I recently finished writing a book I'm calling A Quick and Dirty Argument for Christianity. It's a short and truncated version of a larger book I'm still working on that I plan to call An Argument for Christianity. Actually, the quick and dirty book still needs editing, so I guess it's not really finished. I'm just finished with the first draft.
Anywho, I have thought about writing an even shorter book I might call A Quicker and Dirtier Argument for Christianity, or An Argument for Christianity In a Nutshell or something. Anyway, I was looking on The Wayback Machine for a debate I had on debate.org a long time ago, and I stumbled across a debate where my opponent wanted me to try to prove that Christianity is the one true religion. In this debate, I gave an even shorter argument for Christianity than what I planned in that quicker and dirtier book. This is about as succinct as I think I've ever made the argument for Christianity. Here's my opening statement.
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This is probably an impossible debate for me to win because it requires me to prove so much and for Con to prove so little. But I thought it would be fun.
My argument in a nutshell:
1. If Christianity is true, then it is the one true religion.
2. Christianity is true.
3. Therefore, Christianity is the one true religion.
1. If Christianity is true, then it is the one true religion.
According to the law of non-contradiction, two claims that contradict each other cannot both be true at the same time and in the same sense. All religions contradict each other, which is how we distinguish them. So if Christianity is true, then all other religions must be false. So if Christianity is true, then it's the one true religion.
2. Christianity is true.
What is Christianity?
This is what I take Christianity to be essentially:
i. There is a god.
ii. The god imposes moral obligations on people.
iii. People violate those moral obligations.
iv. God judges people for violating their moral obligations.
v. Jesus is the Christ.
vi. Jesus died for sins.
vii. Jesus was raised from the dead.
I said earlier that my burden in this debate is far greater than Con's. While I've got to prove all seven of those points, Con only has to disprove one. If all seven are true, then Christianity is true. If just one of them is false, then Christianity is false.
The reality of morality
Whether we affirm or deny morality, we all percieve it as if it were real, which is evident in the following observations:
We all judge others as if others are actually obligated to keep the moral view that we hold to.
When judged, our first instinct is not to deny the reality of the standard we are being judged by, but to give excuses for why we didn't violate that standard.
We struggle with moral dilemmas. Moral decision making is difficult because there really are correct answers to moral questions, and we have to find out what they are.
Moral non-realists are rarely consistent. People generally live consistently with what they actually believe, so people who deny morality are just kidding themselves.
We all find moral non-realism to be counter-intuitive. We all think it's prima facie absurd to suggest that morals could have been radically different. For example, it's absurd to think it could've been the case that mother stabbing and father raping are morally right, and kindness and generosity are evil.
Now, consider a person who does not percieve a difference between right and wrong at all. Would we not consider such a person to be mentally ill? Would we not attach such lables as "sociopath" to a person like that? Well, if there isn't really a difference between right and wrong, then such people are seeing the world more accurately than we are. While we all percieve a difference between right and wrong that isn't actually there, the mentally ill are percieving the world as it actually is. If that is the case, shouldn't we consider them sane and ourselves as mentally ill?
If a correctly working mind is a mind that percieves things that are really there and doesn't percieve things that aren't there, and if sociopathy really is a mental illness, then it follows that morality is real. There actually is a difference between right and wrong, and it isn't just in our heads.
The implication of morality
Rules of right and wrong are prescriptive. That is, rather than merely describe how people behave, they prescribe how people ought to behave. Prescriptions cannot exist without prescribers because without some authority, there are no rules. Since it's possible for there to be unjust civil laws, it follows that the moral law transcends human authorities. That means there is a transcendent authority who imposes moral obligations on us. We will come back to this shortly.
The argument from contingency
The only way it's possible for anything contingent to exist is if something necessary exists. To be contingent means it possible for it to have not existed. Since contingent things don't exist by necessity, they depend on something outside of themselves for their existence.
But consider the borrower/lender analogy. Suppose you need to borrow something from your neighbor, but he doesn't have it. So he asks his neighbor who doesn't have it either. The only way it's possible for you to get what you're after is if somebody has it who doesn't have to get it from somebody else.
