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God or Just a Good Man?

Would you believe in this?

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Does God Exist

Does God Exist?

By Ethan Rulloda

Christianity, the biggest religion in the world, with over  2.1 billion believers. Especially, in the Philippines, where 86% of the population are Roman Catholics, 6% Various Nationalized Christian Cults, and 2% are associated with over 100 Protestant denominations. But, did Christ really exist?

Here in this article, will show significant amounts of pieces of evidence proving the existence of Jesus Christ.

My entire life, I've been a Christian without knowing if he actually existed. I usually just listen to whoever lectures me about Christ. But, I obviously had faith, and will always have, even though, I had no evidence. And even other Christians can relate. There are even some who question and doubt the existence of Christ(skeptics).  

So I searched up different videos on YouTube, including  such as, Matthew Santoro a Canadian Youtuber who posts Top 10 Lists and 50 amazing facts and The Case for Christ hosted by Lee Strobel is a Documentary and a book about trying to find valid evidence about the existence of Jesus, both gave viable evidence which will help strengthen the argument.

But first who is Jesus? Based on (https://carm.org/what-is-christianity), Christianity is a monotheistic religion which is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. Christ, meaning the anointed one, is indicating that Jesus was anointed or chosen by God from Father who in the old testament created the world, fulfilled the laws and prophecies, died on the cross for our sins, and rose from the dead three days later. After reading this paragraph, you might be really intrigued, or in disbelief. You can assume that these aren’t true, I mean reading this seems pretty impossible, but I’m going to show you six arguments about Jesus’ existence,

First, Anselm's ontological argument. In 1070, Ansel states that our ability to imagine a concept of a perfect human being means that it must exist. He argued that his idea must stem from something that exists in our universe, otherwise, we wouldn't be able to think it up.

French philosopher Rene Descartes, supported it 571 years later saying that if his concept of perfection needs existence, then God must exist. We all know who God is and that he's perfect, so, therefore, he exists in our understanding. We also understand things we see everywhere, but there are hidden things that we do not yet understand. But why do we understand who God is even though we couldn't see him? And some may argue is because he exists.

Second, the Bible is based on many eye-witness accounts, including, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But, how can we prove it's real? We can say that Jesus was crucified on the cross and that he was buried in a tomb, which was owned by one of the executors. But first, he appeared in front of over 500 people, and second, his disciples died for the truth. After Jesus rose from the dead, his disciples sacrificed their own lives just to prove that Jesus really has risen from the dead. No one would risk their lives just to validate a fake religion. One of them, named James, the brother of John who was later exiled to the island of Patmos was killed by the sword upon the order of King Herod.

Third, there are many miracles written in the Bible, one of the stories, when Jesus healed a Blind Man, or when he turned water to wine. It's not possible, but it was witnessed by many people. And, no ordinary person or thing in this world could do that. And even today there have been reports about miracles. Like for example, a child named Colton, a young boy who had to undergo an emergency surgery and says that he went from Heaven and back. He can even recall meeting his father’s(Todd Burpo) grandfather and remembering how he looked like back when he was young, as when you are in heaven everyone is young.

Fourth, there are laws in science, including laws of physics. But, if those laws never existed or debunked, then, it would be the end of the world. But it isn't, some say that there is a person who holds things together which prevents his creation from fading away. For example, if there was no gravity, then the earth wouldn't be here anymore. Without gravity, we would be weightless and everyone and everything floating everywhere. Also, there would be a change in air pressure because of the disappearance of the earth’s atmosphere. In other words, the earth will be losing its oxygen, and we will die eventually.

Fifth, people believe that faith is one of the things that make us believe in Jesus. It's hard to actually believe in something we can't see, but if we have faith, we can believe in the most unlikely thing in the world. There is one study(https://adrenalfatiguesolution.com/faith-and-stress/) which says that faith can reduce stress and improve physical and mental health. And so, even though God is an intangible creature, the faith God has given us affects the world in different ways.

Sixth, the concept of moral values. During the primitive times, people never really understood what is good or bad. As they had the freedom to do anything, like killing and stealing. But when God was introduced to us, we already thought of the idea of morality and what is supposedly right or wrong so we can assume that our morals must have been given by someone who acted good upon us and helped us understand humanity.

More reasons by Matthew Santoro-10 most popular arguments for the existence of God.

But let's look at the other spectrum just so we could compare these arguments and choose which of these are more believable. What if Jesus is fake?

People who believe in this or the non-theist have two variations. The Agnostics, who claims neither faith nor disbelief. And the atheists, who don't believe in a God or God's.

One man named C.S Lewis was a professor at Cambridge University who before was an agnostic, he claims that Jesus is just a good moral man but not God. So he wrote different arguments on this website (https://www.cru.org/us/en/how-to-know-god/who-is-Jesus-God-or-just-a-good-man.html) why Jesus is just a good man.

First, he said that Jesus might be a demon (even though he presumes that he is a GOOD man), believing that when Jesus said to trust him in our eternal destiny. And if he couldn’t back up his claim, then he is both evil and a hypocrite. The ninth commandment in the ten commandments reads “ Thou shall not bear false witness”, or in other words, no lying. If God lied about his promises, then he sinned and is a hypocrite, considering he was described as perfect or lived perfectly. So if he lied about all of his promises, then he isn't the son of God.

Second, Jesus claiming to be God or anyone claiming to be god is certainly a lunatic. Noyes and Kolb described the schizophrenic as a person who is more Autistic than realistic. People with Schizophrenia desires to escape from reality. And claiming to be God, might be an escape from reality.

And to conclude, he asked these three questions to jews, and hopefully, you could answer all of them. The first question, Is Jesus a liar? The second question, Is Jesus a lunatic? Third, do you believe that Jesus is God? These people believe he is both not a liar and not a lunatic. But believes he isn’t God. But the writer asked one more question, as the three are possible, what is more probable?

For the first argument, God never really lied to anyone yet, which doesn’t conclude that he is a demon; because fulfilled all his promises. I even remembered my pastor telling me that God only responds to us in either one of these three responses. The first response, is yes, second, not yet, and third, “I’ll give you something better in return.”

For the second argument, not all people who claim to be God are not lunatics. We can say those other people who don’t have any evidence of him/her being God/Goddess, but Jesus has proof. He sacrificed his own life for our sins, rose from the dead three days after, and appeared to almost 500 people in his time. And him doing that already proves he is God. 

But, even though non-Christians try to test me or debunk my belief. It won't affect me. God shaped me into who I am and who I will be. I have a great amount of respect and faith in him. And I'm thankful for it. I'm not here to judge your beliefs, but here to hopefully believe in mine.

Based on this article, the evidence of Jesus Christ’s existence is stronger or more powerful than the arguments about Jesus never existing. But there are still many atheists in the world right now believing in what is wrong. And us Christians should make a move about it. We were given an opportunity to share the word like what Jesus’s followers did in the Bible, and in the future maybe our world would turn out like what God wanted it to be.