Hangups

[Noscentia]

Having read a few threads around this section of the boards, I suddenly find my feelings and struggle to be terribly unoriginal, lol. But maybe that's not a bad thing, I'm sure you've heard this before and hopefully have some canned answers tested and ready. I was raised in a fairly loosely catholic household. Once I'd finished my confirmation, it was pretty much only church on Christmas and then only church when my more traditional religious grandparents were in town. I don't know that I ever put much thought into what I believed or didn't believe. I had a difficult childhood in certain respects and couldn't understand why God would let bad things happen to me (as all kids probably do). So it was easy to give up any faith or belief I had when I started exploring atheism.

I've always been steeped in logos, it's how I think and how I've always been best persuaded, so I swallowed naturalism, empiricism, all of it and it formed and shaped my thinking through most of my childhood and young adult life. I'm still fairly young, but things have changed for me and I've started to feel that urge to find something more. This is a very recent development and its taking a lot for me to take even rudimentary baby steps into believing again. I've always understood that all logic and reason has a basis in faith, that I must belief there is an objective reality and that my human senses and reason are capable of comprehending that reality in a meaningful way. I can accept that because it's useful and anything less collapses into sloppy, useless solipsism.

From there, I've accepted that the Christian God, in His own sense, is a testable hypothesis, but only on an individual level. If God is there, outside detection by any invention or syllogism, then the only way to find Him and meet Him, is to seek Him in earnest. I find myself wanting that as much to know if its true as I do just because it feels right to me in some part of myself I haven't accessed in a long time. I am not an emotional person by nature, I don't think in terms of my feelings, I've never followed them as an authority on a proper course of action. It just isn't instinctive to me. For most of my life I've just done whatever seemed most logical or followed the path of least resistance, or whichever thing was most selfish or selfishly rewarding. I'm in uncharted territory looking for God the way He asks to be sought.

I want to, but I can't shake the cold logic that makes it impossible to trust Him. I trust because I have a logical reason to trust. I can trust a person because I know what a person is, what a person is capable of. A person has a nature which is predictable, which draws from experiences and from a pool of emotions and motivations which I can comprehend and use to make predictions with. I can't do something like that for a being which exists entirely outside of every tool I have in my human arsenal. I can't predict God's motivations, I can't hold Him up against other examples of encounters I've had with similar beings or with my own experiences. He exists outside of and is not bound by any system I have with which to determine trustworthiness. I can't use logic on the being that created the logic I'm using.

It's like trying to use computer commands to kill a programmer. It's just silly to even think about. The things I know about God come entirely from God Himself in the form of the Bible. He isn't just the primary source of information about His ways and means, he's the ONLY source. And therein lies the problem I've been having the hardest time breaching. How or why do I trust anything God says about Himself? A being with limitless knowledge and power is capable of limitless deception. I can't say to myself that His actions or His words reflect His true nature, because all that information is given to me by Him. Even if I could necessarily get a hold of His 'true' nature, there's no reason to believe I'd have any way of comprehending it since it likely exists outside my understanding anyhow. I'm left completely in the dark when it comes to God, but I'm supposed to trust Him anyway.

I don't know what to do with that. Is this just the basis of faith? Is it just something I have to shut off my critical thinking for and dive into, and hope that whatever truth I glean is honest and not just God deceiving me? I appreciate any and all help someone can give me.

 

[wayfaring man]

Sounds like you're jumping ahead too much out of anxiety of what may come next ?

Suggest taking one or two things at a time - the one(s) which appear most certain, and by keeping them in mind, allow for their influence to work within...then once those are established, one or two other things will become clearer than they were before...if we keep repeating this process we will find our faith is securely built up. And we can be at peace, even over the things which we do not yet understand completely - for we know that through continued, steady progress - all will be made known to us ! This process is designed to keep us from being overwhelmed, and to enable us to learn patience, so that our trust is not easily shaken, by fears of the unknown.

The only logical explanation for creation is a Creator. It's ludicrous to imagine everything 'just happened on it's own'.

So God Is.

