Richard Dawkins forum implodes

[Prosperity]

Nah, Techboy's modeS logic is even bigger bull****. Basically, they are claiming since it can be true, it must be true. I could use the same device to claim Star Wars is a true story. He doesn't even claim to understand it, but he has faith that it is true lol.

The arguments are only slightly different, they are both sophistry

They both take the idea of a universal possibly existing, and then say well part of the nature of this universal is that it necessarily exists. Therefore the universal necessarily exists! Except that no, necessary existence is still only a property of the universal. Properties aren't actualized until the thing exists in the sense of the word that means it has relations and can effect three (or more) dimensional objects.

That or they say something like the idea of God is consistent, and I can't imagine a world in which it wouldn't be consistent, therefore it exists in ever conceivable world! which is fine but it's still only an idea/concept. It's like saying I can't imagine a world without the concept of Triangle, therefore Triangles must Actually exist! well no, concepts don't necessitate any sort of actual existence, though since they are concepts they do exist in a sense, but only as concepts.

At the end of the day, you get, if God exists, God necessarily exists.

that first IF is pretty BIG if when you are trying to prove God exists.

[Jumbo]

I think that was in Star Trek.

Although in Star Trek, while Satan correctly represented the evils of logic and actual knowledge, he only had pointy ears. Where was the tail, hooves and trident? Or was that the Poseidon Adventure and the Ark?

[Corcaigh]

Although in Star Trek, while Satan correctly represented the evils of logic and actual knowledge, he only had pointy ears.

Limited costume budget. That's why everyone wore the same outfit.

[zoony]

What do you mean specifically?

I'll give you that when the Millenium Falcon jumps to light speed all the stars should be shifted to appear blue because of the Doppler effect. That ruined the whole series for me more than the Ewoks. :mad:

well, when they return to Alderan, for instance, Leia Organa's dad should be roughly 2500 years old

And shouldn't the Millenium Falcon dissapear when it makes the jump to light speed? And whats this about it out-running other ships? Light speed is light speed.

[AzSkinsFan63]

Must be all that IQ....

[Jumbo]

Light speed is light speed.

But the better you can throw a spatial curve with a sharper break you can get a bigger jump on the other ship. Better curve = more warp = win.

[zoony]

But the better you can throw a spatial curve with a sharper break you can get a bigger jump on the other ship. Better curve = more warp = win.

well spacetime itself is curved. I thought about your post with that in mind and my brain melted.

.......

[Jumbo]

well spacetime itself is curved. I thought about your post with that in mind and my brain melted.

.......

It's only melted if a cat looks in your head and gets it's paws stuck in goo.

[zoony]

It's only melted if a cat looks in your head and gets it's paws stuck in goo.

I stuck my head in the freezer for a few- I'm good now.

That's why I don't own a cat

[alexey]

techboy,

I do not agree that Dawkins' arguments are "incoherent and inconsistent all the time" as you claim. He has some problems. He may structure his arguments in a confrontational way. He may fail to properly appreciate the role of religion in human history, or show proper respect for religious reverence. However, his arguments do appear coherent and consistent. More over, I would even say that they have some philosophical value.

As for Michael Ruse... I was not familiar with his arguments, and did some light research just now. Michael Ruse appears to be heavily involved in the ID/creationism/evolution argument. He writes that that ID/creationism ought to be taught, but in classes on comparative religion. His strong negative opinion of Dawkins' argument appears to come from that angle. Specifically, he writes:

http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2008/02/19/michael_ruse_on_richard_dawkins

"A major part of the atheist attack is that science has shown that the God hypothesis is silly. Suppose this is true - that if you are a Darwinian, then you cannot be a Christian. How then does one answer the creationist who objects to the teaching of Darwinism in schools? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If theism cannot be taught in schools (in America) because it violates the separation of church and state, why then should Darwinism be permitted? If Darwinism leads to atheism, does this not also violate the separation of church and state? At the very least, Dawkins and company should be showing more responsibility. If they are right, then so be it. I would not want to conceal the fact. But let us face the consequences of the arguments. Explain to us on what grounds one can now legitimately teach evolution in schools. I think one can because I don't see the link between Darwinism and atheism. Those who do see such a link should tell us why Darwinism can be taught or accept that perhaps, given the U.S. Constitution, the creationists are right and Darwinism should be excluded."

I see this argument as an extremely weak one. Evolution is a secular explanation for things. Separation of church and state leaves evolution in schools and creationism in church. I am also suspicious that he used the term "Darwinism". In my view that is not appropriate.

Based on my initial observations, main disagreement here appears to be that Michael Ruse holds that Christian faith is compatible with evolution, while Dawkins argues otherwise. This disagreement, rather than quality of Dawkins' argument, seems to be the driver behind Ruse strong reaction.

Dawkins seems to be trying to turn agnostics into atheists. Ruse seems to be trying to turn evolution-denying Christians into evolution-accepting Christians. I would not be shocked if these men found the others' work to be detrimental.

[techboy]

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Trust me... if you really want to throw down, I'll throw down.

Nah, Techboy's modeS logic is even bigger bull****. Basically, they are claiming since it can be true, it must be true. I could use the same device to claim Star Wars is a true story. He doesn't even claim to understand it, but he has faith that it is true lol.

You don't have any idea what you're talking about, but you're more than happy to disagree vehemently. There are several fundamentalist Christian sects that would be happy to have you.

For the record, s5 modal logic is not religious or theological or faith based or whatever. It is a very old system of modal logic, and widely (though not universally) accepted.

Plantinga makes use of s5 modal logic in his version of the Ontological Argument, which is a totally different matter, and cannot, by the way, be used to prove that Star Wars is a true story.

I understand Plantinga's argument perfectly. It's actually pretty simple. What I do not understand is why s5 modal logic is widely accepted, because I have not studied it.

