Reddit mentions: The best christian bible study & reference books

It's interesting to me because when I talk to people and how they come to their faith, it's all kinds of different stuff that actually ends up being the "straw that breaks the camels back." Why don't I tell you what convinces me and then give you some recommendations in various directions.

Now, I was raised a Christian. That's important because I'm not sure that I would be a Christian now if I wasn't raised as one. I make that admission not because I think it's a weakness to my case, but because I want you to understand that I understand the difficulty in believing something like this seemingly ridiculous story.

Many of my friends, very few of whom are Christians, actually call me the "most open-minded person" they know or at least one of the most. One of my best friends (an agnostic Jewish girl) says that I would make a terrific atheist if it weren't for that whole "believing in God thing."

Though I have always identified as a Christian, I did go through a time when I decided to weigh the evidence.

I'll consider any evidence and look for its flaws. I like science, but I don't like the double standard that exists between science and faith. In the opinion of many atheists, if ANYTHING appears to be incompatible with their perception of faith, it's automatically proved incorrect and any effort of a person of faith to answer why it may not be incompatible is met with deaf ears. Conversely, if ANYTHING appears to be incompatible with science, that's "fascinating!" or "interesting!" or "a great opportunity to arrive at a greater truth."

With that being said, I think there are quite a few things that we (as a society) take for granted that may or may not be true. For example, we all believe that the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around. But the reason we arrived at that conclusion was not because it was the only possible answer, but because it was the simplest answer. (By the way, I believe that the earth revolves around the sun, this is just an example). Another example is gravity. It behaves so steadily that we even label it with a gravitational constant. But we know it does funky things at the quantum level and at the cosmological level (like near the event horizon of a black hole). We have no idea why.

This thinking brought me to the realization that I might not understand nearly as much as I thought I did. It felt lacking and EVERYTHING felt like faith at that time. Because of that, I decided that I would look for internal consistencies or inconsistencies in the Bible. The one that really stood out to me was Noah's flood. I had always heard that there was varying evidence for or against a global flood, but the vast majority of the arguments didn't seem to be asking the right questions. IF there WAS a global flood, it would certainly be an unprecedented event-- something that we had never observed in our time... so how would we know what to look for? The Bible itself records that water came up out of the earth-- that's not indicative of most floods.

But even that wasn't the most interesting part of that story to me. The Bible is actually a very valuable historical resource. Archaeologists rely on many of its dates and locations to find out more about sites in the middle east. That's why the flood account is so fascinating to me. No one believes that the flood account was written down for HUNDREDS of years after it is supposed to have happened. Yet, according to that account people before the flood were living for hundreds of years (up to 969). Then, for seemingly no reason, the author of the account picks the flood as the dividing point where lives are considerably shortened. I have yet to hear a good explanation for why someone over 1000 years later, yet still over 3000 years ago, would randomly decide to put that kind of change in there. Because of that, I thought, "Hm, maybe the earth drastically changed at that point." I can't prove that, just so you know. It's just an interesting thought that I had.

Now, beyond all that, I look at the historical record of the gospels and the few hundred years of church tradition immediately after that. The thing that always stands out to me there is that, regardless of the evidence of Jesus' resurrection, we do have pretty reliable reasons to believe that prominent apostles chose to die rather than go back on their claims that Christ raised from the dead. I just couldn't wrap my head around why 12 prominent guys, plus Paul, would choose to die for something they would have known to be a lie. I could understand people today who died for blind faith, but this isn't blind faith. It's not cultish (doesn't fit the psychology). It doesn't appear to be hallucinatory (doesn't fit the current medical understanding). The only thing that I could think is that it was either an incredibly elaborate lie that hundreds of people were willing to die for, or it was the truth.

When you take that into consideration with the actual gospel accounts of the resurrection, things get really interesting. I think a lot of people read those accounts (or, trust people who have read them) without considering that they may have actually happened exactly as recorded. They're certainly not written as ridiculous accounts of mad men. They don't protect the reputations of those surrounding the events. If the gospels claimed Jesus had made a roast beef sandwich rather than resurrecting, I'd bet that most people would arrive at the conclusion that they actually happened.

That's just a few reasons in addition to the ideas that resurrection was not exactly smiled upon in that culture, that the church had to survive persecution from the very beginning that the odds of Christianity actually taking hold was so unlikely it might as well have been impossible, etc. etc. As I said, none of these thoughts are exactly original.

Now as to why you should believe, I don't know what it would take to convince you. If you're wondering why I believe in Christianity over a multitude of religions, it's actually extremely original (yes, even in light of the Horus myth). No other surviving system says, "Humanity is despicable, wicked, and evil. There is literally nothing you can do to save yourselves." Yet Christianity is viewed primarily as a religion of hope and redemption. And it has convinced millions of people.

As for your comment about "superstitious goat herders" the book I like best to explain that these guys and their accounts are actually a lot more reliable than they seem is Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. It's not perfect, but it's very very thought provoking and fairly readable.

As I alluded to a number of times, I think most people tend to just treat the stories in the Bible as "impossible" without actually reading them and considering them. To a point, I don't blame them. It does seem unbelievable. But some really rational and reasonable people have looked at the evidence and come to the conclusion that it might not be as totally crazy as they once thought. Will it convince you? I don't know, I pray that it would, but ultimately that's up to you. If there's ever any question you have, I encourage you to come to me with it. I do this kind of thing a lot, speaking of which, here's another conversation I had with some other people on this subreddit. That conversation even caused /u/superwinner, a pretty frequent regular on this part of the site (this very thread, no less), to say, "Thats it, I'm friending the shit out of you." That's pretty much my crowning achievement on this subreddit.

I have much compassion for other members of this human race regardless of religious stance, and the same goes for you. I'm quite pleased that you seem willing to at least engage me on this issue and I thank you for doing it so honestly and respectfully. I hope that you find my response at least considerate and worth YOUR consideration. One final thought though-- it's not going to be ME or anything I say that convinces you one way or another. It'll be your own decision, perhaps in tandem with God, perhaps not (depending on what you choose). Either way, feel free to always consider me as a resource, even if you don't end up believing and you just want to understand why a Christian might believe something-- like why they choose one God over all the others. Good question, OP.

You're throwing a bunch of stuff out there that I don't have the time to respond to at the moment. I'm about to go the gym then I'm going on a weekend trip. I'll just respond to your points quickly.

1. It isn’t a God of the gaps argument. A God of the gaps argument is one that makes a gratuitous inference to God. Again, think the ancient pagans who used the gods to explain various natural phenomena they didn’t understand.
   
   This is completely different from the reasoning of the ancient Greeks (i.e. Aristotle), who using reason and observing reality, came to the conclusion of a prime mover; or Aquinas, who came to believe in the existence of pure actuality. Arguments from necessity, first cause, design, morality, etc -- all start from what we do know and conclude that God is the best explanation for certain features of the universe we observe.
   
   Take the Kalam Cosmological argument for example. The theist does not say “I don‘t know what caused the universe to exist so God did it”. Instead, he reasons about what it means to be a cause of the universe (i.e. spaceless, timeless, immaterial, uncaused and powerful) and arrives at the conclusion that a being like God is the best answer.
   
   
2. I'm telling you that we have very good reason to believe that the gospels are authentic and reliable accounts of Jesus' life. The internal and external evidence strongly point to the gospels being written by Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. For example, all manuscripts we possess correctly attribute these books to them. The writings of the Church fathers, Christian leaders who lived (mostly) in the generation succeeding the Apostles, are also unanimous about their authorship. Furthermore, the gospels also satisfy multiple criteria of historical authenticity such as early multiple attestation, dissimilarity, embarrassment, historical congruence and semitisms. Now, if the gospels are authentic and reliable accounts of Jesus' life then personally, that's game, set and match. The testimonies of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John strongly point towards a Christian conclusion and alternative naturalistic explanations fail to provide a reasonable, compelling and complete explanation of the events. If you want to go further and seriously look into this for yourself, I recommend reading N.T. Wright's magisterial study The Resurrection of the Son of God.
   
   
3. They are still contingent beings within the universe. Again, totally different.
   
   
4. The success of Epicurus' argument rests on God not having good reasons for allowing evil to exist. If God doesn't have good reasons for allowing evil to exist, then this argument disproves God's existence as all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good. However, if God does have good reasons for allowing evil to exist then that argument fails because it would show that God and the existence of evil are not logically contradictory.
   
   Anyway, I believe that God allows evil to exist in order to preserve our free will. Although free will makes good possible -- love, honesty, courage, selflessness and compassion, it also makes evil possible because it can be misused. In the end, in order to make good possible, trade-offs had to be made.
   
   As C.S. Lewis said on the subject:
   
   >“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating.
   
   
5. Why is there a necessity for God? Gosh, I don't even know where to begin. I'll broaden that question to why I believe in God though and give you a quick answer. Let's just say that given the way things are in our universe and looking back at our history, I cannot not see a God behind it all.
   
   
6. The same holds for the Christian God? Substantiate that claim, explain it in detail.
   
   I'd also want you to explain why/account for Christianity has considerable drawing power -- why so many atheists have and continue to convert to Christianity due to the weight of the evidence, be it philosophical, scientific or historical. Here's a quick laundry list of serious atheist intellectuals who converted to Christianity C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesteron, Alasdair Macintyre, Thomas Merton, Malcolm Muggeridge, Mortimer Adler, Edward Feser and Leah Libresco.
   
   I also wonder why Anthony Flew, the world's most influential atheist in the 20th century, converted to deism in 2004. Particularly, I wonder why he came to believe in the God of Aristotle, a God that possesses the attributes of immutability, immateriality, omnipotence, omniscience, oneness or indivisibility, perfect goodness and necessary existence. I also wonder why he also ended up developing a great respect for the Christian religion saying:
   
   >I think that the Christian religion is the one religion that most clearly deserves to be honoured and respected whether or not its claim to be a divine revelation is true. There is nothing like the combination of a charismatic figure like Jesus and a first-class intellectual like St. Paul…If you’re wanting Omnipotence to set up a religion, this is the one to beat (There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind, 185-186).
   
   and on the Resurrection...
   
   >The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It's outstandingly different in quality and quantity (Flew Interview with Gary Habermas, 2004).
   
   Enlighten me.

I believe in and subscribe to evolution. The science is undeniable.

You probably realize that there are good and strong Christians who take different positions about creation and evolution. There are 5 main positions:

• Young Earth, 6-day creation: The Earth is only about 6,000-10,000 years old, and God created the universe and everything we see in 6 24-hr days.
  
• Old Earth, 6-day creation: The universe is 13 billion years old, and the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and God created it all in 6 days 13 billion years ago.
  
• Day-Age Theory: Each of the “days” of creation in Genesis aren’t literal days, but they represent long eras. For instance, the first “day” of creation (creation of light) could have been billions of years in the making. But each age follows the sequence as outlined in Genesis 1.
  
• Gap Theory: Genesis 1.1, like the first phase of creation, happened billions of years ago. Then something cataclysmic happened, and it was all turned “formless and void,” and God started the second phase of creation in Genesis 1.2, which happened more recently.
  
• Evolutionary Creationism: God created the universe and all that we see, but he used the processes of the Big Bang and evolution to created everything we see. If this is the position one takes, Genesis 1 is about how God ordered the universe to function (light functions to give us day, the Earth functions to bring forth vegetation, the heavenly bodies function to give us seasons, etc.), not about how He manufactured it. He certainly created (manufactured) it, but that’s not what Genesis 1 is about.
  
  At the same time, there are 6 different ways to define “evolution.” Only #6 is completely contrary to Christianity.
  
  
  
• The ancient earth thesis, some 4.5 billion years old
  
• The progress thesis: The claim that life has progressed from relatively simple to relatively complex forms. In the beginning there was relatively simple unicellular life. Then more complex unicellular life, then relatively simple multi-cellular life (seagoing worms, coral, jellyfish), then fish, then amphibia, then reptiles, birds, mammals, and human beings.
  
• Descent with modification: The enormous diversity of the contemporary living world has come about by way of offspring differing, ordinarily in small and subtle ways, from their parents.
  
• Common ancestry thesis: Life originated at only one place of earth, all subsequent life being related by descent to those original living creatures—the claim that, as Gould puts it, there is a “tree of evolutionary descent linking all organisms by ties of genealogy.” According to this theory, we are all cousins of each other—and indeed of all living things (horses, bats bacteria, oak trees, poison ivy, humans.
  
• Darwinism: There is a naturalistic mechanism driving this process of descent with modification: the most popular candidate is natural selection operating on random genetic mutation, although some other processes are also sometimes proposed.
  
• Naturalistic origins thesis: Life itself developed from non-living matter without any special creative activity of God but just by virtue of processed described by the ordinary laws of physics, chemistry, and biology.
  
  So how can the Bible and evolution go together? Very easily if we take Christian position #5 and evolutionary positions #1-5. As long as we keep God as the central and necessary sovereign intelligence, power, person, and morality in the process, I don’t see where it’s a problem.
  
  I subscribe to the interpretation of Genesis 1-2 laid out by Dr. John Walton in “The Lost World of Genesis 1” (https://www.amazon.com/Lost-World-Genesis-One-Cosmology/dp/0830837043/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=john+walton&qid=1564575785&s=gateway&sr=8-2). Briefly reporting, in it he asserts that Genesis 1 is about how God ordered the cosmos to function, not how He manufactured it. Certainly God created the universe (as taught in other verses in the Bible), but that’s not what Genesis 1 is about.
  
  The first "day" is clearly (literally) about a *period* of light called day, and a *period* of light called night. It is about the sequence of day and night, evening and morning, literally. Therefore, what Day 1 is about is God ordering the universe and our lives with the function of TIME, not God creating what the physicists call "light," about which the ancients knew nothing.
  
  
  Look through the whole chapter. It is about how the firmament functions to bring us weather (the firmament above and below), how the earth functions to bring forth plants for our sustenance, how the sun, moon, and stars function to order the days and seasons. We find out in day 6 the function of humans: to be fruitful and multiply, to rule the earth and subdue it. Walton contends that we have to look at the text through ancient eyes, not modern ones, and the concern of the ancients was function and order. (It was a given that the deities created the material universe.) The differences between cultures (and creation accounts) was how the universe functioned, how it was ordered, and what people were for. (There were large disagreements among the ancients about function and order; it widely separates the Bible from the surrounding mythologies.)
  
  
  And on the 7th day God rested. In the ancient world when a god came to "rest" in the temple, he came to live there and engage with the people as their god. So it is not a day of disengagement, but of action and relationship.
  
  
  In other words, it's a temple text, not an account of material creation. There was no temple that could be built by human hands that would be suitable for him, so God ordered the entire universe to function as his Temple. The earth was ordered to function as the "Holy Place," and the Garden of Eden as his "Holy of Holies." Adam and Eve were given the function of being his priest and priestess, to care for sacred space (very similar to Leviticus) and to be in relationship with God (that's what Genesis 2 is about).
  
  
  You probably want to know about the seven days. In the ancient world ALL temple dedications were 7-day dedications, where what God had done to order his world was rehearsed, and on the 7th day God came to "rest" in his temple—to dwell with his people and engage with them as their God. That's what the seven days mean.
  
  
  Back to evolution. Therefore Gn 1-2 make no comment on *how* the material world came about, or how long it took. We need science to tell us that. We need Gn 1-2 to tell us what it's there for (God's temple) and how it is supposed to function (to provide a place of fellowship between God and humans, and to bring God glory as an adequate temple for his Majesty).
  
  
  Feel free to discuss this. For those who have never heard these ideas, it takes a little adjusting. But they make a whole lot of sense to me.

hi /u/lenusme. this is probably not the right place for this. self promotion is generally frowned upon here, unless you have an exceptionally well researched blog post, or an actual academic paper you'd like to share. and this is a pretty surface level discussion at best, to be honest. but i'd like to discuss some problems anyways.

> Some believe that Moses wrote Genesis while was in the land of Midian. Others believe he wrote it in the desert after his encounter with God on Mount Sinai. Although there is no way to know.

in fact, modern scholarship nearly universally rejects mosaic authorship entirely. you may want to consult the popular books "who wrote the bible?" and "the bible with sources revealed" by richard elliott friedman for an introduction to the documentary hypothesis (or start with this wiki page, if you'd like).

there are a number of other notable problems with mosaic authorship too, from an archaeological/historical standpoint. for instance, the amarna letters contain a few hundred correspondences between the pharaohs at akhentaten (now el-amarna) and their vassal territories in the 14th and 13th centuries BCE, and are among many other pieces of evidence that indicate that the egyptian empire looked rather like this for most of the time between 1550 BCE and 1100-ish BCE:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Egypt_NK_edit.svg

other relevant pieces of evidence for this are the egyptian hittite peace treaty that places the border between those two empires approximately 100 miles north of jerusalem around 1259 BCE, signed by the great ramesses ii, and the stele left by his son mernepteh in 1208 BCE reaffirming conquest of canaan -- including our oldest positive historical reference to a people called "israel". there are also egyptian outposts like jaffa which persisted until about the mid 1100's BCE, when egypt begins to lose control canaan in the bronze age collapse.

you can probably see why this causes some problems; the entire historical context of the narrative is wrong. there was no free land to lead the israelites to: moses's destination in the story was egypt in history. so, who was moses, then?

> Although the Jews call it Bereshit because it is the first and means "in the beginning."

it actually means "in the beginning of." you may wish to see rashi's commentary:

>> This verse calls aloud for explanation in the manner that our Rabbis explained it: God created the world for the sake of the Torah which is called (Proverbs 8:22) “The beginning (ראשית) of His (God’s) way”, and for the sake of Israel who are called (Jeremiah 2:3) “The beginning (ראשית) of His (God’s) increase’’. If, however, you wish to explain it in its plain sense, explain it thus: At the beginning of the Creation of heaven and earth when the earth was without form and void and there was darkness, God said, “Let there be light”. The text does not intend to point out the order of the acts of Creation — to state that these (heaven and earth) were created first; for if it intended to point this out, it should have written 'בראשונה ברא את השמים וגו “At first God created etc.” And for this reason: Because, wherever the word ראשית occurs in Scripture, it is in the construct state. E. g., (Jeremiah 26:1) “In the beginning of (בראשית) the reign of Jehoiakim”; (Genesis 10:10) “The beginning of (ראשית) his kingdom”; (Deuteronomy 18:4) “The first fruit of (ראשית) thy corn.” Similarly here you must translate בראשית ברא אלהים as though it read בראשית ברוא, at the beginning of God’s creating. A similar grammatical construction (of a noun in construct followed by a verb) is: (Hosea 1:2) תחלת דבר ה' בהושע, which is as much as to say, “At the beginning of God’s speaking through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea.” Should you, however, insist that it does actually intend to point out that these (heaven and earth) were created first, and that the meaning is, “At the beginning of everything He created these, admitting therefore that the word בראשית is in the construct state and explaining the omission of a word signifying “everything” by saying that you have texts which are elliptical, omitting a word, as for example (Job 3:10) “Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb” where it does not explicitly explain who it was that closed the womb; and (Isaiah 8:4) “He shall take away the spoil of Samaria” without explaining who shall take it away; and (Amos 6:12) “Doth he plough with oxen," and it does not explicitly state, “Doth a man plough with oxen”; (Isaiah 46:10) “Declaring from the beginning the end,” and it does not explicitly state, “Declaring from the beginning of a thing the end of a thing’ — if it is so (that you assert that this verse intends to point out that heaven and earth were created first), you should be astonished at yourself, because as a matter of fact the waters were created before heaven and earth, for, lo, it is written, (v. 2) “The Spirit of God was hovering on the face of the waters,” and Scripture had not yet disclosed when the creation of the waters took place — consequently you must learn from this that the creation of the waters preceded that of the earth. And a further proof that the heavens and earth were not the first thing created is that the heavens were created from fire (אש) and water (מים), from which it follows that fire and water were in existence before the heavens. Therefore you must needs admit that the text teaches nothing about the earlier or later sequence of the acts of Creation.

the simplest explanation is that rashi's first reading is correct, and the masoretes have mispointed בָּרָ֣א as a perfect verb, when is should be pointed בְּרֹ֤א (gen 5:1) as an infinitive construct, which is the same kind of grammatical construction. this construction, a complex preposition in construct form, followed by an infinitive, sets up a subordinate clause. the following statement is an aside, with the initial action taking place in verse 3:

>> When God began to create heaven and earth—

>> the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—

>> God said, “Let there be light”;

this is actually a common structure for ancient near eastern creation myths, and you can see it again in genesis 2 -- a work by a different author:

>> When the Lord God made earth and heaven—

>> when no shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, because the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the soil, but a flow would well up from the ground and water the whole surface of the earth—

>> the Lord God formed man from the dust of the earth.

subordinate clause, aside, initial action. you can see it other cultures, even:

>> When the heavens above did not exist,
And earth beneath had not come into being —
There was Apsû, the first in order, their begetter,
And demiurge Tia-mat, who gave birth to them all;
They had mingled their waters together
Before meadow-land had coalesced and reed-bed was to he found —
When not one of the gods had been formed
Or had come into being, when no destinies had been decreed,
The gods were created within them:
Lahmu and Lahamu were formed and came into being.

>> Enuma Elish, Babylon

i point this out because i see hints you're going down the wrong path here -- this first verse is not a definitive statement about anything. it merely locates the story temporally.

> The new testament begins with the words biblos geneseos

by accident. early church tradition assumed that the gospel of matthew was earliest, but based on the two source hypothesis regarding the synoptic problem, and editorial fatigue in matthew and luke, scholars mostly think that matthew and luke were copying the gospel of mark. mark, of course, begins "Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ", arxe tou euaggeliou iesou xristou uiou tou thou, the beginning of the gospel of jesus christ son of god." but there's a better candidate here. consider:

>> Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος (John 1:1)

>> ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν (Gen 1:1 LXX)

it's likely that john was specifically invoking genesis here. i am not sure, at the moment, when the title "genesis" was applied to the text. i suppose i could keep going, but these are some problems i see right off the bat.

if you'd like, i could talk about the function of genesis, literary style, dates of authorship, relationship to the babylonian calendar rather than the original hebrew one, the demythologization of other deities, the polytheistic background it's explicitly rejecting, etc. this is really just scratching the surface.

It's a bunch of gobbledygook about the generations and the kingdom and all of that. It's all nonsense. In my humble opinion, you need to de-indoctrinate yourself to fully remove these types of fears. Not sure if I've shared this post with you before, but here's what I did personally:

Take some time to learn about the history of the bible. For example, you can take the Open Yale Courses on Religious Studies for free.

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Next, learn some actual science. For example - spoiler alert: evolution is true. Visit Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution Website.. Or, if you're pressed for time, watch this cartoon.

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Learn about the origin of the universe. For example, you could read works by Stephen Hawking

Read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Learn about critical thinking from people like Michael Shermer, and how to spot logical fallacies.


For good measure, use actual data and facts to learn the we are NOT living in some biblical "last days". Things have gotten remarkably better as man has progressed in knowledge. For example, watch this cartoon explaining how war is on the decline..

Read The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

Another great source is the youtube series debunking 1914 being the start of the last days.

Another way to clear out the cobwebs is to read and listen to exiting stories. Here are some resources:

https://leavingjw.org

Here is a post with links to a bunch of podcasts interviewing JWs who've left

Here's another bunch of podcasts about JWs

Here is a great book from Psychotherapist and former JW Bonnie Zieman - Exiting the JW Cult: A Helping Handbook

I wish you the best. There is a whole world of legitimate information out there based on actual evidence that you can use to become a more knowledgeable person.

You may still wonder how you can be a good human without "the truth." Here is a good discussion on how one can be good without god. --Replace where he talks about hell with armageddon, and heaven with paradise--

To go further down the rabbit hole, watch this series.

Here's a nice series debunking most creationist "logic".

Start to help yourself begin to live a life where, as Matt Dillahunty puts it, you'll "believe as many true things, and as few false things as possible."

>I suppose to get right down to it, one of the major things that make me unsure about the Bible is because of how it can be so misinterpreted.

I think that this should make you unsure about people, but not the Bible. People twist things, and in fact we are told that people will twist Scripture within the Bible. Beyond that, even people with good motivations are imperfect thinkers. You, myself, and everyone else, when we approach the Bible, we bring with it our own baggage. Our understanding, our lives, and what we think now affects how we read the Bible. This is normal, but we need to recognize it in order for us to get around it and try to see what the Bible actually says (I'll mention this kind of stuff more below). Even with this in mind, this doesn't have any affect on the trust-worthiness of the Bible itself.

>Of course, one of the biggest things we hear about is that homosexuality is a sin. I don't know how many places it's been mentioned, but the only thing I recall about it is the very famous line "Man shall not lie with man as he does with a woman" or something along those lines.

I referenced a few places where homosexuality is brought up, but I'll link them here. The Leviticus passage (which is what you just referenced) is not the only one.

Romans 1:26-27, 1 Timothy 1:8-11, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.


>But while I was trying to learn and understand more about the Bible, what's real and not etc, I have also read several times that this line was something that was difficult to translate from its original texts, and that it originally referred to "sexual satanic rituals" with large groups of people

This is indeed a route people try to go. On nearly every topic you are going to have people telling you things that seem convincing on both sides. I would recommend looking into hermeneutics techniques (how to read, interpret, and understand the Bible). I'll talk more about this in a bit.

For this specific text, I don't think it holds up. I assume that this case is made because Molech is mentioned in the preceding law. Here is that section:

21 You shall not give any of your children to offer them[b] to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. 22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. 23 And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is perversion.


The whole chapter is Leviticus 18. The first tip of hermeneutics I'll give you is "Context is King." Always check for context.


This chapter is one long list of things that the Israelites are not commanded to do and which the other nations will be condemned for (this along with the fact that they are restated in the NT are why I think they are still binding).

The law concerning Molech is either in regards to sacrificing children to the false god or dedicate them to him, likely as temple prostitutes. Either way, it does not mean that the following verse is related to Molech, and if it is then we could say the same thing about bestiality, but this (I think you would agree) is obviously sinful. Taken even further, you could argue that incest was okay, but again, this is obviously not the case.

The idea that the immediate context indicates that this is talking about temple sex worship or orgies (I think) is unfounded and it doesn't take the context of the chapter as a whole into account. With that said here is a link to a debate between James White and a guy who holds this view that you are talking about. To be upfront, this is probably the best defense of homosexual acceptance I have ever heard, and he even made me think his arguments were valid for a moment...but as the debate went on and the more I thought about it the less sense it made.

Maybe you'll come away with a different conclusion though.

I'll also link this response post by Preston Sprinkle (who does a lot of work in this with nothing but love). He addresses this concern in point 2. Lastly, here is a short video by John Piper on the topic.

>It's one of those things that make me unsure of what to believe from the Bible.
It's concerning because I keep coming back to thinking "How do any of us know what is really right from the Bible?"

It takes time. My advice to you would be "don't panic, take your time." I have had foundational shifts in my thinking change because of what I realized the Bible was teaching. This is a part of growing and maturing in the faith. Sometimes it can be painful and exhausting but it is worth it and it will help you in the long run.

I think that looking into how to do hermeneutics will be helpful. I'd recommend How to Read the Bible for All its Worth. I'll link a couple of videos that might help as well. Exegesis and Hermeneutics (its a bit choppy, but it has good content). You'll also want to be aware of two fancy-pants words: Exegesis & Eisegesis. Rather than explain those in-depth, I'll just link to this 3 min. vid by Francis Chan that explains the concepts (these are also brought up in the other vid).

The key thing you want to look for is consistency. Is what I believe consistent with this text? the context? the Bible as a whole?

Here is a clip about the textual variants issue I was talking about. I recommend the whole thing, but you'd have to order it.

>I don't want, or plan to give up on my faith, but I'm afraid that even with me believing in God, and that he will save me, I can't help but wonder if he really will save me, or if he even saved departed loved ones who believed in God, but still did small things that seem to sound like they were sinful.



I would again recommend reading Romans 8. And also let me reassure you that we are not saved by our good works or by a perfect understanding of doctrine. We all err in one way or another. Salvation is a gift, we are saved by grace through faith. If you truly wish to seek God, to do as he says, and to love him then there you should take comfort in that. God recognizes that we are not perfect, he has taken that into account. This is the reason he sent Christ. Don't let the fact that you are confused keep you from rejoicing in God. Confusion does not negate salvation.

Hey, welcome to the sub. :)

First off, you have the right attitude (more than many churchgoers, it seems). You want to understand and wrestle and have it be real. Good news: you're on the right track. Faith is hard, at least most of the time. I'm sorry others looked down on you for asking questions and trying to figure things out; they were wrong to do so.

I agree with what others here are saying: Genesis is probably not the easiest place to start, and you'll get even more bogged down in Numbers or in Chronicles. Start in one of the Gospels. I saw Luke suggested, and I'll throw in John. Luke's writing has more details, and John's might be easier to read.

