Do Christians actually want evidence?

[Sword of Christ]

Yeah, yeah. Just what I thought during my many years as a devout Christian. I realized later that I had been reading the bible, as I express it, with my mind on cruise control. You know how you drive along without really paying attention and then you see something striking or interesting, and you pay attention for a moment.

It was the experience of going to seminary which disengaged the cruise control on my mind. I had to slow down and read the bible carefully, some of it in the original languages. No, I didn't go to one of those liberal seminaries where the professors poke holes in the bible. Quite the opposite, it was an ultra-conservative seminary committed to biblical inerrancy. It was just that I finally had to pay attention to every word, not just the comforting proof texts which Christians lap up from their pastors. And I came to the conclusion which is embodied in my signature line.

I'll let you into a secret, the Bible is not not actually a book of literal history. There will be some history in there of course though what exactly happened to who and when is beside the point. What matters is whether this was a text that inspired through a relationship of a people with God, the creator of the universe. The bulk of Christians may not be reading it that way and of course you have the Young Earthers who have ended up taking the Book of Genesis literally, but God gave us these brains to actually use and discover the facts of the universe for ourselves. God provides the underlying context to what we discover and learn we don't argue with the facts here.

You may be able to restore your faith in God if you tackle it a little differently, if you're well educated in the modern Western scientific perspective you have to put in a little extra work but you'll see should eventually this atheism business is built on a crock of over self inflated opinion and it has nothing of any real substance behind it. There are a couple of good points here and there you can certainly afford to be a little more open minded when it comes to certain subjects. What matters is whether is in general the truth of life or is in general just a book of ancient myths and nonsense. There may well be some ancient myths and nonsense in there but overall I feel Gods word speaks for itself. I am pretty well versed in the Western secular/atheist perspective, skeptical inquiry, critical thinking and all that business. Any objection you have I will have already factored in.

Yes, the bible has some fine noble thoughts in both Old Testament and New Testament. However, they are no better than you will find in other religious traditions, and they are seriously outweighed by all the faults.

Other religions can contain revelations from God as well, that's another secret to let you into. That's not to say they all do or are equally as good however.

For the most part, the Old Testament is a compendium of

• ridiculous rituals practised by ignorant people in the early Iron Age, see Exodus 29:19-21
  
• a lot of cruel and unusual punishments, see Deut 19:20-21 & Deut 25:11-12
  
• one genocide after another commanded by Yahweh, see 1 Sam 15:3
  

True enough you will find all that in there, real people from a real culture that was a little different from our own did write it. You have a number of different authors over a thousand years. Still the overall narrative and theme hangs together and the central message which is essentially good comes through.

The major theme of the New Testament is that the world would end shortly in that era. Jesus thought so, Paul thought so, and so did the crazed author of Revelation. This is a complex subject; it's treated in detail in the thread Poll for Christians: Are the End Times Imminent?

The end of all things is a theme but it doesn't specify a date it could be billions of years from now for all we know and Revelation is clearly using colorful metaphor and mythical allegories to portray a spiritual message.

"Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." Matthew 16:28

That could have been referring to the events surrounding the Resurrection whatever that was people experienced, though certainly there was a profound experience/revelation at the heart of it when certain kind of truth was revealed. The gospel stories represent that truth.