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.
Vjtorley: “Hi davemullenix,
Haven’t heard from you in a while. How are things?”
Fine. Nice to see you posting where replies don’t vanish from the face of the earth when you hit return.
Vjt: “Surely Joseph could have piped up and said: ‘The tomb’s empty because I removed the body. Ask Pilate where it is now.'”
I really doubt if anybody asked him. I don’t thing the fishermen and tax collector types in Jesus’ entourage travelled in the same circles as a rich and respected member of the council.
Vjt: “The other problem, as I see it, with this hypothesis is that the discovery of an empty tomb does not generally trigger belief in the resurrection of the deceased person. What it normally triggers is the belief that the body of the deceased has been stolen – which is precisely what the Gospel of John records (John 20:1-2, 11-15).”
Well, that’s about what they did think: Mary Magdalene says in John 20:2, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” I don’t see any hint of resurrection there or from the disciples, two of whom go down to the tomb to see for themselves. John 20:9 even says, “They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.” They then went home.
But Mary Magdalene stayed at the tomb. Luke 8:2 says that Jesus removed seven demons from her, which was the polite first century way of saying she was at least half bankers and I gather that she was probably in love with Jesus too. Not surprisingly, she starts seeing angels, mistakes a gardener for Jesus and rushes off to tell the others that Jesus is alive. NOW they start thinking resurrection. (John 20:11-18)
And the rest is (mistaken) history.
Vjt: “I suppose I’d give your hypothesis about a 1% chance of being true.”
I’d put some variation of this hypothesis at 80%+ All four Gospels say that Joseph put the body in a tomb, getting it the heck out of his personal tomb was probably a high priority if he wasn’t really a fan of Jesus (and although we don’t know who wrote any of the Gospels, I’m betting none of the authors was in a position to know if he was), and there was plenty of time for his servants to accomplish this.
Now take a group of disciples, fearing for their lives, their dreams shattered, their leader dead, they don’t even know where his body is, and suddenly Mary Magdalene comes running in and reports that he’s ALIVE!! She saw him! She talked to him! Hallelujah! That sounds like the way to start a resurrection myth to me.
A few centuries later, newly empowered church authorities sift through the pile of Gospels that have have accumulated over the years, select four that follow accepted beliefs without contradicting each other too much, burn the rest, add in a few of Paul’s real letters, a few of of his fake letters and a few other pieces and a New Testament is born.
J-Mac: “If ID/God created life, including human life, what difficulty would bringing back the life He had already created present ?”
Little or none. And he used to do it much more often. We’re forgetting that Jesus resurrected Lazarus and a dead woman whose name I’ve forgotten. Of course, thus was long ago, during the BS Age, and we have no way of checking if it’s true.
Funny, that.
It is my experience from almost 90 years on this plane, that miracles are extremely rare, to a degree that I have no problem declaring miracles as non-existent. The most reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the gospels is that they are myths. That makes sense, not least in view of how common a similar myth was known already several thousand years before the current era. Osiris, Dionysos, Bacchus, Attis, Mithra. Another aspect consider is that at the same time Jesus is supposed to have been alive, the Gnostics were prominent in the religious sphere, they even claimed Peter was one of their teachers.
In spite of claims of evidence that Jesus was a historical person, no evidence has been found. The Romans, very good at record keeping didn’t write a word about Jesus. The prominence given to the Jesus story in the gospels shows the Romans very concerned with Jesus and his gang, so the silence on the subject is rather conspicuous.
Acts are silent on Jesus. Why?
Ninety years on a plane is something of a miracle! Welcome back, Rolf. 🙂
J-mac,
I believe in the miracle of the resurrection became possible because I believe the origin of life is a miracle. When one can accept a miracle in one realm it become possible to accept other miracles. The issue is the credibility of the witnesses. The evidence of Young Life on the planet is evidence of the credibility of the Gospel of Luke.