And, in fact, I don't find any version of the Ontological argument particularly convincing (though some versions might be sound), let alone having "faith" in them.

The last time we discussed this (briefly), you tried to use a dictionary to redefine technical philosophical terms (which is akin to demanding that Hawking work with dictionary definitions of "black" and "hole"), so I'd suggest that you just stay out of this kind of discussion if you don't want to put the work in to at least have a surface understanding of what's going on.

I do not agree that Dawkins' arguments are "incoherent and inconsistent all the time" as you claim. He has some problems. He may structure his arguments in a confrontational way. He may fail to properly appreciate the role of religion in human history, or show proper respect for religious reverence. However, his arguments do appear coherent and consistent. More over, I would even say that they have some philosophical value.

And you would be wrong. Here's a quote from Alvin Plantinga (highly respected Christian philosopher) in his The Dawkins Confusion:

Now despite the fact that this book is mainly philosophy, Dawkins is not a philosopher (he's a biologist). Even taking this into account, however, much of the philosophy he purveys is at best jejune. You might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores; the fact is (grade inflation aside), many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class.

which sounds a lot like the comment of Michael Ruse (an atheist philosopher). Again...

Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course. Proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing. As I have said elsewhere, for the first time in my life, I felt sorry for the ontological argument. If we criticized gene theory with as little knowledge as Dawkins has of religion and philosophy, he would be rightly indignant. (He was just this when, thirty years ago, Mary Midgeley went after the selfish gene concept without the slightest knowledge of genetics.)

Here's one quick example of how lousy his argumentation is, from Christian philosopher William Lane Craig:

On pages 157-8 of his book, Dawkins summarizes what he calls "the central argument of my book." It goes as follows:

1. One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.

2. The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself.

3. The temptation is a false one because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer.

4. The most ingenious and powerful explanation is Darwinian evolution by natural selection.

5. We don't have an equivalent explanation for physics.

6. We should not give up the hope of a better explanation arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology.

7. Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist.

This argument is jarring because the atheistic conclusion that "Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist" seems to come suddenly out of left field. You don't need to be a philosopher to realize that that conclusion doesn't follow from the six previous statements.

Indeed, if we take these six statements as premises of an argument implying the conclusion "Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist," then the argument is patently invalid. No logical rules of inference would permit you to draw this conclusion from the six premises.

A more charitable interpretation would be to take these six statements, not as premises, but as summary statements of six steps in Dawkins' cumulative argument for his conclusion that God does not exist. But even on this charitable construal, the conclusion "Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist" does not follow from these six steps, even if we concede that each of them is true and justified.

Dawkins' arguments suck, and at least half the problem is that he considers his ignorance of philosophy and theology a strength with he and his like thinkers even going so far as to invent a "logical fallacy" they call "The Courtier's Reply", which is pretty funny, because when they use it, it is actually they that commit a fallacy, that of begging the question.

Based on my initial observations, main disagreement here appears to be that Michael Ruse holds that Christian faith is compatible with evolution, while Dawkins argues otherwise. This disagreement, rather than quality of Dawkins' argument, seems to be the driver behind Ruse strong reaction.

And you'd be wrong. Philosophers like Ruse, Craig, and Plantinga deal with those they disagree with all the time. An atheist like Michael Ruse and a Christian apologist like William Lane Craig are constantly in battle, academically. As Ruse notes in the article I linked earlier:

Without burnishing my halo too much, I think - and I warned you that I am a very conservative non-believer - that the most important parable is that of the talents and that in this lifetime, although never succeeding (thanks to my own moral frailty), I have tried hard to use that which has been given to me. In particular, I have striven to move beyond the comfortable life of a university professor - and I have been a full-time philosophy prof since I was twenty five - to engage in the public sphere on issues that I think morally important. Specifically, I have engaged in the science-religion debate - more precisely in the Darwinism-Creationism debate - for over thirty years. I have written on the subject, I have lectured regularly on the subject (on average, I give a talk about every two weeks and many are on this topic), and I have appeared as witness in a court case to defend the US separation of Church and State.

That the Creationists and fellow travelers, notably proponents of Intelligent Design Theory (IDT), would dislike my views I take as axiomatic. They should dislike my views for I spend my life fighting against these people. I say this notwithstanding the fact that, at the personal level, I have good and friendly relations with many of the leaders, including Duane T. Gish, Phillip Johnson, and Bill Dembski. I do not consider these people to be evil or motivated by money - anything but this latter, Gish could have made millions in the motivational speaking arena - although I deplore their beliefs and think them deeply dangerous. I will say however that I was disappointed that when Ben Stein tried to make me seem foolish in his movie Expelled, not one of them sprang publicly to my defense. Anyone who did not condemn that gross piece of distortion of the issues should feel really ashamed.

When these academics call work sophomoric or say it would fail an intro philosophy class, they do so because it is true, not because they have an axe to grind.

[techboy]

Specifically, he writes:

http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2008/02/19/michael_ruse_on_richard_dawkins

I see this argument as an extremely weak one. Evolution is a secular explanation for things.

By the way, alexey, this link is second-hand. If you want to get a sense of Professor Ruse's comments in their fullest context, I actually linked to the blog entry that your link pulls from, earlier in this thread. Here it is again:

Why I Think the New Atheists are a Bloody Disaster

I'm not sure it is such a weak argument, though. Evolution may be secular, but if the New Atheists are right, and evolution not just provides an alternative to the divine, but actively disproves it, a case could be made that teaching evolution is the same as teaching against religion, and so a violation of the first ammendment.

I think it's moot, because I agree with Ruse that while science might disagree with some aspects of some religious views, it does not disprove God in general, but I don't think it's fair to so quickly dismiss the underlying thought that the New Atheists could be shooting themselves in the foot.

[Prosperity]

TB, have you read any process theology literature?

