Does Christianity’s Uneven Geographical Distribution Prove It’s Not a Universal Truth?

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1. First, the reason your analogy about astronauts walking on the moon does not work is because no one is claiming that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being who wants you to believe this fact is out publishing books and inspiring prophets over the millennia in order to convince people of this fact.

   Apologists do this all the time: They take some mundane fact, and say that if it is believable, then all of Christianity's supernatural claims must be true. For example, because the Bible seems to exhibit knowledge of the time (people, places, ideas, etc.) in which it was approximately written, they proffer that, therefore, the Bible’s claims of a man sent by God, born of a virgin, who died for some days via crucifixion, then rose from the dead, must also be true. This makes no sense, and if you apply this thinking to other religions, then Christians would deny its power.

   So, in addition to there being a lack of a supernatural deity who is hell bent on getting people to believe this fact, the fact of men walking on the moon, while INCREDIBLE, is mundane compared to the claim of a man rising from the dead, and there being a tri-omni God when the world is full of so much evil, and that slavery, child rape, and genocide were once all okay, but now God has, I guess, changed his (and it's always a "his") mind. You don't realize all of the OTHER intellectual baggage that comes along with accepting your position because you have been raised to believe these things since you were a child.

   However, I have met someone who worked on the Lunar Landing Missions. I worked with a physicist who worked for NASA. I used to watch the rockets launch from Cape Canaveral all the time. I have seen footage that CANNOT be faked of astronauts in microgravity. I have seen videos of the lunar landing, exhibiting physics that could not be faked by the equipment of the day. I have seen interviews with dozens of astronauts. I have watched footage of dozens of rocket launches. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people who work in the space industry, right now. I have touched some of the rockets that have been launched into space. 12 people have walked on the moon, all of them were alive during my lifetime, and 4 of them are still alive, and whom I have seen videos of, both on the moon, and in person. Hundreds of people have been to space, most of them are still alive today. Also, I live right by US SPACECOM.

   Whereas, despite my determined searching as a youth, I have never met a God, let alone one that can somehow be omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, AND still allow for so much suffering in the world. Not only have I never met Jesus, he has been gone for nearly 100 generations, meaning no one alive today, ever met someone he knew Jesus. This also means, there are no pictures or videos of Jesus. The only way we know about Jesus is via a series of books that were based on oral traditions that had developed over the years immediately following Jesus' death (I will admit for the sake of argument that Jesus was a real man and he was crucified), and that were written down approximately 40 years after Jesus' death, for the earliest one (Mark) and then were copied and added to (Matthew, Luke, and John), and then other writings by a man who only met Jesus in a vision, AFTER Jesus' death. That is the extent to which we have evidence for Jesus. As for evidence of a tri-omni God, well… if you engage with this we can go into that.

   Finally, at the end (1:52), you say, that this question carries the assumption that "if something is true, it will be accepted by the majority of people." I think most people, regardless of spiritual background, would disagree with this, and it is understandable that you disagree with this premise. Luckily, no such premise is inherent in this argument, and this shows you have failed to understand this objection.

   Under Christianity, God is an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being who wants everyone to do as he asks, so they can spend all of the rest of their eternal lives blissfully in heaven in the presence of God. Somehow seen as a loving action, if people do not follow the Biblical God's orders, they will spend all of the rest of their eternal lives in excruciating torment in hell. Yet, the vast majority of people who have ever lived, were not, and judging by the trend of Christianity declining (while Islam is on the rise throughout the world and religious non-preference flourishes throughout the Western world), will not be Christians. So, basically, this omnipotent, omniscient being is unable to convince the humans HE MADE? And, the thing is, he is omniscient and omnipotent, not only does he know what it would take to convince us, he could do that thing that it takes.

