Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Lee Strobel concluded his book with a homily, and I would like to respond with one of my own. He endeavored to show the consequences of an acceptance of the Case for Christ as he has presented it, the ‘evidence’ that Jesus is the Son of God, atoning Savior through blood sacrifice on the cross, bestowing by his death the grace of God for forgiveness and eternal life. Mr. Strobel offered the personal example of his own transformed life, the inevitable companion piece to that other kind of transformation in the next world. There is no question that Christianity, like all religious belief, offers perceived benefits to its devotees. Otherwise, religion would have little appeal and would long since have died out. But like Mr. Strobel’s Case for Christ, those benefits are often based on a distortion or wishful misreading of the evidence. 
     And they come at a price.
     The believer is transformed because the faith on which those benefits depend turns the real, knowable world inside-out. It creates otherworld entities and dimensions of alleged reality which are unsupported by scientific and rational evidence. It draws the focus of attention and energy away from the present world of day-to-day existence where we lead our actual lives, to a dimension which may well be pure fantasy, and thus the real world gets neglected, disparaged, distorted; it becomes populated with concepts which can only be detrimental to humanity’s enlightenment. Belief in angels and devils and personal savior gods has never produced one iota of real human progress. Conviction of salvation comes attached to required doctrines of faith, and not all are going to adopt those doctrines; many will have other, rival faiths of their own. Such differences create divisions between people, families, societies, nations; they have formed a long line of unbelievers, heretics, infidels, those in league with evil forces, leading to inquisition, witch hunts, religious wars.
     Those required faith doctrines produce a heightened and unhealthy sense of sin, guilt and fear, and an alienation from our physical selves. They create places of dreadful punishment, whose resident demons spill over into the present world, threatening, torturing the mind, distorting reality. Those doctrines impede scientific advancement and a proper understanding of the world, how it formed, evolved, how it gave rise to ourselves; and we are deprived of the exhilaration at perceiving such an amazing history and development. They interfere with the ability to exercise our minds, our faculties for critical thinking, to hone our own innate wisdom in creating ethical systems to arrive at beneficial moral behavior. When ethical conduct is based on divine fiat in hallowed, petrified writings, when human wisdom and evolving conditions are prevented from exercising any role, morality’s rules become ossified, imposed, fearful of change, unable to accommodate progress.
     If commendable human behavior and the fulfillment of individual and collective potential is our ultimate goal, there are far more efficient ways of achieving such things than through a collective rush to irrational faith. If, on the other hand, the attainment of personal immortality, eternal life for each individual consciousness in some heavenly utopia, is the goal, then we may be grasping at the greatest unreality and irrationality of all. Nothing in the observable universe suggests that such a goal is possible, or written into the scheme of things, much less that it might be desirable from the larger point of view. What the observable universe does suggest is that human happiness and fulfillment may indeed be achievable, but only through understanding ourselves and the world we live in, accepting that we are all part of a naturalistic universe, and doing our best and wisest to operate in harmony with it. If, within that context, it may be possible to perceive something of larger significance, of greater identity for the individual, the route to discovering such a thing must lie in a fuller comprehension of our observable universe through reason and scientific investigation.
     The Case for Christ does not lead us in that direction. For this, and for the failings of the case itself, I ask the jury and the larger court of public judgment to set Mr. Lee Strobel’s own verdict aside, and bring us a step closer to entering upon an Age of Reason.

When I became convinced that the universe is natural—that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light, and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world—not even in infinite space.

I was free—free to think, to express my thoughts—free to live to my own ideal—free to use all my faculties, all my senses—free to spread imagination's wings—free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope—free to judge and determine for myself—free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the "inspired" books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past—free from popes and priests—free from all the "called" and "set apart"—free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies—free from the fear of eternal pain—free from the winged monsters of the night—free from devils, ghosts, and gods.

For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought—no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings—no chains for my limbs—no lashes for my back—no fires for my flesh—no master's frown or threat—no following another's steps—no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds.

And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain—for the freedom of labor and thought—to those who proudly mounted scaffold's stairs—to those whose flesh was scarred and torn—to those by fire consumed—to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still.