Introduction
You may carry deep intellectual doubts that block you from embracing Christian faith. Charles Templeton once preached alongside Billy Graham before his staggering doubts about suffering and science led him into agnosticism. Lee Strobel understands this intellectual friction because he spent years as an atheist legal editor at the Chicago Tribune investigating claims against Christianity.
Lee Strobel applies his legal investigative background to systematically dismantle the eight most formidable intellectual obstacles standing in the way of Christian faith.
You will journey alongside Strobel as he interviews top scholars to rigorously examine these objections. The book organizes these hurdles into eight distinct intellectual barriers that demand honest answers.
- How can a loving God allow pain and suffering?
- Does science disprove miracles and creation?
- Are biblical commands for judgment morally defensible?
- Is Jesus truly the only way to God?
1. Confronting Evil and Suffering
Human suffering and moral evil present the most emotionally wrenching challenge to believing in an all-powerful, loving God.
The Agnostic Challenge
Charles Templeton transitioned from a prominent evangelical preacher to an agnostic primarily because confronting intense human suffering made it impossible for him to believe in a loving God. At eighty-three years old during an interview, Templeton lost his faith after being struck by a Life magazine photograph of an African mother holding her dead baby during a severe drought while praying for rain. He argued that if an all-powerful God exists who controls the rain, allowing such needless agony makes a loving deity an impossibility.
Templeton pointed to the horrors of Alzheimer's disease, which he was personally dying from during three years of battle, as well as global plagues and tragedies, arguing that a compassionate creator would never permit such ghastly suffering.
The Bear Analogy and Logic
Peter Kreeft argues that it is intellectually arrogant for a finite human to claim absolute knowledge that an infinite, wise creator has no valid long-range reasons for tolerating temporary evils. At sixty-two years old, Kreeft has written forty books and summarized twenty arguments pointing in favor of God's existence. He notes that ninety percent of all human beings throughout history have believed in God.
When a hunter has to push a trapped bear further into a trap to release spring tension, the semiconscious bear mistakenly views the hunter as an enemy rather than a rescuer.
The human recognition of evil paradoxically presupposes an objective standard of goodness, which logically points toward the existence of a Supreme Good or God. Kreeft uses the analogy of grading students where giving a ninety and an eighty presupposes that one hundred is a real and objective standard. Granting humans genuine free will inherently includes the potential for moral evil and suffering.
God on the Hook
Rather than remaining immune to human agony, God entered directly into the suffering of the world through the Incarnation and the cross. Templeton pointed to a photograph of a starving woman in Africa representing one billion destitute people. God did not merely stay off the hook; he put himself on the hook by taking all the world's pain, blood, and guts into himself.
Those who experience deep suffering do not ultimately crave abstract philosophical explanations as much as they desire the personal presence of God. Marc Harrienger, whose toddler daughter was tragically killed under a car wheel, found healing and purpose not through intellectual answers, but through experiencing God's warmth and presence in his deep despair.
2. Science, Miracles, and Evolution
Scientific discoveries about the universe and biological origins point directly toward an intelligent creator rather than blind chance.
You might wonder how miracles can coexist with modern science. True miracles do not violate the laws of nature because natural laws contain implicit conditions assuming no supernatural intervention. Natural laws operate under ceteris paribus conditions, meaning all other things being equal.
William Lane Craig notes that oxygen and potassium combust under idealized conditions, but do not cause him to burst into flames because other factors in his body interfere with the process. Just as a person catching a falling apple does not violate the law of gravity, a miracle is an event not producible by current natural causes due to the intervention of a supernatural agent with free will.
Skeptics often demand extraordinary evidence for such events. Probability theorists note that any improbability of an event occurring must be weighed against the probability that the evidence would be just as it is if the event had not happened.
An evening news report that specific lottery numbers like 4, 2, 9, 7, 8, and 3 were chosen has odds of millions to one against it, yet you rationally believe the news report because the high probability of the news agency's accuracy counterbalances the improbability of the numbers.
Miracles versus Science
Because the universe and time itself had a beginning at the Big Bang fourteen billion years ago, it requires an uncaused, timeless, immaterial, and transcendent cause. Oxford philosopher Anthony Kenny noted that an atheist proponent of the Big Bang must believe the universe came from nothing and by nothing.
