Wednesday, April 19, 2000 6:24 AM
From: Jason T. Dailey
I am aware you get a ton of emails and I am aware you have heard amost everything, but I will email you anyway. Instead of addressing specific items on your site, which I sure many people have already done, I will attempt to appeal to your train of thought rather than try and be specific. If I can convince you that the way you are going about studying the issue of God is flawed (I really don't believe I can do this with a short email) then the next step of addressing specific issues can be handeled more appropriately. Here are my very brief thoughts:
I am a Christian and I DO NOT have verifiable proof that the God that I believe in does actually exist. Christianity requires that we have faith and does not claim to be a 100% verifiable truth, despite what many Christians may claim. I do question whether 100% verifiable proof should be necessary for believing in something? I am certain that there are a number of things that you believe that you DO NOT have 100% verifiable proof of. Not to be silly, but are you 100% sure that who you believe to be your biological mother and father are truly your biological mother and father? Have you ever even questioned this? Were you there to watch your mother and father conceive? Do you remember being born out of your mother's womb? I am not suggesting that the evidence for Christianity is as verifiable as the evidence you could provide for proving who your biological mother and father are. My only point is to try and convince you that needing 100% verifiable proof for something will lead you to believing in almost nothing! There are very few things in life, and I mean very very few, that I can verify with 100% certainty. I am not a Bible scholar, in fact I am an Accountant, but I have taken the time to study the historical evidence for Christianity and do find it extremely convincing, enough to have FAITH in such a belief system. I recognize that I could be wrong, and I recognize that I have not heard and read everything. From what I have read and have been shown, I have determined that Christianity is clearly the most plausible belief of the religious and non-religious beliefs. I will NEVER be able to convince you with 100% certainty that I am correct, nor will anyone else. My only goal is to convince you to examine the evidence, trying to determine what is most PLAUSIBLE.
Later,
Jason
Houston, TX
Hi Jason,
Thanks for writing in.
As you have pointed out in your e-mail, the analogy of knowing the truth about who my parents are and knowing the truth about Christianity is a faulty one. In this day and age, we have DNA testing which can statistically prove who my parents are. There is no such test to determine the truth of Christianity, as you are aware. I cannot conceive of what such a test would look like. Can you?
I appreciate your honesty about not being 100% sure. I find it refreshing to come across a Christian who is not telling me that they KNOW the truth and I am rejecting it. I am aware that there are many like you but they seem to be the less vocal of the Christians that I have encountered. To be honest with you, if there were more Christians who take the "I'm pretty sure" route, I probably never would have made a public site debunking the Bible. Oh well.
Having read much of the history of Christianity and studying Christian origins for the time that I have, I do disagree with you regarding the belief system but I accept the difference between us as contributing to the world being the interesting place that it is.
Thanks for writing in.
Cygnus