But our sin has separated us from being close to God.

Enter The Saviour !

Now we have access to knowing God !

Pray for the gift of The Holy Spirit, and the rest is His Story.

May The Lord Be Pleased to Bless!

 

[nChrist]

God has revealed Himself in His Word - the Holy Bible. God's handiwork is all around you, including yourself, so He obviously exists. The answers you seek are very simple, but you have to approach them with an open mind and heart. Start with the following Scripture that speaks volumes:

Romans 10:17 KJV So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

 

[Noscentia]

Sounds like you're jumping ahead too much out of anxiety of what may come next ?

Suggest taking one or two things at a time - the one(s) which appear most certain, and by keeping them in mind, allow for their influence to work within...then once those are established, one or two other things will become clearer than they were before...if we keep repeating this process we will find our faith is securely built up. And we can be at peace, even over the things which we do not yet understand completely - for we know that through continued, steady progress - all will be made known to us ! This process is designed to keep us from being overwhelmed, and to enable us to learn patience, so that our trust is not easily shaken, by fears of the unknown.

The only logical explanation for creation is a Creator. It's ludicrous to imagine everything 'just happened on it's own'.

So God Is.

But our sin has separated us from being close to God.

Enter The Saviour !

Now we have access to knowing God !

Pray for the gift of The Holy Spirit, and the rest is His Story.

May The Lord Be Pleased to Bless!

This approach makes some sense to me. Baby steps is what I'm trying to accomplish. And from what I understand, you're saying I need to basically ween myself onto relying on God as the answer for increasingly larger facets of my life as it becomes clearer and more comfortable. I suppose something like that is how I've gotten this far, but thinking about it in the larger sense is definitely a scary proposition.

Still, it doesn't really address my core concern about wondering how I can come to trust a being who is at His core unknowable and is so powerful and intelligent that I can never hope to have a bead on its true nature. Unless you're saying that this doubt will simply fade away if I follow the aforementioned process? I just find it frightening to rely on answers without a foundation built upon my own understanding and experiences, but instead on things revealed to me by something I can never fully comprehend or have a leg-up on. I've just never done anything like that before.

God has revealed Himself in His Word - the Holy Bible. God's handiwork is all around you, including yourself, so He obviously exists. The answers you seek are very simple, but you have to approach them with an open mind and heart. Start with the following Scripture that speaks volumes:

Romans 10:17 KJV So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

I'm attempting to do exactly this, I'm approaching all of this with the presupposition that God exists and that the Bible is His inspired word. I guess I would say I'm eager to believe in a way. However, where I find myself now is thinking that if God was the one from which the Bible derives its knowledge about God, how can I trust it? If God is all powerful and all knowing, what hope do we have as mere humans to see through any lies or attempts to mislead us He might make? We certainly wouldn't have any hope of conceiving of His motivation(s) or nature. It would be like ants attempting to gain the upper hand on humanity, we don't even have the necessary faculties to even comprehend the nature or meaning of His existence.

All these roads just lead me back to a place of apathy, where I basically was before I started searching for God. That even if there really are answers out there, whether they be entirely natural or supernatural, I'll likely either die before they're found, or if they do exist I, being only human, am probably too small to even know what I'd be looking at.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Having read a few threads around this section of the boards, I suddenly find my feelings and struggle to be terribly unoriginal, lol. But maybe that's not a bad thing, I'm sure you've heard this before and hopefully have some canned answers tested and ready. I was raised in a fairly loosely catholic household. Once I'd finished my confirmation, it was pretty much only church on Christmas and then only church when my more traditional religious grandparents were in town. I don't know that I ever put much thought into what I believed or didn't believe. I had a difficult childhood in certain respects and couldn't understand why God would let bad things happen to me (as all kids probably do). So it was easy to give up any faith or belief I had when I started exploring atheism.

