Eliezer Yudkowsky, a skeptical blogger, addresses the question of whether religion is falsifiable in Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable:
The earliest account I know of a scientific experiment is, ironically, the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal.
The people of Israel are wavering between Jehovah and Baal, so Elijah announces that he will conduct an experiment to settle it – quite a novel concept in those days! The priests of Baal will place their bull on an altar, and Elijah will place Jehovah’s bull on an altar, but neither will be allowed to start the fire; whichever God is real will call down fire on His sacrifice. The priests of Baal serve as control group for Elijah – the same wooden fuel, the same bull, and the same priests making invocations, but to a false god. Then Elijah pours water on his altar… to signify deliberate acceptance of the burden of proof, like needing a 0.05 significance level. The fire comes down on Elijah’s altar, which is the experimental observation. The watching people of Israel shout “The Lord is God!” – peer review.
And then the people haul the 450 priests of Baal down to the river Kishon and slit their throats. This is stern, but necessary. You must firmly discard the falsified hypothesis, and do so swiftly, before it can generate excuses to protect itself. If the priests of Baal are allowed to survive, they will start babbling about how religion is a separate magisterium which can be neither proven nor disproven.
The story of Elijah and the priests of Baal presents a good framework for our discussion of what would falsify the resurrection, and consequently, Christianity. (Although, needless to say, I reached a different conclusion from Yudkowsky about whether Christianity has been falsified. He relied on his interpretation of tangential issues in the Old Testament--not on the resurrection.) Of course if something directly contradicts the claim that Jesus was raised from the dead, then the resurrection would be falsified. However, evidence that actually disproves a supernatural event is not easy to come by.
For example, this website addresses the claim of Joseph Smith that the angel Moroni appeared to him at night when he was a teenager. The author gives a photo of the Smith residence and says that his five brothers would have slept in the same small room, three to a bed, but none of them woke up and noticed the magnificent visitation or even their brother having a conversation (and a powerful spiritual experience) all night. This seems to at least falsify the idea that the angel was present in the room, as opposed to just in Smith's mind. It is consistent with a hallucination. However, it is also consistent with the event in Matthew 2:13, where an angel appears to Joseph, the father of Jesus, in a dream. So the visitation to Smith has not been disproven, but it is consistent with either a normal dream or a hallucination. This means that absent more compelling evidence for Smith's claims, we would be wise to exercise healthy skepticism. How do we then approach the question of falsification of the resurrection? This is where Yudkowsky's ingenious interpretation of Elijah and the priests of Baal is helpful. Just like God, through Elijah, raised the burden of proof by pouring water onto the wood on the altar and into the trench, it appears that God has raised the burden of proof for the resurrection by leaving no plausible naturalistic explanation for the evidence.
Since the death of Jesus, skeptics have tried to explain away the resurrection--starting with the claim that the disciples stole the body. Since then, they have put forth the swoon theory, the twin theory, the wrong tomb theory, conspiracy theories, and the hallucination theory, among others. All have major flaws and most have been discarded. Some skeptics, like David Hume and Bart Ehrman, have attempted to stay above the fray and simply dismiss the evidence by saying, essentially, that the supernatural is always the least likely. But this approach has been refuted using Bayes' Theorem. To say that the supernatural is the least likely, regardless of the evidence, is mathematically fallacious, as non-theistic philosopher of physics John Earman demonstrates in Hume's Abject Failure.
In 1 Kings 18:20-29, the priests of Baal frantically called on the name of Baal all day long without response, and Elijah began to taunt them: "Shout louder! Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened." They shouted louder, leaping around the altar and slashing themselves with swords--to no avail.
This brings to mind the efforts to explain away the resurrection, in the context of Psalm 2:1-4. "Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD and against his Anointed One. 'Let us break their chains,' they say, 'and throw off their fetters.' The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them."
In 1 Kings 18:33-39, Elijah prepared his sacrifice, asking God to reveal to the people that He is the God of Israel and that Elijah was His servant. Fire from heaven fell down on the altar and consumed the offering, the wood, the stones, the dust, and the water in the trench. God accepted Elijah's sacrifice.
Likewise, God accepted the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins and proved it by raising Him from the dead. The resurrection confirmed all the teachings of Jesus as being from God, including His claim to deity, and through it, God fulfilled the repeated prophecy of His Son that He would be delivered into the hands of sinners to die and be raised on the third day (Matthew 16:21, Matthew 17:22-23, Matthew 20:18-19, Mark 8:31, Mark 9:31, Mark 10:34, Luke 9:22, Luke 18:31-33, Luke 24:7).
As Paul said to the men of Athens: "God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead" (Acts 17:30-31).
219 comments:
1 – 200 of 219 Newer› Newest»I apologize for not focusing on your main point of the post, but Elijah and the priests of Baal was how I was going to respond to how I am very certain the Christian god does not exist.
It is God's silence that makes me so certain. You can challenge skeptics to find a better explanation to the evidence that supports the resurrection that you would accept. But nothing changes the fact that God is silent today.
And Elijah's own words that mocked the priests of Baal can be used against God today. I also like 1 Kings 18:29 "When midday was past, they raved until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice; but there was no voice, no one answered, and no one paid attention."
But I also like that it describes the magic trick performed by Elijah. It isn't true that the priests of Baal serve as a control group. There is one difference, the water. And the water doesn't raise the burden of proof because it is clear the water is a flammable liquid. That is why the fire consumes the "water".
That is why I don't believe in your god. You may feel confident that you can show the resurrection really happened (or probably happened) two millenniums ago, but what can you or anyone show today?
Since the death of Jesus, skeptics have tried to explain away the resurrection--starting with the claim that the disciples stole the body. Since then, they have put forth the swoon theory, the twin theory, the wrong tomb theory, conspiracy theories, and the hallucination theory, among others.
You guys are the ones making the positive claim that the bible is both true and accurate but no Christian has ever been able to show that that is the case.
A. John E. Remsburg, in his book, The Christ, states that there were many historians living in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus yet none of them record:
1. Herod's killing of the Innocents,
2. Jesus performing any miracles,
3. The trial of Jesus, or
4. The Crucifixion of Jesus.
In fact, while they do record the various movers and shakers of the time, none ever record Jesus being one of them (and this was well before it became "dangerous" to be known as one of his followers). You'd think that someone who witnessed or heard of either the feeding of the 5,000 or that he rose from the dead would have recorded something like that. There are no documents from the time of Jesus that records anything about him. According to Remsburg, the first mention of Jesus in non-biblical documents doesn't occur until the middle of the second century.
B. Christians disagree regarding the role of God and the bible. Some say that God had nothing to do with writing it, others say He inspired but didn't actually write it while others say He wrote each and every word.
Some skeptics, like David Hume and Bart Ehrman, have attempted to stay above the fray and simply dismiss the evidence by saying, essentially, that the supernatural is always the least likely.
Isn't this what you do with the supernatural claims of other religions? You don't carefully examine the evidence for them and rule them out. You basically say that any miracle outside of Christianity is false while any and all miracles are on the face of them true.
In the book, The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave, Michael Martin, Ph.D, also uses Bayes Theorem to disprove the resurrection. You are someone who is more than ready to dismiss evidence contrary to what you believe so why should we assume that you are applying Bayes Theorem correctly and not him?
C. These gospel stories were passed around for about 30 years before anyone wrote them down. Factor in the idea that the average lifespan of someone then was about 45 years and that the Gospels were written in Greek and not Aramaic then the likely conclusion is that the authors were gentiles who had never met Jesus or who were witness to any of the events in his life.
How can any Christian demonstrate that stories that were written down were accurately and exactly told and retold for 30 years or so without any changes? Scribes and writers who copied the scriptures made both intentional and unintentional changes to the documents - is it so unreasonable that those who were retelling the stories over and over again for 30 years or so didn't make any changes, intentional or not, to the stories as they were being told?
The earliest document we have for the bible comes from the middle of the second century and it is not even a complete gospel. Even ignoring the accidental changes (spelling mistakes, etc) that occurred during copying, it is well-known that subsequent scribes added to the gospels (the last 12 verses or so for Mark and the adulterous woman in John, just to name a few examples). If subsequent writers were willing to alter and append their writings to the gospels then how can the documents ever be considered trust-worthy?
In your post you ask, "What could falsify Christianity?" and the answer you give is for someone to show that the resurrection is false but this doesn't really answer the question. To a true believer, a faithful follower what could falsify the resurrection?
The answer is - nothing thus Christianity to an ardent follower is unfalsifiable.
In science, for example, to show that evolution is falsifiable one just has to show a rabbit in the Precambrian period. If found, scientists may initially be upset but they would accept the fact that evolution is no longer viable and they'll start working on re-examining the data and will eventually come up with a new theory that explains all the data including the rabbit.
All religion, on the other hand, is subjective and a matter of faith. Most religions consider the ability to believe even in the face of no evidence to be both a virtue and a sign of the true believer. If faced with facts to the contrary they will discard the facts in preference to their faith. This, I believe, is part of the mission statement for the Discover Institute where they state that any evidence has to be evaluated with the scriptures and if found to violate what the scriptures say, it has to be discarded.
Faithful followers have their entire lives wrapped up in their religion. They believe that their god will grant them eternal life and allow them to live in paradise/heaven for all eternity if they follow him. In short, they basically get to cheat death and live forever even though their body dies. They get to be reunited with loved ones who have preceded them. These are very powerful and persuasive reasons for believing in their religion - powerful enough for them to lose objectivity and ignore anything that could indicate that they have a false belief. Even though they may talk of intellectualism and objectivity they won't let go no matter what because to them the alternative is unacceptable. No heaven, no eternal life.
Lowell:
God is not silent at all. He is always working in my life and leading me.
What you may be saying is that in your subjective experience God seems silent, but if Jesus was raised from the dead, then He does objectively exist. In getting at the truth, we have to look at the objective evidence.
If you're saying that miracles rarely happen, then that's true, but they do happen. It is still true that "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much" (James 5:16, KJV). "Righteous" does not mean "good" because the Bible teaches that we have no righteousness apart from Christ. So a righteous person is someone who has the righteousness of Christ through His Spirit, and prayer is the way in which the power of God works through and in us.
Someone like Elijah was filled with the Holy Spirit, which is why he had the power to do great miracles. Throughout the history of the Jews, that is how God confirmed that He had sent a prophet, which is why Jesus kept telling the Pharisees to believe because of the signs and wonders.
However, even though you're not going to see many miracles today, Christians do regularly experience answer to their prayers and guidance from God. God is not silent in my life.
Anette,
God is silent to everyone that is not a believer, but that is not how the Bible depicts God or miracles. Miracles are much more than answered prayer and guidance. Miracles in the Bible are performed before non-believers who would then become believers.
Will God show Himself today as He allegedly did with Elijah and the priests of Baal? Today's believers have set such a low bar for their gods. Elijah would mock your god today just as he mocked Baal. At least in Elijah's time, Elijah had to perform a magic trick.
Just like God, through Elijah, raised the burden of proof by pouring water onto the wood on the altar and into the trench, it appears that God has raised the burden of proof for the resurrection by leaving no plausible naturalistic explanation for the evidence.
God hasn't raised the burden of proof in either event. Regarding the resurrection, there is simply not enough information to know what exactly happened. There may very well be a perfectly good explanation as to why the tomb is empty, but with the information available the most the skeptic can do is speculate.
Did God conveniently leave out many details? He is God, couldn't He inspire non-believers to corroborate more of the details in the Bible. Or is His power only limited to believers?
Elijah and the priests of Baal is different, however. In this contest, Elijah sets all the rules. Then, he makes it appear to the priests of Baal that all they will do is have their gods light the wood and bull. Whichever god creates the fire, has proven himself to be a true god.
Elijah has the priests of Baal go first. And they work within the rules Elijah set, and their god is unable to light the wood. Elijah goes second and changes things up. He builds an alter out of twelve stones. What is going on with that alter? I don't know, but there is definitely the opportunity to do something there.
Then he pours ordinary water on the wood. Well, like a true magician, he has his assistants pour the water. I mean, how could there be hanky-panky? "Volunteers" from the audience fetched and poured the water. And there was a lot of "water".
I am not a magician. I do not know exactly how he performed the trick, but the clue is that the fire "licked up the water". The water is flammable. It is not water.
You will point out that the fire fell down from heaven. But how exactly did the fire fall down from heaven. I have always pictured a pillar of fire, but how high was the pillar? A mile high? Thirty feet? What? Or was it a ball of fire zooming down to the alter? That detail is not recorded.
Is the reason observers believed the fire came down from the sky is because the magician had made them believe it would happen that way?
If you were to explain a big trick performed by David Copperfield, would you describe what actually happened or what the magician made you believe happened? And Copperfield doesn't bill himself as anything other than an illusionist. Elijah claimed to be something more.
it appears that God has raised the burden of proof for the resurrection by leaving no plausible naturalistic explanation for the evidence.
If there was such evidence would you change your mind about Christianity or would you continue to believe it anyway?
Darkknight56:
In science, for example, to show that evolution is falsifiable one just has to show a rabbit in the Precambrian period. If found, scientists may initially be upset but they would accept the fact that evolution is no longer viable and they'll start working on re-examining the data and will eventually come up with a new theory that explains all the data including the rabbit.
Okay, so how do you falsify the theory of natural selection? You are simply saying that common ancestry is falsified if scientists find a rabbit in the Precambrian period. Natural selection is not falsifiable since no scientific study can span the amount of time needed to falsify it. It is just considered the best explanation for the evidence.
In your post you ask, "What could falsify Christianity?" and the answer you give is for someone to show that the resurrection is false but this doesn't really answer the question. To a true believer, a faithful follower what could falsify the resurrection?
If other explanations were plausible, like hallucinations, conspiracy, deceit, etc., then they would be the best explanation and therefore the resurrection would, for all practical purposes, be falsified to the fair inquirer. Since Joseph Smith's experience is consistent with a hallucination, that is the best explanation. If the evidence for Christianity were that weak, it would give me serious pause and I would rethink my beliefs. (I say "rethink my beliefs" because I have many more reasons to believe that Christianity is true than the evidence for the resurrection.)
Isn't this what you do with the supernatural claims of other religions? You don't carefully examine the evidence for them and rule them out. You basically say that any miracle outside of Christianity is false while any and all miracles are on the face of them true.
How can seriously say that and claim to have read what I've been trying to say for quite some time now? I've addressed this issue very carefully.
In the book, The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave, Michael Martin, Ph.D, also uses Bayes Theorem to disprove the resurrection. You are someone who is more than ready to dismiss evidence contrary to what you believe so why should we assume that you are applying Bayes Theorem correctly and not him?
Michael Martin is simply replying to Richard Swinburne's use of Bayes' Theorem to prove that, based on the evidence, there is a 97% chance that the resurrection happened. I have never used Bayes' Theorem in the way that it is used by Swinburne or Tim and Lydia McGrew. I used it in the way it's used by John Earman and William Lane Craig--to establish that David Hume's and Bart Ehrman's logic is fallacious.
And even so, Martin's response to Swinburne is far too cursory to be effective. He spends one chapter in a book targeted to a popular audience and squishes into it the issue of whether God exists. The McGrews, on the other hand, wrote a detailed peer-reviewed article where they deliberately left out the arguments for and against God's existence (which goes to prior probability) because it's such a huge subject.
But suffice it to say that Martin does not at all address John Earman's and William Lane Craig's argument, which is the one I'm using. But Earman's argument brings us right back to the fact that the skeptic has to "descend into the trenches" and deal with the specific evidence for the resurrection.
This, I believe, is part of the mission statement for the Discover Institute where they state that any evidence has to be evaluated with the scriptures and if found to violate what the scriptures say, it has to be discarded.
Assuming that this is true of the Discover Institute, can you point to something I've said that indicates that I share that philosophy? If you can't, why bring it up?
All religion, on the other hand, is subjective and a matter of faith.
With all due respect, if you are already certain of this, what is the point of our discussions?
Why couldn't the Angel Moroni conceal himself from Joseph Smith's brothers? Are supernatural beings subject to the same limitations that were are?
Lowell:
Regarding the resurrection, there is simply not enough information to know what exactly happened. There may very well be a perfectly good explanation as to why the tomb is empty, but with the information available the most the skeptic can do is speculate.
All the skeptic has to do is speculate about plausible explanations--he doesn't have to prove anything. In our prior discussion about the story of the guards, you said that you could prove that the story was false, so all I had to do was demonstrate that you have not proven that it was false. I did that by giving a plausible defense that took into account the facts in the story and normal human motivations. I didn't have to prove that it actually happened that way.
Since we have the burden of proof with respect to the resurrection, the skeptic only has to come up with plausible naturalistic explanations that take into account the facts and normal human motivations. But for two thousand years, they have not been able to do that. And the explanations only need to be hypothetical--skeptics don't have to prove anything. But they have to explain the empty tomb, the claims of postmortem appearances, and the origin of the Easter faith in a way that makes sense and takes into account the facts.
As far as the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal, I think your best explanation as a skeptic is just to say that it never happened. That seems easier than attempting to demonstrate that Elijah used a flammable liquid. I have never even attempted to prove that it happened--I simply accept it on faith because I have reason to believe that the Bible is the word of God.
The resurrection, on the other hand, is supported by solid historical evidence, and once we accept it as a historical fact, as I do, it is not much of a stretch to accept on faith that the rest of the Bible is the word of God. So I have no reason to doubt the story of Elijah, but Eliezer Yudkowsky obviously did not operate under the assumption that it was historical. He simply used it as an illustration. (And so did I, for that matter.)
Part of the whole resurrection idea is that of the empty tomb. Most all Christians think that the empty tomb has no naturalistic, plausible, explanation, that it must be empty because Jesus rose from the dead, therefore the resurrection must be true.
I have a friend who is Jewish (no, this time it is really true; we've been friends for over 30 years) and she works at a local (to her as she lives in a different state than me) temple. If she is willing, what I'm going to do is ask her to ask her rabbi if the idea that a member of the Sanhedrin would store the body of a criminal just prior to the Passover Sabbath and then remove it to a pauper or criminal grave when Passover ends is a plausible scenario or not.
I personally don't know any rabbis and if I did I wouldn't want you to think that I only phrased the question just to get a yes answer, should one come up.
At least we'd have then a perfectly natural and plausible explanation for the empty tomb.
Isn't it just your anti-Mormon bias that causes you to discount Joseph Smith's story? After all, you don't have any problem with the idea that Paul's companions didn't see and/or hear the exact same thing that Paul saw on the road to Damascus, do you?
Vinny:
Why couldn't the Angel Moroni conceal himself from Joseph Smith's brothers? Are supernatural beings subject to the same limitations that were are?
Sure, he could have concealed himself from Joseph Smith's brothers, but since a hallucination and a normal dream would be a perfectly good explanation that fits the facts, it is reasonable to be skeptical about this alleged visit from an angel.
After all, you don't have any problem with the idea that Paul's companions didn't see and/or hear the exact same thing that Paul saw on the road to Damascus, do you?
There's no reason to think they didn't hear the exact same thing. They stood speechless, because they heard the voice, but saw nothing. Joseph's brothers slept through the whole episode.
Also, many others claimed to have seen Jesus postmortem.
That reminds me that you still have not addressed my response to the hallucination theory.
I am not sure which hallucination comment you are referring to. If you will point me to it, I will be happy to respond.
As I pointed out, others claimed to have witnessed appearances of the Angel Moroni, too.
Are you suggesting that supernatural beings are capable of concealing their appearance, but not their voices? Is that why we can believe Acts 9, but not Smith's story?
You have claimed that it is an anti-supernatural presupposition that causes me to reject the evidence for the empty tomb. If I must allow for the possibility of supernatural activity, what basis would I have for rejecting Smith's story?
Darkknight56:
I have a friend who is Jewish (no, this time it is really true; we've been friends for over 30 years) and she works at a local (to her as she lives in a different state than me) temple. If she is willing, what I'm going to do is ask her to ask her rabbi if the idea that a member of the Sanhedrin would store the body of a criminal just prior to the Passover Sabbath and then remove it to a pauper or criminal grave when Passover ends is a plausible scenario or not.
Some have also argued that the moving of a body once buried the way Jesus’ body was would have
been contrary to rabbinic tradition (Talmud, Semahot IV.7, XIII.6, XIII.7).
"Neither a corpse nor the bones of a corpse may be transferred from a wretched place to an honored place, nor, needless to say, from an honored place to a wretched place; but if to the family tomb, even from an honored place to a wretched place, it is permitted, for by this he is honored." [Semahot XIII.7]
He also shows that Sabbath Eve twilight burials are common in rabbinic literature:
"In [the case of] a town which is near a graveyard [and the dead] was brought [to burial] at twilight. (note 20)" [Soncino Notes:" (note 20). Of the Sabbath eve. In such a case the ceremonial would be performed on the Sabbath. Though the night forms, for general purposes, the beginning of the following day, in respect of the mourning on the first day of the death an exception is made, and the night is held to follow the previous day. Sabbath eve can accordingly be regarded for the purpose as Friday. viz., the first day of the burial." (B. Baba Bathra 100b)]"
Has William Lane Craig ever proven the existence of God without using the bible?
Vinny:
I am not sure which hallucination comment you are referring to. If you will point me to it, I will be happy to respond.
I'm talking about my post on the appearances of Jesus and the hallucination theory.
As I pointed out, others claimed to have witnessed appearances of the Angel Moroni, too.
Please give me evidence that this actually happened and that some of these individuals were skeptics or hostile to Joseph Smith. I know that you have repeatedly stressed the fact that we don't know with 100% certainty that Paul and James converted at the time when Jesus appeared to them, but I would settle for equally compelling evidence. (And of course you need something equivalent to 1 Cor. 15:3-7, which has led just about all scholars, including skeptical ones, to conclude that the disciples also at least believed they saw Jesus.)
Are you suggesting that supernatural beings are capable of concealing their appearance, but not their voices? Is that why we can believe Acts 9, but not Smith's story?
No, I have already conceded that the angel Moroni could conceal himself from the brothers, but the difference is that Saul had witnesses and Smith did not. Also, as I said, many others claimed to have seen Jesus. (And Paul was originally hostile to Christianity.)
You have claimed that it is an anti-supernatural presupposition that causes me to reject the evidence for the empty tomb.
Have I said that an anti-supernatural presupposition causes you to reject evidence for the empty tomb? I don't remember saying that. What was the context?
Do you have an anti-supernatural presupposition? If you don't know the answer to that question, you can watch this YouTube video of an atheist who is giving a mathematical illustration of an anti-supernatural presupposition.
He is responding to William Lane Craig's use of Bayes' Theorem in the debate with Bart Ehrman. And the way he tries to get around Craig's argument is to say that if you start out by setting the prior probability of the resurrection (before you even look at the evidence) at zero, then the posterior probability remains zero after considering all the evidence.
Translation: If you start out with a completely closed mind before you even look at the evidence, your mind will remain closed after you look at the evidence. This gentleman was kind enough to demonstrate an anti-supernatural presupposition for us mathematically.
What's more, he claims throughout the video that for "the average infidel," the prior probability is zero. That is, nothing would convince the "average infidel" that the resurrection took place.
So my question is: Would you say that's true of the average infidel, and do you consider yourself an average infidel?
If I must allow for the possibility of supernatural activity, what basis would I have for rejecting Smith's story?
You reject it if there are plausible naturalistic explanations for the evidence.
Darkknight56:
Has William Lane Craig ever proven the existence of God without using the bible?
He never uses the Bible to prove the existence of God.
Regarding the YouTube video, the guy gets Craig's arguments for the resurrection wrong in numerous ways, but suffice it to say that Craig is not trying to mathematically prove that the resurrection took place. He is simply refuting David Hume's and Bart Ehrman's argument that the supernatural is always the least likely.
He is responding to William Lane Craig's use of Bayes' Theorem in the debate with Bart Ehrman. And the way he tries to get around Craig's argument is to say that if you start out by setting the prior probability of the resurrection (before you even look at the evidence) at zero, then the posterior probability remains zero after considering all the evidence.
Translation: If you start out with a completely closed mind before you even look at the evidence, your mind will remain closed after you look at the evidence.
This is not true. Having zero evidence for something is not the same has having a closed mind towards it.
My friend talked to a couple of the rabbis she works with and they said that Joseph's storing of the body is plausible mainly considering the fact that it was Passover. It was the biggest time of the year for them and getting Jesus' body down and out to one of the graves outside of the city may not have been possible as everyone was getting ready to celebrate passover.
However, seeing as how Jesus was convicted as a blasphemer he would want him out of the family tomb and into the criminal grave as soon as possible.
Having a naturalist, plausible, explanation for the empty tomb means that there is no supernatural explanation for it. Thus no resurrection and no after death appearances to the disciples or Paul.
He never uses the Bible to prove the existence of God.
Okay, what evidence does he use to prove the existence of God?
Darkknight56:
This is not true. Having zero evidence for something is not the same has having a closed mind towards it.
Absolutely true, and that's not what I said. Prior probability means before examining the specific evidence. To set the prior probability at zero is to have a closed mind because regardless of the evidence, the posterior probability will remain zero.
My friend talked to a couple of the rabbis she works with and they said that Joseph's storing of the body is plausible mainly considering the fact that it was Passover. It was the biggest time of the year for them and getting Jesus' body down and out to one of the graves outside of the city may not have been possible as everyone was getting ready to celebrate passover.
