Are You Telling the Right Story?

Dear Michael,

Long ago I heard an insight someone offered about being a Christian that I have never forgotten. Here it is: You may be the only “Living Bible” some people ever read.

No single phrase I can think of captures as artfully what it means for you to be an ambassador for Christ. To the majority of non-Christians in your life, you are their link to the only truth that can impart eternal life.

You are like the Corinthians who Paul referred to as “our letter…known and read by all men…cared for by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor. 3:2-3).

Your life is a letter. Your life is read by all men. Your life is written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God.

The Circumstantial Case for the Christian Worldview

The Circumstantial Case Against Phil Spector
On September 26th, 2007, the murder trial of Phil Specter ended in a mistrial. Two jurors were unable to find Spector guilty of murder. In spite of the many pieces of circumstantial evidence that made up the cumulative case, these two jurors focused on single isolated issues (more on this HERE) and these single issues proved to be the downfall of the prosecution’s case.

Just a few days later, a cumulative, circumstantial murder case of my own came to a very different conclusion. Our jury returned a guilty verdict in a 23 year old case in the city of Torrance (you can download a Word Document of the news coverage HERE and HERE). Like Phil Spector, our case was cumulative in nature, originally built on a large number of circumstantial pieces of evidence, all of which pointed to the killer, a man named William Marshall. But unlike the Spector case, our jury had been carefully picked as a part of the judicial process. We interviewed the prospective jurors carefully, and seated a panel that understood the value of circumstantial evidence and also understood the power of a CUMULATIVE case.

Cumulative, Circumstantial Cases
Our jury was instructed over the course of four days as we interviewed and screened the candidates. From the prosecution’s perspective, we wanted jurors who understood how powerful circumstantial evidence can be when taken cumulatively. Circumstantial evidences, by definition, are unrelated facts that, when considered together as a whole, can be used to infer a conclusion about something that was previously unknown. In this sense, circumstantial evidence is different than direct physical evidence. Let me give you an example. If you are sitting in a restaurant and someone comes inside and tells you that it is raining outside, you now have an eyewitness and you have direct physical evidence that it is raining. On the other hand, if you are sitting there and you see several people come in carrying umbrellas and dripping wet, you may reasonably infer that it is raining from this circumstantial evidence, even before any of them tells you that this is true. You see, all of us assess circumstantial evidence as a part of our normal experience.

As we selected our jury for the homicide trial, we simply wanted people who (1) understood the power of circumstantial evidence and (2) would not fixate on minutia. We wanted jurors who would not ‘major on the minors’ but were capable of seeing the ‘big picture’. We were trying to avoid jurors like the two hold outs in the Spector case; jurors who would ‘camp’ on minor ‘possibilities’, while ignoring the major ‘reasonable’ inferences. We wanted jurors who could understand the difference between what is ‘possible’ and what is ‘reasonable’.

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Resource: PleaseConvinceMe.blogspot.com

The Problem of Evidential Insufficiency

OBJECTION: God's existence cannot be known with evidential certainty. The evidence for God's existence is entirely circumstantial and therefore cannot be trusted. There are no items of direct evidence that can be examined today to determine if Christianity's claims about God are true.


The Answer Lies in Our Perception of Evidence
There are two kinds of evidence that are used in criminal and civil trials each and every day across America: 'direct' evidence (evidence that proves something 'directly' on the basis of someone's first-hand experience) and 'circumstantial' evidence (evidence that proves something 'indirectly' on the basis of a reasonable inference). We might determine, for example, that a suspect committed a murder on the basis of an eyewitness who saw the murder directly or a suspect's later confession (two pieces of direct evidence), or we might determine this on the basis of the suspect's prior threatening remarks, his bloody appearance minutes after the crime, and his efforts to flee the scene (all examples of circumstantial evidence). Our criminal justice system draws no distinction between these two forms of evidence; both are equally viable and powerful in making a case.

The Reliability of the Gospel Eyewitnesses

Related Posts:
The Historical Reliability of the Gospels
Bibliography by Moody
Know What You Believe

500th Post! Presuppositions Can Lead to Mistaken Conclusions

Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Posted by Al at PleaseConvinceMe.blogspot.com

Presuppositions can have a profound impact on the beliefs that we hold. I was reminded of that recently while listening to a podcast from the UK called "Unbelievable." Jim mentioned it not long ago on one of his podcasts and I quickly became a big fan. The usual format is a debate between an atheist or agnostic and a believer. The podcast I was listening to was a discussion between Michael Licona and Bart Ehrman.
Ehrman is a well-credentialed former believer. He's the kind of Biblical expert that causes many Christians to experience pangs of doubt. After all, he's studied the Bible in far more detail than the vast majority of us, and in the original languages. He was once a believer himself, so maybe his journey away from faith is one to greater knowledge. Or maybe it's something else - the product of the presuppositions that shape his worldview.

The Golden Rule

The question is, which Golden Rule has ground?

Jesus mentioned this rule because he wanted his disciples to remember the Law of the Prophets when it says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself." (Lev. 22:37-40)
Jesus was narrowing all the Levitical commandments to just the two most important ones. If you love God, all the rest just come naturally from your heart.

How Can a Loving God Kill People in the Old Testament?

Here are just a few related posts:
God Kills Innocent Children
Is God a Fair Judge?
Is God a Monster?
Is God Evil?
Does God Love His Enemies?
The Human Race is Evil and Atheists Agree