I've always been steeped in logos, it's how I think and how I've always been best persuaded, so I swallowed naturalism, empiricism, all of it and it formed and shaped my thinking through most of my childhood and young adult life. I'm still fairly young, but things have changed for me and I've started to feel that urge to find something more. This is a very recent development and its taking a lot for me to take even rudimentary baby steps into believing again. I've always understood that all logic and reason has a basis in faith, that I must belief there is an objective reality and that my human senses and reason are capable of comprehending that reality in a meaningful way. I can accept that because it's useful and anything less collapses into sloppy, useless solipsism.

From there, I've accepted that the Christian God, in His own sense, is a testable hypothesis, but only on an individual level. If God is there, outside detection by any invention or syllogism, then the only way to find Him and meet Him, is to seek Him in earnest. I find myself wanting that as much to know if its true as I do just because it feels right to me in some part of myself I haven't accessed in a long time. I am not an emotional person by nature, I don't think in terms of my feelings, I've never followed them as an authority on a proper course of action. It just isn't instinctive to me. For most of my life I've just done whatever seemed most logical or followed the path of least resistance, or whichever thing was most selfish or selfishly rewarding. I'm in uncharted territory looking for God the way He asks to be sought.

I want to, but I can't shake the cold logic that makes it impossible to trust Him. I trust because I have a logical reason to trust. I can trust a person because I know what a person is, what a person is capable of. A person has a nature which is predictable, which draws from experiences and from a pool of emotions and motivations which I can comprehend and use to make predictions with. I can't do something like that for a being which exists entirely outside of every tool I have in my human arsenal. I can't predict God's motivations, I can't hold Him up against other examples of encounters I've had with similar beings or with my own experiences. He exists outside of and is not bound by any system I have with which to determine trustworthiness. I can't use logic on the being that created the logic I'm using.

It's like trying to use computer commands to kill a programmer. It's just silly to even think about. The things I know about God come entirely from God Himself in the form of the Bible. He isn't just the primary source of information about His ways and means, he's the ONLY source. And therein lies the problem I've been having the hardest time breaching. How or why do I trust anything God says about Himself? A being with limitless knowledge and power is capable of limitless deception. I can't say to myself that His actions or His words reflect His true nature, because all that information is given to me by Him. Even if I could necessarily get a hold of His 'true' nature, there's no reason to believe I'd have any way of comprehending it since it likely exists outside my understanding anyhow. I'm left completely in the dark when it comes to God, but I'm supposed to trust Him anyway.

I don't know what to do with that. Is this just the basis of faith? Is it just something I have to shut off my critical thinking for and dive into, and hope that whatever truth I glean is honest and not just God deceiving me? I appreciate any and all help someone can give me.

Hi Noscientia,

Obviously to me, you're a fellow traveler whose mind I can appreciate since I too am a person more beholden to the benefits of analysis and critical thinking. However, I find it a bit odd that you're concerned about any deception which God may have in store for you. You sound like Descartes, but with a larger dose of anxiety about not gaining solid assurance that the powers that be, semantics aside, will do you right in the end.

You might want to instead begin with Jesus as your focal point rather than some general idea God (however Western your idea may or may not be). If Jesus existed, and if He did the things He did for the reasons He claimed He did, do you think He'd go through all the pain of life and an excruciating death on a wooden stick just so He could get "one over on you"? Personally, I kind of find it hard to believe, and I don't think Jesus would have bothered with all of that apparent nonsense for any other reasons than the ones He is reported to have given, Noscentia.

So ... maybe just start with Jesus, as an entity of study, and build up from there, forwards and backwards, upwards and downwards (by which I mean in a historical, philosophical, and theological array), and challenge whatever pre-existing "scientia" you may think you have about God at the present moment.

Peace,
2PhiloVoid

 

[Brianlear]

I think this is all about re-configuring your perceptions of "the world."
You said you'd rather trust people, whom you say are predictable. I would enter that it is in fact people (and all things of this world) who are unpredictable, unknowable, and not anything to put your trust in.
I would submit to you, that God is in fact the one thing/person/entity that you CAN trust. The one who is everywhere all the time. The one who's hand moves every blade of grass and molecule of water. The one who put you together in a body that is, while not perfect, surprisingly good at surviving. Put you on a planet with all the things you need to survive, and also gave you the freedom to do as you wish. You may get injured physically by rocks, fire, even other people. But God has never hurt you intentionally.

