Perhaps… But you are not going to get to an agreement with Christianity and the Bible from objective observation alone. Subjective experience, and choices of participation are required, where what you want matters. But many things in life are like that.
I understand I never will be able to convert someone by just using good reason. It is a matter of the heart, after all scripture states there will be a time when God will make himself known and people will still reject Him. I was told a good question to ask if a conversation starts leading to a conversation about God is this - Please be honest and let me know that even if you discovred everything about the Bible is true, would you still be a Christian?
All I want to do is try and remove roadblocks and give people that are sincerely wanting to know truth some points to ponder. Basically I would be happy if I could just plant some seeds.
That question first occurred to me very recently and I wondered: although, according to Erik Curiel, author of “The Many Definitions of a Black Hole” [published in Nature Astronomy | VOL 3 | JANUARY 2019 | 27–34 | Nature Astronomy]:
- “…black holes are objects of central importance across many fields of physics, there is no agreed upon definition for them, a fact that does not seem to be widely recognized”
it seems, IMO, “mainstream science consensus” is that all black holes are, or are a subset of “event horizons”. Because I have yet to find any suggestion that an event horizon can exist without a singularity within it–if true [and I don’t know whether it is or not–I would think it reasonable to claim or suggest that any singularity originates (i.e. “comes”) from an event horizon, in which case–I would think–collapsing objects “breed” singularities. Just my personal conjecture … which raises the conceivable possibility/probability of an infinite process in which singularities produce things that eventually collapse and become event horizons, each of which contains a singularity, and so on.
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For me, the main lesson is that we know so little, and there are so many possibilities. This is where arguments based on ignorance or probabilities really fall flat. How can we calculate the probability of a universe like ours if we know so little?
Like the infinity of others from eternity, if null then !null. Absolutely nothing at all is noisy.
I wanted to respond to this comment, but Klax is not replying to me.
In his clever use of language, when he said I won, I’m thinking he meant I was going to be snoozed.
Since I was not raised Christian, I have some access to how I might have answered such a question when I was not a Christian. My answer might have been as follows…
It is a matter of evidentiary standards/criterion. Make these too high and much of the conclusions of science are excluded. Make them too low and you get leprechauns and patent medicines made with radium. Very little in the Bible is going to be supported by evidence satisfying anything near the standards of evidence demanded by science for its conclusions. The most you can say is that you wont find evidence against the Bible satisfying a better standard of evidence.
For this reason accepting that something is true isn’t quite so black and white. And the question becomes more about what reasons we can find to accept a lower standard of evidence for some things. Are there compelling reasons to take any of the things of religion seriously and what reasons are there for choosing this particular religion over others.
From my years in the church and in my conversations with Christians, I have often heard that a belief in God is due to personal experience and faith. People say that they feel God’s presence, that they have a personal relationship with God, and that they believe through faith. I don’t know if I have ever met a believer who believes in God solely because of what they consider to be objective evidence.
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Keep in mind most of my conversations will probably not be with scientists 
! My understanding is much of science, or maybe just some of science, still relies on assumptions, which are not facts.
Even though proof is evidence, evidence does not have to be proof. Again, i will use the court of law example, a verdict can be made with absolutely no proof. If enough evidence is presented a reasonable person can come to a reasonable conclusion. And of course many will disregard evidence, no matter how convincing, due to personal biases.
Bottom line is i now feel comfortable I can use the Big Bang theory as a piece of evidence.
A warning, I think I am going to be using this forum a lot. I will use this as a resource on my website. To me new earth, old earth, evolution or no evolution, it does not matter. I just think there is much we do not know. I feel the Bible tells us what we need to know, how God uses scripture does not matter.
As I said in a previous post, I just want to remove stumbling blocks and give people searching for truth points to ponder. I find this forum and website fascinating because I am open to ideas such as a day could have meant an era and God could have used evolution for his creation. I think a lot of the information provided by BioLogos can help skeptics that think there could be something to the Bible but have a lot of issues with traditional interpretations. Correct me if I am wrong.
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That is certainly one of the reasons I want to point out on my website. For me witnessing how God totally changed my life and the lives of others is what strengthened my faith. My interest in apologetics has contributed to making my faith stronger and for me gives me a little more confidence when trying to share my faith.
I might be a bit different from the people you met because I was an atheist until I was 15. In fact atheist is the wrong word. I was oblivious to the fact that a higher being might exist. So I was just living life. So I started my reasoning into a Creator based on the existence of the universe, fine tuning and consciousness and then further in the journey as I was studying philosophies and religions I also stumbled onto the historical Jesus and made a leap of faith to historical Jesus.
Objective evidence however for the existence or non existence of a Creator will never exist for as long as humanity exists which is why we have these eternal debates but faith is basically reasoning based on educated guesses which incidentally seems to get stronger into the journey of a faithful person by experiencing paranormal events for example like seeing Orbs or Spirits.
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As you start this journey I would suggest focusing on understanding the difference between evidence and claims. I often see people who claim to have evidence, but what they actually have are claims.
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That is why I came to this forum. I want to be careful not to put any false information on my website. If someone discovers something I write as blatantly false, then my credibility is rightfully damaged. I see all kinds of “claims” made about politics and so many other topics with no supporting data, I don’t want to be one of those types of people.
How do you know this?
Common knowledge.
Why, do you have any new information?
What’s your view of classical apologetics?
Look I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I believe in God and Jesus Christ.
Classic apologetics are some of the reasons I mentioned elsewhere in another topic reasoning why I believe in God. So you don’t have to convince me.
The topic that we’re talking about is objective evidence. Where we can all go to a certain location and talk to God on demand while He shows us his power. THIS is the evidence that all humans in the existence of humanity are looking for and THIS will never exists unless it is shown to us by the Creator in due time.
Yes. Comedian Stephen Colbert, a Roman Catholic, has said that “Faith must be felt.”
Knowledge about these things is pretty uncommon. But I get what you are saying even if you are misusing your words You said it will never exist as long as humans exist, but you also understand that God can do this when and how he chooses.
Classical apologetics is a method of apologetics that uses purely rational arguments to prove the existence of God. It goes back a long ways, and is used by a handful of Christian apologists today. Sproul and Geisler were notable examples, but they both passed away recently. Bill Craig is still alive, but I’m not familiar with anyone else.
Most Christians have a distaste for these type of arguments. Which I can appreciate, but they are still, and powerfully, valid at disproving atheism. What remains to be known, or cannot be known through pure reason, is the real dilemma straight from the pit of hell or the height of heaven. It can be hard to tell.
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