A Cumulative Case for Christianity

Why should we believe that Christianity is really true? Is this something that we take on blind faith, or are there good reasons to trust our lives and eternities to Christ?

Instead of offering one knockdown argument for Christ, we should instead consider a cumulative case. In a court of law, a jury will consider multiple and independent lines of evidence to reach a verdict of conviction or innocence. Similarly, we should think through several arguments in concert with one another to reach a verdict about Christianity.

Evidence from Personhood

Perception of equality. Do you believe that all people were created equal? The Christian worldview affirms the equality of all people (Gal. 3:28), because we were all made in God’s image (Gen. 1:27; Jas. 3:9) and Jesus values us enough to die for everyone on Earth (Jn. 3:16; Gal. 2:20). If this is true, then equality is both objective and incredibly valuable. Yet if God doesn’t exist, why believe that all people truly have equal worth?

Surely not all people are all physically or intellectually equal. The physicist Stephen Hawking is not intellectually equal with Lebron James, and Lebron James is not athletically equal with Stephen Hawking. If these men were truly equal, then Stephen Hawking should have an equal opportunity in trying out for the NBA, and Lebron should have just as much of a chance publishing popular books on astrophysics. So in what sense are these two men equal? Atheist Ayn Rand admits, “Egalitarianism [equality] is so evil—and so silly—a doctrine that it deserves no serious study or discussion.”^[1] If there is no God, then Rand is right. We might still affirm the equality of all people, but we would have no basis for doing so. However, if God does exist and if he values all people, equality would be both objective and important.

Perception of morality. The Bible states that God has placed a moral law in the heart of all human beings (Rom. 1:19; 2:14-15), because God himself is a moral being (Hab. 1:13). Humans can perceive this moral law, but sometimes wonder if this could exist without God? If there is no God, then the same blind cosmic machine that evolved the fungus on our feet also produced our family members. Nature does not in any way differentiate between the life forms it creates—nor does it care about them or value them. Amoral and impersonal causes cannot produce morality, unless there is a moral standard outside of this naturalistic process.

Is it wrong when a lion kills a gazelle for dinner? Of course not; it’s only natural. But why is it that we consider it unnatural when a human kills another human? For instance, if someone broke into our house and killed one of our family members, we wouldn’t call this nature; we would call it murder.

But what is the difference between a gazelle in the wilderness and a human primate in your home? They both weigh the same. The gazelle has more body hair, and it can run faster. On the other hand, your family member has a bigger brain, walks upright, and can operate a remote control. While these two obviously have some physical or behavioral differences, what is the moral difference between them? Atheist Richard Carrier states that a human baby “has more value than any animal on Earth, with the possible exception of adult apes or dolphins (or, perhaps, elephants).”^[2]

Yet when a pedophile rapes a child or when a serial murderer kills innocent victims, do you think this is truly wrong? If you can perceive a moral law like this, then it points to a moral Lawgiver—a moral Being who transcends nature.

Perception of freewill. The Bible teaches that God wanted free persons to choose to relate to him, rather than having programmed machines which were forced to mechanically respond to him (Mt. 23:37; Acts 14:16; Jn. 1:13). Humans have the immediate awareness that we’re free to a large degree, but under a naturalistic worldview, everything in the universe is the result of cause and effect. If there is nothing beyond nature, then even our own thoughts and decisions would just be the result of a physical process in motion. We might feel like we have free thoughts and decisions, but this would simply be an illusion in the hardwiring of our conditioned brains. As one atheistic thinker colorfully explains, “The brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile.”^[3]

The reactions of our brains are certainly complex, but more complex reactions do not create free will. For instance, imagine setting up ten dominos in a row, watching them as they knock each other over. Now, imagine if you set up 50,000 dominos in a wide, complicated maze. Of course, this would surely be more complex than the first set, but not any more free. Atheistic thinkers are all too aware of this uncomfortable consequence of a universe without God. Atheist J.L. Mackie calls our perception of freewill “a useful illusion.”^[4] Atheist Susan Blackmore states that we need to “accept that we might be deeply deluded about our own minds”^[5] and our perception of freewill is really just “a grand illusion.”^[6]

Do you agree? Or do you have a direct and immediate perception that you are not determined but within control of your own actions? If you sense that you do have a freewill, this points to a supernatural aspect to reality, which transcends nature, rather than being bound by it. Of course, it’s possible that humans are collectively deluded about the fact that they have freewill, but does that answer make the most sense of our perception of reality? Or does it make more sense that our awareness of these realities points toward a Creator who endowed them within us?

Evidence from Creation

The origin of the universe. Ever since the days of Aristotle, secular thinkers in the Western world held that the universe had existed eternally in the past.^[7] But remarkably the Bible claimed: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1; cf. Jn. 1:1; Heb. 11:3). Yet surprisingly, modern scientists confirmed that the biblical view had been right all along: The universe had not existed eternally; it sprung into being sometime in the past.

Modern physicists call this cataclysmic event “The Big Bang,” where all space, time, matter, and energy sprung into existence from nothing. Agnostic physicist Stephen Hawking states, “Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang.”^[8] Likewise, agnostic physicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler write, “At this singularity, space and time came into existence; literally nothing existed before the singularity, so, if the Universe originated at such a singularity, we would truly have a creation ex nihilo [or “out of nothing”].”^[9]

Yet the ten million dollar question still remains: What (or Who) caused the Bang? If you heard the sound of a grenade exploding in the street, what would you think? Wouldn’t you try to discover what caused it? But if “little bangs” need causes, how much more do “Big Bangs”? Commenting on this remarkable discovery, agnostic Robert Jastrow writes, “This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth.”^[10]