Techno, you said that you'd believe him if God came and did something big and on like national television right? But what if he did and then 30 years later some other guy who missed seein it wanted another one, should he keep going? Wouldn't you be able to tell him that God did do something huge and everyone saw. It was just 30 years ago and you missed it?
I'm not 100% on what you mean... What does "should he keep going?" mean?
Could you rephrase the question?
Are you saying that simply because it happened some time ago and that someone/something tells us about it, we shouldn't disbelieve it?
Let's look at a scenario. This would happen in the last 50 years, or at least, during a time of fairly good level of scientific knowledge.... A "miracle" such as someone who was stone-cold dead, declared dead by doctors and the like..., for several days, suddenly comes back to life. Now, of course, this would be the most unbelievable, mind-blowing, miraculous thing to have ever been witnessed EVER (or, at least, in modern times). And this "resurrected" person would be tested/analyzed/studied/etc... pretty exhaustively (the king of understatements, here...
).
Then science came away from it and said, "We can't explain this. It must be a miracle of god." And someone clinically dead for several days, rising from the dead? Hell, what studies would be needed to say it was a miracle?
Oh yeah. That would definitely, completely, unequivocally do it for me. I would believe in god like I believe in the real things around me.
And 30 years down the road, I would definitely pass on these events and my opinion that god is alive and well and VERY real. To anyone who asked.
But this is a very different scenario to the same scenario of jesus, as read in the bible. The difference here is:
1. There are no living witnesses
2. The only record is a written one, as opposed to something far more difficult to fake, such as film/video/etc....
3. That written record is over a couple thousand years old. Written over and over and over again by different people at different times. Possibly with different motives and mindsets. Are you familiar with the term "
chinese whispers"?
4. It's coming from the same source of a heckuva lot more completely fantastic miracles, so the idea that the source has a track record for factuality is difficult to be relied on...
5. There is no possibility for scientific scrutiny, and there never was any in the first place.
So I think the comparison between a glorious miracle happening 2000 years ago, and one happening 30 years ago, witnessed by the modern world and science, isn't a realistic one.
What unbelievable miracles, that science has had the opportunity to put to the test and not been able to explain, have happened in the last 30 years?
I want god to do some DELIBERATE, toe-to-toe with the world of science, to prove that s/he exists. Not something random, or that science has explained.
The rising problem of atheism would be solved instantly, and probably forever? Accord to the bible, s/he's done tons of stuff in the past (resurrecting dead, burning-talking bushes, etc...). Why not do one more, just to reinstate herself/himself?