camel eye

How do you know the bible is true?  Is it the warm fuzzy feeling you get when God does something in your life?  I get a warm fuzzy feeling from old Disney movies. That doesn’t prove anything.  Do you believe it is true because your parents told you to?  Did they ever prove it to you?  Have you ever questioned the truth?  Are you running on blind faith with no evidence to support your life?  I don’t accept blind faith so I set upon a mission to verify that God is who He says he is.  Christianity is not a blind faith. In fact, I find it the only religion that can prove itself.  There are still people who say they are Christian “because it feels right” or some other mushy emotion. This is unfortunate, because there is a plethora of hard evidence supporting Christianity.

Sir Isaac Newton said, “There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history.” . . . . I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by men who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.”  What are these “sure marks?”  I found them grouped in logic, social commentary, mathematics, science, and literature.

The Proof of Logic

When I stripped away the verbiage, I found some tangible, elemental issues of logical proof.  An example comes from the eighteenth-century British naturalist William Paley and is called “the Watchmaker argument.”

“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer.  But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer, which I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there…. The watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use…. Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.”

No one of sound mind, Paley explains, would ever conclude that the watch was the product of bits of dust, dirt, and rock being shuffled together under natural processes.  Even if the natural processes were allowed to operate for a very long time, there would still be no rational hope for a watch to be assembled.  Yet, as all the naturalists of Paley’s day admitted and all the biologists of today emphatically concur, the complexity and capability of living organisms far transcends anything we see in a watch.  If a watch’s complexity and capability demand an intelligent and creative maker, surely, Paley reasoned, the living organisms on our planet demand of Maker of far greater intelligence and creative ability.

Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) had a version of the Cosmological Argument called the Argument from Motion.  He stated that things in motion could not have brought themselves into motion but must be caused to move.  There cannot be an infinite regression of movers.  Therefore, there must be an Unmoved Mover.  This Unmoved Mover is God.

Many years ago, scientists were called to Great Britain to study concentric rocks and holes:  Stonehenge. As studies progressed, it became apparent that these patterns had been designed specifically for astronomical predictions. Many questions remain unsolved. But one thing is known—the cause of Stonehenge was intelligent human design.

Compare Stonehenge to the origin of the universe and life itself. We study life, observe its functions, contemplate its complexity, and what are we to conclude?  Stonehenge might have been produced by the erosion of a mountain, or by catastrophic natural forces working in conjunction with meteorites to produce rock formations and concentric holes. But what scientist or philosopher ever would suggest such an idea?

No one ever could be convinced that Stonehenge “just happened” by accident, yet some expect us to believe that this highly ordered, well-designed universe, and the complicated life it contains, “just happened.”  To accept such an idea is, to use Dr. Wysong’s words, “to break stride from what is natural to believe” because the conclusion is unreasonable, unwarranted, and unsupported by the facts at hand. The cause simply is not adequate to produce the effect.

I am a descendant of Lawrence Washington, former owner of Sulgrave Manor: the site of Stonehenge.  Image telling the grandchildren, “you kids go out and play on the henge.”  The beginning of backyard play structures?  There is a letter, in a British museum, from the King’s Architect, to Lawrence, saying basically, “You moron.  Next time you find metal castings with strange and diverse inscriptions, don’t melt them into pots.”  Apparently, Lawrence found the instructions to Stonehenge and melted them into utensils.  We were a practical lot.

R. L. Gregory made a very elegant observation about the an eye.  The problem of how eyes developed is a major impasse to the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection. We humans can make many entirely useless experimental models when designing a new device, but this is not possible for natural selection, for each step must confer some advantage upon its owner, to be selected and transmitted through the generations. But what use is a half-made lens? What use is a lens giving an image, if there is no nervous system to interpret the information? How could a visual nervous system come about before there was an eye to give it information? In evolution there can be no master plan, no looking ahead to form structures which, though useless now, will come to have importance when other structures are sufficiently developed.  Something had to plan all this in advance.

The Proof of Social Commentary

John Kerry embellished his military achievements and there was instant outcry.  Witnesses stepped up to challenge his claims.  Books were written about the falsity of his claims.  Miles of print media challenged him.  Hours upon hours of television featured people who had evidence he fabricated things.  Image the stir had Kerry claimed to heal the sick and raise the dead!  Yet, there is no rebuttal, in Christ’s time, to the claim that Christ was who He said He was.  He was widely known and completely accepted as a man doing miraculous things. If anything was an exaggeration, someone would have surely written something.

