"I saw Christ, and God, and the Virgin Mary..."

One of the most interesting Catholic converts of the past decade (for more on his conversion, see here and here) responds to an atheist's arguments:

I am religious for the very simple reason that I saw Christ, and God, and the Virgin Mary, and they told me things that later turned out to be true, and cured me of physical ailment in a fashion that can only be described as miraculous, to the astonishment of the attending physicians. I also had the faith poured into my soul as wine into a dirty cup, and this only once I became aware that I had a soul. It is a primary awareness, like your awareness that you are alive and conscious. What would convince you that you are currently not conscious? If there is none, how can you say that you seek truth?

In other words, I am a Christian for the entirely empirical reasons. I believe because I have proof that is it unreasonable to doubt.

I believe for the very good reason that when I was an atheist and I said “I do not believe because I see no proof; show me the proof and I shall be believe” that (unlike some atheists) I was actually telling the truth.

I believe in Christ because I met Him...

In order for me to explain away all these miracles as coincidences, or these visitations as hallucinations, I would have to assume so many unsupported and ad hoc assumptions that I would have to depart from my philosophical honesty and integrity, and indulge in special pleading like you do, you who are a man who sticks to his conclusion no matter what the evidence suggests.

Further, once having become Christian, many things that were either unexplained, or inexplicable, or labored under very cynical and flimsy explanations, are coherent. My model of the universe is logical and coherent and has explanatory power; your “model” of the universe, if it can be called that, is an incoherent babble of disconnected assertions that explains little or nothing, not even the nature of cause and effect, nor the origin or purpose of natural law, nor the authority of morality, nor why and how you are awake and alive, or what you are nor where you are going, or whence the Big Bang arose.

We have written eyewitness accounts of the Resurrection, and  men willing to suffer torture and die rather than repudiate them. This is waht lawyers call indicia of reliability; and they fall under the hearsay exceptions of witness being unavailable, being supported by surrounding evidence, and being dying testaments. We have the miracles of Lourdes, investigated by the French government for hundreds of years, and doctors who will attests the cure have no medical explanation. We have the testament of astronomers who can prove that the universe is not infinitely old. We have the testament of your conscience, which, despite your protestations to the contrary, has some source of knowledge of the difference between good and evil, or else you would not speak in condemnatory tones against those you think do not seek truth. We have living eyewitnesses like me, who has seen the risen Christ and experience miracles not to be explained otherwise. We have hundreds, nay, thousands of years of such testimonies.

And we have the fact that the Christian religion is not a scientific theory.
You see, again and again you make what philosophers call a category error. What I have is a marriage to the Living God, a relationship, with all the complexities and moral obligations that relationships imply. It is as if I joined an army or fell in love, and you are asking who I can prove scientifically that I joined an army or that I am in love. We must separate the purely factual claims implied by that relationship from the other elements. Being in an army implies that you think the C.O. exists, which is a matter of fact, and that he has the authority to command you in battle, which is a matter of law. You cannot prove matters of law with a microscope...

But I will answer your question honestly: show me the bones of the Virgin Mary, I will become a Protestant tomorrow. Show me the bones of Christ, I will become a Jew. Show me that the cave of Machpelah is vacant of the bones of the Patriarchs, and I will become a Deist like Tom Paine. Show me the universe is eternally old, not created, not purposeful, and that human consciousness does not exist and that moral law does not bind men, and I will repudiate even Deism.

Well? Put up or shut up. Produce your proofs. Make your case. Bring out your exhibits. The jurors are waiting.

Perhaps it is difficult to produce your proofs on demand. Perhaps the witnesses are dead or far away. Perhaps the physical evidence is hard to acquire. In such cases as this, honest and adult and rational men understand that the conclusions of rational men can differ. When you hear two witnesses who contradict, it is a matter of judgment about whom to trust, or, to use the older and more precise word, a matter of faith, which witness in whom you have faith.

If your model of the universe is correct, I am an insane man who hallucinates, even thought there is no evidence of insanity or hallucination in any other aspect of my life or family history, and, unlike every other hallucination on record, it was one which sobered and improved my life rather than served as evidence of brain malfunction. In order to believe your model of the universe you must take ON FAITH this unsupported idea that I am a madman, even though there is something of a dearth of evidence. You have not looked at my medical record; you have not spoken to my parents; you don’t know me...