Turning now to Christianity, the following seek to briefly outline some aspect of the Christian belief. To most people it is just another "religion", and sadly this is where they leave the matter. No attempt is made to find out more about Christian belief. Yet these are people that readily expressed their judgement or view about Christianity, as well as other religion. Without a proper understanding of what Christianity is about any such judgement or view are empty statements.

Faith And Rationality

As mentioned earlier most people consider that theism involves a "leap of faith". The process of believing in a God is seen as a miraculous event that is entirely subjective. That it is in fact illogical, not a decision that is supported by reasons or evidence.

WRONG! This is not accurate at all. On the contrary the exact opposite is the case. The critical point to note is that "faith" in the biblical sense is equivalent to "belief", "trust" and "reliance"; and the process is based on reason and evidence.

In our society the word "faith" and "belief" is given a religious connotation, such that as soon as these words are used people automatically associate it with a mystical process, that it is somehow not based on anything substantial. This is just their assumption, what they have been taught or conditioned to think by the society.

Whereas the fact is that "faith", "belief", "trust" and "reliance" are grounded in solid reasons and evidence. For instance, when you trust or rely on something, say the chair that your are sitting on, you do not do it blindly. It is based on reasons. The fact that you trust your chair, is because you know that a chair with four legs or with otherwise appropriate support would not collapse when you sat on it. And you know this because of your past experience (eg. that you have sat on many chair before).

The point is that you do not belief or trust in something blind. The Bible never encourages people to take a "blind leap of faith". Indeed, this is one of the reason the Bible is here for. It is to provide and to inform people of the reasons and the evidence that substantial their belief or faith in God. The Bible is not dogmatic about the matter. It actively encourages people to think and to find out the Truth.

Another subtle point is that even science itself involves "faith". It has been noted in another part that the scientific methodology starts from a subjective premise. To put this in religious terms, the scientist believe that a particular avenue will yield a certain result and so acting on this faith they begin to investigate and collect data. How is this different to a Christian believing in God? Both involve believing in something. Both beliefs are based on something. In the former case, it could be based on observation, and in the latter it is based on the Bible. Is human observation superior to the Bible? A case can be made that the Bible is in fact superior in this regard in that it is supported by historical evidence that have stood the test of time, whereas the observation is just that.

A Word On Interpretation

A common ground of attack against Christianity is the assertion that the Bible cannot be literally true. For example how often have we heard that the Genesis account of creation is impossible. Two points should be about interpretation.

First, any piece of literature should be interpreted in accordance with its "genre". The Bible is a collection of 66 books each written in a different style and belong to a different "genre". A fundamental principle of interpretation and comprehension is to understand the nature of the particular "genre" and apply a reading and interpreting style that is appropriate to that genre. After all you do not read a poem the same way that you read the newspaper. Similarly, you should not read the Psalm, which is poetic in nature, the same way in read Exodus, which is a historical narrative.

The second point is to be mindful of interpreting the Bible through a worldview that is human-centric or through a worldview that is created by human. Here I am referring to ideology like naturalism, dualism, post-modernism, and other so called New Age notions, etc.

I am not advocating you to deny these ideologies, or alternative belief system, outright. I am pointing out the fact that these ideologies characterize the world in a particular way- they each have a particular worldview. And so does Christianity. If you try to interpret the Bible through lenses that are tainted by these other ideologies, the interpretation you get would be distorted. They will no longer be the Biblical viewpoint, rather these become your viewpoint or the viewpoint expounded by these other ideologies.

The consequence is that you will never be in a position to "objectively" evaluate the merits of these alternative belief systems. This is a very easy trap to fall into because most of the time we do not realise what our worldview is. Yet we all have one. The conflict between our worldview and the Biblical worldview can be a very strong block to believing God.

Take the Genesis account of creation for example. Most people would argue that it is impossible to create the world in 6 days. The basis of these arguments are the often cited Big Bang theory, the so called theory of evolution of Charles Darwin. These scientific explanations are automatically accepted by people as "true", not because these theories are intrinsically better that the alternative Biblical explanation of a creation by a supernatural being, but because they are consistent with our worldview of naturalism. People have already assumed that natural laws are supreme, that they can explain everything. It is thus not surprising that anything that is contrary to it is flatly rejected.

