5.1 The Resurrection (Feb 2016)

I've been reading The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona, who suggests that Jesus resurrection is the most plausible explanation for the core historical events that almost all scholars (including those who are rather sceptical of the resurrection) agree on. They try to separate what happened historically from any pre-existing belief of the veracity or otherwise of the biblical text and therefore seek to use only the facts that almost all scholars agree on (and in so doing reject the accuracy of parallel biblical accounts). Trying to see things from their point of view, I think I can understand the strength of the argument, which I have used and developed below (Habermas and Licona essentially start part way through point 3).

So, with help from The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, one of the strongest lines of reasoning in favour of Christianity might go along the lines of…

  1. Everything we know about the universe indicates that God created it. He was there at the beginning and started the whole thing rolling.
  2. Given that the universe is God's creation he is able to intervene in it and work outside of nature to perform what we perceive as miracles.
  3. Given that miracles are possible, one of the best attested miracles of all time is Jesus resurrection. Even putting biblical accuracy to one side, the historical evidence for resurrection is compelling given that even the vast majority of scholars (including the rather sceptical ones) agree that:
         a. Jesus was crucified
         b. The disciples strongly believed they saw the risen Jesus
         c. Paul (originally an enemy) converted to Christianity
         d. James (originally a sceptic) converted to Christianity
         e. The tomb was empty (according to Habermas and Licona this is only agreed on by around 75% of scholars who study the subject, which is lower than the scholarly agreement of the other facts)

    The best explanation of the above facts in number 3 is that a miracle took place and Jesus rose from the dead. Alternative theories to explain what happen fall short of providing a clean and concise explanation of the accepted facts.

My response to this line of reasoning is…

1. The reality is that even the experts have no consensus idea how the universe got to the way it is today. There are many competing ideas from both theologians (e.g. Young Earth Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, Evolutionary Creationism, etc…) and physicists (e.g. different ideas about a proposed but unverified 'multi-verse', e.g. eternal inflation, many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, etc…). The conclusion that any individual comes to seems to me to be more about subjective belief than empirical evidence. As a species we are nowhere near a definitive answer, and therefore I'm agnostic on this.

2. Even if the universe is God's creation that doesn't mean that he can still work within it, outside of nature, to perform miracles. It could be that he created the universe and let it go floating away like a helium balloon and is now unable to gain contact with it to intervene. Even if the universe is still in front of God that still doesn't mean he can intervene. A computer scientist can write a program to perform a certain function, compile it into an executable file, and run it on a computer in front of him. But he can't change the compiled program on the fly to make it perform a different function to that which it was originally programed to do. He could create a new program to do that new function, but that would be like God creating a new universe – not changing the one we already live in (assuming we live in a type of universe that can't be changed on the fly, which may or may not be true). This leads to the conclusion that if God created the universe, it doesn't necessarily mean that he is still able to work within it. We don't know what type of universe it is that we inhabit (see above) so we can't answer this question.

3. Step three, essentially the reasoning from Habermas and Licona, uses what I suspect is a pre-existing belief that miracles are plausible to reach their conclusion. If you don't think miracles are plausible (and perhaps more specifically miracles in a Christian context) you won't find an explanation that invokes miracles plausible however reasonable it sounds apart from that.

I wouldn't personally go as far as saying that miracles are categorically impossible, but I do think that stronger evidence of miracles taking place is required before accepting them as occurring. None of the historical facts presented above are supernatural in themselves and I don't think the evidence Habermas and Licona use is sufficient to demonstrate both that miracles happen and that Jesus resurrection was a miracle.

My response to the assertion that the resurrection is the most plausible explanation would be that human error (by which I mean misunderstanding, miscommunication, misinterpretation, etc.) could be equally plausible if you believe in miracles and is more plausible if you don't.

Going a little further

These thoughts bring us to a wider question that is just as hard to adequately answer which is this: What evidence would be needed to convince someone to change their mind on miracles, be that from a believer to a sceptic or the other way around? How could we tell the difference between a natural phenomenon that is unknown to science and a supernatural miracle?

Using history as my guide it seems clear that natural events (even if the natural cause is unknown) are far more likely to happen than supernatural events (by which I mean events that act contrary to nature). So the null hypothesis should be that miracles don't happen and evidence should be sought to demonstrate that they do - but what could that evidence be?

They type of thing I initially thought of for this would be something that happened a long time ago but is still available for verification today such as the movement of a mountain to a distant part of the world. An example of extant physical evidence for a miracle like this would be in the agreement between the account in the ancient text and geological/chemical analysis of the rocks of the ground where the mountain once stood and of the mountain as it exists today compared to the rock below the mountain in its current position. If there was agreement between the rock type of the mountain and the ground of its original position, but lack of agreement between the mountain and the rock type that it now sits on that would give strong evidence that it had indeed been moved. But...even then we would need to be cautious to rule out natural processes like continental drift and glacial erratics (or as yet unknown natural processes) as these produce similar evidence.

It may even be impossible to demonstrate a miracle happened as there will always be a chance that an unknown or little understood natural process was at work. So again, it seems that concluding miracles happen (or don't happen) is based more on subjective belief than objective evidence. I am left in a position where I have to revert to my null hypothesis that miracles don't happen and continue to seek evidence that undermines this view.

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