An evidence-first investigation · 6 hypotheses · 28 lines of evidence
That God made the universe, spoke through Israel’s prophets, and raised Jesus from the dead. Most people who care about evidence assume the question was settled long ago. We treated it as a hypothesis: we named the rivals, fixed the rules before looking, and weighed every line of evidence, including the evidence against. Every number is yours to check, and to change.
How it works
Researched with AI assistants and checked against the sources linked on every page. How the case is weighed, and how the site was made →
The structure
Each line of evidence is scored only for what it can actually tell apart. Fine-tuning can tell a Mind from no Mind, but not one religion from another; the resurrection is where Christianity and its nearest rivals part ways.
Tier I
Fine-tuning carries most of the weight, modestly: it rules out one universe of blind chance, not a deeper law or a multiverse. The other three tip the scales only slightly.
Can’t tell you: Which God. Every theism predicts this about equally.
Tier II
Most famous “proofs” shrink under fair tests, and prophecy, scored whole with its misses, gives no margin.
Can’t tell you: Whether Jesus is the one the texts point to.
Tier III
Early, rooted sources, and a resurrection the best natural theory fits poorly. It carries almost all of the weight specific to Christianity.
Can’t tell you: Whether God exists: that comes from Tier I.
The verdict
Weighed line by line, with the evidence against in the same ledger, the data favour a Mind behind nature over naturalism unless your starting confidence that there is any Mind behind nature is below about 1 in 11. From even odds, with no favourite religion, they bring Christianity to about 68.4%, almost entirely because of the resurrection. A committed skeptic barely moves.
Remove the resurrection and Christianity falls from 68.4% to 2.5% from an even start, so that is where the deepest analysis on the site is. Count the evidence against twice and it is 20.6%. The uncertainty is wide: letting every line vary across its range, the figure from even odds lands anywhere from about 3% to about 92%.
Every line of evidence, for and against
Likelihood ratio on a log scale: dot = central estimate, bar = the range from the critic's value to the defender's.
| Line of evidence | Low | Central | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| The universe had a beginning | 0.85 | 1.3 | 3.5 |
| Fine-tuning | 0.5 | 10 | 10^3 |
| Origin of life | 0.8 | 1.3 | 3 |
| Mind & near-death experiences | 0.6 | 1.2 | 2.7 |
| Genesis 1 | 0.6 | 1.3 | 3 |
| Science in Scripture | 0.7 | 1 | 1.2 |
| Old Testament history & text | 0.7 | 1.2 | 2 |
| Sinai: a national revelation | 1 | 1.2 | 2 |
| Prophecy: nations & Israel | 0.01 | 0.3 | 10 |
| Messianic prophecy | 0.07 | 0.25 | 3 |
| Typology | 0.9 | 2 | 6 |
| Gospels' reliability (vs Islam) | 1.2 | 8 | 80 |
| The resurrection | 1 | 500 | 10^4.3 |
| Crucifixion record (vs Islam) | 1.2 | 1.9 | 3.3 |
| Evil and suffering | 0.08 | 0.35 | 0.85 |
| Divine hiddenness | 0.3 | 0.65 | 0.95 |
| Religious diversity | 0.4 | 0.75 | 1 |
| Prayer trials | 0.7 | 0.9 | 1 |
| Conquest & slavery texts | 0.25 | 0.55 | 0.9 |
| Contradictions | 0.7 | 0.9 | 1 |
| Perpetual Torah statutes | 0.5 | 0.83 | 1 |
| Cognitive science of religion | 0.7 | 0.9 | 1 |
| Naturalism's track record | 0.6 | 0.85 | 1 |
| Size & age of the universe | 0.7 | 0.9 | 1.05 |
| Rival miracle claims | 0.6 | 0.85 | 1 |
| Evidence for Islam | 0.7 | 2.4 | 19 |
| The Quran's hard texts | 0.097 | 0.41 | 0.9 |
| Evidence for other traditions | 0.83 | 2.3 | 17.5 |
Your turn
It opens where a skeptic starts. Change the starting point, swap in the critics’ numbers, move any line or switch it off.
The calculator needs JavaScript. The results are in the verdict.
The other side
A case that leaves out the evidence against isn’t a case. The strongest objections, from the problem of suffering to the hard texts of the Old Testament, get the same treatment as everything else: the critic’s best form first, then the best reply, then what remains open. Together they cut the odds by a factor of about 20; in the unified model, where two of them are already scored inside other lines, the rest cut them by about 12.
Falsifiable
A demonstrated unguided origin of life; a physical theory that fixes the cosmological constant with no landscape of universes; manuscript evidence that the key prophecies were edited toward Jesus; a credible natural account of the group appearances that fits the earliest sources; or, most simply, the body.
If you have read this far as a skeptic, three suggestions, none of them a sales pitch. Read one Gospel, John is a good choice, start to finish, as the historical source the reliability evidence says it is. Read the strongest critic we cite on whichever page moved you least. And put your own numbers into the calculator: wherever you land, you will know exactly why.
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