(Even Though I Don't Believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy)
"Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD.
--Isaiah
1:18
Contents (forthcoming)
- The Burden of Proof. What does it take to believe in something? Both more and less than your high school science teacher taught you.
- What Do I Believe As A Christian? Seven short statements.
- Some Uncontroversial Historical Facts. What nearly everybody who's studied the issue -- both Christians and non-Christians -- agrees on about Jesus and the Bible.
- Empiricism: The Falsifiability of Christianity. Christianity rests its case on the claim that Jesus was literally resurrected from the dead. Therefore, it is falsifiable and within the realm of rational inquiry.
- The Law of Self-Interest. People will suffer and even die for things they believe to be true. Nobody will suffer and die -- as Jesus's apostles did -- for something he or she knows to be false.
- Fooled into Belief? The circumstances of Jesus's death and post-resurrection appearances make it unlikely that the apostles could have mistakenly thought Jesus was raised from the dead.
- She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain When She Comes. The Old Testament, written centuries before Jesus, makes many predictions about his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection, and his theological significance.
- Contradictions, Quantum Mechanics, and God. Just because we don't understand something doesn't mean it isn't true.
- Debunking Trigonometry. Christians have done some pretty awful things throughout history and even today. But that has no relevance for whether the claims of Christianity are true. Somebody making egregious trigonometry errors doesn't invalidate trigonometry.
Other Sites On The Topic
- Historicity of the Bible. A concise PowerPoint presentation on the reliability of the Bible's historical accounts. Includes some economic and Freakonomic analyses!
- Hallway of Questions. Addresses some of the most difficult questions about Christianity thoughtfully and in great detail.
My Churches
In New Haven, I am a member of Trinity Baptist Church. Where else can you find a Southern Baptist church pastored by a Cambridge-educated Englishman with a congregation of both hedge fund employees and the homeless?When I lived in Boston, I was a member of Park Street Church. My ten years there left a deep, lifelong impression upon me.
My career in economics research began the summer of 1996, when I worked in Washington D.C. doing the glamorous job of data entry for three months, sometimes as much as 60 hours per week. That summer, I was blessed to be a part of the community at New Covenant Fellowship Church, which helped make those months among the happiest of my life.