Science has disproved Christianity

To say that science has disproved Christianity is a bit like saying cookery has disproved roast dinners. Science is a method. Christianity is one of the possible outcomes to which science helps to direct us, if used rightly. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. And Christianity (or roast dinners) may need to be understood and assessed by rather different methods from science (or cookery technique). Taste and see that the LORD is Good.

Can We Trust The Bible?

Here's the text of my handout:

Can We Trust The Bible?

Yes! And we can trust the God who wrote it!

The burden of proof / unjustified scepticism? - Why wouldn’t we trust it?

A very important question – central to Christianity, big claims, life changing, eternal significance

World’s best selling book - both revered and rubbished – popular rejection / ignoring of the Bible (myths, legends, fairy tales, maybe moral or theological truths but not history)

The basic Christian view of the Bible / what the Bible claims about itself:

Historic / traditional consensus of the church: God’s words – inspired (2 Timothy 3:16) - God’s Word Written – What the Bible Says, God says – God’s Word reflects the character of God - true / authoritative / reliable in all that it affirms – inerrant / infallible (no errors)

Not just believe the Bible because the Bible tells you to (not a circular argument)!

Some reasons to trust the Bible:

Main argument (for Christians!):

Jesus is Lord and Jesus viewed the Bible as God’s trustworthy Word and therefore so should we. He accepted the Old Testament as God’s words and authorised the Apostles to write the New Testament

E.g. John 10:34-36; Matthew 5:17-18; 19:4-5; 22:29-32; John 14:26; 16:12-16

à Are Jesus’ claims about his own identity and authority convincing? E.g. the quality of his life and teaching, the evidence for the resurrection

Supporting arguments:

We can be confident we know what the original manuscripts said since the evidence for the original text of the Bible is very strong. The original text is very well preserved in our Bibles. Relatively few texts are disputed and no major doctrine hangs on any of the mostly trivial disputed texts

Manuscript Evidence for Ancient Writings

Author / Work	When written	Earliest fragment / copy	Time span between writing and copy	Number of manuscripts
Caesar	100 – 44 BC	AD 900	1000 years	10
Plato	427 - 347 BC	AD 900	1200 years	7
Thucydides	460 - 400 BC	AD 900	1300 years	8
Tacitus	AD 100	AD 1100	1000 years	20
Suetonius	AD 75 – 160	AD 950	800 years	643
Homer (Iliad)	900 BC	400 BC	500 years	643
New Testament	AD 40 – 100	AD 125	25 – 50 years	24000

(from Orr-Ewing, p43)

The Gospels were written very close to the events they describe by eyewitnesses or drawing on eyewitness evidence

E.g. Luke 1:1-4; John 20:29-31; 21:24-25; 1 John 1:1-4

The Apostles clearly believed Jesus was who he claimed to be, since they were willing to be persecuted and killed for trusting in him. Christianity is not a fraud job by the disciples!

The extraordinary unity of the Bible – agreement of 66 books, over 40 different authors, written over a period of ? about 1600 years

Where the Bible can be checked, it has proved to be accurate e.g. by archaeological discoveries of inscriptions confirming previously questioned details from the book of Acts

Many Bible prophecies have been remarkably fulfilled (e.g. history of Israel, Jesus)

Professor Peter Stoner took just 11 fulfilled prophecies from the Old Testament and tried to calculate the probability of them being fulfilled by chance. He reckoned it was 1 in 8X10^63 (Blanchard, p28 citing Stoner, Science Speaks, Moody Press, pp67-96).

The Bible is remarkably realistic and insightful on many matters, makes psychological sense, interprets our experience. It is a work of supernatural genius

The Bible has the ring of truth about it (J. B. Phillips), it speaks with convincing power

Countless peoples have met with Jesus and been transformed by reading the Bible

à Try reading it (perhaps one of the Gospels in a modern translation) and pray that God would show you whether it is true or not

Further reading:

Paul Barnett, Is The New Testament History? (originally Hodder & Stoughton, 1986; Paternoster, 1998)

John Blanchard, Why Believe The Bible? (Evangelical Press, 2004) – only 40 pages
Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospel (IVP, 2^nd ed. 2008)
F. F. Bruce, New Testament Documents: Are they reliable? (Eerdmans / IVP, 1943)
Walter Kaiser, Old Testament Documents: Are they reliable and relevant? (IVP, 2001)
* Top Recommendation? * Amy Orr-Ewing, Why Trust The Bible? Answers to 10 tough questions (IVP, 2005) – includes consideration of some more modern and postmodern type objections e.g. the Bible on sex, matters of interpretation

