Zaptruder said:
Sorry to be a bother link...
but ultimately, faith is belief without a foundation of logic or material evidence. You can build things upon matter, but without foundation, it's just a castle in the sky; i.e. unreal.
At the foundation of belief in an entity would be necessarily explaining the existence of the entity...
how can you prove beyond doubt... that the christian God, who is often identified as Jehova among other things is real and exists?
Remember... even if you manage to some how successfully say that a sentient entity created the universe, you'd have to connect the point between that and the Christian God that you recognise (no mean feat).
Also as an aside, how can you prove that the Bible and all its content was divinely inspire 'word of God' material, rather than product of several people over the course of a few hundred or a thousand plus years?
Hey Zaptruder, been a while
No bother at all. Faith, at least the biblical understanding of it, is more akin to trust, then to "believing in something you have no good reason to believe in." To have faith in something already assumes that something's existence, like you said. You have faith (trust) in something based on past experiences, which is a good reason why faith itself is somewhat personal. If I found a million dollars and had to leave it with someone, who would I leave it with? My best friend whom I've known for ten years, or some stranger on the street? Obviously, my best friend, because over the years I have found that I can trust his integrity and he won't steal the money! I have faith in my friend's word based on past experience, while if I left it with the stranger, I'd be showing "blind" faith in his word, which I have no evidence for.
Biblical faith is built on a firm foundation of reason and logic, but the actual faith is more subjective then objective. To say "I have faith in God" does not mean that I believe the Christian God exists because I have faith, but I have faith because I first believed. Biblical faith (I want to emphasize the difference between the common conceptions of faith) comes after the fact, and is just like trust. I trust that God will keep His promise. I trust that my sins are forgiven. I trust that God hear my prayers. Replace "trust" with "have faith" in those sentences and you can see the meaning of Biblical faith. My faith is strengthened when more "evidence" comes to light. For example when prayers get answered. Faith is based on past evidence. That is how it is used in the Bible. We moderns tend to use it in a different sense, which is why we sometimes tend to look down on people who "live by faith."
If you would like a better exposition on the meaning of Biblical faith, I can point you here:
http://www.tektonics.org/whatis/whatfaith.html
Now, not to attempt to sidestep, but I dont think much anything can be shown to be "beyond doubt." Even within science, a good scientist will explain that things can be known with certainty and believed for very good reasons, but to know the absolute certainty of this or that fact is not entirely possible. We can come incredibly close on many things, but absolute certainty, beyond any doubt, is not entirely possible. There are limits to our ability to know things "beyond any doubt."
For example, even though I'm quite confident you exist, do I know this beyond a doubt? Can you even prove your own existence to me beyond any doubt? You, as well as this thread, may only be a figment of my imagination. I think you are asking me for evidence of God that even you cannot provide me for your own existence.
While I may have done so in the past, I have come to know my own limitations in knowing things since then. While I do not claim absolute proof in the existence of God, I do think there are some very good reasons to believe that a supreme god does exist.
One of these is the Bible. Now, as I mentioned above, I prefer reason and logic over other things. I require evidence, personally. None of that total blind faith for me. I can of course appeal to my own experiences as a Christian, but those only mean something to me, not you. And what of other non-Christian religious experiences then? So I do not prefer the subjective "evidence."
I like the objective evidence. The kind that can be tested in as much as it can be, or as far as historical evidence can be tested. The Bible has much history in it. It is rooted in history, and many of the stories in it take place in a historical setting. This information can be tested. If it is highly reliable, while it may not prove it is the Word of God, it certainly cannot take away from that claim then.
Other areas of the Bible can be tested as well. Is it internally consistent? Externally consistent? What about non-Biblical accounts of the same event? The Bible is a very unique book. It was not written by only a few men, but by 40 or so men, most of whom wrote their respective books completely independent of each other. Not over a few hundred years, but over 1,500 years. In three different languages and on three different continents. By men of considerable difference in lifestyle and occupation. Some where shepherds, kings, generals, lawyers, fishermen, and tent-makers to name a few. Additionally, the Bible is 66 separate books that represent a broad range of styles of literature. I think one needs to be familiar with these ancient styles before they attempt to criticize the text. These styles include poetry, narrative, treaty, wisdom, apocalyptic, history, biography, and epistles.
We have many, many (read: thousands) of manuscripts and fragments in our possession, and also thousands of quotations from these manuscripts of the Bible by people who were the first recipients of the texts. We can compare all these copies of Bible books with each other and develop a "family tree" so to speak of the manuscripts, so we can determine how reliable the Old and New Testament was transmitted to us down the ages. In other words, we do this so we can see if we can be confident that we have the "original" biblical writings.
For a more in-depth discussion of this section, go here:
http://www.tektonics.org/TK-T.html and scroll down to the section labeled "Textual Criticism."
This all does not mean it is from God, but when it is realized that this incredibly diverse book has a very central theme and a very central main character or "hero," and it does not obviously contradict itself (this is a topic in itself, and if you have examples which do exist, I'd recommend first looking them up in the website that I keep posting before you reply to it here, to see if they are valid "contradictions"), it certainly does not detract from the claim that the Bible is the Word of God. I can personally say that I have not encountered a so called contradiction in the text that could not be reasonably resolved by using standard and accepted methods of manuscript and textual methodology. Nor does it disagree with accepted historical data (when correctly interpreted, so dont break out Genesis 1 on me!)
All this is just the parts of the Bible that can be easily (with a degree of work and research actually, but the information is out there for all who care to look for it. Start out at the website I have provided here) verified and seen to be trustworthy in it's record of events. Once the actual theology of the Bible is understood (not absolutely, but at least how it all fits together) then you are able to see the "Big Picture" of the entire Bible, and how it fits into the history of man and what it all means. This bit of evidence is almost good enough by itself to convince me of the truth of Christianity.
I have been studying it for three years, intently, and on my own. I will soon major in Biblical studies and Theology in college, with the goal to attend seminary to get my Masters in these subjects, and later on, my PhD. Believing in Christianity does not make my life any easier or better or anything like that. I do this because with the evidence that I have seen and studied, there is absolutely no way I can turn my back on it and consider myself reasonable in doing so. No other faith or religion out there has the evidence backing it that the Bible does. Very few, if any, even come close!
100% proof beyond a shadow of a doubt? No, I dont claim that. But as with science, a theory is accepted based on it's ability to explain the data (and predict future discoveries, which in the past, the Bible has been successful at doing, such as in the realm of historical discoveries. In addition, the change in a person's life can be included, which the Bible easily excels at throughout much of history, but then you get into the realm of the subjective, which I prefer to stay out of in discussions such as this, for the time being).
The best theory that explains the evidence is that there is a God, the Bible is His Word, and eternal life is found only in Jesus Christ. I have yet to come across an alternative that better explains the Bible.
The site I have listed previously (
http://www.tektonics.org/ ) is a good place to start (but not end at!) if you are interested in all this evidence that I speak of. Look at it for yourself and decide. I know what I know because I have seen it, I have read it, learned it, understood it, and tested it. That's really the best thing that I can offer you as an answer to your question. I can drone on and on and on about this evidence or that, which even I get tired of doing, or I can just say "hey, check this out for yourself," which I prefer doing anyways. Hey, it saves me from having to retype it all
And now, sleep! ZZZzzzZZZzzzZZZ
