Easter is approaching, but skeptic John Loftus doesn’t believe in the Resurrection of Jesus. What’s more, he thinks you’re delusional if you do. I happen to believe in the Resurrection, but I freely admit that I might be mistaken. I think Loftus is wrong, and his case against the Resurrection is statistically flawed; however, I don’t think he’s delusional. In today’s post, I’d like to summarize the key issues at stake here, before going on to explain why I think reasonable people might disagree on the weight of the evidence for the Resurrection.
The following quotes convey the tenor of Loftus’ views on the evidence for the Resurrection:
What we have at best are second-hand testimonies filtered through the gospel writers. With the possible exception of Paul who claimed to have experienced the resurrected Jesus in what is surely a visionary experience (so we read in Acts 26:19, cf. II Cor. 12:1-6; Rev. 1:10-3:21–although he didn’t actually see Jesus, Acts 9:4-8; 22:7-11; 26:13-14), everything we’re told comes from someone who was not an eyewitness. This is hearsay evidence, at best. [Here.]
The Jews of Jesus’ day believed in Yahweh and that he does miracles, and they knew their Old Testament prophecies, and yet the overwhelming numbers of them did not believe Jesus was raised from the dead by Yahweh. So Christianity didn’t take root in the Jewish homeland but had to reach out to the Greco-Roman world for converts. Why should we believe if they were there and didn’t? [Here.]
…[F]or [Christian apologist Mike] Licona to think he can defend the resurrection of Jesus historically is delusional on a grand scale.[Here.]
My natural explanation is that the early disciples were visionaries, that is, they believed God was speaking to them in dreams, trances, and thoughts that burst into their heads throughout the day. Having their hopes utterly dashed upon the crucifixion of Jesus they began having visions that Jesus arose from the dead. [Here.]
My natural explanation [additionally] requires … one liar for Jesus, and I think this liar is the author of Mark, the first gospel. He invented the empty tomb sequence. That’s it. [Here.]
Loftus is not a dogmatic skeptic; he allows that he can imagine evidence which would convince him that Christianity is true. However, it is his contention that the evidence of the New Testament falls far short of this standard. The problem, to put it briefly, is that evidence for the authenticity of a second-hand report of a miracle does not constitute evidence that the miraculous event described in the report actually occurred. This evidential gap is known as Lessing’s ugly broad ditch, after the 18th century German critic, Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781), who first pointed it out.
In this post, I will not be attempting to demonstrate that the Resurrection actually occurred. Rather, my aim will be to outline the process of reasoning whereby someone might conclude that it probably occurred, while acknowledging that he/she may be wrong. I’ll also endeavor to explain how another person, following the same procedure as the tentative believer, might arrive at a contrary conclusion, which would make it irrational for him/her to espouse a belief in the Resurrection.
The key facts required to establish the Resurrection
Before I begin, I’m going to make a short list of key facts, whose truth needs to be established by anyone mounting a serious case for the Resurrection.
Key facts:
1. The man known as Jesus Christ was a real person, who lived in 1st-century Palestine.
2. Jesus was crucified and died.
3. Jesus’ disciples collectively saw a non-ghostly apparition of Jesus, after his death.
N.B. By a “non-ghostly” apparition, I mean: a multi-sensory [i.e. visual, auditory and possibly tactile] apparition, which led the disciples to believe Jesus was alive again. I don’t mean that Jesus necessarily ate fish, or had a gaping hole in his side: many Biblical scholars now think that these details may have been added to the Gospels of Luke and John for polemical reasons. Are they right? I don’t know.
Readers will note that none of the key facts listed above makes any mention of the empty tomb. My reason for this omission is that St. Paul’s account in 1 Corinthians 15, which is the only eyewitness report, makes no explicit mention of Jesus’ empty tomb, although it seems to imply this fact when it says that Jesus was buried and raised. I won’t be relying on the Gospel accounts here, as they are probably not eyewitness accounts: most scholars date them to between 70 and 110 A.D. By the same token, I won’t be relying on the accounts of St. Paul’s encounter with Jesus in the Acts of the Apostles, which some scholars date as late as 110-140 A.D. St. Paul simply says of his experience: “last of all he appeared to me also.” That makes him an eyewitness.
It will be apparent to readers who are familiar with debates regarding the resurrection that my list of “key facts” is more modest than Dr. Willam Lane Craig’s list of minimal facts which he frequently invokes when he is debating the subject. Craig assumes that Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea, and that the following Sunday, his tomb was found empty by a group of women followers of Jesus. I make neither of these assumptions, although I happen to think he is right on both. For those who are inclined to doubt, Dr. Craig’s article, The Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus, is well worth reading.
Two types of skepticism
I propose to distinguish between two kinds of skepticism: Type A and Type B. Type A skepticism casts doubt on people’s claims to have had an extraordinary experience, while Type B skepticism questions whether a miraculous explanation of this extraordinary experience is the best one. In the case of the Resurrection, Type A skepticism seeks to undermine one or more of the key facts listed above, whereas Type B skepticism doesn’t question the key facts, but looks for a non-miraculous explanation of those key facts.
Carl Sagan’s maxim that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs” is often quoted when the subject of miracles comes up. But we must be careful not to confuse extraordinary claims with extraordinary experiences: the former relate to objectively real occurrences, while the latter relate to subjective experiences. There is nothing improbable about someone’s having an extraordinary experience. People have bizarre experiences quite often: most of us have had one, or know someone who has had one. However, extraordinary occurrences are by definition rare: their prior probability is very, very low.
