This is Part 1 of Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Guide.
Foundations: What Apologetics Is#
Defining Apologetics#
Apologetics, as I use the term here, includes defensive and offensive arguments for Christianity, the claims made by Jesus in the Gospels, and the claims made by the apostles in the New Testament. Because Jesus referenced other books of the Old Testament, and the apostles referenced those books and even wrote additional books of the New Testament, apologetics ends up encompassing thousands of years of writings that make claims about everything ranging from the origins of the universe to minute historical details about obscure people and places. The list of topics that apologetics must cover is practically endless.
Unanswered Questions vs. Sound Arguments in Apologetics#
If Christianity is true, then every piece of evidence should support the Christian faith. In other words, there should be no sound arguments against Christianity. But it’s crucial to note that an unanswered question isn’t the same as a sound argument. Apologetics won’t be able to answer every question, and that isn’t unique to apologetics.
There are still unanswered questions about gravity, but that doesn’t mean gravity doesn’t exist. Human knowledge is limited, so we can’t exhaustively know everything. But we can know some things truly.
Some people get tripped up here by thinking that if we can’t know everything, then there’s a possibility that what we think we know is wrong. Maybe someday we’ll discover some fact that renders all of our present facts obsolete. This kind of thinking traps us in a never-ending cycle of complete skepticism and the inability to know anything.
Suppose we did discover some new fact X that upset our existing beliefs. There would still be the possibility of some other new piece of knowledge that would then upset the belief in X. And so on. We shouldn’t use a lack of exhaustive knowledge as an excuse to feign ignorance about things we do actually know truly.
Why Christianity Isn’t Obvious to Everyone#
The word apologetic simply means to speak in defense of something. It’s typically used in the context of defending a set of religious propositions, such as:
- God exists
- He created the universe
- Humans sin, and their sin has separated them from God
- Jesus is God in human form
- He died on the cross and rose from the dead
- Only those who confess that Jesus is God and believe that He rose from the dead can be forgiven and go to heaven
…and so on.
Christianity has been around for 2,000 years, so you’d think that everything that could have been written in its defense has already been written. That’s partly true, but it needs some clarification.
Arguments for different aspects of Christianity have been around a long time. As we learn more about the world, we occasionally come up with new arguments (or new evidence for existing arguments) based on new discoveries. This might seem surprising if you’ve heard the claim that “science disproves” some aspect of Christianity. In fact, the entire history of science has been one finding after another that aligns with Scripture, especially in biology and cosmology, which also surprises a lot of people. For example, the discovery of intact dinosaur blood cells, soft tissue, and collagen supports the Bible’s record of a relatively young earth.
That’s just one example. The point is that not a single scientific discovery has ever contradicted the Bible. Any so-called “science” that supposedly disproves some aspect of Christianity is always purely theoretical, un-empirical, and hardly worthy of being called science at all. I’ll circle back to this later.
So shouldn’t Christianity be obvious to everyone if it’s true? The fact is that most people don’t pay attention and just don’t know things that might seem obvious to someone else. I am constantly seeing posts on social media from people sharing the most obvious “today I learned” observations, things I’ve known for decades. If you look at the comments, you’ll see some people saying they learned something new, and others saying it’s obvious and they’ve known it for years.
If there’s a clear knowledge gap among people when it comes to trivial things, imagine how much bigger the gap is when it comes to a topic as significant as Christianity. So the answer is no. Many things, ranging from the mundane to the complex and wonderful, including Christianity, are not obvious to everyone.
Ignorance Is the Enemy of Christianity#
A lot of people have never heard good arguments for Christianity, and mistakenly believe that no good arguments exist. There are also a lot of bad arguments against Christianity that many people have heard, and they think they’re actually good arguments simply because they haven’t heard any alternatives or rebuttals.
It’s like if you grew up eating nothing but cheap school cafeteria food, and the lunch ladies always told you that you were eating the best food in the world. There was nothing better out there, and you believed it because you had never tasted anything better. Then one day a world-class chef comes and prepares a meal, and you suddenly realize you’ve been missing out on really great food all those years.
It’s the same with knowledge and understanding. If you’ve been consistently fed outdated, incorrect, and even illogical nonsense, you might just subconsciously assume that it’s the truth and that there’s nothing better out there. The goal of apologetics is to take off the blinders, correct errors, and fill in the blanks so that you can arrive at the correct conclusions on your own, fully convinced and persuaded, not just indoctrinated.
To be blunt, most arguments against Christianity are dumbed-down zingers that appeal to emotion but are intellectually empty, illogical, and sometimes just obviously false. It’s important to address those because they appeal to popular misconceptions, myths, and assumptions that people aren’t even aware of.
Addressing Common Myths: The Dinosaur Fossil Example#
Atheists often claim that dinosaurs existed millions of years ago, and use the supposed age of dinosaur fossils as proof. If this is true, then the literal creation account of Genesis can’t be correct, since it claims God created the world in six literal days. This claim was reiterated by Jesus in the New Testament. If we look at the rest of Scripture and the dates and genealogies provided, the Bible indicates that this creation event happened about 6,000 years ago. So there’s a clear contradiction between the secular millions-of-years claim and the Bible.
