(Part 2) Best products from r/DebateAChristian

You have reached the very foundational elements of the faith that are a very large part of why I am a christian, or at least remained a christian once i sought out what the bible had to say about these exact questions.

So philosophically or more so existentially, the truth of why or what it all means has to be an open playing field so to speak. Fatalism, Nihilism or forms of Pessimistic thought have some implications that seem unpleasant or off putting to some, but ultimately hold water within their own logical frame work. Just because an idea is initially off putting does not make it wrong. The difference between those schools of thought vs. Christianity is that they are not built on a foundation upward, but rather a foundation is kind of the conclusion drawn out from an evolving argument. Christianity has a much higher burden in terms of it's foundational consistency.

Instead of being the product of reasoning, Christianity is a product of ancient documents ranging in literary style from history, poetry, theology, personal letters, and prophesy. Out of those documents a cohesive understanding of the universe and the existential impact of that understanding form the religion. That means the documents have to be the source and need to have not changed over the years to support new philosophies. (at least if you're rational)

So if Christianity is true, then the best way to test it would be to examine the most accurate understanding of these ancient manuscripts alone. That's everything from fields of archeology, historical and textual criticism to (what we are touching on in this thread) doctrinal and theological cohesiveness. Do these ancient manuscripts actually form a cohesive philosophy, without the aid of reasoning from a foundation outside of the documents? Also the documents examined have to be the most original copies of these documents along with the most accurate understanding of the way the original authors and readers would have understood them?


It's no easy task and definitely not something to exhaust on reedit. I hope i've given you a better understanding of some deep theological ramifications of biblical christianity and the kind of philosophical impact they have on hypothetical questions. I will now answer your questions, and the answers will no doubt seem trite and unhelpful. But i think i've reached the end of what i can say to a stranger on the internet, having no clue what background you have in biblical study and no idea where to start:

>So the point of Christianity is to glorify God? And if you fail to do this you suffer in hell for an eternity? This seems like a rather conceited concept does it not?

yes it does seem like that within the framework of human interaction and affections. So the way this idea works is not something to understand within the framework of human interaction and affections. God is not human and so again, it's an open playing field. The question is, does the answers the bible gives make any sense?

>So god is willing to punish those who have absolutely no control over whether they survive long enough to reach an age where they could even possibly understand Christianity? Or do you mean he will only punish the babies that would have never become christian?

I have no idea if either of those are true but the plausibility that they remotely could be is built off the theology (a study of the nature and character of god) in the bible. The biblical documents do not flinch in their explanations of seemingly paradoxical ideas. Paradoxical ideas crop up everywhere in the search for understanding meaning, morals, or truth in reality, it's up to you to judge what you think about the answers the bible gives.

>So god is responsible for saving you from a punishment he himself created? The way you depict it makes it sound like what you do is irrelevant in regards to being saved, by this reasoning, is there even a point to try and do ethical actions, since regardless of what you do, you are already saved or damned.

I can defiantly say "trying to do ethical actions" has nothing to do with being saved or dammed. And as far as the seeming paradox of god creating the punishment (what exactly this punishment is is debated between christians) that he himself saves you from? The ultimate purpose is that he gets more glory if he did it this way then just created beings already perfect and ready for eternity with him.





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Some book ideas about what I talking about.

Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist answers how God's Glory works for our benefit from the bible.

The Reason for God answers some of the seemingly off-puting or paradoxical ramifications of biblical theology.

> 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?

> taking the 2000 year figure, that's getting awfully close to the KJV (1611AD).

So taking "the 2000 year figure" to go from alleged composition to the first manuscript is comparable to the distance from the composition of the gospels to a popular English translation of a Latin translation of the original Greek how?

>You'll need a source for that, every contemporary historian agrees the earliest scroll dates to at least 30 years, and most claim it's more like 60.

Well I was thinking of 7Q5, which was in an area abandoned in 68 and dated by papyrologists to the first half of the first century, but it's a small fragment and not without controversy. There's a more recent (c. 2012) find that has been dated by one paleographer to the second half of the first century, but apparently hasn't been sufficiently examined by others... I've neither seen it discredited or publicized as confirmed.

Since those are both "iffy" sources, I don't mind sticking to 30 instead of 10-20 ... considering paper lasts several hundred years properly cared for, I don't think 30 years is long enough to require a whole lot of copying distance from the originals. I mean ... I have books on my shelf written on cheap wood pulp that are closer to a century than a half-century old (and that haven't been considered holy) and if I wanted to copy them I could; I'm not sure why it's expected that a copy 50-100 years from the originals would have had time to pick up a lot of errors... that doesn't make sense to me.

But why does it matter to you? If you are acknowledging that it's reasonable to care whether it's 10-20 vs. 30-60, then aren't you implicitly saying that it's not intellectually dishonest to consider provenance dates as a reason to believe one document over another?

>To pretend that 2000 years of closely preserved mnemonics will somehow specifically crumble Krishna's resurrection account is not only silly, but entirely unfounded.

If you want to disagree that oral tradition (even with "closely preserved mnemonics") is just as reliable as having a written copy of something and copying it letter for letter, then it's your prerogative to have that opinion... even if we think each other "silly" I don't think that leaves either of us in a position to accuse the other of intellectual dishonesty... just poor reasons for (honestly) believing or disbelieving things, right?

And I haven't seen a response to the idea that oral tradition shouldn't be considered as trustworthy as written copies, but regardless of that, in the 2500 years before the mnemonics began, from there to when the events supposedly happened, is also a big enough gap. Most info I've seen place him at around 3000 BC, if it took from then to 500 for the account of his life to be recorded, that's 2500 years of time for exaggeration to slip in... again, multiple orders of magnitude different from the gospel accounts.

>And again, this is just 1 of the 13 gods I've mentioned resurrecting themselves.

So are you saying that you recognize at least for this one that there are legitimate, non-intellectually-dishonest reasons to trust the New Testament over the Vedas, and you want to move on to the other 12 now? This is why from the get-go I was more interested in discussing the fact that different texts are different levels of trustworthiness for a number of different reasons. Could be the details, could be the provenance, could be the intended audience or the interest of those promoting it.