J. B. Phillips, Ring of Truth: A Translator’s Testimony (Hodder & Stoughton, 2^nd ed. 1978)
John Wenham, Christ and the Bible (Baker) - deals with a number of supposed "difficulties" with the text. Argues, as above, that Jesus thought of the Bible as the authoritative Word of God and so should we
Brian Edwards, Why 66? The Canon of Scripture (Answers in Genesis, DVD, 2008) - how do we know we have the right books in the Bible?

Bible Prophecy a Fluke?

Professor Peter Stoner took just 11 fulfilled prophecies from the OT and tried to calculate the probability of them being fulfilled by chance. He reckoned it was 1 in 8X10^63. In other words, mind bogglingly unlikely.

(John Blanchard, Why Believe The Bible? Evangelical Press, 2004, p28 citing Stoner, Science Speaks, Moody Press, pp67-96).

Multiverse

On the Sunday programme on Radio 4 this morning Professor Bernard Carr argued that some people would say that "the theory of a multiverse is the last refuge of desperate atheists".

Our universe appears to be fine-tuned for (human) life, which implies a creator.

But if you imagine a huge number of universes, you can explain this universe by blind chance and so you don't need God.

Desperate indeed. In our universe there appears to be a God. In other universes, a God may not be necessary. Mmmm.

Problem of Evil (cont)

Here are some assorted further thoughts on the problem of evil in response to a response to a previous post:

Of course the problem of evil is not really a problem to the atheist.

In a way this commends his system: stuff happens, that's just life, we have to pull ourselves together and get on with it. Everything's random and meaningless so hey, ho.

What might give the athiest pause for thought, however, is that his system seems to have little or nothing to say in the face of the rape of a little girl or the carnage of the consentration camps. Whilst "evil" might not be an intellectual problem for his system, it is a problem that he still feels in his gut that certain things are evil and that something in the way he is hardwired cries out for justice.

Thankfully, most atheists are inconsistent and don't live as if survival of the fittest is all there is - but they can't give me a good reason why I shouldn't torture babies if I want too. They have abolished the problem of evil, which is a big problem.

* * *

Satan, the serpent, was created good and fell away from that good.

* * *

Natural evils (such as hurricane Katrina) are not God’s original intention for the pre-fall world considered without sin. They are the result of God’s just curse on sin. Even these God uses for good: I think as C. S. Lewis said, “suffering is God’s megaphone to rouse a sleeping world”. For the Christian, all things work together for good. Suffering and evil provide opportunities for courage and fortitude which would not be possible in a “perfect” world.

* * *

Jesus bore the penalty of sin for all those who would trust in him and decisievely broke its power, though its presence will not be fully and finally removed until he comes again to judge the world and put it to rights.

Falsification of Christianity

My non-Christian correspondent responded to my 10 points on the problem of evil (9th Feb), arguing that: for a proposition to be intellectually respectable, it must be in principle falsifiable.

Of course, its worth pausing to note that a true proposition wont in fact be properly falsifiable since it is true and not false.

The Christian faith is in principle falsifiable: if you could prove that you’d dug up Jesus’ body you would have disproved the physical resurrection of Jesus and hence the historic Christian faith. You would have shown that the Christian faith did not correspond to reality.

One could also show that the Christian faith were nonsense if it contained a logical contradiction. You would have shown that the Christian faith was incoherent.

A great deal of ink could be spilt on how one would know that one had demonstrated that the Christian faith erred.

Much of the work of the Christian apologist will be to show how he makes sense of Christianity as a system. It is not narrow minded, but perfectly reasonable for the Christian to say “since I am convinced on good grounds that God is loving and omnipotent I reason that he must have some morally sufficient reason for allowing suffering and evil”.

Many of the claims of Christianity concern special or even unique historical events such as miracles and so are not susceptible to scientific experimental dis-proof since you can’t go to a lab and repeat something to see if it wont work.

If I had the time and inclination to think about this more, I’d head for John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg, P&R Publishing, 1987), esp. parts 2 and 3 on the justification and methods of knowledge.

Speaking of God (apologetically): yes and no

My non-Christian correspondent responded to my 10 points on the problem of evil, so here are some more thoughts arising:

I stand by what I said in point 1.

