Héhéhé…if I believe the Bible was true, I think that’d make it even harder for me to swallow the play of words William Lane Craig is suggesting…I’d then believe all the atrocities God committed in the Old Testament actually happened, in addition to the suffering in the present world, to the notion of Hell, etc…making a nonbeliever accept what the Bible says wouldn’t help much…of course, we could always define all those things as “good”, “moral”, etc, as I said earlier, but God wouldn’t be morral (the other definition, héhé)…

I read the texts, watched the video about bats/birds, haha…they make nonbelievers look stupid…”Darkins”, héhéhé…it’s all good, there may be translation errors in the Bible…but none of the nonbeliever criticisms you address are about EVENTS in the Bible, like miracles, the only ones I mentioned the other day…I didn’t talk, for instance, about the Bible saying the Earth is a disk (I don’t know the original language, maybe they did mean “sphere”, though many sources argue the contrary), is “suspended” (again, open for manipu…interpretation…héhé) implying that pi=3 (you could say it was an approximation or something), that insects have 4 legs (none match THAT description, héhé…but you could say it meant “crawling animal” or was speaking metaphorically there or something) and there are other passages that are accused of scientific inaccuracy…the main problem is, I’d say, when the Bible talks about a miracle…is it a metaphor (I’m sure some Christians would say that today, but I don’t know if you would)? And, héhé, I didn’t know you accepted the Earth was old, you made some posts in the past where you seemed to express doubt about evolution and such ideas, I didn’t know how far you went in that direction…

I’ll add something I was telling a religious person the other day…in science, if a theory’s prediction is contradicted, doesn’t match up with observation, the theory either needs to be discarded or modified (in some cases, as in relativity, there was no place for modification…it’d either match observation or be thrown out; luckily for Einstein, the first happened)…I think that should apply to the Bible…it might be right about something here, have made scientific predictions there…a historical site might match an author’s description somewhere else…but multiple glaring mistakes elsewhere are enough to put into question it’s status as the words of an infallible being…in Haiti they used to give us small spelling tests (called them “dictées”)…the teacher would read a text out loud and students were supposed to write it out without spelling/grammar, etc, mistakes…well, I don’t know if that’s practiced here in the states, maybe they make you write essays instead and judge you on that…if they do have “dictées”, forgive me for describing something you’re probably familiar with…anyway: you would get a zero (F) if you made 5 mistakes, usually (depending on the test)…you couldn’t say: “Hey, look: I got everything else right…look at this difficult word, I spelled it correctly, most other students didn’t get it right! I deserve some credit!!”, no…héhé, the Bible has a zero on its dictée, if you see what I mean…

You’re right about us not being 100% unbiased, objective…but that doesn’t mean all of us are as likely to accept a claim that goes against everything we’ve ever observed as something else that would conform to known science…there is a limit to our bias, héhé…at least there’s a limit to mine and I feel to that of a significant number of other folks…if you’re a cop and suspect someone committed a crime, then you’re certainly expecting to find something incriminating as you inspect the person’s home…you search and find nothing, then a DNA test absolves the person, then you discover the person has a solid alibi, something with 50 trustworthy witnesses or something…as biased as you were, as serious as your hunch was, you’re going to follow the evidence, you’re certainly not as likely to continue thinking the person is guilty as you had been before, you’ll certainly realize they’re probably innocent at that stage…

I think the challenge here really lies upon how much work that needs to be done for someone who is ‘looking’ or ‘searching’. I wouldn’t be the first to say that many skeptics need God to literally tear open the sky and prove his existence. I wonder then what would be the next objection.

I was recently talking to someone who was challenged with the ‘faith’ portion of Christianity. Not so much about that it takes faith to be Christian, but how does one get to the point where they are faithful because God revealed it to them. Sort of a how do you know you know situation. It was a great question and a challenge to many believers and non believers alike.

I decided to start from the beginning about truth and if it is knowable. Almost immediately, after granting the premise that God does exist, he wanted to jump right into how then could he have the certainty that the Bible is true and is worth putting faith into. That’s a leap, a big one–especially for someone with lots of questions.

Our conversation got cut short. But upon reflection, analogically, it was like starting out on a long backpacking trip (I live in Idaho and we have great outdoor opportunities, so bear with me) and placing yourself at the trail head and then looking at the destination on the map, lets say, a great fishing lake. Almost immediately, the desire is to leave the starting point and get to the destination. Along the way, there is certain to be many sights to see; glacial waterfalls, calm peaceful meadows, jagged ridge lines and mountains. But there are going to also be many challenges and risks to your mental and physical well being; Thirst, hunger, back pains, exhaustion, cuts, bruises, dangerous falls, swift river crossings. All of which are going to make the destination that much more a priority. Unfortunately, for many travelers, they’ll turn back. They’ll get lost, maybe injured. But for those willing to put in the hard work, they’ll find the destination on that map. Can I prove it? No, but no more than someone can prove that if they drive to work tomorrow they’ll arrive safely. But they do it anyway because of the plausibility.

What I can prove however is that if someone is willing to be diligent and do the hard work, that God will be revealed along the way. How? Because I’ve seen it. 🙂

I think as Christian apologists, we need to start asking the same questions that are being asked of us. I think we need to get people (including Christians) to start questioning the world around them, questioning their own truth claims and start doing the hard work.