Try an experiment--get a new puppy and treat it exactly the same way. Put it in a relatively safe place, give it food and water, companionship, don't intentionally hurt it. The dog will trust you until the day it dies and beyond.

 

[Noscentia]

Hi Noscientia,

Obviously to me, you're a fellow traveler whose mind I can appreciate since I too am a person more beholden to the benefits of analysis and critical thinking. However, I find it a bit odd that you're concerned about any deception which God may have in store for you. You sound like Descartes, but with a larger dose of anxiety about not gaining solid assurance that the powers that be, semantics aside, will do you right in the end.

You might want to instead begin with Jesus as your focal point rather than some general idea God (however Western your idea may or may not be). If Jesus existed, and if He did the things He did for the reasons He claimed He did, do you think He'd go through all the pain of life and an excruciating death on a wooden stick just so He could get "one over on you"? Personally, I kind of find it hard to believe, and I don't think Jesus would have bothered with all of that apparent nonsense for any other reasons than the ones He is reported to have given, Noscentia.

So ... maybe just start with Jesus, as an entity of study, and build up from there, forwards and backwards, upwards and downwards (by which I mean in a historical, philosophical, and theological array), and challenge whatever pre-existing "scientia" you may think you have about God at the present moment.

Peace,
2PhiloVoid

I confess to not having read Descartes lol. Though it's been suggested to me for probably that same reason I think. However, I have read quite a bit of HP Lovecraft and I think that's part of where I get a sense of unease about unknowable gods beyond human understanding. Not that I imagine God the same as Azatoth, but the implications about the unknowable and imagining the perspective that a being so far above humans might have makes some sense. If I were to try and piece together what I think a being like that might be like, I would imagine something more like that. Something which was so far beyond us that it wouldn't care any more about us than you or I could about individual specks of dust. But even that is still me assigning characteristics to something which is fundamentally outside my ability to know. Maybe I am just spinning my wheels here because I've jumped too far ahead.

I guess in a way I did start with Jesus, I explored the historical evidence for Jesus somewhat, and I could see how it might be better to fully develop what there is to know about him first. I like that idea, thank you.

I think this is all about re-configuring your perceptions of "the world."
You said you'd rather trust people, whom you say are predictable. I would enter that it is in fact people (and all things of this world) who are unpredictable, unknowable, and not anything to put your trust in.
I would submit to you, that God is in fact the one thing/person/entity that you CAN trust. The one who is everywhere all the time. The one who's hand moves every blade of grass and molecule of water. The one who put you together in a body that is, while not perfect, surprisingly good at surviving. Put you on a planet with all the things you need to survive, and also gave you the freedom to do as you wish. You may get injured physically by rocks, fire, even other people. But God has never hurt you intentionally.

Try an experiment--get a new puppy and treat it exactly the same way. Put it in a relatively safe place, give it food and water, companionship, don't intentionally hurt it. The dog will trust you until the day it dies and beyond.

I understand what you mean, people are certainly not perfect or always trustworthy, but you can count on those factors to remain generally consistent to varying degrees. It's like cars. I've seen many cars in my lifetime and even though new and different models come out every year, I can still recognize a car when I see one and I can make safe assumptions about possible features it might have and how it works because I have experienced cars from a variety of perspectives. It's the same people, even moreso because I am also a person so I can empathize and comprehend the way a person thinks or feels and why that's so, but it cannot be that way with God.

There is only one God and I am not Him. I can't rely on my experience with similar beings to give me insight into His character because there are no others. I can't fall back on my own experience because my experiences and His are fundamentally alien to each other to the point where I couldn't tell you one thing with any accuracy about what it's like to be Him or how or what He thinks or what shapes those thoughts. You claim God is consistent, is constant, and permeates all things and takes a positive interest in my life, but how can a human know or understand the form, function, or mind of God?

