Okay, as far as the Bible goes: You can blast me for taking the easy way out, but all you need to do is take a look at this page, and the wealth of information, and answers to challenges to the validity of the contents of the Bible, and I think that forms a powerful argument to its overall validity:
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/hway.html
The Christian Think Tank and Tekton Apologetics Ministries are just two such web sites that contain hundreds or even thousands of articles refuting false claims made by detractors of Christianity about the contents of the Bible and the circumstances surrounding the writing of the original books and the assembly of the Bible as we know it today, and also articles about other things like the validity (or lack thereof) of Calvinism, Mormonism, the Church of Jesus Christ, Scientist, and other things.
http://www.christian-thinktank.com
http://www.tektonics.org
By the way, regarding whether God in any way "created" evil, here you are, from the Christian Think Tank:
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(1) Evil is...intentions and intentional acts (both being 'acts' or 'personally directed events' and not 'things') of intelligent agents, that violate the God-derived principles of love, fairness, or loyalty.
(2) No, 'acts' and 'events' are not 'made'--they are 'done'. God made and created 'things' and 'agents', not their 'acts' or 'events'...He 'did' His own 'acts' (of course), but other agents 'do' their own 'acts'. So God did not 'make evil' (the phrase is meaningless and nonsensical)
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But back to the trustworthiness of the Bible. It's tough to fully address this one without writing a book on it, but I'm going to pull the old cut-and-paste again, this time from an article called "Thumnails" from the Christian Think Tank. The original article can be found here:
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/thumbs.html
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5. What makes you so confident that the Bible is true? It has so many authors, so many translations, and was written over so many years--there MUST be some mistakes!
"At first blush, you would certainly EXPECT there to be mistakes--there certainly seems to be mistakes in all OTHER such literature. But, we have to keep coming back to the question of God--IF the God described in the Bible DOES exist, and IF He cares enough about us to get a message to us of His love and efforts for us in the person of Jesus Christ, THEN it is CERTAINLY POSSIBLE that He COULD produce such a book that WAS completely trustworthy. So, we are probably not entitled to ASSUME it is untrustworthy--we will have to TEST IT to see if it does measure up to a very high standard of reliability.
"We actually DO have indications that there is something 'supernatural' about this book--in the area of fulfilled predictions of the future. In that portion of the Bible written before the times of Jesus Christ--the Old Testament--there are numerous situations where men and women of God made detailed predictions about the future. To the best of our historical knowledge, ALL of these came true--a VERY 'odd' success rate for foretelling the future! These cases of accurate (and detailed) predictions of the future support the claim that a supernatural influence is involved in this Book.
"As far as modern historical methods, the curious thing about this book is that the farther away in history we get from the actual events it portrays, the higher our confidence grows that the record is correct! In other words, in generations past, scholars would have a list of passages in the Bible that they thought contained errors. But as time went by, and we learned more about ancient civilizations and cultures, and as we did more archeological excavations, the more those passages were found to be true. For example, for the longest time we believed that camels were not domesticated in the times of Abraham. But in the early 20th century, we discovered archeological remains that clearly demonstrated that the Bible record was historically accurate. So, as we learn more about history, the more our confidence in the historical accuracy of the Bible increases.
" Your question about the translations is a natural one, for if the bible we had today was a translation of a translation of a translation (and so on), we COULD have a problem. Fortunately for us, archeology works FOR us again. Each year we find more and more copies of the original manuscripts, from earlier and earlier dates. We even have manuscript fragments that date to the time of the apostles' deaths--LONG before we got into the 'translation business'! So each year provides us with better data about what the original authors wrote (and a way to check the modern translations for accuracy).
"And, even though this is going to sound strange, the very WEIRDNESS and DIFFICULTY of the Bible's content is a witness to the reliability and trustworthiness of the record. Let me explain. There are many passages in the Bible that are difficult to understand, easy to be offended at, or an embarrassment to the early church leaders. But these passages were NOT altered, omitted, or diluted! The emphasis on faithful recording and reporting was ETHICALLY HIGH, with the result that the Bible that we end up with is a trustworthy account.
"In fact, academic historians point out that, compared to the OTHER historical documents of the times, the Bible is incredibly more reliable, non-mythological, and historically testable.
So, by all the modern historical standards, we are justified in placing our confidence in the Bible.