The distinction I have made above is a vital one. The key facts listed above imply that Jesus’ disciples had an extraordinary experience, but as we’ve seen, there’s nothing improbable about that.
On the other hand, the prior probability of an actual extraordinary occurrence (such as the Resurrection) is extremely low. So even if we can show that Jesus’ disciples had an extraordinary experience which persuaded them that he had risen again, one still needs to show that the posterior probability of all proposed non-miraculous explanations of this experience is less than the posterior probability of a miracle, given this extraordinary experience, before one is permitted to conclude that the miraculous explanation is warranted. And even then, one is still not home free, because it makes no sense to posit a miracle unless one has independent grounds for believing that there is a God, or at the very least, that there is a small but significant likelihood that God exists.
To sum up, in order for belief in Jesus’ Resurrection to be reasonable, what one has to show is that:
(i) the total probability of the various Type A skeptical explanations listed below is less than 50%; and
(ii) given the key facts listed above, and given also that there is a reasonable likelihood that a supernatural Deity exists Who is at least able to resurrect a dead human being, if He chooses to do so, then the total [posterior] probability of the various Type B skeptical explanations listed below is far less than the posterior probability that Jesus was miraculously raised.
What’s wrong with Loftus’ argument, in a nutshell
Basically, there are two errors in John Loftus’ case against the Resurrection: first, he overlooks the fact that the probabilities of the various Type B skeptical explanations are posterior probabilities, rather than prior probabilities; and second, he thinks that because the prior probability of a resurrection is very small, any Type A skeptical explanation whose prior probability is greater than that of the Resurrection of Jesus is a more likely explanation of whatever took place. The following excerpt from a 2012 post by Loftus illustrates these errors (emphases mine – VJT):
In what follows I’ll offer a very brief natural explanation of the claim that Jesus resurrected. Compare it with the claim he physically arose from the dead. You cannot say my natural explanation lacks plausibility because I already admit that it does. As I said, incredible things happen all of the time. What you need to say is that my natural explanation is MORE implausible than the claim that Jesus physically arose from the dead, and you simply cannot do that.
As it happens, I’d estimate the probability of Loftus’ preferred explanation for the Resurrection of Jesus to be about 10%. That’s much higher than the prior probability that God would resurrect a man from the dead, even if you assume that there is a God. However, I also believe that there’s a 2/3 3/5 probability (roughly) that Jesus’ disciples had an experience of what they thought was the risen Jesus. If they had such an experience, and if there is a God Who is capable of raising the dead, then I think it’s easy to show that the posterior probability of the Resurrection, in the light of these facts, is very high.
Type A skeptical hypotheses regarding the Resurrection
The following is a fairly exhaustive list of skeptical hypotheses that might be forward, if one wishes to contest the “key facts” listed above.
1. Jesus didn’t exist: he was a fictional person.
2. Jesus existed, but he didn’t die on the cross: either (i) he fell into a swoon on the cross, or (ii) it was actually a look-alike who was crucified in his place.
3(a) The fraud hypothesis: Jesus’ disciples didn’t really see an apparition of Jesus; their story that they had seen him was a total lie. For thirty years, they got away with their lie and attracted quite a following, prior to their execution during the reign of the Emperor Nero. (James the Apostle died somewhat earlier, in 44 A.D.)
3(b) Jesus’ disciples saw what they thought was Jesus’ ghost, but much later on, Christians claimed that the disciples had actually seen (and touched) Jesus’ risen body – either (i) because of deliberate fraud on the part of some individual (possibly St. Mark, in John Loftus’ opinion) who first spread the story of an empty tomb, or (ii) because Jesus’ body had already been stolen by persons unknown, which led Christians to believe Jesus’ body had been raised, or (iii) because the body had disappeared as a result of some natural event (e.g. a local earthquake that swallowed it up), or (iv) because a later generation of Christians (living after the fall of Jerusalem) was no longer able to locate Jesus’ body (or his tomb), which led them to speculate that Jesus had in fact been resurrected from the dead.
3(c) Jesus’ disciples initially thought they had seen Jesus’ ghost, but shortly afterwards, they came to believe that what they had seen was a non-ghostly apparition of Jesus’ resurrected body – either (i) because of the unexpected discovery that Jesus’ tomb was empty or (ii) because of the mis-identification of Jesus’ tomb with another empty tomb nearby.
3(d) Jesus’ disciples experienced individual (rather than collective) non-ghostly apparitions of Jesus, on separate occasions, which convinced each of them that he had risen, and which made them willing to be martyred for their faith in that fact.
[UPDATE: New hypothesis added.]
3(e) Jesus’ disciples experienced a collective non-ghostly apparition of Jesus, which they all saw, but only one of the disciples (probably Peter) actually heard the voice of Jesus. It may have been because Peter was able to talk to Jesus that they were convinced that he was not a ghost; alternatively, it may have been because Jesus was not only visible and audible (to Peter) but also radiant in appearance that the apostles concluded he had risen from the dead.
Type B skeptical hypotheses
Supposing that one grants the key facts listed above, I can think of only two skeptical hypotheses by which one might seek to explain away the disciples’ non-ghostly post-mortem apparition of Jesus, without having recourse to a miracle. Either it was a purely subjective experience (i.e. a collective hallucination), or it was an illusion, created by mind control techniques.