I can give you a dozen books about people going to the moon, from Jules Verne's 1865 From the Earth to the Moon to the fantastic North Korean story of Kim Jong Il's heroic conquest of the moon as told by the North Korean propaganda ministry, to the Bernstain Bears on the Moon, to Michael Chaikin's A Man on the Moon: Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts. Are Kim's and Chaikin's going to be equally credible because they both describe physical possibilities? Is Chaikin's story unbelievable just because Verne's, Kim's, and Bernstain's are incredible for various reasons? Should we discount Chaikin because of this book that says it was a hoax? Or should we believe it just because it's possible?

Edit: fixed a link

The problem is that you said this,

> It's like if the Gospels hadn't been put together into the Bible they'd count as non-Biblical records proving that Jesus existed, but because they are in the Bible that means they don't prove anything.

and you complained about this,

> If you put everything ever written about Jesus into the Bible then there would be no non-Biblical sources for proof, if you don't put everything ever written in then that shows you were picking and choosing your own religion

So now that you have engaged into "backtracking mode", as in,

>All the best historical accounts would be a subset of everything ever written, and so would 'accounts that best fit the goals of the early church'.

So...let's be clear how far we are:

• 1. There is little to no non-christian sources about Jesus.
     
• 2. There are many brutally contradicting christian accounts of Jesus
     
• Of those Christian items, a very few have been selected for inclusion into the canon. Probalby settling about the third/fourth century.
  
  Now, let me address your erroneous statement that the gospels are "the earliest". At best, a portion of one of the gospels may have been written by 70AD (Mark), but could be as late as 100AD. A full 40 years, best case, after the events. The next two (Matthew , Luke )were most likely written based on Mark. Finally, John is most likely even later
  
  This matches very well Egerton Gospel (70AD at earliest) or the Gospel of the Egyptian (80 AD at earliest) and many more whose dating might well be equal to or precede the canonical gospels.
  
  As far as the agenda of the early church, it is well known, and does not worry about historical accuracy, but about setting dogma straight. So, yes, they had an agenda, and that agenda was not to look for historical truth but for orthodoxy. Hardly the standard to create an even close to reliable text.
  
  Ergo, and as a whole, I tell you that this,
  
  > I think it's reasonable to think that the 'selected' canon was selected and held on to because it is the best historical account.
  
  Is not correct. It was selected because it met the orthodoxy of bishops in the 4th century.
  
  You should read this book. It would show you why the bible is not historical record.
  

> Can you lead me to where point 3 is talking about?

In regard to point 3, you mentioned the early history of Israel - have you studied the history of the peoples that became the early Israelites from non-Torah/Biblical sources? And with these peoples, have you investigated the evolution of the polytheistic foundation of Yahweh and Yahweh worship, and the evolution from polytheism to henotheism (a monolatry for Yahweh; Yahweh is in charge, there are other Gods to worship) to an aggressive monolatrist polytheistic belief (Yahweh is the most important God, there exists other Gods but worship of these other Gods is to be actively rejected) to, finally, a monotheistic belief system (there is and, somehow, always has been, only Yahweh)?

An area that I am interested in (as a hobbyist) is the origin story of Yahweh and Yahweh worship that precedes, and leads to, the Torah. If you are interested some references on the growth of monotheistic Yahwehism from a historical polytheistic foundation of holy scripture to the development of the henotheism and then monotheism of early Biblical Israelites:

• [The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel](http://www.amazon.com/The-Early-History-God-Biblical/dp/080283972X) by Mark Smith<br />

• The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts by Mark S. Smith
  
• A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong
  
• The Religion of Ancient Israel (Library of Ancient Israel) by Patrick D. Miller
  
• Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches by Ziony Zevit
  
• Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (Library Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies) by John Day
  
• God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World by Mark S. Smith
  
  While limited to starting with the Hebrew Bible as a basis, and not addressing much pre-Torah scripture related to Yahweh, the following takes a look at:
  
  
• Monotheism, Polytheism, Monolatry, or Henotheism? Toward an Assessment of Divine Plurality in the Hebrew Bible, by Michael S. Heiser, PhD
  
  While a College Senior Thesis (and the perception therefore of a less credible scholarly/appeal to authority level), the following is a good source of other reference material:
  
  
• The Ascension of Yahweh: The Origins and Development of Israelite Monotheism from the Afrasan to Josiah by Andrew Halladay
  
  Some of the on-line summaries/arguments which related to the above argument/position are:
  
  
• Are Yahweh and El the same god OR different gods?
  
• Ugarit and the Bible
  
• Israelite Religion to Judaism: the Evolution of the Religion of Israel By David Steinberg
  
• The evolution of God
  
  The full argument I make against monotheistic yahwehism (the most essential and foundational tenet of the Abrahamic Religions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam) is: Argument against monotheistic Yahwehism/Allahism
  
  > I haven't heard of this text in particular.
  
  I am guessing that this quoted text refers to "(starting at Gen 2.4, the J/Jehwist/Yahwist source, written mostly in the 5th century BCE in the post-Exilic period when Judah was a province of the Persian empire)." If this is the case, I am referring to the scholarly analysis of the authorship of the Torah/OT.
  
  Documentation (Documentary hypothesis - generally accepted by many scholars, though still hotly debated by those professing to be a scholar or presenting a scholarly format while actually intending to lay the groundwork for faith-based apologetics or starting out with a presupposition and then selectively presenting only that evidence that supports this confirmation bias with any "peer review" from people/organizations that share the same confirmation bias /mini-rant over) regarding who likely wrote what and when, to include editing and redactions, of the Torah and OT.
  
  I am a fan of the ongoing (and arguable) Documentary (JEDP) Hypothesis regarding the source/date of the original writings of the Torah, though given the editing/redaction/combination of the source materials I think that it will be very difficult to give definitive origin source identification to every verse/passage. Some references are presented below after the break.
  