On a more local scale, it seems to me God does in the present day, albeit rarely, grant miracles for those who pray in the name of Jesus. Astronaut Charles Duke walked on the moon. After he returned to Earth he became a Christian. He prayed for a blind girl in the name of Jesus. She regained her sight. Some will argue that was a coincidence, and will refuse to believe. I would argue, if it was indeed a miracle, it would be best not to offend the Lord, it is a risky decision to do so…
Jesus prophesied:
And much of the war issues will be due to Jerusalem. Science will not save the Earth from these distresses. Mankind does not have the capacity to save himself from his own nature.
We don’t have as many facts as we’d like to make decisions about how to live our lives, but I have chosen to cast my lot with Jesus because there is no salvation in Charles Darwin nor the feminazis nor post modernists nor Marxists who are wrecking society.
My alternatives to what?–bronze age mythology? Right now, I’m going with YOU being the source of all life and wisdom. After all, you are one of the few mental health workers I’m familiar with and with all the craziness around it seems like one of those might be up to something unsavory.
So, thanks for truth and life and everything, but if you could please stop fucking around, I’m sure a lot of people would be grateful.
Sal,
You’re assuming that God, if he exists, wants us to believe dumb things for bad reasons and will be “offended” if we don’t. That seems pretty risky too.
Rolf,
I am deeply honored to have you as a visitor on this thread. I’m sure that after almost 90 years of ruminating on the big questions, you’ve arrived at your own conclusions, so I wouldn’t presume to argue with you, as I’m only 55 (I’ll be 56 tomorrow). Anyway, I hope that my OP and the comments of other readers have given you food for thought. Cheers.
Sal,
A genuinely good God would not punish us for honestly seeking the truth. That realization helped me begin the process of deconversion some 40 years ago.
My thought process went something like this:
1. If God isn’t good, then all bets are off. He might send us to hell for our taste in music, or for the color of our eyes, or for being Christian, for all we know.
2. If God is good, then he won’t punish us for honestly seeking the truth, even if we mistakenly conclude that he doesn’t exist.
3. If God doesn’t exist, then we’re better off pursuing the truth.
It would be awfully cynical to avoid the pursuit of truth based solely on the fear of an asshole God. I opted for the pursuit of truth.
Happy birthday, Vince.
Nor Newton, nor Einstein, nor Schroedinger.
Funny, though, science isn’t about salvation. Kind of a huge category mistake for you, Sal.
There is no science in Dembski, van Daniken (sp?), and Ken Ham. It matters for those who want an honest consideration of the evidence, and the hope of discovery.
Glen Davidson
Hi J-Mac,
Thank you for your kind comments. You write:
It is important to note that even if someone believes in panspermia, if they’re a naturalist then they’re going to have to believe that the very first life-forms to appear in the universe came from non-living matter. So there’s no escaping abiogenesis, for naturalists.
J-Mac, you’ve raised some very interesting philosophical questions in your comment:
1. If (as skeptics maintain), all knowledge is derived from reason and experience, then why is the claim that life arose from non-living matter any more credible than the claim that a dead body came back to life again, since both claims fly in the face of experience?
2. Can a skeptic mount a successful argument that the probability of a supernatural Resurrection is lower than the probability of abiogenesis? (Obviously a natural reassembly of a dead body over a period of less than three days would be statistically less likely than the spontaneous formation of a bacterium over a period of hundreds of millions of years. But how does one compare the probability of an alleged supernatural event with a natural one?)
3. Given that abiogenesis (at some point in space and time) cannot be shown to be even slightly probable (say, more than one in a million, or even more than 1 in 10^-120), does it make any sense to say that we know it happened or that we can be confident that it happened (the way that we can be confident that man-made global warming happened, for instance)? And if we don’t know, and have no grounds for confidence, then how can people who believe otherwise be called unreasonable?
4. Is a rejection of supernaturalism the only scientific reason for rejecting abiogenesis?
I’m going to throw these questions out to readers without further comment. I have an idea how some readers might respond, but I’d prefer to let them speak for themselves. But from where I am standing, it appears that in order for a skeptical epistemology to get off the ground, naturalism will have to be treated as an unprovable but fundamental axiom. What do people think?