4. Jesus’ disciples had an apparition of Jesus after his death which was so vivid that they came to believe that what they had seen was no ghost, but a resurrected human being. In reality, however, their experience was a collective hallucination, caused by either (i) the grief they were experiencing in the wake of Jesus’ death or (ii) Jesus hypnotizing them before he died and implanting the idea that he would rise on the third day.
5. Jesus’ disciples had a collective non-ghostly apparition of Jesus after his death, but in reality, either (i) aliens or (ii) supernatural beings (demons) were controlling their minds and making them see things that weren’t objectively real.
The Resurrection: Varieties of skepticism
Broadly speaking, there are resurrection-skeptics who believe in a God Who is capable of working miracles, and then there are resurrection-skeptics who have no particular religious beliefs.
Resurrection-skeptics who believe in a God Who can work miracles disagree with the claim that the total probability of the various Type A skeptical explanations listed above is less than 50%. For their part, Jews have traditionally favored explanation 3(a) [fraud], while Muslims favor explanation 2(ii) [a look-alike died in Jesus’ place]. Personally, I find the Muslim explanation wildly implausible: try as I might, I simply cannot imagine anyone volunteering to die in Jesus’ place, and managing to fool the Romans, the Jews, and (presumably) Jesus’ family and friends into believing that he was Jesus. The mind boggles. The fraud hypothesis was put forward by the Jews back in the first century. In the second century, St. Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho (c. 160 A.D.) records a Jewish skeptic asserting that Jesus’ disciples “stole him by night from the tomb, where he was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceive men by asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven” (chapter 108). I have to say that I regard this explanation as a much more sensible one. If I had nothing but the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection available to me, I might be persuaded by it, but for my part, I find it impossible to read the letters of St. Paul to the Corinthians without becoming convinced of their author’s obvious sincerity. The man wasn’t lying when he said that Jesus appeared to him.
Non-religious skeptics who deny the Resurrection fall into different categories: there are both Type A skeptics and Type B skeptics. Among the Type A skeptics, there are a few Jesus-mythers (G.A. Wells, Earl Doherty, Robert Price, Richard Carrier) favor hypothesis 1, while swoon-theorists such as Barbara Thiering and the authors of the best-seller, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, favor hypothesis 2(i). However, most skeptics tend to either favor the Type A hypothesis 3(b) [the disciples saw a ghostly apparition; later Christians made up the resurrection – this is Loftus’ proposal] or the Type B hypothesis 4 [Jesus’ disciples had a collective hallucination, which was so vivid that it caused them to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead]. Hypothesis 3(c) has few proponents, and I don’t know anyone who advocates hypotheses 3(d) or 5.
My personal evaluation of skeptical explanations for the Resurrection
Reasonable people may disagree in their estimates of the probabilities for the various skeptical hypotheses listed above. However, my own estimates of the probabilities of these hypotheses are as follows:
Type A skeptical hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1 – Jesus never existed. Probability: 1%.
Pro: There’s no contemporaneous pagan or Jewish attestation for the amazing miracles Jesus supposedly worked (healing the sick, raising the dead, feeding the 5,000), which is puzzling. Also, certain aspects of Jesus’ life (e.g. the virgin birth, dying & rising again) are said to have mythological parallels.
Con: No reputable New Testament historian doubts the existence of Jesus. Professor Graeme Clarke of the Australian National University has publicly declared: “Frankly, I know of no ancient historian or biblical historian who would have a twinge of doubt about the existence of a Jesus Christ – the documentary evidence is simply overwhelming.” Indeed, there is pretty good attestation for Jesus’ existence from Josephus (Antiquities, book XX) and Tacitus. Miracle-workers were a dime a dozen in the Roman Empire; one living in far-away Palestine wouldn’t have attracted any comment. The mythological parallels with Jesus’ life are grossly exaggerated. In any case, the question of whether Jesus existed and whether most of the stories about him are true are distinct questions. Perhaps there was a small kernel of truth behind the stories: Jesus healed some sick people.
Hypothesis 2 – Jesus didn’t actually die from crucifixion. Either (i) he fell into a swoon on the cross, or (ii) a look-alike was crucified in his place. Probability: 1%.
Pro: (i) Some individuals were known to survive as long as three days on the cross. Jesus’ death after just a few hours sounds suspicious. (ii) Some of Jesus’ disciples appear not to have recognized him, when they saw him after he was supposedly crucified.
Con: (i) Jesus was flogged, and pierced in the side, if we can believe St. John’s account. That would have hastened his death. But even if Jesus had survived crucifixion, he would have been severely weakened by the experience, and his subsequent apparition to his disciples would have alarmed rather than energized them. (ii) What sane person would volunteer to take Jesus’ place on the cross? Also, wouldn’t someone standing by the foot of the cross have noticed that it wasn’t Jesus hanging on the cross? Finally, the appearance of a risen Jesus who didn’t bear any of the marks of crucifixion would surely have made the disciples wonder if he really was the same person as the man who died on the cross.
Hypothesis 3(a) – fraud. Probability: 10%.
Pro: The perils of being a Christian apostle in the first century have been greatly exaggerated. The apostles Peter and Paul, and James brother of the Lord, lived for 30 years before being martyred, and even the apostle James lived for 11 years. During that time, the apostles would have been highly respected figures. Maybe they were motivated by a desire for fame and/or money. And maybe the apostles were killed for political rather than religious reasons, or for religious reasons that were not specifically related to their having seen the risen Jesus. We don’t know for sure that they were martyred for their belief in Jesus’ Resurrection.
