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Athiestic thoughts
After a recent visit from H.G. Bishop Angaelous, i have been doubting my faith and it has been hard for me to think that our whole religion of christianity is true. I have been pretty far away from God for a long time and i dont see my faith what it used to be. I don't know what i should do? It started with deep questions and debates with friends, but now...its starting to scare me because i want to have faith but i dont know what to do. ??? ??? :'( :-[
Comments
Peace and Blessings,
WMa
but i'd also like to add, that maybe you should back off on these debates and deep questions for a while
forgive me for assuming your in your teen years, but i am lol, and when your at this age you shouldnt really partake in these debates unless your sure and ready. i know because i've tried before and got nothing out of them other than doubting my own religion, which is wrong, cause i didnt know everything about my religion to defend it. so first ask abouna or a servant in the church, or read your bible, and ask questions (then get the answers)
youll find yourself not doubting your faith so much, itll just grow stronger
bye~ ;)
http://tasbeha.org/content/community/index.php?board=10;action=display;threadid=3501
God Bless..
When one surveills the totality of religions and juxtaposes each one individually with that of Christianity, there is truly no comparison. There is ample philosophical, historical, existential, cosmological, anthropological and spiritual evidence for the Christian faith. While it would behoove me to sample each of the empirical domains and their relevance to Christianity......the evidence is overwhelming to post altogether.
Although God has not provided enough evidence to coerce or compel an individual into His truth, He has provided enough evidence to persuade men; to make faith in Christ Jesus a most reasonable thing.
Yet, before I am able to denote any evidence to you, you should clarify specifically why your are in doubt with the Christian message. If you have no doubts concerning your theistic worldview, then what precisely has buffeted your Christian outlook as the supreme consummation of that worldview?
I look forward to your response.
God bless you.
If you will? can you share with us what you consider are the key evidences; archeological, anthropological, sociological, existential ,or what ever is handy for you to share, in support of Christianity? For instance if there was an archeological evidence for the existence of Moses and for what he did according to the Bible? When I say that, it does not take account of scriptural verifications such as the Bible rather evidences other than that.
Btw what does spiritual evidence mean?
Thanks.
[shadow=yellow,left]I. Here are some key archeological findings that corroborate the historical reliability of the Old Testament scriptures:[/shadow]
The forthcoming excerpts are taken by one of the many leading Christian apologists, Dr Jay Smith. Dr. Smith has held a doctoral candidate for a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies in London, UK; he readily debates against Islam and it's religious tenants while all the more bestowing credibility for the Christian belief:
1.) "Abraham's name appears in Babylonia as a personal name at the very period of the patriarchs, though the critics believed he was a fictitious character who was redacted back by the later Israelites."
2.) "The field of Abram in Hebron is mentioned in 918 B.C., by the Pharaoh Shishak of Egypt (now also believed to be Ramases II). He had just finished warring in Palestine and inscribed on the walls of his temple at Karnak the name of the great patriarch, proving that even at this early date Abraham was known not in Arabia, as Muslims contend, but in Palestine, the land the Bible places him."
3.) "The Beni Hasan Tomb from the Abrahamic period, depicts Asiatics coming to Egypt during a famine, corresponding with the Biblical account of the plight of the sons of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob'."
4.) "The doors of Sodom (Tell Beit Mirsim) dated to between 2200-1600 B.C. are heavy doors needed for security; the same doors which we find in Genesis 19:9. Yet, if this account had been written between 900-600 B.C., as the critics previously claimed, we would have read about arches and curtains, because security was no longer such a concern then."
5.) "Joseph's price as a slave was 20 shekels (Genesis 37:28), which, according to trade tablets from that period is the correct price for 1,700 B.C. An earlier account would have been cheaper, while a later account would have been more expensive."
6.) "Joseph's Tomb (Joshua 24:32) has possibly been found in Shechem, as in the find there is a mummy, and next to the mummy sits an Egyptian officials sword! Is this mere coincidence?"
7.) "Jericho's excavation showed that the walls fell outwards, echoing Joshua 6:20, enabling the attackers to climb over and into the town. Yet according to the laws of physics, walls of towns always fall inwards! A later redactor would certainly have not made such an obvious mistake, unless he was an eyewitness, as Joshua was."