You need to read something other than apologetics. Here are two links to get you started.
There is nothing special about your myths.
This passage is far more suspect than you claim. One of the most damning facts is that it was not referenced by Christian scholars until the fourth century.
Further, Josephus was not writing contemporaneously with the supposed time Jesus was alive. He’s talking about claims made by Christians, not about anything he observed.
You wouldn’t accept this level of evidence for other religions.
Numbers imply a certain amount of precision. You have provided no basis for determining that precision. At best your numbers can be read as “vjtorley thinks this is very likely” or “vjtorley thinks this is somewhat unlikely”. Using the numbers you arbitrarily selected to arrive at a specific claim like “the resurrection myth is 60+% likely to be true” is utterly unwarranted.
Again, you could have simply said “I believe the resurrection most likely happened because of my faith” and saved yourself some typing.
You “know” stories and myths. You can quote all the historians you like, it doesn’t make up for the utter and complete lack of contemporaneous evidence. My point stands: There are no known witnesses to anything Jesus supposedly did, including exist.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Because there is no such evidence.
Just this morning I saw a news story about a 14,000 year old village discovered in British Columbia. That’s not as old as the Theopetra caves stone wall dated at 21,000 BCE but it beats Gobekli Tepe at 10,000 BCE.
Humans have been around far longer than 6,000 years. You have to be willfully stupid to think otherwise. Ignorance is no longer an excuse for you.
Can one run out of immaterials?
Hi Alan Fox,
Thank you for your comments. You write:
I would call it physical, but not material. It’s something which is in matter, and inseparable from matter, but not itself a piece of matter or even an arrangement of matter – after all, the body of a man who’s just dropped dead from a heart attack isn’t arranged any differently from the body of the same man, shortly before the heart attack – but rather, a system of flow and control linking various body parts into an integrated organism. What happens at death is that the flow is disrupted, permanently. The different parts of the body no longer communicate information to one another in the way a living body does.
If the human mind is inexhaustible, then it is immaterial. The following papers by mathematician J.R. Lucas attempt to demonstrate in a rigorous fashion that any mechanistic explanation of the mind is bound to be incomplete. I offer them for your perusal:
Minds, Machines and Godel by Professor J. R. Lucas.First published in Philosophy, XXXVI, 1961, pp. 112-127; reprinted in The Modeling of Mind, Kenneth M. Sayre and Frederick J. Crosson, eds., Notre Dame Press, 1963, pp.269-270; and Minds and Machines, ed. Alan Ross Anderson, Prentice-Hall, 1954, pp.43-59.
Satan Stultified: A Rejoinder to Paul Benacerraf by Professor J. R. Lucas.From The Monist, vol.52, no.1, January 1968, pp.145-158.
Minds, Machines and Godel: A Retrospect by Professor J. R. Lucas.(A Paper read to the Turing Conference at Brighton, on April 6th, 1990). In P. J. R. Millican and A. Clark, eds., Machines and Thought: The Legacy of Alan Turing, Oxford, 1996, pp.103-124.
The Godelian Argument: Turn Over the Page by Professor J. R. Lucas.(A talk that Professor Lucas gave on 25/5/1996 at a BSPS conference in Oxford, in which he replied to critics of his original argument.)
Since animal bodies are alive, you cannot use Occam’s razor to dispense with their souls, because the word “soul” simply means: that by virtue of which a living thing is alive (whatever it may be). Nor can one dispense with mind, for in order to do so, one would have to dispense with beliefs and desires, and it is certain that we have these. So do some animals. As for the immaterial human soul: all one needs in order to discredit belief in it is to puncture the arguments for its immateriality.
That last bit is particularly important. The Christian bible has been through a lot of . . . curating, for lack of a better term. Even with that, it is rife with contradictions.
