The Case for Christ

1/20/2013

I just (literally, just a few minutes ago) finished reading Lee Strobel's book The Case for Christ, which takes a journalistic approach to examining the evidence for Jesus Christ as historical figure, God incarnate, and resurrected Lord. Strobel, a former atheist, interviews a series of high-profile scholars who discuss everything from the authenticity of the gospels to the psychological profile of Jesus. In part, the book is a recreation of Strobel's journey to faith, addressing the questions that had previously left him skeptical; in part, it's a beginner's handbook for anyone investigating the topic for themselves.

For me—raised Christian, studied religions in college, searching to solidify exactly what I believe--The Case for Christ was exactly what I had been looking for: a reinforcement of some things I knew or felt were true, and a starting point for an exploration of the points still in doubt or question. Strobel himself says it on page 270, in the conclusion of the book:

"Perhaps after reading expert after expert, listening to argument after argument, seeing the answers to question after question, and testing the evidence with your logic and common sense, you've found, as I have, that the case for Christ is conclusive....On the other hand, maybe questions still linger for you. Perhaps I didn't address the objection that's uppermost in your mind. Fair enough. No single book can deal with every nuance. However, I trust that the amount of information reported in these pages will at least have convinced you that it's reasonable—in fact, imperative—to continue your investigation."

That last part is crucial, and it's something I've believed for as long as I can remember: if there's even the possibility that any of the world's religions are true, then it's of chief importance that you figure out what to believe...and even once you've settled on something, to continue challenging and testing your beliefs for the rest of your life. Truth (capital T) should stand up to any scrutiny; even if your truth (lowercase t) should fall to devastating criticism, that doesn't automatically make your truth false—or that criticism Truth.

In other words, we're doomed to argue about religion until the Flying Spaghetti Monster comes to claim us all.

Religion, like politics, is a subject we humans don't seem to know how to discuss rationally. We can calmly disagree about TV shows, parenting styles, and fashion, but scuffles over religion ironically bring out the worst in us. Too often I've seen atheists categorically dismiss Christians as mentally deficient for believing in something they can't directly measure. Too often I've seen Christians hand out vicious judgment before hearing the other side of the story, as though Romans chapter 14 is just there for decoration. Instead of sharing our beliefs, understanding each other, and helpfully showing the other person the folly of their ways, we too often spit on the visitors to our ivory towers.

Having borrowed The Case for Christ, I went online to find a copy for myself and a copy to give to other people—given how helpful it was to me, and how accessible it is (complete with discussion questions at the end of each chapter), I figured it would be nice to have a spare that I could lend out to any religious searchers, or anyone who contends that you need to shut off your brain to believe in Christianity. Strobel makes it clear that men have been sentenced to death with less evidence than there is for the Biblical identity of Jesus; I think that's a compelling notion that makes for meaningful conversation, regardless of how much Strobel only skims the surface of the subject.

I was shocked to read the reviews of the book on Amazon. The recurring theme was, "Don't give this to an atheist, because they'll hate you." People blasted the book, some going so far as to say that, if this book reflects Strobel's journey to faith, then he wasn't much of an atheist to begin with to be converted so easily—that's not just a criticism of the book; it's a personal attack, and one that I would find offensive if it were leveled at me. While there are hundreds of positive reviews of the book, it's clear that the naysayers—at least, the ones whose comments I read—seem to object to the fact that this is The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus, and not Lee Strobel Interviews Everybody in the World with an Opinion About Jesus and Concludes Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt that We Can't Agree on Anything.

I also found a book by Robert M. Price that's a direct response to this one, The Case Against The Case for Christ: A New Testament Scholar Refutes the Reverend Lee Strobel. The cover of the book is the same one Strobel uses, with the impression of a hand with the crucifixion nail hole in it, except it's giving a thumbs-down—so you can tell already this is going to be a polite, respectful disagreement. The book description reads as follows:

"Leading New Testament scholar Robert M. Price has taken umbrage at the cavalier manner in which Rev. Lee Strobel has misrepresented the field of Bible scholarship in his book The Case for Christ. Price exposes and refutes Strobel's arguments chapter-by-chapter. In doing so he has occasion to wipe out the entire field of Christian apologetics as summarized by Strobel. This book is a must-read for anyone bewildered by the various books published by Rev. Strobel."