Starting in the Gospels has a purpose: Jesus is really the major focus. There's a lot to gain from reading his words firsthand, and seeing his actions. You might find it a lot different from what the culture says about him. Take your time and soak it in, and I think you'll find him pretty compelling.

After that, Paul's letters are pretty great. Philippians might be a good one to read first, though they're all really short and won't take long.

I might also suggest reading a different version of the Bible. The NRSV is accurate, but can also be archaic and difficult to understand. There are a lot of debates over Bible versions, but don't sweat them for now; I'd suggest the ESV or the CEB (if you want to study deeper later, the NRSV might be better then).

You'll probably want to find a church. This can be hit-and-miss, depending on so many factors. You won't and shouldn't fit into a church that looks down on you for struggling with faith. To start, even though it might feel silly, talk to God about it. Doesn't have to be fancy, just a conversation asking him to help you find a good church. Visit a couple, and see if they try to follow the Jesus you read about in the Bible.

(And if you're in the Dallas area, let me know... you can visit ours! :D I know a couple other great churches in the area too.)

If you're looking for more resources, it depends on what you're interested in.

• www.biblegateway.com if you want to read the Bible online. Tons of versions (again, I'd go with CEB or ESV). I find it harder to read online, but it's good to have on-hand anyhow.
  
• I second Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. It's a great read with some heavy concepts explained simply (Lewis was fantastic at this).
  
• For the Resurrection (central to Christianity), check out Willaim Lane Craig's books, The Son Rises and Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?, and, for a debate, Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment?
  
• For the creation story, Reading Genesis 1-2: An Evangelical Conversation is a must, as there are several viewpoints on Creation (another reason starting with Genesis might be difficult).
  
• For doubt, I recommend Disappointment with God.
  
• How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth is a good one for... well, pretty much what the title says it's for.
  
• Along the lines of Mere Christianity, try G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy. It's free, but might be a bit harder to read.
  
  BUT... don't go crazy. Start with the Gospels and maybe Mere Christianity, and go from there.
  
  If you have questions about what you're reading, feel free to come to this sub or /r/TrueChristian and ask. To be fair, there will be several opposing opinions on more controversial issues, which is a double-edged sword sometimes. But most everyone is welcoming, kind, and happy to discuss anything.

Here's another side of the coin. Not necessarily to drag you out of the cult, but just some very awesome, beautiful truths. If you've seen me post this before, i apologize. I don't like to assume everyone reads every thread.

Take some time to learn about the history of the bible. For example, you can take the Open Yale Courses on Religious Studies for free.

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Next, learn some actual science. For example - spoiler alert: evolution is true. Visit Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution Website.. Or, if you're pressed for time, watch this cartoon.

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Learn about the origin of the universe. For example, you could read works by Stephen Hawking

Read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Learn about critical thinking from people like Michael Shermer, and how to spot logical fallacies.


For good measure, use actual data and facts to learn the we are NOT living in some biblical "last days". Things have gotten remarkably better as man has progressed in knowledge. For example, watch this cartoon explaining how war is on the decline..

Read The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

Another great source is the youtube series debunking 1914 being the start of the last days.

I wish you the best. There is a whole world of legitimate information out there based on actual evidence that you can use to become a more knowledgeable person.

You may still wonder how you can be a good human without "the truth." Here is a good discussion on how one can be good without god. --Replace where he talks about hell with armageddon, and heaven with paradise--

Start to help yourself begin to live a life where, as Matt Dillahunty puts it, you'll "believe as many true things, and as few false things as possible."

Young Earth Creationists start with the conclusion that the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is the inspired word of God, without any error, and absolutely true in all that it says. And they believe the whole of the Pentateuch is straight-forward history. In my opinion, they regard it that way because they honestly can't conceive of any other [legitimate] way to interpret it.

And I'll admit it's hard. It's hard because our culture (20th/21st Century, American/Western European, Post-Enlightenment) only has a couple of categories for things. Best to use the language of the new Common Core...we have "literature" and "informational texts". And "literature" equals "fiction". So, if anything is supposed to be "true" (that is, "factual") than it must be read like an informational text. That is, whatever it says must be read as "literal".

(I'm sorry for all the box-quotes, but a big part of the problem, apart from categories, is the words we use--like "literal". I think N.T. Wright says a mouth-full in this clip with Peter Enns, where he says that what people usually mean by "literal" is "concrete", vs. abstract.)

As I said, the YEC's read Genesis as straight-forward history, because they don't have any other way (I think) to be faithful to the witness of Scripture as the true word of God. They don't have any other category to interpret it in. They wish (they are impelled) to regard it as true, but in doing so, they suppose the inspired author must have meant it to be a dry recitation of facts; i.e. this happened then this happened, etc.

They're reading Genesis through post-enlightenment, 20th century eyes. There shouldn't be any doubt about this, since Young Earth Creationism, of the Ken Ham, Henry Morris, ICR variety only had its beginning in the last century.

There is a great deficiency in our schools, and there has been for a very long time. Most of us are unable to separate myth from fiction. Or literature from fiction.

So, what's my opinion of YEC's. I think they ought to be commended for their faith in God and for their defense of His inspired word. But they need to be marinated in the whole history of the Church and the people of God, in order that they may begin to understand what it was--what truth--it was that the inspired author of Genesis wished to communicate.

I think John Walton is an important read in this respect. He takes his reader back to the time, and the mindset, of the people by whom and for whom these texts were written. I particularly recommend his book, "The Lost World of Genesis One.

Another important point, though, has to do with when these texts were written. Or, to whom they were written.

What's interesting, as Fr. John Behr points out in one of his talks (maybe not the one I've linked to) is that Adam, Eve, Noah, etc, really aren't mentioned in the whole of the Old Testament after those first 11 chapters. Maybe a genealogy here or there, but there's more emphasis on these personages in the letters of Paul and Peter than there is in the whole sacred texts of Israel prior to the exile. And has been often pointed out, the stories in the first eleven chapters of Genesis seem to borrow from, and refer to, Babylonian motifs. Might it be (perhaps) that Israel knew nothing of these stories before the Babylonian captivity? Might it be that they were therefore written by and to Jews returned from Babylon in the middle of the first millennium B.C. with the intent that they teach a theological, rather than an historical, truth?

I say "perhaps" and I say it advisedly. Because I'm not ready to dismiss the historicity of the first eleven chapters of Genesis completely out of hand. But what I will say, is that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are literature, they are figurative, and they are meant to reveal deeper and more substantial truths than any bear recitation of historical facts could convey.

And I think that when YEC's interpret these chapters "literally", they do the inspired author (and themselves) a disservice, though their hearts may be in the right place.

Hello and welcome! Indoctrination in most cults can leave a person bitter about the world around them. Learning the actual facts about reality, the universe, and humanity is a good way to counter those negative feelings in my experience. Not sure how much of this applies to you, but here are my recommendations for de-indoctrinating yourself:

Take some time to learn about the history of the bible. For example, you can take the Open Yale Courses on Religious Studies for free.

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Watch this talk from Sam Harris where he explains why "free will" is likely an illusion, which debunks the entire premise of "the fall of man" as presented by most Christian religions.

Watch this video on the Cordial Curiosity channel that teaches how the "Socratic Method" works, which essentially is a way to question why we believe what we believe. Do we have good reasons to believe them? If not, should we believe them?

Watch this video by Theramin Trees that explains why we fall for the beliefs of manipulative groups in the first place.

This video explains why and how childhood indoctrination works, for those of us born-in to a high-control group.

Another great source is this youtube series debunking 1914 being the start of the last days.

Next, learn some science. For example - spoiler alert: evolution is true. Visit Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution Website. Or, if you're pressed for time, watch this cartoon.

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne.

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins.

Watch this series where Aron Ra explains in great detail how all life is connected in a giant family tree.

Learn about the origin of the universe. For example, you could read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking.

Learn about critical thinking from people like [Michael Shermer] (http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things?language=en), and how to spot logical fallacies.

For good measure, use actual data and facts to learn the we are NOT living in some biblical "last days". Things have gotten remarkably better as man has progressed in knowledge. For example, watch this cartoon explaining how war is on the decline.

Read The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker.

Watch this Ted Talk by Hans Rosling, the late Swedish Statistician, where he shows more evidence that the world is indeed becoming a better place, and why we tend to wrongly convince ourselves otherwise.

I wish you the best. There is a whole world of legitimate information out there based on actual evidence that you can use to become a more knowledgeable person.

You may still wonder how you can be a good human without "the truth." Here is a good discussion on how one can be good without god. --Replace where he talks about hell with armageddon, and heaven with paradise--

Start to help yourself begin to live a life where, as Matt Dillahunty puts it, you'll "believe as many true things, and as few false things as possible."

There’s a lot of good responses here already but I wanted to offer some resources and ideas that have helped me.
First of all, despite what the new atheists say, you don’t need faith to believe in God, which is why there are so many deists in academia. The weight of the scientific evidence alone is enough to conclude that there must be some kind of intelligence behind reality. This includes the fine-tuning argument, a variation of which convinced Antony Flew, a life long atheist academic and strong critic of religion to change his mind about God and embrace deism, and quantum mechanics, which doesn’t prove God’s existence but rather undermines materialist assumptions about the fundamental nature of reality. These findings have convinced others in the scientific community such as lifelong atheist, Richard Conn Henry, a professor of theoretical physics at MIT to embrace deism.
So just based on what’s happening with physics, it’s reasonable to believe that there’s some kind of intelligence behind reality. However, this in no way proves the existence of the God of the Bible.
To support the Christian view of God you can look at the evidence for the reliability of New Testament accounts. This is where faith comes in. You have to decide whether or not you believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead. Obviously, there isn’t a scientific way to definitively prove whether or not an historical event happened. But if you want support for the idea that miracles happen and are relatively common, even today, I’d recommend Craig S Keeners magisterial 2 volume work “Miracles” which details hundreds of modern day miracle accounts.

Other reading:
The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard who was a professor of philosophy for many years at USC, helped me to understand my faith at a deeper level, which has helped immensely. It turns out it’s much easier to believe in something when it actually makes sense to you.

On Guard by William Lane Craig explains many of the logical proofs that other commenters have offered here, which are great but can be really difficult to understand without spending a good amount of time with them.

Atheist Delusions by David Bentley Hart: Hart is a leading Orthodox theologian and philosopher who spends a lot of time talking about the logical incoherence of materialism. All his stuff is great but it’s difficult.

This is just a small sample of what’s out there in terms of apologetics but it’s a start. There’s enough that you could spend your entire life reading compelling arguments for the God’s existence. However, the most effective way to strengthen your faith, in my opinion, is to see how effective the teachings of Jesus are for yourself, to ACTUALLY DO what he says and see how it transforms your life first hand. This is how you make your faith unshakable. Nothing beats personal experience.

The Bible is a collection of different texts, each one written by different people at different times for different reasons. The concept of "history" wasn't even invented for much of the period of writing, and our modern understanding of genres is only loosely connected to the genres present and recognised at the time. Much of the Bible was never written to be interpreted literally in the first place, it is intended to be read as allegorical, theological, poetry, apocalyptic, prophetic, metaphorical, or parables.

In addition much of scripture was written in one way by the author and later interpreted by the community of the faithful in another sense as well, as people saw that while the writer couldn't have known the deeper meaning of his words, the Holy Spirit can use those words to show later readers a more profound truth. In interpreting the texts, historically the Western Church has considered four general 'Senses' in which any passage can be read. This is an artificial division, but still helpful. These senses are: Literal, Allegorical, Moral, and Anagogical.

The literal sense is not just a 'plain reading' as some conservative evangelicals would understand it, but covers the sense of the text after being interpreted according to sound, consistent rules, called 'exegesis'.

The Moral sense involves the moral lessons that can be derived from the text, that interpretation which leads us to act justly.

The Allegorical sense is when we look at the text and derive a more profound understanding of how it points us towards Christ, and towards God.

The Anagogical sense (from the Greek: anagoge, “leading”) is the sense of the text that points to realities and events in terms of their eternal significance.

For example, the story of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea can be interpreted Literally, as a story of God's rescuing of His People in the past, it can be interpreted Morally as an instruction to us today to trust in God's provision during times of trouble. It can be interpreted Allegorically as a sign or type of Christ's salvation and of Baptism, and it can be interpreted Anagogically as pointing towards our final rescue and God's leading us out of this world into the Promised Land of the New Heaven and the New Earth. All four senses can be used on the same passage, though not every passage can be interpreted in all four senses.

This is all to say that the Bible cannot be taken at 'face value' but must always be interpreted. A book I always recommend as an essential starter book is How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, by Gordon Fee. It gives a good summary of the different genres present in the Bible and how to read them to get the most out of them.

However this is only a starter text. Some would say the bible is so complicated and based on such ancient ideas that are so difficult for modern readers to understand that only certain people are qualified to interpret them, and we must submit our own understanding to that of the Church. Others would say individual 'lay' Christians are capable of interpreting the scriptures correctly but such interpretation requires much serious study, understanding of context and secondary books to guide us. Others would say that all any reader needs is the Holy Spirit and God will ensure our understanding is correct, so we don't need to study at all.

Personally I think both the former and latter extreme positions are flawed, and I think with long study, willingness to learn, serious discussion with other Christians, humbleness, and faith any individual can interpret the scriptures correctly. However we should never be so arrogant as to think that our own understanding is always correct, or that there is not something we can learn from the wider Church and our brothers and sisters in Christ. Nor should we be worried when we don't understand something. While full and accurate understanding of scripture is helpful, it is not essential for salvation, only faith in Christ. A full understanding of the deeper lessons of scripture will often come later, after many years living in faith. If you can't understand something now, just put it to one side, and have faith in God that he will help you to understand it when you're ready to do so.

If you like philosophy, check out the Summa Theologiae. For shorter intros to Thomism, check out Ed Feser's Aquinas or his more polemical The Last Superstition.

Essentially, Christianity is based on the historical event of the resurrection, which really convinced me. [These] (https://www.youtube.com/user/InspiringPhilosophy) videos offer a short introduction, but [this] (https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Jesus-New-Historiographical-Approach/dp/0830827196) book is a great book just from a historical, non-faith based viewpoint.

If you don't have a hardy, solid Catholic Bible check out the [Didache Bible] (https://www.amazon.com/Didache-Bible-James-Socias/dp/1939231140/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1494110408&sr=1-1&keywords=didache+bible)

If you don't have a kindle, you should get one. There are tons of fantastic book collections under $5, including patristics, Chesterton, Aquinas, and more.

Book recommendations:

Mere Christianity, CS Lewis (Almost-Catholic Anglican)

The Abolition of Man, CS Lewis

Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton (Catholic)

The Orthodox Way, Kallistos Ware (Orthodox; especially useful if you are interested in Eastern/Byzantine Catholicism)

The Lamb's Supper by Scott Hahn

Jesus of Nazareth by Josef Cardinal Ratzinger (AKA Pope Benedict XVI)

On Being Catholic by Thomas Howard

Life of Christ by Fulton Sheen

Confessions of St. Augustine by St. Augustine

Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales

Frankly anything by Scott Hahn, Brant Pitre, Robert Barron, GK Chesterton, or CS Lewis.

Even more [here] (http://brandonvogt.com/best-catholic-books-of-all-time/).

Protestantism is easily discerned to be false (Jesus started One Church in 33 AD, not thousands in 1517), but The Fathers Know Best, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, and The Protestant's Dilemma by Devin Rose ought to do it.


I'm an ex-agnostic too, so DM me if you need any advice.


>As my username suggests, I’m searching for truth and I know that the scientific method is an exceptionally good method of doing that. Especially in the fields of basic science, medicine, and engineering it is extremely effective at sorting out all the bullshit and pseudoscience that is out there.

Fantastic! Catholicism believes that truth is truth and that all truth leads us to Christ. The founder of genetics was a Monk, for example, and the discoverer of the Big Bang theory was a Priest. Check out the pontifical academy of the sciences.




Oh! I almost forgot! You'll love Bishop Barron. [Here] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zMf_8hkCdc) is him commenting on David Bently Hart's book, which you read, and [here] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtcKV65-9uY) is one of my favorite videos from him.

His Catholicism film is brilliant, as well as his books Vibrant Paradoxes, Exploring Catholic Theology, and Catholicism: Journey to the Heart of Faith

>You claim that your god interacts with the physical world in response to prayers and according to his "plan" to influence people and events and yet have never shown any proof of the truth of such a claim nor have you even advanced a theory on how such an external supernatural action would occur outside of physical laws.

There are those who may say they have proof in the experiencing the miracles or answered prayers themselves, but I do not believe I'll be able to provide you with "proof" that God interacts with the world. What would that proof look like anyway?

>On top of that, you claim that wine and bread literally transforms into blood and body of Christ. Not allegorically, not metaphorically, literally. This claim is easily disprovable and hurts your credibility. As well, the claim that blessings, confession, sacraments, adoration or any of these ceremonies has a basis in reality is absurd and has zero evidence to back it up.

Yes, I do believe that at the words of consecration from the priest, the bread and wine literally, substantially, truly become the body and blood of Christ.

The claim is easily disprovable in what way? Do you want to take the bread and wine and examine it? We assert that even under a microscope, the bread and wine will still look like bread and wine.

The doctrine of the Real Presence states that Jesus is present under the appearances of bread and wine. So any testing would still reveal that bread and wine are still present.

Even Jesus' own followers left him after hearing him say that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood, it is not surprising that those not of the faith would scoff at it. It is a scandalous claim indeed.

>Spirital as it pertains to biological as well as life-after-death. You say a lot about what the afterlife is like and what the parameters for attaining it are without any basis of proof aside from stories from ancient illiterate shepherds who had no idea how reality worked. You have zero actual knowledge of souls, sins, resurrection, afterlife, etc. and yet you make many claims about them and call these claims "truth".

This depends on what you mean by "knowledge." Are you suggesting that the only way of attaining knowledge of something is to prove it scientifically?

This proof you are seeking is nothing something we've ever claimed that we've had. These things you mention (sins, resurrection, afterlife, etc.) are things we believe de fide divina et ecclesiastica (of divine and ecclesiastical faith).

As far as the soul, I think there is room for discussion about the evidence of the soul. Intentionality comes to mind.

Also, you said that our basis for proof comes from:
> "stories from ancient illiterate shephards who had no idea how reality worked

This is a genetic fallacy

And to suggest they "had no idea how reality worked" is an absurd claim.

>Again, you say this and yet your church makes many claims about knowing precisely this. Belief is irrelevant, evidence is relevant. You can believe what your books say all you want. Even if everyone on Earth believed something that was untrue, say that the Earth was flat (coughthebiblecough), it doesn't make it true.

Belief is not irrelevant and knowledge of something being true is not solely contingent upon seeing scientific proof of it.

For example, you rightly believe that there are other minds apart from yourself. But it is impossible to prove this scientifically. Does it make the belief unwarranted? No, it is a properly basic belief.

Also, the bible does not attempt to tell us how the material world actually is. It's not a science book. There is nothing in the bible that says the earth is flat. What you would most likely refer to is where, in the Bible, it means the "four corners of the earth."

>I have enough evidence to reject it in favour of the null hypothesis for reality with a little help from Occam. The null hypothesis would be that there is no unseen, spiritual world and the only world that exists is what we can detect with our own senses and scientific measurement. Since we have seen exactly zero evidence that contradicts this or supports a magical spiritual world, the only possible conclusion is that magic doesn't exist.

You're starting point is that the only "proof" you'll accept is scientific. The entities in question are not empirical, thus the scientific method is of no use for determining the reality of the after life.

So if your criteria for determining the reality of the after life is that it must meet the standard of scientific proof, you're making an assumption that that's the only proof that is acceptable.

If there is intentionality, a will, I think it's compelling evidence of something "other wordly" that has power over the material world. When I move my leg, I willed my leg to move. This is a good starting point for understanding the spiritual as it related to the biological.

>They aren't credible to anyone unless you already accept their truth a priori. They're about as credible as Homer's Odyssey or any other story devised by man.

Do not treat the Bible as one single book, first off.

Secondly, if you treat the New Testament, especially the Gospel accounts, as you would any other historical document, you may find the historical reliability of the gospel accounts on the resurrection of Christ are quite compelling. See here for quick reference.

For a more in depth look, see here.


>In sum, you use the word "truth" in reference to your claims, yet there can be no truth without evidence.

Are you talking about scientific evidence? Because if you are, then this is simply not true.

You can arrive at truth without scientific in many things, in fact, you have to. Take for example mathematical truths. You cannot prove these with science because science must presuppose them.

You can arrive at logical truths without scientific evidence. You can also know things are true, such as someone is beautiful, without scientific evidence.

The thought that it's hard to conceptualize a ground for moral facts, whether natural or non-natural, is certainly something that motivates Mackie's argument from queerness. He does object to Hare's non-cognitivism, because he thinks that moral statements are meant to invoke moral properties, and fail to do so. Moral realists are also cognitivists, as are other error theorists like mackie. Most of these people, nevertheless, find it hard to conceptualize a grounding for moral facts. Indeed, this is a main reason naturalism is thought not to be very compelling, that it's much harder to conceive of a natural ground for moral facts than a non-natural one. Sharon Street, and as you pointed out, Ronald Dworkin make this point.

Parfit is not an anti-realist, he is a deflationist. He thinks there are moral facts, they are just non-metaphysical facts (like mathematical facts are).

>It's flagrantly circular to say rationality is determined by whatever a maximally rational being desires. So at most you could say that morality is determined by whatever a maximally rational being desires. But then you've done nothing to answer the big metaethical questions concerning rationality (in this normatively-loaded sense of the term): e.g. are judgments of rationality a matter of practical attitude, or do they make reference to some sort of ontology, and if so, what is the nature of this ontology?

Rationality is not determined by whatever a maximally rational being desires. Morality is determined by whatever a maximally rational being desires. This helps to explain the normative force of morality, because it helps us understand why it's rational to behave morally (if a being endorses your action who is perfectly rational, there seems to be very good reason to do it).

>Certainly not if it merely relocates all the big metaethical questions from one normative domain to another (equally problematic) normative domain.

Although normative properties generally are still weird, they are a lot less weird than moral properties. (It is a lot more difficult to see why something is rational to believe than it is to see why it is moral to do). Nevertheless, no moral theory is obligated to provide an account of all normativity (that's the job of a theory of normativity). If that were the case many arguments for moral realism wouldn't work (like Terrence Cuneo's comparison argument).

>I've read Firth and Brandt and Michael Smith, and I consider myself pretty well-informed about ideal observer theory, but I've never encountered "the algorithm analogy".

That's because I invented it when I responded to your post. It seems like it would be a good thing to use in an undergraduate class to make ideal observer theory compelling, but then again, I'm not a teacher.

>Where exactly do people in the literature compare the epistemic merits of moral intuitions with inferential claims about God's psychology? Are you saying that all inferential claims are ipso facto epistemically superior to all intuitions?

Well for starters there's a trivial argument that DCT offers a more reliable basis for morality than ethical intuitionism, namely that it's compatible with ethical intuitionism. So you could back up your intuitions with other stuff, whereas the person who is solely an ethical intuitionism has got nothing to back up their intuitions with.

Nevertheless, I did probably speak too soon in saying it's a general belief that claims about god's psychology are more defensible than claims stemming from intuition about morality. More accurately, most people seem to believe that in light of the objections to ethical intuitionism from cognitive science, claims about God's psychology are prima facie more reliable than intuitionist claims about morality.

The problem of divine hiddenness, for example, implies we know enough about God's character to have a sensible idea of how hidden he would be:

http://philpapers.org/rec/TRIGSA

A lot of religious knowledge also stems from authority, which is typically understood to be more reliable than intuition:

http://philpapers.org/rec/BENBOA-4

On reformed epistemology, knowledge of God is properly basic, which puts it on the level of belief in free will, which seems to be more well-founded than faulty intuitions:

https://www.amazon.com/Warranted-Christian-Belief-Alvin-Plantinga/dp/0195131932

But all in all, when you look at the language religious epistemologists and scholars of religion use, it certainly seems to be a language in which knowledge of God's character is presumed more reliable than an epistemology which looks like it fails. Of course, none of this amounts to an argument that knowledge of God's psychology is more reliable than moral intuition in general, and such would make for a very interesting paper, so thanks for the idea!

I recommend "The Harper Collins Study Bible". It's NRSV, with all the footnotes, nice introductions before each book, etc. I'm also a fan of the ESV. Please avoid King James (KJV and NKJV)

Also, I highly recommend How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth. This is written for Christians, so it might be a little dense (I haven't read it for 10 years). But it is an excellent tool for learning how Christians (especially Christian leaders - theologians and pastors / priests) read.

I will point out one major thing, since you're so new to the topic. There are two basic approaches to reading the Bible. One is more academic and the other more experiential. Neither is right or wrong, and as a Christian, I think it's important to do both. But sometimes you'll notice people will kind of make it seem like you should only do one or the other. Here are details of each:

Experiential
Read it, meditate on it, let God speak to you through it, try to apply it to your life, put yourself in the story - General method used by Christians when they read the Bible every day and pray. This a daily practice recommended in most Protestant denominations, often called "devotions" - Catholics and Orthodox might use approaches that are more about daily rituals / prayers, but Protestantism grew out of the Enlightenment and the idea that people could and should read for themselves, but unfortunately that also tended to lead to a rejection of ritual / tradition.

(Aside, in case you don't know, there are three major branches of Christianity: Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant. Many people hear about all the Protestant denominations like Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist, even Amish and don't realize that they are all grouped together under "Protestant" because they grew out of the Reformation. Church history is a subject that can explain how these groups arose.)

Academic
Understand the historical context, use literary analysis (some books of the Bible are letters, some are poetry, some are allegory, so they should be read differently), and developing a cohesive theology (a set of beliefs that fit together and don't contradict each other). Some people find this approach to be offensive / showing a lack of faith since you aren't "letting God interpret / guide you."

Ultimately, the best approach, used by Christian leaders, combines the two into one process. The book I recommended explains this process and quite a bit more. It's meant for Christian leadership, but might give you a good understanding of the Bible and how to approach it.... or it might confuse you with it's technical jargon. Anyway, here's the basic process. Read to understand these things in this order:

• What the passage meant in its original time and place (historical, literary)
  
• What universal truths it teaches about God and the world (theology)
  
• How to interpret it for our modern life / your personal life (experiential)
  
  Hopefully this gives you some structure for approaching the topic.
  
  I also agree with several people here about where to start:
  
  
• Genesis for creation, the fall, and God choosing the Isrealite - these tend to be the Old Testament sunday school stories of Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, etc
  
• Gospels = Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John, they all told the story of Jesus. Many people really like John. He tells the story of Jesus from a more approachable perspective - less Jewish ideas because he was trying to appeal to a broader audience. This is the book where you hear ideas like "Jesus is the light".... everyone can understand how important light is in a dark night, without needing to understand the Jewish traditions that predicted Jesus and stuff. But it also makes John a bit more poetic and sometimes cryptic. Luke was more of a "just the facts" type.
  
• Acts tells about the early church. It's important to realize they weren't "Christians" with a different faith than "Jews" - they were originally just a sect of Judiasm.
  
  Finally, here are the most common areas of study if you want to learn about Christianity:
  
  
• Biblical Studies - most of the stuff I mentioned above, basically ancient languages, how to read the Bible, etc
  
• Theology - basically like philosophy. But philosophy is about the nature of humans, while theology is the nature of God. This is where you get the great debates (What is the Trinity? What is the nature of God? Why did Jesus "have to" die? What is atonement?)
  
• Church History - Basically everything that's happened for 2,000 years. Includes theological debates that led to church splits.
  
• Other categories: Christian ethics, missions, ecumenical studies (Christians studying other Christians and working together), leadership, etc. Most of these are more about how the church works today. At this point, I think you'd be more interested in the first three.

I've posted about it before, but an accompanying book I really enjoyed and found helpful was How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart. It goes through and explains the different types of genres of literature found in the Bible, and the different ways to understand them. From the back of the book it says,
>"In clear, simple language, it helps you accurately understand the different parts of the Bible - their meaning for ancient audiences and their implications for you today."

I found it to be really helpful and an easy read, I would definitely recommend checking it out!

edit: The authors of this book really like the TNIV translation of the Bible, probably because they helped with that translation, but, like a lot of people in this thread are recommending, the ESV is really a great translation and the ESV Study Bible is awesome! I like this book for the descriptions of the genres, but the translation recommendation is definitely a little biased and not why I am recommending the book.

I've had a similar obsession with the bible over the years. It made no sense to me when I was part of a church but everything opened up once I realized it's one of the best insights we have into the ancient mind and I find it fun to read now.