   The core of this argument lies when you contrast the religious idea of a tri-omni God who intervenes in the world to bring about his will, with the naturalist idea of ideas arising and combining throughout time, and spreading geographically. Because, the question is this, why is it that if I am born in India, I will most likely be Hindu; if I am born in Thailand or Cambodia, I will most likely be Buddhist; if I am born in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc., I will be Muslim; if I am born in Brazil, DR Congo, Mexico, Philippines, Romania, Namibia, etc., I will be Christian; if I am born in Israel, I will probably be Jewish; and, if I am born in Sweden, I will most likely be irreligious.

   Under a naturalist view, this all makes perfect sense. Hinduism arose in India and is a non-proselytizing religion, so it makes sense it has largely stayed in its home country. Buddhism started off as Hinduism, but evolved into an entirely new set of beliefs that spread throughout central and southwest Asia, making its way into the royalty of Cambodia and Thailand, and because it is largely a non-proselytizing religion like Hinduism, it has largely stayed put.

   The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism) started in the Southern Levant in the late Bronze age. Because it began as a non-proselytizing religion at a time when long distance travel was largely impossible, it stayed small and largely confined to the area. The ideas of that religion (contained largely in the Hebrew Bible) reflect the ideas of a Bronze Age culture of that area. The ideas of animal sacrifice and henotheism (contrasting to monotheism in that they believed in other Gods, but worshiped theirs, Yahweh, above all the others) were similar to other religions of the time (those in Canaan and Babylonia).

   Then, around 30 AD, an apocalyptic Jewish preacher (one of many at the time) named Jesus began his ministry to repent before the coming apocalypse, developed a respectable following but, at some point, upset certain people in power who had him crucified. Then, upset over Jesus' death, one or two of Jesus' followers suffered grief hallucinations (https://psychcentral.com/health/grief-hallucinations-vision-loss), genuinely believing they had seen a risen Jesus. Because of their belief, they told the people what they believed about Jesus' word and that he had risen. These stories of Jesus spread, and the followers used these stories to recruit new members, embellishing the stories along the way.

   Then, some years later, a Pharisee named Saul was traveling around the region, persecuting Christians for what he believed to be heretical beliefs; however, at some point, Saul suffered a mental breakdown, possibly from the guilt of violently persecuting all these Christians "beyond measure" (Galatians 1:13 KJV), and he had a vision of the Jesus whose group he had been persecuting. After the vision, Saul changed his name to Paul, became an evangelist for the formerly hated sect, and started writing letters to various Christian churches already established in the area, outlining his theology (the Pauline letters, only 6 of which are authentic).

   Then, decades later, myriad Greek-speaking, Hellenistic Jews, who had never met Jesus , and maybe not even any of his disciples, started writing down the stories of Jesus in a fragmentary manner. Later, these fragments were combined into gospels. 4 of these gospels, along with several of Paul's letters, and some other books eventually became rather standard in Christianity. At some point, Christianity was briefly outlawed, but then became the official religion of Rome. From there, it took off in the Western world, but after Rome fell, Christendom languished, as Islam conquered the Arab world, all the way to North Africa, and the Iberian peninsula. Eventually, as the Western world became the dominant power (thanks to science, not religion) and became imperialistic, it was spread, almost always via force, to many other parts of the world.

   I could do Islam, but I'm bored. The point is that a naturalistic explanation fits PERFECTLY with the fact that geography is a good predictor of one's religion. However, under a tri-omni God who wants us to worship him, the geographical dispersion of religions provides an unsatisfying answer. Is it simply that Swedes, Thais and Cambodians are just naturally more resistant to belief in God, while the former has a natural resistance to religion altogether, and the latter two do not. Is it that Israelis, Saudis, Afghans, Pakistanis, etc., are all just naturally more resistant to the belief of Jesus' resurrection. This is the only position available to the Christian, and it appears ridiculous when you take into account the large populations of converts from these religions to Christianity. So, it would appear that proximity to the religion is what leads to conversion, not the ultimate truth of the Bible. And, again, given an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God, this is difficult, some would say impossible, to believe.

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