I'm going to read The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God by Hartshorne, who is a pretty renowned philosophy of religion scholar. The process theology school of thought seems to resonate well with my intuitions. I can discuss it intelligently when I actually study it though.

[techboy]

TB, have you read any process theology literature?

Honestly, I'm a rank amateur and at most a hobbyist, and tend to only come across stuff when it impacts my areas of interest, which lie primarily in Christian apologetics. As such, I dabble a bit in a lot of stuff, but don't read it seriously unless it interests me. I know, for instance, what s5 modal logic is, but I couldn't expain it or why it works if you held a gun to my head, because I never bothered to study it. If I found Plantinga's version of the Ontological argument persuasive or useful or interesting, I'd read up on it, but I don't, so I haven't.

This is a rather long-winded (surprise! ) way of saying that I've never even heard of process theology.

[SEF]

Trust me... if you really want to throw down, I'll throw down.

There's nothing to "throw down". Present the evidence that any god exists. Not five pages of circular cut and paste B.S. Actual evidence. Christians always say that their god acts in a physical way upon the universe, so it should be easy for you to prove it in a measurable way. Make it so compelling that faith isn't required.

Until then... Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

[Prosperity]

It may interest you

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_theology

It takes a fairly radical departure from classical idea of God. And in so doing may avoid many of the problems Christian apologetics have been working on for the past thousand+ years.

[Corcaigh]

And shouldn't the Millenium Falcon dissapear when it makes the jump to light speed?

That all depends on your inertial reference frame. As the movie doesn't make this clear your assumptions are unsound.

[techboy]

Present the evidence that any god exists.

Fine.

The Existence of God: The General Arguments

Speaking generally, there are several philosophical arguments that convince me that God exists. Before I get into those, I want to discuss very briefly how philosophical arguments work.

For a philosophical argument to be considered valid, the conclusion must follow inescapably from the premises. Each of the arguments I present below is valid, in the sense that if one accepts each of the premises as true, one must accept the conclusion as correct.

For a philosophical argument to be considered sound, each premise must be more plausibly true than its negation. I believe each of the premises of these arguments are, in fact, more plausibly true than their negations.

Since the arguments are logically valid, if you, the reader, wish to reject one of the arguments I present here, you must show that one of the premises is not more plausibly true than its negation, proving the argument unsound. Otherwise, the argument stands.

So, what good philosophical arguments are there for the existence of God?

First (though these are in no particular order), there is the Leibniz Cosmological Argument. Gottfried Leibniz was one of the greatest Philosophers and Mathemeticians in history, and one of the most famous questions he asked was "Why is there something instead of nothing?"

His thinking on this question led him to an argument, one version of which runs like this:

• 1. Anything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
  2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
  3. The universe exists.
  4. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence.
  5. Therefore, the explanation of the existence of the universe is God.

To keep this post as brief as possible, I will direct the interested observer to this Q&A piece by Dr. William Lane Craig (who is the source for the above formulation). In that piece Dr. Craig briefly discusses the premises and defends against objections that are raised against them, though I will, of course, be happy to answer any objections here as well.

Next, there is the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Basically, this is a very simple (but powerful) argument that can be summed up as follows:

• 1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
  2. The Universe began to exist.
  3. Therefore, the Universe has a cause.

Theists and atheists alike have always agreed that there must, at the beginning, be an uncaused cause. Theists have always said that this was God. Until recently, atheists could say that no, the universe is eternal.

The best science of the day, though, now tells us that the universe came into existence about 15 billion years ago. Further, the Borde Guth Vilenkin Theorem shows that any expanding universe (such as ours) cannot extend infinitely into the past.

From there, as Dr. Craig writes in The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe:

Given the truth of premisses (1) and (2), it logically follows that (3) the universe has a cause of its existence. In fact, I think that it can be plausibly argued that the cause of the universe must be a personal Creator. For how else could a temporal effect arise from an eternal cause? If the cause were simply a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions existing from eternity, then why would not the effect also exist from eternity? For example, if the cause of water's being frozen is the temperature's being below zero degrees, then if the temperature were below zero degrees from eternity, then any water present would be frozen from eternity. The only way to have an eternal cause but a temporal effect would seem to be if the cause is a personal agent who freely chooses to create an effect in time. For example, a man sitting from eternity may will to stand up; hence, a temporal effect may arise from an eternally existing agent. Indeed, the agent may will from eternity to create a temporal effect, so that no change in the agent need be conceived. Thus, we are brought not merely to the first cause of the universe, but to its personal Creator.

Again, (relative) brevity should win out, so please follow the link for more details, which is especially appropriate in this case because Dr. Craig is the primary driving force behind the discussion of this argument in today's phioisophical circles.

Moving on, there is the Fine-Tuning Design Argument. One of the most puzzling things about our universe is that the more science advances, the more it becomes clear that our universe appears to be amazingly fine tuned for life.

Dr. Robin Collins (the foremost proponent of this argument) discusses this in his THE FINE-TUNING DESIGN ARGUMENT:

A few examples from the literature of this fine-tuning are listed below:

1. If the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as little as 1 part in 1060, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded too rapidly for stars to form. In either case, life would be impossible. [see Davies, 1982, pp. 90-91. (As John Jefferson Davis points out (p. 140), an accuracy of one part in 1060 can be compared to firing a bullet at a one-inch target on the other side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away, and hitting the target.)

2. Calculations indicate that if the strong nuclear force, the force that binds protons and neutrons together in an atom, had been stronger or weaker by as little as 5%, life would be impossible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 4, 35; Barrow and Tipler, p. 322.)

3. Calculations by Brandon Carter show that if gravity had been stronger or weaker by 1 part in 1040, then life-sustaining stars like the sun could not exist. This would most likely make life impossible. (Davies, 1984, p. 242.)

