How Easter Killed My Faith in Atheism

[Danno 1,228]

How Easter Killed My Faith in Atheism

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/04/16/how-easter-killed-my-faith-in-atheism/?mod=google_news_blog

Earlier this week, humorist Ricky Gervais presented his arguments for atheism and why he thought he was a better Christian than many Christians. In this follow-up essay, writer Lee Strobel offers his defense of Easter.

It was the worst news I could get as an atheist: my agnostic wife had decided to become a Christian. Two words shot through my mind. The first was an expletive; the second was “divorce.”

I thought she was going to turn into a self-righteous holy roller. But over the following months, I was intrigued by the positive changes in her character and values. Finally, I decided to take my journalism and legal training (I was legal editor of the Chicago Tribune) and systematically investigate whether there was any credibility to Christianity.

Maybe, I figured, I could extricate her from this cult.

I quickly determined that the alleged resurrection of Jesus was the key. Anyone can claim to be divine, but if Jesus backed up his claim by returning from the dead, then that was awfully good evidence he was telling the truth.

For nearly two years, I explored the minutia of the historical data on whether Easter was myth or reality. I didn’t merely accept the New Testament at face value; I was determined only to consider facts that were well-supported historically. As my investigation unfolded, my atheism began to buckle.

Was Jesus really executed? In my opinion, the evidence is so strong that even atheist historian Gerd Lüdemann said his death by crucifixion was “indisputable.”

Was Jesus’ tomb empty? Scholar William Lane Craig points out that its location was known to Christians and non-Christians alike. So if it hadn’t been empty, it would have been impossible for a movement founded on the resurrection to have exploded into existence in the same city where Jesus had been publicly executed just a few weeks before.

Besides, even Jesus’ opponents implicitly admitted the tomb was vacant by saying that his body had been stolen. But nobody had a motive for taking the body, especially the disciples. They wouldn’t have been willing to die brutal martyrs’ deaths if they knew this was all a lie.

Did anyone see Jesus alive again? I have identified at least eight ancient sources, both inside and outside the New Testament, that in my view confirm the apostles’ conviction that they encountered the resurrected Christ. Repeatedly, these sources stood strong when I tried to discredit them.

Could these encounters have been hallucinations? No way, experts told me. Hallucinations occur in individual brains, like dreams, yet, according to the Bible, Jesus appeared to groups of people on three different occasions – including 500 at once!

Was this some other sort of vision, perhaps prompted by the apostles’ grief over their leader’s execution? This wouldn’t explain the dramatic conversion of Saul, an opponent of Christians, or James, the once-skeptical half-brother of Jesus.

Neither was primed for a vision, yet each saw the risen Jesus and later died proclaiming he had appeared to him. Besides, if these were visions, the body would still have been in the tomb.

Was the resurrection simply the recasting of ancient mythology, akin to the fanciful tales of Osiris or Mithras? If you want to see a historian laugh out loud, bring up that kind of pop-culture nonsense.

One by one, my objections evaporated. I read books by skeptics, but their counter-arguments crumbled under the weight of the historical data. No wonder atheists so often come up short in scholarly debates over the resurrection.

In the end, after I had thoroughly investigated the matter, I reached an unexpected conclusion: it would actually take more faith to maintain my atheism than to become a follower of Jesus.

And that’s why I’m now celebrating my 30th Easter as a Christian. Not because of wishful thinking, the fear of death, or the need for a psychological crutch, but because of the facts.

Lee Strobel wrote “The Case for Easter: Journalist Investigates the Evidence for the Resurrection“; his first novel, “The Ambition,” releases May 17.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Some blame the Jews for killing Christ, some blame the Romans. But for myself, I still think the leprechauns were behind it.

[웃 910]

Here are some things to consider (not in any order):

1) Your God only has ears...You can talk to Him all day and night but you will never get a response (but in the Biblical era when human intelligence was absurdly low and gullibility was high He talked..hmmm...)