Bear in mind that, as I was reading this description, I was still in that euphoric "I just read a very enjoyable, thought-provoking book that has helped open the door for me to start thinking seriously about my spiritual life again" mindset. Which promptly disappeared as soon as I got to the reviews, if not by the end of that description. I think one of the reviewers puts it best:

"Unfortunately, those who can most profit from exposure to this book are the ones least likely to read it."

Ooh! Ooh! I can tell you exactly why: Because, even before the reviewers start lambasting Strobel and praising Price, that book description is specifically targeting all those atheists I was warned not to buy The Case for Christ for. I might've been persuaded to read the book if it had read something like this:

"Millions of readers worldwide have seen the evidence presented by Rev. Lee Strobel in his book The Case for Christ, but how many have put that evidence to the test? Leading New Testament scholar Robert M. Price examines Rev. Strobel's arguments chapter-by-chapter, exposing dangerously flawed logic and inaccurate facts that misrepresent the field of Bible scholarship. This book is a must-read for anyone who has taken Rev. Strobel at his word, or who is bewildered by the various books he has published."

See, that would've gotten me interested. Instead, I'm looking at a book that sounds like a fair reexamination of Strobel's book, poisoned by raging personal bias. There's nothing wrong with writing a scathing rebuttal every now and again—and I'll reiterate that I haven't read this book, so I'm only going off of the description and the reviews—but I'm struggling to think of any work refuting Christianity or Christian literature that isn't laced with some sort of venom or smugness. The vibe I get from most counter-Christian arguments is not, "Hey, you're wrong, I'll show you why"; rather, it's more like, "FOOL! You know nothing of reality!" I don't know if pro-Christian arguments sound that way to other people (they probably do), but it seems counterproductive to craft a very intelligent, persuasive argument and completely ignore the sensibilities of the people you're trying to convince.

You know where I'm going from here? Other religions. I'm at the point in my study of Christianity where the questions I have yet to answer are the really complicated or contentious ones; before I spend any more time investigating the faith I grew up with, I want to apply the same critical eye to the rest of the world's religions (well, maybe not all of them, but you know what I mean).

If I call myself a Christian, I want it to be not just because I believe the evidence and arguments and it all feels right, but because I've looked at the evidence and arguments for other belief systems and found them unconvincing. I'd like to think I'm open-minded enough to give other religions, even atheism a fair chance—to give Truth a chance, wherever it may be found—and my next step is to take Strobel's approach to other beliefs. What do we know about Muhammad from historical records? How well have the sayings of the Buddha been preserved? How would a psychoanalyst describe L. Ron Hubbard? I'll do some investigative journalism of my own, and see where that takes me.

Whether Strobel's right on the money, woefully mistaken in every regard, or somewhere in-between, The Case for Christ is precisely what I needed to jump-start my stalled personal faith journey, and to spark my interest again in what is probably my favorite academic subject. Praise Zenithar, may I walk with the Prophets, thanks be to Pelor, and hallowed are the Ori.

17 Comments

greyspot link

1/25/2013 12:51:37 pm

First off, I grew up an atheist. I knew that what I thought was true, and everything the Christians said was purely idiotic and had no basis in reality. I carefully studied the arguments for my side (evolution, etc), and had an iron wall of knowledge to throw in someone's face.

But then I got preached at.

1 Corinthians 1:18-21 - "For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. 20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe."

I went to church with my grandparents because they wanted me to, no other reason. These people were total freaks (I later learned that the Bible phrase was "peculiar people." I like that better, now.) I stuck around for a bit because the Pastor wasn't like all the others I've heard. He didn't tell me what he thought about the world, how he feels about things. He said "the Bible says suchandsuch, let's just believe it." That's odd. Definitely foolish.

The Word of God doesn't return void. It always goes out and accomplished a purpose. I found that over a short span of time, it softened my heart, and I was under a supernatural conviction. I knew I was a sinner, and that Christ died to pay the penalty for my sins against Him, something that I could not do. Like I said, I knew all the arguments against this stuff, but it was a SUPERNATURAL thing, something that is unexplainable. I KNEW what the truth was, but did not want to believe it. I couldn't take it any more one day, and I HAD to be saved. I simply repented (changed my mind, my way of thinking, from my own life to God), believed what He did for me, and that was it. I was a "new creature." My whole way of thinking changed. It now doesn't matter what the evidence (seemingly) says, how good it sounds to me, or if I like it or not. It matters what God says, and sometimes that is hard, but it's always right. Call it blind faith if you want, but now I KNOW.

tldr:
Grew up a strong atheist, am now the music director/Sunday school teacher/bus worker at an old-fashioned, King James Bible preaching, Independent Baptist Church.

