For the last three years, I've posted something about the resurrection each Easter. I didn't want to break the stride, but I almost didn't make it today because I'm traveling. I know, I know, I could've written it sooner and just not posted it until today, but I've been crazy busy the last two weeks. Anywho, without further ado, here is this year's Easter resurrection post.
So, I was thinking about Mike Licona's argument for the resurrection the other day. His approach is called "inference to the best explanation," which is a way of reasoning inductively. There are certain common sense criteria that make some historical hypotheses better than other hypotheses. An historical hypothesis is an attempt to explain a`set of data by attempting to say what really happened. Which hypothesis does the best at explaining the data, and how do we decide "what is best"?
The data isn't important to the point I want to make today, so I'm not going to defend it, but in Licona's case, it includes things like the death of Jesus, the fact that the disciples initially lost hope, the empty tomb of Jesus, the appearances of Jesus, the restoration of the disciples' hope as a result of seeing Jesus alive, and the conversion of James and Paul. There's more details involved, but those are the main points. What we're trying to explain is what actually happened, and there are various possibilities.
1. Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to the disciples.
2. Jesus didn't really die, but everybody thought he did, so when they saw him, they thought he rose from the dead.
3. The disciples had experiences like grief hallucinations, visions, dreams, or even mistaken identity.
4. The disciples experienced cognitive dissonance and cooked up the resurrection to cope with it.
5. The disciples were just lying to keep the movement alive or something.
6. The resurrection of Jesus wasn't even part of earliest Christianity and developed as a legend later on.
7. The disciples or somebody stole the body, and maybe Peter had a grief hallucination, convinced the others that he had seen Jesus, and they claimed to see Jesus as well (whether they did or not doesn't matter that much in this hypothesis).
There are some others. I'm writing this off the top of my head. Again, these hypotheses aren't important to the main point of my post. I'm just trying to say that there are multiple rival hypotheses we are comparing to the resurrection hypothesis. Now let's get to the point of my post. To determine what hypothesis is the best, we try to see which one does the best when applying certain common sense criteria. Here are a few of them (again off the top of my head).
a. You want a hypothesis to be simple and not ad hoc. That means you don't have to make up a lot of stuff to fill the gaps or have multiple hypothesis to explain all the pieces of the puzzle individually. You just want something parsimonious.
b. You want a hypothesis that does a really good job of making sense of the data. This is called explanatory power.
c. You want a hypothesis that explains as much of the data as possible. A hypothesis that explains all of it is better than one that explains some of it.
And there are two others I can't think of. While I was thinking about Licona's argument the other day, I thought of what I would say if I were trying to argue against the resurrection. I would just add another criteria and say, "The best explanation is the least miraculous." The reason I say that is because if the resurrection was not a miracle, I don't think there would be serious doubt about whether it happened. I think the evidence for the resurrection is every bit as solid as the evidence for the crucifixion of Jesus. Many scholars have said the fact that Jesus was cruified is among if not the most certain thing we can know about him. I think the evidence for the resurrection is almost if not just as solid. I think the only real reason people doubt it is because it's a miracle.
People who try to refute the argument for the resurrection will sometimes dispute the alleged facts, like whether the tomb was really empty, or whether the apostles really saw anything, or whether Jesus really ate in front of them, and things like that. But if these facts did not lead to the conclusion that Jesus rose from the dead, people probably wouldn't doubt them. The only thing that's really problematic about the hypothesis that Jesus rose from the dead is that it's a miracle.
I think that's where the real argument ought to lie. That's where most of the time should be spent.
In general, I think we should prefer non-miraculous claims to miraculous claims, all other things being equal. The question, then, is whether all other things are equal. It's also important to address the question of how much we should prefer non-miraculous hypotheses to miraculous ones. If you absolutely think miracles are impossible, then this one criteria may be sufficient to trump all the others because if miracles are impossible, then any far fetched theory is more likely than a resurrection. But if you subscribe to a worldview in which the miracles are either possible or are even known to happen from time to time, then that one criteria may not carry as much wait as it would for a naturalist. There are some Christian apologists who want to put miraculous claims and hypotheses on the same footing as non-miraculous claims and hypotheses, and I think that's just crazy. You don't have to be a naturalist to have a general suspicion when it comes to fantastic claims. We do that even when the claims are not miraculous, like if I were to tell you Kate Beckinsale kissed me at the grocery store today. You'd be suspicious because it just seems, on the face of it, to be unlikely. Well, the same thing applies to the miraculous.
I do subscribe to a worldview in which miracles are possible, so although I have suspicions when it comes to miraculous claims, I don't rule them out altogether. In the case of the resurrection of Jesus, the evidence is sufficient to overcome my suspicion toward miraculous claims in general.
Therefore, happy Easter. Jesus rose from the dead. He is the messiah. He did die for sins. He conquered death. He atoned for sins. He will raise us in the last days.
Easter post from 2022
Easter post from 2021
Easter post from 2020.
A post that's relevant to this one because it talks about the oft-repeated slogan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"
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