That isn’t right. Knowledge is derived from empiricism, but not necessarily from “experience.” How would we know of the wholly molten earth that once existed if we were relying on experience (as commonly understood)?
Aside from the serious problem of claiming that we believe knowledge comes from experience, the point is not so much that we claim that life came from non-life in some sort of self-organization and/or accident, as that it’s the only scenario that fits with what we know. Otherwise, we have our pick of myths and supernatural claims.
You don’t compare the odds. There are no meaningful odds of the resurrection at all. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, but that we know of no way that it could in principle.
You’re using terms of faith and knowledge, when we’re talking about possibilities and investigation. There’s a way forward in understanding abiogenesis for possibly showing that it’s not unlikely, or, indeed, that it may turn out to be rather unlikely.
Sure beats “God did it,” as we might possibly know one way or the other at some point.
Because just making up claims isn’t reasonable.
Um, what?
How is “naturalism” a fundamental axiom? It isn’t even inherently meaningful, and can only be made meaningful by defining it in terms of empiricism. The latter is important, and yes, unprovable, but quite demonstrably productive.
Glen Davidson
“So why aren’t people eager to prove this, why do they doggedly ignore evidence the fossil record is young?”
Because they’re not dumb as shit?
How do you know and what evidence do you have to support this claim?
Patrick,
You write:
Your credulity never ceases to amaze me. You refuse to accept a passage in Josephus describing the martyrdom of “James the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ,” even though its authenticity is acknowledged by virtually all historians (including atheists), for the sole reason that no Christians made reference to the passage until the fourth century. (Why would they?) And yet you blithely swallow claims that Jesus is just a rehashed myth of a dying and rising god.
All right. Let’s have a look at your two links. Here’s an excerpt from the first one:
And here’s what the myth of Horus really said about him:
You can find out more here.
And who does your source link to? A book co-authored by D. M. Murdock, a.k.a. Acharya S. Here’s the Wikipedia article about her. Sounds pretty dismissive to me. Atheist N.T. scholar Bart Ehrman has written that “all of Acharya’s major points are in fact wrong” and that her book “is filled with so many factual errors and outlandish assertions that it is hard to believe the author is serious.” (Ehrman, Bart D. (2012). Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. New York: HarperCollins. pp. 20–24.)
Let’s look at your second source, an article by atheist blogger, hardware designer, software programmer and author, Bob Seidensticker. He writes:
Here’s some information about Dionysus (or Dionysos).
Note that Dionysos was not virgin-born, since Zeus literally “slept with Semele secretly.” [Note to Patrick: Christians do not believe, and never have believed, that God slept with the Virgin Mary.]
Richard Seaford in Dionysos (Routledge, 2006) summarizes the myth:
That really doesn’t sound at all like Jesus.
How about Adonis? I suggest you have a look here. My reference cites the following sources: see “Adonis” and “Dying and Rising Gods” in The Encyclopedia of Religion (1987, edited by Mircea Eliade; see also the 2005 edition edited by Lindsay Jones), and Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (University of Chicago Press, 1990) by Jonathan Z. Smith, page 101. Anyway, here’s the money quote:
I am underwhelmed.
How about Attis? Here’s how my source summarizes the myths about Attis:
One vague Yes and eight Nos. Real family resemblance to the Jesus story, that one.
Is this the best you can do?
John Harshman writes:
Once again, you’re over-physicalizing Christian dogmas. Grace is not a funny kind of stuff that needs to be removed from people’s souls. Instead of “God removes his grace from everyone because one (certainly mythical) person did something he didn’t like,” try: “God reluctantly proclaims His estrangement from the human race after its founding father [or founding fathers] declare in no uncertain terms that they’d be better off having without Him around.” The Fall is simply God’s acknowledgement that humanity has placed itself in a state of divorce from its Creator, because of that fateful original decision.