The extreme mathematical precision and fine-tuning of the universe from its inception point strongly toward an Intelligent Designer rather than pure chance. Thirty-five years of research established that fifty constants and quantities, including gravity and the weak force, are balanced to an infinitesimal degree.
Stephen Hawking calculated that if the universe's expansion rate one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have collapsed. P.C.W. Davies calculated odds against initial conditions suitable for star formation at one followed by at least a thousand billion billion zeroes, and estimated gravity or weak force sensitivity at one part in a ten followed by a hundred zeroes.
The Origin of Life
All current scientific theories regarding the chemical origin of life contain fundamental flaws. Walter L. Bradley, who spent twenty-four years as a professor at Texas A&M University, received four million dollars in research grants, served as an expert witness in seventy-five legal cases, and retired at fifty-six years old, co-authored the 1984 book The Mystery of Life’s Origin. The rigorous analysis demonstrated the inadequacy of current chemical evolution theories.
The theory that random chance plus time created life has collapsed because the universe's age is too short and mathematical probabilities are impossibly steep. Following the 1965 discovery of background radiation that established the Big Bang theory, scientists recognized that the earth is less than five billion years old, leaving only a short 400-million-year window before microfossils appeared.
Sir Frederick Hoyle compared the random assembly of a protein molecule to a tornado whirling through a junkyard and accidentally assembling a fully functional Boeing 747. The mathematical odds of creating just one functional protein molecule by chance are 1 chance in a 10 with 60 zeroes after it.
The vast amount of coded information contained within DNA provides compelling evidence for an Intelligent Designer through analogical reasoning. Because human experience shows that written language and encoded instructions always originate from an intelligence, the four-letter chemical alphabet of DNA functioning as coded instructions warrants the analogical conclusion that life came from a who rather than a what.
In the movie Contact, based on Carl Sagan's book, scientists receive a transmission of prime numbers from space and instantly deduce an intelligent cause because it contains structured information rather than random static. Each cell in the human body contains even more information than the thirty volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
3. Biblical Morality and Divine Judgment
Critics often accuse the Bible of promoting cruelty and injustice. In 1794, Thomas Paine wrote in The Age of Reason that the Bible should be called the work of a demon due to its cruel executions and debaucheries.
Alleged biblical atrocities and divine commands to judge wicked nations reflect righteous judicial acts rather than moral failure.
You must distinguish between what the Bible records and what it approves. The text records horrific acts and human failures like adultery or rape, but it does not condone them. God's character remains consistent across both testaments. The word love appears 322 times, split about evenly between both testaments. The word translated as mercy appears 261 times, with 72 percent found in the Old Testament.
God commanded the Israelites in Deuteronomy 7 to totally destroy the Canaanites and show them no mercy. This was a judicial punishment for extreme evil and a protective measure to preserve the lineage of the Messiah. The Canaanites and Amalekites were persistently violent, engaged in cowardly slaughter of the vulnerable, and sought to commit genocide against Israel. God granted them 400 years to repent before judgment fell. Because God is sovereign over life, he has the right to exact judgment, and children who die before the age of accountability enter heaven.
Reliability of Scripture
Archaeological discoveries extensively corroborate the historical reliability of the Old and New Testaments. Thousands of archaeological finds confirm biblical accounts, such as the location of Sodom and Gomorrah, King David, and the Hittites. Archaeologists initially doubted the Bible because Samuel stated Saul's armor was placed in the temple of Ashtoroth at Bethshan, while Chronicles reported his head was placed in the temple of Dagon. Excavations later confirmed two separate temples for Dagon and Ashtoroth connected by a hallway. Roman historian Colin J. Hemer confirmed hundreds of details in the Book of Acts, which was authored by A.D. 62.
The Bible contains 36 references to the Hittites in the Old Testament. Barton Payne's Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy catalogs 191 Old Testament predictions about the coming of Christ. These predictive prophecies were written 200 to 400 years in advance and were fulfilled literally. Psychics achieved a mere 6 percent accuracy rate in 1975, whereas biblical prophecies are specific and verifiable.
