Evidence for God, Christ, and the Bible

M

MusicForThePiano

Trad Catholic
Heritage
I thought I would start a thread for those who are new to the forum, new to Christianity in any form, or questioning their beliefs and want to see some inspiring truths for the existence of God, of Christ's divinity, and of the historicity of biblical texts and events.

This video is a compilation of some of the best argumentative talks on compelling data. Those of us who had the faith before may feel renewed listening and watching this, for we knew our faith was righteous, but for those who are new, I hope this steers you all onto the right path in the present and coming days, when you will need your faith more than anything else.

The most typical argument I hear from people who don't believe in the Bible is that it was "made up" or "corrupted" or "a bunch of men sitting around trying to control everyone." They know none of its true history, and here it is for all to see. This video compilation has been taken down numerous times, and they will not allow it on youtube.

"Primordial Truth: (YHWH) God & Jesus are real. Insurmountable Evidence Marathon."


One of the first segments with the black preacher, Voodie Baucham, is a great little bit of history and investigative reasoning to remember the next time you are confronted by someone who tests your faith by claiming the Bible was fake. I will put some of his content on here for a beginning bit:

This is from his own response on "Why do I choose to believe in the Bible?"
“I choose to believe The Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents, written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses, reporting supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claimed their writings are Divine and not of human origin.”

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In this vein, I will offer up three book recommendations for the Seeker, one each from Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism. These are all good resources for anyone struggling with finding meaning in the world.

-- God's Revelation to the Human Heart, Fr. Seraphim Rose (Orthodox)​
​
-- The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton (Catholic)​
​
-- The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis (Anglican/Protestant)​

Also, each of the three is available for free online if you search around.

(I will admit that, while I found The Everlasting Man very moving and persuasive when I first read it long ago over a summer when I was in college, but I found it much slower going when I tried rereading it a year or two ago.)
 
I do not favor the evidentialist approach but it has it's uses.

For many years, the skeptics were saying that the Christian Old Testament was unreliable. That was until the Dead Sea Scrolls were dug up. The Hebrew Old Testament that Christians had been using were proven to be unchanged over the course of a 1,000 years.

This is just 1 of many such instances.

For a long time, people doubted the authenticity of the Gospel of John, believing it to be overly developed in theology compared to the synoptic Gospels. Again, manuscripts were discovered, and now the Gospel of John has the earliest attestation in the manuscript tradition.
 
GodfatherPartTwo said:
I do not favor the evidentialist approach but it has it's uses.

For many years, the skeptics were saying that the Christian Old Testament was unreliable. That was until the Dead Sea Scrolls were dug up. The Hebrew Old Testament that Christians had been using were proven to be unchanged over the course of a 1,000 years.

This is just 1 of many such instances.

For a long time, people doubted the authenticity of the Gospel of John, believing it to be overly developed in theology compared to the synoptic Gospels. Again, manuscripts were discovered, and now the Gospel of John has the earliest attestation in the manuscript tradition.
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What approach are you in favor of? I can understand not being a fan of it, but for people like me it is helpful to deprogram myself from the secular evidentialism.

I understand that God is in control. That it is a matter of the heart. But even with this, we are still confronted by secular evidentialism that wants answers in that fashion, so as to be witnesses to the Word we can use this type of approach.

I also understand that living the teachings of the Gospel out personally can reap rewards and increase faith, and others see this as a Testament to the validity.

I guess I just don't really understand throwing out this approach and sticking solely to alternate ones considering the level of deception the devil has placed on the minds of the people with things like evolution, which for many cannot be dismissed without a battle as such.

I don't think it even has to be very complicated. Just one or two simple facts that make it absurd to believe the contrary, then we're off. Evidentialism is even attested for in the scriptures themselves to highlight reliability. Many early Christians were converted based on evidential factors without witnessing Jesus or anything supernatural.
 
TrainedLogosmotion said:
What approach are you in favor of? I can understand not being a fan of it, but for people like me it is helpful to deprogram myself from the secular evidentialism.
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I am a presuppositionalist. Evidentialism has it's place but it is my belief that the Bible is self-attesting in it's authority, and any claim it makes is worthy to be believed because of that.

