Why I am Still a Christian

It feels to me like the Christianity I have today is not that different from when I was young.

However, my model about what Christianity is has changed substantially. It is more simple and yet more profound. Over time it was deconstructed and rebuilt for the better.

The most significant thing is using a values system perspective to understand and develop spiritually. (See God's Value System is significant to me.) Everyday experience validates this perspective, and it is practical.

Those that leave beliefs may do so because of bad experiences, or because they had insufficient reasons to remain, or because there was lack of evidence to back their beliefs. However, I am still a Christian because of the good support of Christianity by these aspects.

Note of course that being born into some belief system is not a rationale for it being true. It also is not a rationale for it being false (the Genetic Fallacy). So then because you grew up with it is not a reason to doubt it and leave. And in contrast it is also not a reason to stubbornly hold on to an old less truthful system if you come to understand a new better belief system.

Note that correctness and truth are also not correlated with the feelings you have about your spiritual beliefs. These experiences could be personally very meaningful, but they are not evidence of truth. Many people have feelings of affirmation within many different religious systems. These could be experiences of highly unlikely things (“therefore God must have done it, and it must be true”), or they could be emotional (“therefore it feels right”). These don't of themselves indicate truth even for things that are true.

Most people are not convinced of a belief system only by logic and argumentation. They usually become convinced of it by seeing others that live it well, and often by experiencing God meeting them personally in ways that they cannot explain naturalistically. Each person's path is varied and different.

So the truth of of a belief system should be able to be shown by evidence, reason and experience.

Christians are supposed to be good people. They identify with Jesus Christ, a person that has been recognized as good by virtually everybody. Christians claim to be Jesus-followers, so they should be like Jesus.

While growing up, the adults around me and their families were people like this. The character of what I could read about Jesus matched sufficiently with their lives that it was attractive, even though I also knew they were not perfect.

However, I know this is not the experience of all who have grown up in a Christian context.

This is a point of great sadness to me because, again, people that claim to follow Jesus should be like him and try to represent him well. The people that spent time with Jesus on earth found him attractive as a person. If those now who now claim to be associated with Jesus have instead pushed people away from Jesus because they were so unlike him, then they have failed very badly indeed.

Regarding science and scientific models, the questions we think about are:

• What is the scope of the model? (Do we know what is inside the model’s scope and what is outside the scope of the model?)
• Is the model the most simple one that explains the most things satisfactorily?
• Does the model have strong (deep, effective) explanatory power that gives superior understanding of the context?
• Does the model have a minimum of explanatory gaps?
• Is the model without internal conflicts?
• Does the model consistently explain what happened in the past?
• Does the model consistently predict what will happen (the future)?
• Can the model be tested at present in the real world?
• Does application of the model enable you to consistently influence/change the environment in a known way (staying within the scope of the model)?

These are all key questions that are part of developing good scientific models and of doing good science. The questions can be used to assess which model(s) among a number are better than the others, and therefore they can be used to rank models.

Why should we think we can check spiritual ideas against evidence? Followers of Jesus (in particular) should do this because:

• Jesus recommended this approach.
  • In Luke 7:18-22, Jesus' cousin John was doubting the role of Jesus. Jesus told him to look at the evidence of the miracles that Jesus was doing. Only one with genuine authority for the role could be doing them. This evidence would show John that he could trust that Jesus was the One.

• Because we actually do this all the time.
  • As a silly illustration: Imagine someone was promoting a new "Videogame Church of Jesus" and was teaching that Jesus loved playing video games and also that Jesus told us the way to heaven was by playing them. We would correctly reject this spiritual teaching because it lacks positive evidence and in fact there is good evidence against it. (Video games did not exist in the 1st century.)

• This approach is practical.
  • Jesus said in John 14:14, “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”
  • However, I have asked God to do some things for me "in Jesus name" and God did not do them. Many other people have confirmed this same learning. This is an apparent problem.
  • I believe God keeps his promises, so at minimum this is a problem of understanding about the meaning of the words.
  • Because of evidence, I am forced to conclude that there is a limited context for the meaning of the word "anything". When we ask for things that are within this context, only then will God consistently do what we ask!
  • (Although this is not the point I am trying to make, I believe the context is about asking for help to become more like Jesus.)
  • So, the theological conclusion about the verse is guided by evidence.

We must compare what we think we understand against evidence to have assurance that we are understanding it correctly.

This approach is again similar to science. In science we can imagine all kinds of theories, even crazy ones. These are models of the physical world. However, an untested theory/model is not yet scientific. When the results of experimental evidence come in and support the model, only then is the theory fully scientific.