  This same subject came up recently in /r/AcademicBiblical :
  
  
• How do we know when which books were written? Specifically Old Testament.
  
  
• J, P, E, D, etc. is it still the scholarly consensus of the Pentateuch's composition?
  
  and
  
  
• Pentateuchal source criticism: a preliminary bibliography and exploration of recent research
  
  If you are not subscribed to /r/AcademicBiblical - WHY NOT? :D
  
  ----
  
  
• Documentary hypothesis
  
  
• Documentary Hypothesis
  
  
• JEDP theory
  
  
• JEDP theory
  
  
• Who Wrote the Torah?
  
  
• Pentateuchal Studies Today3
  
  
• JEPD Theory, Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis, Documentary Hypothesis
  
  
• The Documentary Hypothesis The Four-Source Theory of the Pentateuch
  
  
• The Documentary Hypothesis

>Acts is later than Luke, and mentions nothing of James' or Peter's death, Nero's persecutions, the Jewish war against Rome, or the fall of Jerusalem.

Acts purports to record events up to about 60. None of those things would be relevant to the time period about which Acts was written. However, since you admit Acts was written with or after Luke, Luke 19:41-44 and 21:20-24 are clearly references to the destruction of the temple, so Luke is post-70, so Acts is as well.

>Many of the expressions in Acts are early and theologically primitive.

On the contrary, the theology of Acts seems consistent with the Pastorals and Polycarp, moving it into the second century. This would be consistent with the use of Josephus' Antiquities, since that wasn't published until 93.

>There were eyewitnesses around during the writing of the Gospels and Epistles.

For the Gospels, this is assuming the early dates you prefer, which I and most scholars dispute. For (most of) the epistles, this point is technically correct, but irrelevant, since the epistles from that period don't claim eyewitness sources, or for that matter say anything about Jesus that would have either used or contradicted such sources.

>Remember that persecution was severe, from Nero to Domitian.

There's no good evidence of that.

>Also remember that many of these works, including many works by Roman historians, are no longer extant.

Oh, I'm well aware of that. But you can't argue from evidence you don't have. Yes, there certainly were documents produced during that time. There were likely hundreds, if not thousands, of relevant documents, from doctrinal letters to tax receipts. But we don't have them, so we have no idea what they said.

Personally, I suspect 1 Clement was written in the 60s, not 95 as traditionally thought. He's unaware of the Gospel story, references the deaths of Peter and Paul as recent, and is unaware of the destruction of the Temple or even that the Jews had ever been at war with Rome. If the Neronian persecution in 64 happened, Clement is unaware of that, as the victims aren't included in his list of martyrs, which would put Clement prior to 64, but since that event probably didn't happen, it's less clear. Of course, if it's true that 1 Clement dates to the 60s and not 95, that means we don't have anything after the 60s until Ignatius in 110 (or maybe 160, or anywhere in between).

>This is a theory and nothing more.

It's the leading theory in Johannine scholarship, so I'm pretty confident with it.

>The order of all the Gospels is jumbled.

Let's just put it out there: The Christian documentary corpus is among the most compromised bodies of evidence in all of history. The documents that make up the New Testament underwent extensive editing, interpolation, redaction, and revision over the first two centuries of Christianity, not all of which was mere scribal error. The extrabiblical evidence often underwent even more of this, with blatant forgery not uncommon (see my caveats on Ignatius above). Fully half the epistles actually in the New Testament are inauthentic.

This gets to the heart of the issue posited in the original post. In Jewish, pagan, and Christian religious literature, fabricating stories was the norm, even in stories presented as being true. Indeed, the persuasive power of claiming that a story is true is precisely why fabricated stories were presented as true.

For Jewish literature, even the Maccabean texts contain a lot of dubious material, but then you have the Enochic literature (which clearly influenced Christianity), Tobit, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Revelation of Moses, Joseph and Aseneth, the Testimonies of the Twelve Patriarchs, and all the haggadic midrashim. The Old Testament is mostly either fiction (Exodus, Job, Ruth) or forgery (Daniel, Deutero-Isaiah, Deutero-Zechariah). Philo of Alexandria wrote fictional biographies of biblical characters, like Life of Moses and On Joseph, while Josephus' Antiquities contains more stories about such characters, and he's a relatively good historian. Check out the 1st-century collection Biblical Antiquities sometime; it's basically an entire second Hebrew Bible, recounting entirely made up adventures of minor Biblical characters.

All of the pagan "novels" were religious in content. The Greek and Roman mythology that we learn about, stories about gods and heroes and sages, is actually pagan religious literature. So were all the tragedies dramatizing that mythology, and so were many of the comedies making fun of it. Plutarch's biography of Romulus is a great example. Romulus was a minor Greek demigod, later adopted by the Romans as their mythical founder. But Plutarch wrote a straightforward, historical-looking biography of him, placing him firmly in history, pondering which stories were true and which false, and published that biography alongside biographies of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, in precisely the same style. And a great deal of the biographies of even real people was also fabricated as a matter of course. Euripides' marital troubles aren't in his biography because there were any sources about his life, they were written in because of things that some of his characters say about marriage in his plays!

Christians followed this trend quite nicely. Most Christian faith literature written in the first three centuries of its existence was lies. The most obvious category is the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, of which there are hundreds of extant documents; letters from Paul to Seneca, letters from Clement of Rome (beyond 1 Clement, if that's authentic), 3 Corinthians, 3 and 4 Peter (on top of the forged letters that are in the New Testament), a forged letter from Jesus to Abgar (on top of the forged letters from Jesus that are in Revelation), over 40 Gospels, half a dozen Acts (Thomas, Timothy, Peter, Paul, Paul and Thecla, etc), the wild stories from Papias and Hegesippus, the Epistle of Barnabus (which you referenced), the Decree of Tiberius (supposedly proving that Tiberius converted to Christianity). It's not some wild, improbable idea that Jesus didn't say all the things the Gospels tell us he said, because most of the deeds and sayings people attributed to Jesus are fabricated.