Just wanted to share. It wasn't until AFTER I became a Christian that I understood that the arguments and evidence (on either side) doesn't really matter. Matter of fact, the Bible says that if you don't believe first, it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to understand, and that bugged the fire out of an "intellectual" like me!

Also:
That's why I like you YouTube channel. Your videos are far more entertaining, informative, and plain fun to watch than any others. That, and you don't use profanity every other sentence :)

Nathaniel

2/21/2013 05:50:30 am

Thank you for sharing—and also for the kind words! What you describe is very much what I've found: that you can't expect to prove or measure something that cannot be proven or measured; conventional methods can only tell you what is LIKELY to be true.

For comparison's sake, I can tell you that I love my wife. You can hear me say to her, "I love you," and you can see the ways I show her I care. But those don't PROVE I care. No amount of evidence will prove that I actually love her. In truth, there could be invisible space aliens secretly manipulating me to clean out the dishwasher for her. You'd never know. You take it on faith—trust in what you know of my personal character, backed up by what I say and do—that I love my wife. Or you look at all the times I was selfish and thoughtless and irritable and say, "Wow, that PROVES he doesn't love his wife."

I am the king of tldr, by the way, so no need to summarize on my account. ;)

Stefano Wohsdioghasdhisdg

2/25/2013 01:54:12 pm

This is awesome.

742mph

2/26/2013 09:08:07 am

I'm an atheist myself, but I honestly don't have a problem with anyone religious as long as they don't interpret their scriptures too literally. The way I see it, anyone who believes that the Earth was created in six days and that an omnipotent being brought all life into being in exactly its present state is trying to use religion to do science's job (examine the physical world), despite the actual purpose of religion being to motivate you to live your life in a certain way. I can understand why so much of the world' population is religious, but what I don't understand is why so many people assume that you have to choose either religion or science and there's no middle ground. That's simply not true, as each of the two was designed to affect and should only affect one aspect of our understanding of our own lives. The problems only arise when people who don't really know much about either use one to intrude on the other's territory.

Nathaniel

3/1/2013 05:30:29 am

To be fair, that's sort of like someone religious saying, "I don't have a problem with anyone atheist, as long as they don't interpret their science and history too literally." Religion, in addition to motivating people to live a certain way, often seeks to explain why the world is the way it is; depending on your perspective, you could argue that science is trying to do religion's job in some arenas.

However, your points are well-taken, and I agree that you don't HAVE to choose between science and religion. There've been plenty of religiously inclined scientists over the centuries—Newton, Einstein, Heisenberg—so, evidently, science and religion are not mutually exclusive.

I think you're right that problems arise when people use one to intrude on the territory of the other, without a full understanding of what they're intruding on. We can't just close our eyes to the possibility that someone knows something about the universe that we don't, but we can examine everything we learn and see how it all fits together. I don't know if it's so much a matter of not taking scripture literally as it is being flexible enough to listen to what other people have to say without feeling threatened or insulted. That, I suspect, is more of the reason why there's such a divide between science and religion right now—we've forgotten that something SO OBVIOUS to us could be completely incomprehensible to someone else, and instead of trying to gently educate one another and come to an agreement, we just yell at each other and try to undermine each other in school classrooms and political gatherings.

742mph

3/1/2013 10:05:11 am

I agree with you for the most part, but I'm not sure that it's religion's place to "seek to explain why the world is the way it is", as that could be thought of as the primary job of science (unless you meant explain it in a non-material way, in which case I don't have much to say on the matter). It's true that ancient humans used religious explanations to describe the way the world works before they had the technology to discover certain things scientifically, but nowadays most of those theories have been proven wrong by various observations and experiments conducted with modern tools. Most religions incorporate pretty accurate metaphors for how the human mind works, it's true, but as for the external world, I think that's best left to other fields.

Nathaniel

3/1/2013 01:54:13 pm

I can't reply to your reply for some reason, so I'll just respond to the original comment again; oh, well.

Whether or not it's religion's place to explain the world is irrelevant; the fact is, like you touched on, many religions have stories that explain one thing or another about the natural world. Whether those stories are absolute truth, metaphorical interpretations of the truth, obsolete fairy tales, or utter fabrication, they're still an important component of the religion.

So, religion DOES provide explanations of the natural world, but whether it SHOULD is a different question entirely. Again, depending on your perspective—going back to the literal interpretation of scripture—it very well may be offensive for science to presume it knows better than infallible religious scripture when it comes to, say, how the world was created.