4. If the neutron were not about 1.001 times the mass of the proton, all protons would have decayed into neutrons or all neutrons would have decayed into protons, and thus life would not be possible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 39-40 )

5. If the electromagnetic force were slightly stronger or weaker, life would be impossible, for a variety of different reasons. (Leslie, 1988, p. 299.)

The fact that the universe is fine-tuned for life is not controversial, as we see in How bio-friendly is the universe?, an article in the International Journal of Astrobiology 2 (2) : 115–120 (2003) by P C W Davies:

There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the universe is in several respects ‘fine-tuned’ for life.

The question then becomes, why the universe is the way it is. The odds of any one free paramater (like Collins discusses above) being the way we need it, just by random chance, are so infinitesemal as to be meaningless, to say nothing of all of them together. Collins frames his argument like this:

• 1. The existence of the fine-tuning is not improbable under theism.
  2. The existence of the fine-tuning is very improbable under the atheistic single-universe hypothesis.
  3. From premises (1) and (2) and the prime principle of confirmation, it follows that the fine-tuning data provides strong evidence to favor the design hypothesis over the atheistic single-universe hypothesis.
  

Generally, two objections are raised to this argument, and neither are really effective in my view.

The first is that fantastically improbable events occur every day, and that's true. If I flip a coin a million times, whatever result I get would be fantastically improbable. The problem with that is that it (and all other fantastically improbable events raised as an objection) assumes that all results are equal, as in the case of the coin flip. The results in the case of the universe, though, are not equal. Looking at the free parameters discussed by Dr. Collins, any of the other "settings" would prevent life. To return to the coin flip example, if I held a gun to your head and said that unless one particular result came up, I'd kill you, and then that result came up, would you breathe a sigh of relief that you were just lucky, or would you assume that I had somehow fixed the game in your favor? (Just ask onlike poker players, who assume cheating over far less )

The second objection is what's known as the "anthropic principle", which is basically "of course we're here, if we weren't, we wouldn't know it". However, as Dr. William Lane Craig illustrates in his The Teleological Argument and the Anthropic Principle, that doesn't really make sense:

This can be clearly seen by means of an illustration (borrowed from John Leslie{16}): suppose you are dragged before a firing squad of 100 trained marksmen, all of them with rifles aimed at your heart, to be executed. The command is given; you hear the deafening sound of the guns. And you observe that you are still alive, that all of the 100 marksmen missed! Now while it is true that

5. You should not be surprised that you do not observe that you are dead,

nonetheless it is equally true that

6. You should be surprised that you do observe that you are alive.

Would anyone really remark "Well, of course I'm alive! If I weren't, I wouldn't be around to note it! Random chance!"?

For more on the Fine-Tuning Design Argument, as well as responses to criticisms of it, please follow the links, and for a more scholarly treatment, heavy on the statistics, try Dr. Collins' How to Rigorously Define Fine-Tuning, which can be found here (fourth link down).

My favorite general argument for the existence of God (and the one I find to be the most powerful), though, is the Moral Argument. Imagine a world in which Jeffrey Dahmer, rather than being condemned by society as the monster he is, is instead lauded as a hero because he advances the cause of social Darwinism by removing the weak from the gene pool. If there is no God, no source of objective morals and duties, then we have no grounds to condemn him. Society has decided that he is good. What grounds do we have to disagree? Without some higher standard, our condemnation loses any force, and becomes yet another opinion.

The upshot of this is, in the words of Neitszche "If God is not, all is permissible".

The reason I think that this is one of the most powerful arguments for the existence of God is that it matches with the human moral experience. Most everybody agrees that there are, in fact, certain things that are absolutely right and absolutely wrong. We want to condemn Jeffrey Dahmer, regardless of whether or not his society embraces him. It doesn't matter to us that all of Spartan society "voted" that death by exposure is the appropriate measure to take for a deformed child- we want to call it murder. If Adolf Hitler had won WWII, and brainwashed or killed everyone that disagreed with the Holocaust, leaving the entire world in agreement that this was perfectly good and acceptable, we still believe that it was evil, no matter what this imaginary society says.

To put the argument succinctly:

• 1. Objective moral values and duties cannot exist without God.
  2. Objective moral values and duties exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.

I believe that premise 1 is self-explanatory and fairly non-controversial. On the atheistic worldview, morals and duties arise from men themselves, perhaps as a result of blind evolution, yet any moral or duty created by man can be changed by man, and evolution is interested only in survival, not objectivity, meaning that any morals and duties that evolved can simply evolve again, which is hardly objective.

Premise 2, as I said, matches our moral experience and is agreed upon by most everyone.

Thus, premise three follows inescapably.

The Summation: One note here: I haven't once mentioned the Bible or Jesus, and yet we're at a place where simple logic points us to an all-powerful, personal creator that exists outside time and space (the Cosmological Arguments), that carefully fine tuned that universe to support life (Fine-Tuning Design Argument), and that is moral (Moral Argument).

All-powerful, outside time and space, personal, moral... Hmm... Sound familiar?

Each brick adds to the wall of evidence. One particular brick might not be enough to convince, but together it makes a very strong proof, and I haven't even gotten to the best one yet, which I will save for my next post.

[techboy]

The Existence of God: Christianity Specific

To begin here, one thing that I will immediately confess is that the wall of logical arguments we have built here brick by brick doesn't really say anything directly about which God it is. Here is where I turn to the central event of Christianity, the Resurrection. If it's true, then it validates Jesus' claim that he was God, and so proves Christianity to be true, and God to thus exist (obviously). If I have to, I can address the nonsensical "Jesus-Myth Hypothesis", but for here and now I will assume that my readers haven't fallen down that particular silly rabbit-hole.

Part One: Approaches to the Evidence

One of the first things I always hear in response to the evidence I'm about to present is that I'm "just quoting the Bible", or "Just because the Bible says it's true doesn't mean it is!", to which I'd have to reply no, and I'm not saying that's the case, respectively.