Alleged biblical contradictions stem from misinterpreting text, ignoring context, or assuming partial reports are false reports. You should approach the Bible with the legal presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Norman Geisler collected 800 alleged discrepancies and devoted 600 pages in When Critics Ask to resolving them. Matthew mentions one angel at Jesus' tomb while John mentions two. John was simply providing more detail, because having two angels inherently means having one.
4. Exclusivity and Eternal Judgment
You might find it arrogant when Christianity claims that Jesus is the only way to God. Every major religion, philosophy, and worldview actually makes exclusive truth claims that reject contradictory opposites. Absolute truth inherently excludes its opposite, and syncretism fails because truth must be undergirded by love to avoid being repulsive.
Claiming Jesus is the only way to God and affirming eternal hell are logically coherent doctrines grounded in human free will and truth exclusivity.
The Arrogance of Exclusivity
Ravi Zacharias explains that other world religions suffer from internal incoherence when addressing foundational inquiries. Jesus Christ uniquely and coherently provides answers to the four fundamental questions of life:
- origin;
- meaning;
- morality;
- destiny.
Christianity explains origin through distinct creation by God and grounds morality in God's immutable character rather than cultural relativism. Meaning is defined through worship, while destiny finds its anchor in the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ. Former West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer affirmed to Billy Graham that outside of the resurrection of Jesus, he knew of no other hope for the world. Adenauer served as chancellor from 1949 to 1963.
Redemption must precede righteousness. Jesus came to make dead people live rather than merely making bad people good. You cannot work your way toward goodness or act as your own redeemer, following the biblical pattern of redemption, righteousness, and then worship. God has a sovereign plan that places people in specific cultures and makes himself reachable through general revelation. A Muslim woman working in her country felt empty at the end of the work day, muttered a plea to Jesus on the street, and later became a Christian. Sundar Singh, an Indian Sikh, came to know Christ after an apparition of Christ in his room.
The Nature of Hell
You may struggle to accept that a loving God would send people to eternal punishment. God is a just and holy being who takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Hell is a relational state of banishment and punishment resulting from a lifetime of rejecting the purpose for which humans were created.
God cannot force everyone to go to heaven because doing so would strip humans of their free will and dehumanize them. Forcing people into heaven against their free choice treats them merely as instrumental value rather than intrinsic value. Quarantining unrepentant individuals in hell honors their free choice while sustaining their intrinsic value instead of annihilating them.
5. Church History and Personal Doubt
Historical atrocities committed in the name of Christianity were perpetrated by cultural or institutional participants rather than authentic followers living out the teachings of Jesus.
Historian John D. Woodbridge explains that a clear demarcation must be made between visible institutional churches and true Christians. Citing Jesus's warning in Matthew 7:21-23 that many who invoke His name do not actually do the Father's will, Woodbridge notes that bad acts done in history contradict Jesus's actual teachings, though genuine believers have historically also spoken out against institutional abuses.
In 1994, Pope John Paul II publicly acknowledged and asked forgiveness for the dark side of church history, including religious wars and the Inquisition.
Despite historical blots, the vast sweep of Christian history has overwhelmingly benefited civilization through human rights, science, literacy, and humility. Michael Novak, David N. Livingstone, David Lyle Jeffrey, and Mark Noll documented these civilizing gifts of Christianity. By contrast, twentieth-century out-and-out atheist regimes like those of Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao butchered an estimated one hundred million people.
Dealing with Doubt
Doubt is a universal experience in the spiritual life, often functioning as a defense mechanism or a personal wrestling match rather than an absolute absence of faith.
Lynn Anderson grew up with a melancholy personality on a remote homestead in Saskatchewan and battled chronic doubts from childhood through college. Working in a house with a 1929 vintage, the sixty-three-year-old who served thirty years as a senior pastor notes that spiritual seekers and believers often use intellectual objections or professed doubts as smoke screens to mask deeper psychological motivations, fears of commitment, or resistance to changing their lifestyles.
Authentic faith and doubt can coexist, and a faith that is tested by adversity, questions, and contemplation ultimately becomes much stronger. Sixty percent of the Psalms are laments containing complaints and cries to God, proving that melancholy and struggle fit within normal spiritual devotion.
Overcoming doubt requires a deliberate set of intentional steps beginning with the will and moving toward experiential action:
- Decide whether or not you really want to believe.