Regarding spiritual things, we can imagine all kinds of ideas, especially crazy ones. These are models of the spiritual world. However, a spiritual model that has not been compared against evidence does not have certainty.

The strong version of this idea is that only scientific answers are answers of truth. Again, this is a metaphysical opinion. And, there are no scientific tests or experiments that could show characteristically that non-scientific answers are non-truth. That is, this statement is scientifically unprovable, therefore this is self-refuting and it is a false idea.

On this basis, there must be some non-scientific answers that could be true.

A god with non-physicality is of course the most common idea of a god.

On the other hand, maybe there could be a god having only a physical existence. It could not be the god over this universe, however, because it could not have existed until the universe had already begun.

Infinity is a concept that exists in math. However infinity isn’t a number and it is a strange “thing” which creates absurdities:

• You can add any finite thing to infinity or subtract any finite thing from it and still have infinity (e.g. Remove the number 2 from an infinity of numbers and it is still infinity.)
• You can never reach an infinity by accumulating things (such as numbers or seconds or atoms). Whatever count you get to, infinity is still more.
• You can subtract infinity from infinity and get any desired finite result. (e.g. Natural numbers are non-negative counting numbers. All numbers of an infinity of natural numbers greater than 2 is still an infinity. Subtract this infinity from a full infinity of natural numbers and you have the finite two numbers 1 and 2.)

These logical and physical impossibilities indicate that infinity can’t be a real thing. If a real infinity is impossible then an infinitely old universe is the same problem in reverse and it is impossible. (See also Infinity does not Exist)

There are other reasons the universe could not be infinitely old:

• We see evidence that because entropy increases, the universe will wind down into what is called "heat death". Since we are not already at this heat death, the universe could not already be infinitely old.
• Some have suggested that the universe is (infinitely) cyclical, repeatedly collapsing and re-expanding. However, that increase in entropy in our own universe would affect the next one in the cycle, making the available free energy be smaller every iteration. Since we live in a universe with plenty of free energy it also could not be cyclically infinitely old.
• Roger Penrose has suggested a variation of this idea with a "phantom field" that resets the entropy. However this concept is unsupported scientifically, the field has no relation to any field known to science, and the field appears to simply be a substitute for a god.

This is the point from the Kalam cosmological argument:

• Premise: That which begins to exist has a cause.
• Premise: The universe began to exist.
• Conclusion: The universe had a cause.

In the previous note I argued the coming into existence of the universe is indistinguishable from a miracle. The cosmological argument shows this miracle requires a causal entity. Any entity able to cause the universe is indistinguishable from a god.

If this line of reasoning is followed then a god must have existed and did a miracle. This first miracle is the biggest possible miracle. Any other miracles are lesser and would also have been within the capability of this entity. Therefore miracles are possible, are plausible, and are not a reason to reject spiritual ideas.

(Some suggest the multiverse is the ultimate cause for the universe. However, the multiverse cannot be this solution because the multiverse itself requires a cause - for the same reasons our universe requires a cause.)

The beginning of the universe is accepted truth in the Big Bang standard cosmological model (based primarily on the red-shifted light of distant suns). Since the age of the universe is finite, the universe came into existence at a point. This point was the beginning of all. Without the universe, nothing existed: not space, not energy, not matter, not time.

This coming into existence of the universe is indistinguishable from a miracle. Miracles may be said to be events that exceed the scope of what natural laws normally explain.

Some think that science shows that miracles are impossible (Hume). However, science does not show that. That is obsolete understanding.

In the world of quantum events, anything is possible although some events are very low probability. For example, some theories in science suggest our universe simply came from a fluctuation in a quantum field. Modern science does not disallow miracles. And in fact, modern science depends on a miracle (although just one miracle): the miracle of the appearance of the universe.

(See also Everybody Believes in the Supernatural.)

If a physical cause is sufficient to make an effect, the effect is implemented when the cause exists. (For instance, at any time water is in temperatures below its freezing point it changes into ice.) So whenever a sufficient physical (an impersonal) cause exists, its effect will also exist.

Since the universe has a finite age, it had a cause. Since without the universe time does not exist, and the cause of the universe existed without the universe, this cause must be timeless. Problematically however, a timeless physical cause would have created the universe infinitely long ago.

The solution to this difficulty is the cause possessing agency. As William Lane Craig illustrated, even if I had always been sitting in a chair, I could get up at the moment of my choosing. If the cause of the universe possessed free will, this timeless agent could create the universe at any chosen finite time in the past. And so the cause could do this only as a person having agency.

