Some Alternative Explanations for the Resurrection of Christ

Michael,

My wife once met a woman who claimed that God had made her invisible. This happened at a women’s luncheon at an Assemblies of God church that my wife attended at the invitation of a friend. After the luncheon, women were invited to share what God had done in their lives during the past week.

It seems that this woman had gone to the hospital to visit a friend in the intensive care unit. According to hospital rules, only relatives were allowed in the ICU, but the woman was able to walk right past the nurses’ station without being challenged. While she sat and prayed with her friend, nurses came in and out of the room without taking notice of her. Therefore, the woman concluded that God must have made her invisible so that she could visit her friend.

I have no evidence that this woman did not turn invisible and according to your logic, the simplest explanation would seem to be that God really did make her invisible. Nonetheless, I consider other explanations far more likely. For example, it could be that the nurses were busy and simply did not pay any attention to her. It could be that they thought she was a relative. It could be that her friend had had so few visitors that the nurses did not have the heart to enforce the policy.

In a similar vein, I attended a retreat several years ago at which a man testified that God had once fixed his vacuum cleaner. Unlike the invisible woman, he did not provide any details of the event nor did he suggest what God’s motivation might have been. He simply insisted that the nature of the malfunction was such that the vacuum cleaner could not have resumed normal functioning without supernatural intervention. Again I have no evidence that God did not fix his vacuum cleaner and I cannot even speculate as to a possible natural explanation for the event. Nonetheless, I do not find his story credible.

Would you say that I have no basis for doubting these two miracle stories other than an anti-supernaturalistic presupposition?

Vinny,
I reject both their claims based on my supernatural presuppositions. I don’t believe God gives revelation to people today based on teaching in the Scripture. Therefore, no one can say that God did this or that to them or for them beyond a general idea that God works in our lives. So I reject any claim that the person knows God did this or that based on my metaphysical beliefs.
However, I don’t see how someone who is an empiricist can make any metaphysical claims, which is why empiricism is self refuting. Empiricism must assume the belief that all knowledge must be empirically obtained or verifiable. Yet that belief is not empirically obtained and verifiable without first using and assuming naturalistic empiricism. Hence, it is self refuting.
You, therefore, have no ability to make metaphysical claims either way based on empirical data, nor is a self refuting belief system the appropriate standard to measure other belief systems. How would you overcome these observations?

To restate: An empiricist should be agnostic toward metaphysical claims. Yet, you are rejecting metaphysical claims. How exactly do you acquire the knowledge through empirical means that gives you insight into metaphysical claims? Are you not therefore rejecting your empiricism, since no knowledge of the metaphysical can be gained either way through it?

CMP is dead on that possible is not necessarily probable. False doubt is often cast upon our beliefs.

On the other hand, I have some difficulties with arguments like “the phenomenon of the rise of Christianity in a hostile environment, the willingness of the Apostles to die for their confession,” because it seems to me that the same could be said of Islam which was opposed early on but eventually grew rapidly and had many adherents die in its name. Do we therefore accept that God truly spoke to Muhammed?

Also, to Bryan:

Perhaps empiricism as a system is self defeating, or perhaps it is just another kind of presuppositionalism.
Empiricism can address whether a person is actually invisible or not. That is purely a physical assertion. You’re right that whether God had anything to do with it can’t be said by Empiricism. Also Empirical skepticism applies to the man’s judgment that his vacuum cleaner was beyond human repair. Again, that is a physical assertion. As Vinny notes, he cannot claim evidence about these things. He does not say it, but I suspect that Vinny doubts these physical claims, and therefore sees no need for any assertions about the supernatural.

Also, your assertion that 1) God doesn’t give revelation and 2) the two people therefore cannot know they received miracles doesn’t seem to add up. Are you saying that supernatural revelation is the only way they could identify God’s work on their behalf? You do say no one can say that God did this or that to them or for them beyond a general idea that God works in our lives. I am curious how this works with topics like assurance of salvation and the like. The statement seems to imply a human inability to distinguish between natural and supernatural activity at all.

Vinny,

I think you are confusing things here. Michael’s argument is that the evidence for the resurrection are stronger than the arguments against it and, therefore, the resurrection is the most probable explanation. He didn’t say we should believe in the resurrection because there is no proof that it didn’t happen. We should believe it because the historical evidence is strong enough. In the case of the woman you mentioned, the evidence for invisibility is very poor, so I would conclude she didn’t disappear.

