No Bible = No God?

by menrov 113 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Finkelstein

  No one yet has come up with solid provable definition of what is a god or a supernatural being.

  Its easy to say a single creator did it, the ancients did it quite often, things are always easy to imagine for that matter as well, proving an object or thing is real is something completely different.
  

  Will humans ever understand how this universe came to be , probable not and who cares were here now and we're better off dealing with the reality of the living experience than fighting over unprovable ideologies.
  
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  Perry

  Fink,

  The definition given in the Miriam - Webster dictionary is this:

  Definition of god

  : the supreme or ultimate reality: such as: the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe

  I think that if someone came back from the dead and showed himself to hundreds of people that it would go a long way in proving the existence of God, don't you think?

  P of N:

  So your offspring migrated across the pond eh? I'd like to visit Canada sometime. Would love to ski Baniff some winter. Hope you get to go sometime. When we go to Europe it is always to Germany and Czech Republic. I want to go to jolly 'ole England next time.
  

  The issue of how time is viewed by atheist scholars like Hawkins does make the question of who Created God rather moot because whatever or whomever acted upon the nothing to create everything was definitely the uncreated First Cause of our universe.
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  ttdtt

  Funny how all the amazing miracles all happened at a time where the only verification was - "I'll take your word for it"
• 

  Finkelstein

  the supreme or ultimate reality: such as: the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshiped as creator and ruler of the universe

  Words combined with human imagination does not equate or appeal to honest conclusive conclusions .

  A book with written words is still a book with words just like the Bible or the Quran is just a book.

  The Cat in The Hat is a book with words, that doesn't make it a fact that there was a cat in a hat.
  
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  Perry

  Eye witness testimony is still a very prominent source of evidence. People live and die all the time as a result of it.
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  Finkelstein

  Eye witness testimony

  There are thousands of other eye witness testimonies of other gods from out of the ancient world, that doesn't mean they are all truthful in their testimonies.
  

  The ancients told many stories of their gods to create power and relevance to them thereby strengthening the identity of that civilization and helped to socially control that society.

  Are we then to accept that all of these worshiped deities were real because people wrote stories about them or made pictographs on their temples ?
  
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  OnTheWayOut

  What if the bible turns out to be a product of humans, nothing divine.

  What if....?

  Oh, that is so funny. The jury has already returned on that issue.

  The Bible actually hurts the idea that there might be a god because so many people believe it represents such a god.

  No proof exists. I don't believe in fire-breathing dragons or "God" without proof. The Bible made it easier to realize that.
  
  
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  Finkelstein

  The ancient Hebrews were bit more distinct as a self created civilization in that they started to scribe their own stories of their god for themselves and to aid their supposed relationship to their god.

  In a age of many surrounding civilizations with their own uniquely devised mythical practices, one can understand why one separate civilization would try make their god the mightiest, the grand creator over all other gods.

  Simple words or hearsay is just not solid evidence of what those words were speaking of.
  
• 

  NewYork44M

  A majority of the earth's population believe in god or gods. They also have no interest in the bible as we know it.

  I think we need to develop a global perspective on spiritual issues.It is presumptive to think that our beliefs are better than others.
• 

  Perry

  I think that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus that we do have raises the event far above simple hearsay. Here are just a few lines of reasoning:
  
  
  

