"You have to seek Jesus with your heart."
I hear a lot of variations on this argument from Christians and Muslims.
Apparently, the reason I do not accept their truth claims is not that their arguments are lacking in merit, it's because I am not "seeking Jesus with my heart" while examining their supporting evidence.
There are a lot of variations in the wording of this argument, but I think what I listed is the most common.
This is perhaps the most unintentionally telling argument Christians and Muslims make. Apparently, the reason I do not accept their conclusions is that I am not "seeking Jesus/god/whatever with my heart" while examining their supporting evidence for whether or not their conclusions are true. And right here, apologists are giving away one of the deepest flaws in their beliefs and their reasons for believing.
They are in effect demanding that I want the conclusion to be true before examining the supporting evidence for whether or not it is true. If I do not want the conclusion to be true, they recognize that I will not accept the conclusion.
Here's the thing: if your supporting evidence is good, it doesn't matter if the person examining the evidence wants the conclusion to be true or not. The evidence alone will compel them to believe.
Plate Tectonics and Continental Drift
About a century ago, German geophysicist Alfred Wegener noticed that certain continents fit together with the coastlines of distant continents like a puzzle. Furthermore, he noticed that certain bands of fossils lined up across said continents once you positioned them as their outlines suggest they should be.
He came up with what we now call Continental Drift, in which he posited that those continents moved and that they at one time were lined up exactly as their coastlines and fossil distributions suggest.
Geologists of the time soundly rejected his Continental Drift hypothesis because they did not want to accept that continents move.
Then, 50 years later, seafloor spreading was discovered. Now there was evidence that continents do in fact move. With the available evidence of the time, the Continental Drift hypothesis was refined into the Theory of Plate Tectonics.
And that is how it should be. When the evidence is sufficient, the evidence alone is enough to compel people to believe even if they don't want to believe. That's what it means to have the facts on your side. Geologists did not want to accept the idea that continents moved, but once they had evidence of continents moving, they had no choice but to accept that conclusion.
The Evidence Compels You!
If you tell me you doubt that electrons exist, then it doesn't matter to me if you want electrons to be real or not. I don't have to ask you to "seek electrons with your heart" before showing you the evidence for electrons. I can just show you the evidence for electrons (even recreate certain experiments if you're extra skeptical) and the evidence will compel you to believe as long as you are intellectually honest enough to accept that evidence.
If you tell me that you doubt the existence of elephants, I don't have to ask you to "seek elephants with your heart" before showing you the evidence for elephants, because the evidence alone will compel you to believe.
If you tell me that you doubt the existence of traffic laws, then I don't have to ask you to "seek traffic laws in your heart" before showing you the evidence for traffic laws. If you tell me that you doubt the existence of the Germ Theory of Disease, then I don't have to ask you to "seek the Germ Theory of Disease with your heart" before examining the evidence for the Germ Theory of Disease.
If you doubt the existence of the city of Toledo, I don't have to ask you to "seek Toledo with your heart" before showing you the evidence for Toledo.
If you doubt the existence of Alpha Centauri, I don't have to ask you to "seek Alpha Centauri with your heart" before showing you the evidence for Alpha Centauri.
If you doubt the existence of mailboxes, I don't have to ask you to "seek mailboxes with your heart" before showing you the evidence for mailboxes.
If you doubt the existence of gravity, I don't have to ask you to "seek gravity with your heart" before pushing you off the park bench.
But if I want to believe that the God of the Abrahamic religions is real, then I have to "seek God with my heart" before examining the evidence for whether or not God is real. I have to want the conclusion to be true before trying to figure out if the conclusion is true, or else I will not find the conclusion to be true.
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