Does it match reality as we find it — in history, in science, and in everyday human experience?

Its descriptions of nature stand, its history checks out, and its account of the human condition — born believing, restless without God — matches what we see. The richest godless societies are not the happiest ones.

Its advocates answer yes and point to the record: for four centuries natural explanations have replaced supernatural ones — disease, weather, the diversity of life — and never once the reverse. Critics reply that the universe's origin, its ordered laws, and consciousness remain unexplained, and that everyday human experience of meaning and conscience fits theism better. Atheists respond that 'not yet explained' is not 'inexplicable,' and that retreating to the remaining gaps is how the argument for God has always shrunk.

Agnostics say it matches the one fact both rivals must explain away: persistent, intelligent, honest disagreement about God across millennia. Critics reply that everywhere else in life people act successfully on partial evidence, and that treating this one question as undecidable mistakes a hard question for an unanswerable one.

In history: Jesus' life and crucifixion are among the best-attested facts of antiquity — pagan and Jewish sources included — and the church's explosive rise is undisputed, while archaeologists debate some early Old Testament events such as the Exodus. In science: mainstream Christianity accepts cosmology and evolution as the account of how God creates, though literalist readings collide with both. In experience: Christians argue their diagnosis fits the human data — dignity and wickedness together; Chesterton called original sin the only part of Christian theology that can really be proved.

Mixed, and debated in the open: later biblical history is well corroborated — the Tel Dan stele names the 'House of David,' and the Babylonian exile and return are documented — while the exodus and conquest lack direct archaeological confirmation. On science, most movements read Genesis non-literally, so direct conflict is limited; on everyday experience, advocates point to the Bible's unvarnished realism about human moral failure as a mark of truthfulness.

In psychology, remarkably well: impermanence, the link between craving and distress, and the trainability of attention fit everyday experience and clinical research. In history, the broad account of its spread is well documented. The traditional cosmology — rebirth realms, world-cycles, karmic causation across lives — is not confirmed by science; traditionalists hold it literally, modernists read it symbolically or suspend judgment.

Its cyclic deep-time cosmology sits more easily with modern cosmology than young-earth readings elsewhere, and its meditative psychology has entered clinical practice. The load-bearing claims, though — karma and rebirth — resist checking: Ian Stevenson's collections of children's reported past-life memories intrigue some researchers and convince few, and mainstream science finds no mechanism. History likewise treats the epics as epic, not chronicle.

Its history holds up well — the ten Gurus are firmly documented figures, unusual among religious founders — and it makes no dated scientific claims to collide with. Its core metaphysics — rebirth, karma, the divine court — lies beyond historical or scientific testing and rests on the Gurus' testimony; its equality ethic matches broad moral experience, though caste's survival among Sikhs tests the practice.

Where applied, its core prediction has held: neutral states have generally delivered religious peace and freer minorities. What failed was the broader 'secularization thesis' that religion would fade with modernity — Berger, once its leading proponent, publicly reversed himself as religion revived worldwide. Secularists respond that the political principle never depended on religion's decline; it is a settlement for religious societies, not a prophecy of irreligious ones.

With science the fit is by design — humanism revises itself to match the evidence. History is the contested ground: critics say the twentieth century broke its optimism about human nature; humanists answer that the same century’s data include the rights revolutions and doubled lifespans, and that the manifestos themselves grew soberer after the wars. Everyday experience — love, conscience, the sense of dignity — is claimed as its home territory.

On institutions the fit is strong: the corruption of unchecked power and the gains from free inquiry and trade are among history's best-documented patterns. The strain is anthropological: humans may need belonging, roots, and shared meaning more than autonomy, as Tocqueville warned and modern data on declining community suggest. Liberals reply that the framework never claimed to be a full account of human life — only of legitimate power.

Its historical claim matches the record: women's legal subordination is documented fact, not interpretation. The live dispute concerns the present — how much of today's gaps in pay and leadership reflects discrimination versus differing choices and constraints. Economists such as Goldin trace much of the remaining pay gap to how work is structured around parenthood — a finding each side of the argument claims as its own.

Its political prediction has held remarkably: legitimacy worldwide now flows to states that claim to embody nations. Its picture of humanity as divided into ancient, natural nations is the disputed part: modernists showed many nations and their 'age-old' traditions to be recent constructions, while ethno-symbolists answer that they grow from real, older ethnic cores. Everyday experience — how readily people feel and die for nations — is evidence both sides claim.