How can faith be based on evidence?

“When you say faith is rational and evidence-based, I mean if that were true it wouldn’t need to be faith would it? Why would you need to call it faith? You would say it’s just evidence.”

…so Richard Dawkins, in his debate with Professor John Lennox, put his case that you only use the word “faith” where no evidence exists.

John Lennox shot back, quite good naturedly, “I presume you’ve got faith in your wife. Is there any evidence for that?” Lennox made it clear that every day we put our faith in things and people, but we  base it on evidence. We put our faith in pilots, bus drivers, spouses, and even such things as chairs and traffic lights – all based on the evidence that in the past they have been reliable.

Faith in God and in Jesus Christ are not uninformed leaps in the dark, like believing in Peter Pan or Bugs Bunny. Christians have evidence, beyond reasonable doubt, that God is our Creator and that Jesus Christ died for our sins and rose again. This is not just a more attractive idea than atheism. Christians realise that it is built on better evidence than the theory (the faith system) that there is no God.

When we present the evidence for Christianity it comes under the heading, “Apologetics” and if you want to hear more you can tune into Wyonanglican on YouTube and listen to the first couple of Sunday sermons in this Hope 25 series or click the link to the Grow to Maturity talks on Sharing your Faith and Apologetics (which also explores how people think about these things) and https://youtu.be/yaTsh1uCJps                 https://youtu.be/VDMNAO3wXvc 

Here we will take a very brief look at three of the big questions, which people often find to be barriers to belief…

Q1: How do you know God exists? Isn’t it simpler to believe that life all happened by chance?

A: The requirements for life are so finely tuned as to make it virtually impossible for life to have occurred by chance. A number of parts of the human body (cells, DNA, proteins and the like) depend on each other for their existence. They would have had to evolve (come into existence) by chance at exactly the same time – an impossible occurrence.

There had to be something/Someone who was always there, to bring the universe into being. It is remarkable that the universe works by predictable laws and that we can reason about it

Around the world all civilisations have had some concept of a god or gods, something beyond ourselves.

Belief in Christianity has changed the world for the better. The teaching of Jesus Christ, (values often taken for granted) have revolutionised human behaviour.

The alternative (if there was no God) leaves us open to destructive individualism, a loss of any rational foundation for morality and hopelessness when faced with death. 

Q: What evidence do you have that Jesus was the Son of God and died for our sins and rose again? (The foundational beliefs of Christianity)

When you read the accounts of the Resurrection there is convincing evidence. (We don’t have space to cover all the evidence here but books like “Who moved the Stone” and “The Case for Christ” amongst other books, give you all the proof you need.

If the Resurrection is true, and Jesus foretold that he would die and rise, and claimed to be the Son of God, and performed the miracles recorded in the Gospels, then we have very compelling evidence for who Jesus was, written by eyewitnesses shortly after the events and within their lifetimes (there was no time for the story to be changed and the eyewitnesses themselves died affirming what they had seen and heard).

Q: Why does God allow all the suffering in the world?

 Suffering is the result of sin in the world (Sin is a broken relationship with God where we try to take God’s place). It involves disobedience and a raft of other problems, which then affect everybody. Jesus suffered and died on the cross to carry the penalty for sin so that we can be relieved of its guilt and consequences, but the world still persists in going its own way, with devastating results. Some suffering we bring on ourselves, some is a result of the action of others. Sometimes suffering can drive us into God’s arms and sometimes we simply do not know. The Old Testament story of Job, shows us that there are things that happen in the spiritual world which may affect us in ways we will never understand in this life – because we simply don’t have all the facts. We are called to trust that God is good, loves us, will do what is right and has all the facts about every case, where we know only fragments.

If you want to know more there are plenty of books available as well as YouTube clips involving John Lennox and Tim Keller.

John Blanchard has written a fairly comprehemsive apologetics book called, “Does God Believe in Atheists?”