The secularists believe they have the monopoly on evidence, what they don't accept is that they are interpreting their evidences according to their presuppositions. This is why I would rather wage the war with them at the presuppositional level.

The fact that they have made these evidentialist claims against the Bible and the historical events it records and have been proven wrong time and time again is a good thing, but it is not the ground of my faith.
 
GodfatherPartTwo said:
I am a presuppositionalist. Evidentialism has it's place but it is my belief that the Bible is self-attesting in it's authority, and any claim it makes is worthy to be believed because of that.

The secularists believe they have the monopoly on evidence, what they don't accept is that they are interpreting their evidences according to their presuppositions. This is why I would rather wage the war with them at the presuppositional level.

The fact that they have made these evidentialist claims against the Bible and the historical events it records and have been proven wrong time and time again is a good thing, but it is not the ground of my faith.
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Oh yes of course. I also very much agree with this. You mean like presupposing metaphysical truths like logic etc, right? I just don't see it as a black or white thing, or either or, but it seems you don't either since you've just stated evidentialism has it's place. Nevertheless I get your valid and pertinent point, so I won't go further into the semantic weeds. 😄
 
The biggest evidence for Jesus Christ is the list of very specific prophecies fulfilled by him as the Messiah promised in the Old Testament. Pascal gives a great summary of them, and the rest of the book is worth reading too. I was amazed when I first read this and realized we're not dealing with fairy tales like the atheists say.

 
MusicForThePiano said:
I thought I would start a thread for those who are new to the forum, new to Christianity in any form, or questioning their beliefs and want to see some inspiring truths for the existence of God, of Christ's divinity, and of the historicity of biblical texts and events.

This video is a compilation of some of the best argumentative talks on compelling data. Those of us who had the faith before may feel renewed listening and watching this, for we knew our faith was righteous, but for those who are new, I hope this steers you all onto the right path in the present and coming days, when you will need your faith more than anything else.

The most typical argument I hear from people who don't believe in the Bible is that it was "made up" or "corrupted" or "a bunch of men sitting around trying to control everyone." They know none of its true history, and here it is for all to see. This video compilation has been taken down numerous times, and they will not allow it on youtube.

"Primordial Truth: (YHWH) God & Jesus are real. Insurmountable Evidence Marathon."


One of the first segments with the black preacher, Voodie Baucham, is a great little bit of history and investigative reasoning to remember the next time you are confronted by someone who tests your faith by claiming the Bible was fake. I will put some of his content on here for a beginning bit:

This is from his own response on "Why do I choose to believe in the Bible?"
“I choose to believe The Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents, written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses, reporting supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claimed their writings are Divine and not of human origin.”

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Important point to remember here. Side note: This man's accent should he illegal, and is he wearing lipstick? Lord forgive me. 🤢 🤣

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This next part around 1:40 with Bart Ehrman is awesome. He mentions how there is no serious scholar or historian on earth that doubts Jesus's existence, that Paul wrote Galatians, or things of this matter. He's an agnostic and the refuter is athiest.

Ehrman's work is converting people and he's not even Christian lol. Truth is truth. Erhman even says "Why would Paul lie?" as a response to pushback, which proves that even with very solid known evidentialism studied through years of research, one can still deny Christ is the Son of God.
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@TrainedLogosmotion There's always some kind of oddity in the bitchute videos. I've filtered through so much garbage to find kernels of truth on that website but it seems to have the most potent truther videos on history, which makes it worth the search. Naturally, not everyone who is a proponent of the truth may look like a stoic philosopher.

Here is an interesting video that shows even the Chinese civilization at the time witnessed astronomical events pertaining to Christ's birth, death, and resurrection:

"Chinese Recorded Christ's Birth, Death, and Resurrection, 31AD Annals"


edit: I just saw that you beat me to it! I'll keep the bitchute version of the upload here for now in case anyone has an issue playing either.

