The “Overwhelming Evidence” Routine: When Faith Cosplays as Science

Fundamentalist Christians Say the CraziestThings

INTRODUCTION

I’ve got a Christian fundamentalist friend who keeps repeating a line that sounds smart until you actually listen to it:

“The proof doesn’t exist… but the evidence is overwhelming.” Translation: “I don’t have what you asked for, but I’m going to act like I do anyway.” That’s not an argument. That’s a sales pitch. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of telling someone, “No, I can’t show you the receipt, but trust me—this purchase was totally real.”

And then comes the next move: the guilt-trippy spiritual flex. “I told you how you can discover undeniable proof, but you refuse.” That’s not proof either. That’s a rigged test. It’s the kind where belief counts as “success,” and skepticism counts as “you did it wrong.” If the method only works for people who already agree with the conclusion, it’s not an honest test—it’s confirmation bias with incense.



The best part (and by “best,” I mean most absurd) is when this routine tries to borrow credibility from science while rejecting what science actually is. “I watched real scientists all day… people with multiple PhDs… heads of departments…” Great. Now we’ve moved from “I have overwhelming evidence” to “I know a guy.” That’s not how truth works. That’s how fan clubs work.

Proof, evidence, and the bait-and-switch

Let’s clean up the vocabulary, because this is where the confusion becomes convenient.

Empirical proof is not “I feel strongly about it.” It’s not “a lot of people agree.” It’s not “a credentialed person said it on YouTube.” Empirical claims require empirical standards: testability, independent verification, and results that don’t depend on whether the audience already believes.

When someone says, “The proof doesn’t exist, but the evidence is overwhelming,” they’re trying to smuggle certainty into a category where certainty isn’t available. If you’re talking about a miracle—like a bodily resurrection—you’re not talking about a repeatable natural event. You’re talking about a one-time supernatural claim. That’s fine as a faith claim. But the moment you slap the words “undeniable proof” and “true science” on it, you’re pretending the claim belongs to a different rulebook.

A simple rule: if your claim can’t be tested in a way that could show it’s false, you don’t get to call it empirical proof. You can call it belief, testimony, tradition, revelation, personal experience—whatever you want. Just don’t call it science.

“Theory” isn’t an insult—it's a scientific achievement

Here’s where the most common amateur mistake shows up: “You keep coming up with theories, hypotheses, and conjectures.”

That sentence is meant to sound like an indictment. In reality, it’s a confession of scientific illiteracy.

In everyday conversation, “theory” can mean “hunch.” In science, a theory is a powerful, well-supported explanation that integrates lots of evidence and makes testable predictions. That’s why “it’s just a theory” is considered a cheap shot in science education—it’s a misuse of the word.

Also, theories do not “graduate” into laws. That’s another popular myth. Theories explain; laws describe patterns (often mathematically). They’re different tools, not different ranks.

So when my friend says “you only have theories,” he’s basically saying, “you only have the most successful explanatory frameworks in the history of human knowledge.” Not exactly the dunk he thinks it is.

Evolution and relativity: what “strong” actually looks like

Take evolution by natural selection—associated with Charles Darwin. It’s called a theory not because it’s flimsy, but because it explains a broad range of facts: genetics, fossil records, observed adaptation, comparative anatomy, biogeography, and more. That’s what makes it “theory” in the scientific sense: a comprehensive, evidence-backed explanation.

Now take relativity—associated with Albert Einstein. People love to call it a “law,” usually because they think “law” means “extra proven.” But relativity is a theory too—special and general—and it’s been confirmed by piles of experimental and observational tests. The reason it carries authority is not because Einstein was a genius (he was), but because reality keeps behaving the way the framework predicts.

Here’s the key distinction: scientific theories earn confidence by surviving testing and making predictions that can be checked. Faith claims do not operate that way. Faith claims ask you to trust, often in the absence of testable verification.

So when someone mocks evolution or relativity as “just theories,” they’re not exposing weakness. They’re exposing that they don’t know what the word means.

The religious category error: faith pretending to be empirical

Religious belief can be meaningful. It can shape a life. It can inspire sacrifice, charity, community, and purpose. None of that requires it to be empirically provable.

But a certain style of Christian apologetics tries to have it both ways:

“You can’t prove it.”

“But it’s undeniable proof.”

“Science backs it.”

“Also science is wrong unless it agrees with me.”

“You refuse the test.”

“And that refusal proves you’re the problem.”

That’s not reason. That’s a loop. It’s built to protect the conclusion, not discover the truth.

If your “proof” depends on you already accepting the Bible as the baseline authority, you’re not doing empirical reasoning—you’re doing circular reasoning: “This is true because the book says so, and the book is true because it says it’s true.”

And if your “method” for finding God has built-in excuses for failure (“God doesn’t answer to you,” “you want it your way”), then the method is unfalsifiable. It can’t fail. Which means it can’t prove anything.

“Real scientists with PhDs said so”: the authority card

Let’s talk about the “I watched science videos all day” argument.

Credentials matter in the right context. I’m not anti-expertise. If my car needs a transmission, I want a mechanic—not a poet. If I need brain surgery, I want a neurosurgeon—not a motivational speaker.