The top response to this post says the god of the Old Testament is the same as the god of the New but that's because they are looking at it only as a religious text. Looking at it as a historical document you can clearly see a progression over time from a Polytheistic War god at the beginning who demands blood sacrifices to a Monotheistic vengeful god of a chosen few. The New Testament is clearly written with Greek/Roman influences and a kinder god that was changed in ways to better fit and grow in that society.

If you haven't read it already, a good first book on the subject is Who Wrote the Bible by Friedman. I like The Bible Unearthed by Finklestein and Ehrmann's books are good too. There are dozens of other good overviews that show the Bible's progression from ancient campfire stories to the form we see today. After reading a few, I don't see how anyone can seriously believe the Bible is the unerring word of god.

I know I'll never convince my family members that Christianity is wrong so I've focused my efforts to get them to understand the bible was written by man. Even if we grant them that a god actually spoke to Moses and Jesus is his literal son neither man wrote the words in the book. Later men took the stories and wrote them down. The books of the Torah were finalized 600+ years after Moses is supposed to have lived. The Gospels were written 50 years after Jesus is said to have died. These writers were not gods and to say they were divinely inspired is a cop-out. They interpreted what they heard but these men were also products of their times. They practiced blood sacrifice and accepted slavery nor did they have a fraction of our understanding of the world. It's why you can't take the book literally.

There may be truths in the Bible but you have to look behind the words to find them.

The high God of Israel was accompanied by lesser Gods at the start of creation.^1

|Job 38:4-7

-------|:-----|:-----
"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?|
Tell me, if you have understanding.|
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!|
Or who stretched the line upon it?|
On what were its bases sunk,|
or who laid its cornerstone|
when the morning stars sang together|
and all the heavenly beings^a shouted for joy?"|
^a Heb sons of God|

The Israelite religion is heavily based off of the pantheon of the Canaanites:

Excerpt from HarperCollins with added notes:

>“By a remarkable act of theological reduction, the complex divine hierarchy of prior polytheistic religion was transformed into the authority of a sole high god in classical Israelite religion. YHWH…was not, however, the only god in Israelite religion. Like a king in his court, Yahweh was served by lesser deities, variously called “the Sons of God,”^a “the host of heaven,”^b and similar titles. This “host” sometimes fought battles of holy war…^c and were also represented as stars…^d These lesser deities attended Yahweh is heaven…^e Another category of divine beings consists of the messenger gods or angels. The angels carry Yahweh’s messages to earth…^f In later biblical books, the sons of God and the angels merge into a single category and proliferate…^g ”^2

The high God of the Israelite religion by no means served alone. This triple hierarchy (YHWH, the Sons of God/heavenly host, and messenger gods/angels) “derives from the earliest structure of Canaanite religion.”^2

The differences: the Canaanites worshiped El and his wife Asherah as the high gods. YHWH took on most of the traits of El, and Asherah was no longer worshiped, “although there are hints in some texts that she was worshiped as a goddess in some times and places.”^2 While El was highest authority in the pantheon, some the children of El were prominent deities. On the other hand, the sons of God in the Israelite religion are “demoted to a class of relatively powerless beings.”^2

On the subject of polytheism, the text also seems “to acknowledge that gods of other nations exist.”^2 Each nation has its own God that it worships, "but Yahweh is Israel’s god and is the greatest god.”^2 See Deuteronomy 32

Deuteronomy 32:8⌂|

-------|:-----|:-----
When the Most High apportioned the nations,|
when he divided humankind,|
he fixed the boundaries of the peoples|
according to the number of the gods|

as an instance of God "delegating authority [to the heavenly beings] to govern other nations". ^3 The Israelites would then originally be monolatrists, meaning they worshiped one high God without denying the existence of others. Re-read the First Commandment

|Exodus 20:2-3⌂

-------|:-----|:-----
|I am YHWH your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before^a me.|
|^a Or besides

for a different understanding of God’s commandment. This is by far the greatest difference in my opinion between the early Israelites’ understanding of God and modern Jews and Christians.

---

Notes:

|^a see Gen 6:2-4; Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7; Psalm 29:1 (list here)

|^b see Deut 4:19, 17:3; 1 King 22:19; 2 King 17:16, 21:3, 21:5, 23:4; 2 Chr 18:18, 33:3, 33:5; Neh 9:6, 24:21; Isa 34:4; Jer 8:2, 33:22; Dan 4:25, 8:10, 1:15 (list here)

|^c see Josh 5:13-15⌂

|^d see Judg 5:20⌂; Job 38:7⌂

|^e “I saw YHWH sitting on his throne, with all the host of heaven standing beside him” (1 King 22:19⌂)

|^f see Gen 28:12⌂

|^g “a thousand thousands served him” (Dan 7:10⌂)

---
Works Cited:

|^1 H. W. Attridge, ed., The HarperCollins Study Bible, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), p. 13, annotation to 6:1-4.

|^2 Ronald Hendel, "Israelite Religion, God and the Gods", The HarperCollins Study Bible. H. W. Attridge, ed., (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), p. xliv-lv.

|^3 B. M. Metzger, ed., The New Oxford Annotated Bible, (New York: Oxford UP, 1991), p. 261, annotation to 32:8.

---

Further Readings:

"Israelite Religion", HarperCollins Study Bible


A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliott Friedman.


Canaanite religion (Wikipedia)

Beyond the obvious choices, Watts' The Book, Ram Dass' Be Here Now, Huxley's Doors of Perception, Leary’s The Psychedelic Experience, and of course Fear and Loathing (all of these should be on the list without question; they’re classics), here are a some others from a few different perspectives:

From a Secular Contemporary Perspective

Godel Escher Bach by Douglass Hofstadter -- This is a classic for anyone, but man is it food for psychedelic thought. It's a giant book, but even just reading the dialogues in between chapters is worth it.

The Mind’s Eye edited by Douglass Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett – This is an anthology with a bunch of great essays and short fictional works on the self.

From an Eastern Religious Perspective

The Tao is Silent by Raymond Smullyan -- This is a very fun and amusing exploration of Taoist thought from one of the best living logicians (he's 94 and still writing logic books!).

Religion and Nothingness by Keiji Nishitani – This one is a bit dense, but it is full of some of the most exciting philosophical and theological thought I’ve ever come across. Nishitani, an Eastern Buddhist brings together thought from Buddhist thinkers, Christian mystics, and the existentialists like Neitzsche and Heidegger to try to bridge some of the philosophical gaps between the east and the west.

The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way by Nagarjuna (and Garfield's translation/commentary is very good as well) -- This is the classic work from Nagarjuna, who lived around the turn of the millennium and is arguably the most important Buddhist thinker after the Buddha himself.

From a Western Religious Perspective

I and Thou by Martin Buber – Buber wouldn’t approve of this book being on this list, but it’s a profound book, and there’s not much quite like it. Buber is a mystical Jewish Philosopher who argues, in beautiful and poetic prose, that we get glimpses of the Divine from interpersonal moments with others which transcend what he calls “I-it” experience.

The Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila – this is an old book (from the 1500s) and it is very steeped in Christian language, so it might not be everyone’s favorite, but it is perhaps the seminal work of medieval Christian mysticism.

From an Existentialist Perspective

Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre – Not for the light of heart, this existential novel talks about existential nausea a strange perception of the absurdity of existence.

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus – a classic essay that discusses the struggle one faces in a world inherently devoid of meaning.

----
I’ll add more if I think of anything else that needs to be thrown in there!

No. On the contrary, I think it can be shown that theism is rationally obligatory; that is, that we deny the existence of God on pain of irrationality.

To avoid the conclusion of the Modal Cosmological Argument an atheist must deny the Principle of Sufficient Reason: He must hold to the principle that a physical object can exist without a sufficient reason for its existence. Schopenhauer aptly dubbed this a commission of, "the taxicab fallacy." The reason is as follows: Ordinarily, the atheist agrees that things have sufficient causes and explanations: headaches, global warming, diamonds, teapots, lightning. Indeed, the Principle of Sufficient Reason is a lynchpin of rational thought for theist and atheist alike. But when the atheist is asked to follow the principle through to its ultimate logical consequence (i.e., the universe) he attempts to dismiss it like a hired hack—and not because it is rational to do so but because he doesn’t like where it is taking him.

As we move through the rest of the arguments the cost of atheism continues to rise. Faced with the Kalam Cosmological Argument, an atheist must deny the precept of Parmenides that ex nihilo nihil fit; in other words, he must believe that physical objects can pop into existence uncaused out of metaphysical nothingness. To avoid the theistic implications of cosmological fine tuning, he must (in an extravagant defiance of the principle of parsimony) postulate the existence of infinitely many unobservable universes. To explain the origin of life, he must believe that it self-assembled by chance in the prebiotic soup of the early Earth when on every reasonable calculation this is prohibitively improbable. To reconcile his atheism with the essential properties of human mental states, he must deny those properties—including free will and, with it, the rational content of his own denial. He must, finally, deny moral objectivity since morality, on his metaphysic, arises from evolutionary processes in the service of reproductive fitness. This has the absurd and unpalatable consequence that to first principles of moral reasoning (say, It is always wrong to bayonet babies for sport) he cannot give his unqualified assent. And when it is pointed out to him that his belief that, "Beliefs that arise from evolutionary processes serve reproductive fitness and cannot be trusted," is itself a belief that arose from evolutionary processes and so, ex hypothesi, cannot be trusted, he has no reply.

The entailments of atheism are counterexperiential and absurd. Atheism cannot be rationally affirmed.

On the face of it agnosticism would seem to be a very reasonable position to take. What could be more prudent than suspending judgement in matters about which absolute certainty is impossible?

Note, however, that to be agnostic is to hold that, possibly, atheism is true. And since to affirm atheism is to affirm that all its entailments obtain, to hold to agnosticism is to affirm that, possibly, all the entailments of atheism obtain: It is possible that physical objects can exist without a sufficient reason for their existence; it is possible that physical objects can pop into existence out of nothingness uncaused—and so on. Clearly: If it is absurd to believe that married bachelors actually exist then it is just as absurd to believe that married bachelors possibly exist. Atheism and agnosticism cannot therefore be rationally affirmed and so it follows that theism is rationally obligatory.

Against all this the list of objections you cite have no force whatsoever.

>We would see many religions claiming absolute truth that are incompatible with each other, all with fervent and devout believers claiming all others are misled
>
>Vastly different moral codes among religions, cultures, and nations. And time periods. And...this is what we observe.

Yes. But see posts 20 to 23 here

>Prayers would not be answered aside from what chance would allow. And...this is what we observe.

This is a bare claim made without support.

>Miracles would be locked away in the past and would cease to happen in modern times, when the population is more educated and has recording devices. And...this is what we observe.

Recommended reading. Plot spoiler: This massive tome is an encyclopaedia of well-evidenced modern miracles.

>No religion would have compelling evidence outside of their own holy books (or confirmation bias). And...this is what we observe.

Pish posh.

>Believers would commit the same atrocities as everyone else. And...this is what we observe.

If you are saying that some purportedly-religious people act immorally that is a very insignificant claim. If you are saying that the religious life does not overall conduce to the production and pursuit of virtue that is a more interesting but very controversial claim in great need of support. But even granting it, how does this prove there is no God? Man has free will.

>Believers would not live any more or less privileged lives; misfortune or good luck would befall everyone regardless of their inner beliefs

God is not a fairy god mother. He is concerned with his creatures obtaining higher order goods, not material comfort.

>Faiths would continue to splinter into more and more sects, and argue over interpretations of minutiae instead of consolidating

This is a subtype of the problem of hiddenness which theists have coherently addressed.

>Supposed miracles would be unfalsifiable or proven to be hoaxes or simply natural occurrences

Miracles are unfalsifiable? This is rubbish. The Resurrection could have been falsified if the corpse of Jesus had been produced.

>New belief systems and/or cults would appear and sometimes gain large followings despite seeming ridiculous to everyone else (ie. Scientology)

See the above link on divine hiddenness.

>Religions would often need apologists or lies to keep their followers, and that wouldn't always work. And...this is what we observe.

I came to Christian Theism through Natural Theology. I think that on the total evidence it is far more probable than not that there is a God and that he met us face-to-face in the person of Jesus Christ. You are implying here that natural theology has no force.

Well, sure. Anyone can claim anything about the state of a philosophical field but if you actually do the heavy lifting and lay out your case you would get both my attention and my respect. Will you do it or will you tentatively withdraw your insinuation as unsubstantiated? There is no third option—at least, not one that avoids intellectual dishonour.

>Religious beliefs would often demonstrably contrast with observed reality

On the contrary, see my opening remarks.

>Greater access to information would correlate with growing non-religious populations

Google some stats. The vast majority of people in the vast majority of times and places have been theists. Today religiosity is, if anything, growing.

You should definitely stay in the faith. From what you've said you're the ideal person to be a Christian. Jesus came to save sinners, not the perfect. If you feel like you don't pray enough, remind yourself that there's no gold star for praying, and that God never says he'll punish anyone for not praying enough. You're right that being a Christian isn't always easy, but it really is worth it. And yes, it can be difficult, but it's also freedom and true life. I know personally that feeling like a hypocrite sucks, but it's worth staying with it. I went through about 5 years of flirting with atheism and feeling trapped but I'm so glad I stayed. There are answers to your doubts, very good ones. But it can take a bit of searching to find good ones.

Re. Reading the Bible, I think your instinct to be careful in your interpretation is really helpful, but that doesn't mean the only options you have is reading everything as 100% literal (as in, this is what I would've seen if someone was there with a camera) on the one hand, and 100% allegorical (as in, this is kind of like Lord of the Rings in that it makes a nice point but is really just fantasy) on the other.

If you're thinking of Genesis in particular, there's a long history of reading it as not necessarily referring to 6 literal 24hr days (for example St Augustine). [The lost world of Genesis 1] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0830837043?ie=UTF8&tag=thebiofou06-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0830837043) by John Walton is a good place to start if you want to understand the way in which Genesis fits its Ancient Near Eastern context.

On the bigger topic of archaeology, slavery, what's the point of Genesis, why is the OT so wierd, is there a way between literalism and allegoricalism? etc. Inspiration and Incarnation
by Peter Enns is by far the most helpful thing I've read.


TL:DR
Keep going! Read Atheist Delusions, The Lost world of Genesis 1 and, Inspiration and Incarnation. Don't give up, there's plenty of really good answers out there. Christianity is life and freedom. You may not feel it now but the more you look into it, the more you'll see it. At least, that's my experience.

Hey, I know this is late, but if you're still watching this post, I have a couple books for you. I have no idea what you mean by "middleweight-heavy," so I'll just list a few I use and teach from. I'm working on my M.Div. at a Southern Baptist Seminary, so you know I'm not a Ph.D. or an expert.

1. Gordon Fee. He has a couple good books, How to Read the Bible Book by Book and How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth. These books give a great overview of the hermeneutics of the Bible, and while I recommend them as a great way to get a little deeper, definitely aren't for the faint of heart.
   
   
2. Introduction to Biblical Interpretation by Klein, Bloomberg, and Hubbard. This is one of our Intro to Hermeneutics texts at Midwestern Baptist Seminary.
   
   
3. Grasping God's Word by Duvall and Hays. Our other Intro to Hermeneutics text. Gives you lots of examples and practice that I love and use this method when I'm preaching or teaching on a text.
   
   And two I'm not as familiar with, but should be interesting for you:
   
   
4. The Plainly Revealed Word of God? A book written specifically about Baptist hermeneutics. It says that it was mostly English Baptists, but had input from the US and Eastern Europe.
   
   
5. How to Read the Bible Like a Seminary Professor by Mark Yarbrough of DTS. I haven't read this one, so I have no idea what level it would be at, but thought you might be interested because of the DTS connection.
   
   To be honest, I haven't read Traina, and am not sure what sorts of things you've been getting from DTS, so I hope this is helpful. And if not, maybe it will be for someone clicking here to see what books people recommend.

Academic Biblical studies encompass a very broad range of subjects, but I'll try to cover a bunch here. In my opinion, though many people who frequent this subreddit may protest, the best overall introductory text to Higher Criticism of the O.T. would be R.E. Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible?. Although Friedman holds a number of fringe views and the vanilla Documentary Hypothesis has overall fallen out of favor (though there has been a recent revival of it), this is definitely the best-written and most entertaining introduction to the basic theory (I read through the entire thing in about 3 days). If you're looking for more on DH after that, Joel Baden's book, The Composition of the Pentateuch, is much more scholarly and explains the logic behind source division using numerous test cases (providing both the original Hebrew and translation).

For literary studies, just start with Robert Alter. I'm not really sure if this falls under the category of "academia" or is what you were looking for, but it's certainly an interesting analysis of how the Bible (both as a whole and by source division) tells its stories.

The only book I've read on the foundation of the Bible in the mythology of surrounding cultures is Tim Callahan's The Secret Origins of the Bible, which wasn't written by a scholar, but the author sources just about everything he writes; think of it as a Wikipedia for Biblical mythology--not entirely trustworthy, but fine for reference and finding further information. This one's also the only book on this list that has information on the New Testament as well.

Finally, make sure to check AcademicBiblical's wiki! It has tons of resources including videos, articles, etc. that can help you out.

I don't really know of any good books for Hebrew language since I've just been studying it in school my entire life. If you do seem to find a good book/course though, make sure that it's in biblical Hebrew and not modern Hebrew, as a lot of the language is very different. Having studied Arabic myself though, I can tell you that it'll give a significant leg up in learning Biblical Hebrew. For example, the way that words are constructed by fitting 3 letter roots into certain formulations is the same in Hebrew, and the vocabulary of the two languages are often close cognates. Once you've learned Hebrew, it's much easier to pick up Aramaic (I know that as well), but if you're just learning it to read Daniel/Ezra, it's not worth learning the whole language; the grammar is practically the same and the words are also similar enough, so at that point it's easiest just to fake your way through it with knowledge of Hebrew and and good translation to check against (NJPS, NRSV).

> You are making a huge assumption that the Bible is god's guide.

I am answering from within the parameters you gave me. You asked originally about JW's interpretation of Christianity. I think I am granted such assumption in the light of this fact.

> What about all those people who fervently believe the Koran or Old Testament (only) or the Upanishads or the Veda or any other holy book to be god's guide to man?

God will judge them, not me. My task is to spread His good news to them. If He deem them worthy of salvation, then they are worthy of salvation.

> Do you not pause and question what makes your holy book so special, what makes your holy book the true word of god? If other people believe in other holy books with as much you zeal as you do in yours, how can you tell your not falling into the same false belief as they are? How do you know you are following the true word of god and not some impostor?

I suggest Plantinga's book Warranted Christian Belief or C.S.Lewis' Mere Christianity.

My argument for it is fairly simple. The God worshipped by the Christians is the same God that was already being worshipped when Ur was the most important city in the world. The other gods came and went, but He remained.

> If you are truly following the word of god (bible) and Hindus aren't (in general), shouldn't you feel god more?

No, why should I?

> Shouldn't god give you some indication you are on the right path as oppose to how you would feel if you were Hindu?

O, but He does! Truth will set you free, and that is your signal.

> That is like giving your children a test and then rewarding everyone who answered the questions equally regardless if they got it right, and then punishing those who got it wrong (punishment depending on your belief on heaven/hell can simply be having it somehow worse off in the afterlife then another person).

The destiny of mankind is to stay on Earth. No one will be 'worse off' than anyone else.

> How are any of your children supposed to know what the right answers (any 'lifestyle/faith' that gets you the best possible afterlife) are if you give everyone equal encouragement throughout the learning process and test?

There is no best possible afterlife. There is a simple hope of eternal life here on Earth.

> If Hindus can/will obtain the same level of afterlife as members of your faith, then again I ask, why are you spreading your faith?

Why do you tell your friends when something good happens to you?

Yea I'm in the same boat, not a scholar but I've educated myself through Bart Erhman and Mike Licona. Ill go through your list with the knowledge I have.
>As already pointed out by /u/AdultSoccer, none of the gospel authors name themselves in the text.

This is not "evidence to the contrary" as you said, but only absent evidence.
>•The Gospel of Mark is heavily borrowed from in Luke. The author of Luke-Acts makes note of John Mark in Acts 12:25, but does not identify him as the author of the Gospel of Mark.
•The Gospel of Matthew borrows even more from the Gospel of Mark than Luke. Yet, according to tradition, the disciple Matthew is an eyewitness, whereas John Mark is recording what he has learned from Peter.

Yes, the gospel writings most likely used each other as sources, but that does not discredit who they are or there story on that basis alone. For example, if you were going to write a biography of your mom, in order to get an accurate portrait of your mom, could you not ask your siblings, her friends, her relatives, etc., what she was like, to have a more complete portrayal?
>•Mark 7:31 states Jesus went from Tyre through Sidon, to the Sea of Galilee, and finally into the re. . .

I appreciate the map! But Jesus was not in a race or anything, and, if I had to guess, chose that route to show himself to as many people as possible.
>•John Mark was Jewish, yet the author of the Gospel. . .

for the Malachi prophecy, the writer only mentions Isiah, but then quotes both Malachi and Isaiah. It should be noted, though, that both Malachi and Isaiah were referring to the same event, and Isaiah would be the "greater" of the two prophets. As far as contributing the ten commandments to Moses, I'm sure you know the story. God gave Moses the commandments, and Moses then gave them to his people. The verse you gave reads, "For Moses said. . ." and Moses did indeed say these things. As far as Joseph buying the shroud on the Sabbath, the writer was just saying what happened. Yes, that would be against the law, but Jesus also worked on the Sabbath for the Kingdom of God. It appears that work for the kingdom of God on the Sabbath was acceptable, but I'm no scholar here.


I would also like to say that Plutarch's biographies don't have his named attached to them either, similarly as to the gospel's biographies of Jesus. So it is not atypical that the "by: ____" does not appear. No one denies Plutarch wrote his though. I see you called into question Papias's attributions. For Mark; Papias says, "no intention of providing an ordered arrangement of the logia of the Lord" meaning that the accuracy of sequence of events was not taken into account. Yes, Mark begins with John the Baptist preparing the way, and ends with Jesus's death, but the order of his parables and teachings, according to Papias, may not be in a chronological order. Mark just goes from one parable to the next, many times. For Matthew writing in Hebrew according to Papias; We dont have any of the original manuscripts so we dont know what the original language was. I dont see why Papias would care to lie about this, so I would say that the original language as probably Hebrew.
I appreciate your comments though!


Also, Papias was the first, but Justin the martyr also cites Mark around 150 CE. For the other gospels, all the early church fathers had one voice in who wrote the gospels, and no one else was challenging this. So the only evidence available points to their traditional authorship. The church father were not always accurate though, so, again, we cannot say with 100% certainty, but this is history 2000 years ago, and, relative to other events of the era, the available evidence is pretty good.

Lastly, if something like this is holding you back from believing (that is, "academically, we dont know who, for certain, wrote the gospels"), know that nearly 100% of new testament scholars will admit that there are at least 2 different independent sources in the gospels, and the majority of scholars say there are 4-5 independent sources. So, if you are weighing the evidence for Jesus's resurrection, know that, regardless of who wrote what, there are still several eyewitness accounts as to what happen. Check out Licona's book on this, which has over 700 pages and 2000 footnotes. He has also debated Erhman several times, you can find it on youtube

I was about to jump on historicity, too! It has given my faith an incredible shot in the arm. You say you've read Craig, but have you delved into the expanding literature around not just the historicity of Jesus but the history of the Resurrection? Some starting places:

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-evidence-for-jesus

http://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/crj_explainingaway/crj_explainingaway.htm

Also been turned on to this book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0830827196/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d7_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-5&pf_rd_r=15R8W1HZ5115VTJ676JA&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1688200422&pf_rd_i=507846

NT Wright is always brought up, though I haven't checked him out yet. Another favorite, for me, is Luke Timothy Johnson's Real Jesus, an excoriation of the Jesus Seminar, but also his Living Jesus, a blueprint of his model for faith. Timothy Keller's Reason for God is also good, and he's a pastor, too.

Listen to what I'm saying if you will. There's very good evidence not just that Jesus lived, not just that he was who he said he was, but that he really did rise from the dead! Something causes this movement, this early church. Something explains this behavior, this literature, this evidence - it is one of the tightest narratives in the ancient world, and the more modern distance we have from it the more easy it is to disbelieve it but it's no less true, no less strong as an argument from history. And if it's true, or even plausible, it doesn't matter how strong your faith is because it's true independent of your belief!

But... having said all that, may I also recommend that you make a friend you can trust to share your burden? We here at reddit certainly can, but you sure could also use an actual in the flesh beer buddy over this stuff, someone you can be yourself with. Be great if it was a fellow pastor but it doesn't have to be.

For learning Ancient Greek (as an autodidact), start by signing up for The Great Courses Plus and take the Ancient Greek course, taught by Hans-Friedrich Meuller:

Greek 101: Learning an Ancient Language | The Great Courses Plus

You can sign up for a free trial on The Great Courses, for just long enough to complete the Greek course. But I think it’s totally worth paying for ALL of the content.

I recommend downloading the guidebook and doing ALL of the homework. Copy and paste the exercises into a Word doc and type out the answers/translations. Take the course as many times as you can for mastery.

I’ve created a couple of free courses on Memrise for Ancient Greek verbs that (I hope) people may find helpful. I use (my best attempt at) Modern Greek pronunciation. Audio can be disabled by anyone who has a problem with that. My Memrise account (Diachronix) has some other Modern Greek courses.

Paradigms of Ancient Greek Verbs

Principal Parts of Ancient Greek verbs

Professor Al Duncan produced an excellent series of Ancient Greek videos (on Youtube: Learn Attic Greek with Al Duncan - YouTube), which follows along the exercises in chapters 1–10 and 30–34 of Cynthia Shelmerdine’s Introduction to Greek.

That textbook is a bit error-prone, but it’s still pretty good for beginners. I recommend using it to follow along in Professor Duncan’s videos, at least until they cut off at chapter 10. But you’re on your own between chapters 11 and 29. Again, I recommend typing out ALL of the exercises.

The Athenaze Book 1 and Athenaze Book 2 are good self-study resources for intermediate learners, with a lot of excellent reading material. I also have a Memrise course for the vocabulary in these texbooks.

Athenaze: Book 1

Athenaze: Book 2

Leonard Muellner (Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies at Brandeis University) has a Youtube series on Ancient Greek: Learn Ancient Greek, with Prof. Leonard Muellner - YouTube

Unfortunately the audio throughout most of this series is terrible. But if you manage to listen closely (and not fall asleep), it’s quite edifying. Meullner is a genius. The course follows along the Greek: An Intensive Course textbook by Hansen & Quinn. You could try getting that textbook and following along, but I would recommend this last. I just can’t imagine most people having the patience for it. And I’ve heard mixed reviews on Hansen & Quinn, which professor Meullner criticizes ad nauseam throughout his videos.

Another resource I really like is the online version of ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΙΚΗ ΤΗΣ ΑΡΧΑΙΑΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗΣ by ΟΙΚΟΝΟΜΟΥ. You can turn the audio in the bottom right and a robot reads it out-loud. It’s helpful to learn the grammatical terminology in Greek and, if you can manage reading demotic Greek, you can experience the way the Greeks approach Ancient Greek (and observe the notable differences). They have interesting grammatical category distinctions that we don’t have in the West, many of which are quite handy. But this textbook doesn’t have any engaging reading material, aside from bland descriptions of the language. So it’s not for everyone.

Most other learning material I could recommend is mentioned in the various links above. But here are some key items for building a collection of self-study material:

*Geoffrey Horrocks’ “Greek - A History of the Language and Its Speakers” (MUST READ)

Plato: A Transitional Reader

Kaegi’s Greek Grammar

Smyth’s Greek Grammar

Plato Apology

Homeric Greek - A Book for Beginners

Rouse’s Greek Boy - A Reader

Basics of Biblical Greek

A Graded Reader of Biblical Greek

Geoffrey Steadman’s Ancient Greek reader SERIES

My recommendations from books I read in the last year or so (yes, these are all VERY STRONG recommends curated from ~100 books in the last year) -

​

Science fiction-

Derek Kunsken's The Quantum Magician (I would describe it as a cross between Oceans Eleven with some not-too-Hard Science Fiction. Apparently will be a series, but is perfectly fine as a standalone novel).

Cixin Lu's very popular Three Body Problem series (Mixes cleverly politics, sociology, psychology and science fiction)

James A Corey's The Expanse Series (which has been made into the best sci fi tv series ever!)

Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief series (Hard science fiction. WARNING - A lot of the early stuff is intentionally mystifying with endless terminology that’s only slowly explained since the main character himself has lost his memories. Put piecing it all together is part of the charm.)

