Review of “Which god is GOD A Lawyer’s Look at God and Religion” by Adrian J. Adams, Esq.

Score: 93/100 (9.3 out of 10)

When it comes to Christian apologetics, it doesn’t get much better than this!

Which god is GOD?: A Lawyer’s Look at God and Religion by Adrian J. Adams, Esq. is a bold, intelligent, deeply organized, and highly persuasive defense of Christian faith. It is the kind of book that does not merely ask readers to believe. It asks them to examine, question, compare, weigh the evidence, and then decide what they are going to do with the verdict.

At its core, this book asks a question that is both ancient and urgently modern: if the world’s religions make conflicting claims about God, salvation, death, judgment, heaven, hell, reincarnation, morality, and the meaning of life, can they all be equally true?

Adams’s answer is no. And then, like a seasoned attorney, he starts building his case.

Imagine if the world’s religions were placed on the witness stand.

What if Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, New Age spirituality, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, atheism, and agnosticism were not simply treated as private beliefs, cultural traditions, or personal preferences, but as competing truth claims that had to answer questions under cross-examination?

The book begins with a simple but powerful premise: the world’s religions make conflicting claims, and conflicting claims cannot all be true in the same way at the same time. Some religions teach reincarnation. Others reject it. Some teach salvation through works, some through knowledge, some through devotion, some through submission, some through faith, and some deny a personal God altogether. Adams argues that if a religion claims to speak for God, then it should be able to identify the source of its spiritual knowledge and provide credible evidence for why that source should be trusted.

That courtroom framing is one of the book's strongest and most interesting features. Now, to be fair, this concept isn't entirely unique. We actually encountered it fairly recently via Trust on Trial by G.S. Gerry, in which Christian concepts and Earnest Trust—a living personification of Christian faith—are put on trial in a courtroom setting.

However, these are still two distinct books that essentially set out to accomplish the same thing(s). Adams's book is arguably more grounded and realistically, lacking the fictitious characters and hypothetical scenarios of Gerry's. At the same time, it's also less focused on being entertaining and more focused on truth-seeking and educating. This book is arguably even more didactic and heavy-handed than Gerry's, which can be a bit much for some, especially those who are secular, atheistic, agnostic, or from one of the many belief systems that aren't supported by the evidence and talking points the author presents.

The book is divided into three major parts: 1. Does God Exist?, 2. Different Destinations, and 3. The Son of God? There's a very deliberate progression from cosmology and design, to comparative religion, to Jesus, prophecy, miracles, crucifixion, resurrection, and Pascal-style faith/reason arguments.

In Part I, Adams argues that the universe itself points toward God. He discusses the beginning of the universe, entropy, fine-tuning, DNA, and design. His basic claim is that the universe is not random, eternal, or self-explaining. He argues that a created, ordered universe points more reasonably to a Creator than to chance. This section is written very confidently and sometimes aggressively, especially when discussing atheism.

Perhaps the strongest aspect of Part I is the argument that the universe seems more purposeful than random, as if by design rather than via chaos. The author makes the argument that the chances of all these random things happening to create human beings, the Earth, and put them in the Goldilocks zone are astronomically low, making an intelligent creator/designer much more likely in contrast.

One of the best quotes from this book is: "a house cannot build itself."

A lot of the arguments in Part I are similar to those made by Governor James Martin's Revelation Through Science, another outstanding Christian apologetics book.

In Part II, the book compares Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, New Age belief systems, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Adams focuses heavily on where each religion claims to get its spiritual knowledge, what each teaches about death/salvation, and whether its claims are historically or supernaturally authenticated. He concludes that Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, New Age, and Islamic writings do not offer the same level of verifiable historical evidence that he sees in Hebrew Scripture. He argues that the Bible’s historical detail and archaeological/historical support make it more credible as a source of spiritual truth. This is probably the section that's going to upset the most people, especially if Adams's arguments fail to support your religion or belief system, or if they come across as denigrating them.

Even as Christians reading this book, there are times when the tone in which certain religions are described seems dismissive. The narrative does sound like it has, well, a narrative—i.e. a point/conclusion to make. It is hard not to feel some type of bias against certain religions and toward/in favor of others. You could argue that it is just the evidence leading Adams to his conclusions, and in many sections, that argument is persuasive. However, there are also moments when the language feels less like neutral examination and more like a prosecutor dismantling witnesses he already does not trust.

This is especially noticeable in the sections on atheism, New Age spirituality, and some Eastern religions. Adams frequently presents atheistic explanations as evasions, impossibilities, or attempts to avoid God rather than as positions held by serious people who may have arrived there through sincere reasoning. Likewise, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Wicca, Aquarian spirituality, and Raelian beliefs are often examined through their weakest or strangest-sounding features, which can make those faith traditions seem easier to dismiss than deeply understand.

And, to be fair, a lot of strange things happen in the Bible and Torah too. There is a talking snake, a burning bush that speaks to Moses, plagues in Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, manna falling from heaven, Balaam’s donkey speaking, Jonah surviving inside a great fish, water turning into wine, etc.

Now, let's digress a bit. The author does eventually point to evidence like archaeology and things in the Bible that human beings at the time couldn't have known, like the structure of the ocean floor and the various health-related things.

The book’s entire concept is built around legal scrutiny. Adams is not trying to write a gentle interfaith survey. He is cross-examining truth claims. From that perspective, the sharpness makes sense. A courtroom is not designed to make every witness feel equally affirmed. It is designed to test credibility, expose contradictions, and arrive at a verdict. In that sense, the book’s intensity is part of its identity.