2) Your God ALLOWS 16,000 CHILDREN to die of hunger-related causes per day (why didn't he create more apple trees or better vegetation if He was so smart and nice)

3) Comparing the earth to an ant and the universe to the sun (1.3 million earths) would make the universe much smaller than it really is

4) Your God created mosquitos which kill an estimated 2 to 3 million per year (that was mean)

5) Your God created snakes which kill an estimated 50,000 people per year (I thought God didn't like snakes)

6) Your God created a world in which the majority are have-nots and only a few are haves....Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion - a majority of humanity - live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of 45 percent of the world's people. UNICEF

7) Your God created a world in which the majority of humans live on less than $2/day

8) Organized religion sprung up 2,000 years ago....#######? The earth is 4.5 billion years old....That's like me walking up to Donald Trump (he has more like $7 billion but lets pretend he only has 4.5 billion)....Ya, that's like me walking up to him with $2,000 and having him worship me like I have all the answers

9) Your God created the Hitler's, Stalin's, and Mao's of the world

10) Your God lights you on fire for eternity if you do not believe there is sufficient evidence of His existence

11) If you hopped on a spaceship and traveled at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second if you can imagine that) and traveled for 10 BILLION years you would still not reach the furthest known galaxy (there are an estimated 100 to 500 billion galaxies and this year scientists found that there may be up to 50 BILLION planets in our single lonely Milky Way Galaxy...that is not including stars, there are 200 to 500 billion of those things in our galaxy)

12) See above about traveling the speed of light for 10 billion years.....think of this.....Our nearest star is the sun which is 93 million miles away....that is a MERE 8 and a half MINUTES away at the SOL! Now can you comprehend in your human brain that speed at a time of 1 million years? 1 billion? 10 billion? Probably not

13) It's just silly. FAIRY TALES ARE FOR LITTLE KIDS, NOT FOR GROWN UPS!!!

Shall I continue?

Edited April 21, 2011 by Lord Infamous

[Amby 490]

Here are some things to consider (not in any order):

1) Your God only has ears...You can talk to Him all day and night but you will never get a response (but in the Biblical era when human intelligence was absurdly low and gullibility was high He talked..hmmm...)

2) Your God ALLOWS 16,000 CHILDREN to die of hunger-related causes per day (why didn't he create more apple trees or better vegetation if He was so smart and nice)

3) Comparing the earth to an ant and the universe to the sun (1.3 million earths) would make the universe much smaller than it really is

4) Your God created mosquitos which kill an estimated 2 to 3 million per year (that was mean)

5) Your God created snakes which kill an estimated 50,000 people per year (I thought God didn't like snakes)

6) Your God created a world in which the majority are have-nots and only a few are haves....Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion - a majority of humanity - live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of 45 percent of the world's people. UNICEF

7) Your God created a world in which the majority of humans live on less than $2/day

8) Organized religion sprung up 2,000 years ago....#######? The earth is 4.5 billion years old....That's like me walking up to Donald Trump (he has more like $7 billion but lets pretend he only has 4.5 billion)....Ya, that's like me walking up to him with $2,000 and having him worship me like I have all the answers

9) Your God created the Hitler's, Stalin's, and Mao's of the world

10) Your God lights you on fire for eternity if you do not believe there is sufficient evidence of His existence

11) If you hopped on a spaceship and traveled at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second if you can imagine that) and traveled for 10 BILLION years you would still not reach the furthest known galaxy (there are an estimated 100 to 500 billion galaxies and this year scientists found that there may be up to 50 BILLION planets in our single lonely Milky Way Galaxy...that is not including stars, there are 200 to 500 billion of those things in our galaxy)

12) See above about traveling the speed of light for 10 billion years.....think of this.....Our nearest star is the sun which is 93 million miles away....that is a MERE 8 and a half MINUTES away at the SOL! Now can you comprehend in your human brain that speed at a time of 1 million years? 1 billion? 10 billion? Probably not

13) It's just silly. FAIRY TALES ARE FOR LITTLE KIDS, NOT FOR GROWN UPS!!!

Shall I continue?

your reply made me lol this time. I sensed no anger!

[luckytxn 2,265]

Here are some things to consider (not in any order):

1) Your God only has ears...You can talk to Him all day and night but you will never get a response (but in the Biblical era when human intelligence was absurdly low and gullibility was high He talked..hmmm...)

