zumark said:
I wasn't raised Christian. I was never baptised, I've never set foot in a church for service. Sure, we celebrated holidays, but only the commercial aspects of them. Lately, though, I've been looking into the Bible, and reading it, among other holy books. I really like Christianity. I find it to be convincing, and a beautiful religion for the most part. But I have my doubts. I've heard quite a bit about corruption in churches, even in the one my mother was raised with.
So, this is what I'd like to know:
Can you help me resolve my doubts about this religion?
What are the things you love about Christianity?
I'm also VERY interested in different proofs of God's existence. Refer me to books or summarize arguments yourself. Thank you in advance!
Firstly, resolving your doubts either now or in the future is impossible to guarantee. Proof and persuasion are, by their very nature, person specific and subjective. Only God and you , and maybe not even you, know exactly what it might take to persuade you of a given doctrine such that your doubts are resolved.
But for any Christian, being used of God to provide information to you which eventually do help to resolve your doubts is a great honor.
I love many things about Christianity.. God the Father, Jesus the Son of God, the Holy Spirit... the written word of God, the logical consistency of the faith, how by God you can see everything, and that without Him you can't see anything, the archeological proofs for the scriptures, the way it points us to the only truth and the only way we can then actually know that truth etc etc
As far as proofs for the existence of God, here are a few of my favorite books on apologetics:
Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig
Scaling the Secular City by JP Moreland
Apologetics to the Glory of God by John Frame
Faith and Reason by Ron Nash
Worldviews in Conflict by Ron Nash
Handbook on Christian Apologetics by Peter Kreeft and Peter Tacelli
The Analytical Theist by Alvin Plantinga
God, Reason and Theistic Proofs by Paul Helm
Classical Apologetics by RC Sproul, John Gerstner and Arthur Lindsley
perhaps an indirect argument for God is arguing for the absurdity of life without God, this can by found in the excellent book by Ravi Zacharias called "A Shattered Visage: The Real Face of Atheism"...
these will be my very humble attempts at summarizing a few of the arguments for God's existence, but please, go on to much better sources and trained teachers to make sure I get what I am saying right....
the Cosmological Argument reminds us that all around us we see contingent beings and artifacts, eg non sentient materials in the universe.... things which exist now, but did not at one time exist... but everything that does come into being MUST have had a cause.. this is a scientific principle that seems beyond question... and so as we move back in time we see eventually we must come to a first cause of all things since actual infinities are impossible (see Craig and Moreland) and thus infinite time/infinite series of events is impossible, besides it is generally agreed by most everyone that the universe came into being a finite time ago, eg the Big Bang... but something HAD to have caused the Big Bang. The Latin phrase ex nihil nihil fit means "out of nothing, nothing comes", this seems undeniably true based on our experience and science...... so it seems pretty absurd to think that the biggest "something" of all, namely "everything that exists", all came into being out of and from nothing at all. For me, it takes more faith to believe that that all that there is came from nothing, and even more amazingly, that sentient life came into being out of non-sentient life, then it does to believe that there is an intelligent design, and thus, and Intelligent Designer who caused all things to come into being. This we call God.
The Teleological Argument is an argument from design.... just as it would absurd to walk through a field and find a watch laying there, with all it's fine gears and evidence of intelligent intentionality evident within it, and then just imagine that it just "popped" into existence right there and then, complete..... so too, the more we look at the universe in general and earth in particular, we see an incredible amount of fine tuning making human life possible... we therefore feel justified in believing that an intelligent Designer is behind all this order. An important aspect of this argument is the scientific observation called the second law of thermal dynamics which says that all matter tends towards decay and that energy is winding down in the universe.... since the universe has all this design evident within it, and since the state of things now is such that nowhere do wee things tending towards more order, or more energy being produced, we feel justified in believing that there must have been a being who had originally started the universe with all its design in an original state of order..... since high order moves towards disorder and chaos, not the reverse..... this being we call God.
