How do you investigate and evaluate the evidence for these questions?

From a legal perspective, there are always two sides to an issue.  So you need to examine sources that support the existence of God and Christianity on one side, and the sources that contest God and Christianity on the other side.  Clear & Convincing Christianity will take this legal approach to the investigation and analysis, and link to many resources so you can examine the evidence for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

Legal standard and level of proof.

From legal perspective, you need to determine the appropriate standard and level of proof that you will use to examine the evidence.  There is the preponderance of the evidence – more probably true than not (51% sure) – used in civil lawsuits involving money damages such as proving who is at fault in an auto accident or whether a party to a contract breached that contract. Clear and convincing evidence (around 75% sure) – example is enough evidence to take a child away from the child’s mother. Criminal standard of evidence of beyond a reasonable doubt.  (90-95% sure).  It is helpful to understand that you will never realistically eliminate every scintilla of doubt.  (100% sure). For spiritual matters like the existence of God and the truth claims of Christianity, the clear and convincing evidence level of proof is appropriate because if you are going to structure your life around a belief system, you should be more than 51% sure.  But if that belief system has profound implications for your life depending on whether you believe it or not, you should not set the level of proof so high that essentially makes it near impossible to draw a reasonable conclusion from the evidence in favor of that belief system.

The cumulative evidence and level of persuasion.

When examining the evidence for the existence of God and Christianity, not only should you consider each piece of evidence; you should consider the synergistic effect of how all the pieces of evidence interact to support your conclusions. In other words, the pieces of evidence reinforce one another, producing an effect stronger than any piece of evidence by itself.

What is truth?

Some people believe they can define their own truth. Or they say there is no absolute truth. Others say what is true for you is your truth and what is true for me is my truth. This is an incorrect view of reality. There is such a  thing as truth. Truth is what corresponds to or reflects reality. The statement, “There is no such thing as truth” is a self-refuting statement. To demonstrate this, you only need to ask, “Is the statement, ’There is no such thing as truth’ true itself?” Instead, there is an objective truth that corresponds to reality. Different religions have different contradictory beliefs about God. For example, in Hinduism, there are many different Gods. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, there is only one God. Christians believe that God came to earth in the human form of Jesus as the truth about God, the only way to God, and to offer you eternal life with God (John 14:6). But Hindus, Jews, and Muslims don’t believe Jesus is God. All the religions may be wrong, but they can’t all be right. Its up to you to investigate which religion best corresponds to reality. From a Christian worldview perspective, one of God’s attributes is truth. We can look to God for an objective standard of what is truth.