Okay, Prove It!

By Stephen Lucas    8th May 2001    0 responses

Prove to me that God exists? I can’t! But having said that, I cannot prove to you that I exist. Lao – Tse, a Chinese Philosopher illustrated this: “If when I am asleep, I am a man dreaming that I am a butterfly, how do I know when I am awake that I am not a butterfly dreaming I am a man?” The simple answer is that you don’t know. You cannot prove it. Those who study philosophy at University may spend most of their time trying to prove their own existence. Not that they don’t think they don’t exist! So we cannot prove we exist but there is very good evidence that we do. Try slapping yourself in the face! You may change your mind.

You see, we do not live life on proof but on steps of faith based upon reasonable evidence. When I drive somewhere I have take a step of faith that my car does not split in two. But there is sufficient evidence for me to take a step of faith to drive it. Firstly because it is made by Vauxhall! My car is made of strong metal and it doesn’t seem to have any cracks. When I have a drink from the bar I take a step of faith that there is no poison in my drink because it looks ok, the right colour, and I have never been poisoned by it before. I cannot prove that my car will not split in two and my pint will not be poisoned. When it comes to God, Jesus and the Bible, people will not believe any of it unless they have absolute proof. And again I just cannot, nor can any other Christian give you proof. However we can give overwhelming evidence. Enough evidence that makes me believe and gives me the faith that it is true. That is why I am a Christian.

Where’s the evidence, then?

One of the main sources of evidence is the Bible.  The evidence I will look at is that of Jesus, which is contained within the New Testament, since that is what Christianity is based upon. But wasn’t this written many years ago? Was it written down reliably and/or changed over time? Often individuals reject the bible because the motivation for writing it was initiated by belief. On these grounds one could reject all non-fiction. All evidence suggests that the New Testament was recorded reliably. For instance, in the gospels there are parts that contradict the writers. The first witnesses who saw Jesus alive after his death were women. In the period, a woman’s testimony was valid as only one half of a man’s testimony. The writers would not use women as the first witnesses if the writers were constructing their own, false, narrative that they desired to be accepted as truth. Also, there were controversies in the early church; the disciples had a dilemma whether circumcision should be practised. Jesus himself was never recorded to have mentioned circumcision. To avoid all the controversies scribes could have put words into Jesus mouth. There are also other accounts in the bible that weakens the churches’ case. In my view, they were true events recorded reliably.

Another view is that the disciples composed the New Testament accounts themselves. However, no one has provided a plausible explanation of why the disciples would do that. Many of these same writers died because of their faith. Given the opportunities to reject their faith and save repeated sufferings and death, I do not consider this a reasonable hypothesis. There is also external evidence supporting the New Testament. Many Roman and Jewish texts mention Jesus, such as Tacitus & Suetonius, Roman historians, and Josephus, a Jewish historian. Also there is archaeological evidence. Let’s take the example of Pontius Pilate, a figure from the New Testament. Scholars doubted his existence because of lack of evidence in Roman records. Could the Gospel writers have invented him? In 1961 there was an excavation in Caesarea and archaeologists discovered a stone that had an inscription telling how a certain Pontius Pilatus had dedicated the building.

Has the Bible been changed over time? Some people think that the bible has been copied, translated, re translated over and over again over time and what we have has gone through a serial process, like Chinese whispers. But in fact what we have today is taken from the earliest manuscripts in the original language. We do not have the absolute originals but we do have some that were written down very soon after. There were many copies made of the original, more than any other ancient work in fact. All the sections of the New Testament were written between 40 and 100AD. The earliest copy we have is AD130 and we have 5000+ Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts, and 9,300 others. Compare this to Caesar’s ‘Gallic War.’ This was written in 58BC but the earliest manuscripts were written in 900 AD and we have about 10 copies. There is more than enough evidence to suggest the bible is reliable.

So what about the internal evidence in the Bible? Does it suggest that Jesus is the Son of God? Either Jesus was “mad, evil or the Son of God.” (CS Lewis – Mere Christianity). If he wasn’t the Son of God, and he thought he was then he was mad. If Jesus knew he was not God but said he was, he was evil. Or is it was true he was the Son of God? Examine for yourself his teaching, (e.g. Matthew 5 – 7). Jesus teaching was so superior that laws in many countries are based on the teachings of Jesus. Look at his deeds (e.g. John 10: 37, 38).

Jesus performed many miracles, turning water into wine, healing people, raising of the dead. There are miracles still happening today. Get to know his character, he was sinless, he showed much love to people and died on the cross for you and for me. Recognise his fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies. Never before has a book been written about somebody before they were born! There are 322 prophecies made about Jesus in the Old Testament telling where Jesus was going to be born, where he was going to live what he is going to say, how he was going to die, even the number of coins that will be used to betray him. The probability of that happening by one person is 1 in 84 * 10^100 (i.e. 1 in 84 with 100 zeros) It has never happened before or will again!

Let’s take a quick look at the evidence for the fact that he rose again from the dead. His body had disappeared. Maybe the disciples stole it? But the tomb was guarded and the guards where sentenced to death if anybody managed to get through. Maybe the authorities stole the body? Why did they not produce it to stem the commotion when the news came out? Also 500+ people saw him over six weeks afterwards. He touched people, ate with the disciples. Maybe the people were hallucinating, but 500? Some of these people were tax collectors and fishermen.

Christianity and the church grew across the whole world in 300 years, and today people are still experiencing Christ in their own lives. I don’t think the evidence above suggests that Jesus was a liar, mad or evil. This is only a little of the vast amount of evidence that drives me to conclude that Christianity is TRUE. Of course, there are a few grey areas in the bible that we may never explain, but the evidence to support that Jesus is alive today is there. CS Lewis said this “If TRUE then it is of up-most importance. If FALSE it is irrelevant and unimportant. It CANNOT be moderately important” If this happened it applies to everybody not just a select few.

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