Ask a Question
or
Create a Poll
  1. Home /
  2. Questions /
  3. Social Sciences
  4. / Theology
  5. / More Theology

by khammer on April 8th, 2008

khammer

Question

Help answer this question below.

What makes you think god is real?

  • Like
  • Report
Share:
Other

Answers. Showing one answer.

  • by Amy on November 5th, 2008

    Amy

    Well for one,
    I have seen God's love, power, presence and supernatural healing in my own life. And I have seen Him change many many others, transforming their hearts and their lives, healing their wounds, peircing their darknesses, breaking their addictions, and touching them eternally with His love.


    But if you are looking for evidence, I encourage you to start an investigation!


    Does God exist? Is Christianity credible? Is there an intellectual basis for faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God?


    Billy Graham said in a letter to someone:

    "Over the years, I've met many leading scientists and other intellectuals who not only believed in God, but told me they had concluded it was far more logical to believe in God than to disbelieve in Him.

    "Why did they come to this conclusion? One reason, I discovered, was because they had an open mind, and were willing to examine the evidence for God and weigh it carefully and honestly. Can you say that about yourself—or is your mind closed, because you aren't willing to change it? Only you can answer this, of course—but I challenge you to be honest with yourself, and be open to the possibility that God does exist.

    "But many of those men and women came to believe in God for another reason: They examined the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, and came to put their faith and trust in Him. You see, Jesus made the most startling claim imaginable: He claimed to be God in human flesh. He boldly declared, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9).

    "Was His claim true? Yes—and the reason is because Jesus did something no one else had ever done, or ever will do: He died and three days later came back to life. Do you want to know what God is like? Look at Jesus Christ—and when you do, you won't only discover that God exists, but that He loves you and wants you to be part of His family forever." ~Billy Graham



    "Over the years I have met many outstanding scientists who were also strong believers in Christ."~Billy Graham; in ministry for 70 years. "Some of the most devout men and women I have ever known were also scientists or engineers. To them, there was no conflict between their faith and their reason—in fact, some told me they went hand in hand...They also had discovered that faith in God is logical. They came to see, for example, that it's much more logical to believe God created this complex universe than to believe it all happened by chance." ~Billy Graham



    What is some evidence for God?

    There is a fantastic book out there called The Evidence That Demands A Verdict (or actually there is a newer copy, so it is called "The New" Evidence That Demands A Verdict, by Josh McDowell. In the introduction, he says this:


    "Is Christianity credible? Is there an intellectual basis for faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God?"

    "During my fifty years of sharing the good news of the Savior with the academic world, I have met very few individuals who have honestly considered the evidence yet deny Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of men. To me, the evidence confirming the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ is overwhelmingly conclusive to any honest, objective seeker after truth."


    To understand where he's coming from, in Josh Mcdowell's story, "He Changed My Life", he said:

    "...Then my new friends issued me a challenge I couldn't believe. They challenged me, a pre-law student, to examine intellectually the claim that Jesus Christ is God's son. I thought this was a joke. These Christians were so dumb. How could something as flimsy as Christianity stand up to an intellectual examination? I scoffed at their challenge.

    '...I finally accepted their challenge, not to prove anything but to refute them. I decided to write a book that would make an intellectual joke of Christianity. I left the university and traveled throughout the United States and Europe to gather evidence to prove that Christianity is a sham.

    "One day while I was sitting in a library in London, England, I sensed a voice within me saying, 'Josh, you don't have a leg to stand on.' I immediately suppressed it. But just about every day after that I heard the same inner voice. The more I researched, the more I heard this voice. I returned to the United States and to the university, but I couldn't sleep at night. I would go to bed at ten o'clock and lie awake until four in the morning, trying to refute the overwhelming evidence I was accumulating that Jesus Christ was God's Son.

    "I began to realize that I was being intellectually dishonest. My mind told me that the claims of Christ were indeed true, but my will was being pulled another direction. I had placed so much emphasis on finding the truth, but I wasn't willing to follow it once I saw it. I began to sense Christ's personal challenge to me in Revelation 3:20: 'Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me" (NIV). But becoming a Christian seemed so ego-shattering to me. I couldn't think of a faster way to ruin all my good times.