What did these rabbis say about the rabbinical tradition I quoted? Why did Joseph not worry about being in violation of Semahot XIII.7? And what did they say about the other specific points I raised? Why did Joseph of Arimathea not worry about becoming unclean for the Passover by handling the body so much and going into a Gentile court to request the body. Supporting evidence would also be greatly appreciated.
You do see why I don't consider what you said evidence, don't you? You're telling me that your friend told you that the rabbis told her that your theory sounds reasonable-- without pointing to rabbinical tradition or even addressing my arguments. If you don't address my arguments, they still stand. Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.
And besides, you've never dealt with the far more difficult evidence for the resurrection--the postmortem appearances. As I've said before, atheist Bible scholar Gerd Ludemann has said, "It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ." If you want my supporting arguments, please go back and read my post on the postmortem appearances. And I would greatly appreciate it if, before you reply, you double-check to see if I've already addressed your objection.
Translation: If you start out with a completely closed mind before you even look at the evidence, your mind will remain closed after you look at the evidence.
But this is like the pot calling the kettle black. On one hand you said that the resurrection, if proven false, would pretty much nullify Christianity but now you also say:
If the evidence for Christianity were that weak, it would give me serious pause and I would rethink my beliefs. (I say "rethink my beliefs" because I have many more reasons to believe that Christianity is true than the evidence for the resurrection.)
So the resurrection isn't that important to your belief as you made it out earlier.
Translated this means that you would believe in God and Christianity no matter was evidence to the contrary you were presented with. That is pretty much the definition of a closed mind. It does show that Christians (and religious people in general) want others to be open-minded to their point of view but they see no reason to be open to other's point of view. In most Christian education I've had being open to other points of view and evidence is considered to be a very bad thing.
What did these rabbis say about the rabbinical tradition I quoted? Why did Joseph not worry about being in violation of Semahot XIII.7? And what did they say about the other specific points I raised? Why did Joseph of Arimathea not worry about becoming unclean for the Passover by handling the body so much and going into a Gentile court to request the body. Supporting evidence would also be greatly appreciated.
I didn't raise the issue of Semahot as I would expect a rabbi to be aware of it. He would have been aware of what it meant to be clean or unclean at that time (33 AD and at Passover). The other reason I didn't mention it was because I didn't want to bias his answer one way or another thus I tried to keep the question as simple as possible and relied on his education, training and knowledge of Jewish history, practices and tradition.
As for Joseph, it is only your contention that he handled the body himself. Seeing that he's a priest it is highly unlikely that he did any kind of tough, physical labor himself. The bible does not say he physically did it himself. It's not unreasonable to think that he would have hired someone, possibly some gentiles, to move it for him on both occasions.
You're telling me that your friend told you that the rabbis told her that your theory sounds reasonable-- without pointing to rabbinical tradition or even addressing my arguments.
First of all, this arrangement is called a double-blind test as I have no control over the outcome of the test. I pass the question and the circumstances on to a Jewish person who, in turn, picks a rabbi of her choice, not mine, to ask. The result is that my bias and influence is minimized or eliminated in the process. She could have asked a liberal rabbi or a conservative one, it wasn't my choice.
If I had asked the Rabbi then you would claim I biased the question in my favor.
If I had let you or a Christian friend ask a rabbi the question then I could likewise claim you biased the answer into your favor.
Under the circumstances the best way was to let someone who is Jewish frame and ask the question of a rabbi of her choosing. Besides, she's Jewish and I'm an atheist and she wants me to believe in a personal God like you do so for her to get an answer that favors me does not benefit her attempts at converting me to a religious point of view.
If I had my way, I'd get a totally disinterested person, that we could both agree on, to form and ask the question but we didn't really have this option.
Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.
Yes it is but asking a rabbi about Jewish rules and traditions is not an appeal to authority no more than asking a biologist a question regarding biology is an appeal to authority. In both cases we are asking a question well within his sphere of knowledge.
An appeal to authority is when I would say something like "My rabbi says that Ford cars are better than Chrysler cars, therefore I'm going to buy only Ford cars." While the rabbi's personal opinion is that he prefers Ford to Chrysler cars, his position as a rabbi has no weight in that discussion.
And besides, you've never dealt with the far more difficult evidence for the resurrection--the postmortem appearances. As I've said before, atheist Bible scholar Gerd Ludemann has said, "It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ."
You just said my reference to a rabbi was an appeal to authority but now you want me to accept what Gerd Ludemann said. If he said he thought blue Easter bunnies existed would you go and start proclaiming the existence of blue Easter bunnies?
I have dealt with the post mortem resurrection - there is no reason to think it even happened. There is no reason to think it was more than a Christian legend that became reality in believer's minds. There is no corroborating, unbiased evidence from a disinterested third party (or preferably parties) that show it happened. If the disposition of the body and the empty tomb can be explained with a possible, reasonable, plausible explanation then I have no reason to assume that supernatural forces are involved. If you want to make the case that the supernatural was involved then you have to show exactly how it is possible and how it was done, preferably in a repeatable, testable and verifiable way. So far the only argument you have provided for it is one from incredulity ("These people would never lie about any such thing as that." And while many of them died for their Christian belief, there is no proof they were ever offered the option of recanting prior to execution. The emperor who made such an offer did it after the apostles would have died of old age. By the way, argument from incredulity is also a logical fallacy.
Please give me evidence that this actually happened and that some of these individuals were skeptics or hostile to Joseph Smith. I know that you have repeatedly stressed the fact that we don't know with 100% certainty that Paul and James converted at the time when Jesus appeared to them, but I would settle for equally compelling evidence. (And of course you need something equivalent to 1 Cor. 15:3-7, which has led just about all scholars, including skeptical ones, to conclude that the disciples also at least believed they saw Jesus.)
You keep moving the goal posts here Anette. I never said that any of the other individuals who saw Moroni were skeptics or hostile towards Joseph Smith. (I don’t know whether they were or not.) I was merely responding to a distinction that you had sought to make between the stories of Moroni’s appearances and the stories of Jesus’ appearances, i.e., “many others claimed to have seen Jesus postmortem.”
According to Wikepedia, one of others who claimed to see Moroni got kicked out of the church for arguing with Joseph Smith. Once he was outside the church, it would have been in his interest to distance himself from the Mormons. Nevertheless, he never recanted. That seems pretty hard to explain if he really didn't see something.
Darkknight56:
So the resurrection isn't that important to your belief as you made it out earlier.
I said that I have many other reasons for believing that Christianity is true. If the evidence for the resurrection had not been as compelling as it is, it would not disprove Christianity. But since it is, you as a skeptic, have to deal with it, something you have not done.
I didn't raise the issue of Semahot as I would expect a rabbi to be aware of it. He would have been aware of what it meant to be clean or unclean at that time (33 AD and at Passover). The other reason I didn't mention it was because I didn't want to bias his answer one way or another thus I tried to keep the question as simple as possible and relied on his education, training and knowledge of Jewish history, practices and tradition.
In other words, you didn't want to risk him giving the answer you didn't want him to give by asking challenging questions?
Are you familiar with cross examination and why it is such an important tool for getting at the truth? A rabbi may well be biased against the resurrection, so the fact that you didn't ask my hard questions means that the opinions of these rabbis shed no further light on the issue.
You just said my reference to a rabbi was an appeal to authority but now you want me to accept what Gerd Ludemann said.
Two points: First, Ludemann is an atheist who is trying to disprove the resurrection. He is making a concession that goes against his bias. A rabbi, on the other hand, has a potential bias against the resurrection, so why should I trust his statement on this issue implicitly?
Second, even so, I did not expect you to simply trust Ludemann. I gave supporting arguments, specifically addressing arguments made by non-theists. You, on the other hand, never raised my arguments in your discussion with your friend.
What you said about the postmortem appearances tells me that you have either not read or not understood what I have said. And since you didn't go back and try to understand my argument before replying, we are going to agree to disagree, my friend. However, I really do appreciate the time that you have spent commenting on my blog.
Vinny:
You keep moving the goal posts here Anette.
I'm not moving the goal post. You've claimed that the reason why I don't believe that Smith really saw an angel is because I have an anti-Mormon bias. So please show me that the evidence is as compelling as the evidence for the postmortem appearances.
According to Wikepedia, one of others who claimed to see Moroni got kicked out of the church for arguing with Joseph Smith. Once he was outside the church, it would have been in his interest to distance himself from the Mormons. Nevertheless, he never recanted. That seems pretty hard to explain if he really didn't see something.
Why should I trust Wikipedia? You'll have to do much better than that.
Anette,
I think it is a good idea to be skeptical about Wikepedia. If I could corroborate the story of Oliver Cowdery in more respectable sources, would you consider the fact that he did not recant his story of seeing Moroni after being kicked out of the Mormon Church compelling evidence of the sincerity of his beliefs? I don’t mind hunting down more reliable sources if it will make a difference, but I suspect that you wouldn’t have any difficulty coming up with a natural explanation for Cowdery’s actions even if Wikepedia accurately reported the story.
You reject it if there are plausible naturalistic explanations for the evidence.
I agree and I would apply the same principle to the appearances of Jesus. The evidence for the postmortem appearances of Jesus consists of ancient documents that are highly problematic. The gospels and Acts were written many years after the fact by unknown authors based on unknown sources. We only have one first person account of an appearance, but Paul gives us no details about his experience. There can be no doubt that early Christians came to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead but it is plausible that the original experiences that gave rise to that belief were no more tangible and no better attested than the appearances of Moroni.
This site makes much of the fact that Cowdery did not recant during a trial when the opposing attorney mocked him for being affiliated with Joseph Smith and making him out to be a fraud. But the text itself reveals reasons why Cowdery would be motivated to stick to his testimony:
"The speaker all the while sneering and pointing his finger in scorn at Cowdery in the hope of making him ridiculous before the court and jury."
If the opposing attorney is trying to make Cowdery look ridiculous before the court and jury, Cowdery's mind is not going to be on his falling out with Smith fifteen years ago, but on the jerk who is humiliating him at the present moment. He wouldn't have wanted to lose in court.
"Finally Oliver Cowdery arose, calm as a summer morning."
This is also key. Everyone knows that the best way to handle an embarrassing situation is to hold our heads high and be "calm as a summer morning."
Also, who is this C. M. Nelson, who is giving such a glowing testimony of Cowdery's behavior? Was he a Mormon?
"In April of 1838, Oliver was excommunicated from the church for various charges brought against him, mostly dealing with dishonesty in financial matters, and spreading false rumors about Joseph Smith."
If Cowdery was dishonest, why should we trust anything he said? This tells me that he would have been willing to perpetrate a fraud.
"He once again gave a detailed testimony and asked to be let back into the church. He didn’t want a leadership position, he just wanted to be in full fellowship in the church again. "
So all along, Cowdery wanted to be let back into the church, so of course he didn't recant.
Note that I am simply assuming for the sake of argument that the website is accurately stating the facts. I just did a two-minute search on the subject and discovered that this is controversial. For example, in his letter to his brother, Cowdery accused Smith of lying and teaching false doctrine. And one source said that many of the witnesses later denied having seen anything.
Vinny:
The evidence for the postmortem appearances of Jesus consists of ancient documents that are highly problematic. The gospels and Acts were written many years after the fact by unknown authors based on unknown sources. We only have one first person account of an appearance, but Paul gives us no details about his experience. There can be no doubt that early Christians came to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead but it is plausible that the original experiences that gave rise to that belief were no more tangible and no better attested than the appearances of Moroni.
I spent maybe fifteen minutes researching and writing the previous comment about Oliver Cowdery, and giving plausible naturalistic explanations based solely on the way Mormons present the facts. On the other hand, brilliant Bible scholars like Bart Ehrman and Gerd Ludemann (and many other German theologians like him) have for hundreds of years tried to come up with alternative explanations for the historical facts supporting the resurrection, without success. Ehrman is an expert on the Bible and a text critic, and the best he can do is say that the supernatural is always the least likely explanation--a statement that mathematically fallacious.
We have already discussed Sherwin-White and his detailed analysis of the book of Acts and the trial of Jesus, so there is no reason to assume that we can't know what really happened. If all the details that we can verify have been proven accurate, why assume that the rest is inaccurate?
Also, 1 Cor. 15:3-7 is an early tradition that tells us what the predecessors of Paul were teaching from the very beginning. Text criticism reveals that Paul is not using his own words but citing a creed or tradition, and he specifically says that he received this information and is passing it on to the church "as of first importance."
According to even the most skeptical scholars, this is information that dates to within a few years of the death of Jesus, and it says: "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born."
So the last verse is first-hand testimony from a former persecutor of the church and the rest is highly reliable secondhand testimony (at least in terms of what they believed to be true). Everything else in the NT fits this testimony.
Those are the facts that even the scholars who are skeptical of the resurrection cannot help but concede. How do you explain them?
If the opposing attorney is trying to make Cowdery look ridiculous before the court and jury, Cowdery's mind is not going to be on his falling out with Smith fifteen years ago, but on the jerk who is humiliating him at the present moment. He wouldn't have wanted to lose in court.
"Finally Oliver Cowdery arose, calm as a summer morning."
This is also key. Everyone knows that the best way to handle an embarrassing situation is to hold our heads high and be "calm as a summer morning."
Remaining calm was a good idea, but an attorney is not required to express his personal religious opinions when representing a client in court. He certainly has no reason to profess doctrines that the judge and jury would find offensive and heretical.
Also, who is this C. M. Nelson, who is giving such a glowing testimony of Cowdery's behavior? Was he a Mormon?
He probably was a Mormon. Of course, all of the early stories about the people who were supposed to have witnessed Jesus’ postmortem appearances come from Christians.
If Cowdery was dishonest, why should we trust anything he said? This tells me that he would have been willing to perpetrate a fraud.
Peter denied Jesus three times. I guess we shouldn’t trust anything he said either. On the other hand, maybe this is one of those embarrassing details that proves the story wasn’t invented.
So all along, Cowdery wanted to be let back into the church, so of course he didn't recant.
How do you explain him wanting to get back into the church if he didn’t really see the Angel Moroni? What other reason could a successful attorney have for wanting to get back into a church that had excommunicated him?
It seems to me that your reasons for being skeptical about the stories Mormons tell about their origins (many of which I share) are not very different from my reasons for being suspicious of the stories that Christians tell.
Anette,
I wonder whether you have read any of Ehrman's books since I think that he has a lot more to say than "the supernatural is always the least likely explanation." Even so, if that statement is fallacious, why would we reject a supernatural explanation "if there are plausible naturalistic explanations for the evidence"? Why should we ever prefer a naturalistic explanation to a supernatural one?
If all the details that we can verify have been proven accurate, why assume that the rest is inaccurate?
I don't assume that the rest is inaccurate. I treat it as unverified until I have a reason to push me towards accepting it or rejecting it.
I’m sure that there are many details in the Oliver Cowdery story that could be verified as well. Should I assume that all of it is accurate?
Vinny:
Remaining calm was a good idea, but an attorney is not required to express his personal religious opinions when representing a client in court. He certainly has no reason to profess doctrines that the judge and jury would find offensive and heretical.
This was not just about his personal religious views, but about "the great fraud he perpetrated upon the American people whereby he gained thousands of dollars." Since there was no really good way to handle the accusation, Cowdery's reaction (if the story is true) is not hard to explain.
He probably was a Mormon. Of course, all of the early stories about the people who were supposed to have witnessed Jesus’ postmortem appearances come from Christians.
True, which is why critical scholars have ways of ferreting out bias. You still have to deal with the facts that even skeptical scholars cannot deny.
Peter denied Jesus three times. I guess we shouldn’t trust anything he said either. On the other hand, maybe this is one of those embarrassing details that proves the story wasn’t invented.
Peter was not dishonest--he was terrified. (Judas was dishonest.) For Peter it was a moment of weakness, not calculated deceit. And you're right, it is an embarrassing detail that proves the story wasn't invented.
How do you explain him wanting to get back into the church if he didn’t really see the Angel Moroni? What other reason could a successful attorney have for wanting to get back into a church that had excommunicated him?
Maybe his best friends and family members were part of the church. Many people are part of a church primarily for the fellowship. There are many other plausible reasons.
Vinny:
I wonder whether you have read any of Ehrman's books since I think that he has a lot more to say than "the supernatural is always the least likely explanation."
As we have discussed, Ehrman has gone both ways on the empty tomb, and to my knowledge his most recent statement is acceptance of its historicity. His focus on discrepancies in the Gospel accounts is a red herring. It has nothing to do with the evidence for the resurrection. If anything, it shows that the events are independently attested.
To my knowledge, he has never attempted an explanation of the historical facts (like the hallucination theory), but correct me if I'm wrong. So that is why I said that "the best he can do is say that the supernatural is always the least likely explanation." But if you think he has a better explanation for the data I would be interested in hearing it.
Even so, if that statement is fallacious, why would we reject a supernatural explanation "if there are plausible naturalistic explanations for the evidence"? Why should we ever prefer a naturalistic explanation to a supernatural one?
Because things normally happen according to natural laws, so a natural explanation should always be preferred unless there are very good reasons for believing that a supernatural event took place.
I don't assume that the rest is inaccurate. I treat it as unverified until I have a reason to push me towards accepting it or rejecting it.
If the parts of the NT that we can verify are historically accurate, there is good reason to extrapolate to the other parts and give it the benefit of the doubt. At the very least in terms of the major events that are multiply attested.
And even if you disagree with that, there's still 1 Cor. 15:3-8.
I’m sure that there are many details in the Oliver Cowdery story that could be verified as well. Should I assume that all of it is accurate?
Cosmological and historical teachings of Joseph Smith have been proven false, so there is no good reason to believe the rest is accurate.
If the parts of the NT that we can verify are historically accurate, there is good reason to extrapolate to the other parts and give it the benefit of the doubt. At the very least in terms of the major events that are multiply attested.
I think there are several problems with this approach:
If the works of ancient historians frequently contain both fact and legend, why shouldn’t we assume that the same is true of the writings in the New Testament?
When modern historians analyze ancient sources, is it ever considered good historical practice to give them the benefit of the doubt?
The New Testament is a collection of books by different authors. Why would the conclusions we draw about one writer’s work lead us to accept another writer’s work?
Anette,
The resurrection, on the other hand, is supported by solid historical evidence, and once we accept it as a historical fact, as I do, it is not much of a stretch to accept on faith that the rest of the Bible is the word of God.
I think I understand now.
I look at the rest of the Bible to help determine if the resurrection is plausible. You conclude the resurrection must be true because no plausible, naturalistic explanation has been given for the evidence, therefore, the rest of the Bible is true.
You are playing it pretty safe with your beliefs, don't you think? For you, the validity of the entire Bible comes down to one event that can never be duplicated. However, the Bible is full of miracles that could still be duplicated today but aren't. Show me Christians that raise the dead, or heal all the sick, or walk on water.
Presenting all the available evidence for an event from two thousand years ago and declaring that the best explanation is that it was supernatural isn't the same as showing me something supernatural.
In other words, you didn't want to risk him giving the answer you didn't want him to give by asking challenging questions?
Are you familiar with cross examination and why it is such an important tool for getting at the truth? A rabbi may well be biased against the resurrection, so the fact that you didn't ask my hard questions means that the opinions of these rabbis shed no further light on the issue.
What??
First, if I had asked him the question myself you would be accusing me of biasing the question to get the answer I want. But if I don't ask him the question then I'm accused of not interrogating him harshly enough to get the answer you want. I didn't cross examine him because I didn't ask the question in order to remove any bias on the questioner's part. And I'm not going to have my friend cross examine one of her bosses and risk losing her job just to satisfy an Internet chat.
Second, if by biased you mean "Does he believe it happened?" - he's Jewish!! Of course, he doesn't believe the resurrection happened! He's "biased" against the resurrection like you are "biased" against Mohammad splitting the moon. He spent his adult life studying the Talmud and Torah and other Jewish holy books and is absolutely convinced of the truth of those books. Therefore, he thinks he can dismiss all the other holy books a priori as false without having to examine them - just like you do with all of the other religions holy books. I'm sure that he feels that if you just examine the case for Judaism you'd see the truth of it while he knows the falsity of your holy book as well as all other holy books.
I didn't ask him about the resurrection. The gospels all agree that Joseph handled the body prior to burial (Mark 15:46, Matthew 27:59, Luke 23:53, John 19:40) and that he stored the body in the tomb. The only relevant question was in regards to moving the body after the Passover to a criminal grave.
The whole point was to see if there is a possible and plausible reason for the empty tomb, not to find answers to an endless stream of objections that you can dream up. This is just a matter of continually moving the goal posts. If I answer one objection, you'll just have another...and another...and another...and another, ad infinitum. Plausible just means reasonable; it doesn't mean all conceivable objections, real or not, have to be answered first. If you going to continue to move the goal posts here then there is no reason for us to continue this discussion.
You have argued that the swoon theory isn't viable by saying "This was a popular hypothesis around the beginning of the nineteenth century, but like the stolen body theory, it has been almost completely abandoned by modern scholars. It states that Jesus did not fully die on the cross and recovered in the tomb. This hypothesis has major problems. First, since Jesus was at least severely wounded from the crucifixion, there is no way He could have removed the stone covering the entrance to the tomb, so the apparent death theory has to be in part conspiracy theory. Second, as the very liberal scholar David Strauss argued, how did a half-dead Jesus stumble into a meeting of His doubting and fearful disciples and encourage them with the news that He had conquered death and someday they would have a body just like His? Third, numerous studies show that medically there is no way He could have survived the crucifixion. Skeptical Jesus Seminar co-founder John Dominic Crossan has stated that the fact that Jesus died by crucifixion is as sure as any fact could ever be."
There are a large number of false and misleading claims here.
1. Abandonment by modern scholars is irrelevant if the scholars are mistaken about the medical facts. Most of those to which you refer are operating under the false pretense that crucifixion interferes with respiration. However, Dr. Zugibe has proven that false.
2. Removal of the stone is not necessarily difficult. We do not have enough documentation to reconstruct the physical scene - we do not know how much it weighed, nor whether it was positioned vertically, nor whether it was facing uphill, downhill, or neither. This argument assumes more than it is legitimate to.
3. David Strauss's argument assumes that a crucified one has injuries that make them unable to walk normally. This is proven to be false by the Phillippines Crucifixion Ceremony, where flagellated, whipped, and crucified men are later able to walk with no difficulty. But even if it were true, it doesn't follow that the disciples would not react - they would respond by the effect studied by psychologists Festinger and Carlsmith in 1959.
What you say about the medical studies is false. There is only one small group of paper supposedly covering this, but it is based on the claims of Alexander Metherell. Metherell assumes that crucifixion makes respiration without using legs impossible. However, Dr. Zugibe has proven that false. And I personally have shown that the argument fails from a mechanico-physiological perspective by self experimentation (my YouTube video "debunking Dr. Metherell" addresses this)
So the swoon theory is perfectly viable, whether you like it or not. Truth is more important than fantasy.
And also there are a number of viable psychological manners in which we can explain the documentary data naturalistically. I would refer the reader to the research conducted by Dr. Bartlett on confabulation and distortion of memory recollection in the primary and secondary (and higher-order) telling of narratives. The effect studied by Loftus and Palmer in 1974 is also significant, as are the findings of Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) and the Asch Conformity Experiments (1950s). The latter also provides a naturalistic explanation for how the women could have mistakenly gone to the wrong tomb. Once the report of an empty tomb was out, they could have believed they saw a risen Jesus by the Loftus and Palmer effect.
These psychological phenomena can be immensely powerful and are not uncommon at all - they happen even in mentally healthy adults. When we have reports of non-eyewitnesses, they can even compound each other and multiply the effects tremendously. Courtroom criteria of acceptable evidence must take them into account, and the type of third- fourth- and fifth- hand hearsay we have recorded in the NT would not even be admissible evidence in court.
The NT books utterly fail to demonstrate to any satisfactory degree that a genuine supernatural event occurred. Apologists just don't seem to ever be able to admit that. They want to take a theologically motivated belief and claim it is a historical one, even though it is not.
Darkknight56:
The argument originally made by Jeffery Jay Lowder and Richard Carrier was that Joseph of Arimathea was a devout member of the Sanhedrin who temporarily put Jesus in his tomb in observance of Jewish law and then removed it after the Sabbath. That is only a plausible explanation if it fits the facts, and it doesn't.
First, it is in violation of rabbinical tradition, as I've discussed. Second, yes Joseph would have made himself unclean for the Passover either way based on what the NT says, but if he was a devoted follower of Jesus it would have made sense because it would have been worth it to him. If he was someone who voted to convict Jesus and he was only concerned with the law, he wouldn't have done it. Nor would he have defiled his nice, new tomb for someone he despised.
The problem all along with our discussion is that you seem to reply without much regard to what I have previously argued, and this is true regardless of how many times I repeat myself. You are obviously very capable of quickly learning new arguments put forth by atheists, but nothing I say seems to stick.
I am perfectly fine with knowing that I'm not going to change your mind in any way, but if I'm going to debate someone, I do expect them to follow the rules of debate. And one of those rules is to actually address the other person's arguments and move the discussion forward. If you can't do that, the discussion is over.