8.) "David's capture of Jerusalem recounted in II Samuel 5:6-8 and I Chronicles 11:6 speak of Joab using water shafts built by the Jebusites to surprise them and defeat them. Historians had assumed these were simply legendary, until archaeological excavations by R.A.S. Macalister, J.G.Duncan, and Kathleen Kenyon on Ophel now have found these very water shafts."
9.) "Another new and exciting archaeological research is that which has been carried out by the British Egyptologist, David Rohl. Until a few years ago we only had archaeological evidence for the Patriarchal, Davidic and New Testament periods, but little to none for the Mosaic period. Yet one would expect much data on this period due to the cataclysmic events which occurred during that time.
David Rohl (in A Test of Time) has given us a possible reason why, and it is rather simple. It seems that we have simply been off in our dates by almost 300 years! By redating the Pharonic lists in Egypt he has been able to now identify the abandoned city of the Israelite slaves (called Avaris), the death pits from the tenth plague, and Joseph's original tomb and home. There remain many 'tells' yet to uncover."
[shadow=yellow,left] II. Provided below are some key documentary evidence for the Old Testament scriptures:[/shadow]
1.) "The skeptics contended that the Pentateuch could not have been written by Moses, because there was no evidence of any writing that early. Then the Black Stele was found with the detailed laws of Hammurabi which were written 300 years before Moses, and in the same region."
2.) "There was much doubt as to the reliability of the Old Testament documents, since the oldest manuscript in our possession was the Massoretic Text, written in 916 A.D. How, the skeptics asked, can we depend on a set of writings whose earliest manuscripts are so recent?
Then came the amazing discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls written around 125 B.C. These scrolls show us that outside of minute copying errors it is identical to the Massoretic Text and yet it predates it by over 1,000 years! We have further corroboration in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew text, translated around 150-200 B.C."
(External secular evidence for the Scripture's documentation:)
3.) "Discoveries from excavations at Nuzu, Mari and Assyrian, Hittite, Sumerian and Eshunna Codes point out that Hebrew poetry, Mosaic legislation as well as the Hebrew social customs all fit the period and region of the patriarchs."
4.) "According to the historians there were no Hittites at the time of Abraham, thus the historicity of the Biblical accounts describing them was questionable. Now we know from inscriptions of that period that there were 1,200 years of Hittite civilization, much of it corresponding with the Patriarchal period."
5.) "Historians also told us that no such people as the Horites existed. It is these people whom we find mentioned in the genealogy of Esau in Genesis 36:20. Yet now they have been discovered as a group of warriors also living in Mesopotamia during the Patriarchal period."
6.) "The account of Daniel, according to the skeptical historians, must have been written in the second century and not the sixth century B.C. because of all the precise historical detail found in its content. Yet now the sixth century's East India Inscription corresponds with the Daniel 4:30 account of Nebuchadnezzar's building, proving that the author of Daniel must have been an eye-witness from that period. Either way it is amazing."
7.) " The strongest case for extra-Biblical corroboration of the Patriarchal period is found in four sets of tablets which have been and are continuing to be uncovered from that area of the world. They demonstrate that the Biblical account is indeed historically reliable. Let's briefly look at all four sets of tablets.
*Armana tablets: (from Egypt) mention the Habiru or Apiru in Hebrew, which was first applied to Abraham in Genesis 14:13.
*Ebla tablets: 17,000 tablets from Tell Mardikh (Northern Syria), dating from 2300 B.C., shows us that a thousand years before Moses, laws, customs and events were recorded in writing in that part of the world, and that the judicial proceedings and case laws were very similar to the Deuteronomy law code (i.e. Deuteronomy 22:22-30 codes on punishment for sex offenses).
One tablet mentions and lists the five cities of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar in the exact sequence which we find in Genesis 14:8! Until these tablets were uncovered the existence of Sodom and Gomorrah had always been in doubt by historians.
*Mari tablets: (from the Euphrates) mentions king Arriyuk, or Arioch of Genesis 14, and lists the towns of Nahor and Harran (from Genesis 24:10), as well as the names Benjamin and Habiru.