    "I knew I had to resolve this inner conflict because it was driving me crazy. I had always considered myself an open-minded person, so I decided to put Christ's claims to the supreme test. One night at my home in Union City, Michigan, at the end of my second year at the university, I became a Christian. Someone may say 'How do you know you became a Christian?'' I was there! I got alone with a Christian friend and prayed four things that established my relationship with God.

    (He tells how over the next eighteen months his entire life was changed, and how the love of God unundated his life)...


    The (New) Evidence That Demands A Verdict includes:
    (You can check the book out at your local library or
    Buy it from one of these 46 stores (used $10, new $15 and up):
    http://www.google.com/products/catalog
    or go to http://www.google.com/products and type in "The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict" into the search bar)

    The case for the Bible:
    --The uniqueness of the bible
    --How we got the Bible
    --Is the New and Old Testament historically reliable? ("archeological finds/evidence confirming the new testement and "demonstrating the trustworthiness of the OT")...

    The case for Christ:
    --Jesus, a man of history (documented sources of extrabiblical [outside of the Bible] historical references to Jesus of Nazareth""--secular authorities, Jewish references and Christian sources on/to/for Jesus' historicity--including his crucifixion/death)
    --If Jesus wasn't God he deserves an oscar
    --Significance of deity: the trilemma--Lord, Liar, or Lunatic? ("If the NT records about Jesus are historically accurate, there remain only three logical choices concerning his identity")
    --Support of deity: Old Testament prophecies fulfilled in Jesus Christ (with "emphasis on Jewish sources to answer the accusation, 'That's the way you Christians look at them, but what about the Jews?")
    --Support of deity: the ressurection--hoax or history? ("this heavily documented section of evidence for Christ's resurrection refutes theories set forth to disclaim this miracle")
    --Support of deity: the great proposition

    The case for and against Christianity:
    --Is the bible from God? ("the case that the Bible is historically accurate..the case is made that the Bible is trustworthy in that it is inspired by a perfect God")
    --The presupposition of anti-supernaturalism
    --Archeology and biblical criticism
    --Documentary hypothesis
    --Introduction to the documentary hypothesis (what is it? etc.)
    --Introduction to biblical criticism
    --Development of the documentary hypothesis
    --Documentary presuppositions
    --Consequences of radical higher criticism
    --Evidence for mosaic authorship
    --Biblical critcism and the New Testament, etc...
    --Historical skepticism ("the reliability of the record of the historical Jesus is examined")
    --Jesus under fire

    Truth or consequences:
    --The nature of truth
    --The knowability of truth
    --Answering postmodernism
    --Answering skepticism
    --Answering agnosticism
    --Answering mysticism
    --Certainty vs. Certitude
    --Defending Miracles
    --Is history knowable?

    And finally...

    --The four spiritual laws: "You can know God personally and experience the abundant Christian life."


    You can also check out these things....

    --Books by Lee Strobal (a legally trained investigative reporter and journalist), including The Case For Faith, The Case For Easter, #1 Best Seller The Case For Christ (Strobal examines "the claims of Christ, by retracing his own spiritual journey, reaching the hard won yet satisfying verdict that Jesus is God's son. Written in the style of a blockbuster investigative report, [it] consults a dozen authorities on Jesus with doctorates from Cabridge, Princeton, Brandeis, and other top-flight institutions to present the: historical evidence, psychiatric evidence, scientific evidence, fingerprint evidence, and other evidence...It's a riveting quest for the truth about history's most compelling figure.)...

    --Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe, biochemist, senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University: Was Darwin Wrong? "Mike Behe...makes an overwhelming case against Darwin on the biochemical level. No one has done this before. It is an argument of great originality, elegance, and intellectual power. For readers who have been persuaded that biologists have long since demonstrated the validity of Darwinian theory, [Behe's] observations are apt to be a source of astonishment."~David Berlinski, author of A Tour of the Calculus

    --Unlocking The Mystery Of Life, by Illustra Media, link to watch whole thing: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6977EC13CBC49ADD

