"there is no evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, that is something you take on blind faith"

I was in the gym today, and I started talking with a guy I know from local atheist circles.  When we were talking he said "Robin you seem like such a reasonable guy, but you are always talking about the resurrection of Jesus.  And we know that there is no evidence for it and you just believe it on blind faith"

Now I am just going to address the idea of minimal evidence.  As many people know I came to faith in Jesus based on the evidence of resurrection.  I would love to do a longer blog about the entire cumulative case and I will soon.  But for now I will stick to what I talked about today at the gym.

I said to him that the consensus of critical scholarship agrees with 3 historical facts.

1.  The tomb of Jesus was discovered empty by a group of his women followers on the Sunday following his crucifixion

2. Jesus' disciples had real experiences with someone whom they believed to be the risen Christ Jesus

3. As a result of these experiences the disciples who held the resurrection (that they saw him touched him, spoke with him) at the centre of their belief formed the early church in the very city that these events happened in Jerusalem and then grew from there.


What will shock many atheists about these 3 facts is that these are not questionable facts.  From atheist to christian scholar they agree.  they are not questionable facts.  If you want to check it out for yourself go online or even ask local history professors.  Ive done it, when I was 16 I didn't have google and a computer so I went to UBC and asked.  I asked my high school teachers, I asked my friends high school teachers.  I went to Langara and asked.  So just ask.

The question is, what do we do with these facts?  First we have to decide on the data to be considered, and it is these 3 facts.  Next we have to decide what is the most likely explanation of these facts?  First I can tell you there is no conceivable naturalistic explanation to these facts.  You will hear many explanations but none will hold up.  So why don't people accept that it is possible that Jesus rose from the dead?  Even people like Bart Ehrman (who is a very liberal atheist scholar) agree with the 3 facts.  It is because they are philosophical naturalists.  They have a antisupernatural bias going into the question.  So a resurrection is not a possible explanation. 

So I leave it to you.  What do you do to explain these 3 facts?  It is a huge question and anyone who says it is meaningless is plain wrong.  If a carpenter was walking around saying he was God, was crucified for saying that and then rose from the dead that changes everything.  EVERYTHING.  When I was first interested in Christianity I said to myself, what if this is true?  It would mean that there is a creator and author of the universe and my life, how do I relate with him?  It would mean that I have incredible value, and worth that no one could ever take away from me.  So it was worth looking into. 

Let me also say that as a Christian the primary way that I know the resurrection is true is because I feel the presence of God and the Holy Spirit witnesses to me that it is true.  This is how most people know the resurrection to be true around the world.  But I was led there by the evidence, and anyone who says that there is no evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is plain wrong and literally the weight of the worlds historians is against them.  When they say this they are showing their own bias.

Robin

"God doesnt exist and we can prove it because of unanswered prayer"

I was in a class today and on the lunch break me and a fellow student started talking about God and he said that he knows God doesn't exist because of unanswered prayer.  I said that this is a problem to be taken seriously and if he was interested in talking about it.  So we spent a half hour talking about it over lunch.

First let me say that this was an objection that really caught me when I started learning apologetics.  I was chatting with this one very active atheist here in Vancouver and he said he asked me if I thought God answered prayers, I said I definitely believe he does He has many times in my life.  Then he replied with "I guess he never answers amputees then"  I was caught off guard and did not have an answer. 

So how can we address the problem of unanswered prayer?

First I think its important to recognise that most people will only accept an answer of YES.  But God does not always answer yes.  He can answer three ways.  Yes, No and not yet.

I know that God has said no to me many times, and now I can say I am happy he did.  God has an eternal perspective.  He knows what is really important.  He knows when I ask for things that will actually end up hurting me, or that will cause me to drift away from him or may go against His plan.

But what about prayers for healing?  What about the amputee?  I would say that with prayers like these God answers "not yet"  it is the Christian worldview that life does not end at the grave.  We believe that we will be resurrected and receive new resurrection bodies.  We look forward to this day.  Also we know that Gods ways are actually higher than our ways so we cant always understand why God says yes, no or not yet.  But it makes sense considering both the Christian and the Atheist know we are only here for a blink of an eye as far as the universe is concerned. 

Think about what God's goals are for us.  His goals are not to create a perfect life for us.  We are not God's pets.  His goal is for the most amount of people to come into a loving relationship with him freely.