*Nuzi tablets: (from Iraq) speaks about a number of customs which we find in the Pentateuch, such as:
a) a barren wife giving a handmaiden to her husband (i.e. Hagar)
b) a bride chosen for the son by the father (i.e. Rebekah)
c) a dowry paid to the father-in-law (i.e. Jacob)
d) work done to pay a dowry (i.e. Jacob)
e) the unchanging oral will of a father (i.e. Isaac)
f) a father giving his daughter a slave-girl (i.e. Leah, Rachel)
g) the sentence of death for stealing a cult gods (i.e. Jacob). "
Such, are key anthropological ramparts to understanding why Old Testament scriptures can and will continue to be empirically verified. As I mentioned in my previous post, there is a whole array of evidence that can be provided for the reliability of God' existence, the Biblical Scriptures (Both New and Old Testament; more acutely for the latter of the two) and for the Divine personage of Jesus Christ.
However, to provide instances of it within the confines of a single post can at best give a peripheral overview on the preponderant intellectual reasons for faith. If there is specific doubt on the truth provided by the Christian message, then reason for such dubiousness should be denoted in precise terms. This way, the doubt can be quarantined and disected, even unto prospective resolutions.
I speculate that were one to candidly and incredulously search for the truth of God's inspiration and intervention within this world, he would find that no amount of posting could sufficiently do justice to the veritability that has been provided for men to exhume.
God Bless.
Before I comment on it one by one, I would like to inquire more questions and make general assessment on your post:
1) I did not request verification for the existence of God rather evidences which substantiates the claims made by Christianity.
2) One does not have to compare Christianity with Islam to provide a factual data for Christianity in other words there is no need to resort to straw man technique.
3) I was not able to witness from your reply any type of confirmation that will validate the existence of Moses.
And two more questions:
*Is/are there any kind of evidence/s that the Divine personage of Jesus Christ was infact here in this world ? If yes, can you make it available for us?
*This one may be a little bit out of the topic, but since you mentioned Dead sea scrolls, I heard that there were books which were found in those scrolls and used in early Judaism ,how ever, are not included in most contemporary Christianity like Book of enoch. If that is the case, I think one can not site the Dead sea scrolls as an evidence for Christianity, don't you think?
By the way, these are just merely questions. That does not mean ,I, personally need to see a proof for everything to believe; instead I am just attempting to make myself familiar with available facts which support Christianity. As they say the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so I repeat, my main goal out of this is just to be very aware of substantive confirmations for Christianity.
GBU!
Thanks and God bless..
In terms of anthroplogical, not potently......with the exception of the Shroud of Turin. Neverthelss, give me some time and I will post astute reasons pointing to the historical reliability for the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Such an argument is ultimatley faceted around reasons for why books like that of "Enoch" were not included in assembalge of accepted scriputre. The acceptance or rejection of certain writings within the dead sea scrolls does nothing to blunt the argument for the reliability of those the church has accepted, and ultimatley the reliability of the Biblical scriptures. You must first give reasoning for why one should decree the entire Dead Sea Scrolls as fabricated documentation. It is refreshing to find such sincere desire to salvage the Truth of Christ's gospel and His reflected visage within the Scriptures. I commend your earnest interogation.
God Bless.
Well, One more point, it just occured to me: I am aware of the fact that the existence of God is also claimed by Christianity as well as others. There fore, proving the existence of God will not make Chrisianity any better than other religions. At any rate, I believe there is ample evidence in regard to that, so I would prefer if you would not delve in to that.
Thanks and God bless..
Yes, but the evidence is not attuned towards every and any faith. A large amount of evidence for the existence of God demands there be a personal Creator. For instance, the Kalam cosmological argument points for the necessity of a personal, independent Being who initiated the first instance of singularity in the universe. Christianity is the only faith where God has personally made Himself mutually exclusive to those who accept Him and has penetrated the fabric of space and time primarily for man's salvivic prosperity. In every other faith, salvation is ultimatley obtained through the outworkings of man's response to God's existence and His precepts. Only in Christianity, does the seeker who genuinley searches for God.....graciuosly find that he is actually sought by God.
Take care and talk to you soon.
1) Take your time as much as you want to post the reasons to believe the historical reliability for the Divinity of Christ.
2) I think there was a little bit misunderstanding concerning Book of Enoch. What I was trying to say: if one is to provide the dead sea scrolls as his/her proof for the reliablity of their case;in this case the Bible or old testament, then implicitly s/he is admitting that it is a cannonized book. But that is not the case when one considers the Book of Enoch thus that will not give a reasonable ground to present the dead sea scrolls for your defence.