I understand that you like the theory you're proposing, but it's not plausible because it is self-contradictory, it's extremely ad hoc, and it lacks explanatory power. If Joseph cared so much about the law that he went to all that trouble, he wouldn't have violated the law in the process. (Even if he didn't handle the body, he did go into the Gentile court and request the body from Pilate.) And it is not reasonable to think that he would have put Jesus in his clean new tomb if he considered him a blasphemer who deserved to be crucified like a criminal. Furthermore, why did he never say anything?
So if you like your theory but you don't want to deal with my objections to it, you are saying that you don't want to debate me. If you did, you would respond to my objections rather than just tell me to exercise blind faith in your rabbis. (Actually, blind faith in your paraphrase of your friend's paraphrase of what they said.) And that's fine. You are entitled to your beliefs. But then, as you said and I agree with, the conversation is over.
Darkknight56:
By the way, I did not move the goalpost. Moving the goalpost is like saying, "Give me a plausible explanation for X, Y and Z." If when you give me a plausible explanation for X, Y, and Z, I reply: "But you didn't give me an explanation for A. Give me an explanation for A, too," then I will have moved the goalpost, or unfairly raised the bar on you.
However, if I say, "Give me a plausible explanation for X, Y, and Z facts," and you give an explanation that only fits X, then in normal debate I will bring to your attention that the explanation didn't fit Y and Z. This is an effective and fair way of trying to get at the truth.
Nightvid:
David Strauss's argument assumes that a crucified one has injuries that make them unable to walk normally. This is proven to be false by the Phillippines Crucifixion Ceremony, where flagellated, whipped, and crucified men are later able to walk with no difficulty. But even if it were true, it doesn't follow that the disciples would not react - they would respond by the effect studied by psychologists Festinger and Carlsmith in 1959.
Thank you for stopping by. I greatly appreciate the fact that you read some of what I've said in prior posts before commenting since it's difficult and time-consuming to repeat myself.
I did also address the issue of collective hallucinations and the psychological states of the witnesses of Jesus in the post on the appearances of Jesus. It sounds like the study you referenced is about memory, but as I've explained before, 1 Cor. 15:3-7 clearly indicates that the disciples proclaimed the resurrection immediately.
Darkknight56,
First, I apologize if I seemed a little too heated in my response before. I do not want you to take my impatience personally. This is just taking more time than I have. I am getting ready to take at least a month off from blogging--possibly longer, depending on what I decide at the end of it. I may be completely done with this. I feel like I've covered all the apologetics subjects I wanted to learn about and said everything I wanted to say, and I've been repeating myself quite a bit recently.
And I'm not going to have my friend cross examine one of her bosses and risk losing her job just to satisfy an Internet chat.
Of course I did not intend for your friend to cross-examine the rabbis. I didn't even request that you ask her to talk to them. This is sort of as if you and I had a dispute about the church history and you raised a number of objections to my argument and I offered to talk to pastor about it. I then came back and told you that my pastor agreed with me. When you asked me what he said about your objections, I replied: "I didn't want to be rude and sound like I was cross-examining him, so I didn't ask. But he graduated from divinity school, so I'm sure he was aware of your objections and didn't think they were a problem."
Would you then say, "Well, he is a pastor and therefore an expert on Christianity, so I guess that settles it," or would you feel like my discussion with my pastor added nothing to the discussion?
The reason why I said what I did about cross-examination was to make a point. Hearsay is an out-of-court declaration introduced in court to prove the truth of the matter asserted. It is not permitted because it is unreliable information that is not subject to cross-examination, which is a very effective way of getting at the truth.
What the rabbis said about our dispute had the same effect on our discussion as hearsay would have in a trial because I had no way of knowing a) how your friend asked the question, b) how much thought the rabbis gave to answering, c) what exactly the rabbis said, and d) the answers to my objections. So this information shed no light on our discussion and could even be misleading.
Also, why is a 21st century rabbi necessarily an expert on rabbinical tradition governing burial laws in the first century?
Evidence of early preaching that occurred before any of the stuff was written down in records we have access to now (the earliest of which was a full 20 years after the supposed events) in fact makes the Festinger - Carlsmith effect as a naturalistic explanation FOR WHAT IS ATTESTED work even better. The psychologists found, in their studies, that the effect is most pronounced in cases where someone giving testimony has their memory altered by a previous attempt to persuade someone. Seeing that we don't have access to any contemporaneous records of the events, we are necessarily relying on altered memory, since the other sources are, as far as we can tell, either derived from the preachers/evangelizers/missionaries, or written in language so as to be so vague or in contradiction with the doctrine of bodily resurrection that we can't say exactly what they claimed or believed, or cannot use it to support said doctrine.
It is simply wrong to claim there are no plausible naturalistic explanations, if for no other fact than the fact that there are indeed plausible naturalistic explanations.
And in addition, IF you (as most apologists do, but I am NOT saying you are doing this yet) refuse to even give honest, balanced consideration to the naturalistic explanations and simply shrug them off with some lame, unsubstantiated assertion or excuse and then declare victory or repeat your claim in the next blog post that there are no plausible naturalistic explanations, then in effect Christianity does become unfalsifiable, at least for those discussing the matter with you.
Are you open-minded or closed-minded? Are you sincerely seeking the truth, even if it isn't what you already want to believe?
Nightvid:
I just had a chance to read what you said, and you're making a number of claims that you are not substantiating. We won't be able to chase down your sources, so you'll have to develop your arguments more fully if you want us to consider them.
Abandonment by modern scholars is irrelevant if the scholars are mistaken about the medical facts. Most of those to which you refer are operating under the false pretense that crucifixion interferes with respiration. However, Dr. Zugibe has proven that false.
How has he proven that false?
David Strauss's argument assumes that a crucified one has injuries that make them unable to walk normally. This is proven to be false by the Phillippines Crucifixion Ceremony, where flagellated, whipped, and crucified men are later able to walk with no difficulty. But even if it were true, it doesn't follow that the disciples would not react - they would respond by the effect studied by psychologists Festinger and Carlsmith in 1959.
What effect is that? And how do these psychologists know how the disciples would have reacted to a half-dead Jesus stumbling into their gathering and proclaiming that He is the resurrected Lord?
What you say about the medical studies is false. There is only one small group of paper supposedly covering this, but it is based on the claims of Alexander Metherell. Metherell assumes that crucifixion makes respiration without using legs impossible. However, Dr. Zugibe has proven that false.
Again, how has Dr. Zugibe prove that false, and why is he correct and the other medical studies are false?
So the swoon theory is perfectly viable, whether you like it or not. Truth is more important than fantasy.
You have not demonstrated that the swoon theory is perfectly viable.
And also there are a number of viable psychological manners in which we can explain the documentary data naturalistically. I would refer the reader to the research conducted by Dr. Bartlett on confabulation and distortion of memory recollection in the primary and secondary (and higher-order) telling of narratives. The effect studied by Loftus and Palmer in 1974 is also significant, as are the findings of Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) and the Asch Conformity Experiments (1950s). The latter also provides a naturalistic explanation for how the women could have mistakenly gone to the wrong tomb. Once the report of an empty tomb was out, they could have believed they saw a risen Jesus by the Loftus and Palmer effect.
Again, please don't just refer us to studies if you want us to take your arguments seriously.
If the women went to the wrong tomb, how do you explain the appearances? And why didn't the Jewish leaders, who obviously knew the location of the tomb, correct the error when the Christians started proclaiming the resurrection?
These psychological phenomena can be immensely powerful and are not uncommon at all - they happen even in mentally healthy adults. When we have reports of non-eyewitnesses, they can even compound each other and multiply the effects tremendously. Courtroom criteria of acceptable evidence must take them into account, and the type of third- fourth- and fifth- hand hearsay we have recorded in the NT would not even be admissible evidence in court.
What basis do you have for saying that the NT (even the narratives) consists of "third- fourth- and fifth- hand hearsay"? What about the firsthand writings of Paul? And please scroll back to what I said to Vinny (and also said in the post on the resurrection appearances) about 1 Cor. 15:3-7.
The NT books utterly fail to demonstrate to any satisfactory degree that a genuine supernatural event occurred.
The resurrection can be demonstrated by inference to the best explanation, a method that is used in historical analysis, science, and law.
Seeing that we don't have access to any contemporaneous records of the events, we are necessarily relying on altered memory, since the other sources are, as far as we can tell, either derived from the preachers/evangelizers/missionaries, or written in language so as to be so vague or in contradiction with the doctrine of bodily resurrection that we can't say exactly what they claimed or believed, or cannot use it to support said doctrine.
So what you're saying is that Paul and the other apostles had forgotten that they had seen Jesus postmortem twenty years later? I remember major events in my life twenty years ago (and longer) quite vividly, and I've never had a dead person appear to me.
And even so, there's the creedal formula of 1 Cor. 15:3-7 of the appearances that even skeptical scholars date to within a few years of the death of Jesus.
It is simply wrong to claim there are no plausible naturalistic explanations, if for no other fact than the fact that there are indeed plausible naturalistic explanations.
The key is plausible, and the swoon theory has been almost universally rejected because of the sheer magnitude of the improbableness. The wrong tomb theory also lacks explanatory power for the reasons I've already given.
Are you open-minded or closed-minded? Are you sincerely seeking the truth, even if it isn't what you already want to believe?
Yes, I am sincerely seeking the truth. Are you?
Vinny:
The New Testament is a collection of books by different authors. Why would the conclusions we draw about one writer’s work lead us to accept another writer’s work?
Luke and Acts were written by the same author, so if we can establish that Acts is historically reliable, that tells us something about Luke (especially if we can also establish that the trial of Jesus was historically reliable).
Lowell:
You are playing it pretty safe with your beliefs, don't you think? For you, the validity of the entire Bible comes down to one event that can never be duplicated. However, the Bible is full of miracles that could still be duplicated today but aren't. Show me Christians that raise the dead, or heal all the sick, or walk on water.
I don't know any Christians who can do those dramatic miracles, which Jesus and the prophets and apostles did by the power of the Holy Spirit, but I am very familiar with lesser displays of the work of the Holy Spirit, in my life and the life of other Christians. I also know how the Bible explains how the Holy Spirit works in and through us. It analogizes Jesus to the vine and us to the branches, and when we abide in Him, His power works through us like sap flows through a vine to the branches. The extent to which we experience His power depends on the extent to which we stay connected to Him.
But getting back to the resurrection, suffice it to say that it's the only miracle we can prove, and it is also the bedrock of Christianity. We can't prove it conclusively, but we have pretty compelling historical evidence to back it up. We can't prove that Elijah did miracles, nor can we prove that God spoke to Joseph in a dream to take Jesus into Egypt.
John Earman in Hume's Abject Failure says that it is possible to achieve a substantial degree of confirmation of Christianity incrementally. In other words, when we look at the various arguments for theism in general, the prophecy and typology in the Bible, the resurrection testimony, and many other things, the certainty increases incrementally. I have certainly found that to be true for me after discussing all these subjects over the past year and a half.
Anette,
I note that you have only addressed part of my objection, so I will rephrase my point:
If the work of every other ancient historian has been found to be reliable in some areas and unreliable in others, wouldn’t that be a good reason not to extrapolate and give the benefit of the doubt to parts of the New Testament that cannot be verified?
If our experience with propaganda narratives is that they are subject to certain kinds of distortions, wouldn’t that be a good reason not to extrapolate and give the benefit of the doubt to parts of the New Testament that cannot be verified?
For example, suppose that a Mormon narrative about Oliver Cowdery perfectly described a 19th century courtroom setting in all its details. That wouldn't be a good reason to extrapolate and give the benefit of the doubt to accounts of appearances of the Angel Moroni to Cowdery, would it?
>What basis do you have for saying >that the NT (even the narratives) >consists of "third- fourth- and >fifth- hand hearsay"? What about >the firsthand writings of Paul? >And please scroll back to what I >said to Vinny (and also said in >the post on the resurrection >appearances) about 1 Cor. 15:3-7.
My basis is the research done by Bart Ehrman.
Paul could not have known what Jesus's face looked like as he didn't even meet Jesus until after the crucifixion. Thus, he can't claim to have seen Jesus any more than I can claim to have seen your seventh cousin at the mall. (source: Bart Ehrman)
>The resurrection can be >demonstrated by inference to the >best explanation, a method that >is used in historical analysis, >science, and law.
You are begging the question.
"There is sufficient evidence to believe in the Resurrection and therefore there is sufficient evidence to believe in the Resurrection " is not a valid argument.
>The key is plausible, and the >swoon theory has been almost >universally rejected because of >the sheer magnitude of the >improbableness.
I've debunked that argument already.
> The wrong tomb theory also lacks > explanatory power for the > reasons I've already given.
Except that those reasons are fallacious.
>Yes, I am sincerely seeking the >truth. Are you?
Yes, if it can be supported without baseless assertions and appealing to authority .
>I just had a chance to read what >you said, and you're making a >number of claims that you are not >substantiating. We won't be able to >chase down your sources, so you'll >have to develop your arguments more >fully if you want us to consider >them.
I have tried to make it easy by citing specific things, while you just fall back on the "scholars agree on..." argument. Who is making it difficult to chase sources down here? Not me.
>Abandonment by modern scholars is >irrelevant if the scholars are >mistaken about the medical facts. >Most of those to which you refer >are operating under the false >pretense that crucifixion >interferes with respiration. >However, Dr. Zugibe has proven that >false.
>
>How has he proven that false?
http://www.crucifixion-shroud.com/Barbet.htm
http://www.e-forensicmedicine.net
/Barbet.htm
>David Strauss's argument assumes >that a crucified one has injuries >that make them unable to walk >normally. This is proven to be >false by the Phillippines >Crucifixion Ceremony, where >flagellated, whipped, and >crucified men are later able to >walk with no difficulty. But even >if it were true, it doesn't >follow that the disciples would >not react - they would respond by >the effect studied by >psychologists Festinger and >Carlsmith in 1959.
>
>What effect is that?
It's called the "Insufficient Justification" effect. It is where an attempt by one person to persuade another of something alters the first person's memory.
http://generallythinking.com
/research/festinger-l-carlsmith-
j-m-1959-cognitive-consequences-
of-forced-compliance/
>And how do
>these psychologists know how the >disciples would have reacted to a >half-dead Jesus stumbling into >their gathering and proclaiming >that He is the resurrected Lord?
>And how do these psychologists know >how the disciples would have >reacted to a half-dead Jesus >stumbling into their gathering and >proclaiming that He is the >resurrected Lord?
This is a straw man. I am not trying to say they can prove that occurred, only that it is plausible.
>Again, how has Dr. Zugibe prove >that false, and why is he correct >and the other medical studies are >false?
I am assuming you are referring to Barbet's paper and things based thereupon. Dr. Zugibe addresses the matter you ask about at
http://www.e-forensicmedicine.net
/Barbet.htm
As far as I can tell, the "other studies" you speak of either don't exist OR are not based on direct observation like Dr. Zugibe 's . That is why Dr. Zugibe is to be trusted over the others.
>So the swoon theory is perfectly >viable, whether you like it or not. >Truth is more important than >fantasy.
>
>You have not demonstrated that the >swoon theory is perfectly viable.
I have debunked your arguments as to why it isn't. The onus is on you, not me.
>Again, please don't just refer us >to studies if you want us to take >your arguments seriously.
Please don't just appeal to an uncited consensus of scholars or to exclusively Christian apologetic sources if you want us skeptics to take your arguments seriously.
>If the women went to the wrong >tomb, how do you explain the >appearances?
Loftus Palmer effect. False memories.
https://webfiles.uci.edu/eloftus
/LoftusPalmer74.pdf
>And why didn't the Jewish leaders, >who obviously knew the location of >the tomb, correct the error when >the Christians started proclaiming >the resurrection?
Maybe the same reason no one has bothered to disprove the Hindus who claim to have witnessed miracles, no one has proven the Attis cult to be false, no one has proven that alien abductions aren't real, no one has disproven the Heaven's Gate Cult, etc.
The reason is simple: It would be pointless, the adherents wouldn't even listen. Or they would burn all the books containing falsifying evidence.
>What basis do you have for saying >that the NT (even the narratives) >consists of "third- fourth- and >Fifth- hand hearsay"?
I will defer to Bart Ehrman on this point.
Also, Paul didn't even meet Jesus before the crucifixion. He can't claim he saw Jesus for the same reason I can't claim I saw your third cousin at the mall last year: he didn't know what Jesus's face looked like, just as I don't know what your third cousin looks like.
>The NT books utterly fail to >demonstrate to any satisfactory >degree that a genuine supernatural >event occurred.
>
>The resurrection can be >demonstrated by inference to the >best explanation, a method that is >used in historical analysis, >science, and law.
This is an assertion. You are begging the question.
I need to point out something also, just as a general remark to make sure we are on the same wavelength for future discussion. If person "A" speaks about having witnessed something but doesn't write it down, and later non-eyewitness person "B" writes down that this happened, the reliability of source "B" must assume that
1. "A" was not hallucinating
2. "A" told "B" at a time when "A" 's recollection of the experience of "A" was reliable
3. "B" correctly interpreted what "A" said
4. "B" accurately remembered what "A" said correctly and reported correctly, without making too large a number of errors of the type that one sees with careless newspaper reporters
In order to provide a plausible naturalistic explanation of "B" 's report existing without the events actually having occurred, it is only necessary to show that it is naturalistically plausible that ONE OR MORE of the above are false, it is NOT necessary to show that ALL are false. For instance, say we agree that mass, collective, synchronous hallucinations are implausible. That doesn't in and of itself mean the source is reliable.
Similarly, if others got their information from "B" 's writing, their attestation does not make the naturalistic explanations for "B" being wrong any less plausible. For that we need independent confirmation, and we need evidence that the confirmation was in fact independent. A plausible naturalistic explanation, if there is one, of how we could have what we do now without the con firmation being independent thus, given "B", explains those that MIGHT have based their writings thereupon.
I would draw a box diagram of logic and how sources get information and what is assumed, but it is impractical to do so and post it here. You'll have to try to understand me anyway - sorry if it isn't obvious.
>So what you're saying is that Paul >and the other apostles had forgotten >that they had seen Jesus postmortem >twenty years later?
NO, NO, NO, I am NOT saying that, rather I am saying the opposite: That some of them forgot that they had NOT seen a risen Jesus, or equivalently, had a false memory by the Loftus - Palmer effect/phenomenon.
Vinny:
I note that you have only addressed part of my objection, so I will rephrase my point:
If the work of every other ancient historian has been found to be reliable in some areas and unreliable in others, wouldn’t that be a good reason not to extrapolate and give the benefit of the doubt to parts of the New Testament that cannot be verified?
The reason why I only replied to part of your comment is because I was doing other things for most of day and when I came back there were three other people to reply to. Also, it seemed like this was a repeat of our Sherwin-White discussion.
My point about giving it the benefit of the doubt is not that the critic should assume that it is all true. As I said before, I've never relied on the story of the guards in trying to prove the resurrection by way of inference to the best explanation.
However, the fact that the NT is historically accurate (something skeptics have questioned over the centuries) insofar as we can verify it militates against the idea that we simply can't know what really happened. The evidence we do have indicates that the authors attempted to be accurate.
But the mere fact that the historical details are accurate doesn't, of course, prove the supernatural aspects of the narratives. If it did, I would not have spent the past six month developing my argument for the resurrection. I could have just written my post on the Sherwin-White book and let that be the end of it.
I will say, however, that I see no good reason for dismissing the empty tomb story as myth. It meets the historical criteria of embarrassment, multiple attestation, and dissimilarity. I mentioned the latter criterion because, as we discussed before, there is only a faint reference to being raised up on "the third day" in the OT, without any indication that this is a Messianic prophecy. Paul mentions that Jesus was raised on the third day in 1 Cor. 15:4, which implies an empty tomb on a specific day.
Once the three important facts I've discussed are established, the confirmation of historicity of the narratives in general is just frosting on the cake.
Richard Carrier argues that Paul didn't even believe in a bodily resurrection. Unless you provide evidence for the claim that he did, Paul's claims have no bearing on whether or not the empty tomb narrative is true.
Source:
http://www.richardcarrier.info/Spiritu
alFAQ.html
What do you say about the large number of claims in the NT that the authors could not have verified and aren't true? For instance, Paul claims our sense of morality is "implanted" by God, which is disproven by the theory of evolution and the research of Dr. Andy Thompson.
I know this isn't a historical claim, but I am not arguing that it is. I am merely pointing out that it throws doubt on the propensity of the authors such as Paul to claim things without doing fact-checking (i.e. that at last one of the NT authors uses an untrustworthy epistemology).
Nightvid,
You posted 22 comments on my blog this morning (at least that's how many times your name appeared in my email inbox). In skimming through what you've said, I see that you are asking me to research various studies and get back to you if I have any questions.
There are two problems with this: First, to be honest with you, in my mind the swoon theory does not pass the straight face test. In other words, it's not at all plausible. And it won't warrant further research on my part until you convincingly explain to me why the disciples would see the half-dead, badly injured Jesus and conclude that He had been gloriously resurrected. Furthermore, they were so sure of this that they were willing to sacrifice everything, including their lives, for the promise that someday they would be resurrected with a body just like that.
Second, my time is limited. I have researched the best skeptical arguments in great detail over the past six months, but if I can tell right away that a theory is not plausible, I see no reason to invest the time. When Darkknight56 brought it up, I was already familiar with Jeffery Jay Lowder's theory because I respect his intellectual honesty. But even the vast majority of skeptics have rejected the swoon theory, so why should I take it seriously?
If you can convince me, in your own words and without directing me to studies, why I should take the swoon theory seriously, then I will want to research it, because I am very interested in good skeptical arguments. But so far you have not done that. (I do want to warn you that you are unlikely to succeed.)
"The resurrection can be >demonstrated by inference to the >best explanation, a method that is >used in historical analysis, >science, and law."
This is an assertion. You are begging the question.
You might have noticed that I've spent six months developing this argument, so I'm not exactly begging the question. If all I had said was that one sentence, then you would have a point. (And I have no intention of repeating my arguments.)
NO, NO, NO, I am NOT saying that, rather I am saying the opposite: That some of them forgot that they had NOT seen a risen Jesus, or equivalently, had a false memory by the Loftus - Palmer effect/phenomenon.
Please explain the Loftus-Palmer effect/phenomenon to me in your own words. So far you have not whetted my appetite for further research because what you've said makes absolutely no sense to me. Please explain why you think that young, mentally healthy people have false memories of major events twenty years ago. Has this happened to you?
Anette,
What general conclusions can be drawn about an ancient work or its author based on the fact that certain facts can be verified is a more general question of historical methodology than I wanted to address in the Sherwin-White discussion. My point there concerned whether the apologists had accurately characterized the conclusions that he had drawn, not whether those conclusions were either stronger or weaker than the evidence justified.
I agree that being able to verify specific details militates against pessimism, but it doesn't allow us to "take for granted" details that can't be verified.
David Strauss's "wouldn't have impressed the disciples" argument has been paraphrased by you as follows:
"And it won't warrant further research on my part until you convincingly explain to me why the disciples would see the half-dead, badly injured Jesus and conclude that He had been gloriously resurrected."
Ok. First off, I have no idea what "half dead" is supposed to mean, but I will assume you mean either
i) Sufficiently injured or weakened as to be unable to walk upright over > 100 meters at a normal pace , ii) Sufficiently confused or delirious so as to be unable to hold a normal conversation, or iii) Comatose.
Continuing, the explanation is simple: Flagellation and crucifixion do not assure a person will be "half dead" by ANY of these three definitons. You can easily watch (viewer discretion-advised!) clips of the Phillippines Crucifixion Ceremony yourself on YouTube where they go through similar things and are walking and talking normally at the end despite having piercing holes in their hands and feet and back covered with raw, bloody skin. You are starting with a false pretense.
You also say "I do want to warn you that you are unlikely to succeed" This is closed-mindedness, is it not? If you are unwilling to look at the evidence that the problems with the swoon theory or with psychological theories aren't even problems at all, how can you call yourself open-minded?
Loftus Palmer Effect study: Viewers watched as two cars collided with each other. The researchers asked suggestive leading questions on how fast the cars were going when they hit, and the wording of the questions was such that the answers the eye-witnesses gave could be made to vary from 30 to 40 mph simply by the wording. A week later the participants were asked if there was broken glass at the scene or not. By using suggestive leading questions, up to 32% of the eye-witnesses could be induced, a week after these questions, to say they saw broken glass when there was none at all.
The Loftus Palmer effect is similar: Suggestive hints from others and the environment will distort the memory of healthy adults, up to and including making them believe they saw something that they plainly did not.
Also, the Festinger Carlsmith Effect goes as such: Specifically, they showed that if a person is forced [or motivated] to improvise a speech supporting a point of view with which he disagrees, his private opinion moves toward the position advocated in the speech. The observed opinion change is greater than for persons who only hear the speech or for persons who read a prepared speech with emphasis solely on execution and manner of delivery The authors of these two studies explain their results mainly in terms of mental rehearsal and thinking up new arguments. (Psychology Research Database).
By extension, those preaching (motivated by theological beliefs, not necessarily obsevations) were motivated to say things that weren't true in order to bolster their case, eventually causing them to sincerely believe it at the deepest level. I am NOT saying they made it all up, just that some of the details would be renderable untrue by this effect. This is the same phenomenon you see today with, for instance, Christian apologists and preachers denying the evidence for evolution. Their perception has been altered by their attempts to evangelize.
