If you can find a copy, try "Asimov's Guide to the Bible." The book was out of print last time I checked but it is worth finding.

It's a book that details the history surrounding the entire bible. You won't find theological discussions but you will find a lot of good historical information about the region and the times and how that influenced what was written, which sounds like what you're looking for.

If you want a copy of the case for Christ just give me a PM with ur addy and all and I will have a copy sent to you. This book is a really amazing book and gets past all these issues and lets you make the descision for yourself and without blockage of earthly issues.

Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy dedicates some 200 pages to the history of religions - in the main Christianity (though Islam gets a chapter). He gives an excellent account of the theology and philosophy of Christianity including the influence of the Greeks on the early church and on the theology of St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas (who he describes as the most brilliant mind of scholastic philosophers) and Martin Luther amongst others.

It's not as highbrow as it might seem. Russell was an excellent communicator and it makes for very entertaining and enlightening reading. You can probably pick the book up at any public library.

He follows up the religious section with a description of the impact of science on religion which is particularly relevant to the threads often seen on this board.

AENeumann, Axxon, Mac Howard: Thanks for the suggestions! That looks like a good reading list to get started.

nfg22: Thanks for the offer, but I don't mind buying the book at a bookstore. If you've got copies lying around unneeded though, I'd be happy to figure out a way to compensate you to take one off your hands. First, though, I'm going to look up some more information on the various suggestions here, then decide which ones to get. Ideally, I'm trying to avoid subjective titles--as difficult as that may be with this topic--and I get a sense that The Case for Christ might be more of a subjective look at the evidence?

The Case for Christ is written by an news investegator that was an atheist married to a Christian. He wanted to see what his wife was into and being a sceptic he went after some of the best scholars around. Granted in the end he comes to the conclusion that Christ is God and the answer, he breaks down each argument and does not side step things. I believe he did the best job in trying to falsify Christ that anyone has ever. Yes I have a few extra copies around here somewhere. So if you want I will send it free of charge, my pleasure just doing what I am supposed to, the compensation isnt a big deal, same goes for anyone else that wants this book I can help.

There is his error. You can't 'falsify Christ". You can't "falsify" the idea that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden. The onus is on him to justify the belief.

But, two thousand years after the event, it's virtually impossible to do that anymore either. That's why it comes down to "faith". Attempts to "prove or disprove" religious beliefs are futile.


Why?

Ive just come across this web site, Godzilla. It's has all the books of Flavius Josephus who was the nearest thing to a historian at approximately the time of Jesus. He was a Roman but lived in Judea - I think at one point he fought with the Roman army in one of the major battles before the sack of Jerusalem. I believe he does mention Jesus - though not by name - in his "War of the Jews" which covers the period of Herod's death to the sack of Jerusalem (70 AD). Here's the link (suitably modfied):

hxxp://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/JOSEPHUS.HTM

His books have been translated and posted on the site and you can download a zip file to read offline - though I've just had no luck in downloading it. There's a lot of reading there.

Mac...You are now arguing with what I meant when you know what I meant by falsify, but if you must I will get out my websters....

FALSIFY....Definition 4. To prove to be wrong.

Well sir, if you try and prove Christ wrong, and that he wasnt who He said He was then that would be trying to falsify Him. Anyways thats not my argument and sorry if I got distracted.

The reason I have so many lying around is that I have one for myself and I also got one at a convention. Lastly I have a third because my father passed away and I took his.

One more thing Mac, when Lee Strobel, the author of The Case for Christ started out writing the book he wasnt convinced and was trying to prove the belief system wrong so he wasnt trying to justify Christianity

I don't get to deep in these threads, but I thought this was interesting and I remember peeking in on this thread. I studied some of Flew's stuff in college and watched a couple of his debates.


Famous Atheist Now Believes in God

One of World's Leading Atheists Now Believes in God, More or Less, Based on Scientific Evidence



The Associated Press



Dec. 9, 2004 - A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday. At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.

Flew said he's best labeled a deist like Thomas Jefferson, whose God was not actively involved in people's lives.

"I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins," he said. "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose."