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And if you're going to take issue with the fact that I cut-and-pasted from another web site, even though I gave the proper credit, then I have to wonder if the real reason you're in this is just to pick a fight. The only reason I'm participating in this debate is to help people have greater assurance of God's realness and awesomeness, so that the onslaught of people who love to sling mud won't be a stumbling block for those who already believe. If these materials tear down your intellectual obstacles to believing, then that's cool too. As it happens, #6 from the same article provides a good explanation of how we know God exists. Keep in mind, there is enough information about this to fill volumes and volumes, so this is really, really condensed stuff. But here it is, just the same.
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6. How do you know God exists?
"Actually, the only way we really KNOW that God exists is that He has broken into history and made Himself known. He revealed Himself in a pattern of events, over a span of thousands of years, and the record of this 'disclosure' is in the Judeo-Christian scriptures. He gave us a 'book' in which He told us about Himself, His likes and dislikes, what the universe is like, what would made us happy, and how to have a wonderful relationship with Him. He even went so far as to surround this Book with 'special evidences' of its supernatural origin--largely fulfilled prophecy and miracles that accompanied the early messengers He used.
"Indeed, He actually went beyond simply sending purely human messengers--He came to earth Himself in the person of Jesus Christ! He literally sent His Son (the identical image of the Father's character and commitments) to earth for us to see what He was REALLY like. God the Father proved the supernatural character of His Son by raising him from the dead (after being dead 3 days). Those around this person Jesus Christ recorded his words, deeds, character, miracles, resurrection--so that we might know what God the Father was like. And THEIR message was likewise vindicated by miraculous events.
"These are the really strong evidences we have--historical events right in front of our eyes. But there are other arguments that generally support the idea of God's existence, that we can glean from the fact and nature of the universe.
"We know from both science and philosophy that the universe had a beginning. And we generally know that anything that has a beginning ALSO has a 'cause' of its coming into existence. [And this cause has to be 'different' from the universe so IT doesn't need a cause itself.] So we generally can understand that something like 'God' must exist.
"In addition to the simple fact of the universe, the nature of the universe also makes more sense if it were created by a God. We naturally believe that behind every work of art is an artist, that behind every invention is an inventor, that behind every building is an architect. When we see evidence of intelligent design (even imperfect or incomplete) we suspect that there was an intelligent designer. And the same applies to the universe in all its incredible complexity and inter-connectedness. The delicate balances in physical and biological laws can be seen as strong evidence for an Intelligent Designer--God.
"In fact, if you take this argument one step farther, we end up with important data about this "God's" character. As scientists in the last 50 years examined the fine balance in the universe, they were shocked to discover that the universe has somehow been 'fine tuned' to produce humanity. The slightest variances in the initial conditions of the birth of the universe would have precluded humanity's existence. This seems like an important clue that God has a special purpose for humanity, and perhaps even that He 'cares' for us and our well-being.
"This evidence in both history and nature argues pretty strongly that God exists, that He is active in our History, and that He cares for us. But, to be honest, in addition to these evidences, I personally have an additional source of data--God has changed my life and has answered prayer beyond the boundary of statistical probability.
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The rest of this article is so good that I suggest that you all take the time to read it. It's relatively short, but among the best I've found in such concise terms. Speaking of statistical probability, let's look back to a debate between Dr. William Lane Craig, who I've mentioned here before, and one Massimo Pigliucci. Here's an excerpt I particularly like, about how whether by instantaneous creation or by evolution, the existence of life can be considered a miracle. Check that exponent:
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(insert big open-quote marks here) In fact, that leads me to his other argument, concerning biological evolution. And I'm going to suggest that the idea that evolution could have occurred without an intelligent Designer is so improbable as to be fantastic. This has been demonstrated by Barrowand Tipler in their book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth.{1} They estimate the odds of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4-360 (110,000), a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God! And here the Christian can be much more open to where the evidence leads. He could say, "Well, God could have used evolution; He could have used special creation. I'm open to the evidence." But, you see, for the naturalist evolution is the only game in town! No matter how fantastic the odds, no matter how improbable the evidence, he's stuck with it because he hasn't got an intelligent Designer. So it seems to me that the Christian can be far more objective on this point. After all, if you were to find watch lying on the ground, and, say, it didn't function exactly perfectly, it lost one minute per hour, would you therefore conclude that the watch was not designed properly? (insert big end-quote marks here)
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Yeah, I think that about does it.
ADDENDUM: Here's a link to the Craig-Pigliucci debate:
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcrai ... ucci0.html