lives, they both were killed brutally because they kept on spreading this message about Yeshua.
Over the next few centuries, we have countless stories of people being imprisoned, tortured and killed for their faith in this Yeshua person. These people did not witness the things themselves, which were witnessed by the original followers, or Paul. Yet, they clung to their belief that Yeshua was, as He said, the way and the truth and the life. (John 14:6)
So what we have here is a collection of accounts of the behavior of relatively simple people, who became emboldened in the face of persecution - and in one case the persecutor himself becomes one of the chief proponents of the message - to spread this message that Yeshua was divine, that He was killed and rose to life again and that through Him, we all can attain eternal life. What an extraordinary thing to claim. And to claim it as the truth even in the face of certain and often painful death. Either these people were completely crazy - crazy enough to die for a lie, or they were convinced it was true. Either this Yeshua was a lunatic Himself - looney enough to be killed for saying it, or He was who He said He was (and then, indeed would still be today).
So the physical evidence offered to us is the great number of believers, along with eye-witness accounts of certain events. Some of the witnesses have been gone from this earth for two millennia or more and yet their experiences and writings have helped to inspire even more people to believe this preposterous account of the life, death, resurrection & purpose of Yeshua from Nazareth. Even today, there are people on the planet, who claim to have had encounters with Yeshua, many centuries after He was killed and buried and even more who believe it to the extent that they will suffer death & torture for it. I would hope that were I ever to be unfortunate enough to be tested in this way, that I would not renounce my faith - I don’t think I would ever give it up in my heart, but would I say the things the torturers wanted to hear?
The process of conversion from unbelief to belief has always fascinated me and I sometimes seek out such stories. One I read years ago, Lee Strobel’s The Case For Christ. I enjoyed this book as he took me through his investigation of Christianity - prompted by his wife’s conversion & noticeable, lasting behavioral changes - and how he went through many intellectual analyses of the “evidence”. The only fault I found with the book is, in reading it, you can tell it was written after he’d become convinced of the truth of the Christian Gospel. I would have preferred to read the truly cynical, atheist take he had on Christianity prior to his conversion and watch him progress to belief through his writing. I recommend it to those of y’all, who might be interested in seeing what a former atheist now thinks & believes. But know, that it is obvious throughout the book, that he is a believer.
Strobel’s writing has helped me to better articulate my own interpretation and understanding of this Christianity thing, to which I adhere. Above are the reasons and arguments I make for the existence of the one God, revealed to the Hebrews thousands of years ago and in the accuracy and reliability of the story that God came into the world as a human being, lived and died and made it possible for all humans to come to God and live eternally. But I also believe, each of us must make his or her own inquiry - and not just with the mind - but with the heart as well.
--------------------
Texaner dritter Generation deutscher Abstammung
Posts: 7 | From: Texas | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged | 
|
Printer-friendly view of this topic
