Christianity FAQ Page

Here are the links to the Christianity Q&A series I'm doing.

In regular blog posts, I tend to ramble on and on. For sake of being clear and concise, I am limiting my answers to 250 words.

I will add links as I make more posts. They all should be clickable.

Intro to Christianity Q&A

1) Why should I be a Christian if so many Christians have done evil throughout history?

2) Doesn't the theory of evolution prove that Christians are wrong?

3) Why should I believe the Bible when it is full of silly and impossible stories?

4)  Isn't it crazy to think Jesus really rose from the dead?

5)  Isn't it unfair to be born into a sinful and painful world without our consent?

6)  If there are so many denominations, what is true Christianity?

7) What Do Christians Mean When They Say "Jesus died for my sins?"

8) Why should I believe the Bible (especially the four gospels) if they are full of contradictions?

9) Does the resurrection of Jesus violate the scientific laws of nature? 

10) Is there any compelling reason to worship Jesus as God? 

11)  Why does a good and all powerful God allow suffering?

FAQ #4: Isn't it crazy to think Jesus really rose from the dead?

Question: Isn't it crazy to think Jesus really rose from the dead?

Answer:

1. The resurrection of Jesus arguably has better historical support than the assassination of Julius Caesar. There are about 4 primary sources for Caesar's assassination, whereas the resurrection has 5-6 primary sources. The sources for Julius Caesar's death were all written over 100 years after the assassination happened. The sources for Jesus' resurrection were all written within 70 years after it happened, sometimes even within 5 years. 
2. The facts normally used to support the resurrection of Jesus are accepted by >90% of scholars writing on the subject. This statistic is based on a real survey of all the publications written by Phd's about Jesus. 
3. If a person rejects the resurrection itself, but accepts all of the historically sound facts surrounding his death (i.e the appearances after his death, the burial, the crucifixion, etc.) they will be left with an unsolvable historical puzzle with many unexplained "loose ends."
4. Alternative theories like "the disciples stole the body" or "the disciples hallucinated the resurrected Jesus" make very unbelievable explanations in real life. For example, no one would tell a police officer that they simply "hallucinated" drugs in your car. 
5. Some argue that the resurrection theory itself an unbelievable explanation. It would be, but only if Christians claimed Jesus rose from the dead through natural causes alone. Christians claim God raised Jesus, not that he just naturally rose on his own. On the contrary, skeptics of the resurrection postulate impossible events (i.e. multiple group hallucination) as by natural causes only. 

(Back to Christian Evidence Frequently Asked Questions Page)

FAQ #3: Why should I believe the Bible when it is full of silly and impossible stories?

Question: Why should I believe the Bible when it is full of silly and impossible stories?

Answer: 

1. As I said in a previous post, Christianity has three core beliefs 1) Jesus is the Messiah 2) Jesus died to forgive you 3) Jesus rose from the dead. Even if none of the Old Testament stories were true, it wouldn't make any of those 3 beliefs untrue. Furthermore, the Bible is not really one book. It is an anthology of 66 books written over a 2500 year time span. The truth of each book has to be independently examined. 
2. This objection depends which stories one considers to be impossible and silly. The ones that sound impossible and silly aren't as bad as they sound. Some examples below:
3. Adam and Eve: It makes complete sense that if God existed, he would give humans a choice to trust, love and obey him, or disobey and go their own way. To test our loyalty, God could have made one arbitrary rule in an otherwise pleasant environment. This could have just as easily been a tree in a garden with fruit that God didn't want people to eat.
4. Noah's Ark: It is not crazy to think that someone made a boat and took his family aboard when a big flood came. It is not even crazy to think that the flood killed everyone in the time period. Back then, everyone lived in the Middle East and hadn't migrated to other parts of the world yet. Therefore, the flood wouldn't have to be worldwide in order to kill everyone. If it didn't flood everywhere, we might not even notice its geological effects. This doesn't prove its a true story, but it does show that its not completely crazy idea. 
5. The miracles of Jesus: this will be covered in a future post in more detail. For now, I will say that one miracle (the resurrection) has more and earlier historical sources than some commonly accepted facts of ancient history. 