2) Your God ALLOWS 16,000 CHILDREN to die of hunger-related causes per day (why didn't he create more apple trees or better vegetation if He was so smart and nice)

3) Comparing the earth to an ant and the universe to the sun (1.3 million earths) would make the universe much smaller than it really is

4) Your God created mosquitos which kill an estimated 2 to 3 million per year (that was mean)

5) Your God created snakes which kill an estimated 50,000 people per year (I thought God didn't like snakes)

6) Your God created a world in which the majority are have-nots and only a few are haves....Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion - a majority of humanity - live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of 45 percent of the world's people. UNICEF

7) Your God created a world in which the majority of humans live on less than $2/day

8) Organized religion sprung up 2,000 years ago....#######? The earth is 4.5 billion years old....That's like me walking up to Donald Trump (he has more like $7 billion but lets pretend he only has 4.5 billion)....Ya, that's like me walking up to him with $2,000 and having him worship me like I have all the answers

9) Your God created the Hitler's, Stalin's, and Mao's of the world

10) Your God lights you on fire for eternity if you do not believe there is sufficient evidence of His existence

11) If you hopped on a spaceship and traveled at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second if you can imagine that) and traveled for 10 BILLION years you would still not reach the furthest known galaxy (there are an estimated 100 to 500 billion galaxies and this year scientists found that there may be up to 50 BILLION planets in our single lonely Milky Way Galaxy...that is not including stars, there are 200 to 500 billion of those things in our galaxy)

12) See above about traveling the speed of light for 10 billion years.....think of this.....Our nearest star is the sun which is 93 million miles away....that is a MERE 8 and a half MINUTES away at the SOL! Now can you comprehend in your human brain that speed at a time of 1 million years? 1 billion? 10 billion? Probably not

13) It's just silly. FAIRY TALES ARE FOR LITTLE KIDS, NOT FOR GROWN UPS!!!

Shall I continue?

Yes. Please do.

[Samoray 165]

Here are some things to consider (not in any order):

1) Your God only has ears...You can talk to Him all day and night but you will never get a response (but in the Biblical era when human intelligence was absurdly low and gullibility was high He talked..hmmm...)

2) Your God ALLOWS 16,000 CHILDREN to die of hunger-related causes per day (why didn't he create more apple trees or better vegetation if He was so smart and nice)

3) Comparing the earth to an ant and the universe to the sun (1.3 million earths) would make the universe much smaller than it really is

4) Your God created mosquitos which kill an estimated 2 to 3 million per year (that was mean)

5) Your God created snakes which kill an estimated 50,000 people per year (I thought God didn't like snakes)

6) Your God created a world in which the majority are have-nots and only a few are haves....Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion - a majority of humanity - live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of 45 percent of the world's people. UNICEF

7) Your God created a world in which the majority of humans live on less than $2/day

8) Organized religion sprung up 2,000 years ago....#######? The earth is 4.5 billion years old....That's like me walking up to Donald Trump (he has more like $7 billion but lets pretend he only has 4.5 billion)....Ya, that's like me walking up to him with $2,000 and having him worship me like I have all the answers

9) Your God created the Hitler's, Stalin's, and Mao's of the world

10) Your God lights you on fire for eternity if you do not believe there is sufficient evidence of His existence

11) If you hopped on a spaceship and traveled at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second if you can imagine that) and traveled for 10 BILLION years you would still not reach the furthest known galaxy (there are an estimated 100 to 500 billion galaxies and this year scientists found that there may be up to 50 BILLION planets in our single lonely Milky Way Galaxy...that is not including stars, there are 200 to 500 billion of those things in our galaxy)

12) See above about traveling the speed of light for 10 billion years.....think of this.....Our nearest star is the sun which is 93 million miles away....that is a MERE 8 and a half MINUTES away at the SOL! Now can you comprehend in your human brain that speed at a time of 1 million years? 1 billion? 10 billion? Probably not

13) It's just silly. FAIRY TALES ARE FOR LITTLE KIDS, NOT FOR GROWN UPS!!!

Shall I continue?

also God created human beings that kill each other everyday

If there was no disease, no death, no evil, no hunger, we would all become angels living eternally in heaven.

[mawilson 2,133]

my agnostic wife had decided to become a Christian. Two words shot through my mind. The first was an expletive; the second was “divorce.”

This made me LOL

[웃 910]

Yes. Please do.