Proof exists for the New Testament, since Christians were strongly persecuted by both the Jews and the Roman government.  If the New Testament writings were false, these two groups would have produced a great deal of evidence to stop the growth of this “sect.”  None exists.  Further, the New Testament writings,  before they were assembled into the book, circulated during the lifetimes of thousands of people who had actually seen Jesus’ miracles and other historic events. No one ever refuted the New Testament writings.

Secular history supports the Bible. For example, in The Antiquities of the Jews, book 18, chapter 3, paragraph 3 the famous historian Flavius Josephus writes:  “Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works—a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”

In 115 AD, P. Cornelius Tacitus wrote the following passage that refers to Jesus (called “Christus,” which means “The Messiah”) in book 15, chapter 44 of The Annals:  “Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.”

Overall, at least seventeen non-Christian writings record more than fifty details concerning the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus, plus details concerning the earliest church. Most frequently reported is Jesus’ death, mentioned by twelve sources. Dated approximately 20 to 150 years after Jesus’ death, these secular sources are quite early by the standards of ancient historiography.

Altogether, these non-Christian sources mention that Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecy, performed miracles, led disciples, and that many thought he was deity. These sources call him a good teacher or a philosopher and state that his message included conversion, denial of the gods, fellowship, and immortality. Further, they claim he was crucified for blasphemy but rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples, who were themselves transformed into bold preachers.

A number of early Christian sources also report numerous details concerning the historical Jesus. Some, such as the writings of Clement of Rome, Ignatius, and Polycarp, date from A.D. 95-110, or just ten years after the last New Testament book.

As Sherwin-White says, “The confirmation of history is overwhelming.”  And that “any attempt to reject its basic historicity even in matters of detail must now appear absurd. Roman historians have long taken it for granted.”

The Proof of Mathematics

This quest finally led me to use some of the probability and statistics I so happily snoozed through in college.
The odds of being struck by lightning in a year = 7 x 10exp5 or 1 in 700,000
The odds of being killed by lightning in a year = 2 x 10exp6 or 1 in 2,000,000
The odds of becoming US president = 1 x 10exp7 or 1 in 10,000,000

Approximately 2,500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2,000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter.  The remaining 500 or so reach into the future.  Since the probability for any one of these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance averages less than one in ten (figured very conservatively) and since the prophecies are for the most part independent of one another, the odds for all these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance without error is less than one in 10exp2,000.  That is 1 with 2,000 zeros after it.

If you were to conceive just 50 specific prophecies about a person in the future, who you would never meet, what the odds that this person will fulfill all 50 of the predictions?  How much less likely would this be if 25 of these predictions were about what other people would do to him, and were completely beyond his control?  For example, how does someone “arrange” to be born in a specific family?  How does one “arrange” to be born in a specified city, in which their parents do not actually live?  How does one “arrange” their own death - and specifically by crucifixion, with two others, and then “arrange” to have their executioners gamble for their clothing?  How does one “arrange” to be betrayed in advance?  How does one “arrange” to have the executioners carry out the regular practice of breaking the legs of the two victims on either side, but not their own?  Finally, how does one “arrange” to be God?  How does one escape from a grave and appear to people after having been killed?

Professor Stoner put his probability pencil to just one: that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.  He and his students determined the average population of Bethlehem from the time of Micah, who made the prophecy, to the present; then they divided it by the average population of the earth during the same period.   They concluded that the chance of any one man being born in Bethlehem was one in 2.8 x 10exp5 or about one in 300,000.  After examining only eight different prophecies which they could actually quantify, they conservatively estimated that the chance of one man fulfilling all eight prophecies was one in 10exp17.  Ten to the seventeenth is not a number many people can deal with.  10exp17 seconds is 3 trillion years.  Take 10exp17 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas.  They will cover all of the state two feet deep.  Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state.  Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one.  What chance would he have of getting the right one?  Just the same chance that the prophets had of writing just these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time.  Read that again.  That certainly puts things in perspective.

In financial terms, is there anyone who would not invest in a financial venture if the chance of failure were only one in 10exp17?  This is the surety of the investment we are offered by God.

But wait.  We are talking about just 8 prophesies.  There are 456 prophesies dealing with the Messiah, all fulfilled.  In another calculation, Stoner used 48 prophecies and arrived at the extremely conservative estimate that the probability of 48 prophecies being fulfilled in one person is 10exp157.  Now we are talking astronomical magnitudes.

