Uhh I cannot resist responding neither!
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the evident demonstrations are based on facts. An example that you may understand might be when a marriage proposal takes place. If that proposal is backed up with an engagement ring, then an 'evident deomonstration' has taken place. Though the marriage has not taken place yet, each are assured of the 'future reality' that they will be married.
when it comes to religion, the bible provides the 'evident demonstration' thru its record of historical events linked with Gods people. These are too numerous to mention individually but they include things like prophecies and the arrival of the Messiah. The people who wrote these historical facts were eyewitnesses to them and this is why christians today can put faith in their words.
It does not makes a lot of sense to compare a future event with a past event and especially not when they differs in content — you are taking it out of context a creationist would probably say if it was two different bible passages!
Furthermore, you assume what the authors wrote is correct — the marriage we will eventually see if it is correct or not. Whether or not prophecies were indeed godly inspired prophecies are questioned even among scholars, but that is a whole other topic.
To state the point again: You are unreasonably when you try to compare faith in bible with faith in marriage after a proposal and a ring. They are completely different matters and I also think you misuse the word faith. A more proper word for the faith in marriage would probably be confidence or expectation.
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And if you want to argue that we today cannot know if the bible is factual, let me ask you this...
Do you believe that a man named Shakespear wrote Romeo and Juliet? If you do, how do you know that he did write it?
Actually, among the people who study English literature there is a debate whether or not Shakespeare wrote his own play or if he just copied other plays :-) Just because we credit Shakespeare for the play it does not conclusive means he is accepted as the real author among academics. The same goes for Bohr’s theory of atoms (ref. google it, you could find something interesting).
Just as another said; it is not that important who wrote these thing as what these things content. The bible contains many contradictions; Noah’s flood, demons, splitting the sea, walking on water, turning water into wine, virgin birth (have only happen among non-human animals), living in a fish, stating rabbit is a rodent and bat is a bird etc.. You might think these are not contradiction but that is because of the defence mechanism cognitive dissonance. Now you probably want to rationalize to me or maybe to yourself why these things make sense but as long as we look at the evidence, real scientists, consensus, common sense etc. they are contradictions and that is indeed embarrassing when the bible is such a fundamental part of your life. Of course you do not agree with me, because you see the evidence in another way — because of the mechanism cognitive dissonance! E.g. ;oh no, the flood was real, just look at the evidence.. Okay, you might say that, but 99.99% of all scientists who works in fields such as geology disagree with you (I am quite impressed if you can find a well educated geologist who believes the great flood did happen in the past). It does not make sense to disagree with them, unless you have absolute faith in the bible must be true and BAM; cognitive dissonance!
That was a long rambling.
Cheers Peg. (No hard feelings if I sound disrespectful in any way, since that is not my intention. I apologize to you if that is the case.)
PS: I was not sure whether you believe in the flood or not so I just assumed it based on what I have seen you been writing on this forum. I could definitely find something else equal to this you might believe is true in the bible though.
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