14) Your God allowed the world to self-desecrate in the past year due to extremely harsh natural disasters (Brazilian mudslides, Australian floods, Japanese earthquakes/tsunamis, recent tornadoes in the Southern United States).....Didn't God create weather? Why make it so psychotic and deadly and devastating to human and animal life? That is like me calling myself God and putting a large cardboard box on the ground....I call it the earth and I fill it with a bunch of pencil erasers representing groups of millions of people.....I love these erasers.....Yet every day I get the sudden urge to shake the box violently, dump bottles of water inside the box, or take a wind blower and turn it on high and leave it blowing on a certain area of the box for a couple hours

15) Your God allows 7.6 million people to die of cancer each year....Dang! Everyone knows at least someone that has cancer and it is a true killer of a disease.

16) Your God created STDs so that when you are feeling extremely horny and have amazing sex you wake up in the morning with warts on your ####/####### that will never go away.

17) Your God created incurable diseases

18) Your God did not put a cap on "anger"......Sh!t!!! I know some people that have EXPLOSIVE tempers....And I know some people that never get angry...How many people are beaten viciously or killed due to no ceiling on anger....He could have easily created this...Made us more happy or better tempered...Why not?

19) Your God completely discriminated against babies that have no choice about where they will be born....Born in Haiti: Sucks to be you!!!! Born in Zimbabwe: Good luck!! Born in the Congo: HAHA! You are born with aids....Born in Sierra Leon? Might as well kill yourself now...

20) Your God created the chemicals necessary to make Nuclear and Atomic bombs: ouch

Edited April 21, 2011 by Lord Infamous

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Here are some things to consider (not in any order):

1) Your God only has ears...You can talk to Him all day and night but you will never get a response (but in the Biblical era when human intelligence was absurdly low and gullibility was high He talked..hmmm...)

2) Your God ALLOWS 16,000 CHILDREN to die of hunger-related causes per day (why didn't he create more apple trees or better vegetation if He was so smart and nice)

3) Comparing the earth to an ant and the universe to the sun (1.3 million earths) would make the universe much smaller than it really is

4) Your God created mosquitos which kill an estimated 2 to 3 million per year (that was mean)

5) Your God created snakes which kill an estimated 50,000 people per year (I thought God didn't like snakes)

6) Your God created a world in which the majority are have-nots and only a few are haves....Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion - a majority of humanity - live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of 45 percent of the world's people. UNICEF

7) Your God created a world in which the majority of humans live on less than $2/day

8) Organized religion sprung up 2,000 years ago....#######? The earth is 4.5 billion years old....That's like me walking up to Donald Trump (he has more like $7 billion but lets pretend he only has 4.5 billion)....Ya, that's like me walking up to him with $2,000 and having him worship me like I have all the answers

9) Your God created the Hitler's, Stalin's, and Mao's of the world

10) Your God lights you on fire for eternity if you do not believe there is sufficient evidence of His existence

11) If you hopped on a spaceship and traveled at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second if you can imagine that) and traveled for 10 BILLION years you would still not reach the furthest known galaxy (there are an estimated 100 to 500 billion galaxies and this year scientists found that there may be up to 50 BILLION planets in our single lonely Milky Way Galaxy...that is not including stars, there are 200 to 500 billion of those things in our galaxy)

12) See above about traveling the speed of light for 10 billion years.....think of this.....Our nearest star is the sun which is 93 million miles away....that is a MERE 8 and a half MINUTES away at the SOL! Now can you comprehend in your human brain that speed at a time of 1 million years? 1 billion? 10 billion? Probably not

13) It's just silly. FAIRY TALES ARE FOR LITTLE KIDS, NOT FOR GROWN UPS!!!

Shall I continue?

You won't think it's so funny when you're on that rotisserie in hell roasting over the fire with the devil sticking his pitchfork in you to see if you are done.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

You won't think it's so funny when you're on that rotisserie in hell roasting over the fire with the devil sticking his pitchfork in you to see if you are done.

I saw that same episode the other night on Family Guy.

[mawilson 2,133]

You won't think it's so funny when you're on that rotisserie in hell roasting over the fire with the devil sticking his pitchfork in you to see if you are done.

Wouldn't the Devil treat you nicely if you didn't believe in God? It's a little counter-intuitive.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Wouldn't the Devil treat you nicely if you didn't believe in God? It's a little counter-intuitive.

No, he tricks you into selling your soul and then he roasts you over a fire for all of eternity. It really sucks.