As for Ehrman's lack of faith, who knows why he would champion a cause he doesn't believe in. Perhaps not everyone has that spark of connection in them to God even if they know it is right for society. I pray for these folks.
 
Ehrman is a sad case of apostasy. He was thrown into the limelight because of it, which is the worst thing that can happen to someone who cannot defend against pride.

My favorite moment of Bart Ehrman was when James White got him to admit that the Bible is the best attested work of antiquity. If you think the manuscript tradition is too shaky to believe in the veracity of the Bible, then you have no grounds to believe any other ancient work either.
 
One thing we tend to forget in our modern day is one of the factors that drove pagans to convert to Christianity.

People watched Christians going to their death rather than giving a pinch of incense to the pagan gods. The confidence in the face of death that Christians have, was seen as a testament to the strength of the Christian God, and that Christ had overcome death. It is actually no small thing when you think about it.
 
"Being exist, non-being does not."
-Parmenides of Elea (6th-5th century BC)

The mind is without а doubt connected with what we call the material world. We are able to explain and predict phenomena with pure abstract reasoning. Therefore, logical proofs are valid.

Now, there cannot be a triangle with four angles. A triangle must have three angles. Those are absolute statements, non-dependent on anything else.

Therefore the absolutes exist.

To be absolute means to be unconditioned by anything else. To exist unconditioned is to have a being in itself, or to be an extension or manifestation of it. Being in itself = God.

Therefore the existence of absolutes prove the existence of God.

Being-in-itself is not an object but a subject, or better the subject, because it does not depend on anything else like an object do. A subject necessarily means a person. Therefore = personal God.
Kant was wrong when he said that 'thing-in-itself' is unknowable variable outside of us. It is in us, it is the God in us, who each and every moment, outside of time and eternally, creates the world ex nixilo.

Just as there was no time when the eternal Father was without the Son, and just as the Logos of God was not born once upon a time but is being born eternally from the eternal Father, so is creation, space and time.
 
GodfatherPartTwo said:
Ehrman is a sad case of apostasy. He was thrown into the limelight because of it, which is the worst thing that can happen to someone who cannot defend against pride.

My favorite moment of Bart Ehrman was when James White got him to admit that the Bible is the best attested work of antiquity. If you think the manuscript tradition is too shaky to believe in the veracity of the Bible, then you have no grounds to believe any other ancient work either.
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A few months ago I meet a Christian theologian in Bali. He teaches at a Christian college in California. He doesn't know Ehrman personally but he runs in the same circles as Ehrman. He knows people who know Ehrman. He heard that Ehrman had some personal tradegy that caused him to lose his faith in Jesus Christ.
 
The Berean said:
A few months ago I meet a Christian theologian in Bali. He teaches at a Christian college in California. He doesn't know Ehrman personally but he runs in the same circles as Ehrman. He knows people who know Ehrman. He heard that Ehrman had some personal tradegy that caused him to lose his faith in Jesus Christ.
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He wrote a book grappling with suffering and how it is dealt with in the Bible; 'God's Problem' I think it was, so it checks out
 
Ehrman has spoken a bit about his process of deconversion. He was an evangelical that went to university to study the Bible from a higher criticism perspective which is a secular perspective rather than devotional one. This causes him to go from being a conservative evangelical to a mainline liberal Protestant. He said it was the problem of evil that led him to leave Christianity all together though I haven't seen him mention any specific incident that happened to him.

Something that I appreciate about Ehrman is that he doesn't seem to have the same anger and bitterness that lots of ex Christians and atheists have and when he's presenting his arguments it doesn't appear to be coming from a visceral level the same way it would be coming from a Dawkins type. He's pushed back a lot against people who believe Jesus never existed and has taken a lot of friendly fire from other atheists due to that so I can respect the intellectual courage he has shown in that case.
 
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The Berean said:
A few months ago I meet a Christian theologian in Bali. He teaches at a Christian college in California. He doesn't know Ehrman personally but he runs in the same circles as Ehrman. He knows people who know Ehrman. He heard that Ehrman had some personal tradegy that caused him to lose his faith in Jesus Christ.
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James White mentioned that he saw Erhman at the hotel bar the night before their debate. He went up to introduce himself. He described Erhman as "not a happy man."