What you know about Him comes either from His own word, which naturally carries greater weight than the word of a human (who we know is capable of and does often deal in deceit for various reasons), and whatever attributes you've likely projected onto Him. However, we can't know God's nature and therefore we can't know if He's capable of being intentionally deceitful or misleading, why He might be that way, and/or how good at it He might be. I would want to trust God, to believe Him to be omnibenevolent, but I just don't have the proper frame of reference for God with which I would normally make a value or trust judgement, so I don't really know from where to start trusting Him.

You bring up a good metaphor though, similar to what I actually thought of shortly after my last post. Though the gap isn't quite as wide, the relationship between a child and their parents is very similar and makes a naturally apt comparison to that of the relationship between man and God. Many children only grow up with one set of parents. We're not born with any natural frame of reference for what a parent is supposed to be like and we don't instinctively understand their nature and of course they know and understand far more than we do at that point. However that trust is instinctive; kids don't naturally question whether their parents have the best or worst in mind for them, they just accept this relationship as it is (provided it's a healthy one, of course).

I've never been good at acting on instinct or making decisions based on that. Some people also think I have a problem with authority so I'm sure that doesn't help either. Maybe I need to hone that instinct somehow, or learn to tap into it at least. If God is out there, I want to know Him. Maybe not always for the best reasons, but my feelings aren't entirely selfish.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Noscentia,

I confess to not having read Descartes lol. Though it's been suggested to me for probably that same reason I think.

You might find Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy fairly interesting reading, even if not completely convincing. As you might know, the germinal form of the "Matrix" dilemma is proposed in Meditations 1 and 2.

However, I have read quite a bit of HP Lovecraft and I think that's part of where I get a sense of unease about unknowable gods beyond human understanding. Not that I imagine God the same as Azatoth, but the implications about the unknowable and imagining the perspective that a being so far above humans might have makes some sense.

I can understand some of that. Although I've never read Lovecraft's chthonian novels, I was introduced to its "gods," strange as they are, back when I was a kid and I played Dungeons and Dragons.

Yeah, I'd say Jesus is quite a bit different ...

If I were to try and piece together what I think a being like that might be like, I would imagine something more like that. Something which was so far beyond us that it wouldn't care any more about us than you or I could about individual specks of dust. But even that is still me assigning characteristics to something which is fundamentally outside my ability to know. Maybe I am just spinning my wheels here because I've jumped too far ahead.

Actually, I think your concerns are legitimate on a certain level. There is quite a bit of "mysteriousness" involved with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and some of what I call the Epistemological Indices in the Bible are something to ponder, such as in the following verse which, interestingly enough, follows on the heels of God's agreement with Israel as to what will bring about either a Major Blessing or a Malignant Curse:

Deuteronomy 29:29 New International Version (NIV)
29 29 The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.
​

And if we relate the above to something Jesus said, we have an epistemological indication that is downright concerning:

Matthew 13:12 New International Version (NIV)
13 12 Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.​

With concepts like these strewn here and there in the Bible, I suppose we have some things to seriously ponder. But, to wonder if God is deceiving us seems to me to press the limits of coherence.

I guess in a way I did start with Jesus, I explored the historical evidence for Jesus somewhat, and I could see how it might be better to fully develop what there is to know about him first. I like that idea, thank you.

You're welcome.

Peace,
2PhiloVoid

 

[Noscentia]

Noscentia,

You might find Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy fairly interesting reading, even if not completely convincing. As you might know, the germinal form of the "Matrix" dilemma is proposed in Meditations 1 and 2.

I can understand some of that. Although I've never read Lovecraft's chthonian novels, I was introduced to its "gods," strange as they are, back when I was a kid and I played Dungeons and Dragons.

Yeah, I'd say Jesus is quite a bit different ...


