Is it true that we only believe in Christianity because we were raised in a Christian culture? This argument claims that if our religious beliefs are only relative to the arbitrary place in which we were born, then we can’t trust them to be true. However, this is a poor argument. To see why, we can ask this: Why limit this to just our religious beliefs? What about our political, moral, scientific, or philosophical beliefs? Are those simply fixed by where we were born? Should that cause us to discount them?

Ayn Rand was an influential thinker who lived during the 20th century, and many conservatives and libertarians have appreciated her ideas, particularly her championing of freedom of speech, capitalism, and individual rights. However, Ayn Rand was an outspoken atheist who did not like religion or Christianity. So how should we, as Christians, approach the ideas of Ayn Rand?

Have you ever seen claims like this floating around social media? “There have been thousands of religions, so how do you know yours is true?” “You don’t believe in thousands of gods; we just believe in one less.” Statements like this make faulty assumptions about how our religious beliefs work. Just because people have slightly different descriptions of the supreme being that doesn’t mean these ideas are all drastically different. In fact, they are mostly similar, and shows that the vast majority of people and cultures have concluded that there is, in fact, a supreme being – God.