Flew first made his mark with the 1950 article "Theology and Falsification," based on a paper for the Socratic Club, a weekly Oxford religious forum led by writer and Christian thinker C.S. Lewis.

Over the years, Flew proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele, and Reading universities in Britain, in visits to numerous U.S. and Canadian campuses and in books, articles, lectures and debates.

There was no one moment of change but a gradual conclusion over recent months for Flew, a spry man who still does not believe in an afterlife.

Yet biologists' investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved," Flew says in the new video, "Has Science Discovered God?"

The video draws from a New York discussion last May organized by author Roy Abraham Varghese's Institute for Metascientific Research in Garland, Texas. Participants were Flew; Varghese; Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder, an Orthodox Jew; and Roman Catholic philosopher John Haldane of Scotland's University of St. Andrews.

The first hint of Flew's turn was a letter to the August-September issue of Britain's Philosophy Now magazine. "It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism," he wrote.

The letter commended arguments in Schroeder's "The Hidden Face of God" and "The Wonder of the World" by Varghese, an Eastern Rite Catholic layman.

This week, Flew finished writing the first formal account of his new outlook for the introduction to a new edition of his "God and Philosophy," scheduled for release next year by Prometheus Press.

Prometheus specializes in skeptical thought, but if his belief upsets people, well "that's too bad," Flew said. "My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads."

Last week, Richard Carrier, a writer and Columbia University graduate student, posted new material based on correspondence with Flew on the atheistic www.infidels.org Web page. Carrier assured atheists that Flew accepts only a "minimal God" and believes in no afterlife.

Flew's "name and stature are big. Whenever you hear people talk about atheists, Flew always comes up," Carrier said. Still, when it comes to Flew's reversal, "apart from curiosity, I don't think it's like a big deal."

Flew told The Associated Press his current ideas have some similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists, who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe. He accepts Darwinian evolution but doubts it can explain the ultimate origins of life.

A Methodist minister's son, Flew became an atheist at 15.

Early in his career, he argued that no conceivable events could constitute proof against God for believers, so skeptics were right to wonder whether the concept of God meant anything at all.

Another landmark was his 1984 "The Presumption of Atheism," playing off the presumption of innocence in criminal law. Flew said the debate over God must begin by presuming atheism, putting the burden of proof on those arguing that God exists.

Tha Associated Press author does not know what "scientific evidence" entails.

Science cannot (yet) say what happened at the very start of the Big Bang (it is reasonably confident now that this occurred). In order for our universe to have survived the bang a number of parameters had to hold - about 20 of them (such as the mass of an electron etc). The chances of this combination existing is extrememly remote. Therefore the continued existence of the universe is extremely remote. So how did it come about?

With no evidence as to what happened in those first few nanoseconds then it is fair to speculate. Two speculations stand out:

1) an intelligent creator
2) multiple universes (so many that one of them, ours, met the criteria for survival).

A scientist is perfectly at liberty to choose either or insist that the only truth is "we don't know". However neither explanation has anything like "scientific proof". Flew is merely making a choice between two speculations.

I would just say this: Not to preach, but the absolute WORST advice I see posted here is to NOT concern yourself with death and what happens next. Bible says "It is appointed for a man to die once, and then the judgement." You may come to your own conclusion and not believe this is the case, and that is your right in this life to do so. I would only add that to completely ignore the POSSIBILITY of this being true is to also possibly shortchange yourself for all of eternity. In other words, do NOT spend eternity seperated from GOD only because you have decided it was too much WORK to investigate the claims that GOD has made in HIS Word (the Bible.) You owe yourself at least that much.

Like the bumper-sticker says, Read the Bible, there WILL be a Test!

I would also add, a book called MERE CHRISTIANITY by C.S. Lewis is a good intellectual argument for the reality of GOD's existance.

I think the crucial fact in that report may be his age.....it's amazing the number of people who believe in some sort of higher power as they get old, as though it is some sort of playing the odds just in case a higher power may exist after all......as if God isn't smart enough to work it out (assuming there is a god - I have no opinion on that minor detail).