After writing a great deal in a discussion, it
seemed worth the time to publish these thoughts, which proceed through a number
of topics on the general subject of the veracity of Christianity and the proofs
and evidences thereof.
Someone recently posed the thought to me that
carbon dating, fossil evidence, and evolution could completely disprove the
Christian creation story. This got me
thinking. I wonder, what about carbon
dating and fossil evidence disproves the Christian creation myth? Carbon dating only proves that the earth is
old. Very well. I think everyone agrees on that, including
many Christians—there are those among our number who stubbornly insist on a
particular age, but I am not among them.
To start with, the Christian God is omnipotent. So, even if the Earth was only created in six
days, He could have made it look like it was around longer. However, I am more inclined to this theory:
The Biblical creation story describes it as taking place in six days, however,
several of those days are before the sun and earth exist—that is, before there
were days. Thus, it's perfectly
reasonable to assume that they're metaphorical days, not literal ones. In that case, the creation might have taken
as long as you like, whether it be billions of years or days. Science says it looks like billions of years,
so that seems the most reasonable assumption.
Again, a creating God might as well do things slowly as quickly, since
he'd be outside of time anyhow.
“It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.”
― G.K. Chesterton
The nature of the Christian God makes Him outside
the reproach of science. Because, to any
argument that you might come up with to say that science somehow disproves Him,
the simple answer is, "well, yes, but maybe He made it that
way." He's too large to be studied
by science.
“A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer
And as far as fossil evidence goes, it's sketchy
at best. We still haven't found the
missing links, and goodness knows we've been looking. Now, I'm open to evolution, though definitely
skeptical. But even if it’s all true, it
still doesn't disprove Christianity. Again,
a creating God might as well do things slowly as quickly.
It was also posed to me that Christianity doesn't fit with the long history of mankind—that the two thousand years of
Christianity can’t make up for the rest of the time before that, where
supposedly tribes were raping and pillaging each other, and they suffered
natural disasters that had no apparent higher purpose except to cause suffering. And, at the same time, it was posed to me
that there is no objective morality—that morality is only a construct formed
from evolutionary necessity (a topic I wrote a bit on before). Again, this got me thinking.
Now, strictly speaking, to say that Christianity
is only two thousand years old isn't quite accurate. Christianity is a direct continuation of
Judaism. Thus, it goes back as far as
Judaism does—it's all one story, which, one must admit, is certainly more than
two thousand years. With that cleared up,
let’s proceed.
Now here, you shall have to make up your mind to
choose between one side or another.
Humans are uniquely gifted with the ability to make decisions that defy
evolutionary principles if they feel like it.
One must either stick with this first argument—that is, that morality is
a basic and indisputable principle—or with this second argument—that there are
no moral absolutes. You see, by saying
that anything is wrong, you claim that right and wrong are absolutes. You can’t claim that it’s both wrong for
those tribes to go about raping and pillaging villages, and also claim that
there are no moral absolutes. If there
are no moral absolutes, then the only way you can criticize the tribes is by
your moral code. However their moral
code would have been different from yours.
Hence the pillaging. So who’s
right? Either there is a higher code,
which determines that one or the other is right, or their argument is just as
good as yours. They were people
too. Their argument would be just as
valid as yours—and there were probably more of them. People don’t get preferential treatment of their
ideas based on the accident of when they were born. If they could do that without fear, then why shouldn't they? No social code
apparently told them it was wrong. To
say both that something may be wrong and also that there is no objective morality
is a logical fallacy. You’ll have to
pick one side or the other. If you pick
that morality is a social construct, then you can never pass judgment. Their morality was just born of a different
society, and they had every right to go about pillaging. But if you choose that morality is an
essential principle, based on something higher than humanity, you have to
acknowledge a higher power at work. Reason
can only support one side, and the history of the human race seems to be in
favor of an objective morality.
Now, famines and wars are part of life now,
too. They haven’t gotten better, though
we are more sophisticated in the means we have to combat their effects now.
“Life is pain. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is selling something.”
— The Dread Pirate Roberts
Christianity is the only religion that works with
that basic premise—which holds far more truth than its source might suggest. The Christian explanation is the doctrine of
original sin—that we had a perfect world where those things didn’t happen, and
then we screwed it up, and ended up with what we’ve got today. They also likely made sense to those
people. The mythology at the time would have
said that such events were the wrath of an angry god. In a way, from the Christian perspective,
that’s true. Just not in the way most people
think: rather than an earthquake being a
result of some particular sin shortly beforehand, it’s the result of living in
this world, which is not perfect, because we have sinned. But that’s getting into a complicated
doctrine that doesn’t really fit in the scope of this discussion. Suffice it to say that Christians are under
no illusions about the pain in this world.
Now, it was argued to me that for Christianity to
be credible, it should have started in a philosophically and scientifically
advanced country, such as China. Yes,
the Christian God decided to place the appearance of Jesus in Israel—one of the
most primitive parts of the world. But
you know, for a religion whose central tenet is to love everyone, I think that’s
probably the place that needed it most, and the place that it was most
improbable for such a religion to grow out of.
If there were not some kind of dramatic event, can you really believe
that such a religion would have emerged?
This was the land—and is again today—where to say the wrong thing was
met with death. Do you risk death for a
false message? No. It is an undeniable fact that Jesus of
Nazareth lived and was killed on a cross.