Actually, I think your concerns are legitimate on a certain level. There is quite a bit of "mysteriousness" involved with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and some of what I call the Epistemological Indices in the Bible are something to ponder, such as in the following verse which, interestingly enough, follows on the heels of God's agreement with Israel as to what will bring about either a Major Blessing or a Malignant Curse:

Deuteronomy 29:29 New International Version (NIV)
29 29 The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.
​

And if we relate the above to something Jesus said, we have an epistemological indication that is downright concerning:

Matthew 13:12 New International Version (NIV)
13 12 Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.​

With concepts like these strewn here and there in the Bible, I suppose we have some things to seriously ponder. But, to wonder if God is deceiving us seems to me to press the limits of coherence.

You're welcome.

Peace,
2PhiloVoid

I was prepared for the only answer to be that these are things only God knows and I can never understand them and that's probably at the root of my fears. I don't indulge in things, good or bad, without full knowledge of what I'm getting myself into. I'm abundantly self-aware, especially when it comes to my own self-destructive habits, but I engage in them knowing full well what pathology of mine it's satisfying. God and Christianity are different. I feel the pull I've heard Christians talk about. I feel something when I try to connect with God and it's a good feeling, but I don't understand where any of that comes from, or anything about the being supplying it.

Maybe it's just an excess of intellectual pride and impatience. I was just hoping that if I could know enough about God that I wouldn't have to go as far outside my comfort zone to trust Him. I heard a sermon on the radio this evening that actually hit me pretty hard on this subject which I'm surprised I wasn't more self-aware of beforehand. I'm basically new to Christianity, and I guess I'm already feeling frustrated that it's so antithetical to the way I've operated up till now. I don't hate it, I'm just terrible at change, lol. Thanks again, and wish me luck, I guess.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I was prepared for the only answer to be that these are things only God knows and I can never understand them and that's probably at the root of my fears. I don't indulge in things, good or bad, without full knowledge of what I'm getting myself into. I'm abundantly self-aware, especially when it comes to my own self-destructive habits, but I engage in them knowing full well what pathology of mine it's satisfying. God and Christianity are different. I feel the pull I've heard Christians talk about. I feel something when I try to connect with God and it's a good feeling, but I don't understand where any of that comes from, or anything about the being supplying it.

Maybe it's just an excess of intellectual pride and impatience. I was just hoping that if I could know enough about God that I wouldn't have to go as far outside my comfort zone to trust Him. I heard a sermon on the radio this evening that actually hit me pretty hard on this subject which I'm surprised I wasn't more self-aware of beforehand. I'm basically new to Christianity, and I guess I'm already feeling frustrated that it's so antithetical to the way I've operated up till now. I don't hate it, I'm just terrible at change, lol. Thanks again, and wish me luck, I guess.

...if you feel like you "don't understand where any of that comes from," take some assurance in knowing that the rest of us are often puzzled in very similar ways about all of this. The good news is, even though God doesn't give us all the answers, and although life can be tough, there are some things God actually wants us to know. As Jesus said above in Matthew 13:12, "Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance..." And Jesus wasn't talking here about having more "stuff," He was talking about imparting insight and understanding to His followers regarding some of those "secret things" involving God's Will ...

Things to think about. Things to pray about.

Best wishes,
2PhiloVoid

 

[AvgJoe]

It's like trying to use computer commands to kill a programmer. It's just silly to even think about. The things I know about God come entirely from God Himself in the form of the Bible. He isn't just the primary source of information about His ways and means, he's the ONLY source. And therein lies the problem I've been having the hardest time breaching. How or why do I trust anything God says about Himself? A being with limitless knowledge and power is capable of limitless deception. I can't say to myself that His actions or His words reflect His true nature, because all that information is given to me by Him. Even if I could necessarily get a hold of His 'true' nature, there's no reason to believe I'd have any way of comprehending it since it likely exists outside my understanding anyhow. I'm left completely in the dark when it comes to God, but I'm supposed to trust Him anyway.

I don't know what to do with that. Is this just the basis of faith? Is it just something I have to shut off my critical thinking for and dive into, and hope that whatever truth I glean is honest and not just God deceiving me? I appreciate any and all help someone can give me.

That's absolutely correct, God tells us Who He is in His Word, the Bible. So, to me, the next logical question is, 'How do I know that the bible is true?'. The Bible says that God does not lie (Numbers 23:19, 1 Samuel 15:29, Hebrews 6:18), so if I knew that the Bible is true, then I would know that God is Who He says He is, within it's pages, and that I can trust Him.

