If you are only willing to accept sources outside the bible, then I can’t meet your dumb and ridiculous standards
His standard for belief (I presume) is a compelling argument that connects evidence and premises to sound conclusions. It's mine as well. The Bible is evidence of one thing only: that it was written. Nothing in it can be known to be correct without external corroboration, and even with that, scripture is still not part of why the idea is known to be correct if it is.
If you can't meet the standards of experienced critical thinkers, it's because your case isn't persuasive, not because their standards are too high.
This is a great enigma to believers - why won't the skeptics believe? Whatever argument they bring, it's never good enough. It seems that it never occurs to the apologist that the answer may be because the believer is incorrect. Obviously, if he holds a false belief, he will never be able to produce evidence that it is correct.
But the believer doesn't process information the way the skeptic does, which is why they have come to different conclusions despite having access to the same reality. I think that many believers are unaware of this. They are unaware of how tendentious their thinking is, something the experienced critical thinker has learned to disesteem to minimize in himself. He takes pride in the fact that he looks at the evidence first and derives sound conclusions by dispassionately applying valid reasoning. He sees two genealogies of Jesus or two creation myths and concludes that they contradict one another. They make mutually exclusive claims. Simple analysis.
But the apologist doesn't go from evidence to conclusion. He goes from faith-based premise to evidence in search of whatever he can find that he hopes supports his faith-based belief, while ignoring or rationalizing away that which contradicts him. He can only conclude one thing because no other conclusion is possible for him: there is no error there. There is no contradiction. And he'll jump through any number of contortionist hoops in support of that belief. The problem is that ideas reached in that manner - faith - will be incorrect unless one makes a lucky guess, and even then, he can't now that he did until evidence confirms that he did.
And so, he finds himself in the unenviable position of trying to defend indefensible and incorrect positions like creationism or resurrection or biblical inerrancy. Had he used the proper method, he would have arrived at sound conclusions supported by evidence, but he didn't, and now is left defending ideas insufficiently supported if not outright contradicted by the evidence. Isn't that your predicament? The evidence you offer is convincing nobody, and they are telling you why. But you don't see any of this that way. You are sure that your beliefs are correct and corroborated by what you offer as evidence for them, and are confused about why that doesn't convince others.
The answer lies in the fact that it didn't even convince you. You held that belief before looking for that evidence. If it didn't take you to belief, why would it take a skeptic to belief?
