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.
There’s what should be an blatantly obvious difference between
“support of their belief in Christ’s divinity”
“support of Christ’s divinity”
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
From The charge of the light brigade“
There is something rather odd about this OP altogether, to my way of thinking. One is, why does VJT discuss whether or not Jesus existed? Why not instead mention the odds of whether he was even crucified? Clearly he could have existed and not been crucified, or not existed and not been crucified. For the crucifixion and resurrection, we don’t care about whether Jesus existed per se, but whether or not the purported Jesus was crucified. I accept that he very likely existed and was crucified, but surely the second is less likely than the first, because while Jesus couldn’t be crucified and resurrected if he didn’t exist, he wasn’t necessarily crucified or resurrected if he did exist.
Then there’s the bit about the odds of the various other scenarios. Really, how is this the main issue? Isn’t the real issue the odds of whether one can take the accounts of the resurrection as good evidence? This should be the case if one believes that a miracle-causing God exists, or if it doesn’t. And it’s hard to see how the accounts of resurrection matter much at all, any more than all of the other miracle claims that Christians and non-believers alike dismiss without much consideration (because meaningful verification isn’t possible, while they seem rather dubious claims).
The Gospel accounts of the resurrected Jesus are often on the weird side. Often they don’t recognize him, then they do. Why wouldn’t they recognize him immediately? We joke about how many witnesses would convince us, but there is the bizarre fact that 500 is the most we get for having seen the resurrected Jesus, when crowds listening to him were often said to be 10X that. What’s the problem, he’s hiding the greatest miracle of all? Why? Why not preach the resurrection to the crowds, yourself as proof of it, if you are the once-dead but now-living Jesus?
Then there’s the strangeness of the odds of the resurrection supposedly being good if one believes in a miracle-causing God. Isn’t that the overriding issue, the lack of good evidence that miracles actually occur, and specifically, the lack of any good reason to think that resurrection can happen? I would think that if one believed in the Christian religion, including the high probability that God exists, one would believe that the resurrection would be nearly 100% certain. Muslims and Jews, well, a good deal less. After all, there’s really not much to go on with Paul and/or the Gospels in terms of solid evidence, so one is hardly convinced even if one thinks it eminently possible.
I haven’t a clue why God would be any more likely than aliens in causing an apparent resurrection. Indeed, I think that aliens may exist, while God seems quite unlikely. Why would aliens do it? How would I know? Why would God do it? Aliens might be doing experiments, or just being jerks, I don’t know. I really don’t know how to guess the probability of aliens being responsible for an apparent resurrection, but I’d put the odds higher than that God did it.
Above all, what really is the point of saying that if you already believe in the (practical) possibility of the resurrection, then the resurrection should be seen as probable (at least to Christians)? Well yeah, but the real question asked is, why you should believe that the resurrection is something that could happen, given the lack of well-documented observation of it occurring since then?
Reproducibility is the game in science, like with any empiricism worthy of the name, and we don’t really have even one good case of resurrection of a person dead with serious loss of organization. If we did have that, then the resurrection would gain a plausibility that it certainly lacks now for anyone going by the evidence. And why wouldn’t the resurrection be reproduced? If you’re God and letting people become sick, injured, and killed all of the time, why not raise up someone “worthy” of it at some point? Of course God could have good reason not to do so, as he supposedly has for not doing, well, anything of much worth or note, but the fact is that we don’t have much excuse for thinking that Jesus was resurrected if we don’t get to see the like under good, transparent, conditions.
Glen Davidson
I think if you really want to ‘calculate the odds’ of someone rising from the dead, you put in the denominator the number of all the humans and other animals that have ever lived and did NOT rise from the dead. You don’t try to figure out whether this or that witness ‘might have been mistaken’ without reference to the incredible aspect of the claim.
Vince treats the question of a miracle occurring as if he were weighing the evidence of claims that someone actually invented a telephone before Bell.
That, in a word, is what is ridiculous about Vince’s (neither scientific nor philosophical) ‘calculation’ of 63%.
And what’s so special about resurrection anyway? There may be 100 percent certainty that your neighbor’s wife was clinically dead or comatose for three days and then got cured from it. What’s the value of examining “key facts” and “skeptical hypotheses” concerning the event?
It’s bad enough that Vincent doesn’t care for consistency, even though this would be the easy part. He also has no focus on what’s important and he has no sense of why it’s important.
I ran into Vincent’s critique of Tkacz (another classical theist critical of ID) and there’s this gem, “What’s unusual about ID theology – and yes, I will call it that – is that it is tied to a specific conception of the Deity….” If you want a(nother) death blow to ID from an ID apologist in one concise quote, there you have it. Bad philosophy, bad science, bad theology and total lack of apologetic strategy, all in one.