What the reader needs to understand is that below, I am using the approach of the historian, not the theologian. The historian has tools he can use to look at even the worst and most biased of sources, and from them arrive at factual information.

A.N. Sherwin-White (here's his Wikipedia entry) was an eminent historian of ancient Rome at Oxford University. He wrote Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, among other works.

On page 186 he writes (emphasis is the author's):

So much for the detailed study of the Graeco-Roman setting of Acts and Gospels. But it is fitting for a professional historian to consider the whole topic of historicity briefly and very generally, and boldly to state a case. Though for two short periods of our history we are lucky enough to have two major contemporary historians of remarkably objective character in Thucydides and Polybius, we are generally dealing with derivative sources of marked bias and prejudice composed at least one or two generations after the events which they describe, but much more often, as with the Lives of Plutarch or the central decades of Livy, from two to five centuries later. Though connecting links are provided backwards in time by series of lost intermediate sources, we are seldom in the happy position of dealing at only one remove with a contemporary source. Yet not for that do we despair of reconstructing the story of the tyranny of Pisistratus or of the tribunates of the Gracchi.

Sherwin-White goes on to say that the New Testament texts are much better than those, being vastly earlier and much better attested, but that's not my point at this time.

My point here is simply that historians can and do pull historical facts from the worst, most biased, legend tainted sources, and so it is possible to derive facts from the texts of the New Testament, without treating them as holy or special, but just by applying those same methods.

Michael Grant (here's his Wikipedia page) was another eminent classical historian, and in his Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels writes on page 201:

A short way back, exception was taken to the view that everything the evangelists say must be assumed correct until it is proved wrong. Should we, therefore, accept the opposite opinion, which has been locked in an agonizing struggle with it for two hundred years, that all the contents of the Gospels must be assumed fictitious until they are proved genuine? No, that is also too extreme a viewpoint and would not be applied in other fields. When, for example, one tries to build up facts from the accounts of pagan historians, judgement often has to be given not in the light of any external confirmation- which is sometimes, but by no means always, available- but on the basis of historical deductions and arguments which attain nothing better than probability. The same applies to the Gospels. Their contents need not be assumed fictitious until they are proved authentic. But they have to be subjected to the usual standards of historical persuasiveness.

Grant definitely follows through with this in his book, taking a very skeptical stance. For instance, he rejects as genuine any fulfilled prophecy, assuming that it was either written after the event or inserted later by pious forgers (or, in some cases, deliberately engineered by Jesus himself).

So, I'm not asking the reader to treat the Bible as a holy book, or divinely inspired, or anything like that. I am simply asking instead that we approach the texts of the New Testament as historians, like Grant and Sherwin-White, and see what facts we can uncover from the data.

As we will see, it's quite a lot.

Part Two: Jesus Claimed to be God

The high Christology of the early Church came from Jesus himself. One example of this comes from the Parable of the Tenants.

Mark 12 (ESV)

The Parable of the Tenants

1(A) And he began to speak to them in parables. "A man planted( a vineyard© and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and(D) leased it to tenants and(E) went into another country. 2When the season came, he sent a servant[a] to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3(F) And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4(G) Again(H) he sent to them another servant, and(I) they struck him on the head and(J) treated him shamefully. 5(K) And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. 6He had still one other,(L) a beloved son.(M) Finally he sent him to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.' 7But those tenants said to one another,(N) 'This is the heir. Come,(O) let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' 8And they took him and killed him and(P) threw him out of the vineyard. 9What will the owner of the vineyard do?(Q) He will® come and destroy the tenants and(S) give the vineyard to others. 10(T) Have you not read(U) this Scripture:

(V) "'The stone that the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone;

11this was the Lord’s doing,

and it is marvelous in our eyes'?"

12And(W) they were seeking to arrest him(X) but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they(Y) left him and went away.

Before we look at what this saying of Jesus is, uh, saying, I'd like to take a moment to explain why I chose this passage.

One of the things Jesus scholarship tries to do is determine what, if anything, can be determined about the life, works, and sayings of Jesus in an historical sense. Scholars only take seriously those things that can be verified via one or more historical criteria. It doesn't mean that other things in the text didn't happen, necessarily, just that they can't be proven.

It turns out that the Parable of the Tenants is accepted as an authentic saying of Jesus by scholars, even the most radical (such as the infamous Jesus Seminar, which famously voted and found only about 20% of the sayings of Jesus to be authentic).

There are a number of reasons for this. The saying is early, and multiply and independently attested. It is unlikely to be a later Christian invention, because, among other reasons, it includes no mention of ressurection. It also has been found to be very accurate in terms of actual absentee landowner practices of the day, historically, and it reflects and employs stock images found in rabbinic parables of the day, so it coheres with a Jewish mileu.

So, it's pretty much accepted that this is a provably genuine saying of Jesus. As Dr. Craig Evans (his Wikipedia page) notes in his Fabricating Jesus on page 138:

When understood properly and in full context, everything about the wicked vineyard tenants- including its context in the New Testament Gospels- argues that it originated with Jesus, not with the early church.

But what is Jesus saying? In this parable, as in other rabbinic parables of the day, the Vineyard is Israel and the owner is God (a common reference because of Isaiah 5). The tenants are the Jewish religious leaders (which is why they are angered). The servants are the prophets of God, sent to Israel, but beaten, turned away, and sometimes killed (as the history of the Old Testament shows).

And then we come to the son, Jesus. The son in this parable is the owner's only son. He is unique. He is more important than the servants. He is last to be sent.

This passage clearly shows that Jesus thought he was the Son of God, unique in relationship, above all the prophets. Further, in this passage, he predicts his own death at the hands of the Jewish authorities, outside the walls of Jerusalem.

All of this was blasphemy to the Jewish leadership, as can be seen from their reaction, and is why they eventually had him killed.

