I am saying that the Bible provides abundant evidence that there is a God, a lot of it eyewitness evidence to miracles.
I look at the bible and see plenty of evidence that there were plenty of people who thought that there is a God. It is obvious to me that someone living 2500 yrs ago would see things happening every day that they could not explain. I am sure that if I were to witness any one of the miracles described in the bible I would offer a different explanation for what actually happened.
Maybe you would, I don't know. The water into wine? The turning of a few fish and loaves of bread into enough to feed thousands? The healing of a blind man, the raising of dead people? Or back about 1500 years, the parting of the Red Sea, the dew on Gideon's fleece -- and off it; the fire from heaven that burnt up Elijah's water-soaked sacrifice, the floating of Elisha's ax head, the miraculous filling of the widow's empty vessels with oil. As John said at the end of his gospel, "these were written that you might believe." But I suppose that someone determined enough could just assume a priori, without proof, based on prejudice against such things, that there must be naturalistic explanations and defeat John's purpose. Must happen quite a bit actually.
For example, I went looking for some modern day miracles and found this account from some guy writing about modern day miracles.
quote:
When David Newkirk, now a youth pastor at Church of the Open Door in Glendora, California, woke up in the middle of the night, he was still exhausted from a college basketball victory the day before.
"Twenty minutes after my head hit the pillow, I was catapulted out of the deepest sleep," he writes in the book. Along with his mother and sister, he was jerked awake to pray for his brother Dan.
Dan was in Israel. Running out of money, he had chosen to sleep on a park bench for the night. In the wee hours of the morning, a snarling dog woke him up, battling with a chicken under the bench.
Unable to break up the animals, Dan found another bench and resumed his rest. The next morning, a bomb exploded right next to the first bench, hurtling it through the air, leaving "a mess of tangled metal and concrete."
Properly speaking that's not a miracle, but it is what is called "Providence," meaning God's provision of something needed when needed. In this case it's answer to prayer given in response to a prompting by the Spirit. God provided a dog and a chicken to save the person from death. If you don't believe in such things, then such stories won't convince you. But there are a lot of such reports these days, especially in charismatic and Pentecostal circles. Some of them are quite believable I think. But again, they aren't miracles. Miracles involve the suspension of natural law, such as seen in the multiplication of fish and bread, water into wine, instant healing of the blind, raising of the dead, floating of an ax head etc. Answered prayer must seem miraculous to some, but properly speaking it's not.
So this guy describes it as a miracle. Is that evidence that a miracle has taken place? I would describe it as a fortunate coincidence and certainly not evidence for the existence of God.
I wouldn't offer that kind of example as evidence for the existence of God myself, as I would offer the Bible with its God-chosen witnesses.
Second, it's a strangely weak omnipotent God who couldn't guide human beings to an honest report of witnessed events.
My thoughts as well which is why I think that they would not rely on the stories of ancient shepards written on parchments that fade.
Hm. But why can't God use ancient shepherds the same way He could use anyone? If you agree that He should be able to "guide human beings to an honest report of witnessed events" why are you so picky about whom He chooses?
They would instead use the rocks and stars and light to let us know what is really going on. They would use immutable laws so that there could be no mistaking if you are right or wrong in your perception. Which, if there is a God, they have done.
And as I said before, what's to guarantee 1) that human beings have the capacity to interpret these things correctly, especially 2) the Moral Law that runs the universe and the destructive effect of human violations of that Law, the death of living things for instance; in fact the evidence of such destruction in the planet itself -- you all don't see that, you assume that what you see is what you get, i.e. it's the way Nature just IS, as expressed in the principle of Uniformitarianism that never dreams there could have been a better original Creation. We'd never figure that one out on our own. We'd never figure out that we're less than we were originally created to be either, that sin has corrupted us in essential ways and in fact blinded us to what meanings there ARE in Nature; or that sin condemns us all to a miserable eternity, from which God planned to save us by sending God the Son to die in our place. The rocks and stars could not tell us that, not in our fallen condition. This is why we need special revelation from God Himself. Sure, if you HAVE to be able to apprehend everything through your senses and simply refuse to believe that there are things you cannot know by those means, you'll ignore it. You have that prerogative.
Three a: the physical universe has to be interpreted too, there is nothing straightforward about what it presents to the human mind or it wouldn't have taken thousands of years before we learned anything of use about it.
Suck it up Buttercup! Who ever said that anything was going to be straightforward? Besides, when the child asks a question, do you just give them the answer or do you try and show them how to figure out the answer?
I thought the point was that we should be able to understand all we need to know about God and His Creation from the rocks and stars. To my mind that suggests we shouldn't have had to stumble around in the dark for thousands of years with the loss of untold generations of human beings to misery to get the first glimmers of what it all means.
And what little we DO know about all that even now convinces very few of the existence of God anyway, which rather defeats your idea, doesn't it? I mean, just listen to all the strident cocksure voices of Science that tell you that the physical universe is "all there is or ever was or ever wiil be," and how we've sent rockets into space and nobody has seen God out there and so on and so forth. So tell me again how God communicates with us through the rocks and stars?
Three b: Show me where the physical universe gives evidence of what the Bible reveals of the Creation and Fall or the Flood or God's plan of redemption or the need for salvation answered by the incarnation of God Himself to die for us?
On this you are correct. There doesn't seem to be any evidence whatsoever.
Not that the fallen mind would ever discover on its own, that's for sure.
We simply believe the Bible is the undistorted truth given by God Himself.
Why though is the question. How can these accounts be more credible than the Universe that is spread out before you? Why should they deserve more weight than what you can see with your own eyes?
It takes words to communicate clearly, not that words always accomplish that, but some words that tell me to stay away from that rock because there's a rattlesnake behind it are of far more value to me than my own inadequate eyesight.
I'm sure cave men sat and contemplated rocks and stars endlessly. I can imagine them yearning in their heart of hearts that the God who made it all would come down from heaven and explain it all to them, or if they could read would write something down for them so they could understand it all.
Well, He did. I for one am VERY grateful. But perhaps I have no way of convincing you. That's up to God I guess.
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