Have you ever seen claims like this floating around social media? “There have been thousands of religions, so how do you know yours is true?” “You don’t believe in thousands of gods; we just believe in one less.” Statements like this make faulty assumptions about how our religious beliefs work. Just because people have slightly different descriptions of the supreme being that doesn’t mean these ideas are all drastically different. In fact, they are mostly similar, and shows that the vast majority of people and cultures have concluded that there is, in fact, a supreme being – God.

Have you ever noticed how the moral argument for God is somewhat like the first-cause (or cosmological) argument for God? At the core of the first-cause argument is the idea that, if we notice a sequence of causes, then there must be either an infinite regress of causes or there was an ultimate first cause. However, the moral argument functions much in the same way. G. E. Moore introduced the idea of the “open question”: if we say that something is good, then the following question can always be asked: “What makes that thing good?” Any answer you give to that question can also have the same question asked of it: “Well, then that makes that thing good?” This causes an infinite regress unless, of course, there is one thing that is just ultimately good.

Are traditional methods of apologetics outdated? Does giving arguments for God or providing evidence that Jesus rose from the dead actually convince anyone? Should we instead only use apologetic methods that "work"? Some try to disparage traditional apologetic methods, claiming that they really don't convince anyone, and that other things like personal stories or emotional appeals are what really convince people to change their minds. But is simply making Christianity more “attractive” or “desirable” a better approach for apologetics?