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 The website of good reasons for why you can be a Christian

Because all knowledge is contingent, it is possible for a person of good will who has examined the evidence presented here (but who has not personally encountered God) to say their doubts are reasonable. However, this site is called "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" because it is our conviction that it is possible for you to move to a place beyond reasonable doubt.  While a person who has both examined the ("objective") evidence for God AND  had a (" subjective") personal encounter with God may have doubts, reason alone can no longer be used as the basis for those doubts.  Such a person has moved to a new location beyond reasonable doubt.   Their belief about God has moved beyond theoretical musing to actual encounter.  You can't deduce the existience of God through some series of calculations anymore than you could calculate the existence of your love for another human being.  But you can explore how reasonable it is to believe God exists, or that someone loves you.  You can't mathamatically "prove" another personality, you can only encounter a person and enter into relationship with them.  Christians don't believe you can "prove" God any more than you can "prove" any personality, but we do believe you can find great evidence that God is already, even know, reaching out to you.

To save you time, we have laid out this website with a series of propositions or statements that we believe are true. If they are numbered it means that they are steps in an argument.  If you accept a claim as being true, just move on the next numbered claim.  If you find a claim or step in the argument that you disagree with or are interested in, you can jump to the details that defend that argument. As you step down through pages, the language will become more philosophically formal and the arguments will become more technical.  Just go as far as you need to be satisfied.

LET'S GET STARTED !

The primary goal of this website is to convince you that you can have an intimate, personal relationship with God ... and that this relationship can radically change your life. However, there are lots of schemers out there promising us all kinds of things and so the only reason one should embrace Christianity is because it is actually true. I do not mean true for me because I value it and get meaning out of it. I mean really true – the actual state of things regardless of whether I find it meaningful or not. Now, in order for Christianity to be true, all the basic parts of Christianity (and there are surprisingly few) have be true. However, this knife cuts both ways. When it comes to things like Christianity, the environmental movement, democracy, and communism, it turns out that when we say "I don’t believe in it" what we actually mean is that we haven’t bothered thinking. Here’s what I mean. Two major tenants of Christianity are that it is important to be honest and it is important to be compassionate. Most people think that at least one of these is a good idea so they would need to embrace that part of Christianity while they might still reject other parts. So when I reject something like Christianity, I need to understand it enough to say  "I do not accept the following aspects of it" otherwise I am just being a BIGOT. In my own life when I was somewhere between an atheist and a agnostic, I told my Christian friends "I do not believe in Christianity", to which they responded "Which part ?" Which brings us to the second goal of this website. I hope that if you end up rejecting Christianity, this site will help you figure out exactly which part you reject.

One more thing needs to be said before we jump in. First, for me and most people I know, the rock-climbing example we will be using is like our conversion to Christianity – The first time I went rock-climbing I did not even know what questions to ask. But I trusted the man who was showing me and this trust allowed me to experience Rock Climbing before I was able to explain how all the parts of it worked.

How I came to believe in God and how I understand God now are two different things. It is much like the difference between the thrill of riding across a huge bridge and trying to figure out how the bridge was built and what it is made of. Although reason was involved in my initial conversion, I believed first, then struggled with the implications later. It is interesting to note that a good engineer will first design from the top down (start with the big picture of what the final bridge will be), but then will build from the bottom up (start with the discrete pieces are needed to create a firm foundation for the next course). In the same way, through God’s grace I first experienced what appeared to be a genuine relationship with him, and then only later went back to see if there was a foundation of discrete reasons that could support what I experienced to be true. Christians call this "Faith seeking Understanding". Whether you are a skeptic, seeker or believer, I hope this site will help you in your journey.

LET'S GET STARTED !