16 All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness (2 Timothy 3).
Sure the bible flat out says that it is inspired, but how do we know if that statement is the truth? Here is a logical pathway using the arguments of Intro1 that proves that the bible was inspired by 'a species more advanced than humans'.
1. The teachings of Jesus Christ in the Gospels portray a morality so radically different from the normal philosophy of man, and so loving and on reflection so self evidently correct, and yet so far from being implemented by mankind, that they must come from a source external to the human race, a source which knows more about human nature than we do ourselves. They must therefore come from a more experienced more advanced species than man. So the book is inspired certainly by a more morally advanced species.
2. The proven prophetic capability of the book again shows that comes from an external species since no man can see the future in the detail that the bible sees it. So the bible is inspired certainly by a less temporally restricted species.
16 And I will constitute your seed like the dust particles of the earth, so that, if a man could be able to count the dust particles of the earth, then your seed could be numbered (Genesis 13).
Today there are billions of people who claim a genetic or a spiritual descendancy from Abraham, be they Jews, Muslims or Christians. In fact nearly 50% of mankind would claim such a descendancy.
3. The bible reveals the concept of quarantine, in the law of Moses, 3400 years before microbiology discovered bugs.
3 And the priest must look at the plague in the skin of the flesh. When the hair in the plague has turned white and the appearance of the plague is deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is the plague of leprosy. And the priest must look at it, and he must declare him unclean.
4 But if the blotch is white in the skin of his flesh and its appearance is not deeper than the skin and its hair has not turned white, the priest must then quarantine the plague 7 days.
5 And the priest must look at him on the seventh day, and if in the way it looks the plague has stopped, the plague has not spread in the skin, the priest must also quarantine him another 7 days (Leviticus 13).
This was legal isolation and inspection for protection from an infectious disease (a plague).
4. The bible describes the in vitro fertilisation of Mary 1,960 years before IVF was invented by man. Even if you do not believe that Mary conceived without sleeping with a man, the account nonetheless demonstrates that an external species had an understanding of this process over 1,900 years before mankind developed the process for itself.
18 But the birth of Jesus Christ was in this way. During the time his mother Mary was promised in marriage to Joseph, she was found to be pregnant by holy spirit before they were united (Matthew 1).
5 The bible describes the earth as circular 2,000 years before we realised that it wasn't flat, but was a Globe.
22 There is one who is dwelling above the circle of the earth, the dwellers in which are as grasshoppers, the one who is stretching out the heavens just as a fine gauze, who spreads them out like a tent in which to dwell (Isaiah 40).
So the bible is inspired by a scientifically more advanced species than us.
6. The bible describes the earth as being hung upon nothing, 3500 years before Sir Isaac Newton discovered Gravity and 3900 years before 2012July4, when CERN discovered, to the required level of certainty, the Higgs Boson whose field causes the force!
7 He is stretching out the north over the empty place, hanging the earth upon nothing (Job 26).
7. The Law of Moses contains legal principles that are indisputably just and if applied would solve a lot of today's political problems. No nation has today or has ever had a more just set of laws. So the bible is inspired by a species with a better justice system than us.
8. The bible is written in an incredible grammatical code, which uses the same set of words in an account to tell between 1 and 7 different stories - see code. No human is anywhere near being able to write in such a way. We have enough trouble understanding the code that has been written. So the bible is inspired by a species with a grasp of language which is much more advanced than ours.
So in conclusion the bible was inspired by a species that is more morally advanced than us, is less temporally restricted than us, is more scientifically advanced than us (both in biology and in astrophysics), has a better justice system than us and has a better grasp of language than us. So plainly the bible is inspired, by a vastly superior species. Although it is hard for a proud species such as ourselves to admit this possibility. This species also claims in scripture to have the capability to resurrect us, and because they plainly have a superior moral understanding we must deduce that they are not lying. Since they can resurrect us and perform IVF in the absence of a husband, they must be the species that created us. So the bible is inspired by our creator species
Do you believe that?
The above is a logical pathway. How much confidence do you put in it?
