{"id":1615,"date":"2013-08-25T21:29:59","date_gmt":"2013-08-25T11:29:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=1615"},"modified":"2013-08-25T21:29:59","modified_gmt":"2013-08-25T11:29:59","slug":"good-reasons-to-believe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=1615","title":{"rendered":"Good Reasons To Believe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question from Adam:<\/strong>
\nWhat is the best (in your opinion) argument that you have ever heard or had thrown at you about the credibility\/correctness of the Bible? Obviously the Bible is full of crap, but, I’m trying to understand why a person would ever believe in it (logically). Not just from indoctrination, or blind faith, but an actual good reason.
\n
\nAnswer by SmartLX<\/a>:<\/strong>
\nWho said people need good reasons to believe? For those who even consider why they believe and therefore need to give a reason at all, they just have to think<\/em> their reason is a good one.
\n
\nThe most powerful and persuasive reason to begin to believe, by far, is an apparent personal experience of the divine. Never mind that it’s useless for convincing others and it’s objectively a terribly flawed reason. If you really think God’s spoken to you, you’re going to implicitly believe in God as the basic premise of what you think is true, and there’s little that anyone can do about it.
\n
\nAs for reasons that are convincing on their own merit, that you could use to convince others, I’ve been through them all in my Great Big Arguments<\/a> series (tell me if I’ve missed any, of course) and each is fundamentally flawed, so I’m hesitant to call any one of them the best. That said, many of them sound very convincing upon first hearing, or else so complex that it seems pointless to try to rebut them. That first impression that the debate has already been fought and won for Christ can be all a proselytiser needs to elicit a religious experience; Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron are always talking about “bypassing the intellect”.
\n
\nIf there were a reason to believe in God which I thought was a genuinely good reason, I would believe in God. The fact that I don’t implies a certain upper limit on my opinion of any argument for God’s existence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question from Adam: What is the best (in your opinion) argument that you have ever heard or had thrown at you about the credibility\/correctness of the Bible? Obviously the Bible is full of crap, but, I’m trying to understand why a person would ever believe in it (logically). Not just from indoctrination, or blind faith, … Continue reading “Good Reasons To Believe”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[455,39],"class_list":["post-1615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","tag-arguments-for-god","tag-bible"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-q3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1616,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1615\/revisions\/1616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}