Which goes back to that lack of middle ground you described between science and religion. It's hard to accept a compromise on something you take to be indisputably true, and it's hard to deal with the ramifications of a portion of your beliefs being untrue. I think the divide comes from some folks completely dismissing religion as a viable means of understanding the world (regardless of how well-equipped science is to do that), and other folks not knowing how to integrate what science tells us into what religion tells us.

742mph

3/1/2013 04:39:02 pm

I have to disagree with you that it's irrelevant whether religion has any business trying to explain the material world, as those who believe that religion has priority over science in that area make up the more vocal half of the territory dispute. I won't deny for a second that scriptures that state things about the external universe are an integral part of their respective religions, but as I've pointed out before, they don't function well as a basis for logical conclusions. They're there to provide hope for believers in times of despair and teach them how to overcome evil influences both external and internal, and they've done a remarkably good job at those things so far.

As both of us clearly understand, though, conflicts arise when metaphorical scripture is taken literally, as well as when science attempts to tell people how they should live their lives. Both science and religion explain how the world works, but in different ways: science draws conclusions about the objective, external world and religions provide a subjective worldVIEW for their members. Maybe I just reiterated what you were trying to tell me, but I suppose I was just making sure we're on the same page in that area.

Nathaniel

3/2/2013 04:25:29 am

Right. The only distinction I'm making here is that "the actual purpose of religion being to motivate you to live your life in a certain way," as you put it, is an opinion that imposes limitations on the basic identity of any given religion. Quoting Dictionary.com here, religion is:

"a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs"

I'm merely stressing what religion IS, whereas I hear you stressing what religion SHOULD or SHOULDN'T be.

This is by no means a perfect example, but in some ways, this is similar to parenting: It is the parents' prerogative to arrange a marriage for their children, even though the children are capable of exploring relationships for themselves. An argument could be made that parents know best, and have every right to arrange a marriage for their children. Another argument could be made that the children should be the ones to seek true love for themselves. If we substitute religion for parents, human beings for the children, and the truth about the nature of the universe for true love, we've more or less got a passable metaphor.

I say it's irrelevant whether or not religion SHOULD explain the world, because it does anyhow, just like a parent can arrange a marriage whether the child likes it or not. It's a matter of opinion whether religion or science is better qualified to explain the world—a question of whether you'd rather trust your own observations, or the creator of the universe.

Telling a believer that their religion is underqualified to describe the natural world is tantamount in some cases to telling the believer that their god knows nothing about the world he/she/it created. That's why I'm stressing what religion is and does, and trying to downplay what it should and shouldn't do. I feel it's important to make that distinction, because otherwise we're subconsciously mixing facts and opinions when we discuss religion and science with someone.

742mph

3/2/2013 06:41:19 am

The reason why I'm focusing so heavily on what religion should do is because what it's trying to do right now isn't really working out for it. (Well, it's only some believers who are pushing their religions in this negative direction, but the followers of a religion are what ultimately shape its nature.) As long as so many people continue to view their scriptures as if they were precisely accurate accounts of history, this territorial debate will never be resolved. We can't let people who believe that religion can bring about solutions to all of society's problems continue holding our progress as a species back. Not only are they restricting the adaptation to modern times of their religions' moral teachings, but they're straining and deforming their own scriptures in an attempt to utilize them for tasks that they're simply not prepared to perform. It's like if you not only refused to replace an outdated car, but tried to make it into a helicopter by attaching heavy rotors to it which only slow it down in the end. In your attempt to make your car more than it was comfortable being, you wound up with both an even worse car and a pretty terrible helicopter.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to say that religion itself is an outdated automobile, just that scripture interpetations that teach things like "all gays are going to hell" are. Your sensible type of religion, the type that doesn't stray too far from its original message but still keeps up with the times, is the sleek modern car that these fundamentalists refuse to invest in. Science is helicopters here, and you can't really convert a car into one without completely replacing the internal mechanisms and a lot of the exterior too, but a lot of these people are too uneducated about the true nature of their scriptures that they don't realize this. I understand that you'd get equally awful results attaching car wheels to an actual helicopter, but from my experience, those who are attempting that number far less than the ones who try the exact opposite strategy to combine the two modes of transportation.

