According to some estimates, there are about 2.1 billion Christians in the world, or around a third of the world’s population. Whether you are a Christian questioning your faith or simply curious about the world’s largest religion, you’ve probably asked yourself: how can we know if Christianity is true?
Christianity
Does Christianity make you arrogant?
Today I’d like to look at a very commonly held idea regarding religious belief. It is often expressed somewhat like this, “It is arrogant to say that Christianity is true and that all other religions are false.”
We need to thoughtfully consider this statement, because if is true, it means that being a Christian is, to some degree, an inherently bad thing.
Atheism and Science
In a desire to foster a great respect and appreciation between atheists and Christians, and for other religious people, I want to celebrate the high esteem that we often share for science: for the scientific method, for scientific experiments, for scientists, for scientific results, and so on.
To begin, many atheists have made outstanding contributions to our scientific knowledge, and we should celebrate their work. To mention just a few people:
Atheism and Intellectual Courage
One of the important qualities that religious dialogue often lacks is respect. We need to be deliberate in considering the strengths of the positions with which we disagree. I have noticed that looking for the good points of different worldviews is often correlated with the ability to respect the people who believe differently than myself. After all, it is hard to respect someone who seems, to you, to believe utter nonsense. I want to look at some of the virtues of atheists and some of the strengths of atheism.
Are Christians Evil?
One of the most notable and repeated ways that atheist leaders such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have attacked religion is by attacking religious people. Quotes abound, but here are a few particularly juicy ones. No matter what you think of the content, you have to admire the punchy, clever style of their writing.
Richard Dawkins:
Comparing Christianity and Secularism
In an chapter in Passionate Conviction, which is a superb collection of essays, Craig Hazen argues that, among all the great religious traditions in the world, Christianity is the best place to start a search for truth. He offers four reasons:
1. Christianity is testable. In particular, Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 15 that the truthfulness of the entire religion is dependent upon the historical occurrence (or lack thereof) of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. By contrast, many other major world religions (like Hinduism and Buddhism) focus on inner, personal experience.