I typically enjoy Bosk's posts on religious matters (despite disagreeing with him on more and more issues), but in this particular area they leave much to be desired for the reasons you mentioned; using what the bible says as proof of why the bible is right. But maybe I'll be surprised!
Well, but I haven't prested any argument
for God. And I don't think I've said in this thread, or any other, that "God exists because it says so in the Bible, and the Bible must be right because it says so in the Bible." I agree with you and P.C. that that would not be a satisfying argument. But, again, I don't think that is what I've ever argued. Now if you think that, at the end of the day, that's what my arguments boil down to, that's fine. I disagree and feel that is unfairly dismissive, but I get it.
If you want me to lay out my case for the existence of the God of the Bible, I can do so. Keep in mind that this is the short, simplified version, and each of these topics could separately be expanded out into a huge subtopic and it of itself. So this is just my brief overview of how I see the universe and my place in it.
First, I think I do see order in nature. I acknowledge that I could be imagining said order to try to fit what I see in nature into a framework that I can make sense of. But still, it appears to me that there is an incredible order to things, whether we are talking about the cosmos, the weather patters on this planet, or how the human body functions, etc. I see it all around And, to me, it appears to be an order of things that is not only statistically unlikely, but could not have happened by chance simply because what we know and observe about our universe, our planet, our bodies, etc. leads to the conclusion that if things happened by chance, there are countless points in time where things not only statistically
could have gone much differently, but almost certainly
must have gone differently. So, in short, what I observe about nature, the world around me, and the universe inclines me toward believing there might likely be a creator rather than things happening by chance. In a short paragraph, it's impossible for me to fully flesh out this idea, but there you have it in a nutshell.
Looking at scientific theory, there is a lot out there that admittedly seems to point to the opposite conclusion--i.e., that there most likely is NOT a creator. However, I appreciate the vast majority of honest souls in scientific community who aren't afraid to come right out and admit that, still, in 2011, with all our advances in knowledge and achievements, that there are tons of holes, gaps, and even contradictions in even many of the most basic, widely accepted scientific theories and models that, in their various forms, explain the origins of life and the universe.
1 There are. There always will be. Let's deal with it and just acknowledge that our knowledge bases and understanding are
always developing and changing, and until the end of the human species, we will always arrive at a point where we learn something previously unknown that shows us that something we held to be true and inviolate is in fact wrong. But the models and theories we have are simply the best we have based on the knowledge we now have. That's all fine. But again, to me, there is no reason to hold a scientific theory or model inviolate. History has proven that we have been wrong when there was no reason at the time to believe we were wrong. So I can't hold, for example, the theory of evolution and its supporting evidence to be inviolate, even if I believe it to be soundly constructed and based on solid evidence and reasoning. In my observation, there are plenty of soundly based scientific theories out there that strongly suggest that many of the theories and models held up as cornerstones by the atheist community are flatly wrong. There are plenty that suggest the existence of a creator. So despite what Dawkins, et al. may say, what modern day science has to offer is insufficient to disprove the existence of a creator.
I also will mention as an example, the fact that, independent of anything created by mankind, we find a language that exists in nature in all living things on this world. Remember the movie Contact? Remember how the basic premise was that if we discovered a non-random, recurring code being broadcast, it suggested that that code was in fact a language developed by an intelligence? And as we know, that basic premise is the foundation for a lot of government and private agencies that are CURRENTLY searching for signs of intelligent life in the universe. Well, what is DNA if not a random, recurring code that is being systematically coded and decoded within the cells of every living thing on this planet millions of times per second. Coincidence? Maybe. But a recurring theme in my world outlook is that when too many coincidences pile up, it might not just be coincidence.
So, I still find myself in the position of believing a creator is possible. And, if I must be honest, let's face it: I believe a the existence of a creator is the most likely scenario, so my bias in the next steps of the analysis really is to assume the existence of a creator. The next question are, which one, and can we know which is the real one? As Cole correctly pointed out, there are a lot of religious explanations of dieties that simply don't hold water. We KNOW Zeus isn't real. We KNOW there is no flying spagetti monster. While we can argue from a philosophical standpoint that we can't know with 100% certainty, there is so little room for doubt that I'm not really willing to entertain the idea. Without going through every religious belief out there, let's just cut to the chase: Is there reason to believe that the God of the Bible is real? I think there is.