​

Fantasy-

James Islington's Shadow of What was Lost series (a deep series which makes you think - deep magic, politics, religion all intertwined)

Will Wight's Cradle series (has my vote for one of the best fantasy series ever written)

Brandon Sanderson Legion series (Brandon Sanderson. Nuff said. Creative as always)

​

Manga -

Yukito Kishiro's Alita, Battle Angel series (the manga on what the movie was based)

​

Non-Fiction-

Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind - Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (and how we are not as rational as we believe we are, and how passion works in tandem with rationality in decision making and is actually required for good decisionmaking)

Rothery's Geology - A Complete Introduction (as per title)

Joseph Krauskopf's A Rabbi's Impressions of the Oberammergau Passion Play, available to read online for free, including a fabulous supplementary of Talmud Parallels to the NT (a Rabbi in 1901 explains why he is not a Christian)

​

Audiobooks -

Bob Brier's The History of Ancient Egypt (as per title - 25 hrs of the best audiobook lectures. Incredible)

​

Academic biblical studies-

Richard Elliot Friedman's Who Wrote The Bible and The Exodus (best academic biblical introductory books into the Documentary Hypothesis and Qenite/Midian hypothesis)

Israel Finkelstein's The Bible Unearthed (how archaelogy relates to the bible)

E.P. Sander's Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63BCE-66CE ​(most detailed book of what Judaism is and their beliefs, and one can see from this balanced [Christian] scholar how Christianity has colored our perspectives of what Jews and Pharisees were really like)

Avigdor Shinan's From gods to God (how Israel transitioned from polytheism to monotheism)

Mark S Smith's The Early History of God (early history of Israel, Canaanites, and YHWH)

James D Tabor's Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (as per title)

Tom Dykstra's Mark Canonizer of Paul (engrossing - will make you view the gospel of Mark with new eyes)

Jacob L Wright's King David and His Reign Revisited (enhanced ibook - most readable book ever on King David)

Jacob Dunn's thesis on the Midianite/Kenite hypothesis (free pdf download - warning - highly technical but also extremely well referenced)

Great question! I'm going to recommend two helpful books by Gordon D. Fee to you that I hope you will find very encouraging and easy to read. These are incredible, well written, non-technical resources to help us improve as readers of the Bible so that we can be certain we are reading the Bible as it was originally intended.

1. How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
   https://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Bible-All-Worth/dp/0310246040
   
   
2. How to Read the Bible Book by Book: A Guided Tour
   https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0310518083/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0310518083
   
   Also I'd like to recommend some additional, more technical or scholarly resources that can help you in your study of Revelation specifically.
   
   
3. The ESV Study Bible
   https://www.christianbook.com/esv-study-bible-hardcover/9781433502415/spd/502415?dv=%7Bdevice%7D&en=google&event=SHOP&kw=bibles-20-40%7C502415&p=1179710&gclid=Cj0KCQjwq7XMBRCDARIsAKVI5QZrZ2Z-su8Xe2eUMq9AiYRO-aW1oI8w6RycLpq4E1d-M9_w8ze_AgIaAmrIEALw_wcB
   
   
4. The Returning King: A Guide to the Book of Revelation by Vern Sheridan Poythress
   https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0875524621?ie=UTF8&tag=ligoniminist-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0875524621
   
   
5. The Book of Revelation (NICNT) by Mounce, Robert H.
   http://www.wtsbooks.com/the-book-of-revelation-robert-mounce-9780802825377?utm_source=challies&utm_medium=challies
   
   
6. If you want to listen to a full class from D. A. Carson on the book of Revelation, here are 26 lectures that are very helpful.
   http://resources.thegospelcoalition.org/library?f%5Bbook%5D%5B%5D=Revelation&f%5Bcontributors%5D%5B%5D=Carson%2C+D.+A.&f%5Bresource_category%5D%5B%5D=Lectures
   
   Praying the the Lord enriches your study and fills you with the knowledge of his will in Christ Jesus. Have fun!!

I had an inexplicable experience of grace eight years ago, an experience that turned my life around completely. I was 15 then, and I really consider my life to have begun at that moment—absolutely nothing that happened afterward could have been possible without it.

On an intellectual level, I am convinced that Catholicism presents the truth. I have studied the faith extensively, and the more I study—the more theological works I read, the more lectures I attend and listen to, the more I delve into the richness of the Catholic intellectual tradition—the more I fall in love with the faith, a faith centered around the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ and preserved faithfully by the successors of the Apostles. And though I think Catholicism makes the most sense philosophically or from a Chestertonian sense of aligning best with our natural intuition about the world, ultimately I am willing to stake everything on the resurrection. I encourage people to read The Resurrection of the Son of God by historian and New Testament scholar N. T. Wright, or to watch this lecture summarizing the book's contents. In short: the basic historical facts which justify the inference to the Resurrection are all established by critical historical scholarship, and, in an attempt to explain the emergence of those historical events, the 'Resurrection hypothesis' has, by far, the greatest explanatory power. That alone is enough.

The 4-source theory (or the Documentary Hypothesis) holds that Genesis (along with the rest of the Pentateuch [First 5 books of the Bible]) were written by 4 different authors, and later compiled into the book that we have.

The 4 sources are JEDP, J is the Jahwist, E is the Elohimist, D is the Deuteronomist, P is the Priestly Source.

I'm assuming you're writing about the flood narrative in Genesis, which is generally accepted to be a Jahwist text, thought to be written around 950 B.C.E.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis

Use this to get legitimate sources.


There's also the traditional belief that Moses wrote the book of Genesis, which would place it at about 1250 B.C.E., but nobody really puts a whole lot of stock in that anymore.

Personally, I don't particularly buy the 4-source theory as it stands, as it seems to be an unnecessary explanation. It seems to me that the Pentateuch is a collection of Ancient Near Eastern myths compiled by one author, probably around 500 B.C.E. That's probably why you have some similarities with works like Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish, because they all draw from the same oral traditions.

Anyways, I would look for sources on Wikipedia. Your best bet for good, solid information is on the documentary hypothesis. Let me know if you have any other questions, I'll see what i can do to help.

EDIT: Richard Friedman might be a good source. He has a few books that are accessible to the layperson. Particularly Who Wrote the Bible?.

I'd also recommend a few commentaries on Genesis. The best one I've read is the JPS Torah Commentary on Genesis by Dr. Nahum M. Sarna. It's got a lot of Hebrew stuff in it, but you can still get some good information about the Jewish interpretation of Genesis.

Good Luck.

Many have given proofs for God (Edward Feser's Aquinas and Five Proofs for the Existence of God are very good on that front), but in terms of knowing that Christianity is true, there are a few main ways that folks do it. While proving God is deductive, so you only would need one proof to succeed, the Christian faith cannot be proven deductively but would need induction, so more than one proof is good.

1. Scripture can be seen as self authenticating. There are certain parts of the Bible that every scholar, whether religious or atheist, would acknowledge was written by Saint Paul, who met eyewitnesses to Jesus and who said he had a vision of Him. If you read his first letter to the Corinthians or his one to the Galatians, I think it's hard to come from reading them and not to think that he dealt with something very real. He believed that those around him and he himself had experienced something absolutely miraculous, and reading his writings, we have no reason to doubt him as a witness.
   
2. If you want more technical proofs for the Resurrection of Jesus, you can look at academic ones like Mike Licona's The Resurrection of Jesus, or NT Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God, or the more popular The Case for Christ.
   
3. The Catholic Church fulfills prophecies. I don't have time to go into this too much, but in the Old Testament they talk about a man who would be born in Bethlehem (Micah) who would suffer and be vindicated (Isaiah), then have a kingdom that would go around the world established by God (Daniel) while bringing knowledge of the God of Judaism to all the nations. Such claims at the time would have been ridiculous because Israel was a tiny little nation, so the fact that it came true is quite impressive. I could go more into this if you want.
   
4. There are many miracles that still happen today by Christians: https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Credibility-New-Testament-Accounts/dp/0801039525/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1527787634&sr=1-6&keywords=miracles Here is a book that gives a good analysis, and here's a medical article from Oxford talking about them: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3854941/
   
   These proofs are not deductive, so there is some level of uncertainty, but taken together, I think it gives a very good case.

Well I think all kinds of sources are needed. "Enemies" of a religion might not be fair minded, but many intelligent critiques of religions are not by enemies. Also believers are highly unlikely to highlight (or even acknowledge) obvious problems with their religion.

The best sources are the original documents or as close to those as exist. I.e. the best critique of the Bible is the Bible, etc. Applying scientific and logical thinking (i.e. thinking which actually attempts to check itself against bias and coincidence) to original texts has left no good religion unsullied.

Or maybe the best source would always be a faithful graphic novel of the original sources. This seems to bring the wackiness of Genesis to life in a humorous way:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0393061027/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260227764&sr=8-4

I'm sceptical that the facts are as you say, or that we could justly draw the conclusion you do from them. Isn't it much too bold to say that 100% of miracle claims have been proven false? I don't have the inclination to get into a case-by-case examination of individual putative miracles, but consider the class of miracles that is easiest to prove by sainthood standards: an unexplained and permanent recovery from illness. I think it will be enough to mention a supposed natural explanation which I'm sure we've both heard invoked by sceptics in such cases many times: "spontaneous remission."

To me, this amounts to saying there is a natural explanation, which is that there is no natural explanation. In these cases, I don't think there are non-question-begging grounds for ruling out a miracle as an explanation, and if a miracle is the only viable explanation that can't be ruled out, it is reasonable to think it is the correct explanation. Maybe that's a case of shoving God into a gap and further scientific progress will provide alternative explanations for many present-day "miracles," but you can't exactly beat believers over the head with hoped-for future scientific discoveries.

Even if all miracles we had investigated were truly confirmed bogus, it would be rash to draw a conclusion that miracles are impossible. (You might object that you really are open to the possibility if "exceptionally good evidence" is presented, but I think it amounts to the same thing considering the lack of clarity about what exceptionally good evidence would be—something Richard Dawkins, for example, frankly owned up to in a conversation with George Cardinal Pell when he said that if a 900-foot Jesus showed up and announced "I exist," he would not believe.) We could only that we hadn't found any examples yet, just like astronomers hadn't identified any black holes until the 1970s. The Transportation Security Administration has screened millions of air passengers hoping to find terrorists, and hasn't made a single terrorism-related arrest, but we would not reason validly if we concluded that there were no terrorists, or that a higher standard of evidence should be required for terrorism than for other crimes.

As for the particular claim of the Resurrection, I see no reason why it should have to stand or fall together with all other miraculous and mythical stories. Granted, it's a valid criticism if the evidence for the Resurrection amounts to nothing and a totally arbitrary choice is being made to believe one outlandish, unproven claim and reject the others. However, the best Christian apologists (I have in mind writers like Michael Licona, William Lane Craig, and N. T. Wright) lay out detailed cases for why the Resurrection is the best inference that can be made from the historical evidence (and this kind of reasoning isn't just the province of a scholarly elite, it's filtered down to the general Christian public through more popular apologetics works like The Case for Christ and Reasonable Faith). The onus is on other religious communities to make a comparable case for their own miracle claims; if there is none, then even if you think the Christian case isn't enough, you can't say a double standard is being applied.

> One of the key differences that I mentioned earlier, between Buddhism and Science, is that a scientist's "no mind" isn't actually no mind; it's the distinction between relative and absolute truths

It's kind of interesting, but another saying in Madhyamaka thought is that the only absolute truth is that the only truths are relative truths. Or that the only absolute truth is that there are no absolute truths. Gulp down the emetic. :) You might enjoy investigating that school. My impression is that you're pretty bright, and it's all about transformation that starts by turning the thinking mind against itself, in a way. This book is a good introduction, with commentary in the second half that's much easier to parse than the original text.

Minimally, if the effect of prayrer is unverifiable, it would be wrong to say it universally fails (I don't know if you said that but someone did). Prayrer isn't deliberately unfalsifiable, I suppose the nature of prayrer and testing scientifically if prayrer 'works' is . . not really a matter of science, even though I can imagine certain kinds of scientific tests to observe if certain prayrers 'work', and even the term 'work' is difficult to use because of the nature of prayrer. So maybe it would be better to say a significantly better methodology would need to be employed.

If God didn't heal 100 out of 100 amputees, the most you could say based on that experiment is that God said no, 100 out of 100 times. . and then you are assuming there is a God in the first place, and God could have morally sufficient reasons for saying no 100 times.

In regards to the nature of answered prayrer, it is not true theologically speaking that all answered prayrer must happen supernaturally. So answered prayrer could come in the form of a friend meeting a need, and I completely grant that that makes the conversation in regards to science and prayrer even more confusing, which I think supports my point regarding the general untestability of the effects of prayrer in a certain sense.

We live amongst brilliant people so I think something could be done, but the experiments im aware of are either too simple or are based on a superficial understanding of prayrer.

Not that you need to read it, but theirs an incredible book by Craig Keener called Miracles that has significant crossover into the conversation we're having here, more in the region of things like exotic medical ailments being undone. Very well documented. Conclusions aside, it is good work. And its nice to hear what you have to say, too, so I appreciate your conversing :)

Get alone with God and talk with Him about what you've read. Talk out loud as if you're talking to a real person who is in the room with you. Talk to Him about your understanding of what He was doing in the text that you read, and worship Him as you do. Ask Him questions or tell Him things you don't understand, and then make some time to sit quietly and meditate so the Spirit can minister understanding to your heart and mind.

Additionally, check out this book by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart: https://smile.amazon.com/How-Read-Bible-All-Worth/dp/0310517826/ref=dp_ob_title_bk . No commentary or book can substitute for actually reading and meditating on the Word of God, but this book really helped me understand the types of literature in Bible, so I was better able to grasp what I was reading and how I should attempt to interpret it.

Lastly, I'd caution that passion is a feeling that can come and go. I would definitely pray and ask God to give you a heart that is passionate for the reading of His word, but understand that some days you'll feel it and probably most days you won't. Understand that the daily discipline of obedience is an act of worship in itself. Don't take pride in your great obedience, of course, but trust that as you are drawing near to God, He will also draw near to you.

I. Sure, some forms of theism are coherent (Christianity is not one of those forms, for what it's worth; the Problem of Natural Evil and Euthyphro's Dilemma being a couple of big problems), but not all coherent ideas are true representations of the world; any introductory course in logic will demonstrate that.

II. The cosmological argument is a deductive argument. Deductive arguments are only as strong as their premises. The premises of the cosmological argument are not known to be true. Therefore, the cosmological argument should not be considered true. If you think you know a specific formulation of the cosmological argument that has true premises, please present it. I'm fully confident I can explain how we know such premises are not true.

III. There is no doubt that the teleological argument has strong persuasive force, but that's a very different thing than "being real evidence" or "something that should have strong persuasive force." I explain apparent cosmological fine-tuning as an entirely anthropic effect: if the constants were different, we wouldn't be here to observe them, therefore we observe them as they are.

IV. This statement is just false on its face. Lawrence Krauss has a whole book about the potential ex nihilo mechanisms (plural!) for the creation of the universe that are entirely consistent with the known laws of physics. (Note that the idea of God is not consistent with the known laws of physics, since he, by definition, supersedes them.)

V. This is just a worse version of argument III. Naturalistic evolution has far, far more explanatory power than theism. To name my favorite examples: the human blind spot is inexplicable from the standpoint of top-down design, but it makes perfect sense in the context of evolution; likewise, the path of the mammalian nerves for the tongue traveling below the heart makes no sense from the standpoint of top-down design, but it makes perfect sense in the context of evolution. Evolution routinely makes predictions that are tested to be true, whether it means predicting where fossils with specific characteristics will be found or how fruit fly mating behavior changes after populations have been separated and exposed to different environments for 30+ generations. It's worth emphasizing that it is totally normal to look at the complexity of the world and assume that it must have a designer...but it's also totally normal to think that electrons aren't waves. Intuition isn't a reliable way to discern truth. We must not be seduced by comfortable patterns of thought. We must think more carefully. When we think more carefully, it turns out that evolution is true and evolution requires no god.

VI. There are two points here: 1) the universe follows rules, and 2) humans can understand those rules. Point (1) is easily answered with the anthropic argument: rules are required for complex organization, humans are an example of complex organization, therefore humans can only exist in a physical reality that is governed by rules. Point (2) might not even be true. Wigner's argument is fun and interesting, but it's actually wrong! Mathematics are not able to describe the fundamental behavior of the physical world. As far as we know, Quantum Field Theory is the best possible representation of the fundamental physical world, and it is known to be an approximation, because, mathematically, it leads to an infinite regress. For a more concrete example, there is no analytic solution for the orbital path of the earth around the sun! (This is because it is subject to the gravitational attraction of more than one other object; its solution is calculated numerically, i.e. by sophisticated guess-and-check.)

VII. This is just baldly false. I recommend Dan Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" and Stanislas Dehaene's "Consciousness and the Brain" for a coherent model of a materialist mind and a wealth of evidence in support of the materialist mind.

VIII. First of all, the idea that morality comes from god runs into the Problem of Natural Evil and Euthyphro's Dilemma pretty hard. And the convergence of all cultures to universal ideas of right and wrong (murder is bad, stealing is bad, etc.) are rather easily explained by anthropology and evolutionary psychology. Anthropology and evolutionary psychology also predict that there would be cultural divergence on more subtle moral questions (like the Trolley Problem, for example)...and there is! I think that makes those theories better explanations for moral sentiments than theism.

IX. I'm a secular Buddhist. Through meditation, I transcend the mundane even though I deny the existence of any deity. Also, given the diversity of religious experience, it's insane to suggest that religious experience argues for the existence of the God of Catholicism.

X. Oh, boy. I'm trying to think of the best way to persuade you of all the problems with your argument, here. So, here's an exercise for you: take the argument you have written in the linked posts and reformat them into a sequence of syllogisms. Having done that, highlight each premise that is not a conclusion of a previous syllogism. Notice the large number of highlighted premises and ask yourself for each, "What is the proof for this premise?" I am confident that you will find the answer is almost always, "There is no proof for this premise."

XI. "...three days after his death, and against every predisposition to the contrary, individuals and groups had experiences that completely convinced them that they had met a physically resurrected Jesus." There is literally no evidence for this at all (keeping in mind that Christian sacred texts are not evidence for the same reason that Hindu sacred texts are not evidence). Hell, Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Christ" even has a strong argument that Jesus didn't exist! (I don't agree with the conclusion of the argument, though I found his methods and the evidence he gathered along the way to be worthy of consideration.)

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I don't think that I can dissuade you of your belief. But, I do hope to explain to you why, even if you find your arguments intuitively appealing, they do not conclusively demonstrate that your belief is true.

I almost feel like having a teacher is necessary. It is murder trying to learn this language on your own. A teacher will motivate you. A teacher will be able to drop useful information as you go, "Actually, this text says that 'ekklesia' means 'church', but the Romans first used the word to describe public meeting areas that recognized the Lordship of Caesar..." and that'll help keep you interested when you'd rather give up. A teacher helps keep you accountable.

That having been said, Mounce might be good for you. The textbook comes with a CD containing lectures and other study aids that you'll find helpful for learning the language on your own. You can buy the workbook here separately if you'd like, or scroll down to the "Frequently Bought Together" section and get the textbook, the workbook, and the flashcards for only $57.86.

There are simply a lot of resources available for this curriculum, and the CD that comes with the textbook is a passable substitute for a teacher in the absence of one.

Also check iTunes U, I'm pretty sure I've seen classes on Biblical Greek there. If you find one you particularly like, you might want to figure out what textbook they're using and get that.

Before you do though, consider that you don't need Greek to understand the Bible and that learning Koine Greek to the point that you actually glean original insights from the text that you otherwise wouldn't demands a life-long commitment to the study. I've taken two years at university and my handle of the language is, relative to others, deplorable. Most of the insights I've gotten from Greek have come from other more learned people pointing out things I wouldn't have noticed on my own.

Good luck.

Hey there, thanks for posting your questions - they are questions many Christians struggle with, and they are questions many have found satisfactory answers to, I hope you do too ! You may get many answers to your questions, some of them contradictory. It's worth remembering that each of us is at a different part of our journey with God and those different answers are more reflective of our own human understanding rather than any issue with God.

Here's some answers from me for you.

1. I would say there is a lot of evidence for the resurrection. I could detail them but don't want to do a wall of text :) Check this page out. Josh McDowell is an apologist and has looked into this issue thoroughly. I recommend his book Evidence that Demands a Verdict.
   
   
2. I don't feel like it's a guessing game. There is plenty of evidence for God. But God still leaves us with a choice of whether to believe in Him or not. But for some people it takes time. It took me years to make that leap. Years where I carefully studied and sought God out deliberately. If we don't search for God, how can we say God isn't real?
   
   
3. They are wrong about certain beliefs, but there are also many similarities between the three major Abrahamic religions. I believe God has sheep in many flocks.(John 10:16).
   
   
4. Trinity is not polytheism because we don't believe that the God head is seperate from each other. This one deserves it's own post and I'm sure there have been many about it.
   
   
5. Different denominations understand the Bible, and to a degree God, differently. For instance, my denomination believes the Bible says the wicked will not suffer eternal torment and damnation. I can point to certain verses to support my view. But other people who believe differently could point to other verses. We congregate together with those who believe similarly because it makes worship and Bible study better, but I believe we are all a part of the worldwide fellowship of believers.
   
   
6. The Bible is clear that believing in Jesus is what enables us to be saved. If people knowingly reject Gods offer of salvation then they will be lost because there is no other way to be saved. I can answer more specific questions if you have any.
   
   Hope thats helped a little ! Blessings !

You've read "Warranted Christian Belief" by Plantinga (did you? or something else?) and it didn't answer sufficiently for you most of the questions in your stated OP? ... I'd have a hard time coming up with something better from a philosophical or natural perspective on belief.

I mean, a read through The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict might be a good starting point that's a pretty thorough excerpt from a historical authenticity point of view (scriptural etc. although it's mostly a rehashing and collection of other author's arguments and evidences). I found a lot of personal interest in Pensees by Blaise Pascal - but it's not well organized as it's his collections of personal journaling.

The one bit of info I can offer more than anything is that reading a book is a good way to get your head around a concept that doesn't require action or emotion - but Christianity is such that you need to experience both the intellectual pursuits and corrections of the Bible and the emotional connection with God and his church to really understand it. Go to a local church and ask the pastor/priest why and how they ended up in their position. Go to different churches and get some varying stories. I find that people tend to give more honest reflections of their beliefs when they are physically present than in writing which is carefully combed over and worded for a specific audience. It's only one directional. If you interact, I hope you find some people that can give you a more honest perspective on why Christianity makes sense. -- And I do really mean in person. Reddit is a great source for things, but personal contact is so much more rich.

Book recommendations? I don't know what you mean exactly. A supplement or resource? The following resources can probably be found in your church, public, university libraries. Often, you CANNOT check out these types of resources, so you may want to consider investing in a few books. Until then, check out biblehub.com. It is a little odd to navigate, but it is FREE!

Resource Standards (A serious must)

1. The Commentary Why you need these explained here
   
   A single edition condensed commentary as well as a set of solid commentaries such as The NAC and HarperCollins. There are several solid choices.
   
   
2. Systematic Theology Explained here
   
   I HIGHLY recommend one of the following: Christian Theology(used in many seminaries/MDiv OR Intro to Christian Doctrine
   
   3.Biblical Dictionary
   
   Holman's and Unger's are two well received one volume editions.
   
   The three aforementioned tools are in the libraries of every single minister I know. The names do matter, but there are plenty of fine, scholarly companies that produce up-to-date, relevant versions of very similar, but not identical, resources. Above is a minimal (and I mean minimal) list for putting together a 4-10 lesson study of Job. If you would like to learn more about hermeneutics, you should read How To Read the Bible For All Its Worth as a primer. There are several other required resources to add to your library if proper exegesis is something you are passionate about. I taught/lectured on systematic theology, intensive studies, and church history to a well-educated group of adults (some of which were my professors). Even so, remember this always-
   
   >HEB 5:12-14 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.
   
   Job: Interesting observations/thoughts to consider
   
   
3. Regarding the person of Job, the author, the date (probably 1st penned book), history, etc HERE IS THIS
   
   
4. Was Job a parable (mythology)? Research this point.
   
   
5. Was Satan trying to tempt God anywhere in Job, and if so why?

>I honestly have never gone to far into the source material for all this, so I can't offer much help up there if your question is regarding source material.

Thanks, but I have. ;-) If you'd like a primer, wikipedia has a decent intro for the NT, but the OT info is kind of lacking. You can click around the sidebar on the right all day and learn a lot though if you're interested.

The short version is our NT is pretty good but still has some open questions, but the OT, while probably pretty good in a few books, is horrible on many others, and we're fairly sure we often don't really know what the original source was. Of course, many scholars think there wasn't really a single original source at all, that it was compiled and redacted over the course of many years.

For the NT, this is an excellent intro to the field. There's not one standout good book for the OT that I know of, but that's partly because of the difficulties of the text and partly because I've studied the NT much more. ;-) The Septuagint (which the NT writers used)and the Masoretic text are in many of their books quite different in length and content, while being still different from the Dead Sea Scrolls which is sometimes closer to the Samaritan Pentateuch. We have few OT manuscripts, and they're all fairly modern, and we've lost touch with the originals so much that trying to pull them out from history is difficult.

If you want good bible study tools, I highly recommend Accordance if you have a Mac, or Logos if you don't. They co$t though. Blue Letter Bible is quite good for being free. If you're serious, you'll eventially want to learn at least basic biblical Greek though, as the greek tenses are different from ours and contain a lot of the useful information.

These are four books and a lecture series that would certainly be good at getting you started, all of them are academic rigor level, so not something that you'll be able to flip through at the bus stop. They take a bit of time to digest.

• Evidence that Demands a Verdict- good summary of the reasons we have to think that Christianity is historically true.
  
  https://www.amazon.com/New-Evidence-That-Demands-Verdict/dp/0785242198
  
  
• Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology- Natural theology, the arguments from reason for why we have good reason to think that there is a God. Written by academic philosophers.
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Blackwell-Companion-Natural-Theology/dp/1444350854
  
  
• Philosophical Foundations of the Christian Worldview- Another excellent book providing a systematic narrative from the ground up.
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Philosophical-Foundations-Christian-Worldview-Moreland/dp/0830851879/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=6HXK5P412QMRNR2XB37B
  
  
• New Essays on Divine Hiddeness- If God is real, then why doesn't he just appear to me? This collection of essays from both atheists and Christians explores that argument and offers (what I think) are some pretty good responses.
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Hiddenness-Essays-Daniel-Howard-Snyder/dp/0521006104
  
  
• Faith and Reason Lectures by Peter Kreeft- Excellent lecture series by a philosopher who approaches the topic of religion from an introductory level and takes the time to examine the arguments for and against. A great place to start since it covers everything from a general perspective.
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Scholar-Reason-Philosophy-Religion/dp/B001JHT8DI

Hi OP, thanks for the insightful post. You did a lot of collecting of good Bible verses to make the point.

Essentially, your argument is a reductio ad absurdem taking the form: "If X, then Y. Not Y. Therefore not X."

1. If the world is full of magic (as the world seems to be described in the Bible), then there will be verifiable, creditable magic to be present in history and in modern times.
   
2. But there isn't verifiable creditable magic in history and modern times.
   
3. Therefore, the world is not how it is described by the Bible -- a world full of magic.
   
   I think you well supported the first premise. And the conclusion follows from the two premises.
   
   The place to look is your second premise. The second premise you simply stated. You said that history and modern times are not replete with miracles (except ones that are "discredited").
   
   If I challenged the second premise, asserting that anyone who cares to investigate miracle claims (from Christians or any other group) will discover that the observable world is indeed full of them, what would you say?
   
   I'd venture that some people (and just wait for the comments!) will mock me. But let's ignore them.
   
   

• Some people will say that many miracle claims have been discredited. That's true! But many historical claims have been discredited, and that doesn't discredit all of history, only those claims. Many historical claims, and many miracle claims, have been credited and verified.
  
  
• Some people will say "Where's the evidence? Prove it to me." To that I say, four things: first, I'd say beware of sealioning. It's not my job to prove to flat-earthers that the earth is round. It's not my job to prove to materialists that reality is material and formal. If you don't know how things stand, or who to trust, that's on you. But if the question is sincere, perhaps start with Craig Keener's book, Miracles (https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Credibility-New-Testament-Accounts/dp/0801039525) Thirdly, "proof" is completed when the proof has been given. Persuasion is not the same as proof. I can prove things to my five year old son that will not persuade him because he is being unreasonable. So you have to persuade yourself; the proof is out there.
  
  Fourthly, and relatedly, the problem with doubting a thing's existence is that doubt disincentivizes the search for evidence. If I don't believe in sea creatures, I am not likely to go swimming in the ocean looking to "prove" to myself that the ocean is indeed empty.
  
  All that to say, the evidence and proof are plain to most people and readily available unless you are (a) already so sure that you're right that you only mock and dismiss those who could potentially offer you evidence and (b) don't go out of the way to seek the uncomfortable truth about our world.
  