But wait again.  There are about 2,000 prophecies already fulfilled.  Those odds are entirely too huge to even comprehend.  Emile Borel postulated, in Borel’s Law, that anything past 10exp50, is never going to happen no matter how long you wait.

Mathematically, anyone who rejects Jesus as the Christ is rejecting a fact proved more absolutely than any other fact in the world.

One of the strongest arguments for the accuracy of the Bible is its 100% accuracy in predicting the future. The Old Testament was written between approximately 1450 BC and 430 BC. During that time, many predictions of the future were recorded in the Bible. Of the events that were to have taken place by now, every one happened just the way they predicted it would. No other sacred writing has such perfectly accurate predictions of the future.  There is no other book, ancient or modern, like this. The vague, and usually erroneous, prophecies of people like Jeanne Dixon, Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, and others like them are not even in the same category, and neither are other religious books such as the Koran, the Confucian Analects, or similar religious writings.

The Proof of Science

A great deal of scientific evidence supports the accuracy of the Bible: paleontology, astronomy, meteorology, biology, anthropology, hydrology, geology, physics, mathematics, and cosmology.

Nearly 25,000 archeological sites have been discovered which pertain to the Bible.  Even though archeology does not prove spiritual truth, archeological confirmation is amazing evidence of the accuracy of the Bible.  Archeologists consider the Bible a very accurate source.  It wasn’t always so and some would doubt the Bible based upon archeology.  For example, what about the Hittites?  The Bible has Hittites but none existed!  Well, at least not until 1876 when Hugo Winckler unearthed Hattusha, the ancient Hittite capital.  Five temples, a fortified castle, and 10,000 clay tablets.   Yes, we had lots of Hittites.  Another piece of evidence was added to the ever-growing mass of facts verifying the Bible’s accuracy.

And then there was Sargon, King of Assyria. Isaiah said: “In the year that Tartan came to Ashdod, when Sargon the King of Assyria sent him, and he fought against Ashdod and took it.”  Oops, no record of Sargon from the Assyrian Empire.  In fact, a well-known list of Assyrian kings completely omits Sargon  But in 1843, Paul Emile Botta began searching for ancient bricks with cuneiform writing on them. Not only did he find the bricks, he made one of the most magnificent finds in archaeological history.  Buried under the entire side of a hill stood the remains of King Sargon’s palace. This palace was of such size that it has been described as “probably the most significant palace the world has ever seen, covering an area of more than twenty-five acres.” Among the ruins, Sargon left numerous inscriptions detailing his military conquests. Not the least among those inscriptions was a particularly revealing inscription discussing his actions against Ashod, the very city mentioned in Isaiah 20:1.

When I realized the scope of Archeological proof, I simply accepted it as it is far too voluminous to digest in my remaining lifetime.

Sir Isaac Newton looked through his telescope and saw God.  Contemporary cosmologists have been at odds with the Biblical creation and any deity behind it.  God simply hadn’t revealed much of that science.  Then, He dropped the Hubbel on us.  Now cosmologists are claiming the universe came from nothing and was accomplished in an instant with supernatural precision.  Christians are sitting back saying, “told you so.”

Stephen Hawking says: “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.”  The discovery of this degree of design in the universe is having a profound theological impact on astronomers.  Hoyle said that “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology.”  Davies has moved from promoting atheism to concluding that “the laws of physics… seem themselves to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design.”  And, “there is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all…. It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe…. The impression of design is overwhelming.”

Astronomer George Greenstein, in his book The Symbiotic Universe, “As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being?  Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?”

Vera Kistiakowsky, MIT physicist and past president of the Association of Women in Science, commented, “The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine.”  Arno Penzias, who shared the Nobel prize for physics for the discovery of the cosmic background radiation, said, “Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying, one might say supernatural, plan.

Hawking and Penrose’s colleague George Ellis made the following statement in a paper delivered at the Second Venice Conference on Cosmology and Philosophy: “Amazing fine-tuning occurs in the laws that make this complexity possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word “miraculous” without taking a stand as to the ontological status of that word.”

Cosmologist Edward Harrison says, “Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God - the design argument of Paley - updated and refurbished.  The fine-tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design.  Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one…. Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument.”

Allan Sandage, winner of the Crafoord prize in astronomy, remarked,  “I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle.  God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.”  Robert Griffiths, who won the Heinemann prize in mathematical physics, observed, “If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn’t much use.”

Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow, a self-proclaimed agnostic, best described what has happened to his colleagues, “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream.  He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

Could it be any other way?  We are simply discovering what God did.  The more we learn, the tighter it fits.