Pathways such as the above are actually the basis of spirituality. God did not introduce himself to pre-adamic man until we had developed the capability to see with our minds what we could not detect with our senses. The mind sees through logic. For example Sir Isaac Newton deduced from the fact that an apple fell towards the earth that an invisible force was attracting the apple to the earth. He could not physically detect that force, he could only deduce its existence from the physically detectable effect that it had on the apple. Newton saw gravity with his mind. That is precisely how one sees God today.
For example, suppose your non military friend left London at 10:30 am (London Time) and arrived in New York at 9:30 am (Eastern Time) the same day in 2004. You would deduce from this that he must have gone on Concorde. There is absolutely no doubt about this at all, as mankind has no other non military way of achieving this. But how much confidence do you have in this deduction?
Your faith, your spirituality and your Christianity are all dependent on your confidence in such deductions because you cannot at this time see God or see Jesus himself. But if you have full confidence in your deductions, and if you familiarize yourself with the scriptures, then you can see the pair of them. The reason that God requires this effort on our part is to be found in I2.
Have you ever seen your own brain? Most readers will say no. So how do you know that you have got one? Well you deduce it from books and from the fact that you may have seen other people's brains or pictures of other people's brain's and you are the same species as them. But this reasoning is precisely the reasoning we used above to deduce that the bible was inspired by our creating species.
If you can develop confidence in your deductive powers, then you will see God, if you are pure in heart. By this we mean and Jesus meant, if you look without regard for personal consequence. Obviously if there is a God then you are accountable to him. Not everybody likes this idea. So many make a rather limited search for him, they put the telescope to their blind eye, an eye blinded by emotion, fear, religious brainwashing, commercial brainwashing etc.
The way to approach this is to first of all forget about consequences and just decide to search for the truth. If you can do this, then you are searching with a pure heart, you are judging without a motive. OK the consequences could theoretically be dire, but you are not considering them. In fact God is a better judge than anyone could possibly imagine and the consequences of discovering him can only ever be good. If he is not going to allow you into the Kingdom of God it is because that is the best thing for you, because you would not benefit from or be able to deal with that particular 'school'.
If you take this academic stance as regards the truth then you will experience for your self the freedom spoken about by John...
32 Know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8).
In other words, if you permit the truth to frighten you then you are being deceived, you are being cheated out of your inheritance and your spirit is being oppressed. Because the reality is that the truth can only empower you. After all it is nice to know what movie you are actually involved in. Only then can you properly choose the role that you wish to take in that film.
Here are some examples of deductions that everyone has confidence in:
A map is not a reality, it is a symbolic representation, an abstraction, of the reality. We all trust maps. Most of us are confident that if we follow a route on a map we will indeed end up at the destination we seek, even though we may have never gone down that road before and may have never been to that destination before. The bible is such a map. It is just rather more symbolic in its representation and rather more abstract in its construction. And no human today has ever been to the destination which it gives the route for. But many people have never been to Stratfield Mortimer either. Yet this does not mean that the place doesn't exist, or that if you follow the appropriate road map you won't end up there.
Most people accept that many years ago Dinosaurs roamed over the earth. But no human has ever seen a Dinosaur. We just have bits of huge skeletons from which we deduce their existence. It is logic and confidence in our deductions that puts the flesh on those bones. We do not actually have any Dinosaur flesh to hand. Likewise we have the skeletal proof of the existence of God from the words of the bible and from nature itself. But logic and confidence in our deductions are required to categorically prove his existence. For logic and deduction are the flesh needed to create the body of God from the skeletons of nature and the bible.
Sin is short termism. It ignores the consequences of your actions. Sin results from one step thinking. Christianity is basically two step thinking, thinking which takes account not merely of the local consequences but also of the global consequences of actions when deciding whether or not to go ahead with them. Here are some examples of one step and two step thinking...
One Step Thinking: If the government puts taxes up then it gets more tax revenue.
Two Step Thinking: Taxes are pretty high and the higher they go the more the people and the business react against them by joining tax avoidance schemes or actually by just not paying or evading tax. So why not reduce taxes to a more reasonable level and perhaps people will then leave their tax avoidance schemes and stop evading paying it since they see that it is a reasonable amount to pay. This philosophy actually worked in California in the days when Reagan was governor. Also less tax means faster growing business which means more taxable profits are made which means more tax revenues in the next tax year. High tax is short termism.
