What is the strongest case for it — its best arguments and evidence?

A preserved book no one can imitate (Qur'an 2:23), prophecies that came true, a text consistent by its own test (Qur'an 4:82) — and a messenger whose life allows only one explanation: he told the truth.

Four arguments carry the case. The evidential problem of evil: the world contains vast suffering that appears to serve no purpose, which is expected if nature is blind but surprising if a good God governs (Rowe). Divine hiddenness: sincere seekers remain unconvinced, which a loving God would not permit (Schellenberg). Naturalism's parsimony and track record: natural explanations have replaced supernatural ones again and again, never the reverse, and they assume less (Mackie; Oppy).

Its best argument is the actual state of the evidence: the ablest minds of every century, working honestly, have not settled whether God exists — and Hume and Kant showed that the classical proofs and disproofs both fall short. Given that standoff, agnostics argue, suspension is not weakness but accuracy; the position asks nothing to be believed on trust, and its one demand — proportion belief to evidence — is the rule every court and laboratory already lives by.

The resurrection argument: most historians grant that Jesus was crucified, that his tomb was reported empty, and that his followers sincerely believed he appeared to them alive — a conviction preserved in a creed datable to within a few years of the events (1 Corinthians 15:3–8) — and that it turned frightened disciples into martyrs and launched the church. N.T. Wright and Gary Habermas argue the resurrection itself is the best explanation of those facts. Supporting lines: the moral argument that objective good and evil point to God (Lewis), Aquinas' arguments from the world's existence and order, and the faith's demonstrated power to remake lives.

Its chief argument is public revelation: the Torah claims God spoke to an entire nation at Sinai, and Judah Halevi's Kuzari argues that no people would accept such a story about its own ancestors had nothing happened — a claim of national memory, not private vision. Advocates add the argument from endurance: a small, stateless people preserving text, law, and identity through twenty-five centuries of dispersion, and a moral legacy — one God, the image of God, the Sabbath — that reshaped world civilization.

Its epistemology: the Kalama Sutta invites inquirers to test the teaching against their own experience rather than accept it on authority — a stance admired even by critics. Its psychology of craving and suffering strikes many as simply accurate, and its core practices show measurable effects: mindfulness programs built on Buddhist meditation are used clinically for stress, pain, and relapsing depression. And it asks for no belief in a creator, so its central claims can be tried before being trusted.

Its advocates point first to the Upanishads' analysis of consciousness — the claim that awareness itself, not matter, is fundamental — which they argue still stands where brain science remains silent. Second, an unmatched experiment: thousands of years of contemplatives across rival schools reporting convergent experience of a self beyond the ego. Third, the tradition's sheer capaciousness — it has held philosophy, devotion, and ritual together without a central enforcer, and outlasted every empire that ruled it.

A clean, demanding monotheism that tied devotion to social equality centuries early — the langar has seated all castes on one floor since the 1500s. Its scripture was compiled by the founders themselves, giving rare confidence about what they actually taught. And its fruits are visible: an ethic of honest work, service, and courage that even its neighbors acknowledge.

Its strongest case is historical: after centuries of religious war, European states that stopped enforcing belief achieved a durable religious peace, and since Locke the standing argument is that coerced faith is worthless anyway. Its second pillar is freedom — including for believers: religious minorities have generally been safer under neutral states than under someone else's confessional state. Advocates point to modern data on government restrictions of religion in support.

Its advocates point to three things: the moral record — abolition, women’s rights, religious tolerance, and humane law advancing wherever reason and rights spread; the practical record — science-based medicine, education, and rising welfare; and the fact that its language of universal human dignity became the world’s shared vocabulary in 1948. It asks belief in nothing that cannot be checked.

Its case is empirical. Liberal societies lead most measures of prosperity, health, science, and minority protection; Sen observed that no famine has occurred in a functioning democracy with a free press; and established liberal democracies have almost never gone to war with one another — the 'democratic peace,' among the most tested findings in political science. And where people can choose with their feet, migration runs overwhelmingly toward liberal societies, rarely away from them.

The demonstrable record: within living memory, women in most countries could not vote, own property in marriage, or enter universities and professions — exclusions defended by confident claims about women's nature. Mill's wager, that custom and not evidence held women down, has been repeatedly vindicated: where doors opened, women walked through them. Feminists argue this record is the strongest proof that the subordination was injustice, not nature.

Three arguments. Its emancipatory record: decolonization freed most of humanity under the banner of self-determination, now written into the UN Charter. Its democratic argument: self-rule and the welfare state seem to need bounded solidarity — people accept majority decisions and redistribution among those they count as 'us' (Tamir, Miller). And its human argument: belonging to a people meets a deep need that thinner identities have not replaced.