(1) We cannot hope to completely "solve" the "problem" of evil. God is infitely above and beyond us so he will always remain the great Incomprehensible Mystery to us. Yet we can describe the Mystery: we can say what is not so and mark out the area where the truth lies. If you like, we can know God like a sketch (an outline with features and shading) not a photograph (in every detail).

I didn’t mean it to be an endorsement of strong / thorough-going apophaticism.

A soft kind of apophatic theology / via negativa, which says what God is not (immortal, immutable, impassible, independent, uncreated, immense, incomprehensible, infallible, atemporal, aspacial, incorporeal etc.) is extremely helpful.

But we can also make true statements about God because he has clearly revealed himself in human words in the Bible. Our statements about God can be true and adequate but not exhaustive or entirely precise.

God’s revelation involves accommodation: he graciously condescends to describe himself to us in “creaturely” language that we creatures might understand something of the creator, rather as we might explain something to a 5 year old.

All language about God is analogical not univocal. God is a rock (he is strong, stable and reliable) but he is not a rock (he is not an inanimate lump of minerals). God is a lion, but not in the same way that Leo the Lion is a lion. God’s power is not exactly like human power (e.g. he is never tyrannical) and his power is one perspective on the simple God (considered from God's point of view his power is his love, wisdom, goodness, pity etc).

The fact that God is three persons (the Son reflects the Father but is not the Father) and has made us in his image gives a deep theological basis for analogical knowledge of God.

To predicate anything of God is less than straightforward. For example, to say “God is…” sounds like a statement about the present tense, whereas God is atemporal and eternal, so he has all his attributes in that mode, something that its not easy to capture in English.

Deuteronmoy 29:29 is a helpful verse: “The secret things belong to God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

Its worth noticing that the verse implies that God’s revelation is given that we might obey it and live in the light of it, rather than to answer all our questions, to satisfy our intellectual curiosity or for the sake of argument.

God is the creator (the potter) and we are the creatures (lumps of clay). Though he has graciously revealed himself to us, accommodated himself to our weakness and bears with us, he is not ultimately answerable to us. We need to remember our place and watch our words when it come to questioning God. God is and will be the just judge of all the earth. We are not!

The Christian approach is “faith seeking understanding”, not, “God, answer all my questions and then I’ll (condescend to) believe in you (if I reckon you’ve done a good enough job to convince me)”.

Nevertheless, the Christian should explain and defend the faith to non-Christians. The aim here is to show the coherence of the Christian faith and ways in which it can be seen to correspond to reality as we experience it, while showing the incoherence of other world views and their lack of ability to explain the world. If the non-Christian is to accept the reasonable revealed faith of the Christian, God must open his eyes and change his heart.

Why I am Not a Christian

I am a Christian, but I wanted to say something about Bertrand Russel’s essay, Why I’m Not a Christian.

I think I remember GW saying that he found the arguments so bad he thought it could almost be used by Christians as an evangelistic tract: if this is the best the atheists can do…

Whty I Believe In God

One of the blessings of often keeping my study door open is the useful things that can be gleened from the fellow inhabitants of my corridor at Oak Hill. Today there was high praise for ‘Why I Believe In God’ by Revd Dr Cornelius Van Til. It was billed as a beautiful read, properly presuppositionalist unapologetic apologetics. In fact it contains an apology to unbelievers that Chritsians have not been as forthright and clear as they should have been. The piece takes the form of an imagined (one-sided) Sunday afternoon discussion between Van Til and an atheist or agnostic conversation partner.

Here are some of my favourite bits (much of the article!):

… as a person of intelligence, having a sense of responsibility, you have from time to time asked yourself some questions about the foundation of your thought and action. You have looked into, or at least been concerned about, what the philosophers call your theory of reality [evil, life after death etc.] . So… I suggest that you spend a Sunday afternoon with me discussing my reasons for believing in God…

Perhaps you think that the only real reason I have for believing in God is the fact that I was taught to do so in my early days. Of course I don't think that is really so. I don't deny that I was taught to believe in God when I was a child, but I do affirm that since I have grown up I have heard a pretty full statement of the argument against belief in God. And it is after having heard that argument that I am more than ever ready to believe in God. Now, in fact, I feel that the whole of history and civilization would be unintelligible to me if it were not for my belief in God. So true is this, that I propose to argue that unless God is back of everything, you cannot find meaning in anything. I cannot even argue for belief in Him, without already having taken Him for granted. And similarly I contend that you cannot argue against belief in Him unless you also first take Him for granted. Arguing about God's existence, I hold, is like arguing about air. You may affirm that air exists, and I that it does not. But as we debate the point, we are both breathing air all the time. Or to use another illustration, God is like the emplacement on which must stand the very guns that are supposed to shoot Him out of existence.

