Can We Admit The Truth About Religion?

  Can We Know The Truth About Religion?

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There are so many different religions in the world. How can we be sure any one of them is right? Couldn't the one we favor be right for us? Don't they all have good and bad persons? Don't people more or less choose what they like about a religion? We can never examine them all. It just seems narrow-minded, intolerant, even arrogant to say only one religion is right and all the others wrong? So if a person is sincere and tries to do what he or she thinks is right, isn't that enough? But if Christians have a reasonable factual basis for their beliefs, I will give it my sincere, open-minded examination.
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                    Aren't World Religions Based Upon Limited Human Reasoning. 
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World religions are claims to what seems ultimate about life and the world.

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Hinduism—Knowledge of Escape from this Miserable Illusory World.

Buddhism—Buddha’s Plan to Escape Pain in nirvana.

Confucianism—Confucius’ Ethical Wisdom, Ancestor Worship, & Spiritism.

Zoroastrianism—Zoroaster’s Hope the Good God Will Defeat the Evil God.

Islam—Muhammad’s Claim Allah’s Angel Taught Him the Qur'an.

Communism—Marx’s Claim Economic Equality Will Achieve Utopia.

Secularism—No God Means Man Must Save Himself.
Bible Christianity--Jesus is the God-man Come into the World to Save Us.

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I agree there is truth in what are called the world’s religions. Hinduism is right that we are ignorant about god. But I don’t see that nature’s cycles and human defects are proofs of reincarnation and absorption into universal energy. Such things have better explanations. Buddha rightfully said pain is a universal problem and desires or attachments can cause it. But the desire to follow his eightfold path is contradictory and can be undesirably painful. Confucius, the Chinese politician, gave wisdom about human relationships and ethical values showing that even apart from a personal ethical God we have a conscience and practical (not ultimate) sense of moral responsibility. Muhammad said an angel spoke to him. Anybody could have said that which Joseph Smith Jr. did centuries later. Marx claimed economic equality would achieve utopia but that's only one factor and it reduces all but government elites to poverty. Secularism denies God making limited human opinions and the state the authority and whoever gains control dictates policies his way and kills nonconformists.
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I AM saying human reason is limited to speculation, mysticism and mistake. One person’s knowledge is but a speck represented upon the huge circle of universal knowledge. With fragmentary knowledge, poor reasoning, and often just plain guessing, we’re always subject to make mistakes. And even supposing someone’s philosophy or program seems logical and workable, we have to test it to be sure. Claims by alleged prophets or mystics to talking with God or an angel may in fact be true--but crazy men claim as much and supposed prophets can say conflicting things. Apart from visible tangible objective evidence, we have no way to know what people claim about God is anything more than their imagination, faulty thinking, or outright deception--period.

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 I AM saying non-Christian religions are contradictory which means not all can be true. My point in all the above is that these world religions are man’s philosophies, man’s attempts to solve what they regard as our crucial human problems. They are limited human reason and philosophy. They conflict in claims about God, man, ethics, man’s problem, the solution, and life after death. They furnish no objective visible basis of any higher authority than limited human contradictory thinking, which so often leads to chaos, anarchy and tyranny. Is there a higher authority than limited, conflicting human speculative opinion and reason? Yes, Christian faith bassed upon visible historical eyewitness testimony of men who gave their lives for what they knew was God acting in our world (John 1:1-3; Luke 1:1-4; Acts 2:22-23; 1 Cor. 15:1-8; 2 Peter 1:16).

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Christian faith has a reasonable empirical basis for belief in a personal, ethical God. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, if nature’s forces and chance is the whole show, we can never know our reasoning is correct. Unbelief that denies absolute truth inconsistently assumes its denial is true and lives on the basis that truth exists. Contrary to Kant, our senses do accurately convey reality not just appearances, or science and reason would be confused if not impossible. Moreover, experimental science assumes truths established only by the Christian worldview of a rational Creator who created an intelligible world with persons in his image to understand it. While a rock is mere matter, a living mind is required to know that. Christianity saves us from being hypocrites claiming the truth that truth doesn't exist. If the universe be an accident of chance, nothing can be known as certain.

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True science and reason work on the premises that from nothing nothing comes, and that effects must have an equal or greater cause. Thus, this dependent material universe must be the effect of an independent or necessary self-existing source or Creator we rightfully call God. This Creator of the space-time material universe would necessarily be outside space-time, and be an infinite, immaterial (or Spiritual), eternal, unchangeable Mind. The expanding universe, energy depletion,  general relativity, decay of radioactive elements, and the impossible backtracking all confirm a point of beginning which show that this dependent universe is not eternal as atheists like to think.

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In addition, the observable data that only life begets life, its DNA programming, irreducible complexity and integrated relationships, genetic limits, climatic cyclical shifts, innumerable missing links and varied reconstructions in no way suggest evolution. A Common Designer rather than a common ancestor far better explains this observable data. Moreover, if science is verified by experiment, the fruit fly experiment demonstrated that fruit flies don’t mutate into anything but defective fruit flies. So don't evolutionists show a most unscientific naturalistic bias?

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It’s the old controversy: which came first, the chicken (creation) or the egg (evolution)? It’s now resolved that hen eggs won’t hatch by themselves and shells won’t form without a chemical found in chickens. Our conscience tells us not to ignore the truth, but we suppress its voice when we want our own thing. When so much is at stake my friend, don't reject what's obviously true.  

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Christian faith has an empirical historical basis that Jesus Christ is the God-man. Historians accept three independent agreed sources as establishing past events. With the four Gospels, Acts and Bible epistles, we have six independent historical sources of Christ’s life, his claims to be God, numerous fulfillment of a divine Messiah and hundreds of miracles of all kinds. Secular know Bible persons, places, events are true history but show an unjustified unwillingness to God acting in our world.
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Yes, some variances of testimony exist, but that only proves authenticity and not collusion. These documents were published within the lifetimes of persons who knew Jesus—hostile critics would have disputed and destroyed the Christian claim at its outset had that been possible. Always astonished at Jesus’ miracles and at first doubtful of his resurrection, his apostles later underwent torture and death to vouch for its truth. Jewish and pagan sources of that time testify often in derision to details of his life.
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If we can put aside our bias that no personal, ethical Creator God can act in our world, then we can admit the facts clearly show Jesus is the God-man and the Lord and Savior of every honest believing sinner. Is the truth that Christians are really narrow-minded, or rather that unbelievers are closed-minded? Which way does the evidence point?

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On the worldview level, Christ’s resurrection assures us life exists after death, Jesus is God and all he taught is true. In Jesus, we have a sure basis for human dignity, rights, ethics, justice, love, ultimate purpose, experimental science and the choice of Heaven or Hell. No other religion provides grounds for these basic human needs. Deniers claims make us either soulless dirt or recyclic energy awaiting absorption.  Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”  Please trust Him for life eternal!
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My friend, what’s your decision about Jesus, the God-man? He alone forgives our sin and saves us from eternal darkness and torment. Trust him to receive His abiding presence and His gift of eternal life. Eternity in Heaven or Hell--it's your choice. Lord, help this person to choose You and life forever with You. Then fervently share his God-given faith with friends on the www.

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