Most people who live without God still lean on something to do God’s work. It explains the world, tells them what life is for, and sets the rules for how to talk about it. This study takes three of those substitutes one at a time and asks the same four things of each. What does it promise? What hidden premise does that promise depend on? Does the premise survive a fair test? And where does Jesus answer the same question more fully? The answer this guide works toward is modest and testable. These beliefs are usually absorbed rather than argued for, and when you state their premises out loud, each one strains to answer the very question it took over.
You can work through this alone in about an hour, or with a group across one or two meetings. The material comes from a Jude 3 Project podcast conversation in which Lisa Fields talks with Vince Vitale. A group leader should read the whole guide beforehand and decide which substitute deserves the most time with the people actually in the room.
The tool you will use on every substitute
Vitale starts from a principle worth taking seriously before you examine anyone else’s beliefs: “criticism without alternative is empty.” He adds, “Lots of times people wanna criticize one way of seeing the world, but not put anything else in its place.” That principle applies to this study too. Taking a belief apart is only half the work. The other half is saying what you would put in its place, and then submitting that to the same scrutiny.
Vitale names four questions that anyone has to answer “If you wanna live a coherent life”: where we came from, what life is for, how we should therefore live, and where we are headed. Every substitute below is an answer to at least one of them. Use this map for each:
- The promise: what the belief offers the person who holds it.
- The premise: the unstated claim that has to be true for the promise to hold.
- The test: a fair question or counterexample that checks the premise.
- The fuller answer: what Jesus and the biblical text offer on the same question.
Before you begin, write down one belief of your own that you rarely question. You will come back to it at the end.
First substitute: science will eventually explain everything
The promise. Certainty without faith. If science can account for everything, you never have to trust anything you cannot measure. Vitale describes the person he has in mind as someone who says, “I couldn’t be a Christian, because science is explaining everything, or ultimately will explain everything.”
The premise. Explaining how a thing works removes the need for anyone who made it. Vitale knows this premise from the inside. Before he became a Christian he was drawn to Jesus in the Gospels but could not take miracles seriously. He says no one had ever given him good arguments for that view. Instead, “there was just this assumption and culture that somehow because science was explaining more and more things, science in some way had disproved God.” His verdict: “It’s an unfounded rumor.”
The test. Notice that the premise does not follow logically. An engineer who explains how an engine runs has not shown that no one built the engine. Vitale presses further with three features of the universe. Scientists now hold that the universe had a beginning, and he argues that “if you don’t have God as your explanation for how things got started, it’s not clear what another good explanation would be.” The universe is also hospitable to life, which he says scientists describe as wildly improbable under pure chance. And it is regular enough to study. He asks, “if we just live in a world of randomness and chance, why should we expect that the universe would be regular in that way?” From this he draws his boldest line: “only God proves science.”
Be precise about what this shows. These are arguments to the best explanation, not proofs. A skeptic can fairly reply that a beginning does not tell you what kind of cause stands behind it, or that the odds are debated. Vitale’s claim is narrower and still significant: belief in God explains each feature well, and the alternative explanation is unclear. The scientism premise, by contrast, never had an argument behind it at all.
Then there is a second test, aimed at the word “everything.” Lisa Fields observes that claims used against faith are “sometimes just theories” still under investigation. Vitale asserts that “the vast majority of scientific theories that throughout history at one point were considered proven and considered the consensus, are now considered to be false.” That is his historical claim, and your group can weigh how strong it is. If it is even partly right, it creates a problem for anyone who makes science the final word on the meaning of life. A final word that keeps getting revised cannot bear that load. The same logic applies to Christians, which is Vitale’s actual point: “So we need to ground ourselves in something which is much more stable than science, which is the word of God.”
The fuller answer. Scripture opens with the claim that the universe was made: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Paul writes of Christ, “all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist” (Colossians 1:16-17). In KJV English, to consist here means to hold together. That speaks directly to the regularity scientists rely on. It does not settle how or when God created; Jude 3 Project holds firmly that God is Creator and leaves those mechanisms open. It does give science a reason to expect an orderly world, which scientism assumes but cannot explain.
Second substitute: no answer can be the right one
The promise. Peace and humility. If no view of the world is better than another, no one gets crushed by someone else’s certainty. Vitale sees two pressures behind this belief. First, “we have so many choices in front of us in terms of how we’re gonna see the world, it’s almost paralyzing.” Second, “to even suggest that you have a way of seeing the world, which might be the right way or might be better than other ways, is very often immediately branded as intolerant.”
He describes a whiteboard at a campus event in Chicago asking for the meaning of life, with options listed across the top. “My lasting image of that was of students confidently walking up to the board, grabbing the marker, looking at the options, and then really just standing there paralyzed,” he says. This is one observation from particular events, not a survey. It is useful because it shows what this substitute feels like in practice: a marker held in midair.
The premise. Holding a view as true is the same as being intolerant of people who disagree.