I guess I should have mentioned this resource earlier, CS Lewis' book "Mere Christianity" is a masterpiece of lucidity and rationality.... while he touches on other arguments he also talks about the Moral Argument for God's existence.... that since we see in all humanity, no matter the religion, no matter the culture, basic morals we must posit a Moral Law Giver. For if evolution were true, if all man really was and is, is an animal, it is hard to account for the existence of any morality at all. Of course there are differences from culture to culture on some aspects of what is right or wrong, it might be reasonable to say that at all times and in all places it is always wrong to boil new born babies in hot peanut oil. If we are merely animals, nothing more than brains and bodies, it is hard to understand why this is the case. Something from outside of us must give all human beings this inner morality. This being we call God. (Of course there are sociopaths who seem to have no conscience at all. The fact that we find these individuals to be unusual and abhorrent shows that we have a built in morality within us that makes the moral assessment on them, that their absence of ability to act morally, their lack of conscience etc proof of the rule and that they are an exception, not the norm.)
Lastly, as far as these brief and undoubtedly overly simplistic summaries go... which are the summaries of just a layperson like you, please let me remind you
... is the Ontological Argument, which is an argument from "being".... it seems to me a really important aspect of this argument is to remember that a state of being is superior to a state of non-being... and that
1. God is something than which nothing greater can be thought.
2. God exists in the understanding.
3. It is greater to exist in reality and in the understanding than just in understanding.
4. Therefore, God exists in reality
It is important to remember that all these arguments have their supporters and their detractors. This has do with my earlier point of "proof" being a very very complicated and subjective process, that resolving all doubt permanently and totally might not happen. That is to say, I have personally experienced long times of certitude, but there are moments when a doubt may creep in to my mind on this or that subject, and when that happens I have tried to pursue, within my very very limited ability, the answer or a reasonable answer for my doubts. At any rate, what seems perfectly obvious to you or I might not be so for someone else. I confess I do not understand this. It is very curious. Perhaps it has something to do with the nature of sin, that because of our sinful natures what evidence there is all around us for the existence of God is obscured. In fact, this is what the bible itself says:
Psalms 19:1-4a (ESV)
1 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
2 Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.
4 Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world...."
and
Romans 1:18-20 (ESV)
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse."
Humans are kinda like radio receivers who were inherently and originally designed to receive signals/communication from God, things like He exists... that He loves us... etc.. but because of the fall of man and all humanity being cast into a state where we are by nature, sinners, our ability to properly receive these signals.... our ability to properly perceive the evidence around us..... is so askew that we fail to acknowledge and worship God as we ought. In the end, for those who do "get their heads on straight" and see the evidence for God properly, I have to think that this only happens because of God's love, grace and mercy. God had to intervene on our accounts so that we could see God, otherwise, because of our sin, we never would see God. We would continue to "suppress the truth in unrighteousness". This "intervention" is most exemplified in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Also, realize that when we are talking about "proof" in the realm of issues like the existence of God, we will not have the kind of proof that we might have for a statement like 2+2=4, eg mathematical certainty. The existence of God is a "metaphysical" discussion, not a mathematical. There are basically 2 types of proof outside of mathematic proof, eg deductive and inductive. Deductive reasoning provides what most would call absolute certainty, though of course you can always find someone somewhere who would disagree with even this. A deductive argument says something like "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.". So a Deductive argument says that If.... IF... the premise (in this case the premise is "All men are mortal") is true, then what follows (the conclusion to the syllogism) MUST NECESSARILY be true. But there precious few truths in our everyday lives that are dependent upon deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning then, is reasoning towards what is taken to probably be true, based on statistical inference. This is basically the scientific model. We can say that if something occurs under a certain set of particular circumstances, and that repeatedly, this event continues to occur, then, more than likely, it will continue to occur. There MAY be an instance where it might not occur, one cannot with absolute certainty know whether this be the case or not, for the only way to do this would be to continue to do the same thing over and over under the exact same set of circumstances for all eternity in order to see if this is the case. Incidentally, this is a very important reason that science can never dogmatically assert the proposition "God does not exist" as being true based on some type of scientific reasoning. What experiment could one ever set up to prove, scientifically, that this is the case... that God does not exist? Science by its very nature can only speak to, well, nature. It simply cannot answer non-physical or metaphysical inquiries.
Well I hope this helps you... I certainly help this response will not be a source for further confusion!!!
If I may help you in any other way, or try to clarify something I have already said, I will try...
blessings,
ken