“the inability of skeptics to produce a body in the first century”

That’s a bit unfair. The first century skeptics would not necessarily have been in Jerusalem with access to such-and-such a tomb. Or enough years might have passed that any body would have been unrecognizable – Jewish belief was that after only three days a body was so decomposed that its own spirit no longer recognized it.

Michael, thank you for not including the Swoon Theory! It never was much more than a straw man.

Bryan: when did Vinny claim to be an empiricist? All he did was give two examples of stories he didn’t find credible and ask whether that showed some bias on his part, so all your stuff on the doom of logical positivism doesn’t seem to connect with Vinny’s comment, even if Vinny happens to be an atheist: most atheists aren’t logical positivists.

Asking why Christians reject other people’s miracle stories (even those of other Christians if they’re conservative and they’re talking to charismatics, say) is an interesting question: it doesn’t show the resurrection didn’t happen, of course, but it does make you wonder why people believe it happened.

BTW, in some sort of blog synchronicity, there’s also an interesting discussion about the resurrection going on over at Common Sense Atheism, which people might enjoy contributing to.

Bryan,

So is it only the fact that these people attributed their miracles to God that causes you to reject their stories? Had the woman simply claimed to have turned invisible without identifying the cause, would you have believed her?

Paul,

Bryan is basing his assertion on a discussion in the comments to another post.

One thing in particular troubles me about this post. Point #1 is dismissed without discussion – presumably because it is understood as an “alternative” to resurrection. But plenty of scholars, including Christians among them, have viewed this scenario as precisely what the Gospel of Mark implies happened. Raymond Brown, Byron McCane, Craig Evans and myself are among those who’ve made the case for this understanding: Joseph, a member of the Jewish ruling council who is not said in the Gospel of Mark to be a disciple of Jesus, places his body in “a tomb” without involving Jesus’ family members and doing the bare minimum (wrapping in a linen sheet). The anointing beforehand and attempt to anoint afterwards both indicate an understanding that Jesus did not when he was buried receive the honorable treatment his followers deserved.

This is not an alternative to resurrection, but a plausible historical scenario with respect to the burial of Jesus. Why is it dismissed out of hand?

J – your comparison with Islam is a non-starter. When Mohammed died his died he left a fiefdom with a political system which revolved around what he tought, the continued because of what he said and died in BLIND faith not dissimilar to we see in the middle east today, Mohammed providied NO evidence. Wheras the apostles continued and died believing due to EVIDENCE, the supernatural things they whitnessed.

To pile on James point, scenario #1 would be the default assumption if we did not have any other information. The “evidence” is what we know about Jewish practice and belief in the first century.

As it is we have to weigh the quality of that evidence against the quality of what is presented in the Bible. Judging by (so-called?) scholarly opinion, this is no slam dunk for the Resurrection team.

To link the point that Scott and James make to my example, our evidence is not limited to the stories we are told in Gospels. If we know that the Roman practice was to place the bodies of executed criminals in a common grave, that would be probative evidence. If we know that grave-robbing was a problem at the time, that is probative evidence. It might not be as strong as direct eye-witness testimony, but we don’t have that either.

I think McGrath’s point (and Evans, etc.) seems right. On the other hand, Vinny makes a point about Roman culture that we know to also be true. The problem with plausibility comes when Ken Pulliam (and Carrier and others) try to combine the two very distinct ideas.

A pious Jew taking Jesus off the cross and following the standard custom (as James outlined above) isn’t unthinkable at all. In fact, it makes sense. In fact, it’s what the New Testament says happened. On the other hand, we know that Roman soldiers typically removed the bodies from the crosses and placed them in a common criminal grave. Again, if that’s the standard situation it has some credibility.

The problem comes when Ken Pulliam tries (unsuccessfully IMO) to combine the two ideas. It makes sense for a pious Jew to keep the law by following Jewish burial customs in regards to the deceased. It doesn’t make sense for a pious Jew to follow the methods of the Roman soldiers in disposing of the body.

Craig Evans (who James mentions above) has a free article on Jewish Burial Practices and the Resurrection that should be brought into discussion:

http://www.craigaevans.com/Burial_Traditions.pdf

According to Jewish traditions, what we read in Mark seems to make sense (which is why McGrath, Brown, Evans, etc.) seem to stick with what we read in his gospel in regards to the burial.