Sprinkling water on a baby’s head is just a sign. Baptismal water doesn’t “do” anything: it has no mystic powers to restore grace. God knows that we’re ritualistic animals who love ceremonies. Pouring water on a baby’s head is just the outward sign: it is God Who re-establishes the spiritual connection (or what we call sanctifying grace) when the water is poured.
And no, I don’t believe that changes in the structure of the brain caused weakening of the will and a darkening of the intellect. Intellect and will are (unlike memory and imagination) immaterial faculties of the soul. A soul that is cut off from its Creator doesn’t work as well (i.e. doesn’t think and choose as well) as a soul having a proper relationship with its Creator. Simple as that. There’s no need to speak of faulty souls here – just disconnected ones.
Hi keiths,
You write:
A privilege is, by definition, something that does not have to be given. And please remember that God judges us fairly. He knows our handicaps.
Re the massa damnata and the “vessels of Divine wrath”: the interpretation of Romans 9 which you propound is an invention of St. Augustine (354-430 A.D.) The early Church Fathers did not interpret the chapter in the way you do. I suggest you have a look at these two articles:
Calvinism: Absent Among Pre-Nicene Christians
Did the Early Church Fathers Teach Calvinistic Doctrines?
For example, St. Clement of Alexandria writes:
“God does not inflict punishment from wrath, but for the ends of justice; since it is not expedient that justice should be neglected on our account.”
Finally, here’s an article titled, How Should Catholics Understand Romans 9? by Joe Heschmeyer, who quotes from
Fr. William Most’s commentary on the massa damnata interpretation of the passage you quoted from Romans 9:
Another quote from Heschmeyer’s article:
Hi GlenDavidson,
You write:
So you’re admitting that we don’t know that Nature is all there is, but you think it’s productive for scientists (and laypeople in general) to think in this way.
The problem I have with this view is that it’s unfalsifiable. What degree of failure would cause you to abandon empiricism as a world-view, and why?
For instance, you write that abiogenesis may [one day] be possibly shown to be “not unlikely,” and that it beats “God did it,” as an explanation. Sorry, but it sounds to me as if you’ll clutch at any straw, however fragile, rather than believe that life was intelligently designed by God.
For any belief we hold, we should be prepared to answer the question: what would prompt me to give it up?
(By the way, it is incorrect to speak of obtaining knowledge from “empiricism.” A world-view, as such, doesn’t yield any knowledge, although it may yield a fruitful program for obtaining knowledge. And while our knowledge of the Earth’s molten interior (I presume you are referring to its liquid outer core, here) is not experiential, it is derived from observations, coupled with accepted scientific theories. But that’s a philosopher’s quibble.)
Patrick: “That last bit is particularly important. The Christian bible has been through a lot of . . . curating, for lack of a better term. Even with that, it is rife with contradictions.”
Really. You read the four Gospel accounts of the resurrection with their different accounts of who went to the tomb, whether the tomb was opened or closed, whether there were zero, one or two angels present, whether a stone was or wasn’t rolled away, etc … and you just have to wonder about what surprises the other Gospels had in then, the ones that were thrown away.
Since we’re discussing the resurrection and Easter is coming up, anybody interested in this thread might profit from reading Dan Barker’s Easter Challenge for Christians. It’s at https://ffrf.org/legacy/books/lfif/stone.php
Here’s the summary of the problems from it:
What time did the women visit the tomb?
Matthew: “as it began to dawn” (28:1)
Mark: “very early in the morning . . . at the rising of the sun” (16:2, KJV); “when the sun had risen” (NRSV); “just after sunrise” (NIV)
Luke: “very early in the morning” (24:1, KJV) “at early dawn” (NRSV)
John: “when it was yet dark” (20:1)
Who were the women?
Matthew: Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (28:1)
Mark: Mary Magdalene, the mother of James, and Salome (16:1)
Luke: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women (24:10)
John: Mary Magdalene (20:1)
What was their purpose?
Matthew: to see the tomb (28:1)
Mark: had already seen the tomb (15:47), brought spices (16:1)
Luke: had already seen the tomb (23:55), brought spices (24:1)
John: the body had already been spiced before they arrived (19:39,40)
Was the tomb open when they arrived?