THE CASE FOR THE SWOON THEORY
1. Roman centurions at the time had no medical training, as far as we can tell. They did not know how to check a pulse.
2. Scourging and crucifixion are not normally fatal unless the subject is left to dehydrate (Taking 4-7 days depending on weather, etc.), as demonstrated every year in the Phillippines Crucifixion Ceremony. Nor is enough blood lost to leave a trail on the ground as they walk.
3. Contrary to a common Christian apologetic claim, bearing all one's weight on the arms does not interfere with respiration, as proven by Dr. Zugibe's humane experimentation on test subjects. I have also tested this myself, and had no trouble breathing and talking.
4. There are no major arteries in the palms of the hands that would assure a large amount of blood loss, and besides, we do not have enough detailed information about the crucifixion procedure to even say they didn't just tie the arms with ropes.
5. Impalement with a spear would be unlikely to be fatal, by analogy with pericardiocentesis, if the myocardium was NOT penetrated. There is not enough historical evidence to give details here.
6. the VAST majority of S. Aureus infections in open wounds are not fatal, even in the pre-antibiotic era.
7. Most tombs were not air-tight, so suffocation would not have occurred.
8. There is not enough detailed information on the place of burial to prove it would be difficult to escape.
I agree that being able to verify specific details militates against pessimism, but it doesn't allow us to "take for granted" details that can't be verified.
I agree, and I never claimed that it does. This is why, in our discussions, I never relied on details like the guards at the tomb in Matthew's account.
However, there's a major difference between the claims of Joseph Smith and Christianity, and that is that there is considerable historical and archeological* evidence for the claims of the New Testament, whereas there should be historical and archeological evidence for the claims of Smith, if they were true. But there is nothing. What he said has to be accepted entirely on faith.
* Are you familiar with the James Ossuary? It is dated to around 2000 years ago and the inscription is in Aramaic. It says, "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus."
Andre Lemaire, a paleographer at the Sorbonne University in Paris dates the box to 63 A.D, which is, of course, when Josephus says that James, the brother of Jesus, died. He also says: "So far, with all the inscriptions we have, only one other has mentioned a brother. This is a very important point for the problem of identification. There would need to be a special reason to mention the brother. It suggests the brother was also prominent, an important person."
Anette Acker,
>However, there's a major >difference between the claims of >Joseph Smith and Christianity, >and that is that there is >considerable historical and >archeological* evidence for the >claims of the New Testament, >whereas there should be >historical and archeological >evidence for the claims of Smith, >if they were true. But there is >nothing. What he said has to be >accepted entirely on faith.
We DO have archaeological evidence of the same type in the case of Joseph Smith: namely, we have his burial site and those of his immediate family members in the Smith Family Cemetery in Nauvoo, Illinois . According to your argument this should give us strong reason to believe that the Book of Mormon is true.
To claim burial site information is evidence in support of the New Testament writings' truth and to not do so for THE EXACT SAME type of evidence in regards to the Book of Mormon is a logical fallacy known as special pleading: Claiming your case is "special" for no reason.
I agree that there is no evidence for any of the claims that Smith made about the Nephites and the Lamanites and events that supposedly occurred 2000 or more years before Joseph Smith’s birth.
However, the New Testament claims that can be confirmed concern circumstances existing either contemporaneously or within a generation or two of the time that the New Testament was written. To fairly compare the degree of confirmation we would need to look at the Mormon accounts of Joseph Smith’s life and the church’s migration from New York to Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and Utah written by or before the early 1900’s. In those accounts, I am sure you would find plenty of verifiable facts about the travels and activities of the Mormons in the 1800’s as well as balderdash about all the people who saw the Angel Moroni and the Golden Plates.
Nightvid,
Thank you for your last three comments--they were a vast improvement over the 22 that greeted me this morning. Don't do that kind of thing to people! :)
However, you still have not explained to me why the disciples would think that a badly injured, weakened Jesus had been gloriously resurrected from the dead. And they believed it deeply enough to die for it. That's the part I have a great deal of trouble with, and until we get past that, the medical studies you're referencing do not help your case.
But many studies have shown that Jesus must have died from crucifixion--for example, The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), concluded that He died from asphyxiation, complicated by shock and congestive heart failure. And if that didn't kill Him, He would have died when they they stabbed Him and blood and water came from the wound. Around the heart there is a sac that holds a watery fluid, so the doctors believe that Jesus was stabbed in the heart when the blood and water came out.
As for the Loftus Palmer effect, it doesn't mean that eyewitness testimony is worthless, but only that it can be affected by leading questions. That is why it is necessary to have more than one witness. And Jesus appeared to James, a skeptic, and Paul, an opponent of Christianity.
You're making a major leap from the study on the colliding cars to concluding that all the eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus had forgotten that they had not seen Him.
From Boston to SF,
Vinny has said that he's not sure if Jesus existed, so I mentioned the James Ossuary as an aside, not to support my claim that there is historical and archeological evidence for Christianity but not for Mormonism. That is why I put it after an asterisk.
Nobody disputes the fact that Joseph Smith really existed, but some people dispute the existence of Jesus. So obviously it proves nothing that we have burial information about Smith. We also have a photo of him. I was talking about evidence for the claims of Joseph Smith, not evidence for his existence.
My point is that many of the historical details in the NT have been verified historically and archeologically, whereas Smith claimed in the Book of Mormon that horses, silk, steel, etc. existed in America long before they did.
Vinny,
First, I just realized that the authenticity of the James Ossuary has been contested and the case is currently before the court, but apparently the case is very weak and the judge has recommended that it be dropped. Many experts for the Israel Antiquities Authority recanted during cross-examination.
Anyway, we should find out the outcome soon, but I just wanted to clarify that the antiquities dealer has been charged with forgery, in case you (or someone reading this) didn't know.
However, the New Testament claims that can be confirmed concern circumstances existing either contemporaneously or within a generation or two of the time that the New Testament was written. To fairly compare the degree of confirmation we would need to look at the Mormon accounts of Joseph Smith’s life and the church’s migration from New York to Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and Utah written by or before the early 1900’s.
But some of the evidence we have for Christianity is extremely significant in that it points only to the resurrection. So far, every other proffered explanation has failed. And the Bible makes no historical claims that have been proven false.
On the other hand, the evidence that the Mormons migrated from New York to Utah proves nothing of significance. And the claims that horses, silk, and steel existed in America 2000 years ago is false.
Anette Acker:
First off, I am sorry about the 22-post thing yesterday. I had typed up an elaborate 3-page discussion that got completely lost when I hit "submit" and I just wanted to do my comment in pieces so this wouldn't happen. But I won't do it again.
>However, you still have not >explained to me why the disciples >would think that a badly injured, >weakened Jesus had been >gloriously resurrected from the >dead.
Well, according to John 20:24 Thomas's faith was STRENGTHENED by belief in an injured Jesus, not weakened.
Also, we've all heard of cases on the news and through family and friends where someone had a horrific disease or injury and weak and bedridden for a long time and survived by means of aggressive modern medical treatment, and yet still attributed it to a mricale, and their family members and friends also said it was a miracle. If this can happen today, why not back in a time when people were far more superstitious than today, believing that mental disorders and disease could be understood only in terms of demons rather than naturalistic processes?
Anette Acker:
>You're making a major leap from the >study on the colliding cars to >concluding that all the >eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus had >forgotten that they had not seen >Him.
No I am not. In the legal field we have established, for instance, the so-called cross-examination technique as regards eyewitnesses is quite important, because of social pressures and people influencing each other's testimony, we cannot assume testimony from people who knew each other beforehand is reliable, even if more than one person gives it, and this is especially true if they talked about the issue with each other or were influenced before giving testimony. The Loftus and Palmer study is considered a staple in both modern psychology and the theory of eyewitness (un)reliability. Further investigations, such as the so-called "lost in the mall technique" have confirmed that elaborate stories can be induced by being told hearsay can be sincerely believed to have been directly witnessed by a substantial fraction of mentally healthy subjects even though they never happened.
Yale law professor Steven B. Duke has written a brief explanation of many of these issues in the Yale Law School page on the (un)reliability of potentially corrupted testimony. He points out that " At least 80,000 prosecutions in this country every year rely largely on eyewitness testimony. If only half of those result in convictions, we may still be sending to prison nearly 5,000 innocents annually, based on false eyewitness testimony alone. " And this is despite requiring multiple witnesses.
So far it still stands to reason that both the swoon theory and the false memory theory are two examples of viable naturalistic explanations of what is attested in the NT books.
Anette Acker:
>But many studies have shown that >Jesus must have died from >crucifixion--for example, The >Journal of the American Medical >Association (JAMA), concluded that >He died from asphyxiation, >complicated by shock and congestive >heart failure.
I assume you are referring to the article by Edwards Gabel and Hosmer. Two of its authors aren't even doctors or medical professionals, and most of the article isn't even about medical issues, but historical ones.
The article appeals to pity by giving explicit and lucidly image-provoking descriptions of the crucifixion. This kind of emotional appeal is UNHEARD OF in scientific publication - this article is clearly abnormal.
It also contradicts itself: First claiming hypovolemic shock due to blood loss consistent with NORMAL blood factors, and then later claiming coronary artery thrombosis as a possibility that shouldn't be overlooked, which necessarily implies a hypercoagulable state (ABNORMALLY rapid blood clotting).
Not to mention the reliance of the article on the discredited "asphyxiation theory" as I discussed in my earlier post mentioning Dr. Zugibe .
There are several convincing reasons that this article is not to be trusted or taken to be reliable or equal to the best medical understanding.
Unfortunately, sometimes the authors of such journals don't always follow good peer-review procedures, and sometimes things that don't belong do, unfortunately, slip through anyway.
But some of the evidence we have for Christianity is extremely significant in that it points only to the resurrection.
I don’t think that you can claim that evidence points to a particular circumstance or event unless you understand the processes by which those circumstances and events produce evidence.
I apologize if we have discussed this before (I don’t remember every place that I have used this example), but the reason we think fingerprints on a gun might point to the person who used the gun to commit a murder is because we understand the natural process by which the patterns that are found on human fingers can come to appear on other objects. If we didn’t understand the processes by which the secretions on the friction ridges of the human finger can be transferred and we didn’t think that those processes acted consistently, fingerprints would not constitute evidence of anything. If we thought that those patterns just appeared randomly or by divine fiat, we could not say that their presence on a gun pointed to who handled it last.
The problem with saying that evidence only points to some supernatural event is that supernatural events don’t follow known processes. We cannot say what kind of evidence supernatural events are likely to produce and we cannot say what kind of evidence is likely to have been produced by a supernatural event. The most we can say about any particular combination of evidence is say that we don't know of any natural events that are likely to have produced it. The method we use for inferring causes from evidence depends on our ability to rely on natural processes that don’t vary.
Nightvid:
First off, I am sorry about the 22-post thing yesterday. I had typed up an elaborate 3-page discussion that got completely lost when I hit "submit" and I just wanted to do my comment in pieces so this wouldn't happen. But I won't do it again.
Not a problem! It was obviously a shock to my system, but I'm pretty sure I'll recover. ;)
Well, according to John 20:24 Thomas's faith was STRENGTHENED by belief in an injured Jesus, not weakened.
But it's clear in John 20 that there is something very different about the body of Jesus. First, Mary Magdalene didn't recognize Jesus and thought He was the gardener in John 20:14-15. In John 20:19, Jesus suddenly appears among His disciples when doors were shut. Likewise, in Luke 24, the disciples do not recognize Him. Both in John 20 and Luke 24, Jesus let them touch His hands and feet to give them evidence that it really was Him. Because He had a resurrection body (which Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 will be different from ours) it is not necessarily true that the wounds were visible, even though Jesus made it possible for the disciples to feel them.
If the disciples had concluded that Jesus had barely survived crucifixion, they would not have believed that He was risen in the sense that they proclaimed it.
No I am not. In the legal field we have established, for instance, the so-called cross-examination technique as regards eyewitnesses is quite important, because of social pressures and people influencing each other's testimony, we cannot assume testimony from people who knew each other beforehand is reliable, even if more than one person gives it, and this is especially true if they talked about the issue with each other or were influenced before giving testimony.
This is true, which is why it is significant that Paul and James, who were not part of the original group of disciples, and were both skeptics, also claimed to have seen Jesus. (BTW, the argument that Paul didn't know what Jesus looked like carries little weight given how powerful his experience on the road to Damascus, and before healing Paul's sight, Ananias confirmed that Jesus had appeared to Paul.)
Also, the fact that they were under tremendous pressure by the Jews as well as the Romans, and most of them ended up being martyred, militates against self-deception. There is no reality check quite like fear for our lives.
Further investigations, such as the so-called "lost in the mall technique" have confirmed that elaborate stories can be induced by being told hearsay can be sincerely believed to have been directly witnessed by a substantial fraction of mentally healthy subjects even though they never happened.
All the examples they gave were of "memories" from young childhood. I have never heard of mentally healthy people "remembering" significant events from adulthood if those events didn't happen. Although they may well be induced to believe that the details were different than they were if asked leading questions.
Why would you assume that Paul, James, and all the disciples experienced this same thing? Paul spent very little time in Jerusalem with the other apostles.
Yale law professor Steven B. Duke has written a brief explanation of many of these issues in the Yale Law School page on the (un)reliability of potentially corrupted testimony. He points out that " At least 80,000 prosecutions in this country every year rely largely on eyewitness testimony. If only half of those result in convictions, we may still be sending to prison nearly 5,000 innocents annually, based on false eyewitness testimony alone. " And this is despite requiring multiple witnesses.
Nobody has suggested that eyewitness testimony is 100% reliable or that our legal system is perfect, but eyewitness testimony is still a good way of getting at the truth.
And identifying the wrong person or misremembering important details is different from the disciples, James, and Paul "remembering" that Jesus appeared to them postmortem.
Not to mention the reliance of the article on the discredited "asphyxiation theory" as I discussed in my earlier post mentioning Dr. Zugibe .
There are several convincing reasons that this article is not to be trusted or taken to be reliable or equal to the best medical understanding.
Unfortunately, sometimes the authors of such journals don't always follow good peer-review procedures, and sometimes things that don't belong do, unfortunately, slip through anyway.
I did a quick search on Zugibe, and although he may disagree that Jesus died by asphyxiation, he most certainly agrees that Jesus died on the cross. In fact, his work is about what happens medically during crucifixion--specifically what would have happened to Jesus. His publisher calls him "the world’s leading authority on the crucifixion" and says that he "provides the most complete scientific account of Christ’s death available today." So obviously Zugibe thinks Jesus died by crucifixion.
Experts may not agree on exactly how Jesus died on the cross, but there is almost universal agreement that he did die. Why should we believe that you are right and all these medical professionals are wrong?
Nobody has suggested that eyewitness testimony is 100% reliable or that our legal system is perfect, but eyewitness testimony is still a good way of getting at the truth.
It seems like every month or so I read some article about a convict being exonerated by DNA tests that were not available at the time he was sent to prison, even if the man was convicted on eyewitness testimony. The courts won’t accept eyewitness testimony to establish something if science says it couldn’t have happened.
>Well, according to John 20:24 >Thomas's faith was STRENGTHENED >by belief in an injured Jesus, >not weakened.
>
>But it's clear in John 20 that >there is something very different >about the body of Jesus.
Ok, you have a point here. But now you have made your case even weaker by showing that some of them were willing to testify to having seen someone they couldn't recognize by sight. If a witness came into court saying they saw person X but they weren't recognizable, their testimony would be dismissed. If they didn't recognize a figure by sight, they are BY DEFINITION not an eye-witness. If someone in court said they recognized someone involved by feeling their hands even though they clearly appeared to be someone else, everyone would know this person is either mentally deranged or in need of anti-psychotic drugs, I kid you not.
>Because He had a resurrection >body (which Paul says in 1 >Corinthians 15 will be different >from ours) it is not necessarily >true that the wounds were >visible, even though Jesus made >it possible for the disciples to >feel them.
Paul is clearly saying the body is not an earthly one, but a spiritual, heavenly one (this is the "gnostic" view). This is not consistent with the "sarcicistic" (fully embodied) narrative in the Gospel accounts. If they disagree, it is LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for them to both be right. Thus, one of them must be at its core very unreliable. Which is it?
>If the disciples had concluded >that Jesus had barely survived >crucifixion, they would not have >believed that He was risen in the >sense that they proclaimed it.
This argument is empty unless "risen in the sense that they proclaimed it" is well-defined. Since there is so much discrepancy of interpretation (i.e. gnosticism vs. sarcicism) there isn't much substance here.
>This is true, which is why it is >significant that Paul and James, >who were not part of the original >group of disciples, and were both >skeptics, also claimed to have >seen Jesus
If they didn't know what Jesus's face looked like, their claim to know WHO appeared to them is both meaningless and evidence they were in an abnormal psychological state, perhaps experiencing the false memory effect.
Same with Paul. If he says he had a powerful experience, then it doesn't tell us anything about what was actually in that experience. Not to mention Paul needed a politically correct excuse when he stopped persecuting Christians - the mantra "if you're in it, win it" in regards to war is because stopping a fight is politically incorrect, as it amounts to an admission that what you were doing is wrong. In my college Political Science class we learned that this is a very powerful effect. Paul was likely to have embellished whatever happened to meet this need.
Vinny:
If we didn’t understand the processes by which the secretions on the friction ridges of the human finger can be transferred and we didn’t think that those processes acted consistently, fingerprints would not constitute evidence of anything. If we thought that those patterns just appeared randomly or by divine fiat, we could not say that their presence on a gun pointed to who handled it last.
This is why it is important to look at the evidence for the resurrection in a broader context. Since the claim is that it is God's revelation to us of Himself, we cannot presuppose a natural explanation like we do with everything else. It is reasonable to assume that everything (like fingerprints on a gun) has a natural cause, but the resurrection is in large part a question of whether something exists outside of nature, which is beyond the scope of science. So science cannot rule out the resurrection, nor is it even reasonable to ask whether the resurrection is scientifically possible, because of course it's not. The whole point is that the Bible claims that God revealed Himself supernaturally through the resurrection. If it were scientifically possible for a badly flogged victim of crucifixion to rise from the dead, then the resurrection would have no significance.
Of course to a naturalist this is much harder to accept than to someone who already believes in God. That is, the evidence for the resurrection would not, by itself, be sufficient to overcome the presumption that everything happens according to natural laws.
John Earman, an atheist, addresses this issue in Hume's Abject Failure, in terms of prior probabilities of an event, before applying Bayes' Theorem. And the factors that determine the prior probability are things like the arguments for theism in general. Strong arguments for theism increase the prior probability. Prophecy and typology in the OT that foreshadow the redemption of Christ increase the prior probability, especially if, as I have attempted to show in prior discussions with non-theists, the books of the OT are filled with them. If the rest of the Bible is the setting for which the resurrection fits as a centerpiece, then that increases the prior probability.
And after determining that the prior probability is not zero, which would preclude any Bayesian analysis, we would then look at the evidence and determine if there are any plausible naturalistic explanations and make an inference to the best explanation for the evidence.
Numerous scientific theories are formulated by inference to the best explanation. If the hypothesis explains the evidence better than rival hypotheses, then it deserves acceptance.
The resurrection explains all the evidence well and all the naturalistic hypotheses fall apart in very significant ways. Therefore, it is rational to conclude that the resurrection really took place.
But, again, we wouldn't look at the evidence in isolation. Every book of the OT foreshadows the redemption of Christ in some way, so by the time we get to the four Gospels, the foundation has already been laid.
That is only the objective, rational side of the equation, but for many people there are intuitive factors that make belief in such an event very difficult. (John Earman, an atheist, briefly mentions this as well, but says, "unlike Hume, I do not propose to promote my cynicism to the status of a philosophical doctrine.")
The Bible addresses this intuitive side by saying that faith comes through the Holy Spirit and revelation. That does not mean that Christianity is not rational, but that reason by itself is insufficient to overcome intuitive "cynicism."
Anette Acker,
>This is why it is important to >look at the evidence for the >resurrection in a broader >context. Since the claim is that >it is God's revelation to us of >Himself, we cannot presuppose a >natural explanation like we do >with everything else.
You are confusing methodological naturalism with ontological naturalism. Since there have been ZERO cases in all of human experience in which methodological supernaturalism has proven useful in a publicly verifiable way that could not have been met by methodological naturalism, it is entirely appropriate to pre-suppose methodological naturalism (responsible for modern science among other things that would not and arguably could not have been accomplished with methodological supernaturalism). However, this is not an a priori rejection of ontological supernaturalism. If a supernatural event can be shown to have occurred using methodological naturalism, then it isn't irrational to believe it occurred. But arguments on the plausibility of supernatural processes used to claim something about the probability of an event given supernaturalism are worthless until we have more evidence that methodological supernaturalism actually accomplishes something nontrivial. And none of what I said amounts to an a priori assumption that supernatural events do not occur. Merely that it doesn't make sense to claim that some supernatural events are more plausible than others.
This is a test
>I did a quick search on Zugibe, >and although he may disagree that >Jesus died by asphyxiation, he >most certainly agrees that Jesus >died on the cross.
He is assuming that the written claims are true for the sake of argument. He does not say that the medical circumstances corroborate it or that similar circumstances would not have been naturalistically survived BASED ON THE MEDICAL STUDIES ALONE, i.e. the medical studies do not corroborate the written claims.
>In fact, his work is about what >happens medically during >crucifixion--specifically what >would have happened to Jesus.
Ditto my earlier comment.
>His publisher calls him "the >world’s leading authority on the >crucifixion" and says that he >"provides the most complete >scientific account of Christ’s >death available today." So >obviously Zugibe thinks Jesus >died by crucifixion.
The publisher is probably a non-doctor, non-medical-professional who not only misrepresents Zugibe's position but is clearly acting as an exaggerationalist spokesperson.
>Experts may not agree on exactly >how Jesus died on the cross, but >there is almost universal >agreement that he did die. Why >should we believe that you are >right and all these medical >professionals are wrong?
I have already politely explained this multiple times to you. If you don't like to have to repeat your earlier posts, please don't try to make me do so.
Find me a published, peer-reviewed article by doctors or pathologists in a medical journal which is written professionally and to the point, has most of its references scholarly medical references preferably based on empirical data, which says that the medical circumstances would make it unsurvivable without assuming the truth of the written claim that Jesus died on the cross. Then I will address your question, but until then, you are just repeating an argument which I already debunked earlier.
Anette:
>The resurrection explains all the >evidence well and all the >naturalistic hypotheses fall >apart in very significant ways.
No, there are at least 4 viable naturalistic hypotheses:
1. Loftus - Palmer effect and Festinger - Carlsmith Effect combined
2. Swoon Theory
3. Mary went to the wrong tomb and an identical twin made the appearances
4. Body was relocated or stolen and an identical twin made the appearances
And it is NOT true that these have all been properly considered and rejected by those in relevant fields, so stop claiming that, it is false.
Nightvid:
>"Experts may not agree on exactly >how Jesus died on the cross, but >there is almost universal >agreement that he did die. Why >should we believe that you are >right and all these medical >professionals are wrong?"
I have already politely explained this multiple times to you. If you don't like to have to repeat your earlier posts, please don't try to make me do so.
Actually, you have not explained this to me at all. All you have done is assert that Dr. Zugibe has discredited the asphyxiation theory. I looked him up and found nothing that comes close to supporting your claim that it is plausible that Jesus didn't really die.
In fact, his explanation fits the biblical description of the scourging and crucifixion of Jesus very well. He said that Jesus probably died from hypovolemic and traumatic shock, which would have resulted from massive blood loss.
Think about what happened to Jesus. He was scourged 39 times with a whip of leather straps embedded with pieces of metal or glass. His back would have been ripped open each time. By the time the scourging was over, He would have been bleeding profusely. Then a crown of thorns was pushed into His scalp, causing further bleeding.
And nails were pounded through His hands and feet to secure Him to the cross. (Apparently Dr. Zugibe was the first to show that the nails pierced the hands rather than the wrists, which is consistent with the Bible, including Psalm 22:16: "They pierced My hands and My feet.")
All the blood loss Jesus would have suffered explains why He died so quickly while the two other men were still alive when they removed the bodies in time for the Sabbath. Then Jesus was pierced in the side with a spear, causing further blood loss and confirming that He was indeed dead.
Afterwards, He was left in a tomb without any kind of medical attention from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning.
If you think Jesus not only survived that, but pushed the "large stone" off the mouth of the tomb and walked off on His pierced and bleeding feet, you have more faith than anyone I know.
>"His publisher calls him "the >world’s leading authority on the >crucifixion" and says that he >"provides the most complete >scientific account of Christ’s >death available today." So >obviously Zugibe thinks Jesus >died by crucifixion."
The publisher is probably a non-doctor, non-medical-professional who not only misrepresents Zugibe's position but is clearly acting as an exaggerationalist spokesperson.
Well, since Zugibe probably got a chance to approve what the publisher said about him, and you have not given a shred of evidence that he says what you claim, I'll cast my vote with the publisher.
Nightvid:
Merely that it doesn't make sense to claim that some supernatural events are more plausible than others.
