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July 7 - July 10, 2019
To be human is to reason, to reflect, and to ask questions about life and its meaning.
Atheist activist and philosophy professor Peter Boghossian wrote a book in 2013 entitled A Manual for Creating Atheists
he encourages atheists to engage Christians not on the evidence but on the way Christians evaluate truth claims in the first place.
When surveyed, the largest segment of young, ex-Christian respondents said they left Christianity because they had intellectual doubt, skepticism, and unanswered questions.
“Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.”
Although Christianity makes its own ideological and philosophical claims, these proposals are intrinsically connected to a singular validating event: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Why should anyone believe what Jesus said rather than what Buddha, the Hindu sages, or Confucius said? The authority of Jesus is grounded in more than the strength of an idea; it’s established by the verifiability of an event. When Jesus rose from the dead, He established His authority as God, and His resurrection provides us with an important Christian distinctive. The resurrection can be examined for its
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The distinctive attribute of Christianity is not simply that it is verifiable but that it passes our verification tests.
Jesus knew His followers needed more than His direct testimony. He offered the evidence of the miracles to corroborate His claims so His hearers would be fully convinced. In fact, Jesus was so committed to this evidential approach that He stayed with the disciples for over a month following His resurrection to give them additional evidence:
Making the case for the truth of Christianity, Quadratus offered, as evidence, the existence of people healed by Jesus who were still alive in Quadratus’s day.
He referenced the Gospels as eyewitness accounts and encouraged the emperor to respond to his case and become a Christian.
Ariston is the first Christian known to make a written defense for Christianity against Jewish objections.
authored many important case-making documents, including two in which he made the case for Christianity to Emperor Antoninus Pius and the Roman Senate.
Justin sought to reconcile the claims of faith and reason for his readers and argued that traces of the truth (“seeds of Christianity”) could even be found in the writings of historical Greek philosophers who predated Jesus.
became famous as a case maker, defending the truth of Christianity to Emperor Marcus Aurelius and making the case against early heretics in the church.
Tertullian wrote Apologeticus to the magistrates in Rome, in which he made the case for Christianity and argued that freedom of religion was an inalienable human right.
In fact, to this day, there isn’t any evidence disproving the eyewitness accounts recorded in the Gospels.
believe something because it is the most reasonable inference from evidence, even though we may still have some unanswered questions.
When I was an atheist, I believed the universe and everything in it could be explained by (and with) nothing more than space, time, matter, and the laws that govern such things. But I had to ignore the evidence and accept insufficient atheistic explanations for the complex information in the genetic code, the fine-tuning in the universe, the appearance of design in biology, and the existence of nonmaterial minds and mental free agency (more on this in God’s Crime Scene).
Jurors make decisions even though they have less than complete information, and they aren’t the only people who make decisions in this way. Regardless of theistic (or atheistic) worldview, we all trust something is true, even though we can’t answer all the questions.
A recent Barna Group poll revealed that only 9 percent of American adults possess a biblical worldview, acknowledging the existence of objective moral truth, asserting the accuracy of the Bible, believing in the existence of Satan, understanding the relationship between grace and “works,” affirming the sinless life of Jesus, and comprehending the classic attributes of God.
“The more you sweat in here, the less you’ll bleed out there.”
I wanted my students to encounter the claims of nonbelievers like Bart Ehrman, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Victor Stenger, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Peter Boghossian while they were still in my midst.
Don’t avoid the books, videos, or podcasts created by nonbelievers.
“Every Christian who does not study, really study, the Bible every day is a fool.” R. A. Torrey
Evidential confidence is often the result of investigative diligence.
In Cold-Case Christianity, I shared ten investigative principles detectives use to evaluate eyewitnesses as I made the case for the reliability of the New Testament Gospels.
Investigative Practice #1: Read the Casebook Completely
One way to better understand the flow of history and the theological connections between biblical texts is to read the books of the Bible in the order in which the events actually occurred.
Investigative Practice #2: Think about the Nature of Evidence Broadly
When skeptics say the case for Christianity is weak because it can’t be built with scientific, testable, physical, forensic evidence, they simply don’t know how criminal cases are tried every day in America.
Take, for example, atheistic claims about the nature of the universe. Did everything (all space, time, and matter) come into existence from nothing through some natural process involving the laws of physics? Did life emerge from non-life in a similar way? Can immaterial consciousness and true free agency emerge from an entirely physical and deterministic universe? Can the laws of physics provide adequate grounding for moral obligations?
We can make a case for the reliability of the Bible, the historicity and deity of Jesus, and the existence of God from seemingly unimportant statements and facts.
Investigative Practice #3: Take Notes and Analyze the Case Thoroughly
When I first read through the Gospels as an atheist, however, the differences between accounts only strengthened my interest in them as eyewitness accounts.
Investigative Practice #4: Summarize and Organize the Evidence Usefully
While investigating a cold case, I make dozens of lists, and these lists generally fall into two distinct categories: evidences and explanations.
This process is called “abductive reasoning” and I demonstrate its value in both Cold-Case Christianity (chapter 2) and God’s Crime Scene (chapter 5).
Unfriendly “Pagan” Accounts from Outside the Christian “Casebook”
Thallus (ca. AD 5–60)
On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun.
Tacitus (ca. AD 56–117)
Mara Bar-Serapion (ca. AD 70–?)
Phlegon (ca. AD 80–140)
Phlegon records that, in the time of Tiberius Caesar, at full moon, there was a full eclipse of the sun from the sixth to the ninth hour.
Now Phlegon, in the thirteenth or fourteenth book, I think, of his Chronicles, not only ascribed to Jesus a knowledge of future events … but also testified that the result corresponded to His predictions. And with regard to the eclipse in the time of Tiberius Caesar, in whose reign Jesus appears to have been crucified, and the great earthquakes which then took place … Jesus, while alive, was of no assistance to himself, but that he arose after death, and exhibited the marks of his punishment, and showed how his hands had been pierced by nails. 12
These accounts add even more to our understanding: Jesus had the ability to accurately predict the future, was crucified under the reign of Tiberius Caesar, and demonstrated His wounds after He was resurrected.
Pliny the Younger (ca. ...
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They had met regularly before dawn on a determined day, and sung antiphonally a hymn to Christ as if to a god. They also took an oath not for any crime, but to keep from theft, robbery and adultery, not to break any promise, and not to withhold a deposit when reclaimed.
Suetonius (ca. AD 69–140)
Celsus (ca. AD ?–180)