  I believe in science, have a Ph.D., and have personally experienced miracles and know people who perform miracles with some regularity. So, despite skepticism of some particular claims, I credit many of the Biblical stories, historical stories, and modern stories. I don't think that I am weird in this way. Disbelief in the supernatural is a minority report, globally. Most scientifically educated Americans believe in the supernatural. About 50 percent of working scientists are religious and believe in a god or higher power (footnote: http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/)
  
  So there is nothing particularly wild or mysterious about the phenomena you describe as "magic." I've seen it personally, and hundreds of people I know have experienced it personally. So, when I consider the evidence impartially (including verifiable eye-witness accounts), I'd say your second premise needs revisiting.
  
  But like I said, I appreciated the post, and enjoy thinking these things through.
  
  I'd appreciate non-mocking thoughtful responses as well.
  
  Cheers!
  
  Edit: added footnote to verify claim that a slight majority of scientists believe in a god or higher power (51%) according to Pew.

>new source that disputes the existence of Jesus.

There are no sources which dispute the existence of Moses or Romulus but that doesn't mean we should start accepting them as real historical figures.

>Jesus and other similarly or worse attested characters like Hannibal and Alexander the Great.

Alexander is way better attested than Jesus, we even have more evidence of Pontius Pilate than Historical Jesus.

>no respected expert in the field believe in it.

There are several, most prominent ones are Robert M. Price who holds double doctorate in NT studies and Thomas L Broody who's also a biblical scholar.

>Neither Koresh or Jim Jones had a large following

At its peak Peoples temple had a following in upward of 20,000 so i don't think its a right comparison but yeah Koresh or Marshal Applewhite kinda fits the bill.

>but is more rickety than any of them. It doesn't explain why or how. There are no sources supporting it.

I suggest you read some works on Christ Myth theory because all those point were covered by many authors, here's a good introductory article and as for books, Richard Carrier's On the historicity of Jesus is pretty comprehensive and there's also The Christ Myth by Arthur Drews which you can download freely.

Yes, I do believe it is a possible to behave in a way which is contradictory to God's morality, but to believe that one is behaving in accordance with God's morality. So, what, then shall we do? It boils down to this: Truth either exists or it doesn't (I believe it does). I believe Christianity is true, and it is quite possible that I am right. Looking at the evidence (cross-referencing, continuity in text, prophecy (read Isaiah 53)) it seems most plausible. Theism is more logical than atheism to me. Christianity is more logical than any other religion. It stands apart in that God saved humanity.

If my beliefs are determined by my geography, then clearly you are an atheist because of where you were born/lived. I believe China now has the largest Christian population in the world. Why?

I'm not here to convert you to anything either. I'm here to share the truth as I know (believe) it. I don't gain points by "converting" just like you don't for "deconverting" me, which I do not think you're trying to do.

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Eyewitnesses-Gospels-Eyewitness-Testimony/dp/0802863906/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331922895&sr=1-1

Honestly, I'll buy this book for you, if you will read it. If you won't read it, that's fine. Please don't have me buy it for you and cast it aside though. That wouldn't be nice.

What does Richard Carrier believe happened?

We have over 5000 Greek manuscripts from the new testament. Why so many if this was mythological? Clearly, some things were meant to be historical accounts with the way that they were described.

Which historians see the gnostic gospels as fully relevant?

Specifically, what is highly embellished, made up or recycled?

I'm not going to delve into your argument/thesis but will suggest you read something like

https://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Bible-All-Worth/dp/0310517826

Taking something like that from the Psalms and applying it the way you have is a red flag for me.

Understanding a little more of the context of verse and book is helpful. The Bible is not a long list of 'Commands from God' or trueisms that are universally applicable.

In particular the 1 Corinthians passages are about meat sacrificed to idols. And the passage in Romans is about honoring your brother believer who is still 'weak' in his faith. And at heart it is about honoring the law when it is no longer required.

Understanding how the New and Old covenants work and work together is important in understanding the 'jot and tittle' statement. We Gentiles are not Jews.

This is a good read on the subject

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4826020-what-the-bible-says-about-covenant

New username here. It's been a while since was in the literature on these issues, but I got my degree in Phil & Religion under a guy whose adviser was Plantinga and I heard Plantinga give a conference presentation on what became his Warrented Christian Belief. The school I went to was a heart of Pressup Apologetics, since Gordon Clark, who in addition to Van Til, was a founder of the movement, although Val Til was taught more. So I did papers on Van Til and his successor John Frame, but did read some books by Clark on other subjects.



>Upvote for a thoughtful and detailed answer. I suppose I still can't come to see past what I perceive is circularity.



The best critique I know of Plantinga's "proper basicality" is by Tyler Wonder and you can hear him talk about it in pretty good detail over at Common Sense Atheism. He did his PhD on this so he's worth paying attention to, even if I can't say that his argument goes through.



>I can't accept Plantinga's response to the Great Pumpkin objection, because he never offers criteria for proper basicality (other than the vague idea that it occurs only in the "right circumstances").



Well, as far I understand, providing a strict criteria would reintroduce the very problems that make Classical Foundationalism self-defeating by ruling itself out. That's why grounding beliefs by way of Virtue Epistemology helps retain the foundationalist structure. And VE doesn't permit just any belief, but it must grant that our cognitive faculties are generally reliable, which is also self-defeating if denied. And I think cognitive science can support this, yet Plantinga's reasoning goes back to Thomas Reid's "Common Sense Realism" (which was in response to Hume).



>If I am understanding him correctly, Plantinga essentially says that a properly basic belief requires some grounds for belief, but to me, this sounds awfully similar to a demand for evidence.



It's not evidential because, "properly basic" beliefs are known directly without appeal to inferences (memory-based beliefs, for example, are direct, not built on anything but memory). They just aren't indubitable.



>Sure, perhaps a properly basic belief needn't be an a priori belief (esp. in weak foundationalism), but Plantinga, to my knowledge, has not provided any means of distinguishing between one thing or another.



This is where Virtue Epistemology and a Reidian-based rendering of cognitive faculties comes in.

The Bible says on John 21:25

"25 And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen."

So yes, there are many stories that were not written down on manuscripts and HAS to had been passed down orally. Think about this, there are pastors or priest that have memorize their entire Bible today. Hell, there are people from other religions that have memorize their entire Holy book. Why do you think it's so farfetched for earliest Christians to had memorize 5-6 verses? Especially if they knew that they needed to preserve the integrity of this story of literally the Messiah, the son of God himself in order to pass it down. Even as an atheist yourself, you have to admit that this is an immense extra pressure on them to preserve it as it is.

If we are gonna apply this method of scrutiny, you understand that every single religion has used an oral tradition. Christianity is actually one of the religions that has more documented history and strongest backing on his side. And I'm not trying to be arrogant or anything but it really is true. The earliest manuscript can even be traced to just 5 AD after the cross. Even in traditional history this is an anomaly. Let's look at Alexander the Great biography for example wrtten by Plutarch. It came 400 years after Alexander's death, and you would say that it is reliable. there are over four times as many sources for Jesus’ life and deeds than for Tiberius Caesar’s, which was the Roman emperor at the time of Jesus.

>What does it take for a story to be 'authentic'? Is it just that Christians have to like the story? or is it that the story has to be in the original manuscripts? Would it be fair to say 'some Christians making copies of the bible thought it was appropriate to add this passage, therefore the passage is authentic'?

No. You see, there were many forgeries that came up throughout history claiming to be genuine gospels, how to differentiate them? It's simple. You look at the rest of the Bible and see if it is consistent with the teachings/life of Jesus, the OT and NT. It's no different than using this method with any other historical manuscript.

Listen man I have to sleep but I'll tell you this, If you really want to hear more about how the New Testament was formed and the historical development of the Bible, there are sources on the internet and books available. Here are some that I recommend:

https://www.amazon.com/Canon-Scripture-F-Bruce/dp/083081258X/ref=pd_cp_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=083081258X&pd_rd_r=PDQ7KR94J0E0R5F5XHXR&pd_rd_w=htZar&pd_rd_wg=jYezq&psc=1&refRID=PDQ7KR94J0E0R5F5XHXR

https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Bible-Philip-W-Comfort/dp/0842383670

Although I'm sure many people in here would give better recommendations, these are pretty good. God bless.

The scholar who best unpacks these questions is professor John Walton
from Wheaton. I really think you should read his books or listen to his lectures.

Professor Tim Mackie from The Bible Project is really good at communicating biblical scholarship. Please check out The Bible Project on Youtube if you haven't yet. It's literally the best Bible resource I've found, either for new Christians or mature. Here is a relevant, incredible podcast episode on Genesis, science, and faith.


For questions of science and faith, [Biologos](
https://biologos.org/) is the best place for you to be. Check out the contributers there. My favorite is N.T. Wright. He is the leading New Testament scholar in the world, and tackles all sorts of questions with the appropriate nuance and wisdom. The Ask N.T. Wright Anything podcast is a great start.

I can't say one single piece of evidence (or a single study) convinced me, but I can summarize the various pieces of evidence as biogeography - the fact that we see similar (related) creatures living in the same geographic area and even some creatures on different continents with similar features in places where plate tectonics would lead us to expect similarities - and genetics, most notably the human vitamin c gene, which is defective.


The evidence for evolution is not measured in single studies, but in the weight of the collective evidence. For an overview of the collective evidence across many fields, this book by Jerry Coyne lays out the general case for the factuality of evolution. If you read it you do need to be ready for some Dawkins-esque posturing - he wrote a book on why faith and science are incompatible, but the information in the book is very good. For a basic summary, this Khan Academy page does a good job.

Finally, institutions like the Biologos institute convinced me that it's Biblically okay to believe in Theistic Evolution (Evolutionary Creation? Whichever one posits God's active involvement in creation via evolution.). The final "nail in the coffin" was The Lost World of Genesis One by John Walton.

I know I already answered this when you posted the same question over at /r/Reformed, but I wanted to answer here as well, so that others could potentially benefit.

Here's my reading list on Christian Perspectives on Creation. I don't agree with everything written by all of the authors, but they are all worth reading. If you are looking more for a Scientific perspective I'd particularly recommend Collins, Jelsma, and Haarsma since those are the ones written by scientists instead of theologians. If you didn't see it already, I also listed a number of other resources by Collins yesterday in the post about his AMA.

• The Literal Meaning of Genesis by Augustine of Hippo.
  
• Commentary on Genesis - Volume 1 by John Calvin.
  
• What is Darwinism? by Charles Hodge.
  
• The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis Collins.
  
• The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design by Ronald Numbers.
  
• Is Creation Science Reformed? by Tony Jelsma (short article)
  
• The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate by John Walton.
  
• Origins: Christian Perspectives on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design by Deborah and Loren Haarsma.
  
• Also get a few good commentaries on Genesis. The rule of thumb on Genesis commentaries is that the author's name should start with W: Wenham, Waltke, or Walton

I haven't read it, but I've only heard great things about How to Read the Bible for All it's Worth, for Gorden Fee and Doug Stuart.

Also, The Last Word, by NT Wright is excellent. It's not necessarily a book strictly about interpreting the bible, but more of a theology of the bible, so to speak. Reading Wright's work has given me a lot more appreciation for what the bible is, which helps a lot with interpreting it.

Are there any particular issues you're interested in, or any books you'd specifically like guidance with? I've got a final suggestion, that deals with making sense of some of the commandments in the old testament. It's called Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis, by William Webb. It's an excellent approach to the old testament that reads it in light of the New Testament and is able to make sense of the hard commandments without pretending that they don't exist.

Actually, testing your faith as an outsider is necessary for being able to determine its objective truth and hardly "a waste." For instance, suppose you were raised as a Catholic, baptized as an infant. Ask yourself, how do other reasonable people first become believers, or insiders, if from the outside they can't understand Christianity? Which comes first, faith or understanding? If, as a nonbelieving outsider, someone cannot understand the Christian faith, then how does God expect them to reasonably come to faith in the first place? How do you get from being an outsider to being an insider as a rational, thinking, skeptical adult? If you were raised Catholic from childhood then you know that as children we had not yet developed critical thinking faculties to question what our parents told us. We didn't know any better. Isn't it unfair to bring up a child in that environment? How many Catholic parents have adequately questioned their own faith and investigated its truth content before raising their children Catholic?

How many Catholics would accept Catholicism if it were forced upon them when they were 18 years old? Wouldn't we have asked some questions about what our parents told us? If someone came along and tried presenting you a brand new religious paradigm, for example, Scientology or Mormonism, at your age you would, as an outsider, take a critical, skeptical stance against accepting those views. At some point along the line, as we become adults, we need to critically examine what we were taught as children. Doubt and skepticism are learned virtues and as we learn to question, we become thinking adults. But strangely most people don't seem to question their religious faiths which seem too obvious and have become too ingrained in us, usually because they are a part of the culture we live in. Not only that, your faith has ingrained in you a fear of Hell if you deviate from it (of course there is no evidence for the existence of heaven or hell, either), although if you do deviate from it, you can always return later.

Given the abundance of religions around the globe, the probability that the one you happened to have been brought up in is true is highly unlikely. Basically all religions teach that they are the one true religion. At best, only one can be true, as you pointed out earlier. At worst, they are all false. The only rational way to test one's culturally adopted religious faith is from the perspective of an outsider, a nonbeliever, with the same level of reasonable skepticism that a believer already uses when examining the other religious faiths he or she rejects. If you can do that and show how Catholicism is still objectively true, then Catholicism is the one true religion, and all nonbelievers could rationally convert. The problem is that there is just no evidence to support its truth. Again, Richard Carrier's Proving History and its companion On the Historicity of Jesus are the most comprehensive scholarly treatments on the existence of Jesus. Carrier has done a lot of scholarship on the early history of the church and the facts do not hold up the way that the Catholic church would make you think they do. Not to mention that "God's true church" has been involved in some nasty terrible acts throughout history and held some embarrassingly mistaken views about reality, and it is not the paragon of moral virtue that an institution with divine inspiration would exhibit. I would challenge you to question your faith as an outsider. Read those books by Richard Carrier, for instance. Read The Outsider Test For Faith by John Loftus and question your faith as an outsider would. And if you still hold to Catholicism as the one true religion, then you have not lost anything. But if you are convinced by reasonable, skeptical arguments that Catholicism is mistaken at bare minimum or at most totally false, then you have gained a truer perspective on reality.

You have to have a good understanding of what "evidence" means.

Think of a courtroom. The prosecution provides evidence as well as the defense. Then it's up to the jury to decide whether a reasonable person would conclude that the evidence, for or against, is reliable.

It's the same way with the Bible. I can give you tons of evidence regarding the Scriptures, external consistency, internal consistency, textual reliability, etc. This evidence you will either believe, or not believe. But based on the way you asked the question, my assumption is that you will not believe ANY evidence I provide for you.

Another factor is the fact that God doesn't deal in "factual evidence" so much as He deals in "faith". Faith is the currency that God honors. Now that doesn't imply that we are to have "blind faith". God provides plenty of foundations for that faith. But if we are willfully blind, then there's nothing He, or anyone, can do to provide "proof".

For example: I could show you a rock formation which looks amazingly like it had been placed there through a cataclysmic flood (proof of the flood of Noah's day). Others will see that same formation, and conclude it must have been put there through millions of years by erosion.

Or I can show you the structure of a human eye. On one hand, one can see beautiful, and practical design as well as complex optical machinery. Someone else will see the same thing, and conclude it must have come about through millions of years of "selective processes" resulting in a complex organ.

And so on.

The point is, there is no amount of evidence I could provide you which will convince you that the Bible is reliable. If you want a good reference, read "Evidence That Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell. He provides proofs (with sources) on why the Bible can be trusted, even in the small things.

Do I believe that God was there? Yes, by definition, God is eternal, and He was there when it happened.

I am not sure I completely understand the question, but if you are looking to do an in-depth study of the New Testament, I would recommend getting some Bible commentaries.

Concordia Publishing House has a nice series called Concordia Commentary. Here is a link to the volume on Galatians:

https://www.amazon.com/Galatians-Concordia-Commentary-Theological-Exposition/dp/0758615523

Typically you would want something that discusses the original Greek (the actual words, the cases that some words appear in, the grammar (or lack thereof :))) . Most Bible commentaries will also contain commentary on the text, but I guess you could skip that.

With this, I think a good concordance is helpful.

You probably would also want a good dictionary that can discuss the uses of important Greek words.

EDIT: I wanted to add: If it isn't clear, you would want to try and understand the original Greek (including the different manuscripts). As such a serious study might start with a study of Biblical Greek. I can recommend:

https://www.amazon.com/Basics-Biblical-Grammar-William-Mounce/dp/0310287685

(From what I understand this textbook is widely used.)

One more thing: I would also recommend looking at the history of the Biblical canon. Something like:

https://www.amazon.com/Canon-Scripture-F-Bruce/dp/083081258X

might be helpful.

> Ok maybe the source isn't the best but that's not the only one.

Carrier says that it pretty much is. At the end of that review to which I linked, he laments that no one has replicated Grave's work.

But I'm happy to be convinced otherwise.

>So what are your reasons for Christianity not having ties with pagans?

This isn't how arguments work. The one making a claim provides the evidence.

But I won't deny that some pagan concepts influenced how the New Testament authors wrote. For example, Paul's use of ἱλαστήριον in Romans 3:25 almost certainly has some overtones imported from pagan Greek thought. But that's a far cry from Grave's suggestion, popular among the New Atheists today, that the whole notion of the crucified and risen Jesus is a myth taken wholesale from pagan thought.

I'll repeat my exhortation that I edited into my comment above: studying how the New Testament and early Christianity related to its own historical context is a laudable goal that I would commend to anyone willing to put in the effort, and there are good resources out there to help. Go to the scholars who are well regarded in their field, and avoid sensational, popular-level works. Ehrman's undergraduate-level textbook is a good start. For the more ambitious student, N. T. Wright's The New Testament and the People of God contains quite a bit on the historical context of early Christianity in the Greco-Roman and Second Temple Jewish worlds; it appears on many a grad school syllabus.

>Christians who don't believe in YEC, are you mostly in the Age Gap boat, where you feel that evolution is compatible with Scripture, and you don't take portions of Genesis literally (or some other combination that makes room for deep geologic time)?

I find gap theory fairly unconvincing. I don't think Genesis 1 is actually concerned with giving a scientific chronology of creation, but has more theological interests. My take is generally something like the "poetic framework" view, though I find John Walton's approach very informative. In general I find Biologos a useful resource for examining the origins debate from a Christian and scientific perspective.

>I'm mainly asking out of curiosity, because there seems to be a fair amount of "evidence" on both sides, but I also think that both evolutionists and creationists take a fair amount of truth from evidence on faith rather than facts. What is the main deciding factor in your belief either way (specifically, evidence that points to the truth of your belief other than that the Bible says that it happened)?

There seems to be an overwhelming amount of evidence to indicate that life has common ancestry, earth has a deep geological history, and the universe has an even older history going back to the big bang.

Either God created the universe to appear old, or it really is old.

ME First the above quote is out of context. It is common apologist argument that is cherry picked. I can go through and show the real facts of every one of those "proofs". Whether you are a believer or not evolution is a solidified fact, one that even that catholic church is is agreement with. I can deal with almost any religious stuff but the denial of scientific fact, proven theories, I cannot abide by. That article is full of misinformation and misconstruing of documentation and facts. If you want to believe in god that is fine, but don't pretend to know science and biology when over the past 150 years more and more evidence has come to light proving the theory of evolution. And don't say "it's just a theory" when a theory in the scientific discord is of the highest caliber of proofs so to say. Whatever you wanna believe is fine, but proven fact denial is ignorant.
15 hrs · Like

ME I'll even give you a compromise, god used evolution to create the world we live in. It is a proven concept and you can see it in action if you would like sources. It is a well researched, conclusive theory that explains all the life that has occurred on this planet, including you and me, and the evidence for it grows and grows all the time.
14 hrs · Like

DBAG , that RawStory "Did Jesus Exist?" article is ridiculous propaganda peddled out to credulous suckers. It doesn't speak well for their case that the "scholar" they hang their hat on- David Fitzgerald- isn't a scholar at all, but a self-publis...See More

Did Jesus Exist?
One may well choose to resonate with the concerns of our post-modern despisers of established religion. But...
HUFFINGTONPOST.COM
12 hrs · Like · 1

DBAG http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wlp63Lxrxi0

The Extra Biblical Evidence for the Historicity of Jesus Christ.
Documentary: Evidence for the historical existence of...
YOUTUBE.COM
12 hrs · Like · 2

ME Religion is ridiculous propaganda peddled out to credulous suckers. Was there a hippy running around at the time pissing people off? Maybe, but all the supernatural bullshit did not happen. So it doesn't matter either way.
2 hrs · Like

ME Either way this was about evolution, which if you don't think makes sense you aren't worth bothering with anyway. The Jesus thing is whatever, evolution is facts. End of story.
2 hrs · Like

DBAG Actually, this did start out as a discussion about Jesus. And your assertion that "all the supernatural bullshit did not happen" has not been demonstrated to be true.
2 hrs · Like

ME Demonstrate me some supernatural stuff then.
2 hrs · Like

DBAG Well YOU asserted that the supernatural stuff didn't happen, so the burden of proof is properly on you to prove it DIDN'T happen, but in fact there is a pretty solid historiographical case for the Resurrection.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Resurrection.../dp/0830827196

The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach
The question of the historicity of Jesus' resurrection has...
AMAZON.COM
2 hrs · Like · 1

ME Your reasoning is wrong, I have nothing to prove to you. I am done with this conversation, it is boring me and is the same apologetic garbage. Talking snakes, resurrection, people turning to salt, whatever makes you sleep better at night. If you wanna believe in a genocidal egotistical maniac that wipes whole races of people out for no reason, lets people starve and die every day for no reason, and wants you to be ashamed of what you are on your basic human level then good for you. I will live my fulfilling life without the necessity to believe in fairy tales.Good day sir.
1 hr · Edited · Like

DBAG So basically, your mind has been closed from the beginning, and you're unwilling to consider any evidence that might challenge your pre-formed conclusion, since that would involve opening yourself up to possibilities you've already decided were wrong before the discussion began. Do I have that right? Great "rational", "evidence-based" reasoning, bro!
1 hr · Like

ME I have done more reading on this stuff and grew up a staunch believer, I know what they have to say and I keep up with it bro. I've read my bible cover to cover, I've read all these apologist arguments, circular reasoning. everything. I keep up with it. And my conclusion still comes to hogwash. Like I said before :
Joshua Hege's photo.
1 hr · Like

DBAG You obviously know jack-shit about what you're talking about if you uncritically believe an internet puff piece hawking a book by a vanity-press kook, and are completely oblivious to the historical consensus on Jesus. Like most atheists promulgating the Christ-myth garbage on the internet, you've never read a single book on the subject (Whenever I encounter an atheist posing as an expert on the historicity of Jesus, the question "Name a single book you've read on the subject" always stops them dead in their tracks,) and I'm guessing you've cobbled together your information from things you saw in facebook graphics and YouTube videos. Basically, you make a mockery of the evidence-based worldviews you claim to have. Not everything you read on the internet is true, bro. Read a book for once in your life, something that actually gives sources for its claims, it won't kill you!
1 hr · Like · 1

ME No Meek Messiah: Michael Paulkovich, there's a book I read. I read consistently. I never said he didn't exist, I said it is unlikely, and very unlikely he existed as he is portrayed today. As for your typical rude Christian attitude when someone questions your beliefs, loving as it may be, go fuck yourself. I'm done arguing with you.
1 hr · Like

DBAG Ah yes, "No Meek Messiah", published on that prestigious "Spillix, LLC" imprint. As I said, if a vanity press publication by an author with ZERO academic qualifications is the first and only book you've read on the subject, you obviously chose a book that you felt was going to reinforce your pre-formed judgements on the matter. You're starting with your conclusion, and then choosing your evidence to fit your conclusion. Basically, you're doing exactly what atheists always accuse Christians of doing.

Look, I get it. You're an atheist. You like pretending you're smart. It's kinda your thing. You like looking haughtily down on the views of the great masses and clucking "herp derp fairy tales derp derp santa claus herp derp." Unfortunately, as with all edumacated-by-teh-intarwebz atheists, there's really no substance behind the superior posturing.

Well you've run into at least one guy here you can't bullshit. You know it too— if you were really pleased with your performance, you wouldn't keep responding to my posts after saying you're done.

All I'm asking is that you proceed with a little more humility. You're an atheist!?! Hey, more power to you! Here's the cookie you've always wanted! You believe it's "unlikely" Jesus existed!?! Well you have as much right to your opinion as the people who think it's "unlikely" we landed on the moon, or it's "unlikely" 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust! We're all special flowers, unique in our own way! Just realize that there are people VASTLY more knowledgable and intelligent than you who have arrived at different conclusions than you have, that you're dealing with a 2000-year-old intellectual tradition you can't even begin to grapple with, and that if you go posing as an expert on the interwebz, you're bound to get checked by people who ACTUALLY know what they're talking about.

>start with one lie that, if true, is sufficient, but then pepper in like two or three other things that are progressively less relevant

Bingo. And it's also the mark of a truly stupid liar, because each successive addition to the excuse chain brings down the mathematical probability that the core statement is true.

(Disclaimer: considering that I'm almost 40 but I only learned about this last year from this excellent book by Richard Carrier I think it's fair to say I'm a pretty dumb motherfucker myself, but I'll try to make sense.)

Take any statement A. You don't know whether it's true or not, but you can assign it a probability of being true. Let's say that the probability is 0.5 (50%) - a coin toss is worth your best guess at this point.

Then, imagine that there are more statements like that, let's call them B, C, and D. Again, you know nothing about the truth behind them, either, but you can again estimate that each of them has a 0.5 probability of being true.

Now, take three people:

Person 1 tells you "A".

Person 2 tells you "A and B".

Person 3 tells you "A, B, C, and also D, believe me, believe me".

At this point you still don't know anything about any of those four statements, but you can calculate the probability for each person of being full of shit.

Person 1 only claimed one statement, A, so the likelihood he's full of shit is 0.5 (50%).

Person 2 went further and claimed A and B. The probability that both are true is 0.5 x 0.5 = 0.25.

Person 3 is the bigliest guy with the best words, believe me. The probability of his four-part statement chain is 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 = 0.0625 - that's 6.25%.

Because person 3 is a fucking moron he went and stacked multiple statements on top of one another, thereby bringing his full-of-shitness from a 50% likelihood to a whopping 93.75%. Just like that, what a fucking clown.

PS: You can of course have different probabilities for each statement, and they can differ from one another, too. But by definition if you don't know the truth for sure then it logically follows none of the statements can ever achieve a probability of 1. The conclusion is that every additional statement will always reduce the overall likelihood.

> just read the wiki on the "Mūlamadhyamakakārikā", which seems pretty enlightening; though am a hardcore philosophical-theorist

I just looked over the wiki page and it seems pretty esoteric. The MMK is pretty hard-nosed philosophy when you get down to it. If that approach interests you, you might like Buddhism as Philosophy as a short, more down-to-earth overview of this, along with a bunch more topics from the tradition. The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way seems to be recommended a lot around here if you're at all interested in diving into a translation/commentary.

> Thank you for your thoughtful replies.

Sure thing.

>To me, the most obvious explanation for why you don't think Genesis should be taken literally is that you understand that it can't be literally true and so you conclude that it wasn't intended to be so. On the other hand, you want to believe in Jesus and the gospels, so you believe that they're true, and then decide that they must have been written as truth. If this isn't the reason for your position, then please tell me what your actual reason is.

Could you be a little more condescending here? How is this the "most obvious explanation"? This is the most obvious explanation if you take me to be an idiot or intellectually dishonest; I do not appreciate those implications. Charity will ensure that our discussions are fruitful.

If we are going to interpret the Bible, then we must discern how different genres should be interpreted. The Bible has a plethora of different genres: narrative, poetry, song, genealogy, letters, apocalypse, law, prophecy, etc. We need to understand the nature of these genres so we can read them right. Otherwise, we are going to produce absurd ideas. For example, if we read the newspaper thinking that it's a love poem, we will probably become frustrated.

Genesis 1 has a lot of poetic elements to it. It is a story of how God created the universe and assigned function to everything. It should not be difficult to see the poetic nature of this chapter. For example, Days 1-3 depict God creating various containers; Days 4-6 depict God filling the containers. On Day 4, he creates sun, moon, and stars, which corresponds to Day 1 - light and dark. Day 5 has fish and birds which fill the sky and sea (Day 2). Day 6 is plant and animal life and humans, which fills the land made on Day 3.