But name-dropping authorities is not evidence. It’s often an attempt to bypass evidence.

There’s a reason philosophy and logic call this out: appeal to authority becomes fallacious when the authority is irrelevant, misquoted, outside their field, or when the claim still requires evidence and you’re using credentials as a substitute.

And on the internet, the “authority” card gets abused constantly:

A scientist speaking outside their specialty.

A credentialed person selling a religious conclusion dressed up as “science.”

A cherry-picked clip that ignores the broader consensus.

A “Dr.” on a channel that survives on clicks, not peer review.

If your argument is basically “trust this guy,” then your argument is not “true science.” Science isn’t a personality cult. Science is a method.

The double standard: demanding proof from science, granting certainty to miracles

Here’s the most glaring inconsistency in this whole mindset:

Science is held to an impossible standard (“absolute proof, right now, with certainty”), while miracles are granted certainty with no comparable standard (“it’s undeniable because I say so”).

In science, we talk in terms of evidence, confidence, models, and prediction. We revise when new information arrives. That’s not weakness—that’s intellectual honesty.

But the apologetics routine I’m criticizing treats doubt as moral failure. It treats skepticism as pride. It treats “I don’t know” as rebellion. That’s not a search for truth. That’s social pressure disguised as spirituality.

And when my friend sneers that I’ve “put all my faith” in books “other than the Bible,” he’s unknowingly describing the difference between:

"trusting a process that is transparent, testable, and self-correcting, and trusting a claim because it’s sacred and protected from testing."

Those are not the same thing.

“You want it your way”: the personal attack masquerading as theology

Another classic move: “You refuse because you want it your way.”

That’s not an argument about evidence. That’s an attack on motive. It’s a convenient way to avoid dealing with the actual issue: the lack of empirical proof.

If I say, “Show me an independently verifiable, empirical demonstration of the supernatural,” and the response is “You’re proud,” that’s not a rebuttal. That’s an escape hatch.

It’s also an admission: “I can’t meet your standard, so I’m going to accuse you of bad character for having it.”

When politics gets bolted on: prophecy as emotional leverage

Then there’s the weird add-on: “If Republicans lose in Nov… you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Nothing screams “I’m confident in my evidence” like tossing in an election prophecy. This is emotional leverage, not reasoning—fear wrapped in political prediction, tacked onto a religious claim, delivered like a threat.

Even if someone’s political predictions turn out right, it doesn’t validate the supernatural claims. It validates their guess about politics. Different categories. Different standards. Different claims.

This constant merging of faith, science, and partisan politics is part of the insanity. It creates a worldview where everything becomes a sign, and every disagreement becomes moral failure.

The real issue: not Christianity, but a certain kind of Christian thinking

Let me be precise, because I’m not interested in cheap shots.

This isn’t “all Christians.” Plenty of Christians understand the difference between faith and empirical science. Plenty will say, plainly, “My belief isn’t empirically provable, and that’s why it’s called faith.” Fair enough.

What I’m calling out is a particular mindset that shows up often enough to be recognizable:

It wants the moral comfort of faith and the rhetorical authority of science.

It wants certainty without accountability.

It wants to win arguments without doing the work.

It treats “evidence” like a magic word.

It treats credentials like holy relics.

It treats disagreement as rebellion.

And then it has the nerve to call skepticism “ignorance,” while misusing basic scientific terms like theory and law.

A cleaner way to say it

If my friend wants to be intellectually honest, he could say this:

“I believe in the spiritual world and miracles because of faith, religious tradition, and personal conviction. I can share the reasons I find persuasive, but I can’t provide empirical proof in the scientific sense.”

That’s at least coherent. We can talk. We can disagree without pretending one side has “undeniable proof” when even he admits the proof doesn’t exist.

But the current approach—“no proof exists, but the proof is undeniable”—isn’t deep. It’s contradictory.

Why This Matters

This matters because the “faith cosplaying as science” routine doesn’t just confuse people—it poisons discourse.

When we redefine words like proof, theory, and evidence to mean “whatever helps my side,” we don’t get closer to truth. We just get louder.

It also matters because this style of thinking turns every conversation into a loyalty test: agree, or you’re proud; comply, or you “refuse”; convert, or you’re “choosing darkness.” That’s not friendship. That’s manipulation dressed up as concern.

And finally, it matters because misunderstanding science makes people easier to mislead—by politicians, influencers, grifters, and yes, religious personalities who market certainty. If you want to protect your mind (and your relationships), you’ve got to keep categories straight: science is a method for the natural world; faith is a commitment that goes beyond what can be empirically demonstrated.

When someone tries to blur that line, you’re watching persuasion—not truth-seeking.

References

National Center for Science Education. (2016). Definitions of fact, theory, and law in scientific work.

National Science Teaching Association. (n.d.). Science 101: How does a scientific theory become a scientific law?

University of California, Berkeley. (n.d.). Understanding Science 101: Science at multiple levels.

Hansen, H. (2015). Fallacies. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (n.d.). Fallacies.

Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this post are opinions of the author for educational and commentary purposes only. They are not statements of fact about any individual or organization, and should not be construed as legal, medical, or financial advice. References to public figures and institutions are based on publicly available sources cited in the article. Any resemblance beyond these references is coincidental.