Matthew: No (28:2)
Mark: Yes (16:4)
Luke: Yes (24:2)
John: Yes (20:1)
Who was at the tomb when they arrived?
Matthew: One angel (28:2-7)
Mark: One young man (16:5)
Luke: Two men (24:4)
John: Two angels (20:12)
Where were these messengers situated?
Matthew: Angel sitting on the stone (28:2)
Mark: Young man sitting inside, on the right (16:5)
Luke: Two men standing inside (24:4)
John: Two angels sitting on each end of the bed (20:12)
What did the messenger(s) say?
Matthew: “Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead: and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you.” (28:5-7)
Mark: “Be not afrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you.” (16:6-7)
Luke: “Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.” (24:5-7)
John: “Woman, why weepest thou?” (20:13)
Did the women tell what happened?
Matthew: Yes (28:8)
Mark: No. “Neither said they any thing to any man.” (16:8)
Luke: Yes. “And they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven, and to all the rest.” (24:9, 22-24)
John: Yes (20:18)
When Mary returned from the tomb, did she know Jesus had been resurrected?
Matthew: Yes (28:7-8)
Mark: Yes (16:10,11)
Luke: Yes (24:6-9,23)
John: No (20:2)
When did Mary first see Jesus?
Matthew: Before she returned to the disciples (28:9)
Mark: Before she returned to the disciples (16:9,10)
John: After she returned to the disciples (20:2,14)
Could Jesus be touched after the resurrection?
Matthew: Yes (28:9)
John: No (20:17), Yes (20:27)
After the women, to whom did Jesus first appear?
Matthew: Eleven disciples (28:16)
Mark: Two disciples in the country, later to eleven (16:12,14)
Luke: Two disciples in Emmaus, later to eleven (24:13,36)
John: Ten disciples (Judas and Thomas were absent) (20:19, 24)
Paul: First to Cephas (Peter), then to the twelve. (Twelve? Judas was dead). (I Corinthians 15:5)
Where did Jesus first appear to the disciples?
Matthew: On a mountain in Galilee (60-100 miles away) (28:16-17)
Mark: To two in the country, to eleven “as they sat at meat” (16:12,14)
Luke: In Emmaus (about seven miles away) at evening, to the rest in a room in Jerusalem later that night. (24:31, 36)
John: In a room, at evening (20:19)
Did the disciples believe the two men?
Mark: No (16:13)
Luke: Yes (24:34–it is the group speaking here, not the two)
What happened at the appearance?
Matthew: Disciples worshipped, some doubted, “Go preach.” (28:17-20)
Mark: Jesus reprimanded them, said “Go preach” (16:14-19)
Luke: Christ incognito, vanishing act, materialized out of thin air, reprimand, supper (24:13-51)
John: Passed through solid door, disciples happy, Jesus blesses them, no reprimand (21:19-23)
Did Jesus stay on earth for a while?
Mark: No (16:19) Compare 16:14 with John 20:19 to show that this was all done on Sunday
Luke: No (24:50-52) It all happened on Sunday
John: Yes, at least eight days (20:26, 21:1-22)
Acts: Yes, at least forty days (1:3)
Where did the ascension take place?
Matthew: No ascension. Book ends on mountain in Galilee
Mark: In or near Jerusalem, after supper (16:19)
Luke: In Bethany, very close to Jerusalem, after supper (24:50-51)
John: No ascension
Paul: No ascension
Acts: Ascended from Mount of Olives (1:9-12)
Good luck harmonizing that!
What is Nature?
How do you even suppose that I think it’s productive for scientists to think “in this way,” presumably in “naturalism”? How about giving up your ID/UD presumptions about what all of those evil Darwinists think?
Well I suppose if it quit being a useful guide for life. It would be hard to give up, however, simply because we’re born believing our senses.
The point is not that it beats God did it as an explanation, but that it actually is a hypothetic explanation. God did it is not.