Anyway, the story is much more a story about God than about the mechanics of creation. It is not a historical narrative. Thus, trying to interpret this like we would a historical narrative is an unfortunate category mistake. I've found John Walton's The Lost World of Genesis One to be a helpful deconstruction of this chapter.

Now, the Gospels are a different genre. They are biographies of Jesus Christ, and they focus on what he did. These are quite similar to other, secular biographies that we have from the same time period. Furthermore, fiction from that time is not written like the Gospels. The Gospels demonstrate eyewitness sources. To say that they were not to be intended as actual history is to say that the writers effectively invented a brand-new genre of realistic fiction. Mythic writings in this time were not like the Gospels. For example, contrast the Revelation or 1 Enoch (apocalyptic literature) with the Gospels. One should easily be able to tell the difference.

The point is, we should realize that the Bible has different genres, was written over the course of hundreds of years, and is a diverse document. As it sounds silly to question if the epistles were written to actual people because the Psalms are worship music, the idea that Genesis 1 is not intended to be historical implies nothing about the historicity of the Gospels. If you are interesting in a full understanding of the different texts, I would recommend Fee/Stuart's How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, and How to Read the Bible Book by Book. They are helpful introductions to the topic of Biblical Intepretation.

> Redditepsilon, 2 day old account. While a very young account is usually indicative of some sort of got'ca or make-a-claim hit and run account - Redditepsilon, your post history provides some evidence that you will actually discuss/debate against your topic post, so some short answers (mostly copy and paste from previous debates) to these common claims.

> If we look at the background historical data on the resurrection of Jesus, which is the empty tomb,

Let's look at what is arguably the most important narrative related to Jesus in Christianity, the Resurrection narratives. Ignoring the completely inaccurate portrayal of the Roman trial law and procedures in the Trial of Jesus, and the historically unsupportable removal of the body of the decessed Jesus from the crufix and tomb burial - which presumes that the body was actually placed in the tomb (link - warning a HUGH wall of text), let's look at the consistency and accuracy of the various canon Gospel narratives related to the resurrection. The much studied, and selected, Gospel canon narratives, canon selected by learned men who had both (1) strong motivation to select narratives that supported their worldview and confirmation bias and (2) demonstrated rejection of dogma/narratives that did not fit their self-selected criteria, results in a series of Resurrection narratives that are highly non-internally consistent.

• Comparison Chart: Biblical Accounts of the Resurrection
  
• A Table Comparing the Contents of the Resurrection Narratives in each of the Four Gospels
  
  Before the Christian Apologist kicks in and claims that these narratives are all essentially the same (somehow), consider the narratives from the claim that there is a truth position in Christianity/Yahweh's existence that results from the argument of internal consistency and historical fact. Given the widely different versions of the Resurrection narrative, for what is arguably the most important and essential event/tenet of Christianity, the argument from internal consistency of it's own historical fact fails to be credible.
  
  > the post-mortem apparances of Jesus to different people and groups of people
  
  Besides the claim of the apostles that they saw Jesus post-resurrection, who were these other people?
  
  > the origin of the disciples faith that Jesus rose from the dead
  
  But speaking of the appearance of post-resurrection Jesus - Jesus purposefully provided empirical physical, and falsifiable, evidence that he (Jesus) was alive and in natural physical human body form (Doubting Thomas, John 20:24-29) following the Resurrection. 1. Why does Jesus fail to provide such evidence now? and 2. In light of the actions of Jesus, why is Religious Faith considered such a virtue?
  
  > the willingness of Jesus' disciples to go to their deaths for that faith
  
  Fallacy of argumentum ad martyrium (argument from martyrdom). While the argument from martyrdom, an appeal to emotion, produces an emotional response, the act of martyrdom/suicide in no way provides, or supports, a truth position against the belief that is used to support the label of martyr. People voluntarily die for all sorts of beliefs that have no truth value.
  
  For a detailed assessment see: March to Martyrdom! (Down the Yellow Brick Road…)
  
  > is that a convincing evidence on a balance of probability, that Jesus was raised from the dead?
  
  No. The claim/assertions of resurrection is, at best, highly questionable.
  
  > And doesn't that suggest he was raised by God from the dead?
  
  Again no.
  
  > it's almost certain he [Jesus] existed.
  
  Did Jesus the man exist as depicted in the New Testament of the Bible?
  
  Given the contradictions internally within in the narratives and the contradictions in events/dates between the narratives and events/dates presented in contemporary histories, I would say that it is unlikely that, presuming existence of a historical figure, the depiction of Jesus the man in the Gospels is accurate.
  
  I will concede that there was a man, a Jewish man, that acted as a Rabbi, and that preached a form of divergent Judaism, and that lived around 4 BCE'ish till around 29 BCE'ish (when this man is said to have died). I concede that a historical Jesus existed, where Jesus is the name given to the archetype of the person upon which the Jesus narrative in the New Testament is based. Yĕhōšuă‘, Joshua, Jesus, יְהוֹשֻׁעַ, was not an uncommon name within the Hebrew community and may represent the actual name of this archetypal person. This Jesus character is also attributed with what can arguably be described as a lite version of the morality of Buddhism, and this Jesus was a decent, though with a rather shallow philosophy, fellow. This Jesus was also atypical of the contemporary Jews as he was in his 30's and had not married.
  
  The Divine narrative attributed to the Jesus character, however, is a different issue.
  
  If you are interested in a mythist position concerning the historical Jesus, check out:
  
  
• On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt by Richard Carrier
  
  Summary: The assumption that Jesus existed as a historical person has occasionally been questioned in the course of the last hundred years or so, but any doubts that have been raised have usually been put to rest in favor of imagining a blend of the historical, the mythical and the theological in the surviving records of Jesus. Carrier re-examines the whole question and finds compelling reasons to suspect the more daring assumption is correct. He lays out extensive research on the evidence for Jesus and the origins of Christianity and poses the key questions that must now be answered if the historicity of Jesus is to survive as a dominant paradigm. Carrier contrasts the most credible reconstruction of a historical Jesus with the most credible theory of Christian origins if a historical Jesus did not exist. Such a theory would posit that the Jesus figure was originally conceived of as a celestial being known only through private revelations and hidden messages in scripture; then stories placing this being in earth history were crafted to communicate the claims of the gospel allegorically; such stories eventually came to be believed or promoted in the struggle for control of the Christian churches that survived the tribulations of the first century. Carrier finds the latter theory more credible than has been previously imagined. He explains why it offers a better explanation for all the disparate evidence surviving from the first two centuries of the Christian era. He argues that we need a more careful and robust theory of cultural syncretism between Jewish theology and politics of the second-temple period and the most popular features of pagan religion and philosophy of the time. For anyone intent on defending a historical Jesus, this is the book to challenge.
  
  OP, if you wish to have a more indepth discussion/debate, a suggestion... Pick just one claim/assertion, start a new topic (here in /r/debateanatheist or /r/DebateReligion), present your claim and supporting argument/position, and then defend that claim and argument. When you post as many claims as you did in this topic post (and presented without actual credible evidence or supporting argument), the length of a full and detailed response becomes silly.
  
  ----
  
  EDIT: Going back to the empty tomb argument....
  
  OP, here are some previous discussions concerning the claims made around the empty tomb that came up in /r/AcademicBiblical.
  
  /r/AcademicBiblical is a fairly active subreddit that discusses early Judaism and Christianity—with a focus on Biblical texts, but also related noncanonical literature (1 Enoch, the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.)—in a scholarly context. A highly recommended subreddit for all those interested in studies of Judaism and Christianity.

I don't know how valuable that would be without more context. The Diamond Sutra would probably give a little better base if you're interested in Prajnaparamita text. The Heart Sutra is sort of an abbreviation of the teachings. The Diamond Sutra says a little bit more, but it's probably very different from what you've been discussing and would still probably hard to appreciate coming just from a western philosophical context and without a meditation practice.

The Mulamadhyamakakarika, specifically this version with a very good commentary by a professor of philosophy seems to me like it'd be a better fit for your sub given what you've been studying. It's about using thought to see through thought, but with a framework and especially with a commentary that would probably be better suited to someone coming from Western philosophy, provided you can catch yourself if you start dismissing arguments because they challenge things that seem self-evident. It's more analytic, but it argues against the tools of analysis in a way, so it can be tricky.

There's a neat article that talks a little bit about it here. I'd be interested in hearing what your group thinks about it if you ever cover it. Please let me know if your sub ever decides to look at it.

As a gift, the The Good Book: A Humanist Bible is a good idea.

The Good Book consciously takes its design and presentation from the Bible ...offering to the non-religious seeker all the wisdom, insight, solace, inspiration, and perspective of secular humanist traditions that are older, far richer and more various than Christianity.

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True would also make a nice gift.

There is a chance that most of the more popular Atheist books are already in your friend's personal library. A unique idea would be to get him a subscription to Skeptic Magazine.

There are book son the history of interpretation. Has the church always got it right? No. But, there has always been a consistent core of beliefs that are on the text plainly read. However, it's also become apparent as of late that reading books of the Bible according to genre with an eye to it's cultural context yields great results. If you want to read more on this, a book that has become pretty helpful to this would be How To Read The Bible For All Its Worth
Another book on the subject would be the book Grasping God's Word. Covers hermeneutics and exegesis and the latest ideas shaping those areas. Great for beginners. I should add that a Good study bible, like the [ESV Study Bible](http://www.amazon.com/ESV-Study-Bible-Crossway- Bibles/dp/1433502410/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324140894&sr=1-1) will cover a lot of these issues. Lately I've found great use from the ESV Literary Study Bible. They authors highlight all the literary styles and genres and motifs in the Bible. The glossary in the back is worth the price of it alone. Reading books of the Bible with their genre in my mind has been SO enlightening.

>Wikipedia does not seem to agree with your authoritative stance on these issues.

When wikipedia becomes the goto for scholarship, let me know.

>Why wouldn't you mention this evidence, or give the sources about it?

Because the evidence is in entire books that you have to read through in order to understand it. Look into the authorship of the gospels and the research that various scholars have done... a lot of it is available online, I am sure, but I am not interested in doing the research for you. There are all sorts of things in the gospels that raise huge red flags as to who actually wrote them, like geographical errors, the fact that Jesus and his disciples spoke aramaic and not greek, errors in jewish custom, etc.

>Many first hand accounts are not written in the first person, and many first hand account include parts that the author was not present, but was informed about later. You are jumping to conclusion in the extreme.

I'm jumping to conclusions? You have a piece of writing that is completely anonymous. It doesn't claim to be an eye witness account. It has numerous scenes that could not have been witnessed by anyone, and numerous other scenes that when considered together make it obvious that no one person could have been the source. That doesn't even take into account the other research I am talking about. Even based on just this, the most obvious conclusion is that it was not written by an eye witness. There is literally no evidence that points to that conclusion. Yet you say I am the one jumping to conclusions? Right.

>A few, but one of the main reasons many weren't added, was because they doubted the authorship. It's good to know that they were vetting out the letters for authenticity, even in the very early church, wasn't it?

Actually there were dozens. And the way they determined if something was authentic was basically whether the writings matched their current beliefs or not. For example, at the council of Nicea, any gospels that portrayed Jesus as being more divine than human were left out. It wasn't about determining which document had the most credibility. They didn't have forensic investigatory methods to determine that stuff. It was almost exclusively about whether the document was heretic or not. The only reason that the gospels even have the names they do is because Papias gave them those names to make them more credible (things were seen as more credible if they had an apostle's name on it... such was the state of their credibility checks). The claim at that time was that Mark was a follower of Peter, not Jesus, and that he was not an eyewitness. Iraneus was the first to suggest that more than one gospel should be followed... before him, it would have been very unusual to follow the teachings of more than one.

>To say that the apostle John did not write John, simply because it was not written in the first person, and he probably didn't see absolutely everything he wrote about personally, is ludicrous.

I'm sorry, but we know with almost absolute certainty that none of the disciples wrote John. The vast majority of modern scholars believe (and teach in schools all across the world) that John was written later having been passed orally to different communities.

Here is a book by Christian scholar Richard Bauckham that tries to make the case that the gospels are based on eye witness testimony.

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Eyewitnesses-Gospels-Eyewitness-Testimony/dp/0802863906/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1295405950&sr=8-3

In fact, he only asserts that a single one of the Gospels was written direct by an eyewitness: the Gospel of John. However, he does not think he was a disciple, but instead just an unnamed follower. Credibility kind of goes out the window when you've narrowed it down to "an unnamed follower." As I said, he doesn't actually argue that the other three gospels are based on first or even second hand eye witness testimony, and he admits that most scholars won't agree with his view on John.

I can assure you that this is taught in seminaries around the world, and is accepted by scholars all over the world, christian or not.

>> If the system contains all the necessary and sufficient conditions to produce the next iteration of that same system, then the next iteration should occur instantly.
>
> How do you figure?

This you really have to sit down and think about. I know this might come off as me being a dick, but it cannot be elaborated further, since I already verbalized it on the level of 1+1=2.

I'll give it one more try, and if you don't understand this analogy, I am out of options. Mind you, this should in no way be superior to what I already said, it's just slightly different and who knows, maybe this one will grab ya.

Forget physics for a second and instead think of a computer. In the computer we roughly have a CPU and memory. CPU is capable of performing instructions which are stored in memory. The memory contains some instructions for the CPU. And here I am hoping you know that most CPUs are clock-driven. Now, in terms of programmatic logic, between the CPU and the memory, computer has all that's both necessary and sufficient to produce the next iteration of the CPU and memory state from programmer's POV (because programmers do not control the clock signal, and are generally not aware of it except vaguely, that's hardware engineer's job). However, the iteration will not happen without a clock signal to the CPU. Furthermore, the iteration will happen as quickly or as slowly as the speed at which clock signal's state toggles. So in a computer system a clock signal is a necessary condition to move the iterations forward. So in truth, the CPU+memory's state is necessary but insufficient without a clock signal to reach the next iteration.

(Curiously for a single program the speed of clock signal doesn't matter, because to a single program the computer is an inescapable environment. But if you have a situation where there are computers inside other computers and each one has their own clock signal, then ultimately these discrepancies in clock signals will become detectible. And modern computers do have parts that have their own clock signals, so in reality a clock signal can potentially affect how well the program will run or if it will run at all.)

Now back to normal reality. Consider that normal reality is similar to a state inside a computer. If that state logically had in itself all that's necessary and sufficient to produce the next state, then the next state logically should happen instantly. Any delay suggests insufficiency.

If you spend some time on this contemplation you should be able to understand it. What this demonstrates is the following: because we do experience time, no system is sufficient to self-evolve. In other words, all systems lack self-sufficiency. This lack of self-sufficiency manifests as time to us. It perhaps manifests as other things as well, but time is what we can perceive most readily.

Now I can give you reference to Nagarjuna, but Nagarjuna is even more imponderable than anything I said. He spoke tersely and cryptically to those who are on the same level as he and I've explained everything in plain English so that hopefully anyone can understand. Still, if you want to study Nagarjuna, I suggest you get Jay Garfield's translation of Mulamadhyamakakarika. Give it a read, then if not satisfied, I suggest you contact Jay personally. I'm guessing he will make time for a cosmologist. :)

And here's an online translation by a different translator.

Here's the section on time. Give it a read if you like and tell me if that's more comprehensible than what I explained and why so.

>Because information can not travel faster than the speed of light(both experimentally verified, and something that emerges naturally from physics)

Aren't you assuming things here?

Let's go back to philosophy for a second. Remember that no datum stands alone. There is no naked evidence. Instead all evidence is interpretative. All evidence is contextualized by the state of our own mind. So when the evidence "suggests" something, the correct understanding here is that it's not evidence that suggests something, but rather "evidence+interpretation" that suggests something. For most humans this interpretative process is tacit and subconscious. For someone like me, much of it has become conscious because that's the work I do on my spiritual path. For most mundane living it's completely unnecessary to dig into your subconscious and to see what sorts of hidden and tacit assumptions you live with. In fact even to do most physics as a science you don't need to dig into your subconscious. You can just roll with all your assumptions, including many many metaphysical assumptions about space and time, the nature of observation, the nature of intent, and so on. People are fundamentally unfair and meddling observers. And I don't mean bias. I don't mean a mere confirmation bias. I don't mean something slight and small and easily correctible here.

To verify the speed of anything you need to have faith in the rhythmic and even constancy of some pattern. Why so? Because you need a clock of some sort. We tell time by signs and marks, remember? Without signs and marks, there is no perceptible time.

In other words we can say that you measure relative speed and relative time. You never measure absolute anything. All quantities (and qualities) are relative, and therefore environmental. (see my flair, btw).

>Indeed, as was mentioned earlier, this criticism is universally applicable. If your original claim is that cosmology is distinct from the rest of science in some way, this claim can not be made in support of that one.

I'm going to wrap this thing up now. Here's what I want to say about cosmology. Cosmology compared to other sciences makes more inferences. For example, you look at 3 pixels of something that's billions of light years away and you conclude based on those 3 pixels that there is a black hole there or you measure the temperature of the object based on the color of those few pixels, etc. This sort of thing seems to happen pretty regularly. This wouldn't be happening in classical physics, but perhaps this exact "stretching" of the evidence happens in molecular and subatomic physics too, etc. There are tons of tiny little implicit assumptions floating in the subconscious minds of the physicists. Which is human and healthy. But it does affect the results you get.

So my point is, the process of science is different from the process of spirituality (forget religion, since religion often is absurd) only by degrees. There is no fundamental difference. Science is a solipsistic endeavor in the end, if you think about it. It can only be reviewed by peers. It's a pretty insular and elitist system by design.

Science is a beautiful thing. And it's highly useful. But so is genuine spirituality. And the difference between them is not as great as it appears to most scientists. They're both human endeavors with all that's implied.

The actual purpose of the tree of life, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and humans in the garden of Eden.

1. The snake is just a snake. It's never mentioned that it was Satan, anywhere in the Bible. Theologians went through some great lengths to conclude that The Lucifer and King of Babylon passages in the Bible were talking about Satan. The idea is terribly convoluted and a lot of the details (armor of jewels, admired and respected in the garden of Eden and so on) are ignored.
   
   
2. The reason humans were made. We were to tend to the garden. Nothing else. It's says it directly in Genesis 2. There's plenty of mythology from that era that describes the creation of life out of mud (golems). It's a great part of ancient Jewish mythology and that region in general.
   
   
3. Genesis specifically says that the tree of life is used to make sure that the animals and man live forever. It's a fountain of youth. Plenty of myth surrounding items that do just this.
   
   
4. Genesis also says that the forbidden tree is the food for the gods, in this case, the god in Genesis 2 (different from the god in Genesis 1). It is meant for the superior beings. The creators.
   
   Put all these things together, and what you have is a classic myth with your typical "servant takes from the master and gets into deep shit" plot.
   
   So Yaweh creates a garden. Calls it Eden. It's not the world, because Genesis 2 tells us exactly what land on earth it covered, which was somewhere around where Iraq currently is. He makes man, specifically so that he can tend to his brand new garden that he's making. Then he starts churning all these animals out from the ground, and Adam is naming them as they come out from the mud. Yaweh then realizes that Adam needs a helper, so he makes him one.
   
   Then the part that we all were frequently reminded about happens (snake, tree, Eve, Adam, fig tree loincloths, etc.) but here is the best part:
   
   Gen 2: 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
   
   Two things here: First, the snake wasn't lying. Adam and Eve did become like gods. Second, the fruit on the tree of life sustains the gods, as is indicative by the very words of Yaweh himself.
   
   So a quick summary of the whole second and third chapter: Yaweh made a garden for himself to hang out. The tree of life kept his minion gardeners (man and woman) alive for as long as he wanted to maintain his weekend getaway, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil was Yaweh's tree to eat from. It wasn't put there to give us some freedom of choice as we so frequently hear about. So the minions decide to eat what the gods eat and they are kicked out, doomed to fade into nothing. To turn into the dust they once were (or I guess specifically what Adam was. It never really tells what happens to Even except for wanting to have a man and having painful births). Also notice that there's no mention of hell. The story was written long before hell was even a concept in early Jewish beliefs. The only people that actually lived forever where those that were taken up by Yaweh in a chariot to chill with him. The rest of us just stop existing.
   
   This, and the rise of dualism during the Babylonian Exile are my two favorite things to discuss with Christians, if I ever have the chance. I also find the Documentary Hypothesis to be extremely fascinating. I recommend checking out Who Wrote the Bible if you get a chance. It actually makes the Bible fascinating, for a change.

WARNING: Long post ahead!

I admire your desire to avoid confirmation bias and develop a stronger and more reasoned system of beliefs. I also appreciate your honesty in admitting that in some sense, you wish that Christianity could still be true. The pain you are experiencing from questioning long-held beliefs is very familiar to many folks on this sub.

You're not alone. And you should definitely not give up. :)

However:

>>I will follow the evidence wherever it leads.

I'll warn you up front that if you do this, you will probably be led away from any sort of belief in Christianity. Christianity is a religion whose truth or falsehood hinges upon specific historical claims. If Jesus either (1) did not exist, or (2) existed but was not divine and did not resurrect from the dead, then Christianity literally cannot be true. And having walked the same path you're on, I found that the evidence led me to abandoning Christianity. I'm an engineer myself, and eventually I had to accept that the historical evidence just doesn't support Christianity.

With that being said, I've been reading the other posts and discussions here thus far, and it sounds to me like you're stuck between two difficult options: (1) a genuine desire to be intellectually honest, no matter the cost, and (2) facing the difficulty of abandoning a belief system which has been a major part of your marriage and your family. If you want to walk the line between the two, I would recommend that you adopt a rationalistic form of classical Deism or Theism. Accepting a "minimalistic theism," as you put it, might be pragmatically very useful. It could help smooth out any potential conflicts you might have with your spouse and children. At this emotionally difficult time, that could be very beneficial to both you and them. It could also help your family start to look at religious belief in a more rational light, just as you do.

If you haven't already, take a look at some of the best Christian apologists out there --- John Lennox, William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, Alvin Plantinga, and the like. I didn't find them convincing, but reading their arguments could probably help you develop a more intellectually rigorous belief system.

Also, take a look at some books written by theistic evolutionists, such as Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution by Denis Lamoureux, and The Lost World of Genesis One by John Walton. These scholars have had no difficult reconciling science with theism, and they might help you in your quest to develop a minimalist theistic belief system.

Finally, this process can be long and painful, and you shouldn't rush yourself through it. Take your time.

And as always, please use this sub for questions and support when you need. If you have more questions, or want to discuss this further, let me know.

>Yes, there should be no there. Why would a benevolent god shield a few animals in a garden while the rest were susceptible to diseases and cancers and genetic disorders. Not to mentions the necessity of ending the life of another animal to eat is pretty miserable too. Both living things want to keep living but neither have sinned to warrant their own deaths.

I think you're kind of feeding into OP's assumption here, that suffering = result of sin. I'm arguing that isn't the case.

What Genesis 2-3 could be referring to is that time when God started revealing Himself to creation in a direct way, at a time when it was deemed humans were ready to respond. A fascinating part of the book The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate by John Walton was that some parts of the story seems to indicate that the adam (literally , "the human") was given priestly tasks. Perhaps it was the role of these first pair to start dishing out information on God, and people would come to Eden to meet with God. Certainly we get that impression from the rest of the Bible: that God isn't content with only a few knowing about Him, but that the whole world should come to worship (and of course, this kind of finds its climax in Christ, in the story of the Bible).

> Advice recall, In Genesis it implies God doesn't want them to live forever if they know the secrets of the world. So are you saying had they not eaten the first fruit they would have lived forever?

I would rather say, if they continued eating the second fruit. But eating the first fruit (from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) disqualified them from access to the second.

Now whatever that first tree represented is still up in the air. There's a number of good guesses. My personal favourite is that it's an idiom for "wisdom without reference to God". Kind of like how we might say "we searched high and low". We don't mean there's only two places we looked - it's everything inbetween. So too this first tree might be a metaphor for living without God, and instituting moral decisions without God's authority. It was, in effect, a mutiny.

> Why, Christianity as opposed to atheism or other religions?

Hey man, I can't help you much with the questions about the specifics of creation and the role death plays in it, that has never bothered me a lot and I came to Christianity already believing that evolution is true. But I can help you with this question, I hope.

If you really want to find out you will have to do your own research on Christianity and other religions and on atheism and make up your mind. That said I think the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is very strong. I'd encourage you, if you have the time and money, to read the following two books: The Jesus Legend by Boyd & Eddy, and The Resurrection of Jesus by Licona. Both are very thorough and scholarly, the first dealing with the reliability of the gospels in general and the latter dealing with Jesus' resurrection in particular.

If you want a well grounded faith, you need to have a solid foundation. So many people believe in Jesus because they think the Bible is inerrant and when they discover that it isn't so, their faith quickly falls away. When our faith depends on the inerrancy of the Bible, our faith depends on our ability to resolve any and all of the apparent (and real) contradictions, both internal to the Bible and between Bible and external reality (like with young earth creationism and science). When we come across a contradiction that we can't resolve, our faith then will quickly come crashing down.

It should be the other way around: Jesus should be our foundation, and because Jesus is God and He held Scripture in high regard, we should have a healthy respect for Scripture as well. Perhaps then we won't tie ourselves in knots in trying to come up with tortured interpretations whenever the house of cards of inerrancy threatens to come crashing down. Look to Jesus when something in Scripture doesn't make sense; Jesus is the full revelation of God, the clearest picture (or icon if you like) of God that we will ever get in this earthly life.

Remember that there are multiple ways to interpret most parts of the Bible. It's very easy to scoff at the literal view that many fundies take, but not all Christians take the bible literally. If i'm asked to swallow the creation stories in Genesis as actual accounts of how the world came into being, i can't but roll my eyes. However, when I view the creation stories in Genesis as mythology, I can appreciate them as poetry on the same level that i appreciate the mythology of ancient Greece. So, approach the bible as you would Homer or Ovid (but with less coherence to the stories).

Also, remember that the authors of the bible were usually using fictionalized or fantastical stories to relay something that actually happened. Quick example: Jonah and the whale. Though many fundies take this story as literal, it was actually written as an allegory for Israel not heeding their God's instructions. Jonah is Israel, being swallowed by the whale is Israel being taken into captivity as punishment for ignoring their deity. This type of interpretation holds for quite a few of the old testament stories.

Also, learn about how it was written, and who it was written for. Gain a sense of literary context, if you will. I recommend this book for an overview of how the Torah was written. It's actually pretty interesting.


tl;dr: If you read the bible the way fundies do, you'll end up with a poor understanding of it, just like the fundies. If you approach it as an academic, you'll understand their own sacred text better than they do themselves.

You want me to list every source I used for seven years? I don't think I can do that. I'll hit a few high points, though. First, note I am a Christian, but I don't believe in a lot of the OT (Adam & Eve, Noah's Ark, etc.) and some of the NT (Revelation, immunity to snake venom, etc.). My research ultimately led me to believe that Jesus existed, character as depicted, and that the resurrection happened. I believe in evolution, a ~14 billion year old universe, entropy, and pretty much everything else science finds.

/r/Christianity is an excellent source of information. Somebody will always have a reference to link you to. The first thing I did on this journey was to read the Bible and look up every single thing that sounded off to me. That alone took over a year or so.

Mike Licona's book on the resurrection is my favorite by far.

Several books and other info from www.biologos.org are very helpful. Belief in an Age of Reason, The Language of God, and The Reason for God are at the top for me.

These are just the Christian ones. As I said, I also looked into atheist publications and some stuff on the other top religions (mostly online sources like Wiki). It took years, though. I started out as an atheist and ultimately converted.

Aside from the very important Yale course which you found, you'll have to acquire and read books, like Kugel's How to Read the Bible or Ehrman's The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, many of which you can find in local libraries.

There are also a few nice online resources. It's down at the moment, but when it comes back up, check out COJS which has a nice collection of introductory material and beyond for many of the major eras.

The important thing is to continue to learn, grow and get more of a feel for the very vast amount that you need to know if you want to fully understand the context and development of Judaism, Christianity and the world from which they came. If it drives you, intellectually speaking, you'll find that to be very rewarding as you continue to challenge the notions you've held in the past to gain a more nuanced understanding of your own beliefs and what you feel to be true.

The classic example here is John 1:1.

My translation (RSV2CE) says:
> In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Theirs says,
> In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.

The original greek says,
> Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

This is an huge translation error on their part. Greek doesn't have the indefinite article ("a" or "an"). It only has the definite article ("the"). In order to make the JW translation correct, it would have to read in greek,

> καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν θεός.

>> "and the Word was a god."

Otherwise, they should provide very good linguistic reason to place the indefinite article where I can see no reason for it.

