Why do you assume Jesus Christ cannot be verified as God? Because you haven't done the work. In The Case For Christ, a former atheist investigates Jesus's divinity through interviews with experts, examining scientific, philosophical, and historical evidence. There are dozens of books like this, but you have to put in the hours to question your NPC assumptions. #ToChristAlome View quoted note →

Salvation by faith is the ultimate “trust me bro” situation. Nobody knows for sure that the promised outcome actually happens. That is the essence of faith. True saving faith has no direct way of verification. That is the “foolishness” of the claim. Trusting the scriptures is not the same as trusting the sacrifice.

Some things are more important than money.

Yes for sure! That is the irony I was highlighting. You would think that securing a place in heaven would be more important than money, hence the highest level of verification would required (not a “trust me bro” level). 🙂

Belief is a matter of character. Faith comes out of fear. Fear of dying. You can be the smartest person in all universes but still be a coward.

Many many people have verified, it takes a lot of work, but it’s all there. If you can get to the bottom of Bitcoin, you can find sufficient verification that Jesus is who He says He is — and just like with Bitcoin, your old worldview was based on unverified lies until you discover the truth. With Bitcoin you learn what money is and the lies of the modern economy, with God you learn what truth is, goodness, beauty, not to mention meaning and purpose — verifiable answers to fundamental questions that the modern world obscures just like it does with money.

Yes. There's evidence galore, but it does come down to faith in Jesus Christ. You can be convinced of facts all day long without choosing to trust Him and believe.

I’m not sure I understand what you are saying. I probably need to think about it for a while 🧐

Just saying that believing in a God has nothing to do with how smart a person is. They’re just afraid.

Belief is a matter of character. Faith comes out of fear. Fear of dying. You can be the smartest person in all universes but still be a coward.

There is no first hand (check the blockchain type) verification for Christian salvation. This is the essence of the “foolishness” of the message, the fundamental nature of what a “saving faith” is. Verifing his credentials is not the same as waking up in heaven. Unless I have not read the message of Christ correctly, it is salvation by faith.

Ah! I got it. Agreed. I have certainly met some seemingly dumb smart people.

That’s a bit too neologic for me. belief is how one makes sense of the world around us — everyone believes (has a worldview) and very few can articulate what they believe. But it’s revealed by their actions. Faith is best understood as faithfulness, we still have the meaning for marriage (a faithful marriage) but religious faith has in modern times been misconstrued as an intellectual affirmation— which is completely incorrect and ahistoric. Faith is about commitment to something bigger than yourself and your vanities. Christians don’t fear death and are willing to die for their faith — speaking truth even if it means death. Because what they fear is not nihilistic death, they fear the judgment of God based on the morality written on their heart.

Epistle of James is pretty clear on this (and this will upset many modern Christians), but “even the demons believe”, faith without works is dead, and “a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.” — this is the line that Luther famously tried to remove from the German translation of the Bible. Man is saved by faith thru grace, but more specifically in Scripture man is saved by Christ’s perfect faith, not our own. Faith is best understood as “faithfulness” (as in marriage) and not mere intellectual agreement (which is what James is clearly dismissing). There’s a ton of verifiable historical evidence for the person of Christ as well as fulfillment of what He said would happen, as well as the miracles of his ministry and around the church. And plenty of saints such that we can have assurance are “in heaven”, but you’re right that the deeper mysteries of salvation as it effects you personally is not as clear, although in the negation it is — everyone knows what kind of life they could lead to not be saved. And if we’re very honest with ourselves we know the kind of life we should be living, what we’re called to, and that Christ is knocking.

Thanks for being willing to discuss this. I am not sure that we are on the same page though. What I am pointing to is the difference between assurance based on the verifiable proofs you have in mind (earthly experience) and the first hand verification that will take place when a believer dies (heavenly experience). (Basically, you won’t know until you get there.) The earthly and heavenly are two different experiences. I am saying that a believer will only be able to verify the promise they claimed when they pass. Until then, all that a believer can do is exercise faith. You can verify bitcoin on the blockchain, you simply cannot verify your place in heaven. You might exercise trust and have hope, but you can’t verify until you are there (unless I misunderstand how faith plays a part in Christian salvation). The other way of looking at it is, if you can verify that you are saved then you don’t need faith.

I totally agree with what you are saying but unfortunately I am not sure if I have explained myself well enough. The point I am trying to highlight is that there is no verification mechanism while you are alive and on earth to confirm that you have a place in heaven after you pass. As a Christian all you can do is exercise faith. It is a trust based belief system. The only verification mechanism available to a Christian believer is the experience of waking up in heaven. That is when the “transaction” (BTC metaphor) completes. Another way to frame it would be to say that if there was a way to verify that your place was booked in heaven then you would not need to live a faith based life. Hopefully this makes sense 🤞

The point I was trying to highlight was that there is no independent verification mechanism available to the believer, in contrast to Bitcoin. Assurance is not the same thing as verification. To point to interpretations of scripture or spiritual “manifestations” as assurance to something that will happen in the future is not the same as waking up in heaven after you pass. I am suggesting that the reason a believer chooses to express their dedication to a “Christian lifestyle” is because there are portions of faith, trust and hope in play. If I understand you correctly, you are highlighting Christian conduct as an expression of faith (faithfulness). What I am suggesting is that has nothing to do with the ability to verify the claims of Christ. Implying that they are true is not the same as independently verifying that they are true. Hope that makes sense 😀

You lost me at the beginning “belief is how one makes sense of the world around us”. Totally not true. We use supernatural beliefs to make sense of things we can’t explain yet. Give it a few years in every case and we always change belief for knowledge.