In the same way, the only way it's possible for anything at all to exist is if there's something that exists that didn't get its existence from something else. Such a thing would be a necessary being.
Since obviously lots of things exist, then it must be the case that a necessary being exists, and everything else owes its existence ultimately to the necessary being.
Consider the two arguments together
Now, consider these two arguments. One shows that a necessary being exists, and the other shows that a transcendent moral law-giver exists. It may not be obvious that these two beings are the same being, but when you consider how nicely they compliment each other, it seems reasonable to believe they are the same being.
We know that no mere human is sufficient to impose moral obligations on us, nor is any concievable alien that exists in the universe. But if there were a creator who existed necessarily and was absolutely autonomous, then it's hard to think of a better candidate for a being that is sufficient to ground morality. This would literally be that being's world. So it makes a lot of sense to think that the transcendent moral law-giver is one and the same as the necessary ground of the rest of existence.
If there is a necessarily existing person who is the ground of morality, then we are clearly justified in referring to such a being as a god. But we have still not proven that it is the same person as the Christian God.
Jesus
That brings us to Jesus. Jesus was a Jewish man who lived in the first century, claimed to be the Christ, and got crucified. Now, any Jew in his right mind would've taken Jesus' crucifixion is absolute proof that Jesus' claim to be the Christ was false. After all, the hope for a Christ was a hope that God would fulfill his promise to David, and that promise was that there would always be a man on the throne of David. So the Christ was to be a king of the Jews, and that meant national sovereignty, and that meant no Roman occupation. That's why messianic hope was so high in the first century. The hope was in deliverence from Roman occupation. So if the Romans killed the supposed Christ, that proves he isn't the Christ.
Yet Christianity survived the death of Jesus. The only possible way Jews could've continued to believe Jesus was the Christ is if they had some reason to think he was still alive and could therefore fulfill all the messianic promises. And that is exactly what Jesus' early followers claimed. Moreover, they claimed to have seen him alive after he had died. These appearances are apparently what caused them to believe since the record shows that they lost hope after Jesus died, which is what we would expect them to do. Also, Paul and James both converted because they saw Jesus resurrected. When you consider these appearances along with the empty tomb, it becomes apparent that Jesus really did rise from the dead. Without the resurrection, we have no viable explanation for the survival of Christianity.
Now, either Jesus really was who he claimed to be, or else it's just a big coincidence that he would rise from the dead by some freak of nature after making such unusual claims. So the more rational conclusion is that he really was the Christ sent from God. And that entails that the Christian God exists.
It also entails that Christ died for sins, which entails that God judges people for their sins and that people do in fact sin.
3. Therefore, Christianity is the one true religion
Since all the essential claims of Christianity are true, and since all other religions contradict Christianity in some way, it follows that Christianity is the one true religion.
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There are a lot of points I made in this opening statement that I've discussed in more detail in earlier posts, so I thought I'd provide some links in case you're interested.
The Arrogance Fallacy - This is about the mistake a lot of people make in critizing some claims because it's arrogant to believe them as if that had something to do with whether they are true.
I'm right, and you're wrong - This post is similar to the one before. It explains why making exclusive truth claims is logical and has nothing to do with arrogance.
The law of non-contradiction - It may seem silly to have to defend the law of non-contradiction, but I wrote this post because of having to defend it in some of my philosophy classes in college.
What is Christianity? - This is an explanation of how I came up with the seven points I thought captured the core of Christianity.
A quick and dirty argument for moral realism - This post goes into my argument for moral realism in more detail but also provides links to even more detail on the various points.
Why theism is necessary and sufficient to ground objective moral obligations - Just what the title suggests, plus links to more detailed posts.
The god of the philosophers vs. the Abrahamic God - This post goes into more detail about how various philosophical arguments for God compliment each other in such a way as to point toward the Abrahamic God.
Is the universe contingent? - This post explains why I doubt the universe itself is necessary, which is why we have to look to something beyond the universe to explain why anything at all exists.
A quick and dirty argument for the resurrection of Jesus - Just what the title suggests.
How does the resurrection of Jesus prove that he is the messiah? - This post explains how.
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