Revealed knowledge (revelation) is not a bad thing, and it is not exclusive to the spiritual world.

• I might go to a talk by a scientist and learn about things that I had not previously known because I had no experience in the topic. This is revelation.
• A friend might tell me about something they had been thinking about or something they privately experienced. This is revelation.

Revealed knowledge is information communicated to us about things that we might otherwise never discover. (Often this could be because it isn't something that we could participate in or otherwise have experience to know.) A critical part about revealed knowledge is the trustworthiness of the source. If the source reliably knows the material they are communicating, the source is concerned for our interests and is not deceptive, then they they should be trustworthy.

Revelation in our modern world is necessary. Most of what we learn when we get an education is revealed knowledge! And of course we should be thinking about the various bits of revelation and consider if they make sense in the context of things that we already know through personal experience. In this way we test what is revealed to us and put critical thinking skills into practice.

This is not an exhaustive list of religions, but it includes the big ones and some other ones important to the general category of thought.

Paganism and polytheism are not the same thing, however, they have substantial overlap because pagans are usually polytheistic.

The evidence of fine-tuning indicates to me there is a singular creative agent for the universe because of the integrated cohesiveness of all things. On this basis, polytheism and so then paganism seem dis-indicated by the evidence.

Pantheism is the idea that god is identical with the universe, or that the universe is god.

The pantheistic god could not and would not exist before the universe so therefore it would be unable to create the universe. By this we can reject the pantheistic god.

Buddhism doesn’t have a god as in monotheistic religions, and has no creator deity. The goal of Buddhism is for all humans to attain nirvana and become a Buddha. A Buddha is the closest Buddhism has to gods, although they are not actually gods.

There can be many Buddhas, so in this way Buddhism has a similarity to polytheism. The evidence of fine-tuning indicates to me there is a singular creative agent for the universe because of the integrated cohesiveness of all things. Buddhism seems dis-indicated by the evidence because it is polytheistic and creator-less.

Note also: A teaching of Buddhism is that the universe has a cycle of rebirths that are without a discoverable beginning. This is in conflict to evidence that the universe had a singular beginning. On this cyclic view basis, Buddhism seems dis-indicated by the evidence.

Hinduism encompasses a diverse set of spiritual ideas and traditions. Hinduism is not a religion; it is a category of religions. Usually multiple gods are accepted (though monotheism is an option). Because Hinduism is a collection of belief traditions that do not agree, how can they all be true at the same time? To me this casts question on whether Hinduism generally contains the truth about god(s).

Many Hindu texts describe endless creation and destruction of the cosmos. However, physical evidence indicates that the universe had a singular beginning. On this cyclic view basis, Hinduism seems dis-indicated by the evidence (or at minimum, the physical evidence does not support Hinduism).

The evidence of fine-tuning indicates to me there is a singular creative agent for the universe because of the integrated cohesiveness of all things. Polytheistic Hinduism therefore seems dis-indicated by this evidence.

Islam is the third of the Abrahamic religions. Islam seeks to worship the god of Abraham in a way that is discontinuous from the earlier Abrahamic religions. It is complicated because of issues that I see regarding deception, origination continuity, fears of disrespect, bullying and lack of love.

See Considering Islam for a discussion of these concerns and how I see that this brings questions to its trustworthiness.

Characteristics of this God as revealed in Islam includes transcendence, intelligence, purposiveness and action. Islam is monotheistic and Allah is taught as the creator. These match to requirements from physical evidence about the universe.

However, the god of Islam appears to act deceptively. This does not match with evidence of a universe of laws that are consistent, and natural laws that do not deceive us. Islam seems dis-indicated by this evidence.

Christianity is the second of the Abrahamic religions and directly came out of Judaism. It is based on the person and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus was a Jew who lived in Israel in the first century. Jesus knew Judaism at a such a level that he bettered the top scholars of the day (Luke 2:46,47, Matthew 7:28,29), and he showed that Judaism pointed to him as its fulfillment (Luke 24:25-27).

Christianity seeks to worship the god of Abraham, and promotes Jesus as the best representation to humans of this God (John 1:14, Hebrews 1:1-3).

Characteristics of this God as revealed to us by him includes transcendence, intelligence, purposiveness and action. This matches to requirements from physical evidence about the universe.

Christianity is monotheistic, therefore, the Christian God could be the singular creative agent for the universe as indicated by the evidence of fine-tuning and its integrated cohesiveness.

