Home | New Evidence for God, Christ, and the Catholic Church |
I have found many new lines of evidence to support the faith. These are my ideas, the ideas of an intelligent layman, but a layman none the less. You can find the more tradional apologetics at This Rock or Envoy Magazines sites. These are my original "proofs", which you are encouraged to attack and debunk. This is your chance to play Amazing Randi, or simply be a skeptical inquirer. Professors, experts, and many web surfers have looked at them and some have been impressed.
Miracles?My most popular page is in the area of Biblical typology. Old Testament figures often foreshadow New Testament figures. For example, Judah suggested selling Joseph into slavery, Judas sold Jesus to the temple priests. I believe this typology provides powerful evidence for the truth of the Christian faith, or at least a good reason to take Christianity seriously and search further while praying harder, but do not take my word for it, check it out. This may provide evidence for skeptics who want to see something for themselves, not just take someone's word that a miracle happened.Here are comments and reactions to the miracle of the names, some from professors (who were impressed), some from editors (who were not impressed), also graduate students, ordinary people, and you the web surfing public. Even if you are not that interested in my argument, you might find it interesting how various people and institutions react to claims of the miraculous. Contrary to their claims, the non-believers do not devote much time to debunking miraculous claims. Here is a rather different attempt to provide evidence for God. I argue that it is a law of nature that no centrally organized religion can long hold the allegance of the majority of even two independent states because the political authorities will not tolerate it. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church holds the allegance of the majority of not two but dozens of countries for centuries on end. So the Catholic Church is supernatural. Reconciling the Nativity Stories and Genealogies of Matthew and LukeMatthew is writing to Christians who converted from Judaism, while Luke was writing to a Roman offical. Both carefully select what to say and leave out given their audience. Many people see these differences as contridictions. I have written web pages to reconcile the two nativity stories and the genealogies.Science and ReligionI am starting a new section of the web site on science and religion that has some relevance to the miracles pages. This is particularly true of this page on the complimentary relationship between science and miracles. You could not recognize that a miracle is a miracle without scientific knowledge. Miracles are to science as ink is to paper.I also have an essay on methodological materialism. I argue that methodological materialism can be a useful neutral ground on which scientists with many different metaphysical commitments can work together. Religious people should not be offended by the special role of materialism in science because part of the reason we conduct science as if we are atheists is because it is so irrational to be an atheist. Education and ReligionEducated people are less likely to say they believe, and less likely to say that religion is important to their lives, but more likely to say they attended religious services in the last seven days. If we measure words the educated are more religious, but if we measure action they are at least a little more religious. For a more extensive discussion of the relationship between education and religion, click.Other Religious StatisticsAtheists frequently see their views as the wave of the future, but in the last few decades the percentage of the world's population that is religious has been expanding, but what does the future hold. I have essays on the future of atheism, Islam, and Christianity. My second most popular page is a summary of world religious statistics.I also have a page on what if anything religious statistics mean to the person searching for metaphysical truth. Literature and ReligionThe Catholic Church has long been proud of its literary converts. Here is a list. True, it does not prove the Catholic Church is the true Church, but it does show that it is a live intellectural option. It should not be religated to the same category as tribal religions just yet.It might be noted that scientists specialize. As the standard joke in academia goes, the objective is to know more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing. Of course religion is almost always outside of their narrow area of specialization. Writers are more likely to be generalists. My Conversion StoryThe following links are to pages on my conversion that have apologetic value without being miracles in the same sense as the above.If the essay on Old and New Testament names appeals to you, you might also like this one on number theory and the number of the beast, 666. Like the names essay this impressed several professors and other experts, but it impressed them more on the level of mathametics than religion. There was talk that it might be included in an academic book on number theory, but appears that it was just talk. This short essay on my conversion to the Catholic Church through Bible study was published in Catholic Digest, probably the most read Catholic periodical in the English language. The essay recounts how I studied the New Testament line by line comparing Evangelical Christianity and the Catholic Church. Work in ProgressA work in progressYou can leave one or more notes in my guest book. Do not write much beyond the little box they give you, they will simply cut off the last part or your message, just put a second and as many messages as you need in the guest book. If you leave an e-mail I will usually contact you.
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