The ironic thing is that the Biblical account of creation is more believable than the scientific one if we consider the scientific evidence that is accumulating around the world. See "In Six days: why scientists choose to believe in creation", edited by John F Ashton (1999).

My suggestion is to be truly open-minded, and interpret the Bible in a way that it is meant to be interpreted.

The Christian Belief

Lots of books have been devoted to the subject of Christian belief. The intention here is not to provide a comprehensive account of what the Christian belief is about, rather the aim is to summarize the main ideas, particularly those aspect that relates to the apparent conflict between science and Christianity. Indeed, the ultimate authority and account of the Christian belief is to be found in the Bible, or more precisely, the Word of God.

The following is divided into two columns. The left hand side contains some of the ideas that we believe in; and, for those more interested, on the right hand side, a few relevant extract from the Bible (or reference thereto) are also provided.

About Creation
God created everything from nothing.	"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Genesis 1:1
God continues to sustain and uphold everything; ie. God is constantly supervising and controlling all that is happening in the world.	"he is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." Colossian 1:17
Bringing the above two points together: God is not a one-off creator; ie. He does not simply create and forget. Importantly, God continues to care for His creation, including us. This provides the ground for our reliance on Him	"The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word" Hebrew 1:3   See Matthew 6:25-34
The Sort of World Created By God
The world created by God is "good".	In Genesis 1, God repeated described His creation as "good" and "very good".
From this we can say that God created the world and the things in it to be rational and orderly. The world are regular and predictable. This can be contrasted to a world that is chaotic which clearly is not good. In more practical terms, God has created a place fit for habitation, and that it is a world that make sense because we can see that there is a definite structure to things.	See Genesis 2, where the world is full of harmony.
It is because of this orderly structure that we can study it and learn by observing how things operates in the world. In other words, it makes comprehension possible. And it is upon this orderly basis that study by science is made possible.
What is the Purpose?
We can see that the world is rational and orderly and so raise the question that it must be directed towards a purpose. What is this purpose? Whilst we do not know the purpose of God’s creation in all its detail, we, however, do know two very important points:
1. Immediately, a purpose is to create a habitable place- ie. one that is fit to live in	"…who fashioned and made the earth… did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited" Isaish 45:18
2. Ultimately, God has created a place for his Son, Jesus Christ.	"All thing have been created by him and for him." Colossian 1:16
About Human
Human is created in "God’s image" so that we can rule over the world on behalf of God. Ie. it can be seen that Human is given great authority and freedom- we are indeed very privileged.	"Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’" Genesis 1: 26
The Fall
The source of the problem is referred to as "the fall". We are given free will- the ability to choose. And we chose to rebel against, disobey and reject God- the so called "original sin". In so doing we have severed out relationship with God. Things go downhill from this point onward; ie. chaos or disorder set in. This is the source of sufferings and the ultimate reason that the world is not as "good" as it should have been.	See Genesis 3
Salvation
The Christian God is a just and fair god. The consequence is that our sin and our rebellion must be punished. The most serious punishment is the severance of our relationship with God. However, because God is also a loving god He provides a way out of this mess that we have created. The solution is elegant in its simplicity, and is also amazing in its means: God sent His only beloved Son, Jesus, to die as ransom for our sin! This solution has no parallel in any other religion on Earth. The heart of this solution is that a perfectly innocent and flawless man is sacrificed for our sin (not something he has done). It is through Jesus’ death that we are redeemed and our sin forgiven, and a way opened for us to re-establish our relationship with God. For those wondering, the death of Jesus is essential because as a just God our sin must be punished; God cannot simply forgive without giving the punishment for to do so would not be just.	"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!" Roman 5: 8-9
What do we do? How can we be saved?
There is nothing we need to do, nor is there anything we can do, except to have faith in God. See Faith and Rationality for an explanation of this thing called ‘faith’.	"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast." Ephesian 2: 8-9
What is the purpose of our lives?
As a Christian we are living our live for God. That is, instead of focusing on ourselves- self-centered- we give God our top priority. This priority should be reflected in our day-to-day action.	"And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again." 2 Corinthians 5:15
And that we are to work and prepare for the day of His return. Importantly we are to spread the word of God to those around us who has not heard of the good news.	This is referred to as "the Great Commission" See Matthew 28:16-20