The Challenge Part 2

     Of course, the best defense to any sort of attack is a counterattack:

     Catholic: But tell me please: why don’t you believe?
     Secularist: Oh, come on! Why should I?
     Catholic: Well, there’s documentary evidence. We call it the New Testament.
     Secularist: You think that’s evidence?
     Catholic: On what basis do you believe in the destruction of Carthage? The Peloponnesian War? The great run of Philippides from Marathon to Sparta? Written historical records, right?
     Secularist: Well, yes, but that’s secular history.
     Catholic: My friend, until about the end of the seventeenth century, all history was the work of religious scholars and people we would today call “mythmakers.” You prefer to...how would you put it...to privilege these other bits of history on the grounds of your preferences.
     Secularist: Well no other histories speak of miracles, and resurrections, and the like.
     Catholic: Are you telling me that you expect those things to be commonplace?
     Secularist: No, not at all, but—
     Catholic: Now, now! The essence of the refusal to believe is the refusal to believe evidence that falls short of absolute proof. So it would seem that you don’t disbelieve; you refuse to believe.
     Secularist: (silence)
     Catholic: It’s easy to refuse to believe something that can’t be absolutely proved, especially if it cross-cuts your preferences. But bear in mind that among the men who knew Jesus personally, virtually all of them accepted martyrdom, often by torture, rather than renounce their faith – and those events are well documented both in the writings of pagan, polytheistic historians and in the New Testament. Do you really think those men would willingly have accepted death by torture for a lie, when all they would have had to do to save their lives – and perhaps to gain a high place at some ruler’s side – is to renounce it?

     Have fun with it. I do.