There are many testaments to the validity of the Scriptures. The unity of the Scriptures is one such testament. The Bible was written over a period of 1,600 years, by 40 God chosen men, who lived on multiple continents and they all wrote about the same thing, man's sin and his need for a savior, Jesus Christ. There were no mail delivery trucks, no drop ship planes, no Federal Express, no UPS and no email, yet when all of the writings were put together they present one unified message. The Bible is truly the Word of God.

Following are many other areas that attest to the validity of the Scriptures.

An excellent ebook on the subject: http://www.apologeticspress.org/pdfs/e-books_pdf/idobi.pdf

Proof of Textual Evidence
Old Testament: The Dead Sea Scrolls and Biblical Integrity
New Testament: Manuscript evidence for superior New Testament reliability | CARM Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry
More on the Bible: The Bible | CARM Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry

Proof of People Living at the Time of Christ
Non biblical accounts of New Testament events and/or people | CARM Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry
The writings of Josephus mention many biblical people and places | CARM Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry

Proof of Archaeology
Archaeology and the Bible • ChristianAnswers.Net
Biblical Archeology
Archaeological evidence verifying biblical cities | CARM Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry

Proof of Science
Statements Consistent With Paleontology, Astronomy, Meteorology, Biology, Anthropology, Hydrology & Geology, that were made 1,000s of years before science discovered them.
Science and the Bible
Scientific Accuracies of the Bible | CARM Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry
Eternal Productions - 101 Scientific Facts and Foreknowledge

Proof of Prophecy (Messanic & dealing with nations)
Messianic Prophecies
Fulfilled Bible Prophecy Dealing With Nations
Prophecy, the Bible and Jesus | CARM Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry
http://shoreshdavidbrandon.org/pdf/I-Have-A-Friend-Whose-Jewish.pdf (pages 11 & 12 - awesome eBook)
How Do You Know The Bible Is True?

If the Bible is true, then you can trust that the God described within it's pages, is Who He says He is.

 

[Steven Wood]

Having read a few threads around this section of the boards, I suddenly find my feelings and struggle to be terribly unoriginal, lol. But maybe that's not a bad thing, I'm sure you've heard this before and hopefully have some canned answers tested and ready. I was raised in a fairly loosely catholic household. Once I'd finished my confirmation, it was pretty much only church on Christmas and then only church when my more traditional religious grandparents were in town. I don't know that I ever put much thought into what I believed or didn't believe. I had a difficult childhood in certain respects and couldn't understand why God would let bad things happen to me (as all kids probably do). So it was easy to give up any faith or belief I had when I started exploring atheism.

I've always been steeped in logos, it's how I think and how I've always been best persuaded, so I swallowed naturalism, empiricism, all of it and it formed and shaped my thinking through most of my childhood and young adult life. I'm still fairly young, but things have changed for me and I've started to feel that urge to find something more. This is a very recent development and its taking a lot for me to take even rudimentary baby steps into believing again. I've always understood that all logic and reason has a basis in faith, that I must belief there is an objective reality and that my human senses and reason are capable of comprehending that reality in a meaningful way. I can accept that because it's useful and anything less collapses into sloppy, useless solipsism.

From there, I've accepted that the Christian God, in His own sense, is a testable hypothesis, but only on an individual level. If God is there, outside detection by any invention or syllogism, then the only way to find Him and meet Him, is to seek Him in earnest. I find myself wanting that as much to know if its true as I do just because it feels right to me in some part of myself I haven't accessed in a long time. I am not an emotional person by nature, I don't think in terms of my feelings, I've never followed them as an authority on a proper course of action. It just isn't instinctive to me. For most of my life I've just done whatever seemed most logical or followed the path of least resistance, or whichever thing was most selfish or selfishly rewarding. I'm in uncharted territory looking for God the way He asks to be sought.