>Rather than perceiving John as a copycat of legendary material who cares not for history, John was plying the waters of prophecy and OT history to give evidence that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God.

Again, that this was his goal is a great motive for making up precisely those stories.

>Of course Jesus' appearances are after the resurrection—that's Paul's point: Jesus has risen from the grave and lives today.

The point remains, however, that this means Paul seems entirely unaware of any appearances prior to the resurrection. And since one of those appearances was to Paul himself, and we know the appearance to Paul was in a vision, and there's no indication that any of the other appearances were any different, it seems from what Paul tells us that Cephas, the Twelve, and the five hundred saw Jesus in visions, just like Paul did.

>Even Peter and Stephen don't mention the details of Jesus' life when they preach (Acts 2 & Acts 6).

Yes, and that's curious, because you'd think that when defending themselves in Jerusalem itself, to the Jews, literally weeks after everyone supposedly witnessed Jesus' final days in that very city, they'd want to bring up recent events. Stephen's 1200 word, five pages of Greek speech in particular is odd. Because he summarizes at rather tedious length the entire history of the Jews (which the Jews to whom he's speaking probably know), and blames them for Jesus' death (not a particularly good defense strategy), but he says that they killed Jesus by failing to follow the law and the Prophets. In addition to the fact that the recent miracles, ministry, trial, execution, and apparent resurrection of Jesus would have been far more relevant to his defense (but sure, maybe Stephen was just a really bad lawyer), it's entirely implausible that the Sanhedrin would just not argue against him. Unless, of course, Stephen and his speech are a literary device, and no argument against his claims was made because the author of Luke-Acts was writing for a Christian audience who wouldn't disagree, and who presumably just read his version of the Gospel story anyway, meaning they didn't need those details repeated.

No reason to be rude, dude.

> Stories aren't evidence.

Of course they are. Every day in courts all over this country, attorneys call witnesses to the stand to tell their stories, and those are counted as evidence. I direct you to http://www.justia.com/trials-litigation/docs/caci/200/202.html:

"Evidence can come in many forms. It can be testimony about what someone saw or heard or smelled. It can be an exhibit admitted into evidence. It can be someone’s opinion.

"Direct evidence can prove a fact by itself. For example, if a witness testifies she saw a jet plane flying across the sky, that testimony is direct evidence that a plane flew across the sky. Some evidence proves a fact indirectly. For example, a witness testifies that he saw only the white trail that jet planes often leave. This indirect evidence is sometimes referred to as 'circumstantial evidence.' In either instance, the witness’s testimony is evidence that a jet plane flew across the sky.

"As far as the law is concerned, it makes no difference whether evidence is direct or indirect. You may choose to believe or disbelieve either kind. Whether it is direct or indirect, you should give every piece of evidence whatever weight you think it deserves."

> Well then present a single piece, just one piece of verifiable evidence that miracles or demonic possessions occur.

Craig Keener of Asbury Theological Seminary has a recent two-volume work, "Miracles", that deals with the biblical miracles (volume 1) and post-biblical accounts (volume 2), collecting and evaluating many accounts up to the present day. A quick google will turn up plenty of reviews, videos, interviews, articles, debates with Keener on the topic.

http://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Credibility-Testament-Accounts-Volume/dp/0801039525

> occultists have zero magical powers

There are plenty of evidences out there of the legitimacy of these things. You obviously, like everyone else, choose what you will believe, and you live by faith in what you deem to be evidence vs. hearsay.

> where did their magic come from?

Spiritual forces of the occult. I don't think it has disappeared from the earth at all.

> If you are going to attempt to claim that the stories of exodus are history

There are a number of evidences for the Israel exodus from Egypt. If you would like to discuss them, I'd be glad to.

And, btw, there weren't millions of them. Realistic numbers from the biblical account put the population of the Israelites at about 25,000.

> Or reading. Maybe I read.

Well, I'll take that as an insult. The implication is that I don't. Hm. A bit of prejudice on your part.

> Is it faith to not believe something that has no other backing?

I define faith as an assumption of truth based on the evidence (and faith is always based on evidence) that makes it reasonable to make that assumption. When I go to sit in a chair, I can't be 100% sure that it will hold me (chairs occasionally do break). But I've sat in this chair 100 times, my eyes tell me it looks the same, and so I plant my rear in it, believing and assuming it will hold me. It's the same when I turn the key to start my car (I have faith it will start), going to the store (I have faith it's still there), or thousands of other things in daily life. It's what the author of Hebrews claims in Heb. 11.1: "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." There is a certainty based on evidence, though because it is not seen it is subject to faith, just like the store in my previous example. A blind person cannot distinguish color, but color is a real thing, and its reality is unaffected by whether or not the blind person is able to appreciate them.

Christianity is based in evidences, not blind beliefs. That's why it's historical, and not philoso-theological like Hinduism, Buddhism, and even Islam. The earth is here as evidence of a creator. The existence of the Jews as a people group is evidence of God's work in history. The evidence of Jesus as a historical figure and in his death and resurrection is presented in affirmation of his deity. Faith in the Christian definition is distinctly evidentially based, and not just an "out there" kind of "well, you just hafta believe."

I'll add this: There are certainly different kinds of existence. The existence of the chair behind you is very different from the existence of memories, or the thoughts in your brain. Your car in the driveway exists in a different way than, say, time does. Physics cannot and does not cover the whole of reality; it's only a slice of it. I said faith is an assumption of truth based on evidence that makes it reasonable to make that assumption. If your friend tells you they bought you a ticket to a concert, you'd get in the car (by faith) and go with them, because you have all kinds of evidences (your relationship with them, their tone of voice, their body language, etc.) that make it reasonable for you to believe what they are telling you. I find the same dynamics and realities in my relationship with God.

I have "seen" things that have convinced me. Not visually, but emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually my search for truth has always eventually lead me towards a belief in God. I'm not going to get into the individual things that lead me to be convinced of God as they are my lifetime so far of personal experience, education and seeking. But there is enough personal evidence to convince me to have faith.

