Making the case for Christianity: simplest possible case or convergent net?

The story of one of Wikipedia’s founders becoming a Christian (https://larrysanger.org/2025/02/how-a-skeptical-philosopher-becomes-a-christian/ ) is fascinating and encouraging because someone has worked through the philosophical evidence, read the Bible and trusted Jesus for eternal life.

But he also highlights something interesting about arguments for God. In the stage before reading the Bible, he found the “proofs for God” which he taught as an academic philosopher individually uncompelling. What changed was when he considered them together, and the cumulative story they told.

I think the last decade or so has seen many Christian apologists trying to develop a simplest and strongest argument for God. The ideal here is the mathematical proof. The fewer the steps, the less likely you have an error in your proof. The best proofs need a small number of axioms, then one clear and simple line of logical steps to prove the conclusion. The fact that other more complex proofs exist is a distraction from the best simplest proof. I think there are similar ideas in law and marketing. In Christian apologetics, that might include making a minimal facts case for the resurrection, using only the most solidly attested historical facts about the empty tomb, etc, to show Jesus rose from the dead. The idea is to have one simple chain, with no cross links, and shorn of any weaknesses.

By contrast, an alternative view is that there are many strands of evidence, none of which are individually 100% conclusive, but which interlock in such a way as to make Christianity rational and the most compelling account of reality. Focusing on the strength of individual chains is good, but acting as if it all rests on one chain of reasoning being 100% conclusive is a mistake. Rather, in comparison to alternative accounts of reality, Christianity best coheres with the many strands of evidence. Creation ex nihilo, fine tuning, the moral argument, miracles, the resurrection, fulfilled prophecy, personal testimony and societal impact (as set out by historian Tom Holland) work together to make Christian faith warranted. What takes the weight of showing Christian faith is reasonable is not a single chain but a crosslinked mesh of different chains, none of which can bear the whole weight individually.

I’m not sure whether one approach is simply better than the other, or whether this is simply part of human variety. Perhaps some people (and subcultures) generally reason with single simple arguments, and other people (and subcultures) generally reason with a complex range of factors interlocking.