Harry Potter is a fucking wizard then, right?
Erik,
If it was an historical event, then nothing like it has occurred in human history and it is definitive of so much that has happened on earth in that history. (The occasionalist would say not ‘so much, but ‘everything,’ right?)
It doesn’t seem like in your upbringing and education (outside of N. America & Europe, it seems) you studied world religions. I didn’t either, but read and asked independently of school. Resurrection is VERY special in Christianity, y’know, like Easter. 😉
Otherwise, I agree with your critique of Vincent’s IDism. It is a pity Vince can’t see the primitive ideological safety diaper he’s wearing, that has a ‘Made in Seattle’ label on it. It’s tatooed on him now & he can’t wash the actual source of his IDist ideology out. He might go looking elsewhere for alternatives, before safely returning to his Syndrome out of habit, not intellectual coherency. But it seems he has an isolated scholar network problem of asking. 🙁
Tkacz is another of the Catholics that have matured in their thought about the ideology known as IDism and outgrew it. While Vincent otoh has sadly still not matured, instead just growing horizontally more ideologically IDist. It might be because he has spent so much energy reading IDist literature and a high percentage of his overall writing output and time pushing IDism at sites like this.
Yet according to Vincent, folks like Erik & I don’t ‘get it.’ He’s got a punched ticket to the IDism convention, a spot on their radio show, and a ‘precious’ (Golum) self-satisfying intentional martyr ideology and complex to coddle. And yet it’s people watching this catastrophe of wasted talent who are supposedly ‘missing something’ about ideology that Vincent seems to suggest he knows, but never says openly.
It is rather obvious that Vincent J. Torley suffers from ‘Expelled Syndrome.’ “yes, I will call it that.” And since he will admit nothing, NOTHING, of his symptoms of this chronic IDism Syndrome, little healing can occur. He says he’s outgrown IDism, the Discovery Institute and philosophically dwarfish, but always endearing and well-meaning Doug Axe (as if he could replace Dembski!), but he still uses the same IDist language. And of course Vincent-only-IDism is a mixture of ID theology and Vincent’s own theology. This is why it became evident that Vincent thinks rejecting IDism would mean rejecting Catholicism, though he is simply wrong. So that’s where Vincent’s Easter week brings him with an opportunity to throw away once and for all the idol of IDism. Is Vincent up for this type of current and future fasting?
Of course, while Vincent could, in principle become healed from Expelled Syndrome; that healing or lack thereof should not in any way effect or change his faith in Resurrection. Vincent can be a good proper Catholic and reject ideological IDism. He just doesn’t know how yet and, from all previous indications, won’t think about how that might be possible … unless and until he asks someone who knows.
Do you actually need to study it to notice that Resurrection is special in Christianity? The thing is, Vincent’s post displays no awareness of anything special about it. His manner of attributing probabilities is very sad, but it’s even more sad what event he has picked to attribute probabilities to. He meets Loftus’ argument about Resurrection by forgetting the point of Resurrection.
I’m often amazed that folks still don’t understand the obvious reason that Jesus does not reveal himself more publicly
quote:
At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.
(Mat 11:25-26)
end quote
peace
Erik,
To your first question, no. But apparently for those who have never watched professional baseball before… 😉
To the 2nd part, yes, as sad as it is to admit that is how it appears. I think if you, Vincent and I had tea/coffee one afternoon in Beirut (to choose an imaginary location closest to where we 3 now live), we’d find Vincent finds much special about it. As for me, I’ve never doubted nor read much ‘skeptical’ about Vincent’s Catholic Christianity, even as a vastly minority Christian where he lives in Asia.
Probabilism is a problem in IDism. I’ve written about this indirectly via response to Pascal’s Mugging.
With Vincent I never get the feeling of him “forgetting the point of Resurrection.” Although it doesn’t seem you really ever ‘un-forgot’ it either, Erik. It’s that gall-darned ideology Vincent can’t fully disentangle himself from that is disturbing. And he’ll Star&Stripe his IDist ideology as much as he wants (who on Earth is going to go there to disturb him in zombie IDist slumber?), thumbing Feser, Barr, and many others his superior, because he doesn’t seem to know his own fitness. He runs an IDist-wannabe marathon for what amounts to a 100m dash!
This is the reason that evidential apologetics is wasted on the rebel. No amount of evidence will convince you of something you don’t want to beleive in
On the other hand It would be neat if ET existed so no evidence is necessary for that particular leap of faith.
