Yeah, I'm making an effort to avoid being preachy, but since God does play a genuine role in the story, people might as well hear about it (otherwise I'd be hiding crucial information to understand my decisions!)
I'm not going to engage in the eternal atheists vs believers debate, but I'm trusting here that my experience is based upon reality (i.e. I've found convincing evidence). I don't expect what convinces me will convince everyone else, but you and I will die some day and then we'll know (or if it turns out we no longer exist, at least we won't care :P)
Using a word like "evidence" freely without rigour is a big part of the problem we are in relating to misinformation and mistrust in institutions.
I ask without expectations that you refrain from using such words when talking about opinions, experiences or beliefs, so that we may protect our languages from further erosion.
Your comment left me thinking, so I went to double-check the meaning of the word evidence in a dictionary (after all, I'm not a native English speaker). I found this one as the first entry: "the facts, signs or objects that make you believe that something is true" (source: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...). This is exactly the sense in which I'm using the word. What do you mean by saying it erodes language? Or do you use the word evidence in another sense than this dictionary?
PS: not meaning to start a flamewar or engage in endless discussion, I just want to understand your point ;)
Just because you don’t find a particular set of evidence convincing doesn’t mean it fails to meet the criteria for evidence.
Many an atheist has found God after honestly and earnestly investigating the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. However, most people don’t have the emotional fortitude to actually investigate the facts with rigor and end up hiding behind the “implausibility” of the resurrection and/or just end up perpetuating pop-atheism with unfounded critiques of the Bible because they’ve never done a proper study of their own.
If you’ve got specific critiques, feel free to field those, but otherwise your comment reads as a rather arrogant write-off of one of the oldest, and most logically-consistent systems of human belief.
Curious, have you engaged in a similar depth of study of all the world religions? Just wondering if maybe the others also have adherents who believe that the only thing keeping many others such as yourself from finding them is their own lack of emotional fortitude?
I have not engaged in a similar depth of study of other world religions.
If you prove a correct mathematical formula, you need not spend time figuring out every other incorrect way to solve the problem.
Likewise, once you find the truth it doesn’t require falsifying every other claim to truth for it to remain true. Jesus was the only person whose words and deeds claim deity and with which there is zero evidence to contradict his claims, unlike the likes of Mohammad, Buddha, and countless other claims of godhood—Jesus of Nazareth’s are the only ones that hold up under scrutiny.
Other religions can believe they’ve got a claim to truth if they wish, but truth doesn’t waver due to one’s personal preferences or convictions.
When I was little, my mother tried to teach me how to tie my shoelaces, but she
had shown me a method I did not understand and did not like, so I invented my
own way. I was proud of it for 20 years or so. A friend I trusted more than
anyone, tried to tell me in a kind way, that many people tie their shoelaces in
a bad knot. When one knows, it's easy to see even from a glance and such a
knots gets untied, but I wouldn't listen. Thought of not knowing how to tie
shoelaces seemed absurd.
I was the only one I know that would stop randomly to re-tie his shoelaces,
occasionally with people piling up behind me. It may be considered
incontrovertible evidence in truth, yet at the time, it didn't bare much
relevance to me. It was obvious that bad shoelaces were always at fault, or I
didn't apply enough force. In my mind it would be too humiliating to even
consider bad technique a possibility.
It wasn't until I had the grace to look at a knot-tying website alone, try it,
accept I was tying a granny knot, learn how to tie a standard knot, in a
recommended fast way, then proceed to one-up it in my own point of view. I
didn't get much humbler, but at 23 years old, at least I knew how to tie my
shoelaces and they didn't get untied anymore.
If it wasn't for the love of the one who had grace and has given up his grace
so we would have his grace, acting through those who follow him, Himself and
His Spirit, I would not have seen and felt the loving self-sacrifice, which
paled my self-righteousness in an humbling and emotionally painful experience
of the pain I've caused, setting me off in a search to do better, so that after
nearly a decade I would once and then many times again in humility accept what
I cannot deny, that Lord is better than anything I could imagine and Jesus
Christ is our (our = all those who accept Him) Lord and Savior.
This is enough evidence (for me, for others it's just word of mouth) to love
and worship Jesus. I've seen much more, and for that I accept what is written.
It seems I may understand and see more than many, yet still, easily and often,
I forget what I know, ignore and blank my mind, to doubt and void the
uncomfortable. Only hours ago I've yet again given in to what I know to be
bad, to lull and dull the mind, close my eyes and ears so I would not see what
I had a longing to avoid.
I write this as an admission and hoping it will be useful to someone.
To perhaps understand, that one cannot just see and one cannot just be
explained, if it affects him dearly and he does not wish to know.
Speaking of others, but showing the principle:
“Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
...<<specific judgement of specific people>>...
Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’...”
If you had evidence of a god playing a role in anything you could start your own religion :-)