Brief Answer:

Is there a God involved in the Bible, or not?

Detailed answer: 

You are standing in the foothills with a mountain confronting you.

My dad, uncle and I hiked down, and then back up the Grand Canyon in the middle of summer. We were told it would take us around five hours to hike back up, but after four hours I saw the top, maybe just ten more minutes away. I was wrong. At five hours, we were all pretty exhausted, and I finally saw the peak closing in. I was wrong again. After observing one group of hikers having to get helicoptered out due to exhaustion, and giving one of our canteens to another group, we had another couple discouraging times of thinking we reached the top, and were wrong. 

The answer to this primary question is so towering because its significance overshadows every other question that can be asked about the Bible.

Think: If there is a God behind the Bible, all supposed problems you may have with the Bible are very secondary to the need to take this communication as seriously as it gets. What you do not like in the Bible, or do not currently understand is only walking in the foothills of the mountain of significance before you.

If you disagree, why, based on what reasons? Are you claiming you know enough to discount a source of information from the Creator of the Universe, a source in a position to know and ensure their purpose, on a level no other source remotely approaches? What reasons or evidence support your belief? If you realize the overarching importance of the primary question, then the next thing you need to ask is …

How could you know if a God was behind something?

Answer: It at least needs to do something beyond human capacity? This is how something would establish itself as an authority beyond all others. 

I have read the Koran, Vedas, Bible, Book of Mormon, atheist books, and other sources of information people claim has a God behind it, or supposedly has the answers to life’s biggest questions. It is a fairly simple process to determine which sources of information are simply written by people, with nothing more behind them than any other book, and which establishes itself on a whole other level of authority. 

The Bible stands absolutely alone in verified authority

While there may be some impressive ideas, insights, wisdom, etc., in other sources produced by humanity, the Bible is absolutely alone in validating its authority as beyond human capability to produce. 

This was covered in other blogs, such as those about the beginning and cause of the Universe, discussing many clear, specific statements about the beginning and cause of the universe documented in the Bible thousands of years prior to modern science discovering and documenting the exact same facts. 

One of the best-known ways to test the validity of something is if the source provides new information, which no one would have known otherwise, and going against what everyone else thought. This is what made scientists realize Einstein was onto something with his theory of general relativity, when Eddington’s observation of starlight bending around the Sun during a solar eclipse validated Einstein’s predictions. Similarly, the Bible’s claims about the beginning and cause of the universe went against every other religion, common sense experience, and science, all the way up to around Einstein’s time, when modern science reached the same understanding biblical scholars had for millennia.

Nothing by man has ever come close to this; nothing by man has such verification of authority beyond humanity. If you think something is comparable, like Nostradamus, what’s your evidence? There are standard tests for the validity of a claim or model about reality, including: how well a model explains what we find, how much it explains, are the predictions accurate and difficult to match. The biblical model reaches a level of validation in these tests no other competing claim is able to reach. 

One cannot rationally walk past this point, unless other examples show the Bible is not entirely alone in this. Many more reasons can be given to support there is something well beyond humanity’s ability in the Bible, but those will be covered in later sections. 

Brett Kunkle, Sean McDowell, and J. Warner Wallace brought a group of students, and invited me along, to the University of California in Berkeley to interact with undergraduate and graduate student and professor atheist groups. When the question-and-answer period began, I briefly gave a sample of the multiple, clear, specific predictions of the Bible, and asked the hundreds of people in the crowd, including the atheist debaters and professors: “If you think the Bible is only a product of humans, name the other books, or anything ever produced by humans, matching the number and level of clear, specific, accurate predictions, given so far in advance of scientific recognition? No person could have known what the Bible provided.”

Silence. Then, after an awkward span of time, the lead graduate debater on the atheist side said, “But there are errors in the Bible.” I noted as a debater he knows better than to go off topic (using the red herring fallacy). Even if there was something entirely false in the Bible, such as claiming UC Berkeley actually had a good sports program – so what? Does that mean you don’t have to take the Bible seriously? We just covered incomparable evidence there is a God behind the Bible! So, even if we found errors, which I can argue against later, you still have to take the Bible as seriously as it gets because it is a source of information that can dwarf the importance of all others. 

I asked the question again, “If you think the Bible is just the product of people, then all the people in all of history would produce other works that can compare, what are they?” Silence. Someone tried to break the silence by going off on another topic, but I told them I was not going to let them illogically avoid the question. I asked the question again. Silence. I let the silence drag on a really awkward amount of time, then concluded with, “Your silence speaks very loudly, doesn’t it?” I waited, silence followed, I sat down.

The audience started to glimpse the biblical mountain of significance overshadowing the small things they did not like or did not understand about the Bible.

Everything Else is Very Secondary

The Bible is on a level no other written or spoken word from humanity has ever come close to matching. “Is there a God behind this book or person” is always the primary question to ask because the ramifications are as significant as it gets. And there is evidence this book alone has God involved with it. With the answer to the primary question standing as the foundational background to always keep in mind, we can properly consider secondary questions or concerns regarding the Bible.