But many people aren’t aware that we have dinosaur fossils containing actual dinosaur blood vessels, blood cells, and proteins (including collagen), which couldn’t be possible if these fossils were millions, or even hundreds of thousands, of years old. Some have tried to explain this away by saying iron preserved the tissues. It’s pretty obvious that iron cannot preserve anything for millions of years. Even our most sophisticated modern food preservation processes can only preserve food for maybe a few thousand years under the right conditions.
So, no, dinosaur soft tissue was not preserved for millions of years. Therefore, it’s not only reasonable but actually scientific to conclude that dinosaurs existed recently enough that their soft tissue has been preserved.
The point of this example isn’t to suggest that apologetics rests on dinosaur fossils. After all, we didn’t even know dinosaurs and their fossils existed until a few hundred years ago. The point is that atheists sometimes use new discoveries to try to disprove some aspect of Christianity, usually the timeline and historicity, only to have it backfire on them. Dinosaurs are just one example of that.
The Fundamental Question#
The Terminal Objection#
Apologetics, and all discussions on origins and religion, always come down to the same question.
Why did God do things the way He did?
Regardless of the topic, a discussion touching on apologetics is always going to wind up at this question, which I call the terminal objection. Sometimes it’s phrased as a question, as above. Other times it’s phrased as a statement.
Here’s an example of the terminal objection couched as a question. One popular argument asks something like, “If there were a loving God, why would He allow x, y, and z?” where x, y, and z are bad things such as suffering, disease, and natural disasters. This argument is sometimes hedged with the proclamation, “I wouldn’t want to worship a God that does things that way.” So, at least for some atheists, their argument against God isn’t against His existence but against what He does or doesn’t do. This is an example of the atheist hedging his bets by essentially saying, “Even if God exists, He didn’t do enough to win me over.”
Of course, some atheists are purely naturalist and materialist, and don’t believe in any supernatural beings at all, so for them the question is moot. They look at the world and assume that if God existed, He wouldn’t allow certain things to happen, and the world would look entirely different than it does now. They conclude that God doesn’t exist.
You might recognize that this argument, regardless of form, rests on a false dichotomy:
- Option 1: “Either God exists and operates the way I think He should.”
- Option 2: “He doesn’t exist at all.”
This is a false choice because there’s a third possibility:
- Option 3: “God exists and doesn’t operate the way I think He should.”
Recognizing the false choice, many people who call themselves atheists go a step beyond it. They might say something like, “If God exists, then He allowed x, y, z, and therefore I don’t want to follow Him.” The unspoken assumption is that God didn’t have a good reason for allowing x, y, and z. So again, we’re back at the terminal objection.
If you pay close attention, you’ll see atheists swing this pendulum back and forth. They’ll claim there’s no good evidence for God, and then when you point out some evidence, they bring up the terminal objection, not as a rebuttal of the evidence, but as a distraction from it.
Ultimately, the atheist is looking for reasons, or excuses, not to believe.
Forms of the Terminal Objection#
The terminal objection isn’t always so obvious. It comes up in the form of many different questions, such as:
“Why doesn’t God regularly proclaim Himself audibly or visibly in no uncertain terms from the heavens?” The idea is that this would remove any argument that there’s no evidence for God.
“Why doesn’t God speak to each person individually in the way that will be most convincing to them?” The idea is that God could personally persuade each individual, customizing His approach to their personality.
“If God wanted people to believe in Him, why wouldn’t He do a, b, and c?” This is a variation of the previous question, but with the assumption that a, b, and c are things that would convince everyone.
“If God is good, loving, powerful, and just, then why does He allow evil instead of stopping it?” The idea is that God could lock everyone in their own invincible bubble, preventing physical harm from coming to them. He could stop people from vocalizing mean thoughts before the words ever left their mouth. He could even supernaturally shock people whenever they started to have a bad thought.
“Why did God design creatures to look or behave a certain way?” He could have made animals without claws, teeth, or venom, and the claim goes, that would prevent some suffering.
You could probably think of some more.
To be clear, I don’t think all of these questions are bad. But some people raise them not out of genuine curiosity, but as a thinly veiled objection and an excuse to reject God by either denying His existence or denying that He’s worthy of worship. The implication is that the person asking the question thinks that their suggestion would be more effective than whatever God is, or isn’t, doing. It’s pride.
Failure to understand something is not an argument against it. We have all seen people do things that didn’t make any sense to us. That doesn’t mean they didn’t do it, and it certainly doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Seeing Is Not Necessarily Believing#
Now, let’s get to the questions. Why doesn’t God speak to each person individually? I believe God has tried this in the past, and it doesn’t work.
In the Garden, God spoke directly to Adam and Eve. But they didn’t listen.
God spoke directly with their children, and some of them didn’t listen either.
All throughout the Bible, God speaks to people directly and audibly, as well as through intermediaries, and in general, those people don’t listen.
I once heard an atheist ask why God doesn’t write something in the sky to convince everyone He exists. If He did this, people would find excuses not to believe it. Some would say it’s a hoax, others would say it’s a hallucination, and some might believe. People would no doubt take pictures and videos, and there would be stories written about it. But 100 years later, what would people say? They would say the pictures and videos are fake, or they would ask why God doesn’t still write in the sky if He’s real, and so on. Even if God wrote in the sky every minute of every day, people would find excuses to dismiss it. Seeing is not necessarily believing.
So while the thought of God speaking to everyone individually might sound appealing, a quick study of human history shows that people will not believe what they don’t want to believe.