It is more plausible to say that the cause of the Big Bang was a supernatural event than to say that the disappearance of my keys was a supernatural event. Since the Big Bang marked the beginning of time, space, and matter--the beginning of nature--the cause would come from beyond nature. And thus began the natural chain of events that led to the loss of my keys.
If God, a timeless, transcendent, immaterial Being, caused the Big Bang, then it is more plausible to think that He supernaturally raised His Son from the dead for theologically significant reasons than to think that the disappearance of my keys was a supernatural event.
Nightvid:
If someone in court said they recognized someone involved by feeling their hands even though they clearly appeared to be someone else, everyone would know this person is either mentally deranged or in need of anti-psychotic drugs, I kid you not.
However, the Gospels also say that Jesus opened their eyes so that they recognized Him. Mary Magdalene recognized Him as soon as He said her name. And when they felt His hands and His side, they were able to identify the places where He was pierced. That would rule out it being someone else.
Vinny said that he often reads about someone being convicted of a crime based on eyewitness testimony and later being exonerated when DNA testing is available. Jesus gave them the equivalent of DNA evidence because He would have been the only person who had those imprints in His hands and side.
Paul is clearly saying the body is not an earthly one, but a spiritual, heavenly one (this is the "gnostic" view). This is not consistent with the "sarcicistic" (fully embodied) narrative in the Gospel accounts. If they disagree, it is LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for them to both be right. Thus, one of them must be at its core very unreliable. Which is it?
This is Paul we're talking about, remember? The guy who wrote the most theologically significant parts of the Bible. If Paul had been Gnostic, then Gnosticism would have been orthodoxy.
But Paul is not talking about a non-bodily resurrection although he talks about a "spiritual" body. This is very clear in 1 Cor. 15:35-45. He analogizes this earthly body to a seed that is sown (in death) and becomes a different type of body at the resurrection. He doesn't describe that body, but simply says that it is imperishable.
If you are going to hold that the resurrection of Jesus, as Paul describes it, is non-bodily, then you must have think that the Bible says that Adam had a non-bodily existence as well: "So also it is written, 'The first man, Adam, became a living soul.' The last Adam [Christ] became a life-giving spirit" (1 Cor. 15:45).
The word "resurrection" was always used in the bodily sense by the Jews, so Paul's readers would have understood him to mean a bodily resurrection. Before his conversion, he was a Pharisee, and as a Christian he agreed with the Pharisees about the resurrection (Acts 23:6).
Pinchas Lapide, an orthodox Jewish theologian gave a series of quotes by liberal theologians who have "spiritualized" the resurrection and said: "I cannot rid myself of the impression that some modern Christian theologians are ashamed of the material facticity of the resurrection . . . However, for the first Christians who thought, believed, and hoped in a Jewish manner, the immediate historicity was not only a part of that happening but the indispensable precondition for the recognition of its significance for salvation." (Italics added.)
Not to mention Paul needed a politically correct excuse when he stopped persecuting Christians - the mantra "if you're in it, win it" in regards to war is because stopping a fight is politically incorrect, as it amounts to an admission that what you were doing is wrong. In my college Political Science class we learned that this is a very powerful effect. Paul was likely to have embellished whatever happened to meet this need.
Paul needed a politically correct excuse when he stopped persecuting Christians? He was off to Damascus to arrest them. Why the change of heart to begin with then? What kind of a "need" did Paul have?
I noticed that you really like to psychoanalyze people based on studies that you've read, but you are not ever going to find a psychologist who will make a simplistic diagnosis of individuals who lived 2000 years ago, especially not when it goes contrary to the evidence we have. Gerd Ludemann, who has argued that Paul's conversion was precipitated by guilt, is an atheistic Bible scholar, not a psychologist. But there is absolutely no evidence that Paul felt any guilt prior to his conversion. Quite the contrary--he believed he was serving God.
Have you ever been psychoanalyzed by a Christian who has a one-size-fits-all diagnosis for atheism? I have been psychoanalyzed by non-theists who have one-size-fits-all diagnoses for Christian faith. And although you may agree that that kind of thing is mildly insulting, it is also completely inaccurate. People who make blanket assertions generally don't make the effort to listen or take into consideration evidence that contradicts their conclusion.
And all the evidence we have about Paul indicates that he felt no guilt about persecuting the church until after his conversion. He believed it to be his God-given duty to stop the movement.
Anette,
We use intellectual tools to infer causes from evidence. However, in order for these tools to work, we must be able to rely on the consistency of observed patterns of cause and effect. We observe the causes that produce certain types of effects and we reason from this that similar effects in the past were produced by similar causes. This is methodological naturalism.
There is a saying attributed to Abraham Maslow: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything tends to look like a nail.” Many atheists conclude that the supernatural cannot exist because we don’t have any way of verifying it. I don’t think that this conclusion is justified. However, the problem is not the presupposition of naturalism. The problem is the limitations of the tools that we have.
Presupposing a God who reveals himself supernaturally doesn’t change the intellectual tools that we use to infer causes from evidence. Those tools still depend on the consistency of observed patterns of cause and effect. You claim that God revealed Himself supernaturally through the resurrection and in the pages of the Bible. The Muslim claims that God revealed Himself supernaturally through the Koran and the Mormon claims that He did so through the Angel Moroni and the Golden Plates. Unfortunately, we lack an intellectual tool to distinguish between these claims because none of them follow the observed patterns of cause and effect.
Nightvid:
3. Mary went to the wrong tomb and an identical twin made the appearances
4. Body was relocated or stolen and an identical twin made the appearances
The twin theory has been advanced by Robert Cavin, who wrote the first chapter of the book The Empty Tomb, in which he (or his editors) had the good judgment to leave out any mention of the twin theory. It has got to be the most implausible of them all and--if I may be candid--smacks of desperation.
Cavin hypothesizes that Jesus had a twin brother from whom He was separated at birth. This twin showed up in Jerusalem just in time to see Jesus being crucified, and when he saw his mirror image on the cross he realized that the Jesus he had heard so much about was his twin brother!
He knew what he had to do to keep hope alive so he stole the body and appeared to the disciples claiming to be the resurrected Christ.
There are numerous problems with this hypothesis:
First, this twin brother must have been really dumb and really smart at the same time. He watched Jesus be scourged to a bloody pulp and hung naked on a cross before a vast crowd to die, and unlike the disciples, who went into hiding, he said, "Gee, I think I'd like to be that guy!"
But he also knew exactly what to say to the disciples to convince them that he was Jesus. In fact, he knew them all intimately and could explain to them how the OT Scriptures prophesied about Jesus. He also talked to them in exactly the same way as Jesus did.
Second, as we've discussed, the disciples didn't immediately recognize Jesus by sight. It was only when He opened their eyes and let them feel the imprints in His hands and side that they knew it was Him. Jesus gave them DNA evidence.
Third, how does this explain the conversion of Paul, to whom Jesus appeared post-ascension?
Fourth, it is utterly ad hoc. There is no mention anywhere of Jesus having a twin, and no reason why Joseph and Mary would have given him up at birth.
Anette,
But getting back to the resurrection, suffice it to say that it's the only miracle we can prove, and it is also the bedrock of Christianity. We can't prove it conclusively, but we have pretty compelling historical evidence to back it up.
What you have presented is as if Elijah challenged the priests of Baal to a contest of who could provide the best evidence that their god had once performed a miracle.
But Elijah shows the way to prove if a god is real is by demonstrating the god's supernatural power. And the words Elijah used to mock Baal also applies to your god's behavior today.
Throughout the Bible, God demonstrates Himself through miracles or talking in an audible voice not through arguments and historical evidence.
Anette:
>The twin theory has been advanced >by Robert Cavin, who wrote the >first chapter of the book The >Empty Tomb, in which he (or his >editors) had the good judgment to >leave out any mention of the twin >theory. It has got to be the most >implausible of them all and--if I >may be candid--smacks of >desperation.
This is question-begging. "The author left it out, and I know it was implausible, therefore the author left it out because it was implausible, thus it is implausible" is circular reasoning .
The rest of your post is a ridiculous, oversensationalized, exaggerated, and almost insulting straw man. My hypotheses did not posit the same things that Cavin's do. Merely showing something about one part of HIS (Cavin's) explanation to be implausible doesn't make MY explanation implausible, unless I posit those things in question which you have shown implausible.
I have already discussed why the "new body" argument fails: This is a specific point on which the accounts disagree, therefore logically at least ONE of them is wrong, so we have reason to find them unreliable on this specific point.
And religious conversions which you continue to demand an "explanation" for are commonplace. I assume you believe there is a naturalistic explanation for every conversion to a religion other than your own. To claim conversions to your own faith need a supernatural event is special pleading.
Why bother being an apologist if you can't help but using the same hyper-exaggerationalist straw man that most of the others do?
Anette:
>it is more plausible to think >that He supernaturally raised His >Son from the dead for >theologically significant reasons >than to think that the >disappearance of my keys was a >supernatural event.
No, it is no more plausible than to think that the disappearance of your keys for theologically significant reasons really happened.
Your inference pre-supposes something about theology, which is a form of methodological supernaturalism, which is empirically known to be a patently ridiculous epistemology, whether you want to admit it or not. The utter failure of methodological supernaturalism is as much of a certainty as anything (outside of mathematics that is).
Anette:
>However, the Gospels also say >that Jesus opened their eyes so >that they recognized Him.
You are trusting the Gospels on a description of an invisible and unverifiable phenomenon. Do I really have to spell out to you what is wrong with this? Is it really unclear to you why this claim is not historical, even if it were true?
>However, the Gospels also say >that Jesus opened their eyes so >that they recognized Him. Mary >Magdalene recognized Him as soon >as He said her name. And when >they felt His hands and His side, >they were able to identify the >places where He was pierced. That >would rule out it being someone >else.
>He would have been the only >person who had those imprints in >His hands and side.
This is an absurd thing to claim, it was equally likely (a priori) evidence that is was (choose one other crucified Roman among the THOUSANDS who would also have those "imprints"). Special pleading yet again.
Anette:
>Paul needed a politically correct >excuse when he stopped >persecuting Christians? He was >off to Damascus to arrest them. >Why the change of heart to begin >with then? What kind of a "need" >did Paul have?
Paul's conscience perhaps got the better of him, although he suppressed it AND kept quiet for a while, eventually he decided to stop the killing of Christians. And AFTER this happened, he claimed an experience, even though the experience itself was claimed to have been before then.
>I noticed that you really like to >psychoanalyze people based on >studies that you've read, but you >are not ever going to find a >psychologist who will make a >simplistic diagnosis of >individuals who lived 2000 years >ago, especially not when it goes >contrary to the evidence we have.
You are again setting up another straw man. I am not asserting that we have POSITIVE evidence that is what happened. Only that it is an a priori plausible naturalistic explanation for what is written down which isn't ruled out.
Anette:
For the first 3 or 4 "rounds" of our discussion you were quite thoughtful, reasonably intellectual and insightful, and also reasonably tried to be honest, much better than a typical Christian apologist.
But you've now resorted to straw men and arguments I have already shown you are invalid or invoke false pretenses. I enjoyed the dialogue at first, but now you've become just like most of the other apologists: of questionable intellectual honesty. I am really growing disappointed.
I am familiar with much of the standard apologetic rhetoric, I know the arguments from your side as I have been studying them for nearly 6 months as well. I was REALLY hoping you could do better than that. Because if there is good evidence for Christianity, I want to know about it. But I haven't seen any yet.
Vinny:
Presupposing a God who reveals himself supernaturally doesn’t change the intellectual tools that we use to infer causes from evidence. Those tools still depend on the consistency of observed patterns of cause and effect. You claim that God revealed Himself supernaturally through the resurrection and in the pages of the Bible. The Muslim claims that God revealed Himself supernaturally through the Koran and the Mormon claims that He did so through the Angel Moroni and the Golden Plates. Unfortunately, we lack an intellectual tool to distinguish between these claims because none of them follow the observed patterns of cause and effect.
I have spent months trying to demonstrate why there is historical evidence for the resurrection and not for the claims of the Koran and Mormonism. If it is still not clear, there is probably not much hope that I'll be be able to make it clearer.
Charles Darwin used the inference to the best explanation when he developed his theory of natural selection. The theory does not depend on the consistency of observed patterns of cause and effect. Are you saying we should toss it out because the "intellectual tools" used by Darwin and subsequent biologists are insufficient?
Anette:
>Actually, you have not explained >this to me at all. All you have >done is assert that Dr. Zugibe >has discredited the asphyxiation >theory.
If you actually READ what he wrote, you will see this for yourself.
>I looked him up and found nothing >that comes close to supporting >your claim that it is plausible >that Jesus didn't really die.
I am not saying that Zugibe made the positive claim that naturalistic survival is plausible, rather, I am saying that he did not claim that it is a priori implausible. This is another straw man (Enough is enough, please!)
>Think about what happened to >Jesus. He was scourged 39 times >with a whip of leather straps >embedded with pieces of metal or >glass. His back would have been >ripped open each time. By the >time the scourging was over, He >would have been bleeding profusely
I've already explained that this is empirically proven false by the Phillippines Crucifixion Ceremony.
>All the blood loss Jesus would >have suffered explains why He >died so quickly while the two >other men were still alive when >they removed the bodies in time >for the Sabbath.
You are pre-supposing that Jesus died on the cross.
The spear is not recorded in anything written within 2 generations (50-60 years) after the supposed events.
>If you think Jesus not only >survived that, but pushed >the "large stone" off the mouth >of the tomb and walked off on His >pierced and bleeding feet, you >have more faith than anyone I >know.
Please refer back to my "case for the swoon theory". I have already debunked that argument. Repeating the argument over and over is not going to change that.
Nightvid:
The rest of your post is a ridiculous, oversensationalized, exaggerated, and almost insulting straw man. My hypotheses did not posit the same things that Cavin's do. Merely showing something about one part of HIS (Cavin's) explanation to be implausible doesn't make MY explanation implausible, unless I posit those things in question which you have shown implausible.
I don't think it was a straw man, but I can see why you would have found it insulting, and I apologize for that.
Cavin is actually the only scholar I'm aware of who has developed the twin theory. And I don't know what your explanation is. You simply mentioned the twin theory as a possibility.
And he's an excellent Bible scholar who has done his homework on the resurrection evidence. In fact, I think that is why he has to resort to something like the twin theory. He couldn't deny the historical evidence and the fact is that there are no good naturalistic explanations for the data.
I have already discussed why the "new body" argument fails: This is a specific point on which the accounts disagree, therefore logically at least ONE of them is wrong, so we have reason to find them unreliable on this specific point.
This is actually what Cavin talks about in his chapter of The Empty Tomb, which is one of the reasons why I concluded that he is an excellent Bible scholar. He fully understands what the Bible consistently claims about the resurrection body of Jesus and he explains it more thoroughly than I did.
But then in the second half of his chapter he demands that this claim be experimentally tested "over a very long period of time--years if not centuries or even millennia." In other words, he is employing a double standard since the process of natural selection cannot be tested in this way. Most likely he accepts the theory of natural selection, even though Darwin relied on the inference to the best explanation, but Cavin rejects the same methodology when it comes to the resurrection.
>Cavin is actually the only >scholar I'm aware of who has >developed the twin theory.
I am a scholar too. So what's your point?
>And I don't know what your >explanation is. You simply >mentioned the twin theory as a >possibility.
What part of my descriptions given in the original post with the twin hypotheses don't you understand?
>He couldn't deny the historical >evidence and the fact is that >there are no good naturalistic >explanations for the data.
Yes there are, I already have given you 4 and have knocked down all of your arguments against them, as I did with many other apologists. I would be glad to formally debate you.
The rest of your post is a red herring. I am not talking about what Cavin said, I am talking about what I said.
And Richard Carrier, who knows much about the Greek language originals, disagrees with you on the point of what Paul believed relative to the Gospel authors on the "nature of a resurrection body"
Anette:
>Charles Darwin used the inference >to the best explanation when he >developed his theory of natural >selection. The theory does not >depend on the consistency of >observed patterns of cause and >effect.
Yes it does. If ANY OF: the rate of mutations, the processes governing natural selection, the available habitats, the energy sources, the geographical barriers, were not causally reliable, evolution as a theory would not be justified. It is justified BECAUSE these things follow reliable natural laws and have predictable causality and evolution has predictive power.
Nightvid:
Yes it does. If ANY OF: the rate of mutations, the processes governing natural selection, the available habitats, the energy sources, the geographical barriers, were not causally reliable, evolution as a theory would not be justified. It is justified BECAUSE these things follow reliable natural laws and have predictable causality and evolution has predictive power.
Let me rephrase my point: The theory of natural selection is based on "the inference to the best explanation." Do you deny that?
You are simply describing the evidence, for which the process of natural selection is considered the best explanation. However, all of this happened a long time ago and it is not possible to test natural selection by way of experimental science.
I don't want to argue about natural selection--my only point is that the inference to the best explanation is used in numerous fields, including history.
Allan Megill, Steven Shepard, and Phillip Honenberger say in Historical knowledge, historical error: a contemporary guide to practice:
"The techniques for ranking historical accounts as better or worse have been implicitly recognized by historians for centuries. All the same, these techniques may be effectively articulated in a number of different ways. In this chapter, we want to suggest (and show) that historical accounts can be judged better or worse in accordance with what some philosophers and computer scientists have variously called "abduction," "abductive inference," or "inference to the best explanation." In this form of inference, we infer, from the premise that a given a hypothesis better accounts for the evidence than does any other hypothesis, the conclusion that the given hypothesis is true.
"This form of inference is commonly employed in natural science. In The Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin supported his argument for evolution by an inference to the best explanation; that is, he claimed that his theory made sense of many more classes of biologically relevant facts than did special creationism, and did so much more simply."
Likewise, the resurrection hypothesis explains all the relevant historical facts and does so simply. The naturalistic explanations, on the other hand, suffer from lack of explanatory power, they are ad hoc, they require us to multiply entities (e.g., the existence of an unknown twin), and/or they are self-contradictory.
And Richard Carrier, who knows much about the Greek language originals, disagrees with you on the point of what Paul believed relative to the Gospel authors on the "nature of a resurrection body"
Richard Carrier has a Ph. D. in ancient history (not religious studies) and he is known for his atheism, so do think it's possible he has a slight bias against the Bible?
Robert Cavin, on the other hand, is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Cypress College. He also has a bias against the Bible, and yet he fully agrees with my interpretation, that the Gospel authors and Paul describe the resurrected Jesus the same way. After quoting Luke 20:36 and 1 Cor. 15:42-44, he says: "As is evident from these passages, the resurrection body on the concept we are examining possesses a number of quite extraordinary dispositional properties."
Lowell:
But Elijah shows the way to prove if a god is real is by demonstrating the god's supernatural power. And the words Elijah used to mock Baal also applies to your god's behavior today.
Elijah was a prophet of the Lord, and all the prophets of the Lord in the Bible did miracles. God's prophets spoke on His behalf and did great works by his power. (However, there are no prophets today.)
Since the prophets of Baal supposedly spoke on behalf of Baal, Elijah challenged them to light the fire by the power of Baal. But Baal did not reply to his prophets because he is not a god. That's the point.
Anette:
Your "explanatory power" argument fails. I could equally well make the following argument:
1. Water ice has been found on Mars.
2. Mars's low gravity has caused it to thermally lose most of its atmosphere, meaning it used to have a pressure suitable for liquid water, one substance crucial for life.
3. Many people have reported direct experience of alien abduction that were not known by their family to be psychotic.
4. These people have attracted a lot of attention.
5. Flying saucers have been sighted by numerous witnesses.
6. Most of Mars's surface was not investigated by the rovers to rule Martians out.
Thus, we may conclude by inference to the best explanation that Martians abducted these people in their saucers and then returned them. Simple and explains all six facts.
The way out of this conclusion is "extraordinary claims require more solid evidence than ordinary claims" . And the same thing applies to a supernatural resurrection as to Martian abduction.
Anette:
>Robert Cavin, on the other hand, >is Associate Professor of >Philosophy and Religious Studies >at Cypress College. He also has a >bias against the Bible, and yet >he fully agrees with my >interpretation, that the Gospel >authors and Paul describe the >resurrected Jesus the same way. >After quoting Luke 20:36 and 1 >Cor. 15:42-44, he says: "As is >evident from these passages, the >resurrection body on the concept >we are examining possesses a >number of quite extraordinary >dispositional properties."
Luke 20:36 is pointing to the difference from "ordinary" bodies being immortality. On the other hand, Paul's understanding is one of "heavenly, spiritual bodies, not in the flesh" (Paraphrased from 1 Corinthians). In other words, immaterial or etherial. This is a very different claim.
Because much of the meaning can be lost in translation, it is important to have a good interpretation of the original Greek in its historical context, which is, among other things, what Richard Carrier has studied in depth. Robert Cavin has not studied the ancient Greek language nearly so much. "Philosophy and Religious Studies" isn't going to help much here. This is more of a historicolinguistic question than a philosophical one.
I have spent months trying to demonstrate why there is historical evidence for the resurrection and not for the claims of the Koran and Mormonism. If it is still not clear, there is probably not much hope that I'll be be able to make it clearer.
I think the biggest problem is that you seem to know less about the claims that Mormons make than I do, and everything I know comes froms an episode of South Park a single book that I read, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer. I don't know how you can express such certainty about the subject.
In an earlier comment you said that we should prefer a natural explanation for Smith's vision to a supernatural one. However, when it comes to the resurrection, you insist we take into account the claim that God supernaturally revealed himself. Mormons claim that God supernaturally revealed himself to Joseph Smith. Why doesn't that change the analysis of their claims in the same way that you wish to change the analysis of Christian claims.
Charles Darwin used the inference to the best explanation when he developed his theory of natural selection. The theory does not depend on the consistency of observed patterns of cause and effect. Are you saying we should toss it out because the "intellectual tools" used by Darwin and subsequent biologists are insufficient?
By observed patterns of cause and effect, I am talking about natural law and Darwin's theory absolutely depends on its consistency. Only if the forces of nature have acted consistently throughout the entirety of the earth's existence can we draw any inferences from the fossil record and the distribution of different species on earth today.
Vinny:
I think the biggest problem is that you seem to know less about the claims that Mormons make than I do, and everything I know comes froms an episode of South Park a single book that I read, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer. I don't know how you can express such certainty about the subject.
I don't believe we've disagreed on any of the facts about Mormonism, so what am I expressing certainty on? I have for the most part been basing my arguments on what you have said.
Do you honestly not see the difference between the evidence supporting the resurrection and the claims of Joseph Smith? If so, I don't know where the communication breakdown is.
But an atheist who occasionally reads my blog understood my argument back in January (I'm sure he's very smart, but so are you), and he said:
If a does not equal b and c does not equal b it doesn't prove that a equals c.
I am confident that Anette will be able to present a case for the exclusivity of the Resurrection as compared to other religious claims.
I think if we are to use Anette's criteria for judging other non-biblical supernatural claims, they would have to include at least these criterion:
-There are multiple independent eye-witness or one step removed from eye-witness accounts.
-The majority of modern scholars agree on the facts.
-That the event is counter to the expectations of the witnesses.
-That the actions of witnesses, post-event, are drastically changed.
-That all alternate explanations have deficiencies.
I'm not sure that there is another claimed supernatural event that can be scrutinized in the same way.
Whether or not I succeeded at it, that is exactly what I was attempting demonstrate. Does that not make sense to you?
Of course the first question is whether God exists, which is beyond the scope of these recent discussions, but if that has been established by a preponderance of the evidence in someone's mind, then the central claim of Christianity--the resurrection--can be examined critically.
In an earlier comment you said that we should prefer a natural explanation for Smith's vision to a supernatural one. However, when it comes to the resurrection, you insist we take into account the claim that God supernaturally revealed himself.
Could you clarify what you mean by that last sentence? My position is that Christianity can be defended rationally and that there is historical evidence for the resurrection.
In order to consider any religion one has to be open to the possibility that God exists.
By observed patterns of cause and effect, I am talking about natural law and Darwin's theory absolutely depends on its consistency. Only if the forces of nature have acted consistently throughout the entirety of the earth's existence can we draw any inferences from the fossil record and the distribution of different species on earth today.
But Darwin's theory was still arrived at by inference to the best explanation, as are other scientific theories. Historians also use abductive inference. So the "intellectual tool" that is used in a discussion about the resurrection is used in other disciplines.
Nightvid Cole:
>"And I don't know what your >explanation is. You simply >mentioned the twin theory as a >possibility."
What part of my descriptions given in the original post with the twin hypotheses don't you understand?
My point is that you have not developed any kind of argument for the twin theory. All you have done is assert that the twin theory is plausible. You have given no arguments or explanations beyond that. All you've said is:
3. Mary went to the wrong tomb and an identical twin made the appearances
4. Body was relocated or stolen and an identical twin made the appearances
Luke 20:36 is pointing to the difference from "ordinary" bodies being immortality. On the other hand, Paul's understanding is one of "heavenly, spiritual bodies, not in the flesh" (Paraphrased from 1 Corinthians). In other words, immaterial or etherial. This is a very different claim.
This is question-begging.
Because much of the meaning can be lost in translation, it is important to have a good interpretation of the original Greek in its historical context, which is, among other things, what Richard Carrier has studied in depth.
Simply asserting that Carrier has studied Greek in depth and therefore his interpretation of Paul is correct is not a convincing argument. If you can find someone who is a Bible scholar, has less of an obvious bias in your favor, and whose arguments you can either quote or paraphrase, I will take your argument more seriously.