Such is the life of the “skeptic”
peace
Pro tip:
Getting into battle with numbers divisible by 300 is a good way to be immortalized in verse, but not a good way to pass on your genes.
walto,
Vince comes from the perspective that the evidence strongly supports that we are in a created universe. From that perspective, the creator of life would certainly have the tools to repair it if he chose to.
OMagain,
Is someone claiming that Harry Potter is a historic figure 🙂
The obvious conclusion should be that Vincent has his own doubts, and the whole purpose of his post was to try to convince himself.
I don’t really understand this–unless it’s an acknowledgement that he’s begging the question.
I was under the impression that Erik HAS studied world religions…. (Is there ANYTHING that Gregory can ever manage to get right?)
All the theological BS is easily bypassed by the rather sane words attributed to Jesus. How do yo get to heaven? Follow the rules and help other people, especially the poor.
That advice sounds like it came from a real preacher. The hocus-pocus stuff sounds like a campfire story designed to scare children.
Coincidentally, the “be a nice person” advice makes the pre-afterlife pretty good, also.
Erik wrote: “And what’s so special about resurrection anyway?”
To which I responded: “If it was an historical event, then nothing like it has occurred in human history and it is definitive of so much that has happened on earth in that history.”
To which, he has not directly responded.
Erik’s not a Christian, as he has said several times. Jesus’ resurrection is not something he’s likely that interested in. He & I agree on Vincent’s mashed salad IDism. But I don’t go all philologist-esoteric, fit to twiddle gnosis with KN like Erik does too far after that. Vincent is trying to defend what he thinks is the orthodox Christian teaching on the topic, after all, right Vincent?
I put forward my explanation for the hiddenness of God. For some, that’s enough to dismiss the Gospels. But for those who can accept 2 Thess 2:11-12, consider this.
If hypothetically speaking, the apostles were real. Would they die for a lie that they knew was a lie? They claimed Jesus was real and saw him rise from the dead. Why lie about it and risk dying a terrible death for such a lie? In fact why lie at all unless it will make you some money and give you a good life?
So let us suppose hypothetically they were martyred and claimed they saw Jesus rise from the dead:
Now one might question the authenticity of any verse in the Bible, but even then, the idea is well stated. If the Apostle were real and they were martyred, then why do so for a lie that you know is a lie. Maybe that explanation works for a solitary loon, but a collection of them?
My point is, if the Apostles were real, then resurrection account seems credible to me. So then we can now work our way back, were the apostle real and were they martyred?
If there is a chain of testimony from the Apostles to the Church fathers to the time of Constantine, then there is a rational chain of custody of the Gospel accounts.
I should point out, when I played black jack, I won only about 42.5% of the hands. That means it was formally unlikely for me to win a hand, but because of the overweighted payoffs for win, I was willing to bet on unlikely propositions, and in the end I was net winner. Such is even more true for skilled video poker players optimizing their holding decisions for the improbable royal flush (1 out of some 40,388).
There is no long term payoff for betting on Charles Darwin. His horse is guaranteed to lose the race to eternity. For those reasons I’d rather wager my soul on Jesus than Darwin or Dawkins or human science that will eventually die when the universe dies, if not sooner.
walto,
He is begging the question if there is not an evidentiary support of a created universe. He would claim that the existence of life itself is one of the pieces of evidence that supports his perspective.
Here is one of the papers that supports his perspective:
stcordova,
Again with the Pascal’s Wager. Please explain why this is not a case of false dichotomy.
Unless you want to do science.
Which clearly is of no interest to you or most of your ilk.
Glen Davidson
Except you’ll waste your life in the here and now worrying about fantasies that probably won’t come true, rather than fully living the one life you can be certain you have to live.
You bullshitters like to pretend this bet is so simple, that one can just start believing and then go on living your life as if nothing has changed, you’ve now just got this one single extra belief on board. That’s not how it is. Think of the countless hours of their precious short lives people waste in prayer and worrying about whether they’re correctly following God’s plan for them.
It is a very common thing to hear from former fundamentalist christians, who became atheists, how liberating it was when they finally let go of their beliefs, and how sad it makes them to think about how much of their life they wasted being shackled to the idea that they had to live their lives as if it had all been planned for them and nothing they did could ever manage to “pay” for their inherent shortcomings. Set up to fail and be constantly sorry for it.
It doesn’t even make you happy when it really comes down to it. You can’t just believe and be content in your faith. No, you have to have it forced down everyone else’s throat too.