In the end, there's no real way to create a hybrid of religion and science that will perform as well in both fields as each did on their own. The supporters of such failed attempts at that as intelligent design, however, haven't yet recognized that their efforts are futile. Sure, you could think of it as it being their choice to waste their time endorsing such things, but it's a monstorously misinformed choice and one that winds up wasting the time of everyone around them as well (and time is one thing we cannot afford to waste when there are so many bigger issues to deal with). Once again, it's important for all of us, especially them, to understand what religion should be because what they want it to be right now puts too way too much of a strain on it. This debate needs to get resolved soon, as we don't have an infinite amount of time to waste on it, and the only way it will get resolved is if the boundaries of religion and science are finally agreed upon so there's no danger of the two overlapping. As of now, it's pretty clear where science begins and ends, or at least much clearer than what problems religion can comfortably tackle is to these uneducated fundamentalists, so it's at least easy for me where we should focus our efforts if we want to get this issue resolved and put it behind us for good.

Nathaniel

3/11/2013 05:59:16 pm

What you're saying makes sense, and your position's much clearer now. The only thing I'd still be wary of is placing too much blame on religious adherents (especially "those uneducated fundamentalists"), or at the very least, placing too much expectation on them to suddenly change their views.

The random townsperson in my video game RPG who's blocking the road out of town might look like an idiot to me, simply because he's impeding my progress. In reality, he's just been programmed to follow a set path, and it doesn't matter to him that he's keeping me from saving the world—he's just doing what he's been told to do. I can't reason with him; either I wait for him to get out of my way, I find another route out of town that he's not blocking, or I alter his programming to step aside when I push him.

No matter which option I choose, I'm still viewing him as an impediment, and not a complex living being with values of his own. He is just a video game character, after all. But if we're dealing with real people, and are concerned with our progress as a species, then we can't afford to treat others as anything less than human beings. We can't write the deaf person off as stupid if we're only trying to communicate by speaking louder.

Perhaps the problem isn't that people interpret scripture literally—perhaps it's that the groundwork hasn't been laid to form a logical path from one side of the argument to the other. I don't know if it's possible to define an absolute boundary between science and religion that all people can accept, but it is possible to find compromise if we understand each other well enough. Focusing on the thought processes that have brought us to our conclusions, rather than arguing about the conclusions themselves, may well prove to be the solution both sides are looking for.

Sir Donald 3

4/7/2013 06:40:23 pm

One thing to remember is that a large part of the religious dogma that science would conflict with reflects the scientific understanding of the times when that dogma was written. For example, the Israelites of the 2nd Pre-Christian Millenium would have no knowledge of food-borne bacteria or cooking temperature (or our current systems for measuring same); all they knew was if you ate pig's meat, you would die. Hence, Leviticus' prohibition against eating pig.

Incidentally, even scientific theories are subject to such revision. For example, Einstein, with his Relativity, told Isaac Newton to "take a hike" when dealing with A: items on the atomic level, or B: speeds near the (observed from rest) speed of light. Does that mean we throw out the Three Laws of Motion wholesale (or Calculus for that matter)? No!

I'm thinking that, when dealing with any sort of tenant, the key word is the legal term "Severability". That is, discoveries which void portions of previously "established fact" (whether religious or scientific) void ONLY those portions and portions DIRECTLY requiring same; portions entirely unrelated to the discovery stand as they were.

I mean, there aren't that many people who believe nowadays in the first chapter of Genesis as a scientific record. (For my part, it's an (monotheistic-based) explanation for a societal tenant, i.e. why a week is 7 days, in place of the original (polytheistic/astrological-based) justification.) However, "Let there be Light!" is still valid as it has yet to be unproven (though it has been contested).

For the record, I believe that we will never discover how the Universe "began" because that is an endpoint of knowledge. With every scientific advance, we increase slightly the number of standard deviations from the median cases that which we can explain, but that we are progressing by standard deviations implies that there will always be something more for us to discover, always be some outlier that lies unaccounted for.

We will never have a perfect understanding of the Universe, and it is folly to believe that all Religions and all Sciences, even combined, will provide us with one. And yet, we are tasked to proceed ever onward in our studies. This is not a vain pursuit, but rather the fulfillment of our being. It is the attempt that gives honor, not the degree of success.

Nathaniel

4/8/2013 05:37:27 pm

Well stated, and I think that's a very open-minded way to look at the matter. The tricky part is grappling with the ramifications of your beliefs being at all flexible or severable—be they religious, scientific, or otherwise.