…there is no sense in talking about the existence of God, without knowing what kind of God it is who may or may not exist.

…You, of course, do not expect me to bring God into the room here so that you may see Him. If I were able to do that, He would not be the God of Christianity. All that you expect me to do is to make it reasonable for you to believe in God. And I should like to respond quickly by saying that that is just what I am trying to do. But a moment's thought makes me hesitate. If you really do not believe in God, then you naturally do not believe that you are his creature. I, on the other hand, who do believe in God also believe, naturally, that it is reasonable for God's creature to believe in God. So I can only undertake to show that, even if it does not appear reasonable to you, it is reasonable for you, to believe in God.

Shall we say then that in my early life I was conditioned to believe in God, while you were left free to develop your own judgment as you pleased? But that will hardly do. You know as well as I that every child is conditioned by its environment. You were as thoroughly conditioned not to believe in God as I was to believe in God. So let us not call each other names. If you want to say that belief was poured down my throat, I shall retort by saying that unbelief was poured down your throat. That will get us set for our argument.

To be "without bias" is only to have a particular kind of bias. The idea of "neutrality" is simply a colorless suit that covers a negative attitude toward God. At least it ought to be plain that he who is not for the God of Christianity is against Him. You see, the world belongs to Him, and that you are His creature, and as such are to own up to that fact by honoring Him whether you eat or drink or do anything else. God says that you live, as it were, on His estate. And His estate has large ownership signs placed everywhere, so that he who goes by even at seventy miles an hour cannot but read them. Every fact in this world, the God of the Bible claims, has His stamp indelibly engraved upon it. How then could you be neutral with respect to such a God? Do you walk about leisurely on a Fourth of July in Washington wondering whether the Lincoln Memorial belongs to anyone? Do you look at "Old Glory" waving from a high flagpole and wonder whether she stands for anything? Does she require anything of you, born an American citizen as you are? You would deserve to suffer the fate of the "man without a country" if as an American you were neutral to America. Well, in a much deeper sense you deserve to live forever without God if you do not own and glorify Him as your Creator. You dare not manipulate God's world and least of all yourself as His image-bearer, for you own final purposes. When Eve became neutral as between God and the Devil, weighing the contentions of each as though they were inherently on the face of them of equal value, she was in reality already on the side of the devil!

If the God of Christianity exists, the evidence for His existence is abundant and plain so that it is both unscientific and sinful not to believe in Him. When Dr. Joad, for example says: "The evidence for God is far from plain," on the ground that if it were plain everybody would believe in Him, he is begging the question. If the God of Christianity does exist, the evidence for Him must be plain. And the reason, therefore, why "everybody" does not believe in Him must be that "everybody" is blinded by sin. Everybody wears colored glasses. You have heard the story of the valley of the blind. A young man who was out hunting fell over a precipice into the valley of the blind. There was no escape. The blind men did not understand him when he spoke of seeing the sun and the colors of the rainbow, but a fine young lady did understand him when he spoke the language of love. The father of the girl would not consent to the marriage of his daughter to a lunatic who spoke so often of things that did not exist. But the great psychologists of the blind men's university offered to cure him of his lunacy by sewing up his eyelids. Then, they assured him, he would be normal like "everybody" else. But the simple seer went on protesting that he did see the sun.

I am just mildly suggesting that you are perhaps dead, and perhaps blind, leaving you to think the matter over for yourself. If an operation is to be performed it must be performed by God Himself.

Imagine teaching not only religion but algebra from the Christian point of view! But it was done. We were told that all facts in all their relations, numerical as well as others, are what they are because of God's all comprehensive plan with respect to them. Thus the very definitions of things would not merely be incomplete but basically wrong if God were left out of the picture.

If my God exists it was He who was back of my parents and teachers. It was He who conditioned all that conditioned me in my early life. But then it was He also who conditioned everything that conditioned you in your early life. God, the God of Christianity, is the All-Conditioner!