(Back to Christian Evidence Frequently Asked Questions Page)

FAQ #2: Doesn't the theory of evolution prove that Christians are wrong?

Question: Doesn't the theory of evolution prove that Christians are wrong?

Answer:

1. The core beliefs of Christianity are that the Messiah Jesus died to forgive your sins and then resurrected from the dead. If evolution turns out to be true, then it wouldn't make any of those core beliefs untrue. The statement "evolution is true, therefore Jesus didn't rise from the dead" does not follow.
2. The Bible is not necessarily opposed to evolution. Genesis 1-2 state that God created the world in six days. The sequence of creation events in the story is semi-consistent with an evolutionary narrative.  (i.e sea animals were made before land animals and humans). However, for theological reasons found in those two chapters, the length of each of these "days" is unclear. In addition to this, the Bible doesn't say how God created the world, only that he did it. This means that Genesis 1-2 do not explicitly contradict the theory of evolution. 
3. The above does not mean a person should automatically believe in evolution. They should make their decision based on what they think is actually true. They should not base their decision on whether or not some people or group of people will think they are silly. Truth is vastly more important than social acceptance. 

(Back to Christian Evidence Frequently Asked Questions Page)

FAQ #1: Why should I be a Christian if so many Christians have done evil throughout history?

Question: Why should I be a Christian if so many Christians have done evil throughout history?

Answer: 

1. It doesn't make sense to say that "Some Christians have killed people before, therefore Jesus is not God." It's like saying that "Some Democrats have killed people before, therefore Obama is not President." Facts stay true, no matter how badly people may behave. 
2. Those Christians who have acted evil in history are acting contrary to the teachings of Jesus. This means that Christians who have acted evil before are not behaving consistently with Christianity. Therefore, Christianity itself is not at fault for these evils.
3. Of all the religions in the world, Christianity thinks humans are the most evil. Therefore, the fact that some Christians have been cruel in the past confirms the Christian idea that humans are naturally evil and in need of rescue.
4. If you add up all the numbers, people in other belief systems have killed a lot more people than Christians have (especially atheists of the communist type, like Mao and Stalin). If the truth of a belief was determined by how nice its followers were, Christianity would win regardless. 

(Back to Christian Evidence Frequently Asked Questions Page)

Q&A about Christianity

In an effort to focus on being shorter and more concise, I am making a Q&A series on questions about Christianity. I will I realize there are gazillions of Christian apologetics Q&A websites. However, I am realizing that being short and to the point is much better at communicating than making super long blog posts that try to anticipate every possible objection. In reality, FAQ's give people a chance to look up more information if they do not find an answer satisfactory. I will stay under 250 words per question.

As I said, lots of Christian apologetics Q&A sites exist. But these Q&A's are often in article form. These FAQ's are going to be in bullet form. I am bad at being concise, but I will try.

Also, feel free to ask a question in the comments section. It would make sense for me to focus on the most popular questions, instead of researching questions I "think" people are most concerned with.

I anticipate each Q&A to be a short blog post each. At the end of the post, I will consolidate all of the answers on one page with links to each. This may evolve over time but this is the plan for the time being. 

A thought I had today....

I hope to give more thought out posts in the future but this thought occurred to me today.

I have noticed that when people like to talk about what Jesus "really" said and did sometimes the liberal scholars and theologians really like to be pretty ruthless with what sayings are actually authentic sayings of Jesus. They say that many of them aren't actually authentic sayings of Jesus.

However, what's interesting is some liberal theologians seem to lose interest in what sayings are authentic or not when they are trying to prove the point that Jesus is pro-X (where X is some political idea). Everyone seems to think that every saying of Jesus is pretty much fair game when making their point.

Perhaps this is just my imagination but it seems people are pretty much happy to say its all authentic when trying to prove a political point that Jesus is for a certain idea. However, when asked about apologetics issues they seem to go back to their previous skepticism.

Not saying I have actually witnessed someone doing this but this is the vibe I get....