We should pray for him.
 
Kingdom said:
"Being exist, non-being does not."
-Parmenides of Elea (6th-5th century BC)

The mind is without а doubt connected with what we call the material world. We are able to explain and predict phenomena with pure abstract reasoning. Therefore, logical proofs are valid.

Now, there cannot be a triangle with four angles. A triangle must have three angles. Those are absolute statements, non-dependent on anything else.

Therefore the absolutes exist.

To be absolute means to be unconditioned by anything else. To exist unconditioned is to have a being in itself, or to be an extension or manifestation of it. Being in itself = God.

Therefore the existence of absolutes prove the existence of God.

Being-in-itself is not an object but a subject, or better the subject, because it does not depend on anything else like an object do. A subject necessarily means a person. Therefore = personal God.
Kant was wrong when he said that 'thing-in-itself' is unknowable variable outside of us. It is in us, it is the God in us, who each and every moment, outside of time and eternally, creates the world ex nixilo.

Just as there was no time when the eternal Father was without the Son, and just as the Logos of God was not born once upon a time but is being born eternally from the eternal Father, so is creation, space and time.
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This is actually an argument based on nomenclature and it does not work. Like any rational argument, it fails to prove God. God can only be understood with faith, no amount of reason can prove God although it certainly helps.

In your case, you are just defining absolute as something that must exist, and therefore posit God must exist as he is the most absolute of all beings. But in reality it fails at the definition. For you can define a triangle as something with 3 sides, but what about a 3d triangle? Does it have 3 sides or 9 sides? And is a 3d triangle any less absolute than a 2d triangle?

Is there an absolute unicorn out there that must exist, because it is "absolute"? Or how about an absolute 19-headed hydra? Adding absolute to a word does nothing to show it exists, no more than giving a name to anything else can make something exist.

And it doesn't matter if God is both a subject or object. The question is whether or not we can know God as either? The answer is we cannot by means of direct evidence, as he is beyond any form of experience, and thus cannot be proven to anyone.

There is a reason God will not perform miracles for those who do not believe in him, it is because God only respects faith in humans since it is the only way we can know Him. Even though God sent his Son to show the world who He was, it is still "Blessed are those who do not see and believe," because ultimately nothing Christ did could ever be repeated by anyone else and was impossible to prove. Thus it is only with faith alone can God be known.
 
People can always look to the unexplained, documented, supernatural events surrounding Julian The Apostate's failure to rebuild the Jews' Temple for an example of how God intervenes in the world. I always found this passage from Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to be edifying:

"[...] the Christians entertained a natural and pious expectation, that, in this memorable contest, the honor of religion would be vindicated by some signal miracle. An earthquake, a whirlwind, and a fiery eruption, which overturned and scattered the new foundations of the temple, are attested, with some variations, by contemporary and respectable evidence. This public event is described by Ambrose, bishop of Milan, in an epistle to the emperor Theodosius, which must provoke the severe animadversion of the Jews; by the eloquent Chrysostom, who might appeal to the memory of the elder part of his congregation at Antioch; and by Gregory Nazianzen, who published his account of the miracle before the expiration of the same year. The last of these writers has boldly declared, that this preternatural event was not disputed by the infidels; and his assertion, strange as it may seem is confirmed by the unexceptionable testimony of Ammianus Marcellinus. The philosophic soldier, who loved the virtues, without adopting the prejudices, of his master, has recorded, in his judicious and candid history of his own times, the extraordinary obstacles which interrupted the restoration of the temple of Jerusalem. “Whilst Alypius, assisted by the governor of the province, urged, with vigor and diligence, the execution of the work, horrible balls of fire breaking out near the foundations, with frequent and reiterated attacks, rendered the place, from time to time, inaccessible to the scorched and blasted workmen; and the victorious element continuing in this manner obstinately and resolutely bent, as it were, to drive them to a distance, the undertaking was abandoned.”

Ammianus Marcellinus was a pagan chronicler and friend of the infamous Julian the Apostate.
 
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