Why Trust the Bible?

The percent of adults who believe that the Bible is the word of God dropped from about 75% in 2000 to about 50% in 2020.
The percent of adults who believe that the Bible is true dropped from about 60% in 2000 to about 40% in 2020.
20% of non-christian teens say “science refutes too much of the Bible.”
19% of non-christian teens say that they reject the Bible because they “don’t believe in fairy tales.”
Only 9% of teens in America are “Bible engaged,” meaning that they have a high view of Scripture and they read it regularly.

SESSION MATERIALS:

Richard Knopp. Truth About God: What Can We Know and How Can We Know It? A short book with discussion questions and six short videos.
Richard Knopp. “Where Will We Go Without God?”
Richard Knopp. “Missing Bible Verses Prompt Doubts About God.” Article at Room For Doubt.
Peter Williams. Can We Trust the Gospels?
Rebecca McLaughlin. 10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) about Christianity. Includes two chapters especially relevant to the Bible’s trustworthiness: Ch. 5 “How Can You Believe the Bible is True? and Ch.6 “Hasn’t Science Disproved Christianity?”
Michael Kruger. Surviving Religion 101: Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College. Includes about 7 chapters that deal with the nature of the Bible–its claims about miracles (e.g. the resurrection of Jesus), its divine origin, its purported contradictions, its reliability after centuries of copying the texts, its inclusion of 66 ancient books (and not others), and its troubling moral passages that seem to support oppression and genocide.
Recommended Resources for Youth and Adults (books, websites, and videos) on the Room For Doubt website. Especially note the one on “Resources for Teens and Young Adults.”