Thanks but no thanks. You can waste your life sweating and dreaming about whether you’re sufficiently down on your knees and satisfying the Big Guy, but keep it to yourself, don’t try to have it taught to mine or anyone else’s children.
It’s a little known fact, but due to the Mysterious Ways thing, not-believing-in-God has a higher payout than believing. I, for one, am not prepared to take the risk that I’ll be high-fiving Pascal ‘down there’. It’s a dozy system I know, but you try telling Him that.
Tell that to the lady who was blind as a young girl that was healed in the name of Jesus by Astronaut Charles Duke who became a Christian after he returned from walking on the moon. The account is here:
There are other accounts. But you don’t believe in miracles. Even if you happened upon one, it seems you’ll find a way to disbelieve it.
So you’ll waste your life on something that will be certainly gone after you die. You won’t even be around to remember the good times if you are right. If you’re wrong however, you’ll have wasted your soul.
Something to consider. Dawkins puts himself at 6.9 on the atheist scale with 7.0 as highest possible level of disbelief. That’s a 1.43% chance of being wrong. Let’s round it to a 1% chance the Christian God is real and that you could go to eternal damnation. Do you like that expected value?
Look at the design of the world and it’s cruelty. As Darwin said:
If nature is intelligently designed, nature is a powerful testimony of the cruelty God can inflict on those who reject the resurrected savior. Jesus explicitly talks about the worm (or possibly larvae) that never die in hell. Reminds me of the creature Darwin could not comprehend:
Of course, according to Dawkins you have a 99% chance of being right and only a 1% chance of being wrong. Although given the potential downside, wouldn’t it be wise to consider a little insurance?
And I should point something out. Atheists pride themselves on being ethical. Many of them are, imho. So what’s the cost to you? You’ll be pretty much as good and ethical a guy before as you would be after a conversion to Christianity. So you what is there to waste except maybe spending some more time in church and reading a Bible that is hard to understand and usually quite boring.
ROFL. You’re right, I don’t believe that. You people are the most supremely gullible fools imaginable.
You can’t waste your life ACTUALLY LIVING IT. That’s what not wasting your life actually means.
Neither will you, so stop wasting it on this shit. Grow up.
No, I won’t. According to your infantile fable, I’ll still go on living after I die.
You’re not understanding what Dawkins means. It’s not atheism vs [some particular brand of christanity]. It’s atheism vs [all possible religious beliefs with all possible afterlives].
There isn’t a 1% chance the Christian God is real. I’m a 9.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 that christianity is false. At least.
There might be other Gods, maybe a form of deism, my certainty about that would be lower. But deism doesn’t entail that I have to believe. Nor does it entail an afterlife. So I’d still be wasting my life worrying about how to live my life if I became a christian, and deism turned out to be true.
But christianity, and particularly the outrageously intellectually impoverished form of it believed by young earth creationists, is so fatously wrong it can’t be believed by a thinking person.
And we haven’t even gotten around to considering the literally millions of other possible beliefs. Maybe I should be spending my take worrying about how best to decapitate you with a large Axe and give your skull to the blood God Khorne to put on his throne. This has to me about the same level of plausibility as the YEC christian fable where I have to fellate the son of God 24/7 to avoid hurting his all too human and pathetic ego.
Everything about that shit is so laughably the product of the fevered halluscinations of mere men. Why would an omnipotent, omniscient being have an ego that could be hurt by whatever takes place in the fatty lump of flesh of some completely insignificant bag of mostly water on some obscure spheroid spinning away into oblivion in the void?
How can you believe this? What the hell is wrong with you?
Telos.
Yes, true. All the more reason to not believe it was made by an omnibenevolent being.
That doesn’t make any sense. Nature didn’t “reject the resurrected savior”.
For fucks sake, nonsensical shit like that is exactly why I say it can’t be believed by a thinking person. You’re just brainlessly regurgitating this fatuous crap without a thought in your head.
It’s sad to see, particular given how in so many other ways it is obvious you’re actually an intelligent man Sal. Stop wasting your fucking life with this nonsense. You know it’s bullshit somewhere in there.
The hellishness of hell on your particular brand of christian theism does not move the needle around to where belief becomes rationally plausible.
Neither can I.
If theres a divine being that being is probably completely indifferent to life. In the same way that I’m indifferent to the lives of bacteria where I step on the ground. If there’s a God, it probably doesn’t care about any of us. So there’s probably no afterlife anyway.
A little insurance?
Sure, take your pick from this miniscule and far from exhaustive fraction of beliefs: (And remember to feel “insured” afterwards).
So, almost 10% chance that it’s false. I assume it’s percentage, like the 1% was.
I think it’s greater than that.
