Section 4 — What Both Have in Common — and Why It Matters

The Christian Statement

Despite their different positions, the agnostic and the atheist share three things the disciple should recognize and build on.

1. They both have a Moral Law

Every agnostic and every atheist has moral convictions they treat as genuinely binding — not just as personal preferences but as claims about how people ought to behave. They believe torturing children is genuinely wrong, not just culturally disapproved. They believe justice matters, not just that they prefer it. This Moral Law, which they carry and cannot explain within their own framework, is the single most powerful apologetic starting point available.

2. They both have the question of consciousness

Every agnostic and every atheist is a conscious being who finds their own consciousness puzzling if they think about it honestly. The hard problem of consciousness — why physical processes in the brain produce the subjective experience of being — has no satisfying materialist answer. The person asking these questions is using consciousness to doubt consciousness, which is a deeply interesting position to be in.

3. They both exist in a universe that requires explanation

The cosmological question — why is there something rather than nothing? — is not answered by science and is not answered by atheism. The universe began. Something caused it. That cause was either personal or impersonal, rational or irrational. The atheist and agnostic have to answer this question with whatever they have. Their answer is more interesting to examine than most of them have allowed themselves to discover.

★ Disciple Tip: These three points of common ground — the Moral Law, consciousness, and the cosmological question — are the three doors into the secular mind. They do not require the person to accept any religious premise. They only require following the questions their own framework generates. Start with one and follow it wherever it leads.