What if I Have Doubts? (continued)

Intellectual, Skeptical, and Antagonistic Arguments

Rather than prove anything, Bertrand Russell's five reasons showed how weak he was in identifying conflicts that were apparent paradoxes in his day. He immediately wrote them off as impossibilities rather than investigating them more deeply.

People have found solutions to many supposed paradoxes. It can take a long time to discover a solution. The fact that a paradox exists and has not yet been resolved, proves nothing about the issues, and therefore rejection of it disproves nothing.

The link below should lead to a story about how to resolve a paradox that Bertrand Russell felt was unresolvable. It shared aspects of the first cause argument. Take a look at: Resolving_Paradoxes under the section "Existence Paradoxes".

Russell was a master at using many tactics that seemed like good arguments but were not. For example he would make a statement people already accepted as true (whether it was or not). Then he would follow it with a statement such as “if that is true, then you must accept that . . .” then he would state an untruth that did not flow well logically from the first statement.

He used a version of this when he said: "If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause." However, he was not trying to prove that God had a cause, as you might think if you isolated that statement. Rather his point was that there could be no such thing as an eternal, omnipotent God the way the Bible presents Him, because the concept would present an unsolved paradox to those who believed everything must have a cause.

Elsewhere, he admitted that some real things "emerge from chance", thereby contradicting himself. In saying this, he revealed that he didn't really believe every thing has a first cause. Therefore, by default it could be inferred that by Russell's inadvertant admission, God need not have a first cause.

Later as I was listening to the speech, I noticed I was hearing many rapid-fire scathing negative opinions. Russell did not give people time to separate logic from unsupported criticisms. This tactic is a form of the Fallacy of Many Questions in the field of logic. Russell included several other fallacies, such as: Abusive Fallacies, and Relevance Fallacies.

Most of the criticism was toward people, not God. Few people today would consider it above-board to create his various logic puzzles around presuppositions, false assumptions, and flimsy arguments.

Russell was an atheist. Many of my points in this section on doubt show how many people give the reason for not believing in Jesus, is due to someone other than Jesus that they don't like.

Russell's belittlement of the morality of Jesus seen in the New Testament was imperceptive, twisted, and judgmental. It indicated poor interpretive skills for biblical accounts and was caustically presumptuous.

He twisted Jesus' words, took them out of context, and had an overall poor understanding of the Bible. I felt sorry for him in his apparent vindictive bitterness toward God and Christians.

Some intellectual arguments against Jesus are predicated on assuming that the existence of God has been disproven. For example, they ask "How can there be a Son of God if there is no God?".

This kind of logic is so full of holes that the simplest of thinkers could deflate it. The answer is that the existence of God has not been disproven, nor can it ever be. Therefore, the basis of the argument is nonexistent. It is a fallacy of begging the question.

Other arguments against Jesus are based on the vast amount of time that has passed since He walked the earth. Somehow, the assumption is that with the passing of time, historical accounts become less trustworthy. This concept is not without merit when it comes to human revisionist history. But to revise history correctly, one must possess sound documentation contradicting the popular version, thereby superceding it.

No sound documentation exists negating the historicity of Jesus as the Bible depicts Him. Scholarly attempts to question the historical existence of Jesus exhibit anti-Christ bias for which no sound case can be made. The "scholars" and "experts" negate their own arguments with their skeptical biases.

There is a huge amount of archeological evidence to support the historical trustworthiness of the Bible and of Christian history.

Support has been mounting each decade with new digs and artifacts uncovered. The evidence of historical integrity for the chain of manuscripts of the New Testament is compelling as scholars trace it through the ages. The same is true of the Old Testament and the Dead Sea scrolls.

Jesus is the most prominent figure in all of history. More exploration has been done to document His historical and literary authenticity than for any other person. The argument based on assuming that length of time in the past obscures historicity could not possibly be supported when it comes to Jesus.

I think there will never be an end to people who picture themselves as clever, trying to argue against the existence of God and the deity of Christ. The best they can hope for is to present something that stumps us. To stump a person, or even a society, is not valid evidence or proof of anything.

To think you have won an argument by stumping someone is like pulling their pants down, thinking they will never be able to pull them back up.

Please also allow me to offer a suggestion to consider about the concept of proving something to be true or a fact. When someone says a fact has been proven, it usually means the person has been convinced by means acceptable to that person.

Being convinced does not necessarily indicate truth, fact, or knowing. Nevertheless, our society encourage us to hold a concept to be factual if a large number and wide variety of evidences point to it.

I am not critical of this practice, and at the same time, I want to point out it is not an absolute measuring stick. It is indeed possible to know, prove, or correctly find something factual. My objective is to sharpen, not dullen the ability of readers to know, prove, and discover fact that they can feel certain about.