Objective evidence of Christianity?

Question

If I were to accept Christianity, what should be acceptable evidence that what I'm doing is right?

The Bible would need to be substantiated. I woud need to know that what it says is true, and I would need to know that so-called prophecy was actually written before the fact, and that the events claiming to substantiate it were not created by man for that purpose.

I would need to know that Jesus A: Actually existed, B. Actually fulfilled prophecy, C: Actually rose after dying. D. Was who the Bible claims he said he was.

With the ONLY extra-biblical evidence for the man Jesus existing being the copied writings of Josephus, how can a person come to have anything other than a subjective experience of Christianity as true?

Answer 1

Seek and you WILL find. That challenge is from the Bible. I know this, you will never have enough tangible proof, but you can find proof never the less. You have to be willing to seek with an earnest heart and open mind. The "evidence" you will discover will be irrefutible and you will see why it's hard to convey it to someone who doesn't believe. Take the challenge, if you don't find evidence, you aren't any worse off than you were. But, it's out there, I stake my life on God. I don't believe, that implies his existence is in question... I know he exists, but then, I sought the truth.

Answer 2

This question was asked the other day.

There is a long list of circumstantial reasons that you can look up on the Internet using Google, so I won't bother. I think that what you are asking is why I believe, not some cut & paste from a website that you could find yourself.

If the disciples were lying about Jesus coming back from the dead, then why didn't any of them recant their story while they were being tortured to death? Someone who KNEW that he was lying would surely have recanted his story in order to save his own life.

Only one apostle -- John -- died a natural death, and we know that John was imprisoned and exiled for his story. It appears that the others were killed for their faith. Paul seems to have been tortured and imprisoned on several occasions for his story, and it eventually cost him his life. The atheist argument that these people were making up myths in order to gain control of people, or for wealth or power, makes no sense. Paul lost his influence, position, and power when he converted to an unpopular minority sect (Christianity) from a popular majority one (Orthodox Judaism had more followers at the time).

I don't think that all of these people were knowingly lying; that would be irrational, and they don't sound insane when you read their writings.

If you are asking how do we know that the Bible as we now have it is accurate and unaltered, then that is a different argument. I don't want to bore you with technical discussions of textual analysis, or the science of comparing old documents from the desert, so I will just give you the short answer.

The short answer is that hundreds of skeptics have tried for hundreds of years to debunk the Bible, and so far, ALL have failed. The best that skeptics can do, as far as I have seen, is to it nit pick at the wording of an obscure verse or two taken from a bad English translation. This makes the skeptics sound desperate, not convincing. Think about all of the silly arguments that you have seen on the R&S forum on Y!A. With all due respect, the atheists arguments here tend to strengthen my faith, not weaken it, if all of these silly objections to the Christian faith are the best that they can do. They sound desperate, not thoughtful.

The Bible is the most scrutinized and examined piece of literature in history. If there was any real evidence that the Bible has been altered or changed, surely someone would have found it by now.

I've also seen people lives change, sometimes drastically, when they put their faith in God's word. Surely the personal life changing experience of hunderds of people who turned their lives around for the better means something.

Answer 3

A Christian can know he is doing right by Jesus' teachings and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The only thing you need to substantiate is that the Bible is indeed Gods word and you do it by praying over it and reading it. Everything else can be done later but if you go into it with a doubting double mind, then you wont come out with anything.

The problem is you have to have faith in God first, not second. When riding a bike for the first time, you didnt have to ask your parents for your birth certificate anbd proof you were born at the hospital they claimed you were born at. You trusted and had faith in the parents you knew. Perhaps if youre this skeptical over Gods word, then you dont have faith in God to begin with.

People dont follow God or even the principles of Scripture simply because they read the Bible. They believe and follow what the Scriptures teach because they believe God and the Holy Spirit confirms that it is his word.

