To listen to Seven Compact 4-point Apologetics Arguments Countering Common Atheist / Skeptic Assertions (20 minutes), click on the play button:

To download the podcast, right click on "download" and select "save link as" or "save target as" and you can download the podcast and listen to it later.
Download Podcast

Note: These lines of reasoning are based on the material in Compelling Evidence. Please, if you have not read this book, consider reading it before you listen to this podcast. The arguments were created for my Apologetics class at Lincoln Christian University, but should be of use to anyone who wants to share his/her faith.

 

1. There’s no proof for God.

  • Universal spiritual experience and testimony indicate a spiritual world.
  • Insisting on empirical (scientific) proof when God is an immaterial being is itself illogical. Many things cannot be empirically proven, yet are real nonetheless—like logic, numbers, justice, and love.
  • A universe with marks of intelligence and personality is more likely to originate in a source that is itself personal and intelligent.
  • Christians experience God through Jesus Christ.

2. The Bible has been changed.

  • The Bible story isn’t the kind of story people would make up if they were just inventing a religion. If this were a merely human work, we’d expect the embarrassing / apparently contradictory parts to have been cut out, not left in.
  • Translators work from the best available copies. The Dead Sea Scrolls prove the fidelity of the OT copyists over a 1000-year period.
  • The 5500 Greek manuscripts (partial and complete) before the printing press suggest that the New Testament too has been well preserved.
  • Since minor copying errors do not “change” the message, any more than typos usually invalidate an entire document. it is fair to say the text of the Bible has been preserved adequately (not perfectly). The message is remains unchanged.

3. Jesus is merely a myth.

  • There is strong evidence for the historical Jesus (e.g. Jewish, Roman, Christian sources).
  • There are valid reasons to accept the resurrection of Christ.
  • The so-called parallels (dying and rising gods) prove nothing, as they are too late and poor “parallels.”
  • Jesus’ followers (the eyewitnesses) are unlikely to have been willing to die for a mere legend.

4. All roads lead to God.

  • The differences outweigh the similarities, so the statement is simplistic (and offensive).
  • Christianity offers the best answers to life’s fundamental questions (origin, destiny, meaning, purpose, morality, relationship, identity).
  • We must not confuse tolerance of persons with tolerance of ideas. That is, faith doesn’t create truth; it merely recognizes it. (Better a weak faith in a strong bridge than a strong faith in a weak bridge.)
  • Christianity is both exclusive (since truth inherently excludes) and inclusive—for all people (Revelation 7:9).

5. Science contradicts faith.

  • Then why do the majority of scientists believe in a personal god?
  • The Big Bang Theory actually suggests a Creator (something comes from nothing).
  • Evolution has to do with the how, not the why. Thus there is no necessary contradiction with Genesis.
  • God’s book of words (scripture) and his book of works (nature – Psalm 19, Romans 1) are complementary. The Bible is not a science textbook, but a story about relationships.

6. What about the religious wars?

  • The Crusades, Inquisition, bigotry, hate crimes, etc. are a blight on Christianity. Yet the fact that they are done in the name of Christ does not prove that they are caused by him.
  • Many have been killed in religious wars, but atheistic and anti-Christian governments kill, too. In the 20th century, some 100 million perished at the hands of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Amin, Pol Pot, et al. If faith is dangerous, unbelief is even more perilous.
  • Among the complex causes of war, political / economic power lies at the core, not religion.
  • Whereas the Old Testament regulated violence, the New Testament forbids it (Matthew 5; Romans 12). Christianity is not political; “our struggle is not against flesh and blood” (Ephesians 6:12).

7. The evil in the world rules out a (good) God.

  • Without an external moral standard, who’s to say something is evil? If there’s no God, then there is (ultimately) no good or evil. “Whatever is, is right.”
  • As far as we can understand, a world with free will (integral to humanity) requires the potential for sin, pain, and suffering.
  • Christianity offers neither simplistic answers nor escape from pain.
  • God himself enters our world, meeting us in our pain at the Cross. Out of this event, Jesus calls us to a cruciform life.