Costoms, norms, and patterns don’t provide evidence, only possibilities. In light of other evidence, they have to be adjusted.

For example we could say that a large percentage of men in America die of a heart attack. Another large percentage die of cancer. Therefore, it is a possibility that Kennedy did not die from being shot, but from one of these MUCH more common ways to die.

Yes, we will have to figure out how such a “theory” arose, but there are more possibilities than you can imagine, including borrowing from 21st century martyr theory.

I cannot speak for historians, but in a court of law, customary practices are considered evidence.

However, Michael, I would still be interested in your opinion of the invisible woman and the miracle of the broken vacuum.

Did someone actually see her become invisible? In other words, are their witnesses? How many?

We must judge them subjectively.

If it is just the woman who claims this, we no other witnesses, it would not parallel the resurrection story at all. Therefore, there are many other subjective or delutional possibilities that are just as strong as the woman’s.

In the case of Christ, if we only has one line of evidence, no witnesses, testimony, appearances, or empty tomb, but just one guy named Jesus who claimed to have risen from the dead, then it would parallel your story.

But I would say that your story is attempting to present a possibility that would be irresponsible to parallel to the Christ story.

Michael,

No. All the evidence I have about the specific incident is her testimony that she became invisible. It is only my knowledge of how things usually happen in the world that causes me to think that she did not.

Read #17 again.

Vinny,
No, I would not believe her claim that she can turn invisible either because supernaturalism isn’t a belief that everything is just supernatural without being natural as well. The supernaturalist accepts two means of obtaining information: empirical data and divine report/revelation. I was responding to your example that these people claimed that God did these things for/to them. I have no doubt that the vacuum cleaner may have worked when the man tried it again, as this commonly occurs (empirical observation). I do not believe the woman turned invisible because I have no cause, empirically or revelatory, to believe that claim due to what those two sources reveal (no pun intended) to me.

J,
With those assertions I am saying that there is no way to know that God did something specifically to/for them, as though they received revelation from God on that. I do believe that all things that occur are due to divine providence, so generally speaking, all things done to/for us are ultimately from God for some particular reason. We just don’t know the reason, and we don’t necessarily know if He is the direct agent in all of that.

Just a minor point on the ‘invisibility’ story, which i think is a very good illustrative comparison.

A person who was invisible would have no way of knowing whether or not they were invisible save for looking in a mirror and not seeing themself. So unless they stated that as evidence, their testimony would be quite weak I think.

Alternatively: someone die and a few days later, walking around would be within their rights to assume that dead person had come back to life. And this testimony would be stronger than the invisibility claim I think.

However, if the observer had seen someone go into hospital graveley ill, heard they had died, then seen them a few days later – this would be substantially weaker as a testimnoy. So, where along this spectrum do the resurrection ‘testimonies’ lie? Scholarship seems to be split on this, some sayng there are good reasons to assume eye witness accounts, others saying the accounts are surely fabricated (and yet others somewhere in the middle).

oops a bunch of my second para got deleted (insert key).

It should read:

Alternatively: If a person actually saw someone die and a few days later, saw them walking around, they would be within their rights to assume that dead person had come back to life. And this testimony would be stronger than the invisibility claim I think.

Also J,
Empiricism, of course, is a kind of presuppositionalism. The problem is that it a priori rejects the attainment of knowledge apart from itself. Hence, attainment to the truth concerning empiricism cannot be obtained through empiricism, since one must first presuppose it in order to verify its truthfulness. If all that we say is true must be empirically verified then empiricism is self refuting. It makes metaphysical assumptions that it cannot make, but must make in order to be a viable system.

Vinny,
“It might not be as strong as direct eye-witness testimony, but we don’t have that either.”

Is this empiricism? Were you there, Vinny? Do you know who wrote those accounts or are you speculating? You can say, based on your empiricism, that you do not believe the reports are true because dead people don’t come back to life after being dead for three days, but it seems odd to me for you to accept some of the claims of critical scholarship when it comes to whether the reports are eyewitnesses or not. Can you clarify how you come to this conclusion?

Michael,

Sorry, I was going off the e-mail notification I got about the post.