Another reason to believe that the historical Jesus had a divine self-understanding is found in Grant's Jesus on page 160 (emphasis is the author's):

But Jesus' specific claim that, as inaugurator of the Kingdom of God, he was able to forgive sins seemed, as the Pharisees and scribes had already noted in Galilee, to lend a sinister overtone to his own assertion, or the assertion of his disciples, that he was God's son. For since Jews regarded the forgiveness of sins as the prerogative of God alone, the claim to confer this forgiveness, especially if supported by a claim to the Sonship of God, implied that he himself was divine; in which case the sacrosanct Jewish monotheism was deliberately breached.

So, we have two historically supported authentic sayings of Jesus, accepted as genuine by even the most skeptical scholars, that tell us that Jesus had a divine self-understanding.

I can add more if needed, but for (relative) brevity's sake, I will provide this link to Glenn Miller's excellent list of all of the explicit and implicit claims of Jesus of Nazareth and his followers that he was God.

The question then, really, is was he right? Which brings us to...

Part Three: God raised Jesus from the dead

There's actually quite a lot of evidence for Jesus' Resurrection in a variety of forms, and countless books and articles have been written on the topic (and I will provide some links for further reading, if interested, at the end), but again, here we are only making use of facts that can be derived by the solid historical method, and in this section, I will further limit myself by only using facts agreed upon by the vast majority of critical scholars, a method used by people like Craig and Dr. Gary Habermas.

Of course, scholarly consensus only allows us to know that we are on firm ground, and is not a replacement for actual evidence, so for each fact, I will also present a couple of the best arguments for it, and of course I will expound on any point if asked.

Fact #1 Jesus died by crucifixion

Grant notes on page 162 that:

Then follows the horrible conclusion of the story, the Crucifixion. This again must be true because no one would have invented such a degraded end, a fatal objection to Jesus' Messiahship in Jewish eyes.

An important fact to keep in mind for later is that crucifixion was, indeed, a cursed death in the eyes of the Jews (which all Jesus' disciples were). Here, Dr. Grant is using the Criterion of Embarrassment, an important historical tool, but that's not the only reason the Crucifixion is seen by scholars of all stripes as fact.

As Dr. William Lane Craig notes in The Evidence for Jesus:

According to the gospels Jesus was condemned by the Jewish high court on the charge of blasphemy and then delivered to the Romans for execution for the treasonous act of setting himself up as King of the Jews. Not only are these facts confirmed by independent biblical sources like Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, but they are also confirmed by extra-biblical sources. From Josephus and Tacitus, we learn that Jesus was crucified by Roman authority under the sentence of Pontius Pilate. From Josephus and Mara bar Serapion we learn that the Jewish leaders made a formal accusation against Jesus and participated in events leading up to his crucifixion. And from the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a, we learn that Jewish involvement in the trial was explained as a proper undertaking against a heretic. According to Johnson, "The support for the mode of his death, its agents, and perhaps its coagents, is overwhelming: Jesus faced a trial before his death, was condemned and executed by crucifixion."{11} The crucifixion of Jesus is recognized even by the Jesus Seminar as "one indisputable fact." {12}

Fact #2 Jesus was honorably buried by Joseph of Arimathea

Grant again appeals to the Criterion of Embarrassment, on page 175:

After the Crucifixion, Joseph of Arimithea, a member of the Sanhedrin who did not share its unfavourable opinion of Jesus, sought and obtained permission from Pilate to grant the body private burial, thus rescuing it from the two common burial-grounds reserved for executed criminals (1). This story is likely to be true since the absence, which it records, of any participation by Jesus' followers was too unfortunate, indeed disgraceful, to have been voluntarily invented by the evangelists at a later date.

Further, historians assign more reliability to reports that have multiple attestation (more than one source reports something) and to reports that are early (close to the actual events). In the case of the burial of Jesus, we have upwards of 5 independent sources, dating as early as 7 years (or earlier) from the event.

As Dr. Craig notes in his 2006 debate with Dr. Bart Ehrman:

We have four biographies of Jesus, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which have been collected into the New Testament, along with various letters of the apostle Paul. Now the burial account is part of Mark's source material for the story of Jesus' suffering and death. This is a very early source which is probably based on eyewitness testimony and which the commentator Rudolf Pesch dates to within seven years of the crucifixion. Moreover, Paul also cites an extremely early source for Jesus' burial which most scholars date to within five years of Jesus' crucifixion. Independent testimony to Jesus' burial by Joseph is also found in the sources behind Matthew and Luke and the Gospel of John, not to mention the extra-biblical Gospel of Peter. Thus, we have the remarkable number of at least five independent sources for Jesus' burial, some of which are extraordinarily early.

To expound a bit upon this, the Pauline report Dr. Craig is referring to is the kerygma (a formula used by the early church to state beliefs) in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, which scholars have dated to within 5 years of the Resurrection (and some as early as the same year), because while Paul wrote this letter perhaps 20 years later, he very likely received this formula when he first met with Peter and the others, which happened at the much earlier date. Consider this from Dr. Gary Habermas (his Wikipedia page) in his Resurrection Research from 1975 to the Present: What are Critical Scholars Saying?:

Paul probably received this report from Peter and James while visiting Jerusalem within a few years of his conversion.[46] The vast majority of critical scholars who answer the question place Paul’s reception of this material in the mid-30s A.D.[47] Even more skeptical scholars generally agree.[48] German theologian Walter Kasper even asserts that, “We have here therefore an ancient text, perhaps in use by the end of 30 AD . . . .” [49] Ulrich Wilckens declares that the material “indubitably goes back to the oldest phase of all in the history of primitive Christianity.”[50]

Also, as noted in the Craig-Ehrman debate, Joseph of Arimathea, as a Jewish member of the Sanhedrin, is highly unlikely to have been a Christian invention for another reason besides embarrassment. Dr. Craig puts it thusly:

There was an understandable hostility in the early church toward the Jewish leaders. In Christian eyes, they had engineered a judicial murder of Jesus. Thus, according to the late New Testament scholar Raymond Brown, Jesus' burial by Joseph is "very probable," since it is "almost inexplicable" why Christians would make up a story about a Jewish Sanhedrist who does what is right by Jesus. [1]

Finally, there is no competing burial tradition.

