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The Case for Faith


Here is an email I received in response to one of my essays.

Proof The Bible Is True : Alex : dragonfire424@yahoo.com : 2006-03-12

Do you honestly want proof that the Bible is true? Truly desire to know if Christian teachings have basis? Lee Strobel an atheist who wanted to prove that Christianity was a horrendous collection of lies gave some interviews to people and in the end became Christian. He wrote of this in his book The Case for Christ.

book cover recommend book⇒The Case For Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesusto book home
by Lee Strobel 978-0-310-20930-0 paperback
birth 1952-01-25 age:66 978-0-310-22646-8 hardcover
publisher Zondervan 978-0-310-29604-1 eBook
published 1998-09-01 978-0-310-24779-1 audio
  B000FC2KEM kindle
Strobel interviews biblical scholars willing to tell him that all evidence points to the truth of the bible. For some reason he avoided the archaeologists who would have told him the exact opposite, e.g. there is no evidence King David ever existed, there is oddly zero evidence the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years and all the elements of Jesus’s life were borrowed from earlier religions.
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The book I want you to read though, that is if you really want to know if Christianity is true, is The Case for Faith which Strobel wrote later.
book cover recommend book⇒The Case For Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianityto book home
by Lee Strobel 978-0-310-23469-2 paperback
birth 1952-01-25 age:66 978-0-310-22015-2 hardcover
publisher Zondervan 978-0-310-56570-3 eBook
published 2000-10-01 978-0-8297-5240-3 audio
  B000FC2KEW kindle
He tackles the question of the goodness of God, which is a completely different question from the accuracy of the bible, or even the existence of God.
  1. If there’s a loving God, why does this pain-wracked world groan under so much suffering and evil?
  2. If the miracles of God contradict science, then how can any rational person believe that they’re true?
  3. If God is morally pure, how can he sanction the slaughter of innocent children as the Old Testament says he did?
  4. If God cares about the people he created, how could he consign so many of them to an eternity of torture in hell just because they didn’t believe the right things about him?
  5. If Jesus is the only way to heaven, then what about the millions of people who have never heard of him?
  6. If God really created the universe, why does the evidence of science compel so many to conclude that the unguided process of evolution accounts for life?
  7. If God is the ultimate overseer of the church, why has it been rife with hypocrisy and brutality throughout the ages?
  8. If I’m still plagued by doubts, then is it still possible to be a Christian?
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Please be open minded when you read The Case for Faith and consider it. There are many different denominations of Christianity due to the differences in interpretation, etc. and probably not one has it exactly right, but they come close.

The Case For Faith does not appear to be about Christianity at all, but rather tries to dance around the problem of evil. If God is so all fired wonderful, why is there so much shit is the universe?. That same question bedevils every non-Christian theistic religion too, except Satanism. You Christians seem to think that the following questions are all equivalent:

  1. Is there a God?
  2. Is God kind and loving?
  3. Was Jesus a divine being?
  4. Is the bible inerrant?
  5. Will God roast me alive for eternity if I don’t pick the right religion’s rules to follow?
  6. Is God really as petty and peevish as depicted in the Bible?

To me, the questions have almost nothing to do with each other. The only thing I am extremely sure of is that the Bible is full of error and contradiction. That has bugger all to do with whether a divine intelligence created the universe. What possible relevance has the speculations of some desert tribes thousands of years ago got to do with something as complex as the big bang or whatever the latest cosmology is? They were even more ignorant than the bishops who persecuted Galileo Galilei. They had no way of knowing anything of significance about the cosmos.

Please don’t shoot down Christianity as a whole just because of individuals.

I look upon these proofs the Bible is true with the same jaundiced eye I look on perpetual motion scams. I have read hundreds of books purporting to show me God or the truth of the bible and not a one delivered. Further, it is utterly impossible the bible is literally true because it is self-contradictory. See my essay where I discuss the contradictions and also the parts of the bible that are patently absurd. I can’t remember the details, but there was a university study that discovered Christianity makes about 1/3 of people behave better than they normally would and 2/3 behave worse. That fits with my own observation. The most evil people I know all Christians. On the other hand, I have to admit that Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King could never have done what they did without their faith, even if their courage was based on misplaced trust. God not protect Mr. King.

Think about the extreme Muslims who act as suicide bombers at even weddings and such. It does not mean all Muslims are like that. In the same way you cannot label all Christians due to some individual’s actions. It would be like someone assuming you were exactly like your brother or mother just because you are in the same family. Please read that book and open your mind. As you accuse Christians of being close-minded/blinded, you have blinded yourself maybe to an even severer degree than them.

The essential problem with Christianity is that it based on myth and vanity — making Jews and Christians out to be far more important in the grand scheme of the universe than they really are. These lies give Christians a false sense of superiority that makes them insufferable. The essence of Christ’s teaching is that you are your brother’s keeper, yet Kristians toss that teaching overboard. Muslims make Christians look like misers. The Muslim Saudis are four times as generous as the most Christian nation, the USA, (in last place in the western nations in terms of foreign aid generosity). Christianity makes people smug which makes them blind to their faults. For most people, Christianity is a bad influence. Christians are so puffed with pride they imagine their own internal voices are the almighty himself directing them.

I counter Christianity on three grounds:

  1. It is not literally true. It is myth and allegory mistaken as fact.
  2. It makes most people who believe it behave worse than they otherwise would.
  3. Christianity teaches people to hate gays and do their darndest to make gay people’s lives miserable, just out of spite, all the while feeling profoundly virtuous about the irrational persecution.

Sincerely,
Alex


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