Glen Davidson
haha, yeah I meant 99.9999…and so on of course. I can’t even be bothered editing it.
Well, it’s going to be especially busy from now on, keeping to every damned religion known to man.
It’s the only way to be sure. OK, slightly sure.
Glen Davidson
Sal prides himself on his gambling acumen, yet he can’t see the obvious flaws in Pascal’s wager. Go figure.
Also, he seems not quite able to figure the odds of the evolutionary patterns we see in morphology, genomes, etc., along with the evolutionary progression seen in the fossil record, having appeared by chance, whim, or even by design, rather than via evolutionary processes.
But that would require understanding the hated theory. Something he’s avoided.
Glen Davidson
That’s where Sal explicitly reveals that he is unable to imagine anything other than Pascal’s false dichotomy. Either the Christian god (his personal version of it, at that) is real, or there is no god at all. I don’t think he even notices that he’s doing it.
I also wonder why Sal picks the god who’s a monster that tortures most of the dead forever just because they didn’t swear allegiance to him. I suppose if you have to pick one god, its wise to pick the one who offers the worst penalties for failing to follow him. But has his search been thorough enough?
It does have the benefit of torturing all of those who laughed at Sal for eternity, as is their due.
Seriously, it tends not to be mentioned much, for political and appearance reasons, but it’s the fond desire of a lot of them, showing up at UD again and again.
Glen Davidson
The following is what passes for philosophy in Christian circles. Peter van Inwagen puts these words into the mouth of his character Theist, who is defending God against Atheist and the problem of evil:
LoL. “Our current knowledge of human evolution, in fact, presents us with no particular reason to believe this story is false,” says Theist.
I’m going with
(Just to check if Erik loses his shit over this too)
MakeShitUpAsYouGoAlongism saves!
Rumraket,
Where do you think VJT went astray in his calculations?
In making up the numbers for the “odds” of unknowable chances.
Glen Davidson
No amount of BS “evidence” will convince us, true. It needs to be specific as to cause and effect, and you lack anything of the kind.
You could try for a bit of honesty. Aliens are a possibility (and only a possibility) because evolution is a fact. God is not.
Unlike the blithering, who just gawp at any bit of flim-flam.
Glen Davidson
In the fact that he committed a false dichotomy. Being 99.9% sure there is no God, isn’t the corollary of being 0.001% sure that christianity is true, because there are many other religions with god-concepts.
Even if you managed to change the numbers so Dawkins was 99.9% sure there is a God, you’ve still got all your work ahead of you. You now have to show that, of all the tens of thousands of god-concepts and religions believed by humans over the millenia, Christianity is the most likely.
I’m “virtually certain” that Christianity is false. I’m less certain there isn’t some sort of God, but if there is, it’s an outright unbelievable proposition to me that it would have the properties of the Christian god and have interfered in human history in the ways depicted in all the different interpretations of christian scriptures. It all reeks of complete bullshit made up by sexually frustrated men with iron/bronze-age imaginations.
If there’s a god, what a fatously self-serving idea that such an entity would care the slightest fuck about your insignificant existence. Or the smell of burned goat-flesh. Or where you stick your dick. Or what day of the week you work. Or a million other arbitrary and nonsensical concerns of so obviously human male individuals.
But VJT’s “calculations” were specifically about claims made regarding the Christian God.
Glen Davidson
keiths,
Fwiw, I met van Inwagen before he’d hitched his wagon to Plantinga’s star and got famous. Years later I sent something to him to read (on his free will defense), and he replied that he couldn’t be bothered.
“I’m “virtually certain” that Christianity is false. I’m less certain there isn’t some sort of God, but if there is, it’s an outright unbelievable proposition to me that it would have the properties of the Christian god and have interfered in human history in the ways depicted in all the different interpretations of christian scriptures. It all reeks of complete bullshit made up by sexually frustrated men with iron/bronze-age imaginations.
If there’s a god, what a fatously self-serving idea that such an entity would care the slightest fuck about your insignificant existence. Or the smell of burned goat-flesh. Or where you stick your dick. Or what day of the week you work. Or a million other arbitrary and nonsensical concerns of so obviously human male individuals.”
The bible is an early Science Fiction novel, written by committee, incoherent when it’s not simply self-contradictory, centering around a powerful invisible space monster and the primitive humans he torments before vanishing utterly.
But look how self-satisfied it has made guys like Gregory!
You’ve been having sex with BBQ’d goats on Wednesdays again haven’t you.
Is there more to life?
Not much more, unless you let the goats cool down first.
Soulless atheists. Gregory uses live goats.