- Go where faith is by getting around people you respect for their life, mind, character, and faith.
- Put faith-building materials into your mind like books, tapes, and music that build motivation and clarify God's nature.
- Clarify the object of your faith by investing in something solid like Jesus.
- Embark on your experiment of faith by doing what faith would do.
6. The Eyewitness Foundation
The New Testament gospels rest on reliable eyewitness testimony and early historical creeds that confirm the identity and resurrection of Jesus.
Eyewitness testimony carries immense weight in proving historical and legal facts, capable of securing convictions even under severe threats. You can trace how firsthand observation drives justice by looking at the harrowing personal story of Leo Carter.
Leo Carter witnessed Elijah Baptist shoot Sam Blue outside a grocery store. Later, Elijah and accomplices shot Leo in the head and executed two others, but Leo survived with a .38-caliber slug in his skull and successfully testified to convict the killers.
Eyewitnesses to History
The four gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, reflecting direct or indirect eyewitness testimony without competing authorship claims. Craig Blomberg explains that despite being anonymous textually, uniform early church testimony attributes the gospels to Matthew as a tax collector and disciple, Mark as the interpreter of Peter, Luke as a historian and companion of Paul, and John as the apostle. There were no competing authors, which counters claims of late fictitious fabrication.
Papias around A.D. 125 and Irenaeus around A.D. 180 explicitly affirmed the traditional authorship of the four gospels, connecting them directly to the disciples and their close associates. Implicit and explicit claims to divine identity are present throughout the synoptic gospels, not just in the later gospel of John. Jesus walks on water using the divine "I am" formula, claims authority to forgive sins, accepts worship, and applies the divine figure title "Son of Man" from the Book of Daniel.
Jesus walking on water in Matthew 14 and Mark 6 features the Greek phrase "I am", identical to the divine revelation given to Moses in Exodus 3:14. When Jesus told Jewish leaders "I and the Father are one," they immediately picked up rocks to stone him for blasphemy because a mere man was claiming to be God. Jesus would not have willingly suffered a torturous execution for a claim he knew was false.
Going Back to the Beginning
Early Christian creeds date back within years of the Crucifixion, disproving the theory that the Resurrection was a late mythological invention. By examining Paul's epistles, scholars uncover early creeds and confessions such as 1 Corinthians 15. These texts detail Jesus' death, burial, resurrection, and specific eyewitness appearances, dating back within two to five years of the events themselves, leaving no time for legend to replace historical truth.
Paul passed on the creed in 1 Corinthians 15 regarding the post-resurrection appearances to Peter, the Twelve, James, and over five hundred brothers, which he received upon meeting early disciples in Damascus and Jerusalem.
Jesus explicitly claimed to be God, a claim that was fully understood and recognized as blasphemy by the religious leaders of his day.
10 Key Ideas
- Charles Templeton transitioned from a prominent evangelical preacher to an agnostic primarily because confronting intense human suffering made it impossible for him to believe in a loving God.
- Peter Kreeft uses the analogy of a hunter pushing a trapped bear further into a trap to illustrate that it is intellectually arrogant for a finite human to claim absolute knowledge that an infinite, wise creator has no valid long-range reasons for tolerating temporary evils.
- Stephen Hawking calculated that if the universe's expansion rate one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have collapsed.
- The theory that random chance plus time created life has collapsed because the universe's age is too short and mathematical probabilities are impossibly steep.
- Archaeological discoveries extensively corroborate the historical reliability of the Old and New Testaments through thousands of finds that confirm biblical accounts.
- Absolute truth inherently excludes its opposite, and syncretism fails because truth must be undergirded by love to avoid being repulsive.
- Hell is a relational state of banishment and punishment resulting from a lifetime of rejecting the purpose for which humans were created.
- Historical atrocities committed in the name of Christianity were perpetrated by cultural or institutional participants rather than authentic followers living out the teachings of Jesus.
- Doubt is a universal experience in the spiritual life, often functioning as a defense mechanism or a personal wrestling match rather than an absolute absence of faith.
- The four gospels rest on reliable eyewitness testimony and early historical creeds that confirm the identity and resurrection of Jesus.