Judaism is the first of the Abrahamic religions, and clearly seeks to worship the God of Abraham.

Judaism established a theocracy with one people. For this and other reasons I see that it is limited and arguably not a religion for all people. See Considering Judaism for a discussion of this.

Characteristics of the Jewish God as revealed by him includes transcendence, intelligence, purposiveness and action. This matches to requirements from physical evidence about the universe.

Judaism is monotheistic, therefore, the Jewish God could be the singular creative agent for the universe as indicated by the evidence of fine-tuning and its integrated cohesiveness.

Deism might not be an organized religion, but it claims to have spiritual knowledge. It is the position that there is a god, but that this understanding is achieved exclusively through observation and reason. It accepts that god's existence is revealed through nature (natural theology), but it rejects all direct sources of revelation such as scriptures.

A notable part of deism is that this god does not intervene in the world. The deist sees that the god set everything up and then let the world run as designed. The deist also believes that a moral perspective can be determined through philosophy.

There is a variation of the Deistic god concept in which the god does act in history to providentially bring things to happen, even though this god remains remote. Many deistic founders of the USA saw happenings that could not be attributed to coincidence, and so they took it to be the providential hand of god for the start of the nation.

The deist sees god as transcendent, intelligent and (initially) active. This matches to requirements from physical evidence about the universe.

Deism seems to be monotheistic, therefore the deist god could be the singular creative agent for the universe as indicated by the evidence of fine-tuning and its integrated cohesiveness.

The most common deist position, however, is that god is non-intervening after creation. Since paleontology indicates continued infusions of information across history into the biosphere to make new organisms (such as in the Cambrian Explosion), the deistic good seems dis-indicated by the evidence.

It may be surprising to include atheism in a list of religions. However, atheism claims to have spiritual knowledge. Atheism's position is that there is no god. As to beliefs, the atheist apparently believes their position (even though the proposition is unprovable). Atheism therefore is a matter of faith (like all opinions about gods).

See Considering Atheism for my discussion about the atheistic position and problems with it.

Atheists often suggest the idea of the multiverse as a cause for our universe. However, for the same reasons we know our universe was caused, the multiverse also requires a cause; this explanation then ultimately fails. Because the position fails to provide a valid answer, atheism seems dis-indicated.

Atheism uses the virtually infinite probabilistic "resources" of the multiverse to explain the fine-tuning that makes our existence possible. However as I have discussed in some other places here, real infinities do not exist. Even if real infinities did exist, the infinitely most probably answer to our existence and our (apparent) awareness of our existence is that we are a disembodied brain that randomly popped into existence and began "experiencing" this world. (That is, it is infinitely less probable that instead our entire ordered universe randomly popped into existence and we are one of a vast population of conscious thinking beings in it.)

If the the fact were actually that we are a disembodied brain, then our universe and our own planet of people is a massive delusion; there is no science and no truth and there is no reason to believe this position. Atheism seem dis-indicated by its inability to produce a rational explanation for the evidence of fine-tuning.

Atheism again falls back to the multiverse to explain the information that is encoded in living things. Infinite probabilistic "resources" are suggested to enable natural processes to have a path through the improbabilities of life. However, as described the multiverse has already failed, and certainly our universe fails to overcome the The Probability of Life. Again, atheism seem dis-indicated by evidence that natural processes are emphatically unable to account for the information in living things.

A few examples of theories to explain the resurrection without a resurrection:

The "swoon" theory

This theory suggests that Jesus did not die, but only had passed out and so only appeared dead. After he was buried, he came back to consciousness, opened the tomb and left. He showed himself alive and well to his disciples.

This proposal fails because crucifixion is a brutal and highly effective means of killing. It causes substantial body trauma, loss of blood, and exposure to infection. Crucified people predictably died. Of course then, no person just then crucified would have sufficient strength to move the large stone which sealed the tomb to escape from it. Right after his resurrection, Jesus did a 6.5 mile (10.5 km) walk and he used his hands for eating. A crucified person could not hike a large distance after such an experience because their feet would be mangled. They would not trivially manipulate objects for eating because their hands would have been severely damaged. Any human that might have only survived crucifixion would be obviously not well; they would not be full of vitality.

The "disciples stole the body" theory

In this suggestion, the disciples came secretly and stole the body. They claimed that Jesus resurrected when he had not.

The proposal fails because the tomb was officially guarded by trained Roman soldiers and so the body could not be stolen secretly. Anyway however, the disciples had no motivation to make it seem like Jesus resurrected because they had all fled. They also still believed that any resurrection would only happen at the end of the world.