Con: The fact remains that some apostles were put to death, and as far as we can tell it was for their testimony to the Resurrection. St. Clement of Rome, in his (first and only) Epistle to the Corinthians (Chapter 5), written c. 80–98, reminds his readers of Saints Peter and Paul’s martyrdom: “Through jealousy and envy the greatest and most just pillars of the Church were persecuted, and came even unto death. Let us place before our eyes the good Apostles. Peter, through unjust envy, endured not one or two but many labours, and at last, having delivered his testimony, departed unto the place of glory due to him. Through envy Paul, too, showed by example the prize that is given to patience: seven times was he cast into chains; he was banished; he was stoned; having become a herald, both in the East and in the West, he obtained the noble renown due to his faith; and having preached righteousness to the whole world, and having come to the extremity of the West, and having borne witness before rulers, he departed at length out of the world, and went to the holy place, having become the greatest example of patience.” Additionally, there is no doubting St. Paul’s obvious sincerity when he writes in 2 Corinthians 11:24-27:
Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked.
There is little doubt among scholars that Paul is the author of this letter.
Hypothesis 3(b) – the disciples saw what they thought was Jesus’ ghost. Probability: 10%.
Pro: St. Paul writes that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” and it seems that his own experience of Jesus was just a vision. He never claims to have touched Jesus.
Con: St. Paul speaks of Jesus as the first person to be raised from the dead: he is “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” If being raised simply means “being seen in a vision after one’s death,” this would make no sense. Post-mortem visions were common in the ancient world. Jesus wasn’t the first to be seen in this way. Nor would it account for St. Paul’s assertion that the resurrection of other human beings would not take place until the end of the world – “in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.” If a post-mortem appearance by a ghost counts as a resurrection, then many people are raised shortly after their death, and will not have to wait until the Last Day.
Hypothesis 3(c) – the discovery of the empty tomb tricked the disciples into thinking their visions of Jesus’ ghost were really visions of a resurrected Jesus. Probability: 10-15%.
Pro: It’s easy to imagine that people who’d had a post-mortem vision of Jesus might think it was something more than that, if they subsequently found his tomb empty. They might think he really had risen from the dead, after all.
Con: Despite its ingenuity, this hypothesis is at odds with all of the accounts of the Resurrection. In the Gospel narratives, the discovery of the empty tomb occurs before the appearances of Jesus, while in St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, there’s no explicit mention of the tomb being found empty, and no suggestion that its discovery led to a belief in the Resurrection.
Hypothesis 3(d) – the disciples saw the risen Jesus individually, but never collectively. Probability: 3%.
Pro: It’s easy to imagine that over the course of time, the apostles’ individual post-mortem apparitions of Jesus were conflated into one big apparition, especially when many of them were being martyred for their faith in the Resurrection.
Con: The hypothesis assumes that the apostles (including St. Paul) were passionately sincere about their belief that Jesus had appeared to each of them, but that during their lifetimes, they did nothing to stop a lie being propagated: that they had seen him together. St. Paul himself propagates this statement in 1 Corinthians 15 when he says that Jesus appeared “to the Twelve”: are we to presume he was lying?
[UPDATE]
Hypothesis 3(e) – the disciples saw the risen Jesus collectively, but only Peter [and maybe James] were able to talk to Jesus and hear him speak. That may have been what convinced the others that Jesus was not a ghost; alternatively, it may have been because Jesus looked radiant. Probability: 10%.
Pro: There have been apparitions in which all of the seers experienced a vision, but only one seer was able to talk to the person seen – e.g. Fatima, where only Lucia was able to talk to Our Lady. (Jacinta heard her, while Francisco saw her but did not hear her, and did not see her lips move.) The hypothesis would also explain the pre-eminence of Peter [and James] in the early Church, since those who could actually hear the risen Jesus’ message would have been accorded special status.
Con: Seeing and hearing alone would not make a vision non-ghostly. Think of the Biblical story of Saul and the witch of Endor. The ghostly apparition frightened the witch, and even though Saul was able to communicate with the spirit of Samuel, that did not stop him from thinking it was a ghost. Appearing radiant doesn’t seem to have been enough either; in the Biblical story of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17, Mark 9) it is interesting to note that even though Moses and Elijah were visible, radiant and heard conversing with Jesus, the apostles did not conclude that Moses and Elijah were risen from the dead. On the contrary, the early Christians expressly affirmed that Jesus was the first individual to have risen from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:20). [Please note that it does not matter for our purposes if the Transfiguration actually occurred; what matters is what the episode shows about Jewish belief in the resurrection in the 1st century A.D. Evidently, being radiant, visible and audible did not equate to being resurrected.] Finally, it is worth pointing out that St. Paul also claimed to have spoken to the risen Jesus – see Galatians 1:12, 2:2.
Total probability of Type A skeptical hypotheses: 35-40%. 45-50%.
Type B skeptical hypotheses:
Let me begin by saying that if one has prior reasons for believing that the existence of God is astronomically unlikely, then the evidence for the Resurrection won’t be powerful enough to overcome that degree of skepticism. (John Loftus is one such skeptic.) If, on the other hand, one believes that the existence of God is likely (as I do), or even rather unlikely but not astronomically unlikely (let’s say that there’s a one-in-a-million chance that God exists), then the arguments below will possess some evidential force. I have explained elsewhere why I believe that scientific knowledge presupposes the existence of God, so I won’t say anything more about the subject here. I would also like to commend, in passing, Professor Paul Herrick’s 2009 essay, Job Opening: Creator of the Universe—A Reply to Keith Parsons.