So we have to take the humble position of saying that indeed all prayers are answered, but we don't know why prayers receive other answers than yes.

There are answers though that always receive an answer of yes.  If we ever ask for forgiveness (1John 1:9) or salvation (Romans 10:13) God will always answer yes.  You can have total confidence that if you ask God for forgiveness and salvation he will answer yes and will make it evident to you through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit

"The Bible is full of contradictions! you cant trust it!"

Well this is something I hear all the time and I am sure you whether you are atheist or theist have heard it many times as well.  Just yesterday I was pointed towards a website by a guy I got chatting with as we were having coffee that proclaims there are over 1500 full blown contradictions.  Now first I will tell you this is a powerful claim.  Is it totally off base?

First thing I always ask people when they say this is "can you name a couple?" the answer is usually no, but not always.  The fellow I was chatting with did know two "contradictions" and they are tough ones.  First was "How did Judas die?"and second "at what time was Jesus crucified?"

So the first thing you have to do is identify exactly what we are talking about, so with Judas we are talking about the 2 descriptions of his death.  Matthew says that he hanged himself, but in the book of Acts Luke says that Judas fell down and burst open and his intestines spilled out.  So the question is how did he die, and is this a contradiction?

What is the Law of Non Contradiction? The Second Law of Logic, the Law of Non Contradiction, says that something cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same sense. So can both of these descriptions of Judas' death be true?  Neither one negates the possibility of the other so this is not a contradiction.  What happened with Judas is that he went out and hung himself, then later he fell probably due to the weight on the branch and when he hit the ground split open.  When you examine the two accounts a bit closer you see Matthew being specific in that Judas hanged himself, and in Acts you do not see how he died.

So next, what time was Jesus crucified?  Now I will tell you I struggled with this for a while.  I had it come up in conversations and did not have an answer.  But the good thing about those times is that we can get excited to learn more so that next time we will have an answer.  Also remember that it is perfectly fine to admit that you don't know.  We don't need to know everything to prove God.  Its humble and acceptable to tell the person that you don't know but that you will look into it and get back to them in a week or so.

 So in Mark 15:25 Jesus is crucified at the third hour and in John 19:14 Jesus was crucified at about the sixth hour.  Obvious contradiction right?  Well we need to look a bit deeper.  When we read any book, especially a book not from our culture and time period we have to do a little digging and understand context.  I'm sure everyone has heard "context is everything"

The difference here is in the Jewish times of the day and the Roman time of day which is the same as the one we use today.   

Third hour--6am-9am
Sixth hour--9am-12pm
Ninth hour--12pm-3pm
Twelfth hour--3pm-6pm
First Watch--6pm-9pm
Second Watch--9pm-12am
Third Watch--12am-3am
Fourth Watch--3am-6am

So as you can see Mark is just using the Jewish time system and John is using the Roman.  Hence not a contradiction.

So we spoke for another hour or so and had a good hearted argument about the Bible, and it was fun. 

"Believing in God is just as silly as believing in Santa Claus"

I encounter this objection weekly Id guess.  I was just talking about this online now, which reminded me of a few experiences Ive had.  Ive had many people believe this to be a knockdown argument and never expect a comeback or refutation.  Richard Dawkins uses this idea quite a bit.

So as people get older they lose their belief in Santa Claus but the same is not always true with God, why is that?

People will say that there is no evidence for God, and there is no evidence for Santa so its the same type of belief.  Now obviously I believe there is tremendous evidence for God but I will not explore that in this blog entry.  I will stick with the ideas of why we lose belief in Santa and not the same with God.

The reason people stop believing in Santa is not because of lack of evidence.  It is because of positive evidence against the existence of Santa.  There is no one at the north pole, no one delivering presents on Christmas etc. 

Now what about God.  Is there any positive evidence against God?  In thousands of years no one has come up with an argument that will hold up.

Ask any criminologist, you cannot prove something is untrue based on lack of evidence.  Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

So we are left at this point with no evidence against God, so that alone will show that you cant compare God with Santa Claus.  Now of course there are many objections to the existence of God such as the existence of evil and such.   But no one considers this evidence against God.  This blog is about answering those questions and if I haven't already done so that is one of my favourite questions so I will get on it very soon

"Santa Claus is an Ido, a dangerous storyl and Christians shouldnt acknowledge him"

today at the gym I was chatting with a local Christian guy who doesn't like the Christmas season and had a lot of angry things to say about Santa.  He was saying that Santa is a dangerous story that that's emphasis off of Jesus.