However, after the resurrection they became changed people. They had seen Jesus alive and knew that he was God. Their belief in the resurrection was so strong that they maintained their testimony of it in the face of violence and death. A charade about Jesus could not have caused this.

This theory is the original one that was invented immediately after Jesus’ resurrection by Jewish leaders to excuse the missing body. If the soldiers had actually let the body be taken away by some people they would have been very severely disciplined. However, the Jewish leaders covered up their failure to contain Jesus' body with bribes. Essentially by this the regional authorities acknowledged that Jesus' dead body no longer existed.

The "Jesus had an identical twin" theory

In this story Jesus had an identical twin who was unknown to everyone. The twin came to the tomb and stole the body, but then presented himself as Jesus alive and well.

This fails because the followers of Jesus who were confident of his resurrection included close relatives who knew him and his family history. Jesus could not have had such an unknown twin. In addition, Jesus had spent extensive intimate time with his disciples. They would be able to spot an imposter because his mannerisms and knowledge of experiences would not match to the real Jesus. It is true there were times when disciples did not recognize Jesus, but at those times they were thinking that Jesus was a complete stranger to them. They did not think that he was similar but different.

The fact was that the disciples saw Jesus alive and they knew that he was not an ordinary human. Instead, they had evidenced confidence that Jesus was God. It was this that changed them and gave them unshakeable certainty for the rest of their lives.

The resurrection is the best explanation of these facts because:

• The place that Jesus was buried was well-known since it was nearby and it belonged to a well-known man. Jesus' dead body was shut in the tomb by a large stone which was then officially sealed by the Roman authorities. It was then put under continuous guard by competent Roman soldiers. If Jesus' dead body actually had remained in the tomb, it would be able to be displayed by the Jewish or Roman authorities. However, the only thing that could be evidenced at the tomb was that the body of Jesus was not there.

• All the authorities of the day would have liked to be able to show a dead body as evidence that the Jesus character was a fraud. Even though competent guards were put on the tomb, no dead body of Jesus was found anywhere. The best explanation is that he was no longer dead.

• In the Jewish culture, the testimony of women was not admissible in courts. Therefore, if someone was falsely trying to convince other people of a resurrection they would certainly not record women as being the ones who found the tomb empty. Only a story which was corroborated as truth by other living witnesses would have been recorded like this for history. They told the story as it really happened since it was the truth as attested by all.

• It would be reasonably possible that hallucinations of Jesus could be experienced by a few people. However, consistent experiences of a living Jesus by many people in multiple contexts and multiple group sizes is not something that would occur by hallucination. The best explanation is that Jesus was alive to be experienced.

• The people who were experiencing appearances of a living Jesus were strongly predisposed against this. In Judaism any resurrection was only expected at the end of the world. They also understood all too well the brutal effectiveness of crucifixion as a means to assure someone’s death. The best explanation is that Jesus was alive again, fully restored by resurrection.

• The disciples had been dispirited. To them after Jesus' death there was no possible continuation of the Jesus messiah idea. In fact they were already returning to their activities from before having met Jesus. And yet, when they experienced the risen Jesus, they were completely changed. They enthusiastically told everybody about Jesus in spite of adversity for the rest of their lives. A living Jesus best explains this.

I already argued that miracles are possible because the existence of the universe had a beginning. (This is indistinguishable from a miracle. See notes in the "Why do we exist?" section. See also Everybody Believes in the Supernatural.) And so if God had already created the universe in a miracle, resurrecting Jesus would have been an "easy" miracle by comparison.

There is interesting contrast between these two miracles:

• We can observe evidence today of the beginning of the universe, but Jesus is not observable as physically living on the earth today.
• There were no human eyewitnesses to the start of the universe, but we have record of many people who witnessed the resurrected Jesus.

These two events both give evidence for God.

The value system perspective is based on the work of Darren Twa.

Note that God's goal for us is not for our happiness. God's goal is for our character to grow to be like Jesus in love.

Many times this will bring us to places of great happiness, but not always. Therefore, don't mistake tough circumstances to be a removal of God's love. God loves you.

The point here is that redemption helps the recipient of forgiveness, the forgiven. However, because God expects his people to be forgivers, there is another mental health benefit.

The Release step of the forgiveness process also removes burdens of offenses for the forgiver. They have release from offenses which they have experienced which were against them.

Regarding sin see also:

• Understanding Sin
• How should Christians view sin?

See also The Seven Principles of Good Relationships and much more at the Good News page.