I guess that is it at least for today and God bless...
World renowned apologist, Dr William Lane Craig has presented the most substantiated and coherent defense of the Historicity of the Resurrection in so far as I have salvaged. Significantly, the resurrection is authenticated in terms of its historical reliability--not in terms of any physical remains that substantiate its authenticity. By the same token, most of accepted history is not verified on the basis of physical remnants from the past preserved in contemporary history, but upon documentation from the past that dispenses for us the progression of specific events. If the sources of such documents are judged to be reliable and the frame of time from the initial occurrence of the event to its primary recorded documentation is significantly short, then the event is taken to be reliable history. Such is the case for most historical figures, including Aristotle, Tasitus, and even Alexander the Great. As such, the Gospels and their accounts are considered by many historians to be reliable sources of veritable history--they supercede most ancient documentation in terms of their historical credibility.
However, was one to assume that the gospels were fabricated; this would still hold no badger against the historical reliability of the Resurrection. For, most scholars today have universally rejected the notion that very person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth was a ficticous or mythological figure. Christ is and should be accepted by most academia as historically real both in terms of personhood and expression, regardless of biblical authenticity. Under the garment of such presumption, Dr Craig takes the notion of Christ’s existence a step forward. His reasoning follows that of all the possible explanations given to account for four historically corroborated facts; the honorable burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimithea, the discovery of Christ’s empty tomb, the appearance of Christ to a group of women followers and the cumulative origin of the Christian faith; only one holds logical credibility—that Christ had truly risen from the dead as the apostles proclaimed. Every other attempt to explain away the Resurrection fails to provide a logically consistent scenario in light of each of the four events or is facilitated upon threads that are extraneously too presumptous. To reject the Divinity of Christ one must first account for each of the four scholarly attested events of history and establish a criterion to debunk the credibility of disciple’s explanation.
[shadow=yellow,left]The following excerpt is taken from the book entitled Jesus’ Resurrection Fact or Figment?:[/shadow]
“First, we agree, in Dr. Ludemann’s words, that the resurrection of Jesus is the central point of the Christian religion.
Second we agree that if someone tells us, “What really happened?” it is not enough to tell him to “just believe”.
Third, we agree that the Historian’s task is very much like that of the trial lawyer: to examine the witnesses in order to reconstruct the most probable course of events.
Fourth we agree that if someone does not believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus, he should have the honesty to say that Jesus just rotted away—and that he should not be persecuted for having had the courage to say it.
Fifth, we agree that if someone does believe in Jesus’ resurrection, he should admit that he believes in the miraculous intervention of God in the natural world……I want to share four facts that are widely accepted by New Testament scholars today.
Fact 1: After His crucifixion, Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in the tomb.This fact is highly significant because it means the location of Jesus’ tomb was known. In that case, the disciples could never have proclaimed his resurrection in Jerusalem if the tomb had not been empty. New Testament researchers have established this fist fact on the basis of the following evidence:
* Jesus’ burial is attested in the very old information handed on by Paul in first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 15:3-5)
* The burial is part of very old source material used by Mark in writing his Gospel.
* As a member of the Jewish court that condemned Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to be a Christian invention.
*The burial story itself lacks any traces of legendary development
*No other competing burial story exists.
For these and other reasons, the majority of New Testament critics concur that Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in the tomb. According to the late John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the burial of Jesus in the tomb is “one of the earliest and best attested facts about Jesus.”
Fact 2: On the Sunday following the crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers. Several reasons, including the following have led most scholars to this conclusion:
*The empty tomb story is part of very old source material used by Mark.
*The old information transmitted by Paul in 1 Corinthians implies the fact of the empty tomb
*The story is simple and lacks any signs of legendary embellishment
*The fact that women’s testimony was worthless in first-century Palestine counts in favor of the women’s role in discovering the empty tomb.
*The earliest Jewish allegation that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body shows that the body was in fact missing from the tomb.
I could go on, but I think that enough has been said to indicate why, in the words of Jacob Kremer, an Austrian specialist in the resurrection, “by far most exegetes hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements concerning the empty tomb.”