The only parallel I am drawing is that I have no evidence to support any other possibility. Since you pointed this out as one reason to reject alternative explanations for the resurrection, I wanted to know how this principle would apply to other miracle claims.

I agree that there are many subjective and delusional possibilities for the woman’s belief. Would you agree that I am justified in considering those possibilities even when I have no testimony or reports to support them?

Bryan,

I base that statement on the fact that none of the gospel writers asserts that he personally witnessed an appearance of the risen Christ. The gospels are all written as third person accounts. The only New Testament writer who says that he personally witnessed an appearance is Paul.

Vinny,
Thanks for responding. I was just curious how you justified that claim. Fair enough. My only question to you would be, Do you think that your obtainment of this knowledge is based in empiricism or belief in a report? Or both? I should say.

Empiricism contemplates reports based on personal observation. It even contemplates second or third hand reports. I don’t expect to observe everything myself.

Have you looked at all eyewitness accounts and determined that they are always in the first person? Remember that the Gospels are not letters or monologues.

BTW, Do you believe the author of the epistles of John is the same as the author of John? The author claims to have seen, heard, and touched Jesus personally. Do you have different criteria for accepting or rejecting this testimony?

As a side note, I’m completely agnostic on the subject. My supernatural view of the Bible actually allows me to consider all options, as the human agents as eyewitnesses are not necessary, since God is behind the text. So it could have been written yesterday for all I care. This says nothing to the accuracy of the report based on metaphysical claims.
Once again, this shows how a non-empiricist viewpoint is more open than an empiricist one. The empiricist must have eyewitnesses or the reports are suspect. Even then, the reports are suspect if they do not accord with empirical data. This narrow and self refuting idea, therefore, ought to be rejected.

Bryan,

I don’t know whether the same person wrote the epistles as the gospel. I also am not sure what it is that the author of 1 John is claiming to have seen or touched. A Roman Catholic might conclude that he was talking about the Eucharist.

Bryan,

It is true that an eyewitness could write an account of an event without placing himself at the scene or indicating that he had observed it. I will happily modify my statement:

We only have one account of the resurrection that purports to be an eyewitness account.

Vinny,

Thanks again for the civil discussion. I am quite intermittent right now as I am preparing for a speaking engagement in MD.

You said,

“I agree that there are many subjective and delusional possibilities for the woman’s belief. Would you agree that I am justified in considering those possibilities even when I have no testimony or reports to support them?”

Again, I just find a hard time drawing any parallel between the TYPE of supernatural event involved in a woman who professes to have been made invisible with no eye-witness testimony and the resurrection of Christ which is based primarily (if not exclusively) on eye-witness testimony from multiple sources.

Is it a possibility that all the apostles were delusional? Of course. Is it probable, not really. At the very least, without a bias against miracles, I would suspect that any rational person would have to go with the explanation that is the most simple (the “razor”), that Jesus did indeed raise from the grave.

The best way to discredit this, in my opinion, would be to discredit the testimony of the Apostles. Not in the sense that they were lying or delusional, but that they never really claimed to have seen Christ living after death. This option, like so many others, can produce endless possibilities, but they, in my opinion are not probable.

That is the point of this post. Possibility does not equate to probability. I have seen so many people act as if they offer a multitude of alternative possibilities, this somehow automatically discounts the most probable one, making it a leap of blind faith to believe.

In the end, people should at least always concede that the resurrection of Christ is a good possibility so long as you don’t have an anti-supernaturalistic bias. Would you be willing to concede to this last claim?

Thanks, Vinny. I was just trying to get a handle on that. The author of the epistles of John is claiming physical contact with Christ. The “we” is most likely a reference to the apostles, and even if that is not enough, it is clear that the text is attempting to refute Docetism, which denies that Jesus has come in the flesh. So the eucharist is not really in view (even though one could strain the text in that direction, I’m not sure how one “hears” the eucharist with their ears unless we’re talking about what is preached along with the eucharist). Either way, it would seem like a weak argument to say that we know that Jesus has come in the flesh because we have a practice that testifies to his coming in the flesh. The claim that all who have fellowship with Jesus must have fellowship with “us,” once again, seems to indicate that the author is claiming to be an apostle.

Once again, revisiting the my statement that there is no “evidence” for #1: I would propose that in the absence of alternative evidence and claims, this would be just as good a possibility as any others.