Hypothesis 4 – collective hallucination. Posterior Probability: Astronomically low (less than 10^-33).
Pro: Collective visions have been known to occur in which the seers claim to have seen and heard much the same thing (e.g. the Catholic visions at Fatima and Medjugorje). And if we look at the history of Mormonism, we find that three witnesses testified that they had seen an angel hand Joseph Smith some golden plates.
Con: There has been no authenticated psychological study of a collective vision where the seers all saw and heard pretty much the same thing. It stands to reason that after having had the experience of seeing Jesus alive again after his death, the apostles would have cross-checked their reports, to see if they were in agreement about what they saw, before accepting the veracity of such an extraordinary miracle as a resurrection from the dead. If we very generously calculate the odds of one of Jesus’ apostles having a non-ghostly apparition of Jesus on some occasion as 10^-3, the odds of all eleven of them (Judas was dead) seeing and hearing substantially the same thing at the same time are: (10^-3)^11, or 10^-33. [See here for a more detailed explanation by Drs. Tim and Lydia McGrew.] And for a longer message delivered by the risen Jesus, (10^-3)^11 would be far too generous.
Re Catholic visions: it turns out that the Medjugorje seers didn’t all hear the same thing: they got different messages. Additionally, there is good reason to suppose that they were lying, on at least some occasions (see also here). The Fatima seers, on the other hand, were undoubtedly sincere, but only two of them heard Our Lady and saw her lips move; the other visionary, Francisco, didn’t hear her and didn’t see her lips move. Of the two seers who heard Our Lady, Jacinta never spoke to her and was never directly addressed by Our Lady; only Lucia spoke to Our Lady. The parallel with the Resurrection is therefore a poor one. [See also my post, Fatima: miracle, meteorological effect, UFO, optical illusion or mass hallucination?]
Re Mormon visions: each of the three witnesses who saw the angel hand Smith the golden plates had experienced visions on previous occasions. Also, the angel who handed Smith the plates did not speak, whereas Jesus’ disciples spoke with him on multiple occasions. Not a very good parallel.
Hypothesis 5 – alien or demonic mind control. Posterior Probability: Far less likely than the Resurrection.
Pro: An advanced race of aliens could easily trick us into believing in a resurrection-style miracle, if they wanted to. And if demons are real, then they could, too.
Con: The key word here is “if.” While this hypothesis is possible, we have absolutely no reason to believe that aliens or demons would bother to trick people in this way. The straightforward interpretation of the events – namely, that they actually happened – is far more likely.
That leaves us with the hypothesis of a miracle.
Resurrection hypothesis – Jesus was miraculously raised from the dead. Posterior Probability: Well in excess of 10^-11. Arguably close to 1.
Rationale: The number of human individuals who have ever lived is around 10^11, and well over 90% of these have lived during the past 2,000 years. Given the existence of a supernatural Creator Who can raise the dead, then in the absence of any other information, the prior probability of any individual being raised from the dead is 1 in 10^11, by Laplace’s Sunrise argument. Given the evidence listed in the key facts above (a death, and a post-mortem apparition with many witnesses substantially agreeing about what they saw and heard), the posterior probability of a resurrection is much higher. But even if it were only 10^-11, that’s still much higher than 10^-33, as in hypothesis 4.
Conclusion
Since my estimate of the total probability of the various Type A skeptical explanations is less than 50%, and since the posterior probability of the Resurrection is much greater than that of the various Type B explanations, belief in the Resurrection is rational, from my perspective.
Based on the evidence, I estimate that there’s about a 60-65% 55-60% chance that Jesus rose from the dead. That means I accept that there’s a 35-40% 45-50% chance that my Christian faith is wrong.
However, I can understand why someone might rate the probabilities of hypotheses 3(a), 3(b) and 3(c) at 20% each, instead of 10%. For such a person, belief in the Resurrection would be irrational, since the total probability of the Type A skeptical hypotheses would exceed 50%.
Summing up: a strong case can be made for the reality of Jesus’ Resurrection. However, a responsible historian would not be justified in asserting that Jesus’ Resurrection is historically certain. As we’ve seen, such a conclusion depends, at the very least, on the claim that there is a significant likelihood that there exists a supernatural Being Who is capable of working miracles, which is something the historian cannot prove. In addition, estimates of the probabilities of rival hypotheses will vary from person to person, and there seems to be no way of deciding whose estimate is the most rational one.
What do readers think? How would you estimate the likelihood of the Resurrection?
Recommended Reading
“Did Jesus Rise From The Dead?” Online debate: Jonathan McLatchie (a Christian apologist) vs Michael Alter (a Jewish writer who is currently studying the Torah with Orthodox Jews, as well as with non-Orthodox Jews). Originally aired on the show, Unbelievable, hosted by Justin Brierley, on March 26th 2016.
The Resurrection: A Critical Inquiry by Michael Alter. Xlibris, 2015. Meticulously researched, by all accounts. (I haven’t read it yet.) Probably the best skeptical book on the Resurrection available.
The Resurrection of Jesus by Dr. William Lane Craig.
The Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus by Dr. William Lane Craig.
The Argument from Miracles: A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth by Drs. Tim and Lydia McGrew.
The odds form of Bayes’s Theorem [Updated] by Dr. Lydia McGrew. Extra Thoughts, January 6, 2011.
My Rebuttal to the McGrews – Rewritten by Jeffrey Amos Heavener. May 13, 2011.
Alternate Critical Theories to the Resurrection by Dr. John Weldon. The John Ankerberg Show, 2004.