• The First Eyewitnesses were Women. The first eyewitnesses of the resurrection were women. All the Gospels note that the first individuals to discover the tomb empty were women. Matthew notes that “After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to view the tomb…The angel told the women, ‘Don’t be afraid, because I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. For he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the play where he lay” (Matthew 28:1, 5-6).[1] Women were not held in high esteem. In Greco-Roman culture, a woman’s testimony was not admissible in court. In Jewish circles, it took the testimony of two women to equate that of one man. If one were to invent a story, the last people one would place as the first witnesses would have been women, unless it were otherwise true.
• Minimal Facts Concerning the Resurrection. Gary Habermas has popularized the so-called minimal facts argument for the resurrection. The minimal facts are those things that are accepted by nearly all New Testament scholars. The minimal facts are “1. Jesus died by crucifixion. 2. Jesus’ disciples believed that he rose and appeared to them. 3. The church persecutor Paul was suddenly changed. 4. The skeptic James, brother of Jesus, was suddenly changed. 5. The tomb was empty.” [2] These facts are nearly universally accepted by New Testament scholars, including liberals.
• Transformation of the Early Disciples. As noted in the minimal facts, James, the brother of Jesus, was changed from a skeptic to a believer because of the resurrection. James along with his brothers did not believe in Jesus during Jesus’s early ministry (see John 7:5). However, Jesus appeared to James (1 Corinthians 15:3-9) and James became a leader in the early Jerusalem church. His death is recorded by Josephus.[3] Paul is another example of one who was completely transformed by the resurrection of Jesus. Paul had been a persecutor of the church. After witnessing the risen Jesus, Paul became a proclaimer for the church.
• Embarrassing Details of the Resurrection. Historically speaking, embarrassing details add veracity to a historical claim. The fact that women were the first witnesses, that a member of the Sanhedrin (the same Sanhedrin that executed Jesus) had to give Jesus a proper burial, and that the disciples were fearful and fled all serve as embarrassing factors for the resurrection account.
• Willingness to Die for What Was Known. Many people will die for what they believe to be true. But no one will die for something they erroneously invented. The disciples knew if they were telling the truth. Yet, one finds that the disciples were willing to die for what they knew to be true. Stephen died by stoning (Acts 7:54-60), James of Zebedee died by the sword at the hands of Herod (Acts 12:2), James the brother of Jesus died,[4] and Peter and Paul died at the hands of Nero.[5]
• Documentary Evidence. The documentary evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is quite good. The historian seeks to find how many primary and secondary sources[6] can be gathered for an event to determine the event’s historicity. Concerning primary sources, the resurrection has Matthew’s account, John’s account, and Paul’s account in 1 Corinthians 15, including the additional references by James (if one accepts that James wrote the letter attributed to him) and Jude. The following are secondary sources for the resurrection: Luke, Mark, Clement of Rome, and to a lesser degree Ignatius and Irenaeus.
• Circumstantial Evidence. Douglas Groothius notes that circumstantial evidence for the historicity of the resurrection is “namely, the practice of the early church in observing baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Sunday worship.”[7] Baptism is based upon the analogy of Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection. The Lord’s Supper is a symbol of Christ’s sacrificial death. In addition, it is quite odd that faithful Jews would move their worship from a Friday evening into Saturday to a Sunday morning unless something major had occurred on a Sunday morning. The major Sunday morning event was Jesus’s resurrection.
• The Missing Motive. J. Warner Wallace has noted in his lectures and books that when a conspiracy is formed, three motivating factors are behinds such a move—power, greed, and/or lust.[8] The disciples would hold no power behind claiming the resurrection as history. They were running around while often being threatened by the Jewish and Roman authorities. As far as greed, they taught that one should not desire earthly possessions, but spiritual ones. Lust was not a factor, either. They taught celibacy before marriage and marital fidelity after marriage. In fact, N. T. Wright notes in his classic book, The Resurrection of the Son of God, that the disciples had no theological motivation behind claiming that Jesus had risen from the dead as they were anticipating a military hero and a final resurrection at the end of time. What motivating factors existed for these disciples to invent such a story? None! The only reason the disciples taught the resurrection of Jesus was because Jesus’s resurrection had occurred.
• Enemy Attestation of the Resurrection. Historically speaking, if one holds enemy attestation to an event, then the event is strengthened. When one considers the claims of the authorities that the disciples had stolen the body of Jesus (Matthew 28:11-15), the testimony of the resurrection is strengthened. The early belief that the disciples had stolen the body of Jesus is strengthened by the discovery of the Nazareth Inscription that orders capital punishment for anyone who steals a body from a tomb.[9] In addition, several refences to Jesus and his resurrection include citations from Josephus,[10] Tacitus,[11] and Suetonius[12] among others (including the Babylonian Talmud).
• Multiple Post-Resurrection Eyewitnesses. Finally, there is multiple eyewitness testimony pertaining to the resurrection of Jesus. Several people had seen Jesus alive for a period of 40 days. The eyewitnesses include Mary Magdalene (John 20:10-18), the women at the tomb accompanying Mary (Matthew 28:1-10), the Roman guards (Matthew 28:4), the Eleven disciples (John 21), the two men on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35), an indeterminate number of disciples (Matthew 28:16-20); over five-hundred disciples (1 Corinthains 15:6), to James (1 Corinthians 15:7) and to Paul (1 Corinthians 15:8-9). I am certain that there were many other witnesses that are unnamed.