I think you haven't seen anything convincing because you're looking for the wrong thing.

I could say that I don't believe in atoms, that I haven't seen demonstrable proof for them, you'll ask what would convince me, and I could say "I'll know it when I see it." You would conclude that I haven't examined the evidence properly. You'd find the fault in my view, not reality. How I look at it has no bearing on whether or not it is true. You trust yourself to be the judge of what constitutes adequate proof, but how do you know you're judging that properly.

God is something that would by nature be outside the realm of complete human understanding. We are biological beings with a limited subjective view trying to understand the existence of something limitless, something non-biological, something relational, spiritual, metaphysical. Yet you expect this very thing to physically manifest itself before your eyes before you'll even consider that it exists.

Even if it did physically manifest itself to you, through the lens of science, you wouldn't end up believe in the thing itself, just the bit that physically manifested.

What I'm getting at is that science can only prove the physical, so when asking questions about non-physical things you can't rely on science to reveal them. You can believe that there is only the physical, and science is therefore the only metric you need for assessing the truth. But as science can only measure the physical, you can't use it to prove that a non-physical doesn't exist.

You'll ask why this non-physical, if it does exist, hasn't reached out and confronted you, hasn't revealed itself to you. I'd say it has, but you choose not to listen, because you don't believe in it. You have to open yourself to it first. It's there. What you want is for it to take the last step, to make you believe in it. But you want it to do that on your physical terms.

Someone much more wise and eloquent than I can explain this idea better than I can:
Jordan Peterson on why he believes in God.

For the record I think the scientific case for God is also pretty decent. This book has helped me with that.

>If you want me to take the evidence seriously, this is the only way.

Baloney, it isn't the only way to take evidence - one simply critically exams the evidence - that the way to accept or reject evidence. But let's play your game.

Bruce Metzger was probably the most renowned NT textual critic in the last 100 year.

While the UBS5 or NA28 gives the conclusions of the textual committee that decided on the precise reading for each passage of the Greek New Testament, Metzger's A Textual Commentary of the NT gives the reasoning for each of these variant passages.

Here is Metzger's conclusion:

By comparison with the New Testament, most other books from the ancient world are not nearly so well authenticated. The well-known New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger estimated that the Mahabharata of Hinduism is copied with only about 90 percent accuracy and Homer's Iliad with about 95 percent. By comparison, he estimated the New Testament is about 99.5 percent accurate. So the New Testament text can be reconstructed with over 99 percent accuracy. And, what is more, 100 percent of the message of the New Testament has been preserved in its manuscripts! [B. M. Metzger, "Recent Trends In The Textual Criticism Of The Iliad And The Mahabharata", Chapters In The History Of New Testament Textual Criticism, 1963, E. J. Brill: Leiden, pp. 142-154.]

Now of course you will reject Metzger since he is a Christian. But curiously Metzger also wrote The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration with famed athiest/agnostic and Biblical critic Bart Erhman.

Ehrman and Metzger state in that book that we can have a high degree of confidence that we can reconstruct the original text of the New Testament, the text that is in the Bibles we use, because of the abundance of textual evidence we have to compare. The variations are largely minor and don’t obscure our ability to construct an accurate text. The 4th edition of this work was published in 2005 – the same year Ehrman published Misquoting Jesus, which relies on the same body of information and offers no new or different evidence to state the opposite conclusion.

Here is what Erhman said in a footnote in his book Misquoting Jesus: Bruce Metzger is one of the great scholars of modern times, and I dedicated the book to him because he was both my inspiration for going into textual criticism and the person who trained me in the field. I have nothing but respect and admiration for him. And even though we may disagree on important religious questions – he is a firmly committed Christian and I am not – we are in complete agreement on a number of very important historical and textual questions. If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement – maybe one or two dozen places out of many thousands. The position I argue for in ‘Misquoting Jesus’ does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger’s position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament.

So now we have, in addition to a Christian expert that says the Biblical text is 99.5% accurate we have an atheist/agnostic expert who agrees.

Note: to review the many errors in Erhman's book Misquoting Jesus see here

>I don't, but the possibility is there due to their organizational ties. You don't think it's in their best interest to skew evidence to further their narrative?

Can we level this same criticism at you? That you will "skew evidence to further their narrative"?

How does one even have a conversation if one assume s that their interlocutor is so biased that it interferes with their rationality?

It seems the best we can do is assume that we are all being as unbiased as we can and the critically examine the evidence and arguments.

> No authorized translation suggests that Adam listened to the serpent because every authorized translation says that Adam was punished for listening to his wife.

Authorized by who? and for what purpose were most of these translations authorized? Usually because the earlier translations did not conform to the teachings of the church, so they got someone else to translate it. The hebrew and aramaic texts the old testament is translated from are not vowelated, so the words can have multiple meanings.

> Would you care to explain why the Christian god would be OK with Adam listening to the serpent while punishing Eve for listening to the serpent?

Again, I don't think that this literally happened... It could have, but it makes more sense to treat these stories as creation myths. Have you ever studied mythology? It makes more sense to discuss the symbols they used and to put it into the context of the world in which the story was popularized. It could have been said that women were punished with pains in childbearing because of their consent to mate with angels in the book of enoch and create giants. Enoch however was not canonized and therefore does not hold the same authority that we give to genesis.

> However, if you want to admit that the Bible contains contradictions I am OK with that too.

I feel like I've said this before but the bible is not meant to be taken literally. It is a human interpretation of divine word that contains myths and metaphors meant to allow us to experience the divine. IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY Genesis 1 and genesis 2 contain different accounts of creation. Read them again and tell me what cam first, humans or cows?

> So you are retracting your argument that we should disregard 1 Timothy because it was not written by Paul.

