Evidence that demands a verdict
Is Christianity credible? Is there an intellectual basis for faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God? Scholars throughout the centuries, as well as millions of students and older adults, would answer such questions with a resounding, "Yes!" That is what Evidence That Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell, is all about. His experience in speaking to student gatherings -- large rallies and small, plus classroom lectures and hundreds of counseling sessions, plus a magna cum laude degree from Talbot Theological Seminary and his extensive research on the historical evidences of the Christian faith -- have qualified Josh to speak and write with authority on the credibility of Christianity. - Foreword. No, this is not a book. It is a compilation of my notes prepared for my lecture series on "Christianity: Hoax or History?" There has been a dearth in the area of documentation of historical evidences for faith in Christ. Often students, professors and layman have asked, "How can we document and use what you and others teach?" It is my desire that these notes will help my brothers and sisters in Christ to write term papers, give speeches and inject in classroom dialogues their convictions about Christ, the Scriptures, and the relevancy of Christianity today. The proper motivation behind the use of these lecture notes is to glorify and magnify Christ -- not to win an argument. Apologetics is not for proving the Word of God but simply for providing a basis for faith. - Preface.
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What Hacker News says
- So this has happened twice now:
But that second step isn't reasonable. You're free to take it of course. But doing so precludes this from being a type (B) conversation. It's yet another kind of conversation (C) demonstrating the ease of maintaining objections by maintaining distance from the actual evidence and objecting to an imagined version of the evidence.- I refer to the evidence of something in the past (Jesus' empty tomb, the change in my leg) - Instead of stepping closer to learn more about the evidence, you keep as far away from it as you already are and imagine things about the evidence - From that distance, you think your evaluation is reasonable and mine isn't.What you say about my X-rays arises not from any familiarity with them whatsoever, but starting from your conclusion and stepping backwards to what must be the cause.
If instead you learned more about my X-rays, you'd hear from me how the chiropractor showed the sideways bending of my spine (how many degrees to the left here, and back to the right there) by adding lines between corresponding vertebrae points and showing the angle deviation from vertical.
And then he showed me the cause which was the top of one femur was higher than the other, because one leg was longer than the other, the X-ray being captured in the standing position, barefoot with heels firmly planted etc. On the X-ray, he drew a line across the top of the femurs and showed the angle that deviated from horizontal.
And then he said it's like I've been stepping in a pothole my entire life and my spine has compensated by bending sideways. The difference is big enough to affect my spine but small enough that other people never noticed. And since it happened gradually as I grew, I never noticed either. But you'd also hear from me he wasn't hedging like there was any doubt about the X-ray's interpretation.
(The chiropractor lost my business because I could just put a little shim in one shoe and my spine wouldn't have to compensate anymore, and in fact this was his suggestion. No, he didn't try to sell me a shim. Yes, if a different interpretation of the X-ray were possible that'd allow him to keep my business, he would have said so.)
But the stranger noticed entirely independently and weeks later. I wonder if you suppose this was at some big tent revival where someone advertised a healer was in town.
No, if you had asked, if you had stepped closer to the evidence instead of keeping your distance and reasoning backwards from your chosen conclusion after imagining whatever you did, you would learn this was an ordinary boring Sunday at a boring church where I never saw or expected anything like this to happen, and he (truly a random dude that no one announced) singled me out, did his unexpected deed, and left. No one knew him, no one paid him, he didn't gain anything from it. He approached me unbidden, I didn't seek him out for a healing nor did I expect to ever see one much less experience one.
What is the reasonable explanation how this happened in separate places instead of the chiropractor and this stranger knowing each other and trying to gain from this?
You mentioned susceptibility. I wonder if you suppose I might be the gullible type who goes to big tent revivals. But if you stepped closer and asked, you'd learn I have two degrees from MIT and have spent more than two decades dealing with computers where the only thing that counts are facts. My friends from MIT who are believers are not susceptible either. Given a choice between one church that is known for good Bible studies vs another that has people speaking in tongues etc we would all prefer to go to the former.
I opened my eyes during the experience so I not only felt it, I saw it. The follow-up X-ray was the exact same setup body position. It's what the doctor ordered after I described the chiropractor's conclusion about my legs. Perhaps you are reasoning from an anti supernatural presupposition -- that anything supernatural is immediately dismissed. But as I said before, it's easy and reasonable to accept that IF God exists, then he can resurrect just as easily as you dragging a file back out of your trash.
The same goes for Jesus' tomb. If you would step closer and look at the evidence, you would see that the hoax theory is weak. My goal is not to convince you to change your mind because that's a type (A) conversation. My goal is to show you that resurrection is a reasonable explanation. Or rather, my challenge to you was to come up with a reasonable explanation of the empty tomb given the evidence. But now I realize it'd only feel like a difficult challenge if you're familiar with the evidence, which you are not. You could be, if you came closer to it and looked.
One fellow who looked at the evidence was a member of President Nixon's Watergate scandal. He experienced from the inside how hard it was to keep a conspiracy going. He saw what it's like to crack under the pressure. There's no way he could believe Jesus' disciples could carry to their painful deaths the supposed secret of a staged resurrection. This person was Chuck Colson.
