Originally posted by: Trooperman
Just want to add my two cents to this.
As has been said, Christianity (and believe in God) is not something that can be proved. It is a matter of faith. What has also been brought up is that it takes even more faith to believe that we came to be on this Earth by a series of coincidences, and that life on Earth began with a lightning bolt hitting the “primordial soup of life.” This is simply not any more plausible than the existence of God, even less so. I’m sure there’s a good chance there are historical inaccuracies in the Bible. Even the four Gospels contradict themselves in the details. To draw the conclusion that this means there is no God is ludicrous. And I do believe that Genesis is more symbolic in the 6 day creation than factual.
For me, being a Christian is pretty much summed up by the fact that life has a purpose, it has a meaning. I know God, he guides me. A series of personal situations I went through only strengthened my faith. On the occasions I had the humility to realize that I need God’s help, it was amazing to me how quickly things unraveled themselves. The difference between asking for help and not asking for help was actually really hilarious. This is not something that can be proved, and people may laugh, but it can only be know from personal experience.
Another thing to keep in mind:
1. What do the Christians lose if God doesn’t exist? Nothing.
2. What do the atheists lose if God does exist?
Everything.
But the atheists are the brilliant, enlightened ones…
I hope you're not implying that one of the reasons that you're a theist/ Christian is to simply be on the safe side. Personally, I don't believe in an undetectable, supernatural condition on the universe. But when I was younger and more succeptible to these ideas, I remember thinking: what about all the people in the world who aren’t Christian? Are their beliefs incorrect? And if they were, it must mean that a great deal of people got sent to hell after they died. But I’m sure that Christianity is incorrect according to most of the other faiths. Of course, I've moved on since then and no longer think or see the world that way. Still, there was an immediate contradiction once I learned of other religions. How would I choose which religion to put my money on, in hopes that I had gotten it right? It would be impossible, seeing as they all share the same flaw: the absence of any hard scientific proof to back up their creeds or dogmas.
"We came to be on this Earth by a series of coincidences." I see this as one of the most grievous misconceptions about the evolution of life. Whenever something reproduces with variations each time, some variations are bound to be better suited to the environment than others, and those varieties preferentially survive and leave more offspring of its kind. Given 3 or 4 billion years, you can see how such finely tuned (but still not perfect) organisms can evolve. In a way, natural selection is the exact opposite of the random process it is often described as, because it only selects those occasional mutations that enhance survival.
Anyway, just had to put my two cents in.