I realize now that I did not fully flesh out my argument, my apologies. I meant to point out that there are 3 different voices attributed to Paul through the epistles. It becomes apparent when you group them into different categories that they were written in response to different factors as a way of preserving the christian church in that area. The quote from 1st timothy about women should not teach or hold authority over man comes in response to churches having to compete with other religions that allow women to hold authority over man. It allows the church to point to this text and preserve its traditions. Historical context of the texts is always important to consider when quoting verses to prove your point. Try this book if you want some further reading on the background of the book of the bible.

Paul Copan addresses this any many other Old Testament issues in the sixth chapter of his book Is God a Moral Monster?, which I highly recommend.

The gist of his argument is that although God established the ideal law in the Garden by affirming the intrinsic value, moral responsibility, and equality of all human beings and by defining the marriage covenant, mankind chose to reject that ideal in favor of their own. This led to the Mosaic law, in which God preserves hints of the ideal while making compromises for stubborn Israel. It was an incremental step back to the ideal, and one that even the Old Testament acknowledges was intended to be temporary. For instance, in Deuteronomy we find God promising to circumcise the hearts of those who follow him so that they will not need the written law. Later in both Jeremiah and Ezekiel we find references to God writing the law on the people's hearts and causing his people to walk in his statutes.

Evidence that the Old Testament contained compromises for Israel is given by Jesus himself when he is questioned on the law's permission to divorce one's wife. Jesus points back to the Genesis account of God's creating the institution of marriage as God's ideal. Christians find the fulfillment of the Old Testament law in Christ himself. This "fulfillment" of the law does not mean abandoning all its principles, for the parts of the law that reflected God's ideal must remain. Rather, like a child that has matured and no longer needs supervision, Christians no longer need the written law as a guardian because the inward transformation wrought by God's Spirit fulfills the words of Jeremiah and Ezekiel by making Christians children of God who have God's law written on their hearts.

It's also important to consider the cultural and historical context in which the Old Testament laws were given. At this time Israel was composed a single ethnicity living in the ancient Near East, surrounded by pagan cultures with their own gods and religious practices. For this reason a theme of separation runs through much of the Mosaic law. God wanted his people to remain undefiled and to refrain from blending with surrounding cultures or adopting their practices (which could include child sacrifice or religious prostitution). This explains many of the laws we now see as weird from our modern perspective. After Christ, however, God's people come from all nations and every social strata, being joined into one body through Christ himeslf. The theme of separation (or holiness) remains, but the cultural context is entirely different, so certain of the Old Testament laws necessarily fall away as obsolete.

I believe not in a global flood, but a smaller-scale flood limited to human civilization. The animals aboard the ark were not all animals, but only those vital for human civilization, e.g. agriculture. It was important for these animals to be alive, so they could bond or properly relate with the people aboard. This would ensure these animals would optimally fulfill their roles in helping people re-establish civilization.
For more, see:

The Waters of the Flood

Exploring the Extent of the Flood 1

Exploring the Extent of the Flood 2

What does the Bible Say about the Flood?

Navigating Genesis

I'll give you my answers, since they're definitely going to be considerably different, at the very least, from the ones you'll get from anyone else around here.

>Mainly, I'm interested in hearing the Protestant criticisms of Catholicism, and Catholic criticism of Protestantism.

I can't really speak to this one, as I'm not really either of those. There are Catholics that I would deem to be "true Christians" (e.g. Gustavo Gutiérrez, Óscar Romero, John Dominic Crossan) and there are Protestants that I'd refer to as the same (e.g. Jürgen Moltmann, Reinhold Neibhur, Martin Luther King, Jr.). Heck, I'd even call people who don't profess to follow Jesus yet act in a Christlike manner to be "true Christians" (e.g. Mohandas Gandhi, Ernst Bloch, Slavoj Žižek). I'm much less concerned about one's theology than I am about one's praxis.

>How do you view the "lukewarm" Christians mentioned in the Bible?

You're talking about the ekklesia in Laodicea in Revelation 3:15-16, right?:

>I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

These are Christians that refuse to take a side. James Cone has a good quote that I tend to go back to for those "Christians" that refuse to take a side:
>"Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God's experience, or God is a God of racism."

One could substitute any form of hierarchy for Cone's "racism" in that quote; race for him is an ontological symbol of oppression. For God to be a god of liberation (as Jesus' God was/ is) He/She must have an alignment with the oppressed. He cannot be neutral, for neutrality to injustices privileges the status quo. And just as God must take a side, so must Her/His followers. That's what the lukewarm Christians in Laodicea were doing - refusing to take a side. They were unwilling, perhaps afraid to be "hot," and thus were no better than the "cold" rest of the world. Revelation's God is saddened by Her/His followers refusing to take a stand - lukewarm is equivalent to cold, neutrality is equivalent to oppression, but it is much easier to judge active agents of oppression than its passive agents.

> How do you feel about the divide on social and scientific issues - where it seems Catholics are generally more progressive, and Protestants are generally more conservative?

I don't really have a great answer for the science one. If you believe in a Creator (I don't ), and you believe that that Creator is "good," then you should believe that everything that that Creator endowed you with, including the ability to reason, is likewise "good." Thus, denying scientific discoveries and theories because they go against a literal reading of a 2500+ year-old book is spitting on your Creator's gifts to you.

As far as "social issues" go, it should be noted that the metanarrative of the Bible is inherently a political story, one of liberation. Whether God is guaranteeing a "promised land" to slaves in Egypt or guaranteeing that He/She will bring Her/His people home from exile, the authors are making statements against empires. When Mark opens his Gospel with "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God," he's making a direct statement against Caesar Augustus, who was said to be the bringer of evangelion ("good news") and whose full imperial name included the phrase Divi Filius ("Son of the Divine/ Son of God.") The anointed (Christos) son of god that brings the good news was not the Emperor of the known world, but a Jewish peasant bastard from rebellious Galilee. He went on a mission preaching a "Kingdom of God" (as opposed to an "Empire of Rome?") where "the last will be first and the first will be last." He attacked the center of social/political/religious/economic power of Judea, the Temple of Jerusalem, and was promptly executed by Rome with a method saved for political radicals. But then, the scandal! He was resurrected, denying the ultimacy of Rome's power and Rome's ideology, ensuring via promise that the "Kingdom of God" was something that can be achieved.