If he wasn’t resurrected, then why would so many people die for his
cause? They weren’t proclaiming a dead
god. They were walking the streets,
telling people about a living God. They
would preach, get the tar beaten out of them by the authorities, and then walk
out of the prison saying, ‘let me tell you about Jesus of Nazareth, who rose
from the dead!’ Nearly every one of the
original Apostles was executed, and even more of the other believers. All they would have had to do was recant. That’s a lot of men to die for a lie—and it’s
impossible that they wouldn’t have known it was a lie. You don’t just believe that a man rose from
the dead. You have to see it. Though, I believe that it is possible give
these people less credit than they deserve, and likely the Chinese a bit too
much. The Chinese were just as
superstitious as the people of Israel and the Roman Empire—and the Roman
Empire, while certainly neither perfect nor free of superstition, was literate,
and the height of civilization up to that point. The Jews, subjects of the Roman Empire at the
time, had had their own written language for centuries, and the Jewish
scholarly tradition from the time still holds strong today—as does the arguably
better known Greek tradition. You cannot
discount their intelligence based on the date of their births. These men were not backwoods yokels that
would believe anything they heard. The
Apostle Paul was a member of the elite scholarly class. The Apostle Luke was a doctor—which, while it
would not carry as much weight as a modern doctor, was still a profession that
merited skill and intelligence. If a
patient died, the doctor might be held responsible. Another Apostle, Matthew, was a tax collector—not a
reputable job, but one that required a shrewd head. These were intelligent discerning men. And so, the reasonable conclusion is that Christianity
came out of a time that was just uncivilized enough to make it pretty
improbable, and just civilized enough to make it credible.
Now, there are those that argue that Atheism is a
neutral point of view, and not a religion.
But, while no Atheist will ever admit it, Atheism is a religion. It fits every criterion: it has a dogmatic
stance on spiritual matters, makes claim to know what happens after death, and
is mutually exclusive of all other claims to knowledge of the subject. It has a decidedly radical point of view—that
there is no spiritual aspect to human existence—a view which is directly in
opposition to the vast majority of human thought in the past. It is not a neutral point of view, because,
as so many people do, it’s proponents will violently defend their beliefs—even to
the point of insulting the intelligence of everyone who disagrees. It is in every effective way to categorize it,
a religion. Or, perhaps one might call
it an anti-religion, since its members won’t admit their zeal.
Now, a person might say, ‘Who cares if
Christianity is being oppressed or not, it does not make it any more correct or
true.’ Well, firstly, I care. I generally care when anyone is being oppressed—and
it’s rather interesting that secular news media doesn’t think it’s news-worthy
that Christians are systematically murdered in some countries. But there is a very strong implicit argument
in the oppression of Christianity.
In his inaugural address, FDR famously said that, “the
only thing we have to fear is fear itself … .”
This is often taken out of context, to mean that there is nothing to
fear in this world, which is not at all true.
People are afraid of power—as they should be. Power can often be misused. People are also afraid of what they do not
understand—simply because it is unknown.
And, often more than anything else, people are afraid of power that they
do not understand. Now, looking at it
objectively, Christianity is not a threat to any government. It literally teaches that its followers
submit to human authority, and that they be loving to everyone. This is a message that carries no threats—only
the warning that people are sinful, and need redemption. Well, why then would a rational ruler oppress
Christianity? Surely people can believe
what they like if it’s going to make them better citizens. Worst case scenario, they’ll try to persuade
other people conform to the basic moral tenets that they follow—which aren’t
exactly threatening. There is no
rational reason to oppress Christians.
Even if they don’t believe in your religion, isn’t that their loss from that
perspective? If they want to deny the
way to salvation that your religion offers, but still be good citizens, shouldn’t
that be their problem? Surely it is not
an offense worthy of death. But yet,
Christianity remains the most persecuted religion in the world. So it’s reasonable to ask, why? What about this religion—which has possibly
the most rigorous moral code of any religion—is so frightening to rulers and
people in authority? The simple answer
is that it has a power that they do not understand. No matter how thoroughly Christianity has
been oppressed, it has always thrived despite that. When the Romans were burning Christians to
light the roads of the empire and killing them for sport in the Coliseum, it
didn’t stop people from becoming Christians.
By all rights, it should have died. No other religion has been so violently
opposed from its very inception. If it
was false, then it is nearly certain that it would have failed. There is almost no doubt about that. As I’ve mentioned before, most of the
earliest believers were executed specifically for their beliefs. And many of them were eye witnesses to the
whole thing. They saw the trial. Saw Jesus hung on the cross. Saw his body after he’d died. And saw the empty tomb. Nobody dies for a dead Messiah. They go to their graves proclaiming a living
God. So what do you say then? That they were all ridiculously stubborn liars? Nothing about what they did or said supports
that. The only two stories that fit are
that either they were all completely insane, or that they were telling a true
story. Christianity’s very existence in
spite of its persecution provides a solid argument for the validity of its
message.
Of course, you might say that there’s no evidence
for any of the stories in the Bible.
Well, if what I’ve written already isn’t enough to convince you that a
thinking person could disagree with that statement, consider for a moment that
the Bible is the most historically accurate ancient document known to man. It provides an excellent account of the geopolitical
climate at the time, which is useful to scholars of ancient history. It’s mentioned minor figures that do not
appear in other accounts, because they were disgraced and removed from most
records. Historians decide it’s wrong,
then an archaeologist finds that name half-scraped off of a monument
somewhere. There’s no denying that the
Bible is an invaluable historical account.
So, there is substantial reason to believe in
Christianity. And, right or wrong, there’s
no way to disprove it with science alone.
It is ultimately a spiritual matter, and science is ultimately a
physical matter. They occupy different
spheres of thought. The scientist may
discover many wonderful things, but they will not disprove any religion, simply
because they cannot. They’re on
different tracks. Nietzsche said, “God
is dead.” Now Nietzsche is dead and
Christianity keeps going strong. Christianity
is in no way a religion for the uneducated masses, as many Atheists would have
you believe. It is a religion held up by
centuries of intelligent men, looking for truth, and finding it.