I’m amazed, and somewhat ashamed, that I need so much proof.  Evolution argument?  Child’s play.  Think much bigger.  I’m sitting here with no apparent motion, other than a little rocking from fishing till dark in 5′ seas, yet I’m revolving at 900 miles per hour as I rotate the sun at 90 miles per second while the sun is moving one million miles a day through a galaxy of over 100 billion suns that is 100,000 light years wide and 18,000 light years thick as things are whizzing out of my screen at 12 million miles per second hitting the back of my eye that wouldn’t be here except by the planning of God.  Yeah, explain that without a God.  How silly to step out this evening, see it all first hand, and still seek more proof.

The Proof of Literature

Both the Old and New Testaments are strongly supported by manuscript evidence (the evidence of early hand written copies). The Dead Sea Scrolls are one example of the Old Testament evidence. These documents came from the library of a settlement founded at Qumran before 150 B.C. and abandoned about 68 A.D. Some of the manuscript copies were made during that period, and some were written earlier (third century BC) and brought to the settlement.  Ignoring spelling changes the Dead Sea Scrolls match the Hebrew text behind today’s Old Testament, in spite of the passage of over 2,000 years.

Over 24,000 known manuscripts document the New Testament text.  This makes the New Testament the most reliable document of any document written before the printing press.  These manuscripts vary in size from a part of a page to an entire Bible.  The earliest New Testament manuscripts date from the second century (100-199) AD.  These manuscript copies were written in different languages by people of different nationalities, cultures, and backgrounds.  In spite of all those differences between them, the New Testament texts all agree.   In comparison, the second most available ancient manuscripts are from Homer’s Iliad, for which there are 643 manuscript copies, while most ancient documents have fewer than 25 existing copies.

Important is the time interval between the actual events, the date of writing, and the earliest known manuscript copy. For the Bible, manuscript copies or portions thereof exist that were written within 35 to 160 years after the originals. Recent dating of one manuscript of a portion of the Gospel of Matthew, the Magdalen text, suggests that it was written in about A.D. 50: only 17 years after the crucifixion of Christ. If these findings hold up, it means that the Gospel of Mark, which predates the Matthew Gospel, was written as early as A.D. 40: only seven years after the crucifixion.

The interval between the historical events and the written evidence is far better for the New Testament than any other ancient manuscript. For example, the first account of Buddha’s life was written 700 years after his death. The earliest copy of Caesar’s works is 950 years after being written, and the earliest available copy of Plato’s works is dated 1250 years after the original. Yet we do not question the authority of these other works.

Even more impressive is the degree of textual variance in existing copies. Considering the enormous number of ancient New Testament manuscripts, there are only nominal differences in the various copies. The data for the New Testament is phenomenal.

Further support for the Bible comes from the fact that events of the New Testament are supported by writings outside the Bible. Corroboration is available from several secular and Jewish historians of antiquity such as Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Epictetus, Lucian, Aristides, Josephus, etc.

In addition to its being externally verified, significant further evidence of its reliability is the internally consistent nature of the Bible. It is truly an amazingly consistent document. The messages of approximately 40 different writers of the 66 books of the Bible, written over 1,500 years, in three different languages, all fit together like the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. There is one continual theme throughout—God’s plan of salvation from sin won for the whole world by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This consistency itself attests to the miracle of this book.

Its mere endurance speaks for itself. For thousands of years people have explored every nook and cranny of the Bible. Alleged difficulties have been systematically answered. Upon examination, there are no errors or contradictions.  It is a miracle in and of itself.

In addition to hard evidence, there are some observations that point me inextricably to God.  First is the grounds of the testimony of Jesus Christ himself.  Also the harmonious unity of the Book.  The fact that it is victorious over every conceivable attack.   The inexhaustible depth and influence of the Book.  Compare countries without Bibles to countries with Bibles.  Interesting.  I am also attracted by the character of those who accept and reject the Book and by the immeasurable superiority of the teachings.

This is my summary of why I choose to be a universal traveler on a phenomenal spiritual adventure.

What’s the next quest for truth?  The obstacle to the impact of God is not lack of answers but our failure to live them.  I had a friend who questioned the supernatural aspect of any spiritual conversion.  He insisted that conversion was nothing more than a decision to lead a more ethical life and was not any different among any ethical religions.  But then he said something that cut to the bone: “If this conversion is truly supernatural, why is it not more evident in the lives of so many Christians I know?”