Posts by Perry

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

Hopefully, they will see the error of their ways and just let everyone become anointed one day.

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.

Hi P of N,

How have you been?

"the problem with it all is proving it in a demonstrable way."

I think the notion of the "beginning of time" is reasonable based upon observations of the universe and that time has a limit on how far in can run in reverse.

"The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang" - Stephen Hawkins

Fred,

Not if God created time.

No bible = no god? I don't think so.

Every indigenous culture ever studied believed in a Creator or a First Cause, regardless of whether or not the bible was available to them or not.

All things based in the dimension we characterize as "time", have a beginning (Cause and Effect) . It is impossible otherwise.

In Genesis, the very first paragraph has God bringing into existence time, space, and matter simultaneously.

"In the beginning (time) God created the heavens (space) and the earth (matter). - Gen 1:1

Makes sense, but I didn't need to bible to tell me that.

Oh my! Divorce has been rampant in JW land since the late 80's. And, they are masters at weaponizing family relationships. It takes a lot of nerve to stand on the corner with that message. I wonder how many others spoke something similar to them?

I feel sorry for them, trapped like that - taking the heat due the WT. They end up getting victimized twice. I probably would not have been able to just keep walking either.

Ruby,

Evidence is none of the things you list. The problem with some lies in their prior commitment to other ideologies like materialism and methodological naturalism.

‘Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. - Professor Richard Leowin, geneticist & evolutionary biologist, Marxist

These are some of the evidences:

1. Prominent non-christian scholars place the foundational Christian events at the time and place in which they are reported, not decades later. See previous video clip posted.

2. We have sincere eyewitness testimony. Early Christian apologists cited hundreds of eyewitnesses, some of whom documented their own alleged experiences. Many of these eyewitnesses willfully and resolutely endured prolonged torture and death rather than repudiate their testimony. This fact attests to their sincerity, ruling out deception on their part. According to the historical record (The Book of Acts 4:1-17; Pliny’s Letters to Trajan X, 97, etc) most Christians could end their suffering simply by renouncing the faith. Instead, it seems that most opted to endure the suffering and proclaim Christ’s resurrection unto death.

These we not faith based believers like other faith based martyrs. They were the original group and had first hand knowledge as to whether or not they were lying.

3. The conversion of key skeptics, most notably Paul and James. Paul was of his own admission a violent persecutor of the early Church. James the brother of Jesus was not a believer. Having grown up with Jesus, he thought Jesus he was "beside himself" (crazy). Both radically changed their minds after meeting Jesus after his death.

4. A fourth line of evidence concern enemy attestation to the empty tomb and the fact that faith in the resurrection took root in Jerusalem. Jesus was publicly executed and buried in Jerusalem. It would have been impossible for faith in His resurrection to take root in Jerusalem while His body was still in the tomb where the Sanhedrin could exhume it, put it on public display, and thereby expose the hoax. Instead, the Sanhedrin accused the disciples of stealing the body, apparently in an effort to explain its disappearance (and therefore an empty tomb). How do we explain the fact of the empty tomb?

5. Female testimony. Dr. William Lane Craig explains, “When you understand the role of women in first-century Jewish society, what's really extraordinary is that this empty tomb story should feature women as the discoverers of the empty tomb in the first place. Women were on a very low rung of the social ladder in first-century Israel.

There are old rabbinical sayings that said, 'Let the words of Law be burned rather than delivered to women' and 'blessed is he whose children are male, but woe to him whose children are female.' Women's testimony was regarded as so worthless that they weren't even allowed to serve as legal witnesses in a Jewish court of Law. In light of this, it's absolutely remarkable that the chief witnesses to the empty tomb are these women... Any later legendary account would have certainly portrayed male disciples as discovering the tomb - Peter or John, for example.

The fact that women are the first witnesses to the empty tomb is most plausibly explained by the reality that - like it or not - they were the discoverers of the empty tomb! This shows that the Gospel writers faithfully recorded what happened, even if it was embarrassing. This bespeaks the historicity of this tradition rather than its legendary status." (Dr. William Lane Craig, quoted by Lee Strobel, The Case For Christ, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998, p. 293)

The late jurisprudential prodigy and international statesman Sir Lionel Luckhoo (of The Guinness Book of World Records fame for his unprecedented 245 consecutive defense murder trial acquittals) epitomizes the confidence in the strength of the case for the resurrection when he wrote,

“I have spent more than 42 years as a defense trial lawyer appearing in many parts of the world and am still in active practice. I have been fortunate to secure a number of successes in jury trials and I say unequivocally the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof which leaves absolutely no room for doubt.”