Why do Christians trust the Bible?

[Jenny A]

@ Blee

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I've made two rather lengthy replies to you rather lengthy response to the OP.

I won't be replying to you again in this thread because of the shotgun nature of all replies to so many issues presented at once. So, I invite you to start a thread to discuss:

the plausibility of Noah's flood;

the plausibility of the Hebrew's flight from Egypt;

whether any particular prophecy in the OT is fulfilled in the NT times or since;

or any other relatively discrete issue you may wish to discuss.

But I have a couple notes to make first. Please take a look at previous threads on the issue first. If you want to know why Noah's flood was impossible, the reasons are here.

Second take a little time to look into the mater of burden of proof. Generally speaking the person seeking to assert a proposition such as: there is gravity; it is Monday; there is a god; or the whole earth was flooded about 4000 years ago has the burden of proof. It is not necessary for others to prove him false.

Finally, take a look at what is generally counted as historic evidence. By contemporary accounts, we don't mean modern accounts, we mean accounts written at the time the events in question happened. For example, the existence of Homer is debatable and there are no contemporary accounts of him, though two works are attributed to him. The existence Augustus is not debatable as there are many, many contemporary accounts of him. Socrates undoubtedly existed as there are contemporary accounts of him, but the only accounts of what he said philosophically are his pupil Plato's. Thus we are not really sure what he actually said. Plato and Aristotle wrote for themselves so we know what they said but not necessarily what others thought of them. There are no writings concerning the existence of Jesus or what he said until about a generation after his death and he wrote nothing down himself. The situation isn't as removed from contemporary corroboration as Homer, but there are considerably more writings from the time of Jesus than from the time of Homer. Therefore we'd consider contemary corroboration more likely.

Corroboration from outside is the best evidence of existence and deeds.

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Thanks Jenny, I appreciate the responses and the attitude that comes with it. I'll definitely take time to look at some of the topics that you've brought up in your responses and such. Honestly, this first post was really kind of a knee jerk reaction to a lot of the unfortunate anti-debate answers that some of the Christians were offering (not to say that they are wrong, just wrong to this kind of crowd in my opinion).

Yes indeed, this is a crowd that requires evidence rationally applied. Whenever you're ready to dive into a topic, please do. I look forward to it.