In addition to giving my own interpretation so that my arguments can actually be addressed, I have referenced Cavin, a non-theistic Bible scholar, and Pinchas Lapide, an orthodox Jewish theologian, who understood the Jewish mindset--that a resurrection was always bodily.
>Think about what happened to >Jesus. He was scourged 39 times >with a whip of leather straps >embedded with pieces of metal or >glass. His back would have been >ripped open each time. By the >time the scourging was over, He >would have been bleeding profusely"
I've already explained that this is empirically proven false by the Phillippines Crucifixion Ceremony.
The Philippines Crucifixion Ceremony is nothing like the crucifixions done by Romans. These penitents were doing self-flagellation--they did not have people trained to do maximum amount of damage gouge out their skin and cause severe blood loss.
If you think the Philippines Crucifixion Ceremony is an empirical test of what Jesus went through, I would encourage you to do some research on the Roman style of scourging. Most people who survived the scourging itself, died within a few days. Eusebius (AD 263–339) said about some of the early martyrs: "All around were horrified to see them so torn with the scourges that their very veins were laid bare, and the inner muscles and sinews, and even their very bowels were exposed."
And after that, Jesus was hung on the cross for six hours. Josephus describes trying to save the lives of three acquaintances who had been hung on a cross by asking that they be taken down. They were taken down and received the greatest care by physicians, but still two of them died.
Jesus, on the other hand, was left alone in a tomb from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning, without any kind of medical attention. If He was still alive after being taken off the cross, He would have continued to bleed and His wounds would almost certainly have become infected if He did not die from shock.
And if He has somehow managed to survive all that, you would have us believe that, rather than seeking immediate medical attention, the disciples concluded that He had conquered death?
Thus, we may conclude by inference to the best explanation that Martians abducted these people in their saucers and then returned them. Simple and explains all six facts.
The problem is that you have not carefully examined these six facts and ruled out naturalistic explanations. I, on the other hand, have spent about six months carefully examining the three relevant facts supporting the resurrection from every angle to determine their veracity. And I have also examined the naturalistic explanations put forth by skeptics.
The inference to the best explanation is only used after the evidence has been carefully examined and different hypotheses are ruled out.
Anette,
I am well aware that there are differences between the evidence that is used to support the resurrection and the evidence that is used to support Mormonism or Islam or any other supernatural claim. What I am not aware of is a good argument for why those particular differences warrant the acceptance of the resurrection and rejection of all the others.
The biggest problem with that list of criteria is that they have been specifically selected because they favor the resurrection. I suspect that every other religion could find specific factors that favor their supernatural claims. The Mormons might say that the number of first hand accounts of supernatural appearances is an important factor. The Muslims might say that lack of textual variations in the scriptures is an important factor. The Roman Catholics would point to the unbroken Papal succession going back to Peter as validating supernatural claims that are exclusively Catholic. Anyone can cherry pick the criteria that justify the conclusion that they want to reach.
Another problem that I have is that you have not studied those other religions well enough to know the extent to which your criteria might apply to them. Based on my scanty knowledge of Mormonism, I have noticed many parallels in the apologetic arguments they make. I am sure that Islam can muster large number of Muslim scholars who will agree to particular facts that they need in order to make the case for their claims. It may be that those criteria really favor the resurrection as much as you say, but I don’t think you have established it. Nor do I think that modifying the criteria in response to objections in order that they continue to exclusively favor the resurrection is a valid approach.
Vinny,
The biggest problem with that list of criteria is that they have been specifically selected because they favor the resurrection.
I have used the inference to the best explanation, which is how historians go about deciding whether a historical fact actually happened. Since we are trying to determine whether the historical fact of the resurrection really took place, what better way is there to approach the question?
I am sure that Islam can muster large number of Muslim scholars who will agree to particular facts that they need in order to make the case for their claims.
I'm sure they can, but I've almost exclusively relied on statements by scholars who are not conservative Christians in establishing the facts on which I've relied. I have also applied historical criteria to the facts.
Nor do I think that modifying the criteria in response to objections in order that they continue to exclusively favor the resurrection is a valid approach.
Could you give me specific examples of when I have done this? Are you making the same argument as Darkknight56--that I moved the goalpost by pointing out why the theory of Joseph of Arimathea moving the body doesn't work? If so, maybe you can explain to me why Joseph would have put the body in his tomb just to observe the law, and then turn around and violate the law by moving a body from a "honored place" to a "wretched place." As I said to Darkknight56, pointing out the flaws in an argument is not the same as moving the goalpost.
And if that is not what you are referring to, I would genuinely like to know how you think I have changed the criteria so that they continue to favor exclusively the resurrection.
By the way, I'm planning to take about a month off from blogging and decide where to go from there. So I want to thank you for the discussions. I have very much enjoyed them.
Vinny,
Your comment did not post. I just got the email notification.
Hmm?
I guess I'll try it in two parts:
Suppose that you are sitting on a jury and two eyewitnesses testify that they saw the defendant shoot the victim. The witnesses have no known reason to lie and they were in a position to see the events. On the other hand, a ballistics expert testifies that the bullets that killed the defendant did not come from the defendant’s gun. The expert further testifies that gun powder residue on the hand of another man indicates that he fired the fatal shots. You must use inference to the best explanation to decide whether to convict or acquit the defendant.
If you apply methodological naturalism, you will acquit because witnesses are often mistaken but the laws of physics do not vary. Each gun barrel produces unique markings on the bullets that it fires and one gun’s bullets will not match another gun’s barrel. By the same token, the gun powder residue from a gun that is fired will land on the hand of the man who fires the gun. We know from experience that the laws of physics are more reliable than witnesses.
On the other hand, if you believe that supernatural explanations are every bit as valid as natural ones and that they are equally deserving of consideration, you might vote to convict. After all, some supernatural agent may have reshaped the bullets before the ballistics expert tested them and that same agent may have caused the gun powder to appear on the other man’s hand. The supernatural explanation allows you to accept all the testimony whereas the natural explanation would force you to reject the testimony of the eyewitnesses even though you know of no reason why they would lie.
(con't)
(con't)
It seems as though every month or so, there is a story in the news about a man being released from prison because he has been exonerated by DNA testing that wasn’t available at the time he was convicted. This happens even when the conviction was obtained by eyewitness testimony. The courts have no qualms about rejecting eyewitness testimony if it conflicts with what science says is possible. However, if supernatural explanations are possible, there would be no reason to prefer the scientific evidence to the eyewitness testimony since some supernatural agent might have temporarily suspended the laws of science.
Merram-Webster defines ad hoc as “for the particular end or case without consideration of wider application.” Courts of law never use inference to the best explanation to establish the occurrence of the supernatural. Historians never use inference to the best explanation to establish the occurrence of the supernatural. Christians never use inference to the best explanation to establish the supernatural for claims of Scientology, Islam, Mormonism, any religion other than their own. The only time inference to the best explanation is proposed as a means to establish the occurrence of a supernatural event explanation is when Christian apologists argue for the historicity of the resurrection. It is the epitome of an ad hoc argument.
Vinny,
The supernatural explanation allows you to accept all the testimony whereas the natural explanation would force you to reject the testimony of the eyewitnesses even though you know of no reason why they would lie.
If you combine all the arguments for Christian theism and look at them together, this problem is eliminated. (And of course you would look at them together because the naturalist who thinks the universe is just a brute fact is not going to conclude that Jesus was raised from the dead, regardless of the evidence.)
One of those arguments is the rationality and order of the universe. How do scientists know that the laws of physics do not vary? Because they have been constant in the past. But the belief that the sun will rise tomorrow and that an object will fall to the ground the next time we release it is an act of faith.
Why is the universe so orderly and why is it potentially comprehensible to the human mind? Why do the laws of physics correspond to mathematical equations? All of that points to some kind of rational Mind rather than random forces.
It seems to me that attributing these laws to "brute fact" is even more of a dogmatic assertion than philosophically arriving at the conclusion that the Mind of God is behind it all.
But setting that aside (I understand that you probably disagree), the Christian theist doesn't disagree about the laws of physics being constant, or that DNA evidence is more reliable than eyewitness testimony.
However, if the question is whether God exists and which religion is true, it is necessary to go beyond the scope of science to arrive at the answer. If we have already decided that nature and its laws are all there is, then we are begging the question. And that is also a faith-based conclusion.
But as I've said before, it is important to put the resurrection in context; first, by examining the scientific evidence and philosophical arguments for theism, and second, by looking at the many ways in which the redemption of Christ is foreshadowed in the OT in specific ways. It also makes sense theologically, as the solution to the problem of evil by a God of love. In other words, the resurrection is not ad hoc at all.
However, the idea that a supernatural agent reshaped bullets before the ballistics expert tested them would be completely random, and therefore, an ad hoc explanation.
Historians never use inference to the best explanation to establish the occurrence of the supernatural.
Christian historians do use inference to the best explanation with respect to the resurrection, and archeologist William Ramsay became a Christian because of the evidence.
You may say that they are biased in favor of Christianity, but others have an anti-supernatural bias. If you are correct that historians never use inference to the best explanation to establish the occurrence of the supernatural, then you are saying that they have an anti-supernatural bias. That is, even though none of the naturalistic explanations for the data are plausible, they will not conclude that the resurrection happened.
Christians never use inference to the best explanation to establish the supernatural for claims of Scientology, Islam, Mormonism, any religion other than their own.
Actually, I have done that numerous times in my discussions with you and Darkknight56. It is not difficult to come up with plausible naturalistic explanations for the Angel Moroni visions or Mohammed's alleged splitting of the moon. Do you disagree?
As for me not knowing much about Mormonism and Islam, that's probably true, but I'm not talking to Mormons or Muslims, nor am I talking about those religions. I am talking about the resurrection to atheists and agnostics.
If you want to bring up the Angel Moroni, the burden is on you to demonstrate that the evidence is equivalent to the evidence for the resurrection. And even if you see a vague similarity in the claims, you have not done so. When you have brought up some claims of Mormonism, I have responded by giving plausible naturalistic explanations. In other words, I've done exactly what I'm asking you to do with respect to the resurrection evidence.
So I am applying the exact same criteria to all the alleged supernatural events.
There are a number of facts that are universally accepted by scholars, including skeptical ones, that point to the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster:
Fact 1: The Twin Towers and WTC 7 in New York, New York fell more rapidly on September 11, 2001 than any other burning building in human history, as though pushed by an invisible noodly appendage.
Fact 2: The rapid spreading of Pasta and Spaghetti as common foods around the world from Italy, the capital of which is Rome, as though it is divinely inspired.
Fact 3: The rapid spreading of those who have heard of the FSM, in just a few years. If it was a joke, how do you explain this?
Fact 4: Pastafarianism was brought up in court in Topeka, Kansas. If it is a joke, why would anyone serious mention it in court?
Fact 5: FSM appeared on a bike rack in Baltimore, Maryland, in a picture than even skeptical scholars don't claim is a forgery.
Fact 6: All of these cities, crucial to the tradition, lie between 39 and 42 degrees North latitude. Not a single skeptical scholar has explained why this would happen in a convincing way, except that FSM is revealing himself.
By inference to the best explanation, FSM is real!
Nightvid,
Please see my response to your comment about alien abductions. My response to this one is exactly the same. :)
Anette,
I don’t think you understood my point when I wrote “Christians never use inference to the best explanation to establish the supernatural for claims of Scientology, Islam, Mormonism, any religion other than their own.” It is true that you use inference to the best explanation to dismiss the supernatural claims of Joseph Smith and Mohammed, but you haven’t used it to establish those claims.
It is true that I can come up with plausible naturalistic explanations for the miraculous claims in Islam and Mormonism. However, if good historical methodology requires me to accept the possibility that a supernatural agent may have caused events to occur in an unprecedented way, I no longer have any basis to assert that those explanations are any more plausible than the supernatural ones. The only reason I can judge one explanation more plausible than another is by comparison to the way that my knowledge and experience tell me things normally happen.
I have read a fair amount of history and I have listened to several history courses on CD. I have never seen or heard a historian mention the importance of combining all the arguments for Christian theism and looking at them together. Nor do they speak of putting evidence in a theological or philosophical context in order to judge the relative plausibility of different explanations. This methodology is unique to Christian apologists and is necessitated by a faith-based commitment to a specific supernatural event. That makes it ad hoc.
BTW, you might be interested in Dagoods post on William Ramsay. He researched the question of whether Ramsay was ever an atheist or whether Ramsay converted to Christianity as a result of his studies. He couldn’t find anything that Ramsay wrote that would suggest that this was the case. As far as Dagoods could find, Ramsay started out a Christian and remained a Christian.
Vinny:
I don’t think you understood my point when I wrote “Christians never use inference to the best explanation to establish the supernatural for claims of Scientology, Islam, Mormonism, any religion other than their own.” It is true that you use inference to the best explanation to dismiss the supernatural claims of Joseph Smith and Mohammed, but you haven’t used it to establish those claims.
You may have noticed that I've had a lot of discussions with non-theists while blogging about the resurrection. One of the reasons why I do that is because I appreciate having my arguments challenged. I like it when I can arrive more closely at the truth.
In the debates, one of their goals is to falsify my claims, and if I say something false, I am more than happy to let it go. I view it as being sifted like wheat so the chaff is removed and I very much appreciate it.
But when you bring up the claims of Mormonism or Islam, or naturalistic explanations for the resurrection evidence, it is my job to do the falsification. That is, I will try to help you get closer to the truth. Is that something you want me to do, or do you prefer to hold on to your beliefs even if they are false?
I have read a fair amount of history and I have listened to several history courses on CD. I have never seen or heard a historian mention the importance of combining all the arguments for Christian theism and looking at them together. Nor do they speak of putting evidence in a theological or philosophical context in order to judge the relative plausibility of different explanations. This methodology is unique to Christian apologists and is necessitated by a faith-based commitment to a specific supernatural event. That makes it ad hoc.
The methodology is necessary to critically evaluate the claims of Christianity because it is not possible to evaluate them without being open to the possibility that the supernatural exists. But if you don't want to critically evaluate the claims of Christianity, you should free to ignore everything I or other Christians have said about this. Or you could propose a better methodology for evaluating them.
Thanks for the link to DagoodS's post!
Anette:
>All you have done >is assert that the twin theory is >plausible.
The burden of proof is on the person claiming to have examined the explanations and shown them to be implausible, NOT on the person claiming that they are not a priori implausible. Do I really need to convince you that identical twins are not freak events, that people getting lost after only having been somewhere once are common, and that body relocation was common in ancient Rome?
>My point is that you have not >developed any kind of argument for >the twin theory.
Why must I give an elaborate story containing details not relevant to the explanation? Why must I spell out the plausibility of things we all know are common events and feed it to you piecemeal? How would you like it if I demanded the same thing of you regarding natural explanations for apparent alien abduction or the FSM "evidence" ?
Anette:
You want a reliable source on what Paul thought, how about 1 Corinthians 15 ITSELF?
40 There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. 41 The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.
50 I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
How much clearer can it get that Paul is not talking about a bodily form?
By contrast, Luke 24: 38-40 make it clear Jesus is saying they should know by SIGHT and, if necessary, also touch, but not touch alone. Luke 24:41 gives the reason for the initial skepticism as joy and amazement, not a difference of appearance.
This is an obvious contradiction. If you are going to claim Cavin explains it away, I need to know how.
Anette:
I also don't think your demand for a non-skeptical source is fair. I never demanded that you give a non-Christian source for anything, only that it be someone 1) knowledgeable in the field and 2) that it appear well-thought-out and 3) that it be relevant. And surely you would think it unjust if I disallowed sources skeptical of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in formulating naturalistic explanations for the facts I gave.
And Carrier HAS studied the NT quite a bit, in both English and Greek, which Cavin has not. Not sure what definition of "bible scholar" you want.
Finally, you cite Eusebius as regards Roman procedure. But this is 240 years after the time under discussion, and a lot can change in 240 years. Less than 240 years separate today from when thousands of French were executed using the Guillotine, to put matters in perspective.
Anette:
>If you combine all the arguments >for Christian theism and look at >them together, this problem is >eliminated. (And of course you >would look at them together >because the naturalist who thinks >the universe is just a brute fact >is not going to conclude that >Jesus was raised from the dead, >regardless of the evidence.)
Except that said arguments rely on methodological supernaturalism, with the problems I mentioned before. One should consider the issues in a manner agnostic with regard to ontological supernaturalism, but methodological supernaturalism, we have strong grounds for rejecting. Also, to say something has a low empirical antecedent (prior) probability (such as a supernatural event) is not assuming naturalism, as empirical probability is agnostic with respect to processes, whether natural or supernatural.
The methodology is necessary to critically evaluate the claims of Christianity because it is not possible to evaluate them without being open to the possibility that the supernatural exists. But if you don't want to critically evaluate the claims of Christianity, you should free to ignore everything I or other Christians have said about this. Or you could propose a better methodology for evaluating them.
I think that I am open to the possibility of the supernatural. I have never identified myself as an “atheist” in part because I have never been certain that nothing beyond the natural world exists. Nevertheless, I don’t think that critical historical methodology is competent to render judgment on things supernatural. It is like trying to use a ruler to measure temperature.
If you and I were to discuss questions of ancient history outside the New Testament, I doubt that we would have many dramatic disagreements. If we wanted to decide whether Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March, I suspect we would agree about what constitutes relevant evidence and how reliable that evidence is. Where we did disagree about an issue, we would probably both recognize that it was a close question where the evidence was evenly balanced.
By the same token, I think we would probably agree to a large extent about the hisotical claims made by religions other than Christianity. I don’t find the evidence for the Angel Moroni and the Golden Plates at all credible. I don’t know that much about the evidence that Muslim apologists cite, but I doubt that I would find any of it any more persuasive than you would.
(con't)
(con't)
While you and I disagree on the historical claims of Christianity, I am sure that I could find plenty of theists with whom I would agree. There are plenty of Muslims and Jews who would be open to the supernatural, but would assess the evidence for the resurrection in the same way that I do. Moreover, there are plenty of liberal Christians who would agree with me that miracles are beyond the reach of critical historical methodology.
What this tells me is that being open to the possibility that the supernatural exists is not relevant to thinking critically about historical questions. If it were, theists and atheists would not agree about the overwhelming majority of historical questions. Openness to the supernatural only enters the picture when some specific religious group claims that their particular supernatural claims merit some privileged status.
I actually think it quite possible that we would disagree much more frequently if I were more open than I am because I would have to be more open to the supernatural claims of all religions. I don’t know for sure whether my opinion of any of them would change, but I would have to examine the evidence much more closely before I could make a decision. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Muslims and Mormons can cite evidence for certain events for which naturalistic explanations are less than satisfying.
I do not unfortunately have a methodology for assessing the relative probability of the supernatural claims of different religions. If you have one to suggest that doesn’t privilege the claims of any particular religion I would be happy to consider it. Until then, I will employ a methodology that treats all such claims equally. It is the methodology that most theists use when assessing the claims of any religion other than their own.
Vinny:
I think that I am open to the possibility of the supernatural. I have never identified myself as an “atheist” in part because I have never been certain that nothing beyond the natural world exists. Nevertheless, I don’t think that critical historical methodology is competent to render judgment on things supernatural. It is like trying to use a ruler to measure temperature.
You claimed that we lack the intellectual tools to evaluate the claims of Christianity, but in addition to the inference to the best explanation, we would use Bayes' Theorem. The inference to the best explanation would simply apply to the competing hypotheses that attempt to explain the evidence. I have argued that this methodology leads us to conclude that the naturalistic hypotheses have major problems and that the resurrection hypothesis has the most explanatory power, the greatest explanatory scope, and it is the simplest.
And if we use this same methodology in evaluating the supernatural claims of Mormonism and Mohammed's splitting of the moon, they fail because there are better explanations for the data. In other words, the natural explanations are perfectly plausible, and they should therefore be preferred.
However, as you have pointed out, this is a different way of using the inference to the best explanation than the way it's usually used in historical methodology, because the "best explanation" is a supernatural event. So this is why I have also brought up Bayes' Theorem, which is an intellectual tool that is specifically designed to deal with this kind of evidence.
You are mistaken in saying that only Christian apologists use these tools with respect to the resurrection, because philosopher of physics John Earman does exactly that in Hume's Abject Failure, and he's an atheist. This is what he says in the preface:
"I find much that is valuable in the Judeo-Christian heritage, but I find nothing attractive, either intellectually or emotionally, in the theological doctrines of Christianity. If I had need of Gods, they would be the Gods of the Greeks and the Romans. The attack on Hume is motivated purely by a desire to set the record straight and frame the issues in a way that makes discussion of them more fruitful--but I must admit, after a bit of soul searching, that the sharpness of the attack is in part a reaction to what I see as pretentious sneering."
In the book he takes into consideration a number of factors that have come up during our discussion. For example, the independence of the witnesses is important. You mentioned the fact that numerous witnesses had claimed to see the Angel Moroni, and I replied that none of them were independent, and even skeptical and/or hostile, like James and Paul. That is significant when doing a Bayesian analysis of these facts.
While you and I disagree on the historical claims of Christianity, I am sure that I could find plenty of theists with whom I would agree. There are plenty of Muslims and Jews who would be open to the supernatural, but would assess the evidence for the resurrection in the same way that I do. Moreover, there are plenty of liberal Christians who would agree with me that miracles are beyond the reach of critical historical methodology.
But miracles are not beyond the reach of Bayesian analysis. When I said that we need to take into account the arguments for God's existence, etc., I was referring to all the factors that go into determining the prior probability of the resurrection--before we look at the specific evidence and the plausibility of the naturalistic explanations. Once we have done that, we are in a position to make an inference to the best explanation.
I do not unfortunately have a methodology for assessing the relative probability of the supernatural claims of different religions. If you have one to suggest that doesn’t privilege the claims of any particular religion I would be happy to consider it. Until then, I will employ a methodology that treats all such claims equally. It is the methodology that most theists use when assessing the claims of any religion other than their own.
If you're interested, you should read Hume's Abject Failure. Earman has no bias in favor of Christianity. As I quoted, he finds "nothing attractive" about Christian theology and is "motivated purely by a desire to set the record straight."
By the same token, I think we would probably agree to a large extent about the hisotical claims made by religions other than Christianity. I don’t find the evidence for the Angel Moroni and the Golden Plates at all credible. I don’t know that much about the evidence that Muslim apologists cite, but I doubt that I would find any of it any more persuasive than you would.
But you have never explained why you don't find the evidence for the resurrection credible, nor do I remember you saying that you do find the naturalistic explanations for the evidence credible. You've said that we don't have the intellectual tools to evaluate supernatural claims, but that's not true. So why don't you find the evidence for the resurrection credible?
If you have the same reasons for rejecting Christianity as John Earman--that it doesn't appeal to you and you find the supernatural aspects intuitively hard to accept--you should just say so.
The inference to the best explanation would simply apply to the competing hypotheses that attempt to explain the evidence. I have argued that this methodology leads us to conclude that the naturalistic hypotheses have major problems and that the resurrection hypothesis has the most explanatory power, the greatest explanatory scope, and it is the simplest.
The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus consists of ancient documents that are highly problematic. The gospels and Acts were written many years after the fact by unknown authors based on unknown sources. The earliest account comes from a man who did not know Jesus prior to his death and seems to know very little about anything Jesus said or did during his life. What this man does know, he claims to have learned by direct revelation from God. There can be no doubt that early Christians came to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead, but I don’t think that there is any way to determine with any certainty what the actual events were that gave rise to that belief. There are too many problems with our sources. We can only speculate about the various possibilities.
Here is a naturalistic explanation that I find perfectly plausible: Some time after Jesus’ crucifixion, one of his followers had a particularly vivid dream in which Jesus appeared to have returned from the dead. He took this as a special revelation from God. When he shared the story with the rest of the group, it gave him a special status and importance which the others envied. Another member of the group remembered an encounter he had with a mysterious stranger after the crucifixion. He decided that this must have been Jesus and his status was enhanced when he told the group. Before you know it, several members of the group are claiming to have had some sort of encounter with the risen Jesus. As the stories are retold, they are exaggerated until you reach the accounts that are found in the gospels.
I don’t know whether this is what actually happened, however, the only problem with the hypothesis is that it doesn’t agree with ancient documents that are filled with stories of supernatural events. If that constitutes an irreconcilable problem, then we would need to abandon much archeology, science and history.
You mentioned the fact that numerous witnesses had claimed to see the Angel Moroni, and I replied that none of them were independent, and even skeptical and/or hostile, like James and Paul.
What is our evidence that Paul was skeptical or hostile at the time he claims that Jesus appeared to him? Paul never says so. Only Acts says so and it an ancient document written for propaganda purposes by an undetermined author based on undetermined sources an undetermined number of years after the fact.
What is our evidence that James witnessed an appearance at a time when he was skeptical or hostile? We only have Paul’s second hand account of James witnessing an appearance. I don’t think that any of the other New Testament writings mention this appearance. Our evidence that he was a skeptic rests mostly on the gospel of John, a writing that never identifies him by name. No writing tells us the circumstances under which James became a follower of Jesus.
Our evidence for Oliver Cowdery’s independence seems at least as solid as our evidence for Paul or James’.