As the All-Conditioner, God is the All-Conscious One. A God Who is to control all things must control them "by the counsel of His will." If He did not do this, He would himself be conditioned. So then I hold that my belief in Him and your disbelief in Him are alike meaningless except for Him.

Not believing in God… you do not think yourself to be God's creature. And not believing in God you do not think the universe has been created by God. That is to say, you think of yourself and the world as just being there. Now if you actually are God's creature, then your present attitude is very unfair to Him. In that case it is even an insult to Him. And having insulted God, His displeasure rests upon you. God and you are not on "speaking terms." And you have very good reasons for trying to prove that He does not exist. If He does exist, He will punish you for your disregard of Him. You are therefore wearing colored glasses. And this determines everything you say about the facts and reasons for not believing in Him. You have had your picnics and hunting parties there without asking His permission. You have taken the grapes of God's vineyard without paying Him any rent and you have insulted His representatives who asked you for it.

I must make an apology to you at this point. We who believe in God have not always made this position plain. Often enough we have talked with you about facts and sound reasons as though we agreed with you on what these really are. In our arguments for the existence of God we have frequently assumed that you and we together have an area of knowledge on which we agree. But we really do not grant that you see any fact in any dimension of life truly. We really think you have colored glasses on your nose when you talk about chickens and cows, as well as when you talk about the life hereafter. We should have told you this more plainly than we did. But we were really a little ashamed of what would appear to you as a very odd or extreme position. We were so anxious not to offend you that we offended our own God. But we dare no longer present our God to you as smaller or less exacting than He really is. He wants to be presented as the All-Conditioner, as the emplacement on which even those who deny Him must stand.

Now in presenting all your facts and reasons to me, you have assumed that such a God does not exist. You have taken for granted that you need no emplacement of any sort outside of yourself. You have assumed the autonomy of your own experience. Consequently you are unable -- that is, unwilling -- to accept as a fact any fact that would challenge your self-sufficiency. And you are bound to call that contradictory which does not fit into the reach of your intellectual powers. You remember what old Procrustes did. If his visitors were too long, he cut off a few slices at each end; if they were too short, he used the curtain stretcher on them. It is that sort of thing I feel that you have done with every fact of human experience. And I am asking you to be critical of this your own most basic assumption. Will you not go into the basement of your own experience to see what has been gathering there while you were busy here and there with the surface inspection of life? You may be greatly surprised at what you find there.

…if miracles want to have scientific standing, that is be recognized as genuine facts, they must sue for admittance at the port of entry to the mainland of scientific endeavor. And admission will be given as soon as they submit to the little process of generalization which deprives them of their uniqueness. Miracles must take out naturalization papers if they wish to vote in the republic of science and have any influence there.

… creation, providence, prophecy, and miracle. Together they represent the whole of Christian theism. Together they include what is involved in the idea of God and what He has done round about and for us. Many times over and in many ways the evidence for all these has been presented. But you have an always available and effective answer at hand. It is impossible! It is impossible! You act like a postmaster who has received a great many letters addressed in foreign languages. He says he will deliver them as soon as they are addressed in the King's English by the people who sent them. Till then they must wait in the dead letter department. Basic to all the objections the average philosopher and scientist raises against the evidence for the existence of God is the assertion or the assumption that to accept such evidence would be to break the rules of logic.

… I must again make apologies. The fact that so many people are placed before a full exposition of the evidence for God's existence and yet do not believe in Him has greatly discouraged us. We have therefore adopted measures of despair. Anxious to win your good will, we have again compromised our God. Noting the fact that men do not see, we have conceded that what they ought to see is hard to see. In our great concern to win men we have allowed that the evidence for God's existence is only probably compelling. And from that fatal confession we have gone one step further down to the point where we have admitted or virtually admitted that it is not really compelling at all. And so we fall back upon testimony instead of argument. After all, we say, God is not found at the end of an argument; He is found in our hearts. So we simply testify to men that once we were dead, and now we are alive, that once we were blind and that now we see, and give up all intellectual argument.

The God who claims to have made all facts and to have placed His stamp upon them will not grant that there is really some excuse for those who refuse to see.

… what you have really done in your handling of the evidence for belief in God, is to set yourself up as God. You have made the reach of your intellect, the standard of what is possible or not possible. You have thereby virtually determined that you intend never to meet a fact that points to God. Facts, to be facts at all -- facts, that is, with decent scientific and philosophic standing -- must have your stamp instead of that of God upon them as their virtual creator.