It sounds to me like you’re a UDite who can’t even understand the importance of being honest with the evidence, and who still doesn’t understand that if abiogenesis turns out to be highly unlikely that still is no evidence that God did it.
See, you don’t even understand what I write. If abiogenesis ended up being very unlikely I would give it up as anything but a bare possibility (there's undoubtedly some chance). I'd give up my sense that abiogenesis is our only meaningful hypothetic explanation if it were shown to be very unlikely.
Why are you acting like I'd believe in it if it were shown to be highly unlikely? Give up your prejudices about what everyone else believes that you picked up at UD.
No it isn’t. I didn’t say it was everything, and deliberately left out the rest of it for the sake of simplicity. That you’re pedanticly trying to make points out of a reasonably simplified turn of phrase indicates that you’re grasping.
How is “empiricism” a worldview? It’s a matter of epistemology.
No, I was referring to the entire earth being molten, save perhaps for a bit of rock floating at the top. That is based on observation, but it certainly isn’t based on “experience.”
Glen Davidson
Ah, but why would one foolish decision by one person long ago speak for all of humanity forever? And if you’re a Catholic, you aren’t allowed to believe in more than one founding father. You must accept a literal Adam and Eve, sole progenitors of all living humans. You also appear to have made up a story loosely based on Genesis. Or did you get it from someone else?
Why does he have to wait for the water? You’re saying it’s just to humor us? This too is a silly story.
Why doesn’t a soul cut off from its creator work as well? And we’re also back to the question of why souls are issued in disconnected form and in need of a ritual for reconnection. Why isn’t connection the default situation? By the way, I see no evidence that connected souls work better than disconnected ones. The evidence right here in TSZ certainly argues, if anything, for the reverse.
Sorry for the poor line spacing above. All my fault.
If anybody is looking for ways NOT to harmonize the above, try
http://www.tektonics.org/qt/rezrvw.php
Hah! all you non-Christians.
Jesus really IS bigger and stronger than those pathetic wanna-be’s Patrick mentioned as serious competitors. They’re like weakling babies in comparison to your guy. Jesus would trounce them in a nano-second. With one hand tied behind his back!
So, Christians win–at least until more evidence for Galactus turns up.
No, you have that wrong. The Silver Surfer is the Christ figure. Galactus is more the Father.
There is only one World Eater and the Silver Surfer is His prophet.
Two simultaneous testimonies that Silver Surfer is the Christ! What are the odds?
dazz,
By my calculations only .00000367!
Yeah, but we have radically different interpretations of the Silver Surfer’s relation to Galactus. This is how religious wars get started.
My calculation factors all that in.
Pretty sure Harshman is the name of a Marvel superhero. Sorry KN, but you don’t stand a chance
dazz,
No worries. “Kantian Naturalist” is a side-kick name at best. Maybe the pathetic supervillain who gets beaten up on the first page before the main action starts.
Just found some change down the back of my couch. You may need to re-do the math
Shit. X>{
Oh well. I guess you better send me the details. 🙁 another crap weekend for my lab associates and me. 🙁
And we were hoping to start next week on
🙁 🙁
I liked that kid who could turn him/herself into a guinea pig.
John, to Vincent:
I asked Vincent the same thing in our discussion of the problem of evil. His answer was basically that God made a promise, and once he has made a promise, he cannot break it. Vincent couldn’t explain why a wise and benevolent God would make such a stupid promise in the first place.
Here’s Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis (1950):
I’m encouraged by Vincent’s willingness to question the orthodoxy, though he doesn’t (yet) go far enough.
John:
It appears to be a slightly modified version of Peter van Inwagen’s rationalization of the problem of evil. More on this in a later comment.
An earlier exchange on what I’ve dubbed Vincent’s “promise defense”:
keiths:
Vincent:
keiths:
Anyway, god was constantly intervening in humans affairs, back in the remote past where we can’t check. Why, he even flooded the entire world once and saved just one family, killed the firstborn of every family in Egypt, rained fire on the odd city, etc. etc.
