I was wondering about some matters pertaining to truth, specifically the truth of the Bible and existence of God. I’ve grown up in Arkansas in the bible belt my entire life and of course of been surrounded by churches, christianity, and an unquestioning world view that God exists and the bible is the truth.
Recently, I’ve started questioning reality and my perception of the world. I know it is dangerous to get caught up in humanly philosophies and crap like that, but a lot of things don’t make sense to me about God. I’m trying to look at truth from all perspectives so I’ve been reading this book called The God Delusion. I know you might say I’m crazy and I’m going to be completely disillusioned by some stupid science and philosophy, but some of what it says doesn’t seem to be completely crazy. Right now, specifically I’m struggling with contradictions that the Bible seems to present. I’m wondering whether all the Gospels are in agreement as to the birth of Jesus. I’m sure there are several other contradictions that atheists would point out also. If you could address some of those and give me another viewpoint.
Thanks for your letter. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to think carefully about what you believe and why. There’s also nothing wrong with reading Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion—although many serious scholars don’t think very highly of his arguments or condescending attitude. For a good critique of Dawkins’ book, you may want to also read The Dawkins Delusion by Alister E. McGrath. It would offer an informed rebuttal of many of Dawkins’ claims by a world-class scholar with doctoral degrees in both molecular biology and theology.
I deal with alleged contradictions in the infancy narratives in my article on the virgin birth here on the Probe Web site. A more in-depth article can be found here: www.tektonics.org/af/birthnarr.php.
Two other sites you should be familiar with are Bible.org and ReasonableFaith.org. The latter site is that of Christian philosopher/theologian William Lane Craig. I would highly recommend his articles on the existence of God, the historicity of Jesus, etc. Both sites have lots of great resources.
Wishing you all the best in your studies!
Michael Gleghorn
© 2007 Probe Ministries