ananda
Early Buddhist
My personal standard on this subject is "proven with no doubt", not "proven beyond a reasonable doubt".... There are 2 reasons for me to keep faith. One is personal experience with God. The other is the Bible which gives us strong reasons to believe that God exists. The Scriptures made it less subjective, so to speak. The following, adapted from the book, "Understanding Prayer Faith and God's Will" tries to demonstrate that the Bible is more than just hearsay. It can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt if people do not just say that it is unprovable. ...
There are many surprisingly accurate scientific statements found in other religions too, Buddhism included.Accurate scientific statements
The Bible is not a book of science but when it made scientific statements on several occasions, it is surprisingly accurate. ...
There are many religions with prophetic statements. Pointing to prophecy as support for your preferred religion is not convincing to me, first: because I neither witnessed their origins, nor their alleged fulfillment; second: even if those prophecies are actually genuine & were actually and genuinely fulfilled, it still does not prove that their origin came from someone omniscient or omnipotent.Biblical Prophecies Fulfilled The Scriptures contain prophesies about the future that have come true.....
Events found in the early Buddhist scriptures are also supported by the historical method.Bible is supported by History
That doesn't speak well of the alleged author - if he is truly omnipotent & omniscient, could he not ensure that his message be preserved infallibly?Some people assert that if the Bible is God’s Word, then there should be no mistakes at all. Should we apply such a standard towards the Scriptures? When scientists, mathematicians, scholars and historians conduct experiments for verification, they do not insist that the results must be totally free from mistakes. Some kinds of technical variations are accepted within certain margin of error. It does not mean that should absolutely be no glitches in God’s Word.
Old writings are found in every religion.Dead Sea Scrolls
I haven't witnessed these events for myself.The Roman Calendar
Could Abraham Lincoln or Napoleon be cleverly fabricated myths that somehow became accepted as the truths? Could historical records attribute the Great Wall of China to the work of a fictitious emperor? Surely these people were not just stories or folklores. Likewise, our calendar today, dated according to the birth of Jesus, indicates that He once lived on earth.
The Roman Empire persecuted Christians for about three hundred years. In 312 AD, however, the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. Just before a decisive battle with his arch enemy, Maxentius (who was a co-ruler of the empire), Constantine had a dream, where God told him that under the cross, he would have victory, upon which he ordered that the sign of the cross be painted on his soldiers’ shields. His army prevailed, he believed, and passed a decree to stop all persecutions against the church, and also declared Christianity to be the official religion of the empire.
Later, the existing Roman calendar at that time was modified to be marked according to the year that Jesus was born, which became 1 A.D. Anno Domino means “the year of the Lord”. The years before His birth were marked BC (Before Christ).
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