The test. Give this belief its strongest form first. People have been harmed by others who were sure they were right, and humility is a real virtue. But try this counterexample. Ask someone who holds this view whether it is wrong to treat a person as worthless because of their race. Almost no one will say that answer is merely one option among equals. The rule that no view is better turns out to be a view held as better. Tolerance also needs real disagreement to mean anything. You cannot tolerate a view you think is no different from your own. Vitale’s goal shows a different path. He wants people to “take a respectful look at the options and make an informed decision about what you want at the center of your life.” Respect and judgment are not enemies. A person can respect you while thinking you are mistaken.
The fuller answer. Jesus does not offer one more option for the whiteboard. He makes a claim about reality: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). Jude 3 Project affirms that claim as Jesus said it and holds it as an invitation, not a weapon. The substitute promised peace by refusing to answer. Jesus offers peace that comes with an answer, which is the only kind that can still hold when someone asks you what you actually believe.
Third substitute: life means whatever I make it
The promise. Freedom and a sense of worth. The options on Vitale’s whiteboard included passing on your genes, being successful, and making money. Each offers a purpose you can achieve and measure.
The premise. This takes a different form for each option. For genes, the premise is that what biology tends to do tells you what you ought to do. For success and money, it is that worth earned through achievement will last and will satisfy.
The test. Take the genetic answer first. Biology describes what happens. It cannot, by itself, tell you whether you should go along with it. A person who chooses not to have children has not failed at life’s meaning, and most people know that instinctively. That intuition is evidence the premise is wrong. Now take success. Ask the third and fourth of Vitale’s questions: how should I live, and where am I headed? Success can answer the first only by leaving out everyone who does not help you succeed. It cannot answer the fourth at all, since every achievement ends at death. Also ask what happens to a person’s worth when the success fails to arrive. A meaning that depends on results leaves the person exposed to circumstances they cannot control.
The fuller answer. Jesus asks the question this substitute avoids: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36). Notice the reasoning. He grants that the gain might be real. The issue is that the gain cannot purchase what matters most. The whiteboard also listed sacrificially loving others, and that is the one option a substitute cannot ground. Why should love that costs me something be better than success that benefits me? The Christian answer locates worth in being made and loved by God rather than in performance. That is why it can call people to self-giving love without making them earn their own value first.
The strongest objection: is Christianity just another substitute?
A careful skeptic will turn the tool around. If these beliefs were absorbed from culture, perhaps Christianity was too. That is a fair challenge, and for many people it is simply true of how they came to faith.
Vitale’s own story shows a different path. As a philosophy student he says, “I didn’t feel I could just park my brain at the door if this was a blind leap of faith.” He spent months asking hard questions in a community that took them seriously. When the conviction came, alone in his dorm room, his words were “oh man, this really happened.” Look at the logical shape of that sentence. It is a claim about a historical event, and Jude 3 Project teaches that Jesus rose bodily from the dead in space and time. A claim about an event can be investigated and could in principle be shown false. The substitutes above mostly cannot be tested that way, because they arrived as atmosphere rather than as claims. That does not prove Christianity. It does mean Christianity can face the same map you have used on everything else, and the honest response is to apply it.
Practice: map it, then ask what would change your mind
This exercise takes about twenty minutes. In a group, work in pairs and then compare.
- Return to the belief you wrote down at the start. Fill in the four parts of the map for it: promise, premise, test, fuller answer. If you cannot state the premise in one sentence, that is a finding in itself.
- Choose one of the three substitutes above that someone you know lives by. Write its premise in words that person would accept as fair. If they would object to your wording, rewrite it until they would not.
- For each belief, write one sentence beginning I would give this up if… Be specific. A belief for which you can name no possible counterevidence is held as atmosphere, not as a conclusion.
- Now do the same for your Christian faith. What evidence would genuinely trouble you? This is not an exercise in doubt. It shows whether your faith rests on reasons you could explain to someone else.
Leaders: keep step 4 voluntary to share aloud. Some people will find it unsettling, and that is fine. Let the group sit with the answers instead of rushing to resolve them.
Discussion questions
- Of the three substitutes, which one would you most likely hold without noticing? What is your evidence for that answer?
- Vitale argues that a beginning, a life-friendly universe and regularity are better explained by God. Which of the three seems strongest to you, and which seems weakest? Why?
- If most past scientific consensus was later revised, what follows for science, and what does not? Does this argument risk dismissing well-supported findings? How would you guard against that?
- Try to state the strongest version of the view that no answer can be the right one. What real concern sits behind it, and how could a Christian honor that concern without accepting the premise?
- Where in Mark 8:36 does Jesus agree with the person chasing success, and where does he part ways?
- Lisa Fields says, “Contending without being contentious is important.” Think of a time someone challenged your beliefs well. What did they do that made it possible to listen?
- Vitale says people often tell his team, “You took my questions seriously. You took me seriously.” Why would the way an argument is made count as evidence about the God being argued for?
A question to carry this week
Pick one conversation where a substitute is clearly at work. Do not try to win it. Ask the person which of the four questions their view answers best, and which it answers least well. Then listen. If they turn the question back on you, you now have a map for answering honestly, including the parts of your own faith you are still testing.