Why Don't Christians Make This Argument More?

The best argument for Christianity you've never heard of.

I’ve often been struck by how poorly most Christians argue for Christianity.

I mean, sure. They usually make the relatively powerful minimal facts argument for the resurrection. But then they make all sorts of unconvincing arguments like the argument from fulfilled prophecy—remind me to write an article about why that argument is hugely unconvincing at some point—rather than the powerful arguments for their position from, for example, modern miracles. A picture of Mary appears atop a Church in Egypt and seems to defy natural explanation, gets seen by thousands of people, is thoroughly investigated by the Egyptian government who declares it a miracle—and Christians don’t see this as being worth mentioning in arguing for Christianity.

Christians standardly ignore the healing at Calanda—where a person regrew a limb after praying to Mary as attested to by a thorough investigation by secular authorities, with lots of eyewitnesses attesting to each of following: the amputation procedure, the person healed having not had a leg for years, and them having subsequently had a leg. They ignore the levitation of Joseph of Cupertino, where Joseph was seen, in a religious setting, flying over and over again by hundreds of people everywhere he went in Italy, leading the skeptical “debunkers” to be so desperate as to declare that people all—everywhere in Italy—ate poisoned bread that made them think he—and only he, mind you—was flying, or that Joseph simply jumped and people got confused.¹ No joke, that’s what the so-called debunkers think.

Modern miracles are, as the kids say, an S-tier argument for Christianity—better than all but perhaps the resurrection argument. I’m still not moved by it as I think non-Christian theists can explain why God—or some other angelic authority—sometimes intervenes in religious settings, but nonetheless, I think it’s a powerful consideration worth at least seriously reflecting on, unlike, say, the Kuzari argument or the argument from prophecy.

Evidence for Jesus’s divinity focus almost exclusively on claims that he rose from the dead. If a guy claims to be God and then rises from the dead, you should start taking him a lot more seriously. But that’s just one of the many miracles that Jesus is alleged to have done in the Gospels. And while it’s probably the best attested, there’s another one that’s pretty well-attested but that Christians never seem to argue for, as if the only miracle that might vindicate Jesus’s divine status is rising from the dead.