Liberation is the heart of Jesus' evangelion. Thus, as far as social (and economic. Especially economic!) issues are concerned, the God that Jesus professed will always be on the side of the oppressed, not that of the oppressors, for that would be the demesne of the God that named Caesar "Augustus." I hesitate to even affirm "progressivism" as the Christian God's ideology de jure; it's more radical than that. Jesus completely subverts what the Romans considered to be "reality" by presenting a Kingdom of God free of death (oppression). He revealed society's constructed nature, denied the invalid claims to ultimacy (because nothing man-made can truly be "ultimate"), and presented an alternative. Whereas Empire causes oh so many to fall into non-being, Jesus instilled his followers with the courage to be.
>And lastly, why do you think you've found the most correct version of Christianity?

Most correct? I hesitate to ever claim superlatives, but I am confident that my understanding of Christianity is much closer to Jesus' religious beliefs than the abomination of "mainstream" Christianity is. Why, though? Because I make every effort to read the Gospel with the eyes of a first-century Jewish peasant - Jesus' original followers and original audience. Or, failing that, I read it through the eyes of oppressed classes, after all, they certainly have a hermeneutical privilege. I read the Bible unpolluted by Plato's doctrine of the eternal soul or by the obscenity that is Constantine's in hoc signo vinces. I divorce myself from the assumptions of "nature" that our society makes, just as Jesus himself did. I reject the inherently flawed assumptions about a "just world" and those that affirm the powers-that-be as infallible.

What does that leave me with? Hope. Energization against an unjust world because Christ's gospel screams that there shall be a real, just world that we can bring about. Not just can, but must, for
>"Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.".

So, am I confident that I've "found the most correct version of Christianity?" No, and I don't think that that's possible. But I have been to the mountaintop, I have seen the Promised Land, and I know the Kingdom of God. Exegesis, coupled with the hermeneutic of the oppressed, offers no reasonable alternative "Christianity" to the gospel of liberation. Sadly, instead of this "bottom-up" model, Christianity has long been co-opted by "top-downers" more interested in either explicitly imposing their will further upon the downtrodden or simply pushing their legitimate grievances aside in favor of otherworldliness. But again, God cannot be neutral, and what use is a God on the side of the powerful? Why let them continue to stack the deck, to stack their team? The only God worth believing in is the God who evens the score, who stands on the side of true (distributive, not retributive) justice, the God who killed all oppression and bought us liberation at Calvary.

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.

> Many of these 'proofs' you mention are just oft repeated statements.

No, many of these "proofs" are agreed upon consensus from historians and biblical scholars. No offense but I'll take their word over some random guy/woman that IDK from the internet.

> I can find no references from historians or peer reviewed articles that support this view among new testament historians.

Really? Go read up on it. https://ehrmanblog.org/do-most-manuscripts-have-the-original-text/

>The manuscripts used to translate the ESV or the HCSB are wonderful translations directly from the earliest manuscripts. I honestly do not see any strange inconsistencies with the new testament.

Well, given that I've just recently finished up reading the ESV bible, I cannot understand how anyone, who's actually bothered to read the entire bible, can say that.

> The earliest manuscripts of Mark were written 7 years after the events of the gospel and I believe the parts that were in later manuscripts are true as well.

Again, not so. The consensus is that it was written ~30-40 yrs after Jesus's death.

http://www.bc.edu/schools/stm/crossroads/resources/birthofjesus/intro/the_dating_of_thegospels.html

>The thing we must all wonder is why? Why would these men die for something that they knew wasn't true.

This is a fallacy. Men will die for what they BELIEVE is true but that doesn't mean it is true. Happens all the time. 9/11 hijackers and Heavens Gate are two prominent examples. Just cause someone believes it true doesn't make it so. I use to believe Santa Clause was true. I had good reason to think so. Such as the yr we went away before Christmas only to come home and find presents under the tree. Even got into a fist fight over the whole "is Santa real?" discussion in grade school. Of course, it was later reveal that my parents had us simply wait in the car while they went back in the house to get something they "forgot". But I sure did BELIEVE that Santa was real.

>We have excellent historical accounts of these martyrs deaths and many many thousands more.

Again, not really. Only church tradition that I'm aware of. No contemporary accounts. If I recall correctly, the bible doesn't discuss their deaths either. But even if we did, that still doesn't prove their claims. And as far as "thousands" of martyrs, probably only in that it feed early christian's fetish for wanting to be like Jesus. There's actually no real evidence that there was this centuries long campaign to persecute christians. Hell, there is actual evidence that chrisitans DEMANDED to be persecuted. In one case, a group of christians went up to a Roman official demanding to be crucified only for him to basically say: LOL! Go home, you're drunk. There was another group (name escapes me) that would go on raids just hoping to be killed for Jesus. Very ISIS like. read up on by NT scholar Candida Moss.

> If you could get passed that you still can't explain the insanely fast spread of christianity from 12 men to millions in a few hundred years. No religion has seen such growth in so short a time.

Yea....'bout that...Doesn't seem to the the case. Islam spread far more quickly and rapidly than christianity did upon it's inception. And remember, christianity didn't necessarily spread out because of it's message but because of the sword. The Inquisitions, Crusades, Manifest Destiny, Salam witch hunts, etc. In some countries, like Ireland, it's still a crime to blaspheme Christianity. I think it was Seth Myers who was recently looking at 2 yrs in jail over there for that "crime". Hell, there was a kid just about 3 yrs ago that was basically brought up on blaspheme charges in Pennsylvania and sentenced for portraying himself receiving a BJ from a Jesus statue.

>My theory is that christianity especially in its earliest execution worked. It just worked. The miracles, the Holy spirit confirming, the whole thing worked, and people could see it for themselves.