Let's start with the Bible itself. It makes some outlandish claims--claims that should not, by what we observe in the natural world, be true. But when it comes to things that we have the ability to factually verify, we find that it is historically accurate. I have looked at a lot of supposed factual contradictions, and at the end of the day, none of them hold any water whatsoever. (well, there is
one. But at the end of the day, that one contradiction has many possible explanations, and there isn't really anything out there that can aid us in drawing a firm conclusion about whether it is a mistake or whether there is a true explanation. But moving on...) So, the history is accurate. And, unlike other religious writings, it is fairly unique in how it was written. What I mean is, it was written over such a long period of time by so many different authors that one would not expect to find a high degree of internal consistency. And yet, it is there. It tells a uniquely unified story of the relationship between God and man through history, beginning with man and God in unity, then after man broke that unity, a struggle through the ages to be reunited, ultimately ending with that reunion at the end, back in the "garden" by the tree of life, back where it all began. It tells of that struggle happening, and an overall plan unfolding. In doing so, it does some extraordinary things. For example, there are prophesies made in earlier writings that are fulfilled in much, much later writings. To a point, these can easily be explained away as coincidence or even fraud on the part of the writers. But there are so many that it becomes improbable to dismiss that many coincidences, especially when many of them contain great detail about things that could not have been known at the time. On a related topic, there are, at times, observations made about how the universe functions that could not have been made by peoples with such limited knowledge and technology. So, in short, I find many reasons for the Bible and the information contained therein to be reliable.
Are there reasons external to the Bible to find the Bibilical text reliable? Yes. For example, I mentioned its historicity. Secular history and archeology confirm a great many of the events recorded in the Bible. And, as one would expect, new evidence is constantly being discovered. But we have examples of a lot of things that simply should not be if the Bible is not true. I find the empty tomb to be a great example. Unfortunately, Cole completely misrepresented the evidence on that one, but that is unfortuately, fairly common these days. But the two governments in charge at the time did in fact have a huge interest is squashing Christianity, they made sure the body of Jesus could not be stolen, and could have squashed the whole "problem" of this newly-emerging religion had they only been able to produce the body and say, "no, he's really dead." And in the unlikley event the disciples somehow did manage to get past trained Roman guards to steal the body, it makes no sense that they would have been willing to continue their new religion, which they unequivocally KNEW to be false, under penalty of death. Yeah, there are a lot of crazy people out there that might do that. But there are too many in this instance to chalk it up to just being a bit nutty.
And you have secular history outside the Bible backing up biblical events. I find the ancient Chinese to be a startling example. Here is a culture that, 4,500 years ago when their written language was emerging, were completely isolated from the Jewish culture that would emerge sometime later. And yet, we find built right into their written language, which is still around today, the fact that they knew a great deal of the things recorded in the first 11 chapters of Genesis (the garden of Eden, the ark and the flood, etc.). When I first began to look at this, there seemed to be many coincidences that, again, could be explained away. But, again, after awhile, there are just far to many similarities to be coincidences. And these were a people that, unlike today, in their pre-Confucian, pre-ancestor-worship, pre-Bhuddist society were a monotheistic people whose religious practices were startlingly similar to those of the patriarchs in the Bible (Abraham, Noah, Job, etc.).
So, I am led to the conclusion that what is contained in the Bible about God is likely accurate and true. Not simply "because the Bible says so"--but because internal and external evidence points me toward the conclusion that the Bible is a reliable set of documents that can be trusted, which is an important distinction, and based on that, what it has to say about God is not only consistent with what we observe in nature, but is true and accurate.
And on and on and on. So, I apologize if this is rambling, but I wanted to at least set out an overview of why I believe there is a creator, and why I believe the God of the Bible is that creator. In a nutshell, that's it.
1 One reason I lump a lot of completely different things together that, from an analytical perspective, and completely distinct, such as the theory of evolution, cosmology, geology, etc. is that I am not attempting to argue the distinct merits of any particular theory in any particular discipline, but am merely concerned about how they collectively can be used to attempt to explain hte origins of life and the universe. Yes, I realize these are distinct disciplines and distinct theories within disciplines. We're not debatign that right now.
Topic: Theism vs. Atheism, New Atheism, God as a scientific hypothesis, and a lot more (Read 6128 times)