To reply or not to reply? I've not posted here often, but this topic got my attention, albeit a little late. After reading 12 pages of mixed opinions, I guess I'll throw mine in.
I'm a Christian. I don't like labels either. "Atheist" is a range of beliefs that have a belief in no God in common. For example, Sam Harris believes in an absolute morality (i.e. killing a baby is wrong no matter what society says) while Dawkins believes it is more of a social construct. Christianity is also a range of beliefs that has Jesus as the son of God in common. We disagree on some other things, for example, William Lane Craig, believes in the big bang and the generally accepted 13 billion year timeline, while Ken Ham believes in a literal 6 day creation some 6,000 years ago.
I'm also an electrical engineer. So I don't like the suggestions that I don't have a reasonable arguments for believing in Jesus and God. I've been a fan of Dave since I stumbled across his first videos when he was still making them in his garage. But this forum isn't really a comfortable place to discuss religion, mostly due to his comments and the other comments of others "bashing" religion generally and often Christianity in particular.
Some people have asked for reasonable arguments, and we could go on and on most likely. But I'll try to be brief here.
First, the claim is made that in an age of science and reason, belief in God should be recognized as baloney. I don't buy that. Based on my knowledge of science, the universe had a beginning. If it had a beginning, there was some cause to the beginning. I just don't buy that some quantum fluctuation in a multiverse resulted in a singularity that expanded into everything we see. That is an explanation, but the scientific proof of that theory is just as speculative as a creation of the universe by God. I don't buy that it's a simpler explanation either. Further, am I to believe that atoms ordered themselves into the first cell? How did that happen? I think our most complex engineering feats fall below the complexity of a single cell. I have to admit I don't know much about biology. I chose to be an engineer because I could understand it. Biology was too complex for me to understand. Am I to believe that the first cell just appeared? Am I to believe that evolution shaped the course of biological history? That by the power of natural selection (i.e. death) the complexity of life was advanced far beyond the complexity of a single cell? On what basis? Science has so far fallen short of an adequate explanation for me on these questions. I don't think it'll ever fully answer them. I think the fact that the universe is here and that we're here to see it is nothing short of miraculous and if it's short of that I'd say it's so highly improbable that I'd exist to be typing this and that you'd exist to be reading it that we should celebrate the fact that it is happening at all!!!
I'd think that engineers could recognize that highly improbable things do happen. But they usually happen on purpose. It is improbable that the computer I'm typing on would appear. So the best explanation is that someone designed and built the thing. And as we all should know and appreciate, that's a hard thing. We're all much more complex than a computer, so did we just appear, or did someone design and build us. This could go on and on, and I suppose you could ask, if God designed everything, then who designed God as Dawkins has. But the Christian God has always been. And therefore, the question is meaningless. But if you ask the same question of the universe, since it had a beginning, the question is valid. Something or someone caused the universe, and science only gives speculative explanations to counter a God explanation.
The other particular question is, "why Jesus?" To this I'd say the major influence on me was reading the new testament. Yes, our earliest fragments of the new testament are dated some 30 years after Jesus died. And the majority of the new testament wasn't written by people who knew Jesus, but by people who knew people who knew Jesus. But the claims written down are incredible. The resurrection of Jesus is frankly an outlandish claim. But I started to believe in large part due to the influence from other people's lives around me. Not people who were merely religious, but people who genuinely care about other and try to live out the morality that is recorded in the new testament taught by Jesus. Many of my other experiences with prayer and encounters with God I can relate. However, to many they will be relegated to some psychological trick, explained away by people who like me took a single semester in psychology.
But, I am an incredible skeptic, so at some point I checked out some of the surrounding historians, like Josephus, that are referenced by Christian scholars. Josephus refers to Jesus as dying and says a group he called Christians continued to follow in his teaching and even claimed he was still alive. That coupled with the thought that many of the founding Christians died rather than denounce the resurrection of Jesus. It seemed to me the most plausible explanation for the initial spread of Christianity was that these people really believed and were willing to die for their beliefs. I suppose they could have been deceived, but if so, it was quite a feat of the founders. After all, all the Jews or Romans had to do was to produce Jesus' body and the whole thing would have been settled.
Finally, the fact that there are other educated people I've met who believe as I do, at least indicates that there is some validity to it. I have to admit, many of the ideas in this post are not mine, but taken from other people I've talked to or read. I humbly ask you to read the new testament if you have never done so. I don't accept the claim that it is just like the Quran. I've read some of it also, and it's a different book about a different set of beliefs. It's naive to lump all religious beliefs in one pot. I'm specifically appealing to belief in Christianity. Anyway, there's a lot of information and misinformation out on the internet if you want to research on your own. I've done about as well as I can addressing some of the comments for one forum post. Thanks to anyone who read this lengthy post.
Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
