Why this is important
The Bible is a book that claims a particular God raised a man from the dead–actually raised several people from the dead. As theistic evolutionists, atheists and others demand of YECs extraordinary evidence for YEC theories, the same can be said for the claims of a man raised from the dead. Today in the pastor’s sermon he mentioned his son asking the question, “How do we know the Bible is true?” Sadly I think the preacher gave a tautological answer to that question–Because it is God’s word. Again, such a claim should require extraordinary evidence to back it up
Let’s start with Jesus’ resurrection. Atheists say that Christianity is just another agricultural motif of a god dying in the Fall and rising in the Spring. Dionysus, Persephone, and Osiris are among them.10 Resurrected Religious Figures - Listverse. These people think the resurrection is not historically true, but true philosophically because the cycle of the year symbolizes death and rebirth. They use the same line of logic as liberal christians do with Genesis 1, the Fall and the Flood etc. (liberal is defined in post 3 here in response to Pevaquark). The question I have is, 'Is it ok to use that logic on early Genesis but not on the resurrection?" Seems to me that once we go down the ‘symbolical’/‘philosophical’ truth pathway, and excluding real history, then there really can be no objection to saying that Christianity is just another mystery cult from the first century with a symbolical, nonhistorical resurrection.
One can go backward through the Bible on any of the miracles, and make them just as symbolic as Genesis 1, or as symbolic as atheists claim the resurrection was. There is no end to our ability to extract philosophical truth from some tale, but there is limited ability to extract historical truth from that same tale.
As I said, the resurrection is a extraordinary claim which should require extraordinary evidence. I do feel that the behavior of the early disciples post resurrection is evidence that they believed in it, but that isn’t a certain criteria. Cult leaders often act like they believe what they know to be false.
What kind of evidence would suffice? The resurrection is claimed to be an act of God… But how do we know this God has the power to do it. I think we would all agree that Zeus didn’t have this power, even if it is claimed for him by some myth or another. Is Jehovah just another made up God whose followers are deluded people who really should believe something else? As I said, this claim requires extraordinary evidence. Mere mental assent to the concept that Jesus actually arose constitutes no evidence.
The only thing I can think of that really suffices is for this God to inspire the writer to tell us things that are true; things a human writer couldn’t have known. Almost as good as this is finding a way to allow Scripture to be read as a real history. The former is more direct; the latter at least gives us confidence that the stories in Scripture could be true.
No one tries to take real historical event, deny its reality and then turn it into a nonhistorical philosophical truth. No one denies that the slaughter at the Goliad during the Texas revolution was a real event. We might argue about the details but that it happened basically as reported is never questioned. Santa Ana slaughtered a bunch of Texans who had surrendered. Santa Ana had them shot in cold blood. No one says “It doesn’t have to be a true event because it was never intended to teach us real history. It was meant to teach us philosophical truth, not history”. A historian who said this would be laughed at. But somehow, we Christians come to early Genesis, make it all nonhistorical, containing only philosophical truth, and thus, no one can actually see a God who actually did some remarkable things. If God did remarkable things in early Genesis, then it supports the concept that God could actually raise a man from the dead.
Genesis is important as a support for this being the real God. The description of Eden , the flood pointing and the curses (effects of a bigger brain) to a time long time ago, is something that couldnt have been known by the Hebrew writer and thus, becomes evidence of this God’s validity. Without something like this, all we have is just another mystery cult.
This is why having a way to read Genesis 1 as historical, having Eden in a place that matches the hydrology and the four rivers actually having been together at one time, and why it is important to have an actual historical flood.
People often charge me with having no faith because I need/require historical verification. I look at it differently. I think I had faith enough to believe that God really did the things described in early Genesis. Believing that made me search for evidence of those events. I spent large quantities of time in my life pursuing a real flood that would match Noah’s flood, a real Eden that matches the description found in the bible and a way to read Genesis 1 as a real set of events. Yes, I doubted. Yes, I almost became an atheist, but I didn’t. I believed what God inspired in Scripture, and found out that at the very least, those stories CAN be true.