Most people die a natural death. But this could not be put forward as “evidence” that James Dean died a natural death? Why? Because there is stronger support and testimony that he did not. Therefore, for me to say that there is not any evidence for the first is valid. There is not. Customs provide likelihood in the alternative explanations are absent.

As well, I was speaking to the implications that the author had with #1. The idea that Jesus was placed in criminal graveyard is not really the issue. The issue is that the author implies that this is an alternative to the resurrection. In this, the assertion would be that not only are the Gospel writers wrong about the resurrection, the evidence that they are wrong is because Jesus body was placed in a criminal graveyard (like all other crucified Jews). If they were wrong about this, they were probable wrong about the resurrection too.

I don’t think I am reading too much into this as the author of the original post says this right before offering the three “alternatives”:
“In addition to the scenario I have already outlined, there are also other possibilities to explain the phenomena before one has to resort to a supernatural explanation.”

At the same time, I would agree with the premise of many of the responses. We should attempt to find a naturalistic explanation for a phenomenon, historic or contemporary, before settling on a supernatural one. This is why, from a Christian standpoint, it is so easy to dismiss the majority of other religious claims. They are not quite so incarnation. In other words, they don’t allow themselves to be tested historically. In those cases, if believe, it is a blind leap. Whereas the resurrection of Christ is totally unique in its historicity and its implications (and you have to have both).

However, I do, oddly enough, appreciate those who do everything they can to give alternative explanations. From one perspective, like anything else, it helps to strengthen rather than weaken the case for Christ resurrection.

Vinny,

This is my impression of what’s happening:

Michael is arguing, “When a claim about a supernatural event is supported by evidence like X and Y, then it’s not reasonable to be skeptical based on Z.”

You’re reading that as, “When anyone makes any claim about a supernatural event, then it’s not reasonable to be skeptical based on Z.” (That seems to be how you’re crafting your attempted parallels.)

In other words, Michael’s argument depends on the supporting evidence for the supernatural claim. If you want to draw a parallel to critique Michael’s post, you have to extend your parallels to the nature of the supporting evidence.

“Is it a possibility that all the apostles were delusional?”

This is a pretty strong claim and not one anyone is making. I can, however, draw parallels to the Millerites who faced absolute disconfirmation, pivoted to a spiritual interpretation and remain with us to this day as the Seventh Day Adventists.

One can say that Jesus’ story is completely different, but the above illustrates how confrontation with direct, contradictory evidence does not necessarily defeat belief.

Can Liberal and Real Christians ever come together? When they have such different views of the nature of the underlying documents, how can common ground ever be reached?

Scott,
I don’t mind the differing liberal view, I just can’t along with their hairstyles.

I’m joking, of course. Every scholar, conservative or liberal, including this would be scholar, doesn’t know how to comb his hair. 🙂

The absence of a credible explanatory alternative to a theory does not mean that that theory is true.

So, for example, we have no theory of how gravity works that explains all the extant data. The presence of a theory that explains most of the data, or that is the most convincing of all the theories, does not mean that that theory is true. I could think of other examples but that will do for now.

So what explanations do we have for Christ’s missing body (assuming it was missing)? Several, including the explanation that he rose again / was resurrected. Now CMP and many others argue that a resurrection best explains all the extant data, and therefore that explanation is probably true.

I would maintain, however, that that only makes it possibly true and does not raise the probabilities to greater than the flip of a coin (though I do believe in the resurrection).

It is just as reasonable to believe that no one rises from the dead, and that there are no other potential examples other than this singular one (Lazarus, etc. don’t count because there are no other historical records of such events other than the Bible, which document assumes the truth of Christ’s deity). If people do not regularly rise from the dead, it is reasonably to suppose that no one ever has, including Christ, and that there must be some other explanation for missing body which we have just not developed yet (just as we haven’t yet figured out gravity, or why galaxies spin faster than they are supposed to).

If one starts out with the supposition that there is an omnipotent God, well, then nothing is impossible and one doesn’t really need any proofs for Christ’s resurrection.

If one starts out with the supposition that there is not an omnipotent God, then the missing body is not sufficient to strongly doubt one’s belief that bodies do not rise from the dead. The atheist may not have a current explanation for the missing body of Christ, but she does not need one in order to be reasonably justified in the rejection of the Christian explanation. Her observation that bodies do not rise from the dead justifies her belief that Jesus did not either and that we should continue to look for explanations of the missing body that do not involve supernatural action.