I'll make you the same offer I make every christian who proclaims this. This is what Jesus allegedly said: He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” Matt 17:20 (ESV)

If I see you walk outside and command a mountain to move in Jesus's name and it magically lifts up and flies off, I will give away everything I own to your church, done sackcloth and cover myself in ash. I will then go proclaim Jesus to the world myself.

To date, I've not had any takers but I sure have had a lot of apologetics and excuses given.

>Atheism requires far far more blind faith to believe than christianity.

No...No....that's not what it is. It's simply a rejection of your position that there is a god. Hell, you're an atheist for every god out there but one. I just happen to be an atheist for all the gods.

>Atheism is a religion, one that believes in chance.

No, again that's not what being an atheist is. I don't worship anyone/thing. There's no dogman associated with being an atheist. No religious text or rituals.

>Do the math. Do you know the odds of a universe coming into existance out of nothing? It's zero. Out of nothing, nothing comes.

How did you determine this? How did you determine that the universe came out of "nothing"? Because, to my knowledge, no-one knows that answer. But the fact is that a universe can come out of "nothing" but "nothing" isn't what you think it is. Yea, it's complicated. I've listened to the book a
few times on Audible and I think I have a grasp of it. But it's a pretty bold statement you're making there and I'll challenge you to tell me how you know what the initial conditions were at that time. It's the same reason I disagree with Stephen Hawkings reasoning on why he doesn't believe in a god. In short, time began when the universe did so therefore, there was no time for a god to exist in. Now I don't pretend to be on his level of intellegence but I would LOVE to sit down and discuss it with him and I would ask him the same I'm asking you: How do you know?

That aside, improbable things happen all the time. For example, what do you think is the probability of a specific leaf falling off a tree on a trail out in the middle of the woods in central Russia and hitting me in the face on Oct 12th, 2032 at 2:34:43PM? I would argue that the probability is so low as to be zero. You surely wouldn't make a bet of it I'm sure. However, it CAN happen, correct?

>The chicken very obviously must have come before the egg.

Nope, the egg came long before the chicken ever evolved. Dinosaurs laid them. We even have some fossilized dino eggs.

>Causes do not come from effects.

Ok. So what caused your god to come into being?

>Is your notion of it is that it is science, or that it is pre-science?

So glad you asked! If science means "modern science", definitely pre-science. There is a modern tendency to reject ancient ideas prima facie. In the Coughlin translation of the Physics, he starts his introduction by noting how difficult it is for readers of the "modern, technical age" to understand the kind of writing it is. Coughlin then proceeds to provide four reasons why, rather than being "overthrown" by modern science, Aristotle's Physics is foundational to and presupposed by modern science.

I love both science and philosophy. One reason Thomism (particularly Laval and River Forest Thomism) is so appealing to me is that it takes modern science seriously.

>Why is it important to you to understand Aristotles arguments?

The Organon are his works on logic. It's absolutely necessary to understand logic to engage in any kind of intellectual pursuits. I'd done some basic logic in my life, and for that reason thought I could skip the Organon and go straight to Physics, De Anima, and Metaphysics. I'm now realizing my mistake. In my own life, I hold a weekly "Aristotle Club" where some friends and I read through his writings and seek to understand them.

What are your interests, both scientific and philosophical?

>Personally, I'm of the opinion that Revelation is a coded pep-talk to the various churches that John of Patmos deigned to correspond with

I agree in part. After Revelation 20:6, I believe it jumps to futurist thinking/prophesy.

>What good is the book for Christians who aren't living in the end times?

Personally, and I know I'm n the minority based on other threads, I feel that we're in the Revelation 20:7-8 portion of the letter. An interesting read if you are curious about diving more in to these ideas is the Partial Preterist view

I would recommend reading The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, not because I'm trying to convert you but I do think there are a lot of good points brought up by a lot of Ivy League PhD scholars. The more knowledge the better, even if you still find it insufficient

The Case for Christ - Once past the first chapter or so, this book falls into stride, and has interviews with lots of really intelligent people. As a former athiest, seeing/interacting with people more intelligent than myself that are Christians was the largest contributing factor to me opening up to the idea of God. Either way, bravo for at least wanting to see what all the fuss is about!

It might be best to just jump into the literature itself. Like both articles on VE stated, there are different camps, though they're not always mutually exclusive. And Wiki mentioned Alvin Plantinga. He's quasi-VE, but written very directly on the subject you're interested in. He has a paper called "Justification and Theism" that predates his trilogy on warrant, the last one titled Warranted Christian Belief. In fact, I have an abridged chapter of that book; Plantinga presented it as a paper at a conference years ago. I also have, from that same conference, a paper "Proper Epistemic Function and the Intellectual Virtues" by Jay Wood and Robert C. Roberts, who are referenced in the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on VE. There's also a paper on Proper Function in science. I don't mind scanning these papers and emailing or uploading them.

I also think that you would benefit from subjecting Foundationalism (which includes both Empiricism and Rationalism) to much more critical scrutiny, and for reasons unrelated to "supernatural" questions. The foundations are illusory. Richard Rorty, who was thoroughly atheist himself, had some of the harshest criticisms of Foundationalism.

Please don't base such important views on reddit comments. Talk to a pastor, just search church in Google maps and go talk to one. or read books by them Reasons for God by Timothy Keller would be a good read [amazon.com] andor his podcasts [itunes.apple.com] [podbay.fm]

Here's what I read in my grad school class. This is probably the best place to start IMO. Link.

Exegesis is looking at Scripture and trying to figure out what it originally meant to its audience. This means studying the historical context surrounding the verse. Someone mentioned Isaiah 53 not being about the Messiah. Why do they believe this? Well if you look at the historical context it makes sense that it's about Israel and/or Isaiah himself. Isaiah was traditionally believed to be martyred by the king of Israel. But later in the New Testament Paul applies a new meaning to the verse and attributes it to Christ. Which is right? Well as a Christian I would say both are important. Hermeneutics is merely taking what you learned through exegesis and applying it to a modern context or what it means to us.

As for learning more about it I could name many different books, but here are the ones I read first:

How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth

Grasping God's Word

Inspiration and Incarnation