I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this. Im new here and created an account because im having somewhat of a crisis of faith and wanted to pick people's brains who might know a bit more on these issues than me.
Some background, I've been a Christian all of my life, ive never really questioned it, it seemed logical and more reasonable than alternatives. Ive spent numerous ours arguing about creationism against evolution, and saw ken hamm speak a few times. Thats not why im here. Recently my brain has been subtly nagging me with some questions.
Im a pretty fact, logic and evidence based person. I wont believe something just to feel better or be comfortable. I need a REASON to believe that its true. Assumptions can be made to some extent from there and belief can come into play, but the underlying evidence needs to exist. So taking that perspective i turned it on Christianity and said "what if i question this just a little bit and see what holds up?". What I did was to take nothing assumed and to try to convince myself to believe the various aspects. Obviously the Bible is huge, but most of it is not really relevant to "is this true", so i focused on areas that would be reasons to believe. So now getting a little bit into the thoughts and concerns i had and hopefully someone can give me some help/guidance in the right general direction.
1. The Bible was written by many authors over 1600ish years, we don't REALLY know who wrote most of them and we dont have a lot of verifying documents other than "yes this document exists". Getting into the "why is it infallible and the word of God?" argument. They were all written by men, the exact books included were chosen by men, most of the books were written years if not generations after the events took place, i could write up a story about the old west 150 years ago with real people I've heard about, but my details would be abysmally inaccurate. That example is 150 years, some of the Bible books are thousands of years. The evidence i most often see brought up to believe the Bible is
A. Divinely inspired authors - how do we know? Why only in that period, why not any more? Why do we assume that and not just evidence of human observations?
And B. The details match up with the other books and authors - but wouldn't many of those books have already been written, allowing the newer authors to piggy back details off the old? How do we know they weren't aware of the existing books? Also how do we know the people determining divine inspiration weren't just cherry picking what fit? In fact isnt that exactly their criteria?
Are we missing books? Are they divinely inspired too? If so why dont we have them? If its Gods word why cant the denominations today even agree on the correct books?
Trying to look at it objectively, it seems very much that we took a number of books from an era....books that very reasonably could have extremely accurate and important information, and then said it was God who assembled them. Do we have any evidence of that? The old testament could reasonably be confirmed by Jesus, but the New was well after his time. I guess my questions boil down somewhat to: Do we have any conclusive reason to believe the Bible is the word of God other than some older Christian's saying it was?
2. Does God exist. Which i know is probably a well discussed topic everywhere. But from a Christian perspective and without using the somewhat circular reasoning of "He exists because the Bible says so, and the Bible is accurate because he says so", what I seem to gather is the whole evidence based basis for Christianity and the existence of a judeo christian God boils down to just a couple things.....the prophets of the old testament, and Jesus.
The old testament is provably ancient and can somewhat date itself as well before the time of Christ just as physical documents. Within those documents prophets are named and predicted certain things that didnt come to pass until Jesus. There doesn't appear to be a whole lot of archeological evidence of any of those peoples existence (is there?), But the old testament itself is at least evidence of an author of that time making those prophecies. Christ allegedly fulfilled those prophecies exactly. There are also a few secular and roman sources mentioning Christ as a real person. Which can somewhat confirm he was real, that allows a reasonable belief that the biblical stories about Christ are at least somewhat based on real events.
Together the prophets and Jesus make a somewhat reasonable basis for belief, but still leave a lot of concerns:
A. Some of the prophecies seem to be "he will be a good guy", or "something good will happen in Bethlehem", that borders on the astrology tactic of being vague and then people connect it with whatever happens. Christians today even still like to try to associate current events with biblical prophecies. Are there enough detailed and conclusive prophecies that provably came true?
B. Is it not possible that Jesus could have played into the prophecies in order to appear legitimate and then his followers wrote stories about him to make them fit which is the New Testement?
C. Prophet seemed to be common enough to be a job title back then, and there are mentions of false ones, but why only that period? Why not now? How do we know they weren't just lying, drunk, or hallucinating? I in theory believe in the supernatural/spirituality, but most events in the past 100 years seem to have rational real world explanations.
D I guess this is the big one. Other than mentions of Jesus proving his existence, therefore fulfilling prophecies that we have just a couple records of existing (and not much knowledge of the time), and the combination of the two telling us about God and the realities of the world....do we have anything else as a reason to believe? Or is all our believe really hinging on those 2 things?
Some of the events and people in the Bible are mentioned in secular history....but that makes sense because those people were around when the books were written. I could write a fictional book about Abraham Lincoln, merely finding evidence he existed would not prove my books accuracy. And concernedly there ISNT significant or any evidence of a lot of the key events and people.... prophets, Exodus, Moses, etc. There wouldnt necessarily be anything given the thousands of years, but its not that comforting.
There appears to be no proof of anything between creation and maybe Abraham or even Moses. Especially since even in the Bible that was written thousands of years after.
I guess my underlying concern is that rather than hundreds of books by different authors confirming and proving the existence of God and validity of Christianity, the reality is, its mostly about believing prophets talked to God and that Jesus was real, not a fraud, and the fulfillment of those prophecies. Everything else seems to just be people aware of and believing those two things, then elaborating? Assuming we even know who those authors are. Reasonable basis for belief, but also pretty possible to imagine ways for it to be made up.
