This post is part 1 of my full reply and covers 3 topics, "Sin and the Purpose of the Bible", "Evidence for the afterlife", and "How we know we can trust the Bible".
Sin and the Purpose of the Bible:
To start off, you are correct that disease does kill you. However, sin kills us too. Sin is a term shared with archery meaning 'to miss the mark' or in otherwards, to live in a way other than what God intends for us. As I mentioned in my earlier post with Romans 6:23, "the wages of sin are death...". Sin does harm us whether we choose to recognize it or not. To build off what I said in my last post, whether you acknowledge the link between smoking and cancer or not, it does exist, and it does cause harm.
Next, Christianity isn't just about what happens after we die. It talks a lot about how to live a good life and glorify God in the process. For example, one of the largest continuous chunks of teachings we have from Jesus is the sermon on the mount (Mathew 5-7). Of the 20 sections, only 2 directly deal with the afterlife, the others deal with things such as controlling anger, not retaliating against people, loving your enemies, dealing with anxiety, and so on.
- I have friends who've escaped alcoholism, who've overcome drug addictions through Jesus. Friends who've mended broken families and relationships through following what the Bible teaches. That wouldn't be possible if the Bible only talked about what happens in the afterlife. It concerns the here and the now.
Evidence For The afterlife:
The evidence for the afterlife is actually really fascinating. Over the past 40 years there's been 900 scholarly articles published in scientific and medical journals detailing a phenomenon called 'Near Death Experiences'. When someone is near the point of death (often clinically dead), they find themselves outside of their body and fully conscious. This has happened to people who are religious, and those who are atheist. It's happened to people all across the world too, not just in the west. What's interesting is those who believe in things like reincarnation don't see something aligning with that, they see a white-robed man with a book of accounts. Which lines up with what the Bible teaches. While that sounds wild, unbelievable, and fake, these cases end up getting published in journals because people see things that are only possible if they are truly in such a state. For example, a researcher named Kimberly Clark Sharp detailed the experience of a heart-attack patient named Maria. While Maria was unconscious, she floated through the ceiling and outside the hospital. She saw a shoe and after she regained consciousness was able to describe it perfectly. The hospital staff checked, and the shoe was there just as she described, down to the detail of a scuff mark over the little toe. There is no way Maria would be able to describe such a shoe unless she had actually seen it in the way she described. These are extremely fascinating and well documented; they point to us being more then material bodies and that we do have a soul. While people absolutely make false claims about this and pretend to have 'Near Death Experiences', that doesn't explain the cases like Maria's where something testable and verifiable was observed. It is clear that something happens after death.
How we know we can trust the Bible:
In terms of the how the Bible was written, it wasn't written all at once 40 years later by 'somebody'. The New Testament was written by 9 different authors and the earliest parts (such as creed recorded in 1 Corinthians 15) can be dated back to 6-months to 3-years after Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15 actually is about the evidence for the resurrection too and names of people in that time period you could go ask to confirm the story, including over 500 people Jesus appeared to at one time. That's either the boldest lie in history or it's true.
In terms of historical writings, the standard for all texts (not just the Bible) is three criteria:
- Was it written from eyewitness accounts?
- Was it copied with extreme care?
- Does it have archeological evidence?
With point 1, the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses (Mathew and John) or scribes recording what eyewitnesses saw (Mark and Luke). Each of these authors wrote without collaborating with one another (Mathew wasn't checking with Luke to see what he wrote in Chapter 9). The fact that they line up without contradictions further proves that they recorded events that really happened.
- These people observed live-changing events, those are far easier to remember. I can't tell you where I was a year ago today. I can tell you exactly where I was and what I was thinking when I learned my grandfather passed away. The eyewitnesses watching Jesus heal the blind, watching Jesus raise the dead, hearing Jesus tell of things to come and teach them how to live good lives. Watching Jesus be killed on a cross then rise three days later. These would be events you could not forget, not just some random day years ago. You also have to consider the eyewitnesses were teaching what Jesus said and did to people, it's not like they stayed quite for years then finally wrote it down one day. This would constantly be in their memory.
With point 2, the Jewish people were known to be meticulous copiers (the greatest in the world). They wouldn't copy line-per-line or word- per-word. They would copy letter-per-letter. They knew how many letters each section should have. So, they would go to the middle and count forwards and backwards, if it was incorrect, they would throw them out and start all over again. This can be further proved by the Dead Sea Scrolls. Prior to 1947 the oldest copy of the Old Testament we had was from 900 AD. Then the dead sea scrolls were discovered and dated to 100 BC conservatively and 300-400 BC if you're more liberal on it. They showed that the Old Testament had been reliably translated for over 1,000 years without error. That is the care that was taken with copying the Bible.
With point 3, there is a mountain of archeological evidence that supports the Bible. For example, the Book of Acts mentioned 39 countries, 54 cities, and 9 islands. All of which have been found and confirmed with archeological evidence. Often times the Bible will mention a group that existed, that is lost to archeology for long period of time only to be found again. My favorite example of this it the Hittites who had no evidence of existing for 1,900 years until the 1900s when we discovered archeological evidence of them. That entire time the Bible was correct and 'modern historians' were wrong. It is clear the Bible knows more about history then we do. This also applies to the sciences. The Bible isn't a science textbook (I can't learn to build a rocket to Mars by reading it) but every time it mentions something scientific it is correct. For example, most ancient cultures believed that the earth was sitting on something, the Greeks claimed Atlas was holding it up, the Egyptians claimed it rested on 5 pillars, the Hindus claimed it was balanced on an elephant on top of a massive turtle. Only the Bible (in the oldest book in it) correctly claims that it is floating over nothing, "He stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing" Job 26:7, ESV.
Even if every copy of the New Testament was destroyed, we could still tell exactly what it said from other groups documenting the events going on. Such as Jewish documents like the Mara Bar-Serpian or Jewish authors like Josephus. Jesus is also mentioned by Roman authors who were literally trying to destroy the church like Pliny the Younger (who detailed torturing two Christain women to death), Tacitus, Lucien, Suetonius, and Celsus. There are also early Christian authors like Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and Justin Martyr. All of this evidence is overwhelming and shows the Bible is accurate.
Either we accept the New Testament is valid historically or we throw-out everything else written in history.
- I can get more into this as this is one of my favorite topics but let me just add this. There was a cold case detective named J Warner Wallace who was an atheist and started investigating the Bible using his cold case skills. He ended up coming to the conclusion that the Bible is true, and the evidence is in its favor. He's written a few books about the subject, most famously was "Cold Case Christianity". I highly recommend reading the book or watching some videos on it. I've linked two bellow:
- Short video - My Journey Through the Evidence for Christianity - YouTube
- Long video - Cold Case Christianity - J. Warner Wallace - YouTube
In terms of "edits and additions" there's an entire field of study called textual criticism and thought it we can tell with near certainty what the original Bible said. We can tell where scribes made mistakes or where others tried to insert things. For example, I own 3 different full translations of the Bible, all of them points out that Acts 8:37 was added in later and don't have included in the main text. The idea of "edits and additions" isn't an issue for that reason, we can tell when those took place and will point them out. We don't try to hide them as we want people to be aware of those things. This helps the credibility of the Bible since we are not trying to hide things. Every time we translate the Bible, we go back to the earliest sources we have (like the Dead Sea Scrolls). Bible translation isn't one long game of telephone where errors get compounded over time. The Books in the Bible we have today are verifiably the same as the ones first written.