Note that I wrote “strongly doubt”. I’m talking about justified belief and probabilities here. The lack of a good alternate explanation does not make it more likely than not that the Christian explanation is correct. The lack of a good alternate explanation to Ptolemy’s epicycles for the orbits of planets in perfect spheres did not mean that his explanation was more probably correct, even though there was no good alternate explanation for thousands of years. He was still wrong; planets have elliptical orbits.

regards,
#John

Scott F,

I think we are actually in an exciting period where re-engagement will be increasingly possible as the epistemology of academia rapidly switches from a modernist, materialist understanding of things to a more postmodern way of seeing things. The question is will the Church see this opportunity and be willing to engage post-moderns.

Far too often we are caught fighting the battles of the last century which simply no longer exist. You see a lot of popular preachers railing against postmodernism these days while at the same time implicitly (without realizing it) embracing modernism in their approach to theology and truth claims which was probably worse. Christianity (ideally) has it’s own epistemology which is neither modern or postmodern and (at least I believe) a proper understanding of Christian epistemology probably has more in common with postmodern epistemology then modern.

John 1453,
“If people do not regularly rise from the dead, it is reasonably to suppose that no one ever has, including Christ, and that there must be some other explanation for missing body which we have just not developed yet”

Why??? I sense some presuppositions here which can’t be proven. I’ve never seen a lot of things (including any event in history before 1983), yet I believe them to have occurred.

You only offered two sets of starting presuppositions for approaching the resurrections. Let me offer a third. There MAY be a God and Jesus MAY have risen from the grave. Ultimately you only make CMP’s point which was that unless you start with a unprovable set of naturalistic presupposition, one of which is that resurrection is impossible, then the resurrection is the most probable explanation for the evidence. I don’t think CMP’s motive was to get atheists to suddenly surrender, but rather to lay bear their presuppositions.

I think John is saying that the common human experience that one can comfortably accept based on recent, reliable reports includes no cases of people raising from the dead. Even most Christians would agree with that (Please let us know if you have a story of a modern resurrection!)

A lot of weasel words in that definition but it is a body of experience that is not chiseled in stone and yet serves as a background to the way we experience the world in modern times. The problem is that when someone expresses it in more definite terms, people jump on his head and cry “presupposition!” 🙂

I might add that this modernistic world view has been very successful and has allowed us to advance our knowledge in ways that have produced tangible benefits in medicine agriculture and technology. None of us would be having this conversation if methodological naturalism hadn’t made possible the semi-conductor. No wonder scientists hew to it so tightly. This thing produces the goods (no, not grants – knowledge).

One further refinement to the above defined view would be that recent experience is generally regarded as more reliable. Reliability is felt to be inversely proportional to age. Here may be one of your presuppositions. Do scholars sufficiently guard against it?

I saw David Cooperfield make an elephant disappear. Which is more likely:

1) I was tricked
2) The elephant really disappeared

I saw my car door open when I pulled on the door handle. Which is more likely:

1) I was tricked
2) The car door really opened

The underlying probability of a resurrection has a lot to do with which events are more probable. Even if it is possible that a resurrection could occur the probability is far lower than virtually any other reasonable explanation.

And #4 has lots of evidence. Not the least of which is dozens of rising savior Gods becoming fashionable at the same time the Christian one did. Not the least of which is the fact that the gospels we have, have both internal and external evidence of having evolved implying an evolving story. Not the least of which is how ambiguous the early accounts are.

#4 offers a picture of the resurrection fully consistent with dozens of known cases of religious evolution. An actual resurrection offers a picture fully consistent with 0 known cases.

I believe in quantum physics. I believe it is entirely possible that a car could spontaneously jump 30 feet to an new location without crossing the distance in between. I just happen to think the odds against it are astronomical. So much so that the evidence that the car jumped on its own rather than some other explanation would be discounted unless there was massive evidence in support of the car jumping.

Re presuppositions

The presupposition that dead people don’t rise and the presupposition of naturalism are no less rational and defensible than the presupposition that dead people can rise.

If someone starts with the presupposition that dead people can rise because God can do it, then no evidence at all is necessary to support their belief. God said it / God can do it, I believe it, that settles it.