Origen, Contra Celsum, Book II. Chapters 57-70 provide an excellent historical summary of pagan arguments against the Resurrection of Jesus in the late second century, and Origen’s rebuttal of those arguments in the mid-third century.
Good and bad skepticism: Carl Sagan on extraordinary claims by Vincent Torley. Uncommon Descent post, March 15, 2015.
Cavin and Colombetti, miracle-debunkers, or: Can a Transcendent Designer manipulate the cosmos? by Vincent Torley. Uncommon Descent post, December 1, 2013.
Hyper-skepticism and “My way or the highway”: Feser’s extraordinary post by Vincent Torley. Uncommon Descent post, July 29, 2014.
Is the Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Better Than Mohammed’s Miracles? by John Loftus. Debunking Christianity, March 6, 2012.
Oprah Winfrey’s Half-Sister and The Odds of The Resurrection of Jesus by John Loftus. Debunking Christianity, January 21, 2012.
A New Explanation of the Resurrection of Jesus: The Result of Mourning by Gerd Lüdemann, Emeritus Professor of the History and Literature of Early Christianity, Georg-August-University of Göttingen. April 2012.
Michael Licona’s Book is Delusional on a Grand Scale by John Loftus. Debunking Christianity, July 22, 2011.
Dr. John Dickson To Me: “You are the ‘Donald Trump’ of pop-atheism” by John Loftus. Debunking Christianity, April 2, 2017.
You already made clear that you were not reasoning. I am equally justified to put you on ignore. To repeat, you said, “What is missing from Churchland’s account is a serious account of how one can get from merely Gibsonian creatures — creatures that are pretty good at navigating their affordances by way of mostly accurate, generally reliable maps or models of those affordances — to genuinely Brandomian creatures — creatures that are pretty good at playing the game of giving and asking for reasons and able to revise their beliefs in light of what is most likely true.”
Churchland is not giving an account how truth matters for us, so he is not taking Plantinga’s argument (or truth – take your pick) seriously in the first place. Plantinga has all the right to put Churchland on ignore.
ETA: You probably took the accusation of scientism as an insult. Unfortunately it’s an apt description of your beliefs.
Namely, you said this too, “But just because he’s missing it, it doesn’t follow that one isn’t available to naturalism.” If one were available, you would be able to present it. Enthusiasm like “soon-soon we will have it, just a matter of connecting some dots” is straightforward scientism.
FMM,
It seems the more you actually know about reality the less likely you are to attribute things to a deity. Funny that. And also funny how abandoning our natural hardwired inferences has allowed us to live in a world of technology, rather then simply praying for computers to appear.
What is it an unsupported belief in then? If it’s not absence it has to be positive for something – what?
I wonder if Plantinga bothered applying the same bayesian analysis to the question of how likely it would be to hold true beliefs given theism, christianity etc…
dazz,
He has. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief.
I see you still haven’t learned to follow a link. LOL
Keep working at it. And get back to me
peace
do you have a link or mind summarizing it please?
Not saying that’s what he did, but positing an omnipotent being would trivially solve any problem, truth, OOL, etc… but that’s a bug, not a feature
Why do you equate academic advancement with knowledge? I would say my grandmother knew more about the local environment than any biology professor even though she never got past the eighth grade
It seems to me that the more time you spend in a classroom rather than actually experiencing nature the less likely you are to see purpose in it.
That is to be expected, our hardwired faculties don’t work in the absence of stimuli.
peace
It’s a book. Links to it and responses to it come up by googling. I have not read it, so I cannot summarize it. I myself prefer the theory of morality as per natural law philosophy, where truth is one of the moral values.
But Plantinga’s book should be interesting to KN, because it revolves around Kant.
For starters it’s the position that your natural common sense inferences are not only mistaken but with out warrant and should be ignored . As such it needs to be defended.
If I believed that the outside did not exist I would not act as if you had the burden of proof to demonstrate to my satisfaction that I was mistaken.
No, it would be up to me to demonstrate that the universal hardwired common sense impression was mistaken.
The same goes if you what to argue against the hardwired commonsense belief in theism.
peace
Erik,
OK, but you said “Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief”
It’s not the same thing to say that *if* christianity is true, then the likelihood of X,Y,Z is very high as opposed to saying that christianity is true
In fact, unless I’m missing something, the bayesian analysis requires assigning a probability to christianity first. So the bayesian analysis itself would be totally irrelevant to the question of whether christianity , or naturalism are true
dazz,
Without having read the book, we don’t know exactly how he proceeds. AFAIK, he considers Christian/theistic belief “properly basic”. I’m sure this conclusion involved some analysis and was not simply blurted out.
Of course, I would expect tons of question begging there.
My point is that we probably don’t need to read the book to know that Plantinga did NOT warrant Christian Belief based on Bayesian analysis as you said
I agree, there is quite a jump from “humans naturally see intent and meaning behind events” to “that intent and meaning naturally implies a divine being”. The former does not automatically lead to the latter.
I disagree. For something to have a “purpose” means that some sort of agent “intends” something with it.
The problem is the jump from “an intender/purposer” to “the intending agent is a divine being”. There are many kinds of “intending” agents. Cats, mice, dogs, cows, humans and so on. Assuming intent on little to no information can be rewarding, both in terms of not taking unnecessary risks and thereby avoiding predators that intend to eat you, or finding prey species that intend to drink from a local water source (or whatever).
I’m totally with you in saying it is completely unwarranted to say human beings are hardwired for theism.
