We're often told that there is "no evidence" for God, for Christianity, or indeed for any religion. This, of course, is not true. What atheists mean by "there is no evidence", what they actually mean is there is no evidence they would personally accept. Throughout history, many atheists have. Starting from a position of hostility towards God, they set out on a journey, collecting and examining the evidence other atheists claim doesn't exist. The result? They come to faith in the King of kings and Lord of lords.
The main problem other atheists have, other than the obvious issue of sin that causes all unbelievers to suppress the truth in unrighteousness, is a faulty definition of "evidence". To begin with, they change it according to what position the evidence is for. If it's for something they want to believe, like Evolution, it seems virtually anything will do. But if the evidence is supposed to prove Christianity, it must be a "silver bullet".
The immediate flaw here, however, is that no one piece of evidence - unless you happen to have been a first hand witness - is supposed to prove Christianity. Evidence is more like a jigsaw. Suppose, for example, I wanted to prove that I once owned two Staffordshire bull terriers. As they have both died, I cannot show you the dogs. I can show you pictures, but photo editing technology is highly advanced these days. I could show you their collars, but you don't need a dog to buy a collar. I could even hand you their urns, but at the end of the day, a clay pot full of ash does not prove I ever owned two Staffies.
You see, then, how evidence is open to interpretation. It's not entirely rational to suggest I am lying about my Staffies, and the evidence I can provide is at least consistent with the claim that I did, but there are always ways to reinterpret the evidence I provide. And if you really want to, you can deny all of it.
But what you cannot reasonably do is deny that the evidence exists. Of course, if you want to, you can deny anything exists. I've had atheists tell me they would sooner deny my existence than confess God's. And you don't need my personal anecdote. You can find videos of atheists like Richard Dawkins admitting that nothing would convince them. God could re-arrange the stars so that they spell out "Richard Dawkins, I am God, believe in me", and he would still suggest that a sufficiently advanced race of aliens could perform such a trick. So, you can deny that evidence exists, but to do so is not remotely reasonable.
As it stands, we do have plenty of evidence not only for God, but for Christ being that God. But of course, if we're going to prove that Jesus is God, we must first assume He was even a historical figure. 2,000 years have passed since the Ascension, and so it is both possible, and popular, to deny that Jesus is anything more than a fictional character.
Now, when I say popular, I do not mean among scholars. The overwhelming majority of scholars, regardless of their religious affiliation, will admit that Jesus is really a historical figure. Jesus Mythicism is not respected in academia, and indeed it should not be, for we have a lot of evidence for the historical Jesus, from sources both faithful and hostile.
But we don't actually need that, as we have the Bible. "Circular reasoning!", the atheist cries. Well, yes and no. To begin with, circular reasoning, in the biggest of pictures, is unavoidable. Eventually, there are certain assumptions we must make in order to make any truth claim. To put it simply, we know we are able to use our brains to find truth because we have used our brains to determine that this is true. This is circular reasoning, and yet, because we cannot prove it without assuming it, we literally cannot have any conversation without circular reasoning.
Which brings us to the fact that this is not the only time we use circular reasoning. Open your wallet. What's inside? If you don't have money, you might have some form of identification. A driver's licence, perhaps. If not, perhaps you have a passport. If not a passport, you very likely at least have access to your birth certificate.
All of the above are what's known as self-authenticating documents. They affirm their own truth, and, in theory, do so better than counterfeits. I often like to joke that atheists should send me all the money they can't prove is real, and I'll happily "dispose" of it for them. But at the end of the day, circular reasoning is extremely common, and in order to function as human beings, we must assume it is sometimes valid.
The question then becomes how valid it is to apply it when it comes to the Bible? Well, to begin with, even if we do not assume divine inspiration, we owe the Bible the same reverence we would give literally any historical document. For a moment, let us compare Jesus to Socrates.
Socrates is a famous 5th century B.C. Greek philosopher, credited as the father of Western philosophy. But did he actually exist?
The irony here is that there are some struggles pinning down his exact philosophy, known among historians as the "Socratic Problem". His existence as a historical figure, however, is very rarely questioned. Yet, he left no writings, his body is gone, he is known only from accounts given after his death by his students, with Plato, his student, being the primary source.
Much like Socrates, Jesus does not appear to have left any personal writings. However, whereas Socrates is mainly known from contradictory accounts by his students such as Plato and Xenophon, Jesus is known from a plethora of documents left by His own Apostles.
Apostle carries a far greater weight than student/disciple. To be clear, an Apostle is a disciple, but a disciple is not an Apostle. To be an Apostle literally means to be "sent out". That is, the Apostles were literally taught by Jesus, and authorised to carry His teachings in order to make more disciples.
This makes the Bible considerably more reliable as evidence for Jesus than Plato's are for Socrates. If Plato and Xenophon were Apostles of Socrates, they failed, as Socrates' personal philosophy is now an everlasting mystery. But due to the internal consistency of the Bible, which is far more well attested than the writings about Socrates, we can, indeed, rely on it.
What makes it more reliable is the willingness of its authors to suffer for their testimony. As far as tradition holds, almost every author of the New Testament (John being an exception) was murdered for teaching it. There are conflicting accounts of how some of them died, meaning we cannot conclusively say that every author definitely died a martyr's death. Others are more conclusive.