Can anyone provide more arguments or evidence? Something to help me sleep at night a little bit?
Some background, I've been a Christian all of my life, ive never really questioned it, it seemed logical and more reasonable than alternatives. Ive spent numerous ours arguing about creationism against evolution, and saw ken hamm speak a few times. Thats not why im here. Recently my brain has been subtly nagging me with some questions.
Im a pretty fact, logic and evidence based person. I wont believe something just to feel better or be comfortable. I need a REASON to believe that its true. Assumptions can be made to some extent from there and belief can come into play, but the underlying evidence needs to exist. So taking that perspective i turned it on Christianity and said "what if i question this just a little bit and see what holds up?". What I did was to take nothing assumed and to try to convince myself to believe the various aspects. Obviously the Bible is huge, but most of it is not really relevant to "is this true", so i focused on areas that would be reasons to believe. So now getting a little bit into the thoughts and concerns i had and hopefully someone can give me some help/guidance in the right general direction.
1. The Bible was written by many authors over 1600ish years, we don't REALLY know who wrote most of them and we dont have a lot of verifying documents other than "yes this document exists". Getting into the "why is it infallible and the word of God?" argument. They were all written by men, the exact books included were chosen by men, most of the books were written years if not generations after the events took place, i could write up a story about the old west 150 years ago with real people I've heard about, but my details would be abysmally inaccurate. That example is 150 years, some of the Bible books are thousands of years. The evidence i most often see brought up to believe the Bible is
A. Divinely inspired authors - how do we know? Why only in that period, why not any more? Why do we assume that and not just evidence of human observations?
And B. The details match up with the other books and authors - but wouldn't many of those books have already been written, allowing the newer authors to piggy back details off the old? How do we know they weren't aware of the existing books? Also how do we know the people determining divine inspiration weren't just cherry picking what fit? In fact isnt that exactly their criteria?
Are we missing books? Are they divinely inspired too? If so why dont we have them? If its Gods word why cant the denominations today even agree on the correct books?
Trying to look at it objectively, it seems very much that we took a number of books from an era....books that very reasonably could have extremely accurate and important information, and then said it was God who assembled them. Do we have any evidence of that? The old testament could reasonably be confirmed by Jesus, but the New was well after his time. I guess my questions boil down somewhat to: Do we have any conclusive reason to believe the Bible is the word of God other than some older Christian's saying it was?
2. Does God exist. Which i know is probably a well discussed topic everywhere. But from a Christian perspective and without using the somewhat circular reasoning of "He exists because the Bible says so, and the Bible is accurate because he says so", what I seem to gather is the whole evidence based basis for Christianity and the existence of a judeo christian God boils down to just a couple things.....the prophets of the old testament, and Jesus.
The old testament is provably ancient and can somewhat date itself as well before the time of Christ just as physical documents. Within those documents prophets are named and predicted certain things that didnt come to pass until Jesus. There doesn't appear to be a whole lot of archeological evidence of any of those peoples existence (is there?), But the old testament itself is at least evidence of an author of that time making those prophecies. Christ allegedly fulfilled those prophecies exactly. There are also a few secular and roman sources mentioning Christ as a real person. Which can somewhat confirm he was real, that allows a reasonable belief that the biblical stories about Christ are at least somewhat based on real events.
Together the prophets and Jesus make a somewhat reasonable basis for belief, but still leave a lot of concerns:
A. Some of the prophecies seem to be "he will be a good guy", or "something good will happen in Bethlehem", that borders on the astrology tactic of being vague and then people connect it with whatever happens. Christians today even still like to try to associate current events with biblical prophecies. Are there enough detailed and conclusive prophecies that provably came true?
B. Is it not possible that Jesus could have played into the prophecies in order to appear legitimate and then his followers wrote stories about him to make them fit which is the New Testement?
C. Prophet seemed to be common enough to be a job title back then, and there are mentions of false ones, but why only that period? Why not now? How do we know they weren't just lying, drunk, or hallucinating? I in theory believe in the supernatural/spirituality, but most events in the past 100 years seem to have rational real world explanations.
D I guess this is the big one. Other than mentions of Jesus proving his existence, therefore fulfilling prophecies that we have just a couple records of existing (and not much knowledge of the time), and the combination of the two telling us about God and the realities of the world....do we have anything else as a reason to believe? Or is all our believe really hinging on those 2 things?
Some of the events and people in the Bible are mentioned in secular history....but that makes sense because those people were around when the books were written. I could write a fictional book about Abraham Lincoln, merely finding evidence he existed would not prove my books accuracy. And concernedly there ISNT significant or any evidence of a lot of the key events and people.... prophets, Exodus, Moses, etc. There wouldnt necessarily be anything given the thousands of years, but its not that comforting.
There appears to be no proof of anything between creation and maybe Abraham or even Moses. Especially since even in the Bible that was written thousands of years after.
I guess my underlying concern is that rather than hundreds of books by different authors confirming and proving the existence of God and validity of Christianity, the reality is, its mostly about believing prophets talked to God and that Jesus was real, not a fraud, and the fulfillment of those prophecies. Everything else seems to just be people aware of and believing those two things, then elaborating? Assuming we even know who those authors are. Reasonable basis for belief, but also pretty possible to imagine ways for it to be made up.
Can anyone provide more arguments or evidence? Something to help me sleep at night a little bit?