Answer 4

Actually the writing of Josephus have been called into question. It is strongly suspected that they were altered during a recopy to add the information. The section talking about jesus just does not fit into the surrounding text.

Also one of your replys suggest that you read "case for the creator". On the surface that book sounds like it has substantial facts. But when you get into it, it is nothing but lies, half truths and very old outdated scientific hypothisies that have been proven wrong by more current ones. Once again Strobel cherry pics his information to support his point. Never once did he take the "evidence" to someone with a decenting point of view for their perspective.

Reading it is a total waste of time unless you want to become even madder at the religious right.

Answer 5

You are right,and I mean from a Catholic perspective. Belief in the divine is based on faith,which automatically exludes anything that can be impirically demonstrated; that wouldn't constitute religiosity any more than knowing how a jet engine works. This is the concept of knowledge sacred and profane; profane does not mean obscene,only understanding obtained by materialistic means; i.e. science. Sacred knowledge come from within,and can only come from within. The soul is the spark of God's love and will in each of us. The Church can only maintain the teachings,stimulate innerness with ritual and provide support on spiritual development,in other words how to strengthen that spark,make it grow into a flame. But it's all subjective. It wouldn't have any meaning if it weren't. It you could "proove" Christ's divinity with test-tube analysis,what meaning would the concept of faith have? Look it up in the dictionary: faith. It means accepting as real that which cannot be proven imperically. Science and faith are two different things. That's why atheists are atheists; they can't tell the difference,they only recognize the one (science),so from their perspective religion is just bad science. This makes perfect sense to them. To the rest of us it seems like a grossly materialistic,even infantile,way of looking at reality,completely non-abstract. They're missing the multi-dimensional aspect of consciousness. But that's the way they are,and either they discover that spark on their own or...they don't.

Answer 6

As a Christian, the only thing I can really say is:

Look. This thing is called faith. I came to Jesus because I knew in my heart and in my instincts that this stuff is true. With that perspective, I can point out a million things to you. I could even take you to Israel and point to you Bethlehem where Christ was born. The ruins of the manger are encased and preserved and so also is Golgotha in Jerusalem, and the tomb where Christ was buried. But even these signs will mean nothing to you if you choose not to believe.

I can show you the church in Rome, the original manuscripts in Alexandria, archaeological digs discovering ancient civilizations and writings that Christ was there, but unless you have faith, you are not going to buy it.

You could also make the argument to me that Abe Lincoln existed. I could argue he doesn't and never did. You would show me the White House or a log cabin in Kentucky where Honest Abe was born. I would say so what? A White House and a log cabin do not prove Abe existed. You could tell me he freed the slaves. Since there was no slavery when I was born, I could tell you that is just a story, and, look: So many blacks live in poverty today and continue to serve whitey-what did Abraham Lincoln free them from if Abe Lincoln ever existed in the first place?

You could show me the Gettysburg address signed by Lincoln, and I could say it was forged and reinterpreted and nobody really knows what that means and no slaves were freed. You could take me to Ford's Theater, and all I would see is just a theater.

You could also show me countless books written and pictures of Abraham Lincoln and I could show you the same and much more of books and pictures of Jesus Christ.

You believe in Abraham Lincoln because you have faith and trust your history teachers and your parents and your intuition. You want Abraham Lincoln to be real to convince. It takes exactly the same amount of faith to believe in Jesus Christ.

It all depends on what you want to see and what you choose to see. I say open your eyes. You have to choose to do so.

Answer 7

I don't think that many Christians, apart from really argumentative ones, will argue that what they believe is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It is a faith, or belief, based on what they think and feel, but nope, we can't prove it.
But, it is as reasonable a theory as Evolution, or the Big Bang. And scientific theories aren't always correct - people thought the imbalance of the humours in the body made you ill for about 1000 years, and that turned out not to be so accurate.

It's not just about the facts, for a lot of people I don;t think, though, but about what they feel. you can feel whether or not you think there is a God. For me, that's what means I don't need the definitive proof.