Still, this approach may be a strength for some readers and a barrier for others. Christian readers looking for a confident defense of the faith may find the tone refreshing, direct, and powerful. Readers from other religious backgrounds, or readers who are already skeptical of Christianity, may feel that the book is not always charitable enough toward the beliefs it critiques.

Yet even with that criticism, the book remains highly effective. Its bias, if we want to call it that, does not come from laziness or lack of structure. It comes from conviction. Adams believes the evidence points somewhere specific, and he follows that evidence all the way to the God of the Bible and the person of Jesus Christ. The result is a book that may not always feel neutral, but almost always feels purposeful.

In Part III, the book narrows sharply to Christianity. Adams argues that Jesus clearly claimed divine identity, that the Trinity is compatible with Jewish monotheism, that Jesus’ miracles validated his claims, that fulfilled prophecy points to him as the Messiah, and that the resurrection is the central evidence for Christianity. The sections on miracles and resurrection are among the most “lawyerly” parts of the book, because Adams discusses witnesses, hostile parties, cross-examination, statements against interest, and alternative explanations like theft of the body or hallucination.

In our opinion, Part III was probably the most thought-provoking and fascinating of the sections in this book. It actually had us on our heels and considering if this book would have a twist finding. Maybe it'd end up supporting Judaism more than Christianity after all. That thought crossed our minds several times when beginning this section.

Believe it or not, this book wasn't 100% clear that it was a Christian apologist book until about the middle of Part III when the evidence for Jesus seemed to be piling up. It actually read like it might be defending an Abrahamic/Judeo-Christian belief system in general. That might actually be part of the genius of this book. It at least provides the possibility—the plausible deniability—that the author isn't just trying to reach a forgone conclusion they already set their mind on (at the expense of all other alternate conclusions).

We made a list of certain things that we found especially interesting or thought-provoking in this book. For example, the author points out that it's strange how some cults and religions hinge on the belief that an alien created aliens who then created aliens who then created us (humans). He made the argument that it's strange having a god who lives within a universe (like in most polytheistic religions) because it makes the god subject to that universe.

Surprisingly, some of the best arguments the book makes are about the placebo effect.

Adams acknowledges a fair skeptical possibility: maybe some of Jesus’ healings could be explained by belief, suggestion, or psychosomatic relief. In other words, maybe people believed Jesus could heal them so strongly that they experienced real improvement. That is a reasonable challenge to raise, and we appreciated that Adams did not simply ignore it.

However, he then makes one of the book’s strongest points: the placebo effect cannot explain everything.

It cannot explain raising the dead. It cannot explain someone being healed remotely when they did not even know Jesus was performing a miracle. It cannot explain physical conditions like blindness from birth, leprosy, paralysis, a withered hand, a long-term hemorrhage, or a severed ear. It cannot explain Jesus calming a storm, walking on water, feeding thousands, or turning water into wine.

That section is really where Adams starts to cook.

The argument is not just, “Jesus performed miracles, therefore Christianity is true.” It is more specific than that. Adams argues that Jesus performed the kinds of miracles that would be difficult to dismiss as emotional, symbolic, exaggerated, or purely psychological. He also points out that Jesus’ miracles were not hidden in a cave somewhere, witnessed only by one person who then claimed private revelation. They were public. They drew crowds. They attracted enemies. They created investigations. They forced religious authorities to respond.

One of the most compelling examples involves the man born blind. Adams discusses how the man’s healing was not simply accepted without question. People questioned whether it was really him. His parents were questioned. Religious leaders investigated. The healed man himself was interrogated. That is exactly the kind of situation where the author’s legal framework works especially well. It feels less like vague religious inspiration and more like testimony being tested under pressure.

The same is true of the book’s discussion of Jesus’ enemies. Adams argues that the religious leaders had every motive to disprove Jesus’ miracles. If they could have shown that Jesus was a fraud, they would have done so. Instead, according to the biblical account, they attributed his works to darker powers or tried to eliminate him. In Adams’s courtroom logic, that matters. A hostile witness who cannot deny the evidence can sometimes become one of the strongest witnesses of all.

The resurrection section is also excellent. Adams deals with explanations like the wrong tomb, the stolen body, hallucination, and the idea that the disciples simply invented the story. Whether every reader accepts his answers or not, this is one of the most engaging parts of the book because it is exactly where the lawyerly approach feels most natural. He looks at motive. He looks at opportunity. He looks at witness behavior. He looks at whether people had anything to gain or lose by making the claims they made.

His argument about the disciples is particularly strong. Adams emphasizes that the disciples did not become rich, powerful, comfortable celebrities by preaching the resurrection. Quite the opposite. They faced social rejection, persecution, torture, and death. That does not automatically prove every claim they made was true, but it does make the “they knowingly made it all up” explanation much harder to accept.

That is one of the big reasons this book works so well. Adams understands that Christian apologetics is not usually about proving one isolated fact in a vacuum. It is about cumulative evidence. One piece of evidence may be debated. Another may be questioned. Another may have alternate explanations. But when you start stacking the beginning of the universe, design, prophecy, historical detail, the uniqueness of Jesus, public miracles, hostile witnesses, fulfilled foreshadowing, the empty tomb, and the transformation of the disciples, the case becomes much harder to casually brush aside.

Of course, not every argument lands with equal force. Some sections are stronger than others. Some of the science-related material will likely be challenged by secular readers. Some of the comparative religion material may feel oversimplified to people who belong to those traditions. Some readers may also question whether modern courtroom standards can be applied so smoothly to ancient religious writings, oral traditions, miracles, prophecy, and theology.

Check it out on Amazon!