    Summary
    "In 1993, Professor Phillip Johnson of the University of California at Berkeley [retired UC Berkeley American law professor and author, professor of law at Boalt School of Law, author of "Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds," "Darwin on Trial," "Reason in the Balance"; see interview w/ him, in "Conversation With Phillip E. Johnson: Dismantling Darwinism": http://www.billygraham.org/DMag_Article.... ] invited a small group of scientists and philosophers to a small beach town on the Central Coast of California. They came from major academic centers--including Cambridge, Munich, and the University of Chicago--to question an idea that had dominated science for 150 years.
    'I think Pajaro Dunes represented a turning point for many of us. Individually we all had questions about evolutionary theory, but when we came together each person brought something of their own to the table and suddenly we all had a glimpse of a new way of looking at life that none of us had individually seen before.' ~Dr. Paul A. Nelson, PhD in philosophy, fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

    'I would have to say that this was an intense period of time in my life. It just seemed that there was something here much more intellectually satisfying than the view that I had held up until this time.'~Dr. Dean Kenyon, leading evolutionist, BSc in physics, Ph.D. in biophysics from Stanford University, previous National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemical Biodynamics at the UC Berkeley, Research Associate at Ames Research Center, Assistant Professor at San Francisco State University until 1969

    'Looking it back on it now I think that gave me the motivation to just look the evidence and see where it pointed.' ~Dr. Michael J. Behe
    'I realize that this was bigger than any one person or discipline. This was the beginning of a community of scientists who are now willing to face the fundamental mystery of life's origin.'~Dr. Stephan C. Meyer director and Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute

    --The Priviliged Planet, by Illustra Media (goes hand in hand with Unlocking The Mysteries of Life). For an introduction to it, read this: http://manawatu.christian-apologetics.org/.../

    --Cosmic Coincidences by John Gribben and Martin Rees

    --The Fingerprints of God~Dr, Hugh Ross, astronomer, a BSc in physics from the University of British Columbia and an MSc and PhD in astronomy from the University of Toronto, a postdoctoral research fellow at Caltech, studying quasars and galaxies, the youngest person ever to serve as director of observations for Vancouver's Royal Astronomical Society; He "tells the fascinating story of how the latest research into origins not only has sealed the case for divine creation, but has revealed the identity of the Creator Himself."

    Even more resources:

    -- http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/booklist.shtml "NOTE: All these books give evidences for the God of the Bible, but many are written by non-Christians, some by non-theists and even evolutionists." Topics include astronomical design, origin of life, origin of humanity, evolution and the fossil record, human consciousness, and the origin and reliability of the Bible...


    "....you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." (John 8:32)

    Comments

    • Your long answer I hope, is proof that there is enough room for everyone in heaven.

      Don Gorgeous George

      by Don Gorgeous George on November 5th, 2008

    • I don't understand what you mean....

      Amy

      by Amy on November 5th, 2008

    • Read 'The Devil's Chaplain' &
      'The God Delusion' by Prof. Richard Dawkins &
      'God is Not Great' by Prof. Christopher Hitchens.

      One could read 'a small essay on evolution' or 'the whole history of religion of past 3,500 years or so'; to learn the same truth!

      Go to: http://www.richarddawkins.com/

      Enjoy your precious life! Then you will know THE truth, and the truth will set you free.

      ScienceSwamy

      by ScienceSwamy on January 17th, 2009

    • Swamy, what makes you think that Dawkins or Hitchens have the answers to life's questions? your opinion? If I have to rely upon your opinion, then life is a lot worse than I thought.

      The Galaxy Hitchhiker

      by The Galaxy Hitchhiker on February 15th, 2009

    • Science Swamy your answer is very negative and really proves nothing except that you would choose to take Hope away from those who desire it. If a person wants to believe in God, what's it to you? Let them believe and you can continue disbelieving.

      Quiet_Listener

      by Quiet_Listener on April 13th, 2011

    • Amy your answer is way too long and people really just need the short answer. Try to sum up next time. You'll get your point across alot quicker and you won't lose your reading-audience.

      Quiet_Listener

      by Quiet_Listener on April 13th, 2011

    • Like
    • Report

    6 comments | Post one | Permalink

Want to attach an image to your answer? Click here.

Did this answer your question? If not, then ask a new question or create a poll.

More Questions. Additional questions in this category.

You're reading What makes you think god is real?

Follow us on Facebook!

Related Ads

Related Questions

Professionally Researched

Answerbag

a Demand Media company