But i can see why you want it, it does depend on the sort of person you are and it might change for me as i get over. but becasue i can't prove it, doesn;t mean it's wrong.

Answer 8

The bible isn't even appropriate to this occasion.The bible is a e book prepare with the aid of adult adult males who desperate what they needed lined and the writings are from different peoples interpretations of what they observed and heard.How precise can others sight be? we are able to all see the comparable journey and interpret it in yet differently.Christianity is a faith that follows the classes of the Christ.not something incorrect with following in his footsteps ,yet God is an all at the same time entity.To be genuine,i don't comprehend why human beings do not think of that we got here from a writer.We as all people is incredibly marvelous in our advent and purely a incredibly good being would have executed any such great difficulty.Iknow you have seen infants substitute in utero,how they bypass for the period of the species in the time of their advance and look like many different species till they alter into guy.How a woman and purely a woman can conceive a baby.How we as human beings would be unable to crossbreed with animals sexually starting to be a 0.5 human and 0.5 animal.purely a clever and understanding God would have executed any such difficulty with sparkling forsight for definitely some one might have had any such baby with the aid of now,had not the writer thought forward.besides the little certainty of a super solar that knows that is direction and not in any respect veers off that direction and seasons that come and bypass whilst triggered with the aid of God.each difficulty in the international is made to accomodate guy.each animal is placed right here to earnings guy or preserve guy's enviroment which we bypass and wreck.

Answer 9

First of all Christianity is not a book - it is a mistake to conflate the two. The Bible is not seen by the religion that uses it as an Audubon field guide to prehistory, nor does it intend all of its Old Testament books as history (Job and Jonah, for instance are parables, and the Song of Solomon is a poem.)

As to Jesus actually existing, the evidence is a little stronger than that. There is, first of all, the fact that no historian considers at least eight of Paul's letters to be pseudepigraphic. In one of these letters, Galatians, he tells of meeting Jesus' family and the principle apostles in Galatians - Peter most notably.

We know Peter is real: his house in Capernaum is a known archaelogical find.

There's also the fact that the New Testament telling has details in it that increasingly jibe with what Israeli archaeologists discover about the second temple era. For instance, the nailed crucifixion was often thought to be an erroneous detail in the gospels - other Roman crucifixions involved suspending the prisoner with rope - then they found the heel bone of a crucified Jewish man, and it had been run through with a nail, much as the gospels have described.

Tacitus refers to Jesus as well, and Tacitus is the historian through whom we know most of the Roman figures of antiquity. Reject Tacitus and you MUST reject various Roman Emperors, and figures such as Cicero and Mark Antony.

But beyond all of this: I reject the idea that Christianity must only be adapted if it passes various historical tests for veracity. For me, although the historical narrative isn't particularly hard to believe (although I will admit the ressurection is a problem the first time you hear about it), what makes orthodox Christianity a no-brainer for me is that it has a consistent epistemology. Its theology makes sense in light of the gospels, the gospels make sense in light of the epistemology, and they provide a consistent framework on which to develop a self-consistent moral and spiritual theology, one that dovetails nicely with various lines of classical thinking, such as neo-Platonism.

As to Eusebus interpolating Josephus (something Kallan alludes to above), nice try. But a failed one.

Josephus' second reference to Jesus is an involved tale in Book XX of Antiquities in which he describes the removal of a high official at the temple in Jerusalem. As part of the plot of this fellow's removal, Josephus tells of how Jesus' brother James (Yaakov) is thrown from the temple wall. In passing it is mentioned that this is James the brother of Jesus, "also called messiah." The story is simply too complex for it to be an invention of later interpolators; it is too carefully weaved into the story, and James (and Jesus) too peripheral to the narrative about a priest being removed from office.

Answer 10

I cannot help you much without using only the Bible and modern writings, so I would suggest going to a good pastor near you. They know a lot more than I do.