Fact 3: On multiple occasions and under various circumstances, different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive form the dead. This is almost universally acknowledged among New Testament scholars, for the following reasons:
*The list of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection appearance that is quoted by Paul in 1 Corinthians guarantees that such appearances occurred. These included appearances to Peter, the twelve disciples, the five hundred brethren and James.
*The appearance traditions in the Gospels provide multiple independent attestations of these appearances.
Dr. Ludemann himself concludes, “It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.
Fact 4: The original disciples believed that Jesus was risen from the dead despite their having every reason not to. Think of the situation the disciples faced after Jesus’ crucifixion.
*Their leader was dead. And Jews had no belief in a dying, much less rising, Messiah.
*According to Jewish law, Jesus’ execution as a criminal showed him out to be a heretic, a man literally under the curse of God.
*Jesus’ belief about the afterlife precluded anyone’s rising from the dead before the general resurrection at the end of the world.
Nevertheless, the original disciples believed in and were willing to go to their deaths for the fact of Jesus’ resurrection. Dr. Ludemann himself admits the historical analysis leads to the “abrupt origination of the Eastern faith of the disciples.”
In summary there are four facts agreed upon by the majority of scholars who have written on these subjects that any adequate historical hypothesis must account for: Jesus’ burial by Joseph of Aramithea, the discovery of his empty tomb, his postmortem appearances and the origin of the disciples’ belief in his resurrection….”
“In his book Justifying Historical Descriptions, historian C. B. McCullagh lists six tests used by historians to determine the best explanation for given historical facts. The hypothesis “God raised Jesus from the dead” passes all these tests.
1. It has great explanatory scope. It explains why the tomb was found empty, why the disciples saw postmortem appearances of Jesus and why the Christian faith came into being.
2. It has great explanatory power. It explains why the body of Jesus was gone, why people repeatedly saw Jesus alive despite his earlier public execution and so forth.
3. It is plausible. Given the historical context of Jesus’ own unparalleled life and claims, the resurrection serves as divine confirmation of those radical claims.
4. It is not ad hoc or contrived. It requires only one additional hypothesis—that God exists. And even that need not be an additional hypothesis if you already believe in God’s existence, as Dr. Ludemann and I do.
5. It is in accord with accepted beliefs. The hypothesis “god raised Jesus from the dead” does not in any way conflict with the accepted belief that people don’t rise naturally from the dead. The Christian accepts the belief as wholeheartedly as he accepts the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead.
6. It far outstrips any of its rival theories in meeting conditions 1 through 5. Down through history various rival explanations of the facts have been offered—for example, the conspiracy theory, the apparent death theory, the hallucination theory and so forth. Such hypotheses have been almost universally rejected by contemporary scholarship. No naturalistic hypothesis has attracted a great number of scholars.”
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If anyone feels a chruning antithesis in regard to the espoused argument or needs further clarification, feel free to post your comment and I will do my best to adequately reply to your query.
God bless.
“Seventy weeks are determined For your people and for your holy city, To finish the transgression, To make an end of sins, To make reconciliation for iniquity, To bring in everlasting righteousness, To seal up vision and prophecy, And to anoint the Most Holy. Know therefore and understand, That from the going forth of the command To restore and build Jerusalem Until Messiah the Prince,” (Dan 9:24-25).
“Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.” (Dan 9:27).
Answers to your question can be drawn from the Old Testament alone from many other verses of prophets.
If Jesus is Christ then He must be God incarnate, He is capable and undoubtly has the power to defeat all mankind death by Resurrection. So really, faith is needed not history.
Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, was also filled with the Holy Spirit on the day of John’s birth, and prophesied saying, “Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited and redeemed His people.” God remembered his promise, thus he was named ‘Zacharias’, meaning ‘God remembered’; Zacharias named his son ‘John’, meaning ‘God was compassionate’; and Christ was named ‘Jesus’, meaning ‘God is Savior’. So we see that God remembered, God was compassionate, and God saved.
(ref. http://www.copticnet.com/Books/English Books/H.G. Bishoy/Fulfillment of the Prophecies.pdf)
Remember what Jesus answered the greatest among prophets, John the Baptist, when the latter sent disciples to ask the Lord: "Are You the One or must we wait for another?" (while he knew Jesus is the Son of God, he wanted his disciples to confirm the facts, the miracles and to follow the Messiah, knowing he was to be executed soon).