I want to, but I can't shake the cold logic that makes it impossible to trust Him. I trust because I have a logical reason to trust. I can trust a person because I know what a person is, what a person is capable of. A person has a nature which is predictable, which draws from experiences and from a pool of emotions and motivations which I can comprehend and use to make predictions with. I can't do something like that for a being which exists entirely outside of every tool I have in my human arsenal. I can't predict God's motivations, I can't hold Him up against other examples of encounters I've had with similar beings or with my own experiences. He exists outside of and is not bound by any system I have with which to determine trustworthiness. I can't use logic on the being that created the logic I'm using.

It's like trying to use computer commands to kill a programmer. It's just silly to even think about. The things I know about God come entirely from God Himself in the form of the Bible. He isn't just the primary source of information about His ways and means, he's the ONLY source. And therein lies the problem I've been having the hardest time breaching. How or why do I trust anything God says about Himself? A being with limitless knowledge and power is capable of limitless deception. I can't say to myself that His actions or His words reflect His true nature, because all that information is given to me by Him. Even if I could necessarily get a hold of His 'true' nature, there's no reason to believe I'd have any way of comprehending it since it likely exists outside my understanding anyhow. I'm left completely in the dark when it comes to God, but I'm supposed to trust Him anyway.

I don't know what to do with that. Is this just the basis of faith? Is it just something I have to shut off my critical thinking for and dive into, and hope that whatever truth I glean is honest and not just God deceiving me? I appreciate any and all help someone can give me.

I love the way you think, I really do. I was almost the same way at about the same age as you. How could I trust something that I've never met and I didn't really think about God deceiving limitlessly but the thought I had was that man wrote the Bible and no man is trustworthy, being subject to his own selfish gain. Also thinking that every religion has their own god saying that he's right and the others are false. That led me to fall away almost completely. Years later without even meaning to things clicked for me. You're right in knowing that man's logic can never understand God and that's a limitation but there is a thing called "divine wisdom." It's not one set equation for all people but honestly it's God's wisdom being "dumbed down" if you will to match an individual's understanding. For me, my journey started with basic science and astrophysics, then somehow led me to anthropology and as you mentioned all of man's notions being based in one sort of faith or another I found that ALL faith's and beliefs can be traced back to one event in the beginning and the explanation of those beliefs are told in the Bible. A person thinking logically will have irrefutable proof when a proper study is made. As for trusting God I went back to the time of Jesus. The ones who believed on him heard about him first then went to see him. He was there in the physical and his miracles were manifest that's where the trust came from. God knows that man has a hard time trusting what he can't see but that's where faith comes into play. We all have faith that tomorrow will happen, the sun will rise, our cars will start when we turn the key (Some aren't so sure) but with the exception of tomorrow that's all physical and the only reason we have faith in tomorrow is because there has never been a day without a tomorrow. Jesus says if you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can tell a mountain to move and it will and that's a major key. Learning from proof that God is real leads into knowing that he spoke everything into being (soundwaves). Logic dictates that if everything hinged on God's word to exist than he is incapable of telling a lie for he is the origin of truth. It's like when a king declares something is to change. It has to change because he is the authority and his word is law. If God were able to lie nothing would exist (not to mention there are SO many things the bible talks about when in our concept of early man they would have no way of knowing ex. the use of the word tree when referring to noble men. The dna of trees is very similar to man's dna and the term the apple doesn't fall far from the tree or the word swine being used for unclean men. men are pigs. The physiology of a pig is the closest of all to man). Faith starts in knowing that there's a God. It grows with the knowledge that what God says is true, every word. It leads to the logic that if hat God says is true then everything in his word, the Bible is true. By this time your logic is starting to mirror God's and you start to get a picture of God's nature, what wants and how he wants are actions and thoughts to be like. By the end your logic will be that whatever God says we can do we can do and you will see the results of it. Seeing the results of God's words are miracles like the ones people saw Jesus perform. Then after that long arduous journey you find that the little question of God's existence has matured into full blown faith because you've seen it firsthand. Sorry the response was so long. As i said I love the way you think and I could think of no way to shorten it.