So we spoke for quite a while about Christmas in general but mainly about Santa.  Santa Claus is actually the Anglicized form of the Dutch name Sinter Klass which is a reference to Saint Nicholas.  Saint Nicholas was a Christian bishop who gave gifts to children in need.  Also Saint Nicholas was at the council of Nicea in 325 AD.

the council of Nicea constructed the Nicene creed which supported the doctrine of the Trinity.  So personally my favourite thing about talking about Santa Claus is that he leads into a discussion about the Trinity.  I will expand about the Trinity in a future blog as I do have many conversations about this doctrine. 

As we get closer to Christmas  we can look to Saint Nicholas as a strong Christian leader and one who gave gifts to children and the poor.  We should follow his example.

"Isn't Christmas just an old Pagan festival?"

While I was on the bus today, I asked a guy if he was looking forward to Christmas.  He said Christmas was such a joke and that people don't seem to realize that Christmas is just an old Pagan festival.   I noticed that all the ears on the bus then turned to us as they usually do on the bus.  People intently listen but don't want to get caught eavesdropping so they don't make eye contact. :)

So first I said that I wanted to acknowledge that this is actually close to the truth.  Back in the day the Romans did celebrate the winter solstice on Dec 25 (incorrectly because the solstice is on the 21st) and had the Pagan feast of the Unconquerable Sun.   He seemed to be very pleased, because he said he knew it was Pagan just didn't know the name of the festival.

Second I explained that Christmas did not evolve out of this festival but was set up in rivalry to it.  Christmas(Christ's Festival) was set up to celebrate and announce Christ's superiority over all other superstitions and gods such as the sun god.

Today those Roman Gods and superstitions are forgotten, but we still celebrate that God Himself entered into history and saved us.  The evidence of his life abounds, both in history and in the changed lives of Christians today who have had a personal encounter with him.

I gave him my email and I hope we can talk again soon

"I don't like you Christians, because you get to repent last minute on your deathbeds and be saved!"

Recently I was in a pub with a friend.  Me and my friend were having a
beer at the bar while a guy next to me was listening to what we were talking about
We were talking about Christian summer camp, church, Jesus and such.  So the
Guy turned to me and said "If you don't mind, can I tell you what I don't like about
Christians?"  I say "of course, Id love to hear it."  He said "you Christians get to
repent on your deathbed.  You can live your life however you want and then
at the last minute bam! there you go right into heaven.  As a Jew I find this offensive
because people like that don't deserve to be forgiven and let into heaven. 
This would mean that even Hitler could have repented last minute in his bunker!!!"

I said to him, "I find this very surprising to hear from a Jewish person." which made his face
light up in surprise.  "Israel's story is a story of grace. Why did God save his people out of Egypt in the Exodus?"  He said "what do you mean?" "I meand id he save them because they deserved it? Because of their good works?  Because of their long term commitment?  "He then said "Uh, I don't like where this is going"(I wont forget that one) I said God saved his people because they cried out to Him, and he saved them
because of His grace.  (Exodus 3)

We had a good laugh and we spoke a bit more over a beer and have spoken a couple times since.  What I think is important here is the idea that people say the New Testament is about Grace and the Old Testament about works and the law.  This is not true, the Bible is one story.  God's story.  I also often hear that people like the NT God  rather than the OT God.  He is the same, yesterday today and tomorrow.  The OT is a story of grace, the NT is a story about grace.  God's grace abounds and is amazing.




People are uncomfortable about the idea of terrible people becoming Christians at the last minute.  Why? because they don't deserve to be saved?  What if a murderer or a rapist got saved last minute? or a regular person who lived in rebellion to God? or a person who never even cared? or you or me?  Whether we are following God for 50 years or 5 minutes, God has grace for all.  It is Amazing Grace.  We love that song, but do we remember who wrote it? John Newton, former Slave Trader! Yes I just said Slave Trader.  No way he deserved it.  Why was he saved?  Because he cried out to God in the same way God's people called out to him in Egypt.

No one deserves it, no one.  I often ask Christians if they know if they are saved and if so how?  A
common response is "yes I am saved and I am trying my best to live a good life".
While this is good, salvation is because of Gods grace alone.  We cannot live
a good enough life to deserve it.

So that a short entry from a story from a little while ago, I thought I should do a quick blog about it.