*


The following is an excerpt from a standard basic introductory New Testament Greek text book^(page 27-28):

> ...word order is employed especially for the sake of emphasis. Generally speaking, when a word is thrown to the front of the clause it is done so for emphasis. When a predicate nominative is thrown in front of the verb, by virtue of word order it takes on emphasis. A good illustration of this is John 1:1c. The English versions typically have, “and the Word was God.” But in Greek, the word order has been reversed. It reads,


> καὶ | θεὸς | ἦν | ὁ | λόγος.
---------|---------|---------|---------|---------
and | God | was | the | Word

> We know that “the Word” is the subject because it has the definite article, and we translate it accordingly: “and the Word was God.” Two questions, both of theological import, should come to mind: (1) why was θεὸς thrown forward? and (2) why does it lack the article?
In brief, its emphatic position stresses its essence or quality: “What God was, the Word was” is how one translation brings out this force. Its lack of a definite article keeps us from identifying the person of the Word (Jesus Christ) with the person of “God” (the Father). That is to say, the word order tells us that Jesus Christ has all the divine attributes that the Father has; lack of the article tells us that Jesus Christ is not the Father. John’s wording here is beautifully compact! It is, in fact, one of the most elegantly terse theological statements one could ever find. As Martin Luther said, the lack of an article is against Sabellianism; the word order is against Arianism.

> To state this another way, look at how the different Greek constructions would be rendered:

> καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν ὁ θεὸς.
"and the Word was the God" (i.e., the Father; Sabellianism)

> καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν θεός.
"and the Word was a god." (Arianism)

> καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.
"and the Word was God." (Orthodoxy)

> Jesus Christ is God and has all the attributes that the Father has. But he is not the first person of the Trinity. All this is concisely affirmed in:

>καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.



EDIT: cf. also This text book, ^(pages 266-269)

EDIT 2: fixed a copy/paste error

Verse 16 is a little odd. It says that the Sun and Moon are affixed to the solid dome of the sky (which also holds back the waters of the primeval ocean). And then it says "and the stars too". It's almost like the author was thinking "I better say something about the stars, but I'm not really sure what they are. I'll just casually toss them into this sentence and hope someone else can figure out where they should go."

And yes - verse 26 is a reference to the ancient Canaanite pantheon. This is especially clear when you compare Genesis 1 to the other Mesopotamian creation myths, especially the Babylonian Enuma Elish. When the text says "let us make man" is is a reference to the sons and daughters of El, the father of the gods. Note that verse 26 specifically says "in the image of the gods, male and female".

This is a really good book on the origin of the Old Testament. It totally changed my view of the Bible. Reading the OT now is actually quite fun, because it is so easy to see how the various sources were stitched together over the centuries.

IMO, MacCulloch's book is quite a commitment, and, I suppose, it would depend on what time frame you are seeking the history of. If you are looking for an in-depth history of the biblical era, this isn't the book for you - only the first few chapters are devoted to anything pre-Jesus, and the life and times of Jesus get another few dozen pages. Perhaps I'm biased as post-biblical era Christianity doesn't interest me, but I view it as more a book of theology rather than history. Make sure you explore the table of contents to make sure you know what you are getting into.

If you are not seeking something devotional, I recommend these Yale Religious Studies courses every chance I get. They will give you the background you need to tackle more specialized books in areas of interest.

If you are looking for books, I'd recommend Kugel's How to Read the Bible or Coogan's Intro for Old Testament, and Ehrman is the standard academic introduction to New Testament.

"History of Christianity" is a pretty broad topic. If there is something specific that interests you, I'll try to come up with more recommendations.

I'm surprised no on mentioned Jordan Peterson's extensive analysis of Genesis, which may be one of his more useful contributions to the public record, IMO. He views and describes Genesis through the lens of psycho-social development, and makes, what I think is a pretty compelling description of how a person can hear these stories and see themselves within the narrative as protagonists aligned with the ancients seeking a covenant with God (Peterson's definition of God is roughly, that which represents the highest attributes and ideals). If anyone was interested in this reading and this topic, I highly suggest listening to the Peterson lectures; I found them very interesting.

One final thing on this point, Peterson remarks quite frequently about the self-referential nature of the bible, that it has numerous links throughout the text back to other stories and that these should often be taken as updates, revisions and remarks on the original tales. It's one of the things that makes the New Testament so interesting to me because it acts as a commentary on the body of work that had been meticulously edited and passed around for a few thousand years recasting the meaning of the Old Testament as the means to the NT ends, i.e. forgiveness of Sin for our endless bullshit into a new age of grace ennobling us to move forward.

I'd also add that R. Crumb's illustrated Genesis is amazing and really drove home the human element underlining these stories. While his aesthetic is more cartoony than realistic, he's clearly a master of his craft and really drives home the emotion and strife of the various actors and lays out the stories in a fun and thoughtful way.

Although it may seem wild at first, I subscribe to John Walton's cosmic temple inauguration explanation. He looked closely at ancient Near Eastern literature and the Hebrew text with emphasis on the Hebrew word for "create" (bara). He discusses two types of ontologies, one material and one functional. Material creation would be what we're most familiar with, like creating a table. An example of functional ontology would be creating a meeting.

Walton makes a convincing argument that Genesis 1 is an account of God's functional creation. He took one week of 24 hour days to inaugurate his material creation, which we can observe components of scientifically but don't have a scriptural description.

I believe Adam and Eve existed but were not the first homosapiens. They were the first to be created in God's image. I also believe (not scripturally, but from our best scientific theories) in the big bang and evolution.

A good analogy would be the creation of a university. The building could take years to build. Faculty and staff would need to be interviewed and hired. Class schedules would need to be designed. The university is functionally created on the first day of class when everyone shows up and fulfills the design.

If you're interested, here is The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate

Thanks for your nice message.

These arguments made a big difference in my life and if they make a difference in someone else’s life (or at the very least challenged them to give serious consideration to the evidence of natural theology) I am very happy to hear it.

I understand your reservations about the argument from desire. I think I mention in my discussion of it that it has only moderate force but has an important place in the cumulative case.

I would highly recommend some further reading because my posts are all capsule versions of arguments that are presented and defended with much greater rigour in my sources. If you only ever read two books on this subject let them be The Existence of God by Richard Swinburne and The Resurrection of the Son of God by N. T. Wright. If you have an iPad or Kindle both are obtainable in a matter of seconds online.

And regarding your question, I recommend this video: The whole thing or from around 6:00 if you’re short on time. In short: Aquinas suggested that wealth and poverty can each be either a blessing or a curse. Much more would need to be said to give a satisfactory answer but I think that is a good starting point. And of course if third world poverty is something that could be ended if first world countries were totally committed to ending it, then ultimately it is a consequence of moral evil.

All the best :)

If you're interested in an eastern philosophy perspective but have a western cultural background there's no one better than Alan Watts to start with. He's an expert at translating difficult concepts into a frame of reference that's far more digestible.

I'd start here with The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. Alternatively you can listen to many of his talks on YouTube for free. I highly recommend this as his character is half the joy of his work. Here's a relevant talk that covers some of the same material as The Book, just in less depth obviously.

If you enjoy his work, then you can move on to more difficult material. I'm a huge fan of Nagarjuna and his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, or "The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way". It's an incredible work but you can't just start there or you won't have the necessary conceptual vocabulary.

From a post I made awhile back:

If you want to go for a scholastic/western positive apologetics approach check out: The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology.

If you want to go for a scholastic/western negative apologetics approach check out Alvin Plantinga's God and Other Minds. This is the work that actually re-kindled serious philosophical debate on the existence of God in Anglophone philosophical circles according to Quinten Smith (a notable atheist philosopher btw). From there you could also check out Alvin Plantinga's warrant trilogy in order: Warrant: The Current Debate, Warrant and Proper Function, and Warranted Christian Belief.

Personally I'm skeptical of the scholastic/western approach in general and I favor the Eastern/Mystical approach. I think the scholastic/western approach cannot escape radical skepticism, and I mean this in terms of secular and religious. If one takes seriously the scholastic/western approach in general, whether one is atheist or theist, radical skepticism follows. This video from a radical skeptic that goes by the user name Carneades.org does a good job of demonstrating this: Arguments of the Indirect Skeptic

The Orthodox approach has always been mystical rather than scholastic all the way from the beginnings of Christianity. From Jesus, to the apostles, to the church fathers, to right now we still have the original apostolic faith in the Orthodox Church. Check out this short documentary to learn more: Holy Orthodoxy: The Ancient Church of Acts in the 21st Century.

Fr. Vladimir Berzonsky explains the Eastern/Mystical approach: "To properly understand the Orthodox approach to the Fathers, one must first of all understand the mystical characteristic of Orthodox theology and the tradition of the apophatic approach to an understanding-if "understanding" is indeed the proper word-of what the hidden God in Trinity reveals to us. This needs to be combined with the insight that what is incomprehensible to our reason inspires us to rise above every attempt at philosophical limitation and to reach for an experience beyond the limits of the intellect. The experience of God is a transcendence born from union with the divine-henosis (oneness with God) being the ultimate goal of existence. This makes the requirement of true knowledge (gnosis) the abandoning of all hope of the conventional subject-object approach to discovery. It requires setting aside the dead ends of Scholasticism, nominalism, and the limits set by such Kantian paradigms as noumena/phenomena. One must return to, or better yet, find in one's heart (or nous, the soul's eye) union with the Holy Trinity, which has never been lost in the Orthodox Church."

Source: Fr. Vladimir Berzonsky, (2004). Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism. p. 178. Zondervan, Grand Rapids

You can look at religion (in my example religious text) from an academic lens (ex:Bart D. Ehrman’s textbook on the New Testament) where using historical fragments of manuscript you can see what portions were likely edited or added later. You factor in writing styles and other variables and evaluate it as a historical text that changes over time (and why those changes occur). This evaluation let’s you see that say some authors may have influenced the writing of other later writers who may have added elements they thought weren’t sufficiently elaborated (ex: resurrection) which then led to later editors adding that to the earlier authors so they all were in agreement. It can actually be really interesting to look at the text in this way.

Within Catholicism, the Jesuits are particularly interested in science / academia which has sometimes created theological debate where they push / publish something at odds with a historically held position. They’ve actually contributed to several areas of science (ex: experimental physics in the 17th century), but someone with more background would need to speak more to this.

Comparing a class I had in primary school (the equivalent of 6th grade) to later classes outside of school in the US there were notable differences. The first emphasized ethics and pulled in history and science as tools to help explain and answer “why is this the case” or “how does this work” questions while the second was more “this is what is true and anything that conflicts must not be true” which threw out a lot of history / science that didn’t agree (ex: evolution).

It’s the difference between allowing scientific knowledge to influence your beliefs so that you see evolution as an even greater and more powerful miracle than a simple creation as is vs. ignoring science and seeing evolution as fiction because it wasn’t in the book.

Sorry for the late reply, you caught me between class and teaching last night.

> I did not know that about Luther. Did he say why he removed those books?

His reasoning for removing those 7 books were that they weren't recognized by the Jews as canon (who themselves only "formalized' their Scripture sometime between the 3rd and 6th centuries. There's no scholarly consensus on when it was exactly finalized or by whom). Part of his reasoning was that they weren't (debatably in some cases) written in Hebrew but instead in Greek, thus they weren't inspired texts like the rest of the Hebrew OT. The Council of Trent, a Catholic Ecumenical Council, defined the Catholic Bible as 73 books including the 7 removed by Luther and the Reformers as deuterocanon (or "secondary canon" though still full parts of Scripture).

> Also, was there ever some sort of original historical team that established a set of books that was later refined? Do we have a timeline where that occurred, and how the Canon shaped over time and research?

Wiki does a good job summarizing the major movements in the development. And as I said above, Trent was when the finalized Catholic bible was authoritatively declared, though it was basically a formal acknowledgement of what was already standard practice in the Church for about a thousand years.

>Is this what the "Magisterium's Team" is?

The Magisterium is the teaching body of the Catholic Church and they settle matters of doctrine, including what is contained in Holy Scripture. The Magisterium is what made up the various councils throughout the ages including Trent.

>Finally, is there any specific source you recommend where I can go to find out more about the history of the Canon of the Bible?

Like I said, wiki does quite a good job giving a summary level. If you want a more academic and in depth reading I recommend Metzger's The Canon of the New Testament as was already suggested (though it tends to be on the apologetic side, it is still quite reliable) or F F Bruce's The Canon of Scripture. Niel R Lightfoot's How We Got The Bible is also quite good.

The heavily upvoted assertions in this thread simply tell us what we want to hear. Hence there are so few requests for citations and sources for these statements.

For those genuinely interested in reading research from both sides (rather than simply the flavour of the month sensation 'the real Jesus is this' author), why not check out a source such as NT Wright's 'The Resurrection of the Son of God', a 700 page work by a man who is arguably one of the best historical researchers and lexicographers of the period and its surrounding times.

Surely either people are genuinely interested in an issue, or they're merely genuinely interested in having their own preferences confirmed.

Wonder if the downmods will flow in...sometimes it seems the wonderful Redditors who I've enjoyed good honest discussion with are being replaced with diggbots who simply downmod anything that disagrees with their own view. Reddiquette people...this contributes to the discussion by offering a well-researched alternative viewpoint.

What if I told you scriptures are not a scientific tome, but rather a generalized explanation of a relationship between a divine being and people, how we should live with one another, care for one another, and help one another?

And that study of Science is there to help us understand the world we live in, and further the aforementioned goal of living with one another, caring for one another, and helping one another?

And that Scriptures were never intended to be a scientific tome, or even be referenced as a scientific tome?

John Walton, "Lost World of Genesis.", and "Lost world of Adam and Eve"

Anyway, I'm not saying you're wrong, but suggesting that perhaps the people who do have the position you correctly point out are very confused about what they have been taught about their scriptures.

>our religion, ie: for Judaism

I was under the impression that you didn't believe the Torah. Do you?

>Put up or shut up.

I'm not sure how you would like me to, but I'll list some resources below. If you would rather delve into it by having a strict dialogue between the two of us, that's cool too. I may not be able to respond quickly every time, depending on how this carries forth, but I'll do what I can. As you mentioned, your soul is "at stake and all that."

Gary Habermas and N.T. Wright are the top two resurrection scholars. Michael Licona is also a leading scholar on the resurrection debate. Philosophers such as Richard Swinburne and Antony Flew have even shown their faces on the scene as well.

Books

• The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas & Michael Licona
  
• The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach by Michael Licona
  
• The Resurrection of God Incarnate by Richard Swinburne
  
• The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright
  
• The Resurrection Factor by Josh McDowell
  
• The Son Rises: Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus by William Lane Craig
  
  Presentations
  
  
• Gary Habermas - "The Resurrection Argument That Changed a Generation of Scholars"
  
  
• William Lane Craig - "Did Jesus Rise From the Dead?"
  
  
• William Lane Craig - "The Evidence for Jesus's Resurrection."
  
  
• N.T. Wright - "The Resurrection"
  
  
• N.T. Wright - "Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?"
  
  
• Michael Licona - "Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus"
  
  
• Michael Licona - "Evidence for the Resurrection"
  
  
• Doug Powell - "Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?"
  
  Debates
  
  Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, and Michael Licona are the most frequent debaters on the Christian side, and Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier are the most frequent debaters on the non-Christian side. Habermas, Craig, and/or Licona have debated the following (possibly) recognizable names on this issue: Bart Ehrman, Richard Carrier, Antony Flew, John Shelby Spong, Gerd Ludemann, Shabir Ally, Arif Ahmed, John Dominic Crossan, Robert M. Price, and Dan Barker.
  
  YouTube is great for finding those debates. There are also, of course, dialogues in book form.
  
  >if you don't like my tone
  
  I'm actually enjoying your tone, haha

> Wouldn't a considerable chunk of it be lost in translation and also there be possibility of misinterpretation?

This is the greatest challenge with different translations is with trying to understand the original intent of the original author and not misinterpret it. Just as you lose meaning in translating with your friends so we lose meaning with biblical translation. Each of the arguing groups all are arguing that their translation loses the least (or no) meaning. You probably doubt that. So do I. But just because each has maybe (we don't really no) lost something in translation doesn't mean we can't work to recover the original meaning and hopefully do our best to mitigate our own biases.

> They interpret it according to their own unique situation.

The great debate you usually see between which translation is best has to do with this and is usually aligned along a number of factors:

• proximity to the original source,
  
• biases of the translators,
  
• the translation approach adopted (in itself a debate)
  
  If you are interested in looking into it further I'd recommend Fee and Stuarts text on hermeneutics: How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth

I've noticed a few on my library shelves, but haven't read them all yet:

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. It's Bechdel's memoir about her father, and an excellent read. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0618871713/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_zF8HzbJGXQY79

The Lives of Sacco and Vanzetti by Rick Geary. It covers a milestone legal case in 20th century US. https://www.amazon.com/Lives-Vanzetti-Treasury-Century-Murder/dp/1561639362

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. It's a text on the nature of comics, in graphic novel form. It's a classic. https://www.amazon.com/dp/006097625X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_sO8HzbDMZF7EJ

The Book of Genesis, illustrated by R. Crumb. He illustrated the entire text of this book of the bible. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393061027/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_8U8HzbZBERQNM

And here's a good list from The Atlantic Monthly: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/08/comic-books-as-journalism-10-masterpieces-of-graphic-nonfiction/243351/ (I've read and enjoyed a couple of these titles, so I feel safe in assuming the others are just as good)

Hi prophetofantman. I am one of the few creationists on this sub. I recommend you post your question to /r/Creation as well. If you message the mods I'm sure you'll be given access.

If you are interested in some more general books on this topic, I can recommend the following:

Three Views on Creation and Evolution.

Explore Evolution: The Arguments for and Against Neo-Darwinism.

The Cell's Design - Fazale Rana

---------------

Some good Young Earth Creationist books:

Understanding the Pattern of Life - Todd Wood

Thousands, Not Billions, ed. Don DeYoung

Seraphim Hamilton, a young Eastern Orthodox commentator and YEC, wrote a good blog post here.

-----

A good book on theistic evolution is "Creation or Evolution: Do we have to choose?" by Denis Alexander


-----

A good Old Earth Creationist book is John Lennox's

"The Seven Days Which Divide the World".

You might also be interested in this Christianity Today article
"A Tale of Two Scientists"

No worries, David, I totally remember what it was like being a student; the last couple weeks of any quarter were always the hardest.

I would want to add that this isn't "my position" so much as "the scholarly consensus". I'm not a theologian or a biblical scholar, I rely on those who are more educated in these matters to inform me. You'll find this is the case with most atheists you meet; we place a lot of value on the words of scholars, particularly specialists in the field we're studying.

But yes, the documentary hypothesis is fascinating. There's an excellent book on this by Richard Friedman, a preeminent scholar on this hypothesis. I highly recommend it! (because I know as a college student you've got loads of free time to read, lol!)

http://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353#_

Good luck on finals!

Some of it is political, yes. Not all of it, but more than most people realize. I'm not an expert so o have to be careful with what I state is true!

My info above mostly came from this really interesting book Who Wrote The Bible by Richard Friedman. The four authors theory is pretty well known and widely accepted. This book lays it all out in a great overview.

I second /u/Frankfusion's recommendation to read How to Read the Bible for all It's Worth.

I would also add that maybe the most important thing that you do is to read the Bible with other Christians. If you have a group of friends that attends different kinds of churches, that would be even better, because that would give you some idea of the differing perspectives their traditions will bring to the table. Even if not, I would try to find some people to study it with together, because the Bible was always meant to be a book for the whole church.

As far as how to read it, there will be plenty of other suggestions, I'm sure. I would agree that you may want to start with one of the Gospels, since Jesus is the heart of the Christian faith. Personally I think some of better known Pauline epistles like Romans are really hard to understand until you've read quite a bit from the Law in the OT.

A friend of mine just recommended this book to me yesterday! This is the book's description on Amazon:

In this astute mix of cultural critique and biblical studies, John H. Walton presents and defends twenty propositions supporting a literary and theological understanding of Genesis 1 within the context of the ancient Near Eastern world and unpacks its implications for our modern scientific understanding of origins. Ideal for students, professors, pastors and lay readers with an interest in the intelligent design controversy and creation-evolution debates, Walton's thoughtful analysis unpacks seldom appreciated aspects of the biblical text and sets Bible-believing scientists free to investigate the question of origins.

It sounded quite interesting. Basically, the author compares the content from Genesis chapter one to other nations' writings on the origin of the world. He also writes that our modern thinking today views the creation story as the creation of the material world, but the original readers would have seen Genesis one as the creation of the functional world. More about organization and function of things, not origin of things.

Again, I have not read the book yet, but plan on it. It does use The Bible but compared with other theories and civilizations I believe. Just thought I'd share since I just found out about this book yesterday!

Removed comment posted by /u/bdw9000 at 01/04/15 22:27:15:

> The Bible With Sources Revealed
>
> In addition to a good explanation for why scholars have come to the conclusions they have, it includes the OT "books of moses" in their entirety, color coded to correspond to the JEDP authors. This helps you read the bible with a new perspective and gain a greater appreciation for what each author was trying to do.

... in response to submission Question: Looking for books on JEPD. Any good resources? posted by /u/RevMelissa at 01/04/15 19:32:08:

> I want to write a bible study this Summer on the four early voices in the Hebrew Bible: Jahwe, Elohim, Priestly and Deuteronomical. Any great resources?

____

Removed comment posted by /u/Checake1 at 01/04/15 22:28:11:

> Does conversion from one religion to another prove anything? I am sure if you google religion x to conversion to religion y where x and y are all religions in the world, you'll find numerous examples. Does Bart Ehrman's leaving the Christianity, even though he is more knowledgeable in Bible and Christian history than 99.9% of Christian population prove christianity is not true? No, apostasy in my opinion aren't really evidence for anything. Numerous factors go into. I am sure in America you'll hear of numerous jews converting to christianity. Where as in Israel you'll hear of numerous Jews staying fast to their faith.

... in response to comment posted by /u/evo64 at 01/04/15 22:03:05:

> I haven't watched them and am not sure I will for a while.
>
> I presume an interesting counterpoint might be the testimony of Father James Bernstein, an Orthodox Christian priest who first became an evangelical Christian, but then converted to Orthodoxy. His father was an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi in the Old City of Jerusalem.
>
> Hw authored a book that is popular with Orthodox Christians entitled Surprised by Christ: My Journey from Judaism to Orthodox Christianity

2 things:

1. It helps to have a mental framework wherein a god, or "great mental entity" is even possible. There is evidence, but without accepting first that God may exist, it will be explained away as something else. You don't have to believe at first, but it's impossible to understand Christianity if you start off rejecting even the smallest possibility that God exists and wait for someone/something to prove you wrong. Inquire into The Quinque Viae with an open (but discerning) mind.
   
2. Start by looking into how the Bible was made. A good resource is The Canon of Scripture. Most people emphacize the teachings of the Bible (which is good, but as you pointed out, then it's one teaching against another and how do you choose?) over the history. The Bible is not one writing; it is accounts collected over history by different writers about how God showed up in history. And the history is accurate. These are by and large the only religious documents ever made that don't take place in an unverifiable place or time. The Bible says "this happened here in X time period. Go see for yourself." The book explains pretty well why some writing is called "The Bible" and some other documents such as The Gospel of Thomas missed one or more stringent qualifications.
   
   Inquiring into both of these things won't necessarily make you Christian or cause you to have an experience. But you will learn something about yourself, and understand the mindset of intelligent people who approach these claims with an open mind and find something uniquely true.

The Good Book: A Humanist Bible by A.C. Grayling. Using the same techniques of editing, redaction, and adaptation that produced the holy books of the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic religions. The Good Book consciously takes its design and presentation from the Bible, in its beauty of language and arrangement into short chapters and verses for ease of reading and quotability, offering to the non-religious seeker all the wisdom, insight, solace, inspiration, and perspective of secular humanist traditions that are older, far richer and more various than Christianity.
http://www.amazon.ca/Good-Book-C-Grayling/dp/0802717373/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369102513&sr=8-1&keywords=the+good+book

> The Bible was still legit

Take some time to learn about the history of the bible. For example, you can take the Open Yale Courses on Religious Studies for free.

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Next, learn some actual science. For example - spoiler alert: evolution is true. Visit Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution Website.. Or, if you're pressed for time, watch this cartoon.

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Learn about the origin of the universe. For example, you could read works by Stephen Hawking

Read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Learn about critical thinking from people like Michael Shermer, and how to spot logical fallacies.

'The Book of Genesis Illustrated' by R. Crumb is very good.

Reviews

“Starred Review. Crumb’s vivid visual characterizations of the myriad characters, pious and wicked, make the most striking impression. His distinctive, highly rendered drawing style imparts a physicality that few other illustrated versions of this often retold chronicle have possessed. The centenarian elders show every one of their years, and the women, from Eve to Rachel, are as solidly sensual as any others Crumb has so famously drawn.” (Booklist)

“To say this book is a remarkable volume or even a landmark volume in comic art is somewhat of an understatement.... stands on its own as one of this century’s most ambitious artistic adaptations of the West’s oldest continuously told story.” (Paul Buhle - The Jewish Daily Forward)

“It’s a cartoonist’s equivalent of the Sistine Chapel. It’s awesome. Crumb has done a real artist’s turn here—he’s challenged himself and defied all expectation. ... I’ve read Genesis before. But never have I found it so compelling. By placing it squarely in the Middle East—and populating it with distinctively Semitic-looking people—Crumb makes it come alive brilliantly.” (Susan Jane Gilman - Morning Edition, NPR)

“[A] beautifully drawn and relentlessly faithful rendition of the first 50 chapters of the Bible by an apostle of the 1960s and sometimes profane progenitor of underground comics. Crumb has produced what could be the ultimate graphic novel.” (David Colton - USA Today)

Ok.

Tell me about your childhood situation:

parents marital situation

financial situation

siblings

location(s)

Elaborate as much as you feel comfortable

EDIT:

yeah, you are an very conservative mormon, and somehow you think you didn't suffer childhood trauma. Okaaaaayyyyyyy.......

You do realize that parents long-term, consistently lying to their children is broadly accepted, and has been for a long time, as significantly traumatic to a child, right?

https://www.google.com/search?q=parents+lying+to+children+considered+trauma

and do some reading on something called NPD

https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Americans-Confident-Assertive-Entitled/dp/1476755566

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Always-About-You-Narcissism/dp/0743214285

https://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Oz-Other-Narcissists-Relationship/dp/0972072837

Instead of bottle-ing up your misgivings about devoting your entire life orientation around a gigantic lie your parents forced on you, you might try being honest with yourself and doing some actual research about the topic. Here's a good place to start if/when you summon up enough courage and honesty to do so:

https://www.amazon.com/Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason-Doubt/dp/1909697494

Obviously you're intelligent enough analytically to already realize that Mormonism is complete and total bullshit, yet you can't seem to accept it and move on. The problem seems to be you can't accept that your parents subverted your life for their own desires. Again, you'll find reading about NPD's effects on children very enlightening. I'll take a wild guess that there are some addiction and avoidant issues you need to address as well.

Here's a good start:

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/special-reports/new-insights-narcissistic-personality-disorder/page/0/1

Ronningstam, Harvard U., and is considered one of the, if not the, best researchers in the world on NPD. Hopefully that measures up to your grandiose personal standards of quality research.

Btw, ADHD is one of the biggest garbage can diagnoses in modern medicine. Can't focus consistently DOES NOT automatically = ADHD. It's just as worthless a standalone dx as "irritable bowel syndrome". Amazingly, nearly every person with a personality disorder and/or significant addiction could also qualify for an ADHD diagnosis, if their other issues were not taken into consideration (DSM, flawed as it is, actually qualifies this in hierarchical diagnostic criteria, but I'm sure you already knew that from your super extensive personal research into ALL of psychology, psychiatry, and brain science, not just some reading about ADHD, right?).

Case studies are FULL of examples of zombie-fied children of religious-version narcissistic parents. You can plenty of case study books available for purchase online.

Good luck!

There's lots, on all different levels. So it depends what you're looking for and what questions are important to you. You might consider:

• Reason for God by Timothy Keller - from Amazon.
  
  If you want to understand the philosophical arguments for God you could try:
  
  
• Reasonable faith or the book with the same name, which sets out some pretty standard arguments.
  
  
• Stand to Reason
  
  
• Unbelievable is a podcast where it's pretty evenly debated.
  
  Specifically on Jesus, you might try,
  
  
• The case for the resurrection of Jesus
  
  
• The resurrection of the Son of God
  
  And one last one which I haven't read, but I hear is good
  
  
• Jesus and the Eyewitnesses
  
  But honestly, simply reading the Bible, praying and earnestly seeking is the best start.

>How is the knowledge of what a person is intrinsic? Also, how do you know that you, yourself, are a person, from an epistemic standpoint?

It's just the general definition for what you are. You know that experience and you know how it manifests externally. That is how you can define what a person is.

>How would you assert that you are the specific creature that was made in God's image?

