The search for Christianity

The question

This all started for me somewhere in the past couple years.  I can’t point to a specific moment, but observing the evangelical community over this time led me to the conclusion that this was no longer the style of church for me.  I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew something had to change.  I’ll have more to say on this in a later article.  But while these thoughts were in my head, my brother Pete told me that he had been wrestling with questions of how to know what God’s will is.  More will be said on this later, too.  But ultimately it led to a profound question: If we hadn’t been exposed to Christianity at a young age, if we encountered it instead now, would we be convinced it is true?  

As a child, the family environment was hardly something you’d call religious, but there were remnants of a Catholic faith here and there: a sacred heart picture of Jesus on the wall, an occasional comment about praying something to Mother Mary to ward off Satan, a rare attendance at Mass with other parts of the family that were still observant.  This was enough to establish as a given that there is a God and a heaven, even if the ideas were all vague.  But when I was an early teen, my mother started going to a Pentecostal church, and it wasn’t too long after that I made my own commitment of faith.  This provided a much more complete set of assumptions about God and the Bible.  By the time Pete arrived on the scene, church was a regular part of life, and he was raised going to church and to Christian schools when possible.

The point of saying all this is to illustrate that there were certain ideas that were simply presented as true from a young age, and, like many things we learn from our families, simply through observation and imitation these ideas became my ideas too.  I never really examined the fundamental ideas that I built my faith on, until this point.  But if these ideas are true, they certainly should withstand scrutiny.  And the most fundamental ideas are that there is a God, and that the Bible is a true and accurate communication from Him to humankind.

So the focus of these articles will be on those two points, relative to a number of different topics.  The overall premise is that, if the Bible is true, it should line up with our collective experience from outside the Bible, in terms of history, science, and the like.  But before jumping into those topics, it would be good to talk about the methodology of my examination.

Must vs Might

Imagine that someone held a contest in some endeavor you are interested in.  For example, perhaps it could be to find the greatest guitar player in America, and they determine it is Baxter Shredmaster (any similarity to an actual person unintentional).  Presumably you would be impressed by Baxter.  However, what if it came out that Baxter had arranged with the judges beforehand that he would be the winner, regardless of who entered the contest?  I imagine you wouldn’t be impressed at all.  Even if the judges presented all the reasons they selected Baxter, it wouldn’t be persuasive, knowing that the outcome was predetermined.

However, this is how many people approach topics they investigate.  They aren’t really considering all the possible theories and conclusions.  Rather, the winning conclusion has already been determined from the start.  The conclusion must be true.  This is especially true of religious matters.  Christian authors will claim to be presenting objective scholarship on if and why Christianity is true, but they knew before they started their research that, no matter what, they would conclude Christianity to be true.  And then, Christians will read those books, also knowing before they start reading what they will personally conclude.  All of this provides a veneer of academic rigor and intellectual honesty, but, just like the guitar contest, the results do not carry much weight, since there was really no contest to begin with.  This is not to say I will be ignoring Christian authors; I will indeed be looking at some of the best known books.  It is just that I cannot accept their conclusions at face value.  I need to examine the evidence they provide and draw my own conclusions as best I can.

What is much more useful to an objective examination is research done from the view that a given idea might be true.  The guitar contest only has meaning if each contestant is evaluated on their own merits, with no preconceived notions.  Accordingly, I will also be considering research by people who do not have the view that Christianity must be true.  This is a major aspect of my examination, in fact.  For the people that do not believe, what are they seeing (or not seeing) that leaves them unpersuaded?

There is an unfortunate dynamic between these two views.  When Team Might Be True concludes that they are not persuaded, Team Must Be True looks at them and says this is not possible from an objective analysis of the facts (since this must be true), and therefore those people must have decided from the start that this can’t be true.  This is unavoidable, I suppose.  If a given view is true without question, then anyone who claims to have good reason to not accept that view is just denying the truth, consciously or unconsciously.  There are variations on the argument, but they all boil down to the idea that there is some factor other than the evidence itself not being persuasive.

Since I’ve been a Christian for so long, it should be no surprise that I am certainly biased in all of this.  I definitely want a particular outcome here.  But I will be doing my best to look at this from the view of someone who is looking at Christianity for the first time.

Extraordinary claims

Allow me one more hypothetical.  If I told you that I met a friend for lunch, presumably you would think nothing of it, since this is a routine event for many of us.  If instead I said I met with Carlos Santana, you would likely have a few questions about this, because someone of his fame generally does not hang out with the unwashed masses.  Nonetheless, a photo would probably convince you, because the claim is still within the realm of reason.  However, if I said I met with Mozart for lunch, it would likely be impossible to convince you, because this is beyond anything in our collective experience.  A photo would not be sufficient, nor would eyewitnesses or a receipt from the restaurant.  The photo could be manipulated or of an actor.  Similarly, the eyewitnesses could have seen an actor, or maybe I paid them off.  It would take something truly extraordinary to make such a claim seem plausible, let alone probable.

And this is all as it should be.  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  Yet some Christian apologists try to paint this as unfair, claiming this is what they call anti-supernatural bias.  As they represent it, just because an account contains supernatural elements (things beyond our natural experience), we shouldn’t be more skeptical of it or hold it to a higher standard of proof.  That perspective is unreasonable, though.  We all do this, at least for anything we haven’t already decided Must Be True, and we should.  Any sane person would doubt my story about Mozart or if I claimed I can fly like Superman.  Christians certainly doubt the supernatural claims of other religions, like the claim in Islam that Muhammad split the moon in half.  But since the Bible is the bedrock of Christianity, Christian apologists (to varying degrees) give the accounts it contains a pass.  For me to look at all of this with fresh eyes, though, I cannot do this, and must view all of this with the same skepticism I would have for any other supernatural claims.

The burden of proof

Another tactic used by some apologists is to try to shift the burden of proof to those that are skeptical.  The rough idea is that, since the skeptic is the one making the claim that Christianity is not true, the skeptic is the one that has to prove their case.  There is also the vague comparison to being on trial, and being innocent until proven guilty.

However, both of these views turn the situation on its head.  The skeptic is not making a claim.  The skeptic is doubting the claims made by Christian apologists.  Similarly, there is a comparison that can be drawn to a courtroom, but not the one they are making.  In a courtroom (in America), the person making the claim has to prove it.  If I accuse you of robbing a bank, the burden falls on me to prove it.  You are not assumed to be a bank robber unless you can prove otherwise.

And again, this is how we look at everything else.  Claims of Bigfoot sightings are not assumed to be true unless proven not to be.  Nor are the claims of other religions.  I doubt you would agree with me if, in my Mozart example, I claimed that my account has to be true unless you can prove it is not.  The burden would rest with me, since I am making the claim, and so it is with Christianity.

Which Christianity?

One last point before I move on.  There are, of course, many different flavors of Christianity, and any discussion of the truth of Christianity can easily get bogged down in these distinctions.  There is a wide spectrum of beliefs about which parts of the Bible should be looked at literally and to what degree its contents are divinely orchestrated.  My background tends to be a more fundamental one, and (in my mind) for good reason.  There is certainly a very modern view that counts most of the stories as allegories rather than literal accounts, and likewise considers many of the moral teachings as reflections of the cultures they were written in rather than timeless principles applicable to us today.  And that view may well be true, but if so, why would I believe the stories of the resurrection and Heaven any more than the other stories?  What becomes the basis of deciding what is true and applicable?  In any case, I will be looking at a variety of elements of the Bible, including those important claims in the New Testament.

Next article: Biblical contradictions