Regardless of the mystery surrounding some of their deaths, it cannot be denied that the Apostles risked death. Aside from the obvious problem with following a man who was crucified for His teachings, Christian persecution in the early days of the Church is very well documented. Some of the New Testament was even written from prison, with 2 Timothy being written from what is effectively death row.
With the obvious exception of Judas Iscariot, there is no evidence that any Apostle of Christ ever turned on Him. Paul, having initially persecuted the Church himself, labored hard for the Gospel, receiving death threat after beating after bogus trial. He never recanted. Peter, ironically having thrice denied Christ, never did so again in the face of meeting His same fate (though, at his own request, upside down). John, seemingly the only Apostle to die of old age, did not have an easy life. Yet he remained in the Church, even writing more epistles, to the end of his life.
It would have been so easy for every one of these Apostles to just give up. If they stopped preaching Christ, the world would have stopped punishing them for it. If they had gone a step further, if they publicly repented and dedicated their lives to exposing The Way, imagine the riches that would have poured in. So much wealth and power would fall into their hands.
By contrast, the only thing they had to gain by continuing is if it was true. They lost so much, yet they gained so little. Even when they could, they did not. Paul, a firm believer in the fact that those who preach the Gospel should live from the Gospel (1 Corinthians 9:14), did not make any attempt to claim that living, working instead with his own hands and earning his own bread (2 Thessalonians 3:6-12). They lost much, they gained little, yet with one accord, they preached the Gospel with their lives, and there is no evidence that any of them ever deviated from that path.
But this is where atheists point out that other religions have their martyrs, too. 9/11 is a common example. If the Apostles dying for Christ proves they are right about Christ, then how can I deny Muhammad, given that there were martyrs on that plane, too?
The distinction is simple: Martyrdom does not reveal the truth of one's beliefs, but the sincerity with which one holds them. However, the 9/11 bombers were not witnesses to Muhammad. They never met him, not in person, nor even in their dreams.
The irony is, there is very little evidence for the existence of Muhammad. I do not intend to turn this article into a discussion of Muhammad's existence, but suffice to say for now, the historical evidence for Muhammad is sorely lacking. It cannot even be compared to the evidence for Jesus.
But the authors of the New Testament either knew Jesus personally, or knew someone who did. The martyrs of the New Testament didn't receive the Christian faith many centuries later, as I did, for example. If I die for my faith, that will prove I believed it, it won't prove I was right. I never met Jesus. I never met Peter. I never met Paul, John, Mary, Luke, any significant Biblical figure. If I die for my faith, that proves only that I was sincere. That the evidence I have seen convinced me that they were telling the truth.
But the Apostles didn't just learn the faith many years later. They knew Jesus. They saw His miracles. They ate and drank with Him. They traveled with Him. They watched as He was arrested. Some of them even stood at the foot of His cross as He died. And when He rose on the third day, they witnessed His empty tomb, and marveled as He appeared to them. They didn't sincerely believe the evidence, they sincerely believed... their eyes. They believed what they saw. What they touched.
So the next question we have to ask is what could possibly convince them all that they had seen Jesus? Seeing Jesus might cause it... You're Thomas, you say you won't believe unless you touch His wounds, you open your eyes, and there He is, "touch my wounds". Why wouldn't you find that convincing? What would even convince you that you hadn't seen the risen Lord, if, in fact, you had seen the risen Lord?
But more problematic to non-Christians is, if you hadn't seen the risen Lord, what could convince you to believe you had? When the first synagogue excommunicates you, why would you preach the same message in another? When the first family member disowns you, why would you cling to your testimony? When the first whip makes contact with your back, why would you call down a second crack? If you had made it up, if you had maybe hallucinated, if you had taken a drug, would you not be questioning your even a little?
And so the faith seems to make a little more sense. Its very existence, in spite of its history, in spite of its very beginnings, seems highly unlikely unless it is true. But then we look deeper, and we see even more. We look to life, and we see it is far better designed than our greatest inventions, and design screams designer. We look to our universe, and we see it filled with finite matter; A beginning is required, and there is a book entitled "Beginnings". And so we open that book, and we read on, and we find in it a faithful God who tells the end of an event before it even begins. And here, we find shadows of a coming Messiah. A Savior, born of a virgin, in the unassuming town of Bethlehem. A son of David, who calls this son "Lord". A man who would bear the sins of the world, healing us by His wounds. God, pierced by human hands! And we find but one man, one human being in all of recorded history, who fulfills all of these prophecies. Which man? Christ the Lord.
And so we see, there is indeed evidence for the Christian faith, even if all we look at is the Christian faith. The founders of our religion thought it was worth dying for. This is because Jesus died for us. Ultimately, death is inevitable. This life ends, after which everything we have done within it will be judged. But by our own steam, we will be found guilty in that trial, as every one of us has sinned in some way. But in His life, Jesus never sinned. Thus, the death He died was ours. He received the punishment for sin, allowing us to receive the reward for His righteousness. The sole condition for receiving this gift is faith. All who confess Jesus as Lord, and believe in their heart God raised Him from the dead, will receive eternal life in His Kingdom.