Right, all true. And that might be what FMM means when he says it, that was just not how I initially understood his words.
Didn’t say that. That’s just the operation of your confusion again.
You don’t seem to understand that the contradictory of
S believes that P.
is not
S believes that not-P.
It’s interesting how a small, simple confusion can lead one so far astray. You’ve got four or five going on at all times.
FMM,
Does the sun orbit the earth or does the earth orbit the sun? How do you know?
I found this review http://homepages.wmich.edu/~mcgrew/plantinga.pdf
It says,
So, yes, you need to read the book to know better.
FMM,
Women who are old and ugly and who have cats are witches and deserve to be burnt alive.
‘Default’ and ‘commonsense’ is not the same thing.
The default view is not the common sense view. The ‘default’ is sort of analogous to a factory setting. Like whether your smartphone comes with the battery already inserted. When it comes to human beings and their assumptions about unknown events in the world, the “default” view, is a sort of automatic tendency to err on the side of intent being behind events around us. That rustling sound from the bushes is probably wolves, or a foreign tribe of humans, or a large stag intending to defend it’s territory. This “instinct” is seen all over the animal kingdom. A sudden loud noice is universally assumed to be dangeous and probably a large attacking predator and it’s after YOU in particular. Birds will instantly take flight without even having any awareness of what caused the sound, your cat will bolt away at what appears the speed of light and so on.
But that isn’t at all a “common sense” view. I very much doubt that you can even apply common sense to the underlying “state” of the world and events that unfold in it. That sort of thing simply isn’t amenable to intuition, we have to use reason, logic and science to get at that. And all of that is very hard work and often counterintuitive.
He assigns that probability based on separate arguments to then use it in the bayesian analysis. The results of his bayesian analysis depend on those probabilities and the arguments from which they are derived. Do you agree the heavy lifting is not in the bayesian analysis itself?
True,but that does not mean they cannot be contradictory.
I agree but if both descriptions include the same detail, number of women, and they differ ,they contradict each other. Now one might argue that the point of the story is not the number of women but the Resurrection.
Do you and your friends claim your reminiscences are the word of God?
If you were talking to a group of friends about the trip you all took to a restaurant yesterday and one insisted that a person who was not there was in fact there, you’d wonder if they’d had a breakdown overnight. You’d not think “well, descriptions of the same event can differ without being contradictory”.
FMM,
I said the more you know about the world, not the more degrees you have.
How much money do I have in my pocket right now?
And what is the purpose of nature? Name a thing, and describe it’s purpose.
For bonus points, what is the god given purpose of Acanthamoeba castellanii?
It’s telling that you equate classrooms with absence of stimuli. Unfortunately for you the evidence is clear. Before we had classrooms we had dirt and lots of it. Dirt and religion. And fuck all else.
FMM,
Why did your deity hardwire it in then, if it’s all supposed to be about us choosing to believe or not?
You may not like the way he does it, but he does it. I mean, I don’t like the details of his procedure myself, but he assigns probability to theism as required by intellectual honesty. That’s what you were after, right?
I acknowledge that it doesn’t seem quite equal the way he treats theism as compared to naturalism, but they are different world views on different foundations and those foundations should be taken into account when weighing probabilities, shouldn’t they? If truth matters, like should be irrelevant.
My point was that there’s an infinite number of ways one can rationalize how an omnipotent being could justify true beliefs, and the same goes for any particular theistic version. There are no constraints: the conditional probability of anything, given God is trivially close to 1 when all you need to do is make up stuff so that prior and marginal probabilities are just what you need. Question begging galore, that’s all that’s needed, and I would never call that intellectual honesty.
Meanwhile you complain to KN for not having a theory for how we may have “generally reliable cognitive abilities”, and you pull a classic argument from ignorance to argue that supports Plantinga’s EAAN. Uh, yeah, stuff is much more difficult when you have constraints placed on the explanations you can provide: naturalism and evolution do that: you can’t just claim that there’s a tiny physical blob of neurons responsible for reliably parsing beliefs. It needs to make sense, and be consistent with our background knowledge.
So if I said humans nature inclination towards explaining the world results in conspiracy theories ,science, literature,voodoo,philosophy and religion among other things, you would agree?
Wouldn’t the belief that there is no God satisfy one’s natural inclinations as well? Sometimes the explanation is there is no animal in the bushes, there are no evil spirits causing diseases, there is no one answer to all questions.
The popularity of the belief in the supernatural may not be the result of the inclinations to explain but from emotional needs religion fulfills
I can have no belief whether extraterrestrials exist, maybe they do, maybe not. Why is it impossible to have the same position on gods?
Well, if that was your point, then you were totally wrong.
Compare: Is there an infinite number of ways to rationalize truth under naturalism? No, these ways are strictly limited, either bound to empiricism or to nominalism. Except if you talk about rationalization as in coming up with anything without any regard to consistency or coherence.
Similarly, there is a distinction between an omnipotent being and Being Itself, completely different theisms that entail different paths of rationalization. Plantinga’s way is a particular way, not just any random way.
Interesting. I was thinking that there’s another understanding of “default” according to which it is the position one OUGHT to take (rather than the one we may be naturally inclined to take) when there is an absence of evidence. Thus, the default view of whether there are any more sentient beings that have blonde hair in the galaxy might be thought to be “Who the hell knows?”–whether we have any natural inclinations on the matter or not.
And, I take it, depending on the particular belief, “the default position” given this interpretation might or might not coincide with either the “common sense” position, the “natural inclination” position, or both.