Nor do I pretend, of course, that once you have been brought face to face with this condition, you can change your attitude. No more than the Ethiopian can change his skin or the leopard his spots can you change your attitude. You have cemented your colored glasses to your face so firmly that you cannot even take them off when you sleep. Freud has not even had a glimpse of the sinfulness of sin as it controls the human heart. Only the great Physician through His blood atonement on the Cross and by the gift of His Spirit can take those colored glasses off and make you see facts as they are, facts as evidence, as inherently compelling evidence, for the existence of God.

Deep down in your heart you know very well that what I have said about you is true. You know there is no unity in your life. You want no God who by His counsel provides for the unity you need.

I readily grant that there are some "difficulties" with respect to belief in God and His revelation in nature and Scripture that I cannot solve. In fact there is mystery in every relationship with respect to every fact that faces me, for the reason that all facts have their final explanation in God Whose thoughts are higher than my thoughts, and Whose ways are higher than my ways. And it is exactly that sort of God that I need. Without such a God, without the God of the Bible, the God of authority, the God who is self-contained and therefore incomprehensible to men, there would be no reason in anything. No human being can explain in the sense of seeing through all things, but only he who believes in God has the right to hold that there is an explanation at all.

I hold that belief in God is not merely as reasonable as other belief, or even a little or infinitely more probably true than other belief; I hold rather that unless you believe in God you can logically believe in nothing else. But since I believe in such a God, a God who has conditioned you as well as me, I know that you can to your own satisfaction, by the help of the biologists, the psychologists, the logicians, and the Bible critics reduce everything I have said this afternoon and evening to the circular meanderings of a hopeless authoritarian. Well, my meanderings have, to be sure, been circular; they have made everything turn on God. So now I shall leave you with Him, and with His mercy.

The Problem of Evil

My theological correspondent (a non-Christian who asked about the omnipotence of God and my doubts) said he found the problem of evil (almost?) insurmountable. Here are some thughts (numbered for convenience not logical order) which may help:

(1) We cannot hope to completely "solve" the "problem" of evil. God is infitely above and beyond us so he will always remain the great Incomprehensible Mystery to us. Yet we can describe the Mystery: we can say what is not so and mark out the area where the truth lies. If you like, we can know God like a sketch (an outline with features and shading) not a photograph (in every detail).

(2) God is all loving, all powerful, all wise and all good. He really does govern the world. God must have a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.

(3) God must have made the best of all possible worlds considered as a whole, because of (2).

(4) God did not create evil. Evil is a privation (a falling away from good) not a thing that exists in itself.

(5) God is not the immediate responsible author of sin. Satan and humans are real responsible moral agents and all the blame for sin attaches to them.

(6) No one is really innocent. We all deserve hell.

(7) God uses evil for good. Without evil there could not be certain types of good: there is no making up without breaking up, no wrath or redemption without sin or loss.

(8) In the Person of Jesus Christ as a Man, God entered our world and took the full force of evil and sin. God sympathises with us in our human sin and suffering since he has been there.

(9) in (8) Jesus defeated sin and death and all their harmful consequences. He drew the sting of death. His resurrection proves his victory and guarentees it to all his people.

(10) God will judge the world with justice and every wrong will be put right.

Anything to add or change?

Do you find this intellectually and emotionally satisfying?

Do you ever have doubts?

My correspondent (who asked about omnipotence) said he finds the problem of evil / innocent suffering pretty insummountable and asked if I ever had doubts.

He's my quick reply:

Yes. I think the problem of evil is a biggy.

On doubts, I must say I'm normally pretty convinced. I think I could show you really good evidence and satisfying arguments. My expererince and that of millions of others down through time and around the world backs up the Bible. And when I read what the Bible says about Jesus it just "tastes right": it has a kind of immediate power and I believe him, and stake my life on it.

And I guess I've been a Christian sometime and am quite well indoctrinated / programmed (praying, reading my Bible and singing hymns most days). I do sometimes have doubts. But I think I've got an ordinary robust kind of certainty: the same kind of certainty that I have that my wife loves me, though I couldn't absolutely prove it to you.

I've written "problem of evil" on a post-it note on my desk in my study and I might try and blog something about it in the next few days, though I'm not sure I could "solve" the "problem".