But miracles are not beyond the reach of Bayesian analysis. When I said that we need to take into account the arguments for God's existence, etc., I was referring to all the factors that go into determining the prior probability of the resurrection--before we look at the specific evidence and the plausibility of the naturalistic explanations. Once we have done that, we are in a position to make an inference to the best explanation.
The existence of a God who is capable of raising someone from the dead doesn’t give me any basis to assess the likelihood that He would do so.
You are mistaken in saying that only Christian apologists use these tools with respect to the resurrection, because philosopher of physics John Earman does exactly that in Hume's Abject Failure, and he's an atheist. This is what he says in the preface:
What supernatural events does Earman find credible? Are you aware of the critiques of Earman’s arguments? What do you think of them?
Vinny,
Have you noticed that the only people who think the universe is less than 10,000 years old are Christians, the only people who think Jesus never existed are members of the skeptical subculture, and the only people who think James was not the real brother of Jesus are Catholics, who cannot abide the thought that Mary didn't remain a virgin, and Jesus mythicists, who obviously can't accept the idea that Jesus had a biological brother?
Do you see a pattern there? Some people decide what conclusion they want and interpret the facts to fit it.
In your last comment you raised issues that we have already discussed in great detail, like the historicity of Acts and the conversions of James and Paul. At this point, suffice it to say that just about all scholars (including atheists like Gerd Ludemann) believe that James and Paul converted because they had experiences in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ. The NT establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt, and very few scholars dispute this. I can see no other reason for you to question the reason for James' and Paul's conversions except that you find these facts awkward.
Also, I want to point out that if we use the inference to the best explanation for their conversions, it is clearly the experiences they had of Jesus appearing to them. Scholars reach this conclusion without having to acknowledge anything supernatural.
What supernatural events does Earman find credible? Are you aware of the critiques of Earman’s arguments? What do you think of them?
Earman does not do the kind of comprehensive Bayesian analysis of the resurrection that Richard Swinburne or Tim and Lydia McGrew do. He simply refutes Hume's philosophical argument against miracles using Bayes' Theorem.
I'm not aware of any refutation of Earman's argument. Luke Muehlhauser used Bart Ehrman's debate with William Lane Craig as an example of why atheists lose debates. However, I've seen nobody spell out what Ehrman should have done. Luke linked to the YouTube video where the guy sets the prior probability at zero, but that is a very poor response that fails to address Craig's argument. Even with 20/20 hindsight, Ehrman's reaction was probably strategically the best one.
John Earman does not find any supernatural events credible because he is an atheist. But he's a very intellectually honest atheist who wrote the book to set the record straight, and he's candid about simply being "cynical," but unlike Hume, not promoting his cynicism to the status of a philosophical doctrine. As I said before, he also said that he finds nothing attractive about Christian doctrine.
He does not go through the process of evaluating all the evidence in support of the resurrection, but he concludes:
"Hume is thus forced to leave the high ground and descend into the trenches where, as he must have been aware, there were opponents who had considered the contrary miracles argument and were prepared to argue on the basis of contextual details for the superiority of the New Testament miracles stories over heathen miracle stories. These opponents may or may not have been right. But Hume had no good reason for avoiding an engagement with them."
Earman himself does not "descend into the trenches," and evaluate the evidence for the resurrection, but that is beyond the scope of his book. He basically admits that he has personal reasons for rejecting Christianity, and he doesn't twist or explain away the facts, like people do when they feel threatened by the truth.
You said in an earlier discussion:
"Apologists love to pose the question 'What evidence would convince you that the resurrection really happened?' For me, it is not a question of needing some additional evidence. The problem is that I would have to erase so much of I already know about how the world works."
If that's your fundamental reason for rejecting the historicity of the resurrection--that you can't accept the supernatural--why not just leave it at that? As John Earman demonstrated, you don't have philosophically sound reasons for rejecting it on those grounds, but that certainly is a valid personal reason and one that is shared by Earman himself, Antony Flew, Gerd Ludemann, and many others.
Just think of it this way: You wouldn't have to spend so much time talking about Joseph Smith and the Angel Moroni. ;) You have already admitted that you don't find that story at all credible, but you are not able to conclude the same about the resurrection without rejecting facts that are accepted by just about all scholars--and facts that you would easily accept if you didn't have a problem with the implications.
Vinny,
Some have argued that Earman misunderstood Hume by claiming that his argument is an a priori rejection of the miraculous. This is a valid criticism. As I quoted in an earlier discussion, Hume said:
"A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined . . . And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof, which is superior."
So at the very least, Bayes' Theorem refutes Ehrman's argument ("I’m just going to say that miracles are so highly improbable that they’re the least possible occurrence in any given instance"), but possibly not Hume's, because Hume's last sentence fragment is simply a truism, "nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof, which is superior."
Of course the opposite proof has to be superior, and many came to accept the resurrection for that reason, like orthodox Jew Pinchas Lapide and the leader of the liberal Tübingen School of Theology, Ferdinand Christian Baur.
But all that is just a repetition of what I've already said, so I have nothing more to add.
In your last comment you raised issues that we have already discussed in great detail, like the historicity of Acts and the conversions of James and Paul. At this point, suffice it to say that just about all scholars (including atheists like Gerd Ludemann) believe that James and Paul converted because they had experiences in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ. The NT establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt, and very few scholars dispute this. I can see no other reason for you to question the reason for James' and Paul's conversions except that you find these facts awkward.
Anette,
I wasn’t the one who raised the issue again. You raised it in your previous comment when you cited James and Paul to distinguish the appearances of Moroni from the appearances of Jesus. While it is true that we have discussed this in the past, you have never cited a single shred of evidence to show that James wasn’t already a follower of Jesus before the appearance. You just keep claiming that scholars believe it which means nothing without evidence to support the belief.
What I find interesting is that the more I point out the lack of evidence concerning the moment of James’ conversion, the more certain you seem to become. In an earlier comment, you seemed willing to allow that there might be some uncertainty on the question, but now you are claiming that the New Testament proves it beyond a reasonable doubt. You have taken what was nothing more than an educated guess at best and turned it into an irrefutable fact. Psychologists say that it is not at all unusual for people to become more convinced of the things they believe when the lack of evidence is exposed.
You asked why I don’t find the evidence for the resurrection credible and this captures it pretty well. As stories are told and retold, elements that were mere speculation at the beginning can be turned into rock solid fact. I think my hypothesis of how the story of the guards at the tomb might have arisen captures this phenomenon perfectly. I can’t prove that this is what happened with the appearance stories, but it is plausible enough that I can see no need to resort to supernatural explanations.
If that's your fundamental reason for rejecting the historicity of the resurrection--that you can't accept the supernatural--why not just leave it at that?
That is not my fundamental reason for rejecting the historicity of the resurrection. I can accept the supernatural and I did in fact accept it for a large part of my adult life. However, my acceptance was always based on subjective personal experience, whereas historicity requires objective criteria.
In an earlier comment, you seemed willing to allow that there might be some uncertainty on the question, but now you are claiming that the New Testament proves it beyond a reasonable doubt.
In an earlier comment, I said that we don't have 100% proof, or mathematical proof, and now I'm saying that the NT proves it beyond a reasonable doubt. Mathematical proof and the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of proof are two different standards of proof. So I have not become more certain--I have remained exactly as certain as I was the last time we discussed this.
Let this be an example of how skeptics find "contradictions" in the Bible. I chose my words deliberately each time and have not contradicted myself or become more or less certain.
Do you want me to spell out why I think the Bible proves the reason for James' conversion beyond a reasonable doubt--that is, why I think doubt in this instance is unreasonable?
First, the Gospels indicate that James was one of the brothers of Jesus (Matthew 13:55, Mark 6:3) and the brothers of Jesus were skeptical of His claims during His lifetime (Mark 3:21, John 7:5).
Second, the Gospels' silence about any involvement of the brothers of Jesus in His ministry indicates that they were not part of it.
Third, by the criterion of embarrassment, it is most likely true that the brothers were skeptical, since this is mentioned but not emphasized--so this is not a Cinderella-type plot element.
Fourth, by Acts 1:14, the brothers of Jesus were gathering with the disciples in the "upper room" to pray, and they were all "with one mind."
Fifth, Paul says in Galatians 15:7 that Jesus appeared to James.
Sixth, in Acts 15:13, James settles a dispute about circumcision, so he clearly had an important position in the early church. Gerd Ludemann says: "That James later became the leader of the earliest community had more to do with the fact that he was a member of the family [than the appearance of Jesus to him]. In antiquity people thought in terms of family politics."
Now, this doesn't conclusively prove that James converted because Jesus appeared to him, but it certainly proves it "beyond a reasonable doubt" because there is no reason why James, who was skeptical during his brother's lifetime, would see Him crucified as a criminal and then decide that He was the Messiah. He would have put his own life in danger by being affiliated with the followers of Jesus.
So there is no good reason why James would have converted before seeing Jesus postmortem and there is a very good reason why he would have converted afterwards. Therefore, by inference to the best explanation, he converted after seeing Jesus as the risen Christ.
Vinny,
That is not my fundamental reason for rejecting the historicity of the resurrection. I can accept the supernatural and I did in fact accept it for a large part of my adult life. However, my acceptance was always based on subjective personal experience, whereas historicity requires objective criteria.
But it is completely normal and understandable for a non-theist to have a very hard time accepting the idea that Jesus was raised from the dead. This is hard for many conservative Christians to accept and really believe. The Gospels show it as being very hard for the disciples to believe even though the narratives also indicate that Jesus repeatedly prophesied His resurrection.
It is perfectly valid for a non-theist to say that the evidence for the resurrection is insufficient to overcome the presumption against miracles. This is why all the arguments for theism in general would be factored into the equation. And of course it's much easier for someone who already believes in God to come to the conclusion, based on the resurrection evidence, that Christianity is the true religion, than it is for a naturalist to accept Christianity based on the same evidence.
So there is no good reason why James would have converted before seeing Jesus postmortem and there is a very good reason why he would have converted afterwards.
Many people became followers of Jesus without witnessing a postmortem appearance. Are you saying that none of them had a good reason for converting? If they had a good reason, why couldn't James? Or are you saying that no one who was initially skeptical about Jesus during his life could ever have a good reason for changing their mind about him other than witnessing a postmortem appearance? Is that your idea of proof beyond a reasonable doubt? Can you cite any scholar who thinks that's the reason why we can be sure that James converted as a result of the appearance?
If Mark 3 is evidence that James was a skeptic, then it constitutes evidence that Jesus' mother was a skeptic, too. Do you figure she wouldn't have had a good reason to convert without a postmortem appearance?
If James could only be converted by a personal postmortem appearance, then the other brothers would have required one as well. Why don't we read anything about that appearance?
Anette,
Your second-to-last post is rather incoherent, none of it specifically points to James converting to a belief in a bodily resurrection upon an appearance. And your last post is plagued by the problem of relying on methodological supernaturalism which so far has always failed (as I explained before).
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results - Albert Einstein
Anette,
BTW, I cannot find anything in early church tradition that hints at James being converted from skeptic to believer as a result of an appearance. According to Eusebius, James was appointed bishop of the church in Jerusalem "on account of the excellence of his virtue" right after Mattias was selected to replace Judas as one of the Twelve. It is hard for me to believe that he would have been so recognized if he hadn't been part of the group for a considerable period of time. If Eusebius had known anything about James being converted just recently, he might have mentioned it.
Several apocryphal works point to James being an insider prior to the crucifixion. According to the Gospel of the Hebrews, James had participated in the Last Supper. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus tells the apostles that James will be a leader after he is gone. In the Apochryphon of James, Peter and James are together when Jesus appears to them.
Of course, none of this proves that James wasn't a skeptic up until the time that Jesus appeared to him postmortem, however, it seems that no one in the early church ever heard about it.
Nightvid,
Your second-to-last post is rather incoherent, none of it specifically points to James converting to a belief in a bodily resurrection upon an appearance.
That is irrelevant to my discussion about James with Vinny.
And your last post is plagued by the problem of relying on methodological supernaturalism which so far has always failed (as I explained before).
Your comments on this subject indicate that you're unfamiliar with how John Earman, Richard Swinburne, Tim and Lydia McGrew, and many others have utilized Bayes' Theorem in their discussions on miracles. Since I'm wrapping up this conversation and I was addressing Vinny, I didn't reply to your comments by attempting to explain this.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results - Albert Einstein
Right back at you, bud! ;)
Vinny:
BTW, I cannot find anything in early church tradition that hints at James being converted from skeptic to believer as a result of an appearance. According to Eusebius, James was appointed bishop of the church in Jerusalem "on account of the excellence of his virtue" right after Mattias was selected to replace Judas as one of the Twelve. It is hard for me to believe that he would have been so recognized if he hadn't been part of the group for a considerable period of time. If Eusebius had known anything about James being converted just recently, he might have mentioned it.
Why do you assume that Eusebius, writing in the third and fourth centuries, was more likely to know whether James was a disciple of Jesus when He was alive than the Gospel authors, writing in the first century? All four Gospels indicate in some way that the brothers of Jesus were skeptical. Luke is the least explicit, and yet he also tells the story of people reporting to Jesus that His mother and brothers were looking for Him, to which Jesus didn't reply, "Tell them I'll be right there!" but rather pointedly, "My mother and brothers are those who hear God's word and put it into practice" (Luke 8:21). I would say that's a pretty good hint that His biological family didn't fit into that category. In addition to the early dating of the Gospels, the criterion of embarrassment indicates that they are telling it like it was.
Can you cite any scholar who thinks that's the reason why we can be sure that James converted as a result of the appearance?
In Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology Gerd Ludemann says: "Only vague conjectures are possible about the historical background to this individual vision, which represents a kind of conversion of James. Because of 1 Cor. 15.7 it is certain that James 'saw' his brother."
Ludemann also quotes a piece by Jerome (referring to the Gospel of the Hebrews), who characterizes James as belonging to the community of believers before the resurrection. Ludemann refers to that and the general glorification of James in the piece as "peculiarities."
If James could only be converted by a personal postmortem appearance, then the other brothers would have required one as well. Why don't we read anything about that appearance?
It's possible that Jesus appeared to all of His biological family and that James is specifically mentioned by name (as well as Peter) because Galatians 1:18-19 says that Paul only saw those two apostles during his trip to Jerusalem three years after his conversion.
But I'm not saying that an appearance by Jesus was the only way James could have converted. However, he was not a follower of Jesus during His lifetime, according to the Gospels, and by Acts 1 he was. That is a very sudden change, and one that has to have an explanation. The explanation given by Paul in 1 Cor 15 about Jesus appearing to James explains the dramatic change very well, and by inference to the best explanation even skeptical scholars conclude that this experience precipitated the change.
If Mark 3 is evidence that James was a skeptic, then it constitutes evidence that Jesus' mother was a skeptic, too. Do you figure she wouldn't have had a good reason to convert without a postmortem appearance?
Mark 3 is not evidence that Mary was a skeptic because there are other indications (Luke 1:45, John 2) that she had faith. But Mark 3 indicates that she may had doubts or that she was unduly influenced by her adult sons. It may be the latter since John says that the brothers of Jesus did not believe Him, but none of the Gospels say that about Mary.
Anette,
I asked you for a scholar who thought we could be sure that James converted as a result of the appearance and you responded with a quote from Ludemann who says that "[o]nly vague conjectures are possible about the historical background to this individual vision, which represents a kind of conversion of James.” I cannot imagine being much farther from certainty beyond a reasonable doubt than vague conjectures about something that represents a kind of conversion. Is that really the best you can do? Ludemann may be expressing certainty about the appearance itself, but he is not expressing certainty about the surrounding circumstances.
Christians often accuse me of making arguments from silence, but I don’t think I have ever claimed that we can know beyond a reasonable doubt that something wasn’t so simply because the gospels don’t mention it. No gospel says that James wasn’t a follower of Jesus during his lifetime. None of them tell us when he became a follower. At best, the gospels indicate that unidentified members of Jesus’ family had some doubts about him at some point during his earthly ministry. I say “some doubts” because it is apparent in John 7:1-5 that the unnamed brothers knew something about the works that Jesus had done in Galilee since they advised him to go do them in Judea as well.
In any case, it is wrong to say that “very few scholars” doubt that James converted as a result of the appearance. As we have discussed before, the Catholic Church has traditionally identified James the Just with James, the son of Alpheus, who was one of the Twelve. You may disagree with this position all you like and you may attribute it to theological bias, but you can’t simply ignore it in order to invoke a consensus among scholars that doesn’t exist.
This is one reason (among many) that I find the “minimal facts” approach so intellectually dishonest. Scholars whose work doesn’t support the desired result are simply ignored or dismissed. When a scholar qualifies his statements with a phrase like “vague conjecture,” the qualification is simply ignored and the statement is treated as one of absolute certainty. When a scholar like Ehrman expresses a more nuanced position in his overall work than one particularly useful quote might suggest, the apologist cites the useful quote and ignores the rest of his work. This is why I would prefer to talk about the evidence itself rather than what “most scholars” supposedly believe the facts to be.
I do not believe that Eusebius is any more likely than the gospel writers to know whether James became a follower of Jesus prior to his crucifixion. I do think that he is more likely to know what the early church thought about the question than some modern apologist. If James was believed to have undergone a “Damascus Road” type reversal of attitude towards Jesus as a result of the appearance rather than simply becoming a follower during Jesus’ life, I would consider it very strange that no early source even hints at it.
BTW, I notice that you have had some problem with comments that have not been posted. I discovered that some comments on my blog were going into a spam folder, but I was able to look at them and approve them. Try going to the Blogger Dashboard and clicking on the Comments tab.
Vinny,
I did not take Ludemann out of context at all--I would be happy to provide the full context:
"Furthermore, the attestation to the report [the Gospel to the Hebrews] is late. Its basis is a New Testament tradition of the eucharist which 'has been transformed into a personal legend to glorify James'. Apart from the fact that Jesus appeared to James, the text gives us no reliable information of any kind. Rather, the tradition in the Gospel of Hebrews serves to enable admirers of James in the second and third generations to claim the first appearance for James rather than Cephas. Similarly, in the Johannine circle the protophany is indirectly stated by the narrative to have been to the Beloved Disciple rather than to Peter (John 20.3-8), in that it is explicitly said that the Beloved Disciple beat Peter in the race to the tomb (see below, I52f.).
"It follows from all this that the report of the Gospel of the Hebrews is to be understood exclusively in literary apologetic terms and has no genetic relationship to the historical vision of James (see above, 37).
"Only vague conjectures are possible about the historical background to this individual vision, which represents a kind of conversion of James . . ."
He also says later on the page: "It should be noted that James had no religious link with his brother during Jesus' lifetime." (Italics added.) So Ludemann expresses a fair amount of certainty that James had a change of mind after Jesus appeared to him. However, none of us know the historical details like whether James was alone or with his brothers, where it happened, etc.
In any case, it is wrong to say that “very few scholars” doubt that James converted as a result of the appearance. As we have discussed before, the Catholic Church has traditionally identified James the Just with James, the son of Alpheus, who was one of the Twelve. You may disagree with this position all you like and you may attribute it to theological bias, but you can’t simply ignore it in order to invoke a consensus among scholars that doesn’t exist.
I forgot to take into consideration the position of the Catholic Church when I said that, so when I said "very few scholars," that was incorrect.
This is one reason (among many) that I find the “minimal facts” approach so intellectually dishonest. Scholars whose work doesn’t support the desired result are simply ignored or dismissed. When a scholar qualifies his statements with a phrase like “vague conjecture,” the qualification is simply ignored and the statement is treated as one of absolute certainty.
Please see my above explanation. I did not in any way misrepresent Ludemann's position. Feel free to look it up on page 108-109 of his book by searching it on Amazon.
It is not intellectually dishonest to point out when the evidence for a significant fact is so strong that some skeptics admit it, even if we dismiss the skeptics who deny it. The point we are making is that the evidence for the minimum facts is so strong that only opposition scholars deny them, and not even they always do.
When a scholar like Ehrman expresses a more nuanced position in his overall work than one particularly useful quote might suggest, the apologist cites the useful quote and ignores the rest of his work.
You have never demonstrated that I have dishonestly quote-mined a scholar. You attempted to demonstrate it with respect to Ehrman's statement about the empty tomb in From Jesus to Constantine, but the context fully supported William Lane Craig's quote even though Ehrman elsewhere contradicted himself. But Craig brought it up in his debate with Ehrman, who would have had the opportunity to explain himself and did not.
This is why I would prefer to talk about the evidence itself rather than what “most scholars” supposedly believe the facts to be.
I agree with you that it's better to talk about the evidence itself, and I do. However, when the evidence for something is particularly strong, often scholars will make admissions that go against their own bias. Ludemann was making a case for the hallucination theory, and it would have been in his interest to claim that James had always been a follower of Jesus. However, he apparently decided that such a claim would not represent a fair reading of the NT.
I do not believe that Eusebius is any more likely than the gospel writers to know whether James became a follower of Jesus prior to his crucifixion. I do think that he is more likely to know what the early church thought about the question than some modern apologist. If James was believed to have undergone a “Damascus Road” type reversal of attitude towards Jesus as a result of the appearance rather than simply becoming a follower during Jesus’ life, I would consider it very strange that no early source even hints at it.
First, James was never a persecutor of the church like Paul was, so his conversion would not have been as dramatic.
Second, Paul's conversion is mentioned numerous times, with Paul often talking about what a violent persecutor he was, so later admirers of Paul would not have been able to gloss over that. Admirers of James, on the other hand, could easily gloss over what is said about the brothers in the Gospels and come up with something like James swearing after Jesus was crucified that he would fast until He was raised from the dead.
Third, by the criterion of embarrassment, the Gospels probably did not make up the skepticism of the brothers of Jesus if James, the leader of the Jerusalem church, was a follower of Jesus. Wouldn't they have clarified that James was faithful to Jesus? Why describe random people with great faith in glowing terms, and not James, if he deserved it? Also, the brothers of Jesus were, as a group, described as skeptics in the Gospels, and in Acts and the epistles, they are described, as a group, as followers of Jesus (Acts 1:14, 1 Cor. 9:5).
But I understand that you don't find the evidence for James' skepticism and later conversion persuasive, and I would be happy to agree to disagree. Take care and thanks for the discussion.
BTW, I notice that you have had some problem with comments that have not been posted. I discovered that some comments on my blog were going into a spam folder, but I was able to look at them and approve them. Try going to the Blogger Dashboard and clicking on the Comments tab.
Thanks!
Third, by the criterion of embarrassment, the Gospels probably did not make up the skepticism of the brothers of Jesus if James, the leader of the Jerusalem church, was a follower of Jesus. Wouldn't they have clarified that James was faithful to Jesus? Why describe random people with great faith in glowing terms, and not James, if he deserved it? Also, the brothers of Jesus were, as a group, described as skeptics in the Gospels, and in Acts and the epistles, they are described, as a group, as followers of Jesus (Acts 1:14, 1 Cor. 9:5).
The problem here is that you are reading the work of five different writers as if they were a single account. In order to think critically about the question, you have to let each author speak for himself.
Mark comes first and in his story Jesus’ mother as well as his brothers think that he is crazy. However, this is not at all embarrassing to Mark because he does not have these characters doing anything else in the story that would be inconsistent with their skepticism.
Luke, on the other hand, has a description of Jesus birth and his presentation at the temple whereby Mary would have to have known that her son was someone special. Luke also has Jesus’ family with the apostles after the ascension. Luke leaves out the part from Mark about Jesus’ family thinking he was crazy. He says nothing specific about the conflicts between Jesus and his family. Matthew also has a nativity story and he also tempers Mark’s account of the conflict.
Luke is particularly interesting because he could have solved the conflict by describing what you think occurred, an appearance that turned James from a skeptic into a believer. Luke didn’t do this. Instead, he simply dropped the passage in which Jesus’ family thinks he’s crazy.
John never mentions James by name, but he has his mother Mary playing a more significant role. She asks Jesus to perform his first miracle and she is at the foot of the cross when he dies. In John, it is only Jesus’ brothers that do not believe him. However, the brothers don’t show up in the story later as they do in Luke.
Paul doesn’t say much of anything about Jesus’ earthly ministry or his relationship with his family.
When each writer is allowed to speak for himself, there is no element of embarrassment in any of the descriptions of James, Mary, or Jesus’ brothers. It is only by artificially harmonizing them that you get there.
Second, Paul's conversion is mentioned numerous times, with Paul often talking about what a violent persecutor he was, so later admirers of Paul would not have been able to gloss over that. Admirers of James, on the other hand, could easily gloss over what is said about the brothers in the Gospels and come up with something like James swearing after Jesus was crucified that he would fast until He was raised from the dead.
In other words, the evidence on the question is very weak. If the evidence were strong, no one could gotten away with telling the story differently.
I agree with you that it's better to talk about the evidence itself, and I do. However, when the evidence for something is particularly strong, often scholars will make admissions that go against their own bias. Ludemann was making a case for the hallucination theory, and it would have been in his interest to claim that James had always been a follower of Jesus. However, he apparently decided that such a claim would not represent a fair reading of the NT.
I have never read Ludemann. All I know about his position is what you have quoted so I have no idea whether you have taken him out of context or not. What you quoted before was not an expression of certainty about the circumstances under which James converted. What you quote now seems to express a greater degree of certainty; however, it still falls short of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” In any case, Ludemann still isn’t citing any evidence for his version of events. He is simply dismissing someone else’s version.