I think there are some helpful distinctions in the neighboring bushes, though.
Kant has this nice phrase, “purposiveness without purposefulness” for talking about organisms (in his Critique of the Power of Judgment). What he’s getting at, I think, is that organisms are purposive, or teleologically structured, without having been organized by some agent. Their teleology is ‘internal’ to them rather than something imposed on them from the outside. This is what makes organisms different from artifacts.
I find it more than a little ironic that both anti-Darwinists like Dembski and Behe and ultra-Darwinists like Dawkins and Dennett are strongly committed to the conflation of biological teleology and technological teleology. As Steve Fuller elegantly puts it, “biology is divine technology.” Whereas from a Kantian standpoint, it’s precisely this conflation that should be rejected!
I think we can happily say that cats, dogs, mice, and humans have purposes, or are purposive, without requiring that there must exist some Agent or Intelligence that confers those purposes onto them. (Though it is an important truth about human beings that we can also create some new purposes for ourselves, whereas other animals cannot.)
Whether the Agent or Intelligence in any way resembles the God of Scripture — however variously interpreted — is a completely different question.
You mean you wouldn’t just vote to convict the mean-looking guy with the gang tattoos if you were a juror?
Somehow, when it’s religion the presumptive stance is sacred. There’s nothing wrong with reacting so that you increase your chance of preserving life and limb, but any claim that one’s biases and prejudices have anything to do with founding truth is nonsense.
Glen Davidson
I’m a Calvinist.
I think libertarian freewill is for sissies. 😉
In my opinion It’s not supposed to be about us choosing to believe or not.
It’s about God glorifying himself by choosing to show grace to those who would never choose him.
Maybe God hardwired it so that rebels would look extra foolish when they reject him.
peace
You need to define divine. I think you might be assuming the Christian God here.
The many gods of the animist are much less impressive but they are still divine beings.
peace
Atheism is just the position that gods don’t exist.
It is the contradictory of the position that god(s) exist.
Now you might not have an opinion on the matter at all. You might be agnostic. Agnosticism is not a position at all it’s just a starting point for further inquiry.
peace
not according to the science.
yep, But those sorts of conclusions like any conclusions require supporting evidence.
You just don’t get to assume them.
peace
That is called agnosticism and it’s not a position. It’s simply a statement of personal ignorance.
It’s certainly should not be held up as some sort of neutral high ground from which to critique others positions
peace
As is so often the case with believers, you manage to make your god sound like a real dick. What other sort of person would want to glorify himself, especially at the expense of other people?
Yes–It’s not the case that God exists contradicts God exists. However, if you go back and read your posts on this thread you will see that you failed to recognize that S believes that God exists is a complex proposition, not contradicted by S believes that God does not exist, and as a result, bungled lots of claims here. That’s kind of what you do.
It’s a quite reasonable default (as I defined it), when, as in this case, nobody really knows what the hell they’re talking about.
Claiming that the vast majority of mankind who don’t reject their hardwired inclination toward theism “don’t know what they’re talking about” and only you and your little group are privy to the facts is a much stronger position than mere agnosticism.
It’s just those sorts of positive claims that require evidential support.
It’s certainly not the default by any reasonable definition.
peace
It’s not about glorifying himself, God is tripersonal the Son wants to glorify the Father and the Father wants to glorify the Son etc.
And it’s not at anybody’s expense.
It’s you who are stealing from him the glory he deserves
It’s not like you deserve something that God is taking away from you. Absolutely everything you have is the result of God’s amazing grace.
A little gratitude would be nice.
If you stubbornly withhold that gratitude and instead mock and scorn him you deserve to look foolish
peace
fifth, to John:
And yet it’s you, the Christian, who consistently looks foolish here.
Even with God supposedly helping you, you can’t provide the answers to a simple quiz or explain why your wise and powerful God does such a poor job of communicating.
keiths,
The best communication can get lost in translation 🙂
colewd,
You think God is too stupid and feckless to get his message across intact?
It amazes me what a low opinion some Christians have of God.
Demanding gratitude is not a healthy attitude. But what do I know?
Even Confucius thinks your god is a prick.
But they’re all the same god, you know, so it’s all self-gratification. It’s a mystery. Anyway, why should any of the persons want to glorify another?
It is if the ones who don’t get shown grace end up in eternal torment. You believe that, right?
How am I doing that, and why does he deserve glory?
What evidence can you provide for this assertion? (Note that statements made in the bible are not evidence.)
I would be happy to be grateful if you would give me some reason to believe that god exists and has given me anything.
Let me note that I am not mocking and scorning god, as I don’t believe there is such a person. I’m not even mocking and scorning you. I’m mocking and scorning your beliefs. And they deserve it. Of course I’m only doing it because god causes me to, right?
keiths,
I am amazed at your belief that you can understand the master plan of the creator of the universe. I do admire your bold intellectual self confidence 🙂 Do you honestly think you are not quibbling.
This really is the stake in the Reformed heart. Everything that ever happens (including everything written at TSZ) was decreed from before the Creation so any complaints that God isn’t getting the respect he deserves (LOL) are ludicrous.
God is getting EXACTLY as much respect as he wants.
colewd,
So you think that God actually doesn’t want to get his message across to us?
Woodbine, to fifth:
Even fifth seems to think his god is a prick.
When asked about this verse…
…fifth’s “defense” was:
That’s persuasive. God was an asshole in this case, but not to everyone. Only to “those few folks” who had the bad luck of being among God’s “chosen people.”