[luckytxn 2,265]

14) Your God allowed the world to self-desecrate in the past year due to extremely harsh natural disasters (Brazilian mudslides, Australian floods, Japanese earthquakes/tsunamis, recent tornadoes in the Southern United States).....Didn't God create weather? Why make it so psychotic and deadly and devastating to human and animal life? That is like me calling myself God and putting a large cardboard box on the ground....I call it the earth and I fill it with a bunch of pencil erasers representing groups of millions of people.....I love these erasers.....Yet every day I get the sudden urge to shake the box violently, dump bottles of water inside the box, or take a wind blower and turn it on high and leave it blowing on a certain area of the box for a couple hours

15) Your God allows 7.6 million people to die of cancer each year....Dang! Everyone knows at least someone that has cancer and it is a true killer of a disease.

16) Your God created STDs so that when you are feeling extremely horny and have amazing sex you wake up in the morning with warts on your ####/####### that will never go away.

17) Your God created incurable diseases

18) Your God did not put a cap on "anger"......Sh!t!!! I know some people that have EXPLOSIVE tempers....And I know some people that never get angry...How many people are beaten viciously or killed due to no ceiling on anger....He could have easily created this...Made us more happy or better tempered...Why not?

19) Your God completely discriminated against babies that have no choice about where they will be born....Born in Haiti: Sucks to be you!!!! Born in Zimbabwe: Good luck!! Born in the Congo: HAHA! You are born with aids....Born in Sierra Leon? Might as well kill yourself now...

20) Your God created the chemicals necessary to make Nuclear and Atomic bombs: ouch

OUR God. One of the best things I love about God is that we are able to go through life and have choices and do what we think is best. He maybe could have created automatons that thought and did only as he pleased but he decided to allow us to go and procreate and love and care as we saw fit. Of course he loves if we come toward him on our own but he knows that many will not. The light will come in due time and at that moment he will be pleased that many who denied him will see finally his greatness.

Now I believe but expect many to not do so. I certainly will not start posts to degrade ones non beliefs. My brother is a non believer but I still love him. My sister is a very huge believer and I still love her. Now you have said that you could never get a degree that required to learn math at all so went for the easy degree plan. Math is actually easy. It is all just numbers. You have defeated yourself by simply stating that. Now you are taking the easy way out again by stating there is no God and blasting us believers AGAIN. You have defeated yourself again. My faith in God is stronger when attacked. Even though I see weakness in he spirit of non believers I still love all and want the best for us all. God helps us that helps themselves.

[웃 910]

Now you have said that you could never get a degree that required to learn math at all so went for the easy degree plan. Math is actually easy. It is all just numbers. You have defeated yourself by simply stating that. Now you are taking the easy way out again by stating there is no God and blasting us believers AGAIN. You have defeated yourself again. My faith in God is stronger when attacked. Even though I see weakness in he spirit of non believers I still love all and want the best for us all. God helps us that helps themselves.

I went up to trigonometry which I got an A in....Probably top 3 (possibly #1) in the class, not sure...What I loved about math is that you either know it or not....Once you know the subject and understand it then you will never be wrong unless you make a calculator error....If you studied for the test then guess what? You get an A.

Problem is it requires a lot of studying. Not a class you can skip...Not a class you can learn without doing the homework...Takes hours of study time and hours of homework time and review. I did not want to spend years of my youth locked up in my room doing math problems (although they are fun sometimes).

All I did here in this thread was put a simple list of very basic ideas that I believe strongly confirm my faith (or in my case lack thereof).

Let's say there is another planet with similar human life...If we send a group of missionaries over there and try to tell them there is a Creator to this universe. He loves you. He forgives you. He is kind. He sends you to hell where you feel the worst pain ever for eternity if you don't believe in him. But if you believe in him you go to the land of paradise...He has a son that walked on water. He lived in earth. He was killed but came back from the dead. He forgives peoples sins....Go to church...Listen to the pastor who accepts tens of thousands in donations per week and has a big house and fancy car. Look at this book from 2000 years ago. It is the truth. The truth will set you free. Now go my friends, thank you, and the choice is yours!

Then you leave. Guess what. That bible is going in the trash can and the aliens are gonna laugh their asses off.

Edited April 21, 2011 by Lord Infamous

[mawilson 2,133]

No, he tricks you into selling your soul and then he roasts you over a fire for all of eternity. It really sucks.

If the Devil hates (or opposes) God, wouldn't he welcome the unbelievers?