Yes, I agree. I've never seen heaven - the transaction doesn't hit 6 confirmations until I get to see for myself! In a way, one glimpse we see of it is the deaths of our loved ones - some react to what they're seeing, just before they slip away. Or just that they die at peace. If there's no resurrection, if the only reality is this life, those who suffer for Christ do so in vain. But there's blessing and comfort in this life, character to grow and fruit to bear, justice to live out and people to strengthen. There's strong testimony, powerful evidence of His work changing lives. Even if I knew nothing beyond death, I'd still have been blessed. I'm grateful for the God who walks with me. But if what the Bible says about heaven and hell is true, ignoring it is a terrible risk, the worst decision possible. So it's worth the time to stop and check out. If the parts we can verify are true, it's more likely those we can't are too, and that it's the only safe place to put our trust. Other beliefs require faith too. (It's impossible to verify with absolute certainty that there's no God, etc.)

It does, but go deeper for an answer — where does your definition and understanding of “truth” come from? How do we *know* what is true? All ancient cultures understood “truth” as a deity. Veritas, the Latin word for truth, was a pagan goddess. The Greeks got a little closer but Aletheia is also a pagan goddess. Socrates had his daemon. Plato a demiurge. Aristotle had a profound insight that there must be a first principle (a first cause that cannot be explained) and that it must be the logos (the divine word) of what he called the unmoved mover. But this was ultimately transcendent and unknowable to us mortals. The Hebrew thought of logos as creator with a radical notion that humans are created in the image and likeness of God, and Christianity innovated with Christ as logos made flesh, connecting us mortals to the transcendent, to the spirit of truth (made flesh). The presumption of objective and knowable truth is entirely born of Christianity. It is one of many “fruits” of Christendom than we tried to preserve but without the tree from which it grew. We question Christianity with an implicit Christian ethos, exactly at a time when that ethos is disappearing in the west. And the consequences is that truth itself reverts to its old pagan relativism. We become playthings of gods (ideologies), and can’t even answer what a woman is. But if you want actual epistemology, the radical view that humans can know truth, then you have Christianity, and only Christianity, as the source.

Sorry, I meant that by definition — that’s just a simplified definition of “belief”, what’s true (what’s real) and what’s not. That’s just the standard definition of “belief”, it can be supernatural or natural or mundane or axiomatic or whatever, belief is just a belief. Knowledge is not self justifying, belief is required. You can’t have knowledge of something that you don’t believe in, what Aristotle defined as “justified true belief”. Psychologically, the source of what you think of as knowledge is effectively your god, that is, the first principle (or the God archetype if you’re into Jung). For naturalists this is reason and empiricism — but there’s a reason (pun intended) that naturalists only exist in Christian cultures. For some simple examples, there is no natural explanations for truth, goodness, beauty, or even numbers nor mathematics — we refer to these as transcendent categories. They’re real, and we can have knowledge about them, but only with Christian presuppositions about knowledge, outside of a Christian epistemology it’s all just word games (as postmodernists are want to point out). Our cultural bias is so thoroughly shaped by these Christian presuppositions we don’t even see it, like water to a fish, we just act like these things are obvious (but there’s a reason this only emerges through Christendom)

You tried really hard but none of that offers proof of a god, not even a justifiable theory of a god.

I have really liked it as well. It is an interesting one with a bit of nuance. It has the potential to get a little bit out of hand but also go deep. I have really liked hearing about other people’s perspectives. 😄

Thanks for this. I have enjoyed hearing people’s thoughts on the subject of verification as I teased it. I am always curious about these kinds of questions, the ones that don’t have obvious answers. You have added depth to the discussion that is appreciated 🙏

Trying hard is irrelevant. I could just as well be describing a mathematical proof, the soundness doesn’t rest in persuasion. You’re directly assuming you understand what proof is, what truth is — while demonstrating you have no idea and couldn’t even explain what I just said. In your worldview, what is truth? What is justification for knowledge? Or he’s an easy one, what is good? How do you know something is good or bad? Right or wrong? My point is that you do have one, but you have no idea what that is and clearly have no idea what people mean by God.

Thank you!

Haha you try too hard to convince yourself of “your truth”. When you tell people they have no idea you are really talking to yourself haha. You’re so afraid haha.

There is no “your truth” or “my truth” There is only THE truth And truthfully, the thing I fear most, and fear so deeply that it’s the only thing I do fear is God at the day of judgment. “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” ~ Matthew 7:22-23

Try harder

Thank you for your time. I’ll not waste any more of it.