Evidence for God from Science

All of this is according to the writings of humans. At best all we could say with any degree of certainty is that Jesus was crucified for sedition. That's it,,that's all. Anything else is an unsupported assertion, and almost certainly filler added by the authors of the gospels. Regarding the book of Job it simply shows the conviction of Job's faith in an immoral God.

What do I say to this guy?

You can say a lot more than that. Even if we accept the blantantly false statement that all we can say about Jesus is that He was crucified for sedition, we can still ask, "And where did His first followers get the idea He was God? Where did they get the idea that their sins were forgiven in His sacrifice, and that they were no longer under the Law"?

Point anyone who asks such silly questions to N.T. Wright's excellent (though laborious) work, The Resurrection of the Son of God. John Dickson (a historian by training) has some popular level books on the historicity of Jesus. Somewhere betwen those two works in terms of scholarly depth is Jesus Under Fire, edited by J. P. Moreland and Michael Wilkins.

As I understand it, the gospels are a historical account of Jesus' ministry, death, & resurrection; selected from a number of writings and taken for the Bible because of their widespread acceptance as the complete truth.

I suppose the reader can choose the degree to which they accept any historical account. For example, I could say the only thing we know for sure about Abraham Lincoln is that he was a tall president, and the rest written about him is unsupported filler. But I think that would be unreasonable in the same way the person making the comment about what we know for sure about Jesus is.

Even most non-Christian Scholars accept that Jesus was crucified for saying He is God, that His body went missing, and that many people went to their death rather than deny seeing Him resurrected.

A good book on the historicity of Jesus is "Cold Case Christianity" by J Warner Wallace, it goes into great detail about why we can call them historical documents and how the resurrection is supported by the evidence.

J Warner Wallace is a former cold case detective, atheist turned Christian, he uses his skills as a cold case detective to analyze the case for Christ, it is a very interesting read and I learn't heaps about detective work.

Regarding the book of Job it simply shows the conviction of Job's faith in an immoral God.

How does the story of Job make God immoral?

Dan

I picked up the book you recommended and am really enjoying it. Thanks!