Another is Lee Strobel who wanted to disprove Christianity. But the key is he came closer to the evidence with his skills as a professional investigative journalist to really attempt a direct undeniable smack down on it. He wanted to know it in exacting detail to totally refute it in a hit piece. But the evidence is so strong that he became a believer.
If you or anyone else is interested, here are some resources
Evidence That Demands a Verdict vols 1&2, Josh McDowell
Included in volume 1:
Included in volume 2:- think the Bible is no different from any other book? See chapters 1 and 4 - how can you trust the Bible when it wasn't officially accepted by the church until 350 years after the crucifixion? See chapter 3 - how do we know what we have today from the Bible authors was not changed from the originals? See chapter 4 - how can you believe in Jesus when all we know about him comes from biased Christian writers? See chapter 5 - *how can Christians say Jesus rose bodily from the grave? There are lots of possible explanations ... see chapter 10*
The Testimony of the Evangelists, Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice -- Simon Greenleaf- are the gospels a reliable record? See chapters 16 through 27Case for Christ, Lee Strobel
If you are willing to step closer to the evidence and take an honest look, these are available.
If you remain unwilling, then this branch of the conversation dies here. The record will show you maintaining the hoax/misremembering explanation as reasonable _only_ from a position of unawareness of the evidence. And I would then move to the other branch that you're waiting for. This wasn't a delay tactic. Perhaps I don't have as much free time as you, or my posts take longer to compose than yours -- they contain more as you can all see.
- For baseline Christianity (not Mormonism), there are a number of works giving a defense of the holy texts as being historically accurate. "Evidence That Demands A Verdict" by Josh McDowell was a good one, but it is almost certainly out of date by now. "Cold Case Christianity" by J. Warner Wallace is a more recent one, but is far less comprehensive.
From a philosophical perspective, "He Is There And He Is Not Silent" by Francis Schaeffer is solid. It's simple, but very deep.
- Oops—sorry for the delayed response here!
Yeah I think "Evidence That Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell is a great one. He was agnostic and set out to disprove Christianity and found its evidence was impossible to refute.
Others I'd highly recommend would be: - More than a Carpenter, by Josh McDowell - The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel - Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis
I find all of these books fascinating because they're all written by men who were atheists and set out to disprove the "foolishness" of Jesus. In the end, they all came to the same conclusion which is that the evidence that points to Jesus being the Son of God is very heavy. I'm not sure there's any reasonable evidence to the contrary. In fact, most atheists I've known and talked to were atheists not due to reason, but due to emotion. Christianity has a lot of emotional baggage that comes with it. We're all flawed people and unfortunately most people associate Christianity with abuse, rules, and condemnation. That's why I prefer talking about the person of Jesus. I've never met someone who could level a reasonable accusation at the person of Jesus, and after all—He's the entire reason any of us talk about any of this.
If you read all 4 of those books and come away unconvinced I'd love to have a conversation! I was not able to retain my disbelief :)
- Apologies for the delayed response! I urge you to take a look at a few of the books I listed in a sibling comment. While I have neither the time nor desire to expound at length the copious amount of evidence for the deity of Jesus of Nazareth, there are several men who have done so for me! In addition, these guys were not your devout raised-from-birth Christians who believe simply because they were told. Rather, they believed because they could not disprove the evidence for Jesus. In fact, I believe all 4 men were atheists who set out to disprove Jesus, but came to the conclusion that the evidence supporting his claims to deity are monumental!
- Evidence That Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell
- More than a Carpenter, by Josh McDowell
- The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel
- Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis
Finally, this is addressed in probably each of these books, but as for your last comment. It's not unthinkable to imagine Jesus was so insane he was willing to die for his "personal views on ethics" (Although there's precious little evidence to support this, see the "Lord, Liar, Lunatic" argument). Nor is it outside the realm of possibility to think that perhaps his closest 12 followers were willing to die for a charade (Although again, there's no logical reason to support this idea)—I imagine stranger situations have occurred.
But consider the vast history of Christianity, littered with martyrs whose only mandate to escape death was simply, "Deny Christ" and were yet unwilling to do so. It begins to become disingenuous to suggest that across 2,000 years people have been willing to die for one man's "personal views on ethics" when all that would be required to avoid said death is to simply say, "Jesus is not God", unless of course you were utterly convinced it was true.
- I'm not sure that Christianity is about "simply believing" -- I mean yes that describes the effect of Christ's grace (all you need is belief/acceptance to receive it)... but that's not why I choose to believe in a God.
I completely agree with you.
Belief for the sake of belief is not why I choose to believe in God, either. However, you must at least admit that justification by faith (simply believing) is at the core of the protestant Christian tenets.
If you trace the original conversation though, I was just trying to point out that fear was not a motivator for my belief, and tried to show why. I could have expounded on the core of why I do believe, but that would have resulted in a full dissertation.
As you pointed out, there are hundreds of historical texts and reasons that form the foundation for belief (see also Josh McDowell - Evidence that Demands a Verdict).
We're on the same page, I was just explaining something entirely different.