Because the Bible doesn't say creature, it says man, a specific creature.

>Not trying to poke at things, but wouldn't an even simpler explanation be that they are "soulless" (can't think of a decent word at the moment), but still appear to have a mind? Similar to AI.

Not at all. How is it simpler that they would be different? That you are the only person with a "soul" despite everyone being created by God? Wouldn't that just be special pleading?

Remember the simplest explanation is not "the simplest to implement", it's not about whats simplest to make happen when you already know intrinsically consciousness can happen. Rather the simplest explanation is the one that makes the fewest assumptions.

Assuming everyone who looks and acts like you has a mind, which you know you have, is one assumption.

Assuming everyone who looks and acts like you, does not in fact has a mind is one assumption. This also assumes you're now the only one with a mind. So that's two. Then you assume that for other's its a facsimile or AI. That's three. etc.

>I agree with that, but the problem is what humanity is. How do you know you are the creature that God was referring to?

As above, the Bible does not use "creature" it uses "man", as in "mankind".

>So then what is the point of believing them over not?

They're necessary for understanding the external world.

Before we were grounding all belief. To do that we grounded fundamental beliefs in ourselves, which makes sense as we are the ones that hold belief.

Now we've jumped to a scope beyond ourselves. These are the beliefs that are foundational to understanding the external world, but not necessarily foundational to ourselves or all belief in general.

>Are there any books in particular or online summaries that would relate to this certain aspect of PBBs?

I read Plantinga's book "Warranted Christian Belief" awhile back and I believe that starts to dig at those topics. This goes into some depth but it is written in more accessible language.

A more formal treatment by him would be his paper "On proper basicality" but it's an academic philosophy paper so it might be hard to digest. There's also "Is belief in god properly basic?", another paper of his but I can't find a link that isn't behind a paywall.

You can check out this list of some of his work. He addresses many of the questions you've been asking. Reformed epistemology is as good a place as any to jump into this.

William Lane Craig also talks about it occasionally, but I don't think he's written something specifically in regards to it.

When my daughter started hearing religious stories from her aunt, I bought R. Crumb's comic-book-style illustrated version of Genesis. I treated Noah's Ark and the talking snake just like other fun stories, you know, like Curious George and The Hungry Caterpillar. (You might want to dodge the part where Lot's daughters sleep with him.)

I also started telling Greek myths, like about how winter was caused because Demeter's daughter Persephone went into the underworld, and that made Demeter (goddess of all growing things) sad. I looked up a few so that I could tell them as bedtime stories.

There are so many silly, harmless, fictional stories we tell kids. Throw religion right into that mix and it dilutes it. Don't make it scary or different. Make it part and parcel of the rich fantasy life that kids have. Then when you bring reality in on all of those stories, as your child gets old enough to think about story fiction versus real and true, religion will wash away with the rest.

That's my theory anyway, and I feel it's worked well on my now seven-year-old.

I used to keep this link to a whole bunch of stuff, but I don't have it on hand. If you're serious about this topic, I would recommend picking up Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell. He goes into much more depth about evidence, the quality of evidence, and external evidence than I can get to in one comment box. I believe he goes into the Romans, Josephus and others as well.

I'm not the one that states that they're entire belief system is constructed around the ability to test a hypothesis repeatedly to prove that something's true. While Physics is awesome, and there are many repeatable things, "historical science" is not repeatable.

Lastly, sure I know what pi is, the fact that it does not repeat is amazing.

> Christianity is not an evidence-based religion. It's like all other religions, which is faith-based.

While I agree that faith is a necessary component of Christianity, you seem to assert here that faith and evidence are mutually exclusive. I think this is a false dichotomy akin to the oft-repeated "science versus religion" debate topic of the last century.

Faith alone does not a Christian make. True faith always makes itself known (always "discovers itself" in the words of Edwards) in the life of the believer. In other words, faith produces evidence that demonstrates its efficacy. A love for God, a hatred for one's sin, and a spirit that strives to obey God's commands are some examples of this evidence that is apparent not only to the believer but to surrounding people. I certainly see this in my own life.

But this is not to say that one's faith cannot be bolstered by external evidence. In this category we have arguments for the existence of God and the historicity of the events described in the New Testament documents. Chief among these is the resurrection, which Paul identifies as the linchpin of the entire Christian faith.

> The resurrection of Jesus is not historical at all. The historicity of Jesus ends with his crucifixion.

As /u/RighteousDude has already pointed out, we "prove" facts of history not in a binary sense, but with degrees of confidence. Another way to put this is that given the body of evidence (documents, oral testimony, artifacts, and so on), we seek the explanation that can account for all the evidence and do so far better than any competing explanation.

The resurrection should be treated no differently. Given the evidence, virtually all scholars (to include skeptics) agree that 1) Jesus of Nazareth died in Jerusalem by crucifixion, 2) his disciples were transformed from cowards into men who boldly claimed that they saw Jesus after his death and who went on to become martyrs, 3) James (the brother of Jesus and a skeptic) was converted in the same manner, 4) Saul of Tarsus (initially an enemy of Christianity) was converted in the same manner, and 5) the tomb was discovered empty. There are many more facts that can be extracted from the available evidence, but these five are perhaps the most critical, and as mentioned, nearly everyone who studies this subject agrees on them.

So given these facts, what is the best explanation? Many have been proposed over the years, such as ideas that the someone stole the body, or that the disciples fabricated the story, or that Jesus never actually died, or that the disciples hallucinated, or even that this entire story is fiction. But each of these ideas completely fails to account for the whole body of evidence in some way or another. The best explanation that accounts for all the evidence is simply that God raised Jesus from the dead, and that the disciples, James, and Saul were all eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus.

The case I've summarized above is drawn from the work of Gary Habermas, whose Historical Jesus is an approachable introduction to the life of Jesus that pays special attention to the extra-Biblical sources. If you're interested in a more thorough treatment, N. T. Wright's Resurrection of the Son of God_ is a great choice.

I was an evangelical for 27 years, from age 18 to 45. I wouldn't say that there's one profound argument against Christianity; I would say that Christians and atheists are not even talking the same language. And most of that has to do with Christians having their conclusions in mind when they investigate, whereas atheists are willing to be led wherever the evidence and reason lead them. The end result is that atheists and Christians have completely different mindsets about what constitutes evidence and what they are willing to consider.

The first book I would recommend is Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliot Friedman. Friedman is, himself, a Christian. The book deals with what scholars know about the construction of the first few books of the Bible.

Second book I would recommend is The Bible Unearthed by Neil Silberman and Israel Finkelstein. Have you ever wondered what the archaeological support is for the stories of the Old Testament? Dr. Finkelstein is one of the leading archaeologists in Israel today. This is an excellent place to start. (Here's a 90 minute video if you prefer.)

Third, pretty much any book by Bart Ehrman. Here's a good one, though -- Jesus, Interrupted. Dr. Ehrman is very respected in the scholarly community, and what he writes here, for the most part, represents where the majority of scholars are.

Fourth is A History of God by Karen Armstrong. Ms Armstrong tells the story of how the God the Jews, Christians, and Muslims got his start in Canaan. There is a quick summary of the book here.

There are a number of books on exegesis, but a good number of them are terribly technical.

I think the best way to do it is to actually do it with somebody who is more mature. Read a passage and talk/discuss/debate about the passage.

Having said that, there are several useful books. Let me see if I can remember them.

1. Robert Stein - Basic Guide to Interpreting the Bible
   
2. Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart
   
   I think those two books are quite useful.

Hello,

This book is a robust examination of the Christian faith, looking not only at doctrine but the evidence for the truth claims of scripture.

https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Case-Christianity-Homicide-Detective-Investigates/dp/1434704696

I greatly respect your attitude towards your husbands faith. The fact that you're here asking this speaks volumes.

edit: bonus recommdations

https://www.amazon.com/More-Than-Carpenter-Josh-McDowell/dp/1414326270/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/New-Evidence-That-Demands-Verdict/dp/0785242198/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

1. Have I always been an atheist? No, I was raised in protestant christianity.
   
2. If you have not always been an atheist, what were you before and what changed your mind? First? Learning science and realizing that I could prove that the Bible is fallible through independent analysis of reality, rather than depending on what other fallible people told me was true in contradiction to what I can prove to be true. Second? Realizing that not only is the Bible fallible, but that it is massively self-contradictory ... which led to: Third? Discovering conclusively that the Bible is a hodge-podge of mythological tales that have been edited, redacted, and cobbled together numerous times over the last ~28-2900 years to serve the agenda of men ... which led to: Fourth? Discovering that christianity as it is known today didn't exist some 19-2000 years ago, and that what you currently practice has very little in common to what christians in the first century CE practiced and/or believed ... which led to: Fifth? Discovering with an almost perfect certainty that Jesus never existed as a human being, and that the people that lived in the early to middle of the first century CE never believed that he did ... Paul certainly didn't, and he wrote the first books that were later included in the new testament.
   
3. If today, Jesus Christ appeared to you directly and showed you that He exists, would you be willing to follow Him and His teachings for the duration of your life? Why or why not? Why say "Jesus Christ"? This is as likely as saying that the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Xenu might appear in front of me to demand the same thing, and just as ridiculous a hypothetical. So, let me ask you a much more pertinent question:
   
4. What would it take for you to reconsider your faith in christianity? I can reasonably prove that Jesus never existed and is a historicized mythological construct based upon first century mystery religions syncretized with messianic Judaism (read me). I can absolutely prove that the old testament was redacted multiple times based upon the political and religious views of the time of the redaction/edit (read me). I can absolutely prove that the creation myth of Judaism was based in Canaanite mythology and later was syncretized during the Babylonian captivity (i.e., it's bullshit) and that life evolved through natural processes (read me). I can point to thousands of contradictions, impossibilities, and outright lies in your "holy book" which undermine any claims made by any of the Abrahamic religions (which is a funny title, given the absolute certainty that Abraham never existed ... nor did Moses, or any number of other prominent figures in Judeo-Christian historical mythology). I can point to the faith of members of any other religion, note that it's no weaker than the faith you have in your own, and point out that faith alone in the face of reason proves nothing. I mean ... I could go on forever on this subject, but honestly: you're asking us what it would take for us to believe, when in reality the more important question is what it would take for you to stop believing a tall tale simply because someone told you it was true in the face of actual, verifiable reality.
   
   For my part, I'd believe that Santa Claus was real if I could objectively, scientifically, and reliably demonstrate such a claim. I'd believe that Vishnu, Horus, Odin, or Zeus were real for the same reasons. In fact, I can conjure up any number of fanciful scenarios in which strange, supernatural claims could be verified and "believed" by atheists, because that's how we operate: we believe in reality, however strange it may be. Just because such a fanciful scenario can be imagined, however, doesn't give that scenario any sort of validity. Your claims are as baseless as someone that wants me to believe they have an invisible and undetectable dragon in their garage that will burn my invisible and undetectable spirit FOR ETERNITY if I don't fork over 10% of my income and obey their every incomprehensible and often immoral edict. So put yourself in the position that you so "cleverly" thought you'd put us in: what would change your mind?
   
   Oh, wait ... you don't even want to question your "faith"? That's what I thought.
   
   edit: Watch this, pause, and reflect on your beliefs.

For me it comes down to the cumulative case for Christianity. I can imagine you must feel very hapy, joyful and open-minded. I would recommend a couple books to you:

1. http://www.amazon.com/Case-Resurrection-Jesus-Gary-Habermas/dp/0825427886
   
   2)http://www.amazon.com/Mere-Christianity-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652926/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381803860&sr=1-1&keywords=mere+christianity
   
   
2. http://www.amazon.com/Evidence-Demands-Questions-Challenging-Christians/dp/0785242198/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381803878&sr=1-1&keywords=evidence+that+demands+a+verdict
   
   I think when you are done, that you will see that even with all of the legitimate questions and curiosities that Christianity has, it still is the most logical worldview out there. Also, I would encourage you to find churches outside of the Catholic church as the Catholic church keeps people in bondage. Try and find a solid baptist church. There is no perfect church, but we can find the perfection of love and holiness in Christ.
   
   Also, check out: http://answersforatheists.com/. This addresses many of the common questions and objections to Christianity from a very logical point of view.

haha! yeah that would be pretty funny. youre right though, according to Mahayana (and Buddhism generally, though they focus less on "Sunyata" compared to Mahayana), reifying things, the self and other, as inherently existent, independent, unchanging, etc is the fundamental primary delusion that leads us to appropriate things mainly either through acquiring pleasure and avoiding pain.

a great read on Sunyata, or emptiness, is THE FUNDAMENTAL WISDOM OF THE MIDDLE WAY by Nagarjuna, translated by Jay L. Garfield: https://www.amazon.com/Fundamental-Wisdom-Middle-Way-M%C5%ABlamadhyamakak%C4%81rik%C4%81/dp/0195093364

Those 3 paras are seriously cool, thanks for sharing!

I'd like to make people aware of what may end up being Carrier's most important work: On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt.

Carrier examines all the available historical evidence (much more than many of us think, yet much less than many apologists claim) and makes a very earnest, thorough effort to use (Bayesian) probability theory to estimate the likelihoods, respectively, that Jesus was a real existing dude or that Jesus was completely mythical.

Spoiler: Although he generously errs in favor of historicity in his estimates, in the end he considers the odds of a real historical Jesus no better than about 1 in 3. That's definitely not "disproving" Jesus, but it's a basis for giving the possibility of non-Jesus some serious thought. Sadly, we're unlikely to gain any more certainty than this, unless some surprising find of ancient documents is made.

Regardless, though, of whether someone follows Carrier's reasoning and math, this book is a real treasure trove of information: about historical sources, about pre-existing Pagan myths, about OT literary templates copied by the NT authors, about motifs from Homer and other old Greek literature that cropped up in the Bible, about Jewish beliefs in "a" Jesus or Messiah long before "the" Jesus, about the narrative structure of Acts and the Gospels (including the gaping plot holes)... and so on.

Carrier's forte is not just presenting this suff, it's all very thoroughly referenced and footnoted. On some pages, there's more footnotes than body text! Whatever his critics may accuse him of, it can't be a superficial treatment or a lack of authoritative sources. So there's a lot to learn, and it's all meticulously sourced. Even without worrying about whether Jesus existed or not, this is a treasure trove on state-of-the-art historic scholarship on Jesus and the NT, and doesn't suffer from the usual religious bias or heavy reliance on the authority of other religious scholars.

Recommended? Hell yeah. Belongs on the bookshelf of anyone considering himself an intellectually "serious" atheist.

----

Footnotes/disclaimers:

• No, I don't get a kickback. I don't even like Carrier any more since he took up with the "A+" gang of Social Justice Bullies. This isn't about hero worship, though, it's about scholarship.
  
  
• This pseudo-review is a bit hasty. I haven't finished the book yet - still on Chapter 11.

Historians aren't merely considering the Old Testament narrative, for example, the call of Abraham, when they conclude that Yahwism (ancient Judaism) was henothesitic. The Pentateuch/Torah, while comprised of several early textual sources, did not reach its final form until late into Israel's nationhood, and maybe not until after the return from Babylonian captivity (537 BCE). So, most of what you're reading in the Old Testament was written much later than the period it depicts and that, as such, the writers/editors often shape the narrative to fit their own theological persuasions. In this case, the writers/editors would have been part of a more thoroughly monotheistic Judaism and this perspective would have shaped the way they brought the stories together.

On the other hand, earlier texts incorporated into the whole still reflect the latent henotheism of ancient Judaism, as I listed above. There's no real difference between identifying ancient Judaism as henotheistic and saying that "a lot of Israelites had a hard time holding to this concept [monotheism]." Henotheism doesn't even require worship of other deities only an assumption that other deities exist. The text assumes this (“You shall have no other gods before me”) and the common people believed it (as suggested by their frequently idolatry). You write, “…by the time Moses was on the scene, God had weaned them enough to give them the solid decree that he was the one and only God.” The only way you can draw this conclusion - since the Ten Commandments and the Mosaic Law do not declare that Yahweh is the one and only God; only that no other god is to be worshipped – is that you assume the Bible to be homogenous and feel free to impose the perspective of later writers onto the early Israelites.

You assume that the disparate documents compiled in the Bible are coherent, theologically consistent, and somehow point to an overarching divine plan, placing the Bible in a unique position among literature. That’s a lot to assume and awfully hard to defend. Since I consider ancient Judaism to have been henotheistic, you conclude that I “have not taken the time to really dive in and attempt to understand how it all fits together, nor understand that there were processes involved in accomplishing God's plan for the people group in question.”

If you’re interested in this, I’d suggest one or more of the following:

The Bible with Sources Revealed, by Richard Friedman

The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, by Michael Coogan

How to Read the Bible: History, Prophecy, Literature--Why Modern Readers Need to Know the Difference and What It Means for Faith Today, by Steven McKenzie

How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now, by James Kugel

Sure. If you want scholarly resources on the resurrection, then I would suggest The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach by Licona. You can get it on Amazon for about $35 and it's a long read at 700+ pages.

https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Jesus-New-Historiographical-Approach/dp/0830827196/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3UCOAX5QZYQUY&keywords=the+resurrection+of+jesus+mike+licona&qid=1570211397&sprefix=the+resurrection+of+Jesus%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-1

Another good scholarly resource is The Case For the Resurrection of Jesus by Habermas and Licona. You can get it for about $13 dollars on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Case-Resurrection-Jesus-Gary-Habermas/dp/0825427886/ref=pd_sbs_14_1/140-8576167-7556334?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0825427886&pd_rd_r=decfba9d-109a-4324-99c9-ba4523d42796&pd_rd_w=TIA6v&pd_rd_wg=EeKYx&pf_rd_p=d66372fe-68a6-48a3-90ec-41d7f64212be&pf_rd_r=WW1HBRRY8K7JV6EPDW3P&psc=1&refRID=WW1HBRRY8K7JV6EPDW3P

I would also suggest getting a general overview of the New Testament. Bart Ehrman is probably the world's leading skeptical scholar of the New Testament. His book on the New Testament, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the New Testament Writings, is a great resource and can be bought on Amazon for around $6.

https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Historical-Introduction-Christian/dp/0195126394/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=introduction+to+new+testament+ehrman&qid=1570211027&sr=8-6

Other books that I would strongly recommend would be:

Early Christian Writings. A short read at 200 pages. A catalog of some of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament. You can get it for $3 on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Early-Christian-Writings-Apostolic-Fathers/dp/0140444750/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=early+christian+writings&qid=1570212985&s=books&sr=1-1

The New Testament: Its Background, Growth and Content Bruce Metzger was one of the leading New Testament scholars of the 20th century. You can get it for $20.

https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Background-Growth-Content/dp/1426772491/ref=pd_sbs_14_5/140-8576167-7556334?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1426772491&pd_rd_r=d83ca7e7-e9be-4da7-b3e8-3e5b6e143a27&pd_rd_w=AUNpT&pd_rd_wg=VLsLw&pf_rd_p=d66372fe-68a6-48a3-90ec-41d7f64212be&pf_rd_r=RESQKSAY5XYMKZ939JS7&psc=1&refRID=RESQKSAY5XYMKZ939JS7

The Fate of the Apostles, by McDowell. An in-depth study of how reliable the martyrdom accounts of the apostles are. A little bit pricey at $35-40.

https://www.amazon.com/Fate-Apostles-Sean-McDowell/dp/1138549134/ref=sr_1_1?crid=JBDB9MJMOVL8&keywords=the+fate+of+the+apostles&qid=1570212064&s=books&sprefix=the+fate+of+the+ap%2Cstripbooks%2C167&sr=1-1

Ecclesiastical History, by Eusebius, a 3rd century historian. Eusebius documents the history of Christianity from Jesus to about the 3rd century. You can get it for $10.

https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Background-Growth-Content/dp/1426772491/ref=pd_sbs_14_5/140-8576167-7556334?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1426772491&pd_rd_r=d83ca7e7-e9be-4da7-b3e8-3e5b6e143a27&pd_rd_w=AUNpT&pd_rd_wg=VLsLw&pf_rd_p=d66372fe-68a6-48a3-90ec-41d7f64212be&pf_rd_r=RESQKSAY5XYMKZ939JS7&psc=1&refRID=RESQKSAY5XYMKZ939JS7

http://www.amazon.com/The-Canon-Scripture-F-Bruce/dp/083081258X

It is actually more of a Freshman in college reading level, but this is the best one out there, I'd say. FF Bruce's The Canon of Scripture.

As for summaries of the Bible, I honestly don't think there is a good one. You just need to read that book, man. It is slow at times, confusing at times, and there will always be a reason to quit. You just have to ford that stream.

If you're familiar with another language or two, then you know how language learning goes: Pick up some vocabulary and very basic grammar, and practice. Assuming you're willing to practice, Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar is a great place to start.

Once you learn the alphabet and start recognizing basic vocabulary words, you'll want to get a copy of the Greek-English New Testament - it's got Greek on one side and English on the facing page. Since you already pretty much know what the scripture says, you can read it aloud phonetically in Greek, and your vocabulary will grow automatically.

Finally, see if there's a Greek church near you - there may be a whole community of folks who worship in the same language as the New Testament, and they may be very happy to help you learn :-)

An old standard is St. Augustine's Confessions. A new one is N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God.

I find both authors compelling for different reasons. I think Augustine is great at just writing about what it's like to be human. He knew what psychology was before it was invented, and it takes a great deal of honesty and self-reflection and humility to write about what goes on in your head, rather than what you wish went on in your head.

As for Wright, I really like The Resurrection of the Son of God because I think apologetics need to start with the cross.

>Is there evidence to support the sacred reality to which these religions appeal?

In the cases where evidence is applicable, sure. Look, for example, at James H. Austin's Zen and the Brain. I'd certainly argue that various notions of an enlightened view of existence are reachable through logic, too, though that's more through rational debate/philosophy based on our evidence rather than a direct demonstration through an empirical experiment. Jay Garfield's commentary on/translation of The Mulamadhyamakakarika is a great example of that kind of logic at work.

In other cases, such as a vaguely pantheist sense of sublime awe at the totality of the universe and a subsequent feeling that we should try to contribute to a better world as espoused by some UU members, I'm not sure that evidence for/against is really applicable. It's about what humans experience as profound and applicable to their values, which isn't an objective, quantifiable, controllable, falsifiable process.

In a general sense yes. The full documentation is more complicated but I loved reading it with color coded sources and it gave me so much more depth and sense of history to what I was reading. It was like a cultural time machine.

Of course oral tradition dominated in this time so it likely existed for some time before being written. And that is indeed attributed to Moses, which I think is dope because he himself claims poor speaking ability and yet is a sublime poet. Behind Jesus (duh) he's my favorite father of faith.

That is very sweet. :) The idea that souls hang around is very comforting, and sounds like it helped her handle it.

Have you read The Good Book? It's got a section about grief and I find it useful to turn to when I need something inspirational and consoling without myths. I think the relevant section was probably either Consolations or Lamentations.

The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way is amazing if you have a background in philosophy, more of a metaphysical look at existence, and why things have to exist this certain way that they do (won't spoil it for you)
The Way of the Bodhisattva is also good, you can find a free online version (I think it's a better translation than the printed version I read) at www.shantideva.net

I know it's only anecdotally about Buddhism, but Coffinman is a great novel, it got made into the award-winning film Departures (Okuribito) a few years back.

That's a false either/or. Christians believe both that the Bible is inspired, and also that it must be interpreted (since all literature must be interpreted). As for how to interpret it, the Christian community must wrestle with the best way to do this. And we have. And we continue to do so.

While the method might appear arbitrary to an outsider, it is anything but. Its too complicated to spell out the actual methodology to you in this format. But if you're interested in how Christians interpret the Bible can you check out primers such as this one or this one. Both of these are good introductory texts in regards to the consistent (i.e. non-arbitrary) manner of biblical interpretation.

The only thing I would add to these books which sometimes doesn't get mentioned enough, is that Christians (the majority of us anyways) believe that interpretation belongs to the theological community in the most technical sense. While we encourage people to read the Bible individually, the theological community serves as a checks-and-balances, or a self-correcting mechanism. If we insist on only interpreting things alone, its too easy to let our own personal biases slip in, and then we are in danger of "picking and choosing." But by doing our interpretation in community (e.g. peer-reviewed journals, etc.), we help to eliminate much of this.

Right away, a curious observer would find themselves wondering how, if this Theorem is the wonderful instrument of historical objectivity both Craig and Carrier claim it to be, two people can apply it and come to two completely contradictory historical conclusions.  Yet they both use Bayes Theorem to attempt to "prove" historical things.  Something does not make sense here.


Then if we turn to who doesn't use Bayes Theorem to analyse history we find this category includes ... pretty much every single historian on the planet.  Again, this should strike the objective observer as distinctly odd.  After all, if Bayes Theorem can genuinely be applied to determine the truth or otherwise of a historical event or proposition, it's exceedingly strange that thousands of historians all over the world are not applying this remarkable tool all the time.  Richard Carrier maintains that this is because every historian on earth, except him, is too ignorant and mathematically illiterate to understand the wonders of this remarkable tool and only he has been clever enough to realise that it can be applied to history.  Given that Thomas Bayes ' theorem was first published in 1763, our objective observer would be forgiven for finding it remarkable that no-one noticed that it could be used in this way until Richard Carrier, an unemployed blogger (and a person who isn't taken seriously by most scholars), came along.

​

There are two problems here when it comes to trying to apply Bayes Theorem to history: (i) Carrier and Craig need to treat questions of what happened in the past as the same species of uncertainty as what may happen in the future and (ii) historical questions are uncertain precisely because we don't have defined and certain data to feed into the equation.


Bayes Theorem only works in cases where we can apply known information.  So, in the example above, we know how often it rains in a year and we know when the weather forecast is and isn't correct.  So by inputing this meaningful data, we can get a meaningful result out the other end of the equation.


This is not the case with history.


Bayes Theorem's application depends entirely on how precisely the parameters and values of our theoretical reconstruction of a real world approximate reality.  With a historical question, Carrier is forced to think up probabilities for each parameter he put into the equation.  This is a purely subjective process - he determines how likely or unlikely a parameter in the question is and then decides what value to give that parameter.  So the result he gets at the end is purely a function of these subjective choices. 


In other words: garbage in/garbage out.


So it's not surprising that Carrier comes up with a result on the question of whether Jesus existed that conforms to his belief that Jesus didn't - he came up with the values that were inevitably going to come up with that result.  If someone who believed Jesus did exist did the same thing, the values they inputted would be different and they would come up with the opposite result.  This is why historians don't bother using Bayes Theorem.


So what exactly is Carrier doing by applying this Theorem in a way that it can't be applied?  Apart from being incompetent, he seems to be doing little more than putting a veneer of statistics over a subjective evaluation and pretending he's getting greater precision. 


Not surprisingly, despite his usual grandiose claims that his use of Bayes Theorem is some kind of revolution in historiography, his book Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (2012)   has pretty much sunk without trace and been generally ignored by historical Jesus scholars and historians alike.  His failure to convince anyone except a gaggle of historically clueless online atheist fanboys of his vast genius means that Carrier is most likely to remain what he is: an unemployed blogger and general nobody with a fringe thesis.

It all depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for a word for word translation go with the NASB. It uses a more recently found manuscript that is more accurate to the original text and it trumps the KJV and NKJV. If you're looking to have a better understanding of the text use the NIV or TNIV. They use a sentence by sentence translation and will bring things into context which makes it easier to read and understand.

As far as your question goes, off the top of my head that is literal. Why is that question throwing you off?

I recommend reading a book called How to Read the Bible for All its Worth as well. It's taught me a lot about interpreting scripture in context and how to make sense. The theme I took out of the book is "Scripture can never mean something to you that it didn't mean to the original hearers." It keeps you from stripping verses out of context. for instance 2 cor 6:14. (If you don't know many people apply that verse to marrying someone of a different faith, when there is no mention of marriage in the entire book)

http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Bible-All-Worth/dp/0310246040/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249090643&sr=8-1

I read your edit about becoming an evolutionary creationist. Welcome to the club! You should check out BioLogos, a friendly website for exploring the harmony of modern science and Christianity. I also recommend reading The Lost World of Genesis One, by John Walton, and The Language of God, by Francis Collins. They were super helpful for me when I started down the path you're on.

If the historical Jesus is what they're after, Robert Price might be a good place to start. He has a podcast called "Bible Geek," and it shouldn't be too hard to find some of his debates on Youtube (which at least will give both sides; whether or not they're equally matched is up to the viewer I suppose). He gives a lot of fantastic counterpoints to the most common apologetic arguments on the authenticity of the gospels, and has a very good grasp of the subject (at least from what I, a non-expert, can tell).

On the same subject, I have heard great things about Richard Carrier's book "On the Historicity of Jesus", which is next on my list of books to read. Hope these help!