It's perfectly reasonable to think that the aforementioned pig-meat prohibition came about due to health reasons...but if you can "explain away" that rule, what's stopping you from doing so with any other rule that doesn't make sense in the modern world, or that you really don't care to follow? If Genesis isn't scientific fact, how can we trust that anything else in the Bible really happened?

In a more academic setting, these kinds of questions are the subject of research and discussion, but I suspect the average person isn't trained or disciplined enough to handle them rationally. Hence, we've got science destroying faith, religion rallying against science, and believers inventing their own versions of religion based on inconsistent interpretations of scripture. The differences between ancient and modern understandings of the world are certainly part of the equation, but I think the driving factor is how responsible and thorough we are in our pursuit of reconciling those differences.

Thomas

5/30/2014 03:59:47 am

Nathaniel, I came across this today and I wanted to chime in. I apologize if I dredge up an old conversation, but I felt like there was something I could add.

In commenting on this discussion, I want to first nit pick at something. It is not as if there is Truth (capital 'T') out there waiting to be discovered and truth(s) (little 't'). What we have is either true or false and what we believe to be true or false. It may seem like a minor distinction but it is actually rather important here.

With the issue of Religion v. Science or the question between Religion 'A' and Religion 'B' we are not searching for truthes but truth. I love your response to both Lee Strobel's book and its "refutation". The thing is that we are all here, on the same level, stuck in the same mud trying to find out what is true in this world. The problem with most of these debates is that people fail to recognize that no one has it. No one has access to the objectivity we all crave. Not Science, Not Religion, Not the Mystics, Not even... dare I say it... The Politicians *gasp*.

As human beings, we have different values and different questions. Some want to know about the created world. They want to learn, for example how the body works. They start to ask questions about this body and that body and begin to construct hypothesis and test these hypothesis against test after test.

Others want more. Some want to be Metaphysicians. Some want to to be Priests. For example, they want to know why the body is the way it is. They want to know why it is this way and not another. Is there a being that intended things to be what they are? Human artists construct things with intention, couldn't there be a being even greater than us acting? This answer has been offered by both atheistic philosophers (i.e. Spinoza) and religious ones (i.e. Thomas Aquinas).

The problem is not with religion or religious beliefs. The problem is when Religion becomes Dogmatic. This is even true of Science. The failure for BOTH comes when they assert something to be true and do not budge when they see see some evidence or some event that contradict.

When Christ says "I am the way, the Truth, and the Life" in John 14:6, did he tell us how? Ok, so Christ is the Truth, what part of him? His body? His actions? His teachings? Interpretation of the Truth is hard and one is not capable of simply downloading the truth into their brains, but they are stuck interpreting it the same way we all are. Some people just value certain answers over others.

Nathaniel link

6/3/2014 06:17:14 am

Well put, Thomas. The only thing is that I fail to see the distinction between "Truth" and what we have that's "either true or false." Sounds like we're talking about the same thing: ultimate, incontrovertible fact about the nature of life, the universe, and everything. I agree that neither science nor religion *likely* has the complete picture, but I suspect (indeed, I believe) that at least some of what we as humans accept to be true is also True.

SwordHMX

7/7/2013 09:14:10 pm

I see I'm a bit late to the party. I just skimmed through the long discussion, and I can say that the Bible does not preach that the universe was created in six days. First of all, six days came after "in the beginning." Secondly, what is six days? Six earth days? Six days on Eris? Six rotations of gravity in a super-massive black hole? Day and night were not even defined until the fourth day.

The use of days was understood as a metaphor for centuries. People got fancy and didn't stop to think that maybe giving the actual units of time would have been confusing and meaningless.

I think it's pretty neat that you are Christian, it's making a big difference in you life, and you are examining the questions you have. That's exactly what God wants you to do. Remember that lots of people prop up something as "science" when it does not meet the standards for scientific acceptance. The media does it every day.

I'd happy to take any questions or requests over my e-mail. So far it hasn't been eliminated ;)

-Tim

Nathaniel link

6/3/2014 06:40:55 am

Eesh, who's late to the party now? Yep, it's me.

Yeah, I tend to take the earliest books of the Bible with a grain of salt (or a pillar of salt, hur hur hur), focusing more on the message than the exact details. I realize it's dangerous to start picking and choosing what parts "sound" completely factual, but it's also dangerous to take at face value millennia-old stories passed down orally through a foreign culture.

Science and one's own faith are both topics of study that can last a lifetime; the world would be a much different place if we figured everything out right away!

Likewise, my e-mail is always open to questions and requests.

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