To sum it up, as Dr. Craig notes in the Evidence article:

According to the late John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the honorable burial of Jesus is one of "the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus."{15}

Fact #3 Jesus' disciples genuinely believed that they had experiences with the risen Jesus, despite having every reason not to

As Grant notes on page 176 of Jesus:

The Ressurection is the subject of some of the greatest pictures ever painted, but there is no actual description of it, and nobody claimed to have seen it happen. Yet those who believed that Jesus had appeared to them on the earth after his death have their alleged experiences recorded in a number of passages of the New Testament. Their testimonies cannot prove them to be right in supposing that Jesus had risen from the dead. However, these accounts do prove that certain people were utterly convinced that that is what he had done.

Some excerpts from the Habermas article:

From considerations such as the research areas above, perhaps the single most crucial development in recent thought has emerged. With few exceptions, the fact that after Jesus’ death his followers had experiences that they thought were appearances of the risen Jesus is arguably one of the two or three most recognized events from the four Gospels, along with Jesus’ central proclamation of the Kingdom of God and his death by crucifixion. Few critical scholars reject the notion that, after Jesus’ death, the early Christians had real experiences of some sort.

An overview of contemporary scholarship indicates that Fuller’s conclusions are well-supported. E.P. Sanders initiates his discussion in The Historical Figure of Jesus by outlining the broad parameters of recent research. Beginning with a list of the historical data that critics know, he includes a number of “equally secure facts” that “are almost beyond dispute.” One of these is that, after Jesus’ death, “his disciples . . . saw him.”[83] In an epilogue, Sanders reaffirms, “That Jesus’ followers (and later Paul) had resurrection experiences is, in my judgment, a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences I do not know.”[84]

Bart Ehrman explains that, “Historians, of course, have no difficulty whatsoever speaking about the belief in Jesus’ resurrection, since this is a matter of public record. For it is a historical fact that some of Jesus’ followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution.” This early belief in the resurrection is the historical origination of Christianity.[91]

As we have mentioned throughout, there are certainly disagreements about the nature of the experiences. But it is still crucial that the nearly unanimous consent[92] of critical scholars is that, in some sense, the early followers of Jesus thought that they had seen the risen Jesus.

This conclusion does not rest on the critical consensus itself, but on the reasons for the consensus, such as those pointed out above. A variety of paths converge here, including Paul's eyewitness comments regarding his own experience (1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8), the pre-Pauline appearance report in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, probably dating from the 30s, Paul's second Jerusalem meeting with the major apostles to ascertain the nature of the Gospel (Gal. 2:1-10), and Paul's knowledge of the other apostles' teachings about Jesus' appearances (1 Cor. 15:9-15, especially 15:11). Further, the early Acts confessions, the conversion of James, the brother of Jesus, the transformed lives that centered on the resurrection, the later Gospel accounts, and, most scholars would agree, the empty tomb. This case is built entirely on critically-ascertained texts, and confirmed by many critical principles such as eyewitness testimony, early reports, multiple attestation, discontinuity, embarrassment, enemy declarations, and coherence.[93]

Further, the disciples not only believed it, but they were willing to die for those beliefs, as recorded in the documents of the New Testament as well by extra-Biblical writers like Josephus and Polycarp.

Fact #4 Mutations of the Jewish beliefs about resurrection and the Messiah

We saw in Fact #3 that the disciples and other early Christians suddenly and sincerely came to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. What is often missed about this is that they had absolutely no reason to believe that this would happen. As Grant noted earlier, they were shattered by Jesus' shameful death. As Jews, his crucifixion seemed to argue that he had been cursed by God. Further, Jews of the day had no conception of the ressurection as an event that occured in time. To those Jews that believed in ressurection, it was to be a general event for all the righteous at the end of time.

Consider this from a short article by Dr. Larry Hurtado (here's his faculty page, as he doesn't seem to have a wikipedia entry), That Curious Idea of Resurrection:

How early Christians grappled to accept the idea that Jesus returned from the dead.. The relevant excerpt:

The ancient Jewish and early Christian idea of personal resurrection represented a new emphasis on individuals and the importance of embodied existence beyond the mere survival or enhancement of the soul, although there was debate about the precise nature of the post-resurrection body. Some seem to have supposed it would be a new body of flesh and bones, closely linked to the corpse in the grave but not liable to decay or death. Others imagined a body more like that of an angel. But whatever its precise nature, the hope of resurrection reflected a strongly holistic view of the person as requiring some sort of body to be complete. With ancient Jews, early Christians saw resurrection as an act of God, a divine gift of radically new life, not an expression of some inherent immortality of the soul. That is, the dead don't rise by themselves; they are raised by God and will experience resurrection collectively as one of the events that comprise God's future redemption of the world and vindication of the righteous.

So we see that the disciples had absolutely no reason to expect that Jesus would return from the dead, and every reason not to. Further, as Jews, they did have accepted frameworks for seeing the honored dead, such as visions of the person in Abraham's Bosom.

