Of course, I am convinced that Jesus is the Son of God. And, when I say "the Son of God", I mean the Son of God. He has no equals, no true siblings. No other person in the present or past can truly make the same claims to authority and identity. Simply putting that statement into print puts me at direct odds with most of the world's population. Amazingly enough, it even puts me across the fence from a large number of Christians.
I've covered why we should believe in God as opposed to not believing in God. And, I've touched on why I believe in the biblical God, as opposed to Allah, or Zeus, or Ganesh, or any other selection from the vast plethora of things that are worshiped in this world. There is simply no other document like the Bible, and there is simply no other religion with same level of evidentiary truth as Christianity. Many non-believers attempt to paint all theistic systems as having no better or worse foundations than any other, but this is clearly not so.
Others assert that this particular question is irrelevant. "All roads lead to God", they say, implying that anyone who is sincere in their beliefs will please God enough to be granted access to Paradise. It's a lovely thought, but there are major problems with this idea. First, there are certain absurdities to be dealt with. Can one seriously believe that the road of atheism leads to God? Or the road of Satanism? I think not.
Okay, so maybe it's just "Many roads lead to God". I'm afraid that there is very little evidence for that position. It would seem that there is no religious or philosophical system (including atheism and freethought) that allows for the notion that believing something that is not true can yield positive results. No purported revelation says that it only contains "mostly truth". Every religion (including Christianity) contains the principle that there is a "best" way to believe and practice, and many of those religions define penalties for not following that way. We often hear that Christianity is somehow alone in insisting on exclusivity, a monolith of intolerance, but a moment's thought and a quick perusal of international news show differently. There are more Christians around the world dying for their faith than any other group. There is anti-Christian violence in almost every area of the globe, on every continent except Antarctica.
But, still, I hear some of you thinking, couldn't it just be enough to "be good"? I know many Christians who believe that you can be good enough to please God. In fact, for a while, I was one of them. But, it comes down to this. If any other religion is true, at least to the extent that you can win your own way to Heaven without faith in Christ, then Christianity is totally false. If there is any other road to God, then there is absolutely no reason for Jesus to have lived, died, and lived again. The necessity of Jesus' sacrifice is the underpinning of the whole faith. If there are not terrible and eternal consequences to rejecting Jesus, then there's no real point to accepting Him. After all, it's not as if there aren't plenty of more palatable options. If any of those options are truly available to us, then why deal with any of the rules, rites, and responsibilities that Christianity lays down? If it was sufficient to be a "good" first-century Jew or a "good" first-century pagan of any stripe, it seems the Father dropped Jesus and the church into the mix for no good reason. In other words, if Jesus is not the Son of God, as he claimed to be, then he's not even a son of God.