Or: We are what we eat. Of course we are not what we eat. We are instead the end product of what our bodiy does with what we eat. We are what we eat metablozed. In fact if you eat more saturated fat and less carbohydrate keeping the calories constant then your plamsa saturated fat (the dangerous saturated fat in your blood stream) actually goes down. Whereas if you eat more carbohydrate and less saturated fat then your plasma saturates go up. So one step thinking is that to get less saturated fat in my bloodstream I should eat less of the stuff. So less butter, less whole milk, no cream, less cheese and cut all the fat off the meat. This thinking is completely flawed because it ignores your metabolism. Whereas two step thinking is in order to reduce my plasma saturated fats I need to reduce my carb intake, since my metabolism produces saturated fats from excess carbs. So I will therefore eat more saturated fat in order to have less of it in my blood plasma!!
One Step Thinking: If we introduce strict anti pollution laws, then our companies will become less profitable so they will sack people and unemployment will rise.
Two Step Thinking: If we cut pollution, we will slow down global warming, so the climate will remain stable. Then the rain will fall evenly and slowly in the right places, rather than falling unevenly and quickly in the wrong places. Since the weather will remain predictable and consistent, we will not get unprecedented floods and droughts and hurricanes, so farming won't fail worldwide, so we won't all starve. (Alright it is a few more than 2 steps! more like 5 steps!)
One Step Thinking: I want this, I don't care what anyone else feels about it, I am having this because that is what I want.
Two Step Thinking: Everything I want is presently owned by someone else. My welfare is dependent upon others. They also have the same needs and desires as me. If we co-operate as a team we will both reach and attain these desires and needs more quickly. So my plan to achieve my goals has to complement other peoples plans to achieve their goals, in other words I'll have to do a deal.
One Step Thinking: Close down the coal industry in the UK because you can buy cheaper coal from Germany.
Two Step Thinking: The cost of closing down our coal industry to the UK as an economy, in terms of lost jobs, unemployment benefit, lost utility revenues, lost factory rents, lost tax revenue, lost bank profits, lost shop profits, psychological demotivation of people etc. is much greater than the marginal difference between German coal prices and UK coal prices. So we are better off subsidising UK coal. Obviously the Germans understand this and have implemented a policy of subsidy which is based on two stage thinking. In the 1980s the UK was buying German coal which was inferior in quality to ours and which costed more to mine than ours but was subsidised to a greater extent.
One Step Thinking: The world is becoming one place, lets have one world wide government to make the world a fairer place.
Two Step thinking: Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. After the UN becomes the worldwide government, all of the power being in the hands of one government will be catastrophic. The UN itself will become like an African dictator answerable to no one and so it will inevitably become completely corrupt. We need a worldwide judge yes, for human rights issues, a worldwide social service yes, and worldwide health service yes, but a worldwide king with a worldwide army - NO. That would be the worst and most corrupt form of global police state.
One Step Thinking: Lets ask everyone what they want and give it to them in a political system - Democracy.
Two Step Thinking: Peoples individual desires are not as important as their collective needs. We need a political system which gives people not what they want but what they need. We may all want chocolate pudding, but what we need is protein and greens. To ensure that all people get what they need, which is a job, a house, healthcare, schooling for everyone, moral guidance, security (protein and greens), we need to do things that people don't want us to do, and so would never vote for. So we need to educate people so that they understand how to fulfill collective needs and so that they value these needs as much as they value their own personal wants. This education is Christianity. Christianity is not your sticky toffee pudding, it is your protein and your greens. But if you eat up all your greens then you'll get your sticky toffee pudding in the Kingdom of God!
One step thinking: We are in a recession, we need money, lets repossess this house and get some of our money back now.
Two step thinking: If we repossess houses in a recession then we have to sell them at forced sale values. this reduces the price of all the other houses in the area, since those houses are competing with repossessed houses for buyers. The bank has mortgages on many more properties than this particular repossession. If we repossess a significant number of properties and market them during the recession we will destroy the value of the remainder of our property portfolio and become an insolvent bank requiring a bailout. So lets wait until the recession ends before evicting this family rather than repossessing ourselves into a depression.