In my opinion, there are plenty of liberal scholars who are every bit as guilty as Christian apologists of expressing certainty when the evidence is very scanty. They are just as creative in asserting as fact that about which the Gospels are silent. John Dominic Crossan seems to do this a lot, too. Someday I may get around to reading Ludemann, but nothing you have quoted makes me terribly eager to do so. I can see no reason why I should believe that he has any special insight into the question of when James converted.
It is not intellectually dishonest to point out when the evidence for a significant fact is so strong that some skeptics admit it, even if we dismiss the skeptics who deny it. The point we are making is that the evidence for the minimum facts is so strong that only opposition scholars deny them, and not even they always do.
Once again you, you are moving the goal posts. The point was never that only opposition scholars denied them. The point was always that the evidence was so strong that scholars of all perspectives agreed upon them. To say that only opposition scholars deny them is like saying “The evidence is so strong that only people who don’t think the evidence is so strong disagree.”
Your comments on this subject indicate that you're unfamiliar with how John Earman, Richard Swinburne, Tim and Lydia McGrew, and many others have utilized Bayes' Theorem in their discussions on miracles.
No, I am not unfamiliar with Bayesian inference. Bayes's Theorem, when applied to things with well-defined frequentist probabilities, MUST be true, there is no denying it.
But the approach of Swinburne et al. is methodologically supernatural as far as the antecedent (prior) probability of the Resurrection is concerned. It is this which I am objecting to, not Bayesian inference.
I dare say you wouldn't accept me using the same priors for the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but without methodological supernaturalism, you don't have any grounds for such special pleading.
Your second-to-last post is rather incoherent, none of it specifically points to James converting to a belief in a bodily resurrection upon an appearance.
That is irrelevant to my discussion about James with Vinny.
Yes, it is relevant. You were using it in an argument for bodily resurrection, however indirectly.
I know you were addressing Vinny, but come on, as counter-apologists we have a right to team up :)
I know you were addressing Vinny, but come on, as counter-apologists we have a right to team up :)
Be careful Nightvid. There is a fifteen yard penalty for piling.
Nightvid:
I know you were addressing Vinny, but come on, as counter-apologists we have a right to team up :)
It's not that I don't want to talk with you but that I'm trying to wrap up this whole thread, and the more people raise different subjects the more difficult that becomes. So when you responded to my comments to Vinny on Bayes' Theorem I did not reply for the simple fact that it is too much work to get into discussions with different people who may or may not be familiar with the subject. It's nothing personally against you, but as I've said, I'm trying to take a break from this.
But I will briefly reply to what you said:
Yes, it is relevant. You were using it in an argument for bodily resurrection, however indirectly.
The Greek word for spirit is pneuma, and the Greek word for spiritual body is pneumatikos soma. Paul talks about the latter in 1 Cor. 15:44, in distinguishing it from the physical body. It is not just a spirit--if it were, the text would simply use the word pneuma.
But the approach of Swinburne et al. is methodologically supernatural as far as the antecedent (prior) probability of the Resurrection is concerned. It is this which I am objecting to, not Bayesian inference.
No, it's not. I have never used arguments for theism that require methodological supernaturalism. I have never involved myself in the ID as a science debate, and it sounds like that is what you are referring to.
The cosmological arguments for theism are quite consistent with methodological naturalism (but of course not metaphysical naturalism) because they concern questions that are metaphysical to scientists as well, like the cause of the Big Bang and the apparent fine-tuning of the universe.
I dare say you wouldn't accept me using the same priors for the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but without methodological supernaturalism, you don't have any grounds for such special pleading.
The priors are not even remotely the same. Here are three arguments for theism: the argument from moral law, the fine-tuning argument, and the cosmological argument applied to the FSM (I have discussed these in detail in previous conversations and am not reopening this can of worms--I'm just briefly replying to your point about the FSM):
The argument from moral law states: If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Objective moral values do exist. Therefore, God exists.
The strength of the syllogism is that premise one is philosophically true and premise two is intuitively true. And if both premises are true, then the conclusion must be true.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to philosophically justify the existence of objective moral facts without God. As Jean-Paul Sartre said: "[Without God] there can no longer be an a priori Good, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it."
Since God is by definition that "infinite and perfect consciousness," it is obvious why this argument concerns Him, but what does morality have to do with the FSM? Monsters are not exactly known as paradigms of virtue.
The cosmological argument states in part that everything that begins to exist must have a cause.
Matter had a beginning, so its cause must have been immaterial. This means that the cause could have been God, since He is immaterial, but it could not have been the FSM, because it is material.
The fine-tuning argument is based on the following scientific fact, as stated by Francis Collins:
"When you look from the perspective of a scientist at the universe, it looks as if it knew we were coming. There are 15 constants--the gravitational constant, various constants about the strong and weak nuclear force, etc.--that have precise values. If any of those constants was off by even one part in a million, or in some cases, by one part in a million million, the universe could not actually have come to the point where we see it. Matter would not have been able to coalesce, there would have been no galaxy, stars, planets or people. That's a phenomenally surprising observation. It seems almost impossible that we're here. And that does make you wonder--gosh, who was setting those constants anyway. Scientists have not been able to figure that out."
If we conclude that an intelligent Fine-tuner was responsible for this astonishing fact, then God, a rational Creator, would qualify.
If the FSM is intelligent, then it would also qualify, but we would be multiplying entities since God is simple (He is immaterial and therefore has no parts) and FSM is complex. So the FSM fails Occam's Razor.
And it fails the other two arguments for God's existence even more dramatically.
Vinny:
Once again you, you are moving the goal posts. The point was never that only opposition scholars denied them. The point was always that the evidence was so strong that scholars of all perspectives agreed upon them. To say that only opposition scholars deny them is like saying “The evidence is so strong that only people who don’t think the evidence is so strong disagree.”
How am I moving the goalpost when you brought up the fact that you think the minimum facts approach is dishonest? Neither I nor anyone I am aware of has argued that all scholars accept the historicity of the empty tomb.
However, those who do deny it tend to be opposed to Christianity--in other words, they engage in counter-apologetics, like the authors of The Empty Tomb and Gerd Ludemann. Bart Ehrman is also an opposition scholar because he has written books attempting to discredit the Bible. So they have an obvious bias--some more than others. To say that these individuals deny the empty tomb is about as significant as it is to say that William Lane Craig and Gary Habermas accept it. IOW, it is to be expected.
However, there are many scholars out there who are simply critical Bible scholars. For example, Geza Vermes is a Jew so he is far from being a conservative Christian, but he is still considered a neutral NT scholar. In no way is he a counter-apologist.
In fact, the reason why Craig and Habermas quote critical scholars in support of the significant facts, in addition to spelling out the evidence, is because they themselves have a bias in favor of Christianity and people know that. But the fact that scholars who have a bias against Christianity disagree doesn't mean much.
But even among atheists, there are scholars, like Michael Grant and Jeffery Jay Lowder, who do accept the historicity of the empty tomb. And Ludemann believes that James converted when Jesus appeared to him, even though Ludemann is advancing the hallucination theory. That is of some significance, although of course the evidence itself matters more.
In other words, the evidence on the question is very weak. If the evidence were strong, no one could gotten away with telling the story differently.
The evidence is weaker than the evidence for Paul's conversion, and I probably shouldn't have said "beyond a reasonable doubt." However, I am aware of nobody who doubts that James was a skeptic who converted after Jesus appeared to him except those whose bias necessitates it. (Ludemann talks about veneration of James in the second and third centuries and his admirers wanting to establish that he was the first to see Jesus rather than one of the last mentioned, like in 1 Cor. 15:7.)
Since this is a question of historical fact, we would look at it in terms of the inference to the best explanation. The competing hypotheses do not fit the facts and the hypothesis that James and his brothers were skeptics who converted after (at least) James saw Jesus postmortem fits all the NT evidence.
The problem here is that you are reading the work of five different writers as if they were a single account. In order to think critically about the question, you have to let each author speak for himself.
Historians always look at all the sources together in order to reconstruct the events. And even though Luke doesn't explain why Jesus dismisses His mother and brothers so pointedly, Mark does. And the explanation fits. Without it, Jesus' response doesn't make much sense. If He considered His natural family part of His spiritual family, why make the distinction? In Matthew, He specifically pointed out that His disciples were His mother and brothers and explained why.
You said earlier: "If you and I were to discuss questions of ancient history outside the New Testament, I doubt that we would have many dramatic disagreements. If we wanted to decide whether Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March, I suspect we would agree about what constitutes relevant evidence and how reliable that evidence is. Where we did disagree about an issue, we would probably both recognize that it was a close question where the evidence was evenly balanced."
This is absolutely true because neither one of us would have a vested interest in the issues. I quote neutral or skeptical scholars in support of significant facts because I know that I do have a bias. You also have a bias, and I think you would easily reach the conclusion that the appearance to James led to his conversion if you weren't troubled by the implications.
How am I moving the goalpost when you brought up the fact that you think the minimum facts approach is dishonest? Neither I nor anyone I am aware of has argued that all scholars accept the historicity of the empty tomb.
The empty tomb is always presented as the exception among the minimal facts in that it does not enjoy the near unanimous support among scholars that the other facts do. I have never seen Craig, Licona, or Habermas make any similar concession about any other fact. Therefore, if you now wish to introduce the conversion of Jesus’ skeptical brother as another fact that enjoys less acceptance among scholars, you are moving the goal posts.
Historians always look at all the sources together in order to reconstruct the events.
Of course the historian looks at all the sources, but that doesn’t mean that you can read the sources into one another. The question is the criteria of embarrassment. If Mark never writes anything about any members of Jesus’ biological family playing a role in his ministry or in the church, then there is nothing embarrassing to Mark about writing that they thought Jesus was out of his mind. If John never gives such a role to Jesus’ brothers, then there is nothing embarrassing to him about writing that those brothers didn’t believe in Jesus. It is Luke who puts Jesus’ sibling in important roles, and not suprisingly, he drops Mark’s embarrassing reference to Jesus being out of his mind.
If He considered His natural family part of His spiritual family, why make the distinction?
Luke makes the distinction because they did not become part of his spiritual family by virtue of being part of his natural family. If they were a part of his spiritual family—and it is quite clear from Luke 1-2 that at least his mother was at that point—they became so or would become so in the same way that everyone else did, i.e., by doing his father’s will. The point of making the distinction is to show that the spiritual family is the important one and that anyone can be a member of it—including the members of his natural family.
Vinny:
The empty tomb is always presented as the exception among the minimal facts in that it does not enjoy the near unanimous support among scholars that the other facts do. I have never seen Craig, Licona, or Habermas make any similar concession about any other fact.
Actually, Habermas does not claim that the conversion of James enjoys near unanimous support among critical scholars. He says that "the majority of scholars, including many skeptics" accept it. On the other hand, just about all scholars agree that the disciples, James, and Paul at least thought they saw Jesus as the resurrected Christ.
As for Catholic scholars, if they have a faith-based presupposition about James, then they are not critical scholars. Habermas and Craig also probably would not characterize themselves as critical scholars. As I said before, they are relying on critical scholars who do not have faith-based presuppositions in establishing the relevant facts.
As I said before, the conversion of James certainly fits as the best explanation for the evidence. Luke is not the only one who characterizes the brothers of Jesus as believers after Pentecost and James as an apostle and leader. Paul also refers to them as such. And none of the Gospels even hint at them being followers of Jesus during His lifetime--on the contrary, Mark and John explicitly say the opposite.
This is not as compelling as the conversion of Paul, the violent persecutor of the church, but it does add to the weight of the evidence in favor of the resurrection.
Actually, the gospel of John does indicate that the brothers were followers of Jesus at some point. John 2:12 says that after Jesus turned the water into wine, his mother, his brothers, and his disciples went with him to Capernum.
John 6:60-71 describes how many of Jesus disciples stopped following Jesus after he taught that they needed to eat his flesh and drink his blood. The next passage describes how Jesus brothers advised him to Jerusalem so that the works he did could be seen there, whereupon John writes that “Even his own brothers did not believe in him.
Thus it seems clear that his brothers had been following Jesus for awhile and had witnessed miracles that he had performed. John does not say exactly what their doubts were; but neither does he give any indication that they stopped following him as some other disciples had done. It may be that the brothers were simply confused by some of Jesus’ harder teachings as the departed disciples had been.
James overcoming his doubts prior to Jesus’ crucifixion is also perfectly consistent with all the Biblical evidence. Moreover, it is also consistent with the earliest traditions found outside the Bible. Does Ludemann explain why Eusebius and Clement of Alexandria should be ignored?
The next passage describes how Jesus brothers advised him to Jerusalem so that the works he did could be seen there, whereupon John writes that “Even his own brothers did not believe in him.
Actually, John 7:1-9 makes the brothers of Jesus look particularly bad because it starts out by saying that the Jews were seeking to kill Jesus in Judea, and the brothers then, in a sarcastic way, try to talk Jesus into going to Judea. John's commentary reinforces the interpretation that the brothers were being insincere. (Also, this would have happened right before Jesus went up to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover, so the brothers would have been unbelievers shortly before the crucifixion.)
The fact that the brothers were with Jesus in John 2, and probably elsewhere, doesn't mean that they were His followers in the way that they were in Acts and the letters of Paul. They were His brothers, so by necessity they were together some of the time.
Also, even though the brothers saw the miracles, that doesn't mean they would believe the claims of Jesus. The Pharisees saw the miracles and said that Jesus did them by the power of Beelzebub. About 150 years later, Celsus wrote a book in which he didn't dispute the miracles of Jesus--he simply dismissed them as no big deal and characterized Jesus as a sorcerer.
Does Ludemann explain why Eusebius and Clement of Alexandria should be ignored?
No, to my knowledge he doesn't address what they say about James, but he does mention admirers of James in the second and third centuries in general. It seems clear from the early Christian writings that many people had a great deal of admiration for James, and some of what they say seems like legend. Real humans are flawed--a fact that the canonical writings convey very well.
The fact that the brothers were with Jesus in John 2, and probably elsewhere, doesn't mean that they were His followers in the way that they were in Acts and the letters of Paul. They were His brothers, so by necessity they were together some of the time.
I will concede that this is not proof positive that Jesus’ brothers were his followers, but you claimed that there wasn’t even a hint.
I don't think that is any kind of hint that they were followers of Jesus. John 2 talks about the wedding in Cana, and it appears that Mary is in some position of responsibility, so it is not surprising that the brothers would be mentioned. If the mother of Jesus knew the bride and bridegroom well enough to know that they ran out of wine, then it may well have been a family wedding--or at least a wedding of someone close enough to the family of Jesus so that they would all be there. And John 2:12 adds nothing of significance by saying that they all went to stay in Capernaum for a few days afterward.
I don't think that is any kind of hint that they were followers of Jesus. John 2 talks about the wedding in Cana, and it appears that Mary is in some position of responsibility, so it is not surprising that the brothers would be mentioned. If the mother of Jesus knew the bride and bridegroom well enough to know that they ran out of wine, then it may well have been a family wedding--or at least a wedding of someone close enough to the family of Jesus so that they would all be there. And John 2:12 adds nothing of significance by saying that they all went to stay in Capernaum for a few days afterward.
I think you are simply inventing the details you need in order to justify your interpretation. There is nothing in the story about Mary’s relationship with the bride and groom. The story doesn’t say that Jesus and his family were invited to the wedding. It says that “Jesus and his disciples” were invited to the wedding. Since Jesus had only gathered his disciples over the prior two days, that might suggest that the invitation was extended on the spur of them moment. Perhaps the host invited them because he had heard that John the Baptist had identified Jesus as the Son of God three days earlier. Last minute invitations would certainly help to explain why the wine ran short.
On what grounds do you determine that the mention of Jesus’ brothers in John 2:12 is insignificant? This is the first time they are mentioned and everything up until that point had been a description of how Jesus’ public ministry began. Why would John tell us that Jesus brothers accompanied him and his disciples to Capernaum if it had nothing to do with Jesus’ ministry? What were the disciples doing there if it was just a family outing?
When you start playing the “it may well be” game, it just means that there really isn't any evidence on the question. It may well be that James didn't convert until Jesus appeared to him postmortem. On the other hand, it may well be that he became a follower before Jesus was crucified. "It may well be" is the language of speculation, not fact.
BTW, I can tell you from experience that you don’t have to know the bride and groom particularly well in order to know that the wine has run out. Anyone who asks for a refill will figure it out.
BTW, I can tell you from experience that you don’t have to know the bride and groom particularly well in order to know that the wine has run out. Anyone who asks for a refill will figure it out.
When that happened, did you start ordering people around? (If so, maybe it was a good thing that the wine ran out!) Because Mary did. She said to the servants, "Whatever He says to you, do it."
Also Jesus clearly indicates in John 2:4 that this was none of His business because His hour had not yet come. He had not yet begun His public ministry, so He was not there as part of His ministry.
I didn’t give any orders, but I might have if I had known someone who could solve the problem with a wave of his hand. As it was, I dropped in $20 when a collection was taken up to keep the bar open. I was able to empathize with the hosts’ plight regardless of how well I knew them.
Since Jesus did in fact work the miracle, I cannot see how we can take his protests in John 2:4 as proof that he wasn’t there as part of his ministry. If he was only there because of family relationships, it is an awfully big coincidence that all his disciples happened to be invited as well.
Since Jesus did in fact work the miracle, I cannot see how we can take his protests in John 2:4 as proof that he wasn’t there as part of his ministry. If he was only there because of family relationships, it is an awfully big coincidence that all his disciples happened to be invited as well.
We can speculate about a number of things, like why the disciples were there and what role Mary played, but the central question in this present discussion is whether Jesus had begun His public ministry, and He answers that one explicitly in John 2:4: No.
And yes, He does perform the miracle. Since you donated $20 out of empathy for the hosts, it's not hard to imagine why Jesus did what He could to spare the bride and groom humiliation. If He had simply declined, that would hardly have been the act of a loving God.
But He does it so discreetly that not even the headwaiter knew where the wine had come from (John 2:8), so that was not a public miracle. It was just an act of kindness.
The story also contains deep symbolism as a prelude to Jesus' ministry. The imagery of weddings, wine, and vineyards runs through the whole Bible--symbolizing joy and salvation.
John 2:6 says that Jesus used the stone waterpots set there for the Jewish custom of purification to contain the water that He turned into wine. Likewise, Jesus came to replace the dead ceremonial law with His life-changing grace. John 1:17 says: "For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ."
So the story is significant on more than one level, even though it happened prior to the public ministry of Jesus.
Anette,
Once again, you are inventing elements and adding them to the story in order to justify your predetermined conclusion. According to John 2:11, “What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” There is no suggestion that this miracle was a prelude or a preview or an appetizer. John draws no distinction between private miracles and public miracles. This miracle is simply the first of many that he used to reveal his glory.
Did I invent the fact that Jesus says in John 2:4 that His hour had not yet come? And did I invent the fact that John 2:9-10 says that the headwaiter didn't know where the wine had come from and commented to the bridegroom that he had saved the good wine until the end?
John 2:11 doesn't contradict any of that because that was His first recorded sign and it would have manifested His glory to His disciples, who knew of the miracle and believed. It doesn't say that He revealed His glory to all the guests there. That would have been a very unloving thing to do at a wedding where the attention is supposed to be on the bride and groom. But the text indicates that Jesus was discreet about what He had done and that the bridegroom was praised for saving the good wine for last.
Anette,
What you have invented is Jesus’ intention to be discreet about this particular miracle as opposed to every other miracle that he worked. His disciples were guests at the wedding and they knew what had happened. The servants knew what had happened. Since the bridegroom would have known that he hadn’t intentionally saved the best wine for last, we can assume that he knew that something had happened as well. In fact, the only person we know of who doesn’t know what happened is the headwaiter.
It is true that Jesus tells his mother that his time had not yet come, but that indicates the intention not to perform a miracle, not the intention to perform a miracle discreetly. We can only assume that the schedule got changed as a result of his mother’s request since he did perform the miracle, he revealed his glory through it, there is no reference to it being a “prelude,” there is no indication that his time did in fact come at some later point, and there is no indication that this sign is any different in character or purpose than in any subsequent sign.
Vinny:
What you have invented is Jesus’ intention to be discreet about this particular miracle as opposed to every other miracle that he worked.
I have not invented that--I have drawn a reasonable inference based on what details we are given and what we know about how people feel when something embarrassing happens, like running out of wine at a wedding. Most of us would appreciate someone coming to the rescue without drawing attention to the problem. Since Jesus taught that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves and not "sound a trumpet" when we do good deeds, and the details in the story indicate that He was discreet, it is reasonable to infer that He was.
It is true that Jesus tells his mother that his time had not yet come, but that indicates the intention not to perform a miracle, not the intention to perform a miracle discreetly.
There's a lot in the Gospels about the difficulties Jesus endured because people knew about His miracles, so I think that when He said "My hour has not yet come," He was referring to all of that as well. People were always crowding around Him. Also, His public ministry led to rejection by the religious leaders (Mark 8:31, Luke 9:22), who sought to kill Him for making Himself equal to God (John 5:18).
All the details of the story indicate that He was just enjoying a social event with His family and disciples before His public ministry began. And although He had not planned to do a miracle, He did it out of empathy for the bride and groom, and John says that it was His first sign where He "manifested His glory." But that doesn't necessarily mean to everyone there.
We can only assume that the schedule got changed as a result of his mother’s request since he did perform the miracle, he revealed his glory through it, there is no reference to it being a “prelude,” there is no indication that his time did in fact come at some later point, and there is no indication that this sign is any different in character or purpose than in any subsequent sign.
Okay, I'm fine with that. I don't much care if it was a "prelude" or if His schedule was changed because of His mother's request. There is still no hint anywhere in the canonical Gospels that His brothers were part of His ministry during His lifetime.
I don’t think there are any details that point to Jesus being discrete.
We know that at least some of the other guests at the wedding, i.e.,the disciples, knew about the miracle. That would suggest that Jesus didn’t try to be discrete.
We know that the servants knew about the miracle. There was certainly no reason Jesus couldn’t have worked a miracle without them knowing, but I suppose that letting them find out doesn’t show intentional indiscretion.
The only thing that might point to discretion is the fact that the headwaiter didn’t know where the new wine came from. However, Jesus instructed the servants to have the headwaiter taste the new wine when he could have simply instructed them to serve it to the guests. Because Jesus did this, the bridegroom found out that there was some new wine at the feast that was better than what he had provided.
At that wedding I attended many years ago, suppose I asked the bartender for a beer and he told me that what the hosts had purchased had run out. (I don’t actually recall how I learned that the liquor was running low.) If I wanted to be discrete, I would simply give the bartender the money to pay for another case without telling anyone. If the hosts had provided an inexpensive domestic beer, that is what I would buy. If I wanted to be discrete, I wouldn’t choose an expensive imported beer and I wouldn’t make sure that the hosts knew that I had provided a better quality of beer than they had purchased.
I’m not saying that Jesus was showing off, but it looks to me like he intended what he had done to become known and protecting the host’s feelings was not his priority.
Anette:
The "argument from moral law" is utterly bogus. Morality is a result of "computationally distributed" goal-seeking in a society, and the goals set by the members of the society are things they desire because they enhance survival and reproduction indirectly. The things sought for are objective even though the motivations are subjective, and dependent on objective evolutionary phenomena. Thus, morality is an epiphenomenon resulting from objectively verifiable phenomena. God's existence is not relevant.
Anette:
The cosmological argument states in part that everything that begins to exist must have a cause.
This is wrong. In quantum field theory, vacuum fluctuations exist without a cause . This has been experimentally demonstrated via the Casimir effect.
Additionally, in modern physics, causality is something that is well-defined within classical general relativity only, NOT quantum gravity. It thus cannot be applied to the very early cosmos, you are abusing the concept of causation here.
The fine-tuning argument is likewise incoherent - causation is governed by some set of laws and constants, the laws and constants themselves are not involved in any causal relations.
Anette:
Clearly you don't understand Pastafarianism. Actually the FSM is immaterial.
As I pointed out to you before, 1 Corinthians and Luke are in contradiction about the resurrection body, Paul says a "spiritual body" is not flesh and blood, while luke says Jesus's body was. I gave you the verses already.
Also, Francis Collins is simply wrong here. First and foremost, the constants you mention are not dimensionless. I can make them whatever I want simply by using a different set of units, their values as such are not fundamental.
But even if you combine them to form dimensionless constants and ignore the other problems, the argument has still been shown to be weak by physicist Victor Stenger.
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Cosmo/FineTune.pdf
and
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Briefs/Hoyle.pdf
Sorry, in my last post, I should have given
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/
vstenger/Briefs/Hoyle.pdf
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Cosmo/FineTune.pdf
and
http://rickbradford.co.uk/InevitabilityofFineTuningNov.pdf
If you want to end this discussion, you need to stop using bad physics. I am myself a physicist, so if you use fake physics made up by apologists to advance their case, don't expect to slip it by me.
Sorry, I meant
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/
vstenger/Cosmo/FineTune.pdf
and
http://rickbradford.co.uk/
InevitabilityofFineTuningNov.pdf
for the latter two of those. I keep forgetting to break up the URL so it won't get cut off.
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