Understanding Christianity, Using Philosophy

    We now move on to a philosophical defense of Christianity, without reference to scripture. This has the value of allowing those who do not trust scripture to get a core understanding of Christianity anyway. At the same time, it helps prepare for the scriptural arguments to follow. Below is a map, detailing the philosophical foundation of Christianity. Each arrow indicates that a section depends upon a previous section. As you can see, the arguments are not entirely linear. In the text that follows, I go down the left branch before I go down the right branch. Use this map to keep the dependencies straight. In the left branch, we start with physics, learn that physics cannot explain the universe, and end with an understanding of God. In the right branch, we start with neuroscience, learn that neuroscience cannot explain consciousness, and then end with an understanding of the soul. In this way, we see that not only do science and religion not conflict, but a careful study of science leads to an understanding that our knowledge is fundamentally incomplete without religion. It is a fundamental property of science that it cannot explain God and the soul. It is not something that can be fixed with more scientific theories or experimentation. I will discuss this more as we go.

This page was last changed on 2011/08/28