Problem: You cannot take “no” as the default position. Materialism does not prove that the material is all that exists, it simply assumes it. But this is illogical. Whenever materialists think they have evidence for materialism, they are, whether overtly or covertly, assuming what they think they are proving.

The most basic apologetic for God and the Bible is Jesus Christ. If the biblical account of him is basically correct (we do not need to assume inerrancy at this point) then there is a god.

You cannot say that the miracle accounts have to be false, because you don’t know that materialism is true. If the miracles did happen, then we would have exactly the evidence for them that we do have: widespread accounts of them, people refusing to renounce Jesus even at the cost of their lives, people enough moved by the miracles and personality and teachings of Christ to found a worldwide church, and so on.

If Jesus came back from the dead, then his teaching is vindicated. And he taught that Old Testament Scripture is entirely true and God-breathed. And since those he trained wrote the New Testament, we have confidence that the NT is also God’s word.

I would say my general angle is pretty materialist, with perhaps buddhist sympathies (although I don’t count myself as a buddhist).

For my Christian sympathies, I’ve always rather liked CS Lewis, with the obvious disagreement on the whole god thing. I’m not quite sure where you guys would place him! My guess is he might not be quite traditional enough, although he does seem fairly traditional.

It is, I suspect, not popular around here, but I tend to start from something vaguely materialist as the default viewpoint and feel it’s God and the bible that need justifying.

Looking at your link, evidentialism seems like the potentially valid approach, but obviously it has never convinced (or I’d be one of you!)

Glad to hear you’re interested in Christianity.

The questions of whether Christianity is true and exactly what it teaches are distinct, with distinct methods. This series assumes that the reader is basically Christian, but is not sure about the basics.

Since theology is not mathematics, there is no one correct way to prove God or the truth of the Bible. It depends on the individual: his temperament, his training, his experiences. For a general approach to apologetics, see here.

It would help if we could know your general approach to these questions (e.g., are you a materialist? An agnostic?) and what you see as the main reasons why you reject God and the truth of the Bible.

These facts seem to be the obvious starting point for trying to sell me on any bible based arguments.

This seems like a common theme in pro-Christian arguments to me – (a) and (b) seem like really the heart of the matter, and yet everyone trying to convert the unbeliever skips over them and goes straight to justifying things based on the bible. You can’t use the bible as an authority till you’ve convinced me it is one!