If someone starts with the presupposition that dead people cannot rise from the dead, then the story of Jesus’ resurrection will not be enough to convince them. Why should they believe a report of 1900 years ago? Why not also believe in reports of dragons and cyclops? At least the latter two are physically possible. One would have to attack their presuppositions first. Just because Christians have a plausible explanation for the missing body doesn’t mean that their explanation is correct, even if there were zero other possible explanations.

As for someone who is wavering or uncertain or doubtful about their presuppositions, one can’t convince them to accept a presupposition of belief in the supernatural using the very story that one wants to convince them of! That would be begging the question (i.e., using a premise that assumes the truth of the conclusion).

“Evidence that demands a verdict” and similar literature is crapola as far as I am concerned and has extremely limited apologetic value.

The Christian explanation of the empty tomb (a miraculous intervention by God) is certainly a rational and good reason to believe in the resurrection, but it doesn’t prove anything. I accept the explanation as a good reason for my beliefs, but my faith isn’t founded upon the human evaluated probability of the explanation being correct. Certainly, if there were good evidence that Christ didn’t rise from the dead (e.g., a tomb like Mohammed’s with bones inside) that would act as a potential defeater for my beliefs (though I could pull a Seventh Day Adventist and claim a spiritual resurrection of Jesus, to be followed by a future physical one).

CMP’s states, “In the end, the simplest explanation is that Christ did rise from the grave. If you do not start with anti-supernaturalistic presuppositions (i.e. dead bodies can’t rise, therefore, Christ did not rise from the grave), then you can truly follow the evidence and not search for far-fetched, yet possible, explanations. It is because of acrobats like these that I think it takes more (blind) faith not to believe in the resurrection of Christ than to believe.”

To which I reply, “so what?” Just because it’s the “simplest” explanation does not make it probably true or even possibly true. And why should I hold supernaturalist presuppositions instead of anti-supernaturalist ones? The reports of Christ’s resurrection cannot be used to justify the presuppositions that are then used to accept the supernatural natue of Christ’s resurrection.

I second what McGrath wrote above.

Also, Mike, you wrote that Christianity was at a “disadvantage” and mentioned three cases that do not seem quite as disadvantageous as you presume:

1) “Christianity arose in a hostile environment,” but it was also a superstious environment which was NOT hostile to miracle tales (read Josephus), nor even to tales of a divine Roman emperor (Augustus). In fact Christians composed no less than three endings to the earliest Gospel, endings not found in the oldest copies we posses of Mark, but only in later copies. The most popular of those endings involved three supernatural promises: “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” Secondly, there is nothing “hostile” about people’s strong wishes and desires to believe in a personal afterlife and cling to tales and even rumors of such. Thirdly, the Roman world provided a lingua franca and roads by which tales and stories might spread geographically to many people far from the original events. That in itself was an enormous advantage that was fully in place when Christianity arose. Even the newness of any belief provides an advantage, that of initial curiosity.

2) “The willingness of the Apostles to die for their confession.” Most scholars agree there is less evidence concerning the deaths of the apostles than concerning the death of Jesus on a cross. Also, dying for a cause has little do with with the truth or falisity, rightness or wrongness, of the cause itself. People have suffered and died or been persecuted at the hands of others for as long as their have been hands. And Christians became the persecutors after Constantine and his descendants ruled the Empire, i.e., in their wars against the gods, against non-Christians and heretics. “Let anyone who does not accept the Trinity be viewed as anathema and demented and the Empire shall use force…” “Let the books of Porphyry and Arius be burnt and let no one be found reading them,” etc.

3) “The embarrassment factor in the Gospel accounts.” Which factors exactly? The apostle’s thick-headedness in Mark? We don’t know if they were as thick-headed as THAT, or whether expressions of doubt were sui generis when it came to telling miracle tales to make them sound more convincing (as was the case in examples provided by Price). It is also a convenient way to promote belief without sight as in the case of the fourth Gospel which uses the tale of Thomas’ doubts to promote belief without having seen anything for one’s self, “Blessed is he who has NOT seen, yet believed.” Personally, I think the two inserted verses in the Gospel of Matthew about the “many raised saints” are an embarrassment. Along with the tale of two earthqukes, which all the other Gospel authors seem to have forgotten or left out.