No Evidence?

From time to time, we get non-Christian posters who make comments like the following from rrlane in a recent thread:

Actually the big issue is that you're teaching kids something that there is no evidence for.

Often, the same people who make such comments rarely or never attempt to interact with our arguments for Christianity. We post on such issues frequently, and people like the non-Christians who have been posting here in recent threads don't participate in those discussions about evidence. That's their choice. But when they do decide to comment on evidential issues, like rrlane did above, shouldn't they attempt to interact with what we've already said about such things? Or if they aren't familiar with our material, why don't they familiarize themselves with some of it or at least interact with arguments they're familiar with from other sources?

Why is it that so many atheists and other critics of Christianity who have so little to say when we're posting about evidence for Christianity find so much more to say when a less substantive topic comes up? They see an opportunity to complain about how Steve Hays is responding to Ken Pulliam's death, so they post. They see an opportunity to issue some vague, common objections to Calvinism, so they post. But they're more silent in other contexts. Why is that? If these people are as concerned about evidence as they claim, then why does their behavior suggest otherwise?

Maybe some of these people are new to the blog. But I've noticed the pattern described above for a long time and with a lot of individuals. People who object to an alleged lack of evidence in one context are often silent in other contexts in which evidence is being discussed.

For those not familiar with our material on the evidence for Christianity, I'll point you to some representative examples. You can also search the site with our search engine above or with Google, for example, if you want to find something else. We've published some ebooks on evidential issues, such as here and here. You can find a topical index of Steve Hays' posts here. We've written many posts about evidence for the paranormal, the infancy narratives, and Jesus' resurrection, for example. We've addressed these kinds of issues many times and in a lot of depth.

As I noted in a recent series of posts (here, here, and here), Christianity has set itself within an evidential framework from the start. Evidential concepts like eyewitness testimony and fulfilled prophecy are prominent in both the Old and New Testaments. Churches like the ones in Smyrna and Rome were prominent in early Christianity largely for reasons related to historical evidence, particularly the churches' historical relationship with one or more of the apostles. Somebody like rrlane could interact with traditional Christian arguments or explain why he finds more recent efforts, like Richard Bauckham's Jesus And The Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006) or Michael Licona's The Resurrection Of Jesus (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2010), unconvincing. But just making vague references to "no evidence", as you avoid so many threads at the same blog in which evidence is discussed, is insufficient.