Originally Posted by frozenchief
This is a DC thread answer but I figure I’ll address this answer respectfully and OP at the end.
Bertrand Russell, hardly a Christian, once said that without God, it is meaningless to talk about the purpose of life. I cannot live a life without purpose. We just ride this rock around the sun and then die? Truly believing that is a good way to go insane.
There are also ethical issues that support Christianity. Socrates discussed how we as humans are too subjective (modern language) to be the source of ultimate truth and this is seen in, among other areas, ethics. Without an external source for ethical guidance, at most we get to some kind of utilitarianism. Why do chimpanzees and gorillas and orangutans kill and rape and eat other members of their own species with impunity while such actions are considered unethical, to put it mildly, for human beings? Without an external source of ethical codes, at best we are reduced to “Well, you wouldn’t want that to happen to you.” That may sound fine but it only works until the social utility for it happening to you outweighs the social utility against it happening to you. In either case, there is no philosophical basis to say that such conduct is wrong.
There is also historical evidence. Jesus of Nazareth is the single most historically documented individual from the ancient world. The sheer number, consistency and chronological proximity of accounts of Jesus dwarf any other individual from the ancient world. Alexander the Great? We have about half a dozen original documents that discuss him and they are from several centuries after his death. Julius Caesar? Same. Homer? The best info we have about him is from about 7 centuries after his death. The works of Plato are contained in only a few manuscripts, the texts of which vary quite widely. A valid comparison would be if 1000 years from now, the only evidence of Joan of Arc would be from fragments of articles that were written about her now. The entirety of US history is far too recent for this to apply but you could use historical examples like Queen Elizabeth, Henry VIII, or Christopher Columbus.
On the other hand, we have over 5000 texts about Jesus of Nazareth written within 100-200 years of his death. We have manuscripts that date to within roughly 40 years of his death. Furthermore, the empty tomb of Christ is the single most attested fact from the ancient world. Again, it is not even close. Scholars today, whether believers or not, largely agree that Christ’s tomb was indeed empty. The question is ‘why’. 11 of the 12 disciples were brutally executed rather than denounce what they saw. We know that mass illusions or mass hysteria is not a legitimate explanation for numerous people seeing the same thing. So what did those disciples see? Why were they willing to die for it? Not just die but their deaths were brutal.
Consider St. Bartholomew. He was skinned alive. There is a famous statue of him continuing to preach while holding his own skin. You can see pictures of the statue
I don’t know about you but there is no way I am going to die for something that isn’t true, particularly a brutal, painful death. None of the disciples ever made money or were powerful. They were not influential. I mean, while the Romans are nailing the cross together for some of them, all they have to do is say, “That Jesus guy really isn’t God. He didn’t rise from the dead. This has all be a horrible mistake,” and the execution would have been called off. But they all died rather than say that Jesus was not God, that He did not rise from the dead. Why? What would they gain? What did they see that made them so absolutely sure? That, to me, is pretty compelling evidence that they absolutely believed what they saw and they claimed to have seen that Jesus died and rose again from the dead.
In the same way, the Bible is the most attested book in the world. The list of manuscripts that we have of the Bible dwarf any other work of literature. Further, their consistency is overwhelming. There is no disagreement about any major point of doctrine. There are some inconsistencies on minor matters, such as some numbers or names. But nobody doubts the Odyssey, the Illiad, Plutarch’s Lives, Marcus Arellius’ Meditations or other major works of literature handed down from ancient times yet we only have a few copies of those documents. Plutarch’s Lives, for example, is the best source of information we have about Alexander the Great. it was written centuries after Alexander’s death and we only have a handful of copies of that book that date from about 100 A.D., roughly 450 years after Alexander’s death. Plutarch’s Lives is the only or primary source of information we have about a number of famous people from the ancient world. That is not true about the Bible. We have thousands of manuscripts of various parts of the Bible and they date to within a comparatively short time after they were written. And when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1948, they were the oldest known copies of biblical manuscripts containing portions of many Old Testament books. The consistency between those scrolls and the biblical scrolls we had at the time were astonishing for ancient manuscripts.
You can say that it is not real but the evidence for my God requires you to literally shut your eyes. As biochemistry teaches us more about genetics, biologists and mathematicians are realizing that there simply is not enough material in the universe to explain the origin of life by random mutation. There has not been enough time to explain how life as we know it got here. David Gelernter, a professor of computer technology at Yale, wrote about the impossibility of life arising from random chance based solely upon math. You can read about
Glernter, by the way, is not religious from what I can tell. Indeed, he laments the death of Darwin’s theory in the article because, according to him, Darwin’s theory is simple, elegant, and beautiful. It is also impossible.
Don’t believe me? Research it yourself. Look at the evidence. Paul said that if Christ did not rise from the dead, we (Christians) of all men are to be most pitied. 1 Corinthians 15:19. I know what I believe and why I believe it. My faith is not irrational. There is no gap between my faith and reason. My faith is defensible philosophically, historically, and empirically. I know what I believe and what I believe is absolutely real.
To OP, I do think about death, as do most people. The Bible says that God has put eternity in man’s heart so it is no surprise that we contemplate death. Death makes an absurdity of our lives. But my God has triumphed over death. “Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?” I hope my death is quick and painless. I really don’t want to be crucified or eaten by a bear or drowned. Drowning really scares me. But while I have some trepidation about various methods of dying, I do not fear death. I will be united with my Savior and I will be without sin. I do not look forward to the process of dying but I long for the day when I can meet my Savior face to face.
OP, if you want a good place to start, this is a good
And if you, or anyone else reading this, do check this out and have more questions, PM me. As I said, I know what I believe and why and I’m not afraid of any question. I mean that. You may not agree with me but I’ll give you the best answer I can because as much as I love Chiefs football, this question is far, far, far more important.
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