This, I think, is the killer argument.
If God really wants us to be saved, why does he play so incredibly hard to get? Back in the days he supposedly went round for a couple of years, explained in person to many people what they ought to do and not do to secure a place in Heaven, and regularly threw is some miracles for all to see and help them believe.
Why then has he not kept this up? Why don’t we see Jesus every Friday evening on prime time TV with a half-hour sermon and a miracle or two? If he could do this 2000 years ago why can’t he do this now? What has changed?
I’m sure that the apologists will come with scores of ‘reasons’, but surely the simplest and most straightforward explanation must be that the ‘Jesus was God’ story is simply made up? This fits all the known facts (as little as there are anyway) much easier without any need for twisted and tortured apologetics.
And if anyone asks ‘how come so many people believe the story?’, we can point to how many people believe in the story that Allah spoke with Mohamed through the archangel Gabriel, that Joseph Smith found golden plates with messages from God, that people are regularly abducted by Aliens, that crop circles are made by UFO’s, that the moon landings were a hoax, that…. etc. etc.
People are gullible, simple as that.
faded_Glory:
Vincent rationalizes it this way:
My answer is “well, yes”. If God is willing to “stoop so low” as to perform magic tricks for the Pharaoh of Egypt, then why shouldn’t he be willing to send some unmistakably divine tweets to us in the 21st century? If he’s willing to stoop so low as to torture himself to death like a common criminal, then why shouldn’t he be willing to host a prime time TV show?
Why not do what’s necessary to get the message across? If it was important to God then, why isn’t it important to him now?
Obvious answer: he doesn’t exist.
Personally, I am agnostic on the existence of God (depending of course very much on what we mean with ‘God’), but the overwhelming balance of probability is that Jesus was not God. This because of the highly significant internal inconsistency of God walking the Earth and presenting himself 2000 years ago but not having done so ever since, and on the undeniable fact that many, many people are rather gullible and believe all sorts of outlandish things.
Of course if it is highly unlikely that Jesus was God, the probability of the resurrection also is vanishingly low.
keiths:
faded_Glory:
I was speaking of the Christian God, since that is the God whose behavior Vincent is trying to defend.
The problem of evil and the problem of divine hiddenness, among other problems, render that God’s existence overwhelmingly unlikely.
John Harshman writes of the Fall and the sacrament of baptism:
Because we’re one race – which means that we’re all in this together. Either the human race as a whole is in harmony with God or the human race as a whole is estranged from God. Who decides? The logical choice would be the progenitor of the human race.
Good point. The evidence that the human population never fell below 1,000 (or more likely, 10,000) is now too strong to ignore: three converging lines of evidence all point the same way. Dennis Venema has done a very good job of summing it up, over at his Biologos blog. Catholic theologians have made ingenious attempts to reconcile this discovery with the Biblical story of Adam. One theory [which I don’t like much] is that Adam was still capable of interbreeding with subhuman hominins – and that in the early days of humanity, interbreeding was rife (which would explain why the population of human ancestors never fell below 1,000). Only much later did humans break away from their sub-rational kin, as a large and distinct population. This scenario raises all sorts of problematic questions as to whether the child of a union between a true human and a subhuman hominin would have a human soul or not: was there a certain X-gene that hominins had to possess at conception, in order to acquire a human soul? Or was the child of any such union automatically human? Another theory [which I prefer] is that perhaps Adam was the leader of a tribe of true human beings (with rational souls), who elected him as their spokesman. Thus it would still be true that sin came into the world through one man.
Basically, yes. Remember: we are bound by the sacraments, but God is not. People who are dying and who want to be baptized with water but are unable to receive baptism are still said to receive a “baptism of desire” from God, which accomplishes the same thing as normal baptism.
Because God is the One who maintains it in being and keeps it functioning. It stands to reason that without a healthy relationship with its Creator, it would be prone to malfunction.