N T Wright (his wikipedia page) discusses this more in depth in his Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins. What we find is that although the disciples and early Christians were devout Jews, their beliefs about ressurection were changed from that in Judaism, both in specifics and in range. While the Jews had a variety of beliefs about resurrection from group to group, for the Christians, the belief was remarkably consistent and markedly changed, a fact that requires an historical explanation. First, a quick overview of Jewish beliefs about ressurection:

I merely sketch the overall shape of Jewish belief. The spectrum runs from those who deny the resurrection to those who insist upon it. The Sadducees deny the world to come altogether, reminding us that resurrection was and remained an explicitly political doctrine, about God turning the present world and its power structures upside down. Thus the Pharisees’ belief in the resurrection was part of their generally revolutionary ideology: as in Daniel and Maccabees, resurrection was an incentive to martyrdom. I am not convinced that the Essenes believed in resurrection; but I do hold that Wisdom of Solomon 3.7-8 teaches resurrection, a re-embodiment for the righteous whose souls are presently in the hand of God, who will be given a new life in which, to the consternation of their former persecutors, they will return and rule over nations and kingdoms. Finally, a much more Platonic picture is held by Philo of Alexandria, who believed in disembodied bliss for the immortal soul. This belief is shared by Jubilees.

Resurrection is thus one point on the spectrum of Jewish beliefs about life after death. If Christianity had been simply a sect of miscellaneous Jews who had followed Jesus or approved his teaching, we might have expected a similar spread of views, and the fact that we do not is a major part of our question about Christian origins; but that is to run ahead of my story. The second point to note about Jewish belief in resurrection is that, where it did occur, it was never a detached belief. It was always part of a larger picture of what God was going to do for the nation and indeed the world.

In contrast...

Almost all early Christians known to us believed that their ultimate hope was the resurrection of the body. There is no spectrum such as in Judaism.

And now the changes...

First, the early Christian belief in resurrection had a much more precise shape and content than anything we find in Judaism. In early Christianity, obviously in Paul but not only there, resurrection will be an act of new creation, accomplished by the Holy Spirit, and the body which is to be is already planned by God. This will not be a simple return to the same sort of body as before; nor will it be an abandonment of embodiedness in order to enjoy a disembodied bliss. It will involve transformation, the gift of a new body with different properties. This is so engrained in earliest Christianity that it already affects teaching on other subjects, such as baptism (Romans 6) and ethics (Colossians 3).

The third way in which early Christian belief about resurrection is significantly different from that of second-Temple Judaism is that, particularly in Paul, ‘the resurrection’ has split into two. Paul still sees ‘the resurrection of the dead’ as a single theological event,7 but it takes place in two phases: first the Messiah, then at his coming all his people.8 This too only makes sense within second-Temple Judaism, but it is something no second-Temple Jew had said before. Resurrection had been a single all-embracing moment, not a matter of one person being raised ahead of everybody else.

I'll skip some of the others (see the article for the full list), but perhaps the most obvious change demanding explanation was how they saw the Messiah:

Jesus had not done what Messiahs were supposed to do. He had neither won a decisive victory over Israel’s political enemies, nor restored the Temple (except in the most ambiguous symbolic fashion). Nor had he brought God’s justice and peace to the world; the wolf was not yet lying down with the lamb. But the early gospel traditions are already shaped by the belief that Jesus was Israel’s Messiah; Paul regularly calls him Christos, and if that term had become for him merely a proper name (which I dispute) that only goes to show how firmly Jesus’ messianic identity was already established by Paul’s day. For Revelation, Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. The historian is bound to face the question: once Jesus had been crucified, why would anyone say that he was Israel’s Messiah?

Nobody said that about Judas the Galilean after his revolt ended in failure in AD 6. Nobody said it of Simon bar-Giora after his death at the end of Titus’s triumph in AD 70. Nobody said it about bar-Kochbar after his defeat and death in 135. On the contrary. Where messianic movements tried to carry on after the death of their would-be Messiah, their most important task was to find another Messiah.14 The fact that the early Christians did not do that, but continued, against all precedent, to regard Jesus himself as Messiah, despite outstanding alternative candidates such as the righteous, devout and well-respected James, Jesus’ own brother, is evidence that demands an explanation. As with their beliefs about resurrection, they redefined Messiahship itself, and with it their whole view of the problem that Israel and the world faced and the solution that they believed God had provided. They remained at one level a classic Jewish messianic movement, owing fierce allegiance to their Messiah and claiming Israel and the whole world in his name. But the mode of that claim, and the underlying allegiance itself, were drastically redefined.

This is probably the most significant one. The Messiah was not supposed to be killed. The Messiah was not supposed to be cursed by God because he hung on a tree. The Messiah was supposed to be a powerful political ruler, and he was only supposed to come once.

When other "Messiahs" died, the groups either disbanded or found a relative to follow. But not here. Here, the disciples and early Christians, despite every reason not to, proclaimed that their executed leader was still the Messiah.

Fact #5 The conversions of James, the brother of Jesus, and Paul, an enemy of Christianity

James was a skeptic who did not accept Jesus' ministry. Yet, after Jesus' crucifixion, James went from skeptic to vocal leader in the early church who believed so strongly that he was martyred for his faith, as recorded by Jospehus and others.

This point is agreed upon by virtually every critical scholar for a variety of reasons, but one of the most important is the Criterion of Embarrasment. It was embarrassing to the early church and to James that he rejected Jesus initially, and if they were making up the story, they probably wouldn't have put that in.

As for Paul, we know more about him than perhaps any other Biblical figure because of his prolific letters, which comprise a treasure trove of historical data. From these letters, as well as other sources, we learn that Paul was a Jewish official who brutally oppressed the early Christians, sometimes putting them to death, until one day he experienced what he saw as the risen Christ, and became a fervent Christian, enduring repeated beatings, torture, and martyrdom.

An important thing to note about Paul is that although he was not around for the actual events, he did interview and fact-check with the disciples, so he would have been able to judge the validity of the claims of the early Christians. This also makes his letters the excellent source of information that they are.

And so, we have two opponents of Christianity (one an outright to-the-death enemy), that came to follow Jesus. This must be explained.

Fact #6 The empty tomb

To be totally honest, unlike most of the other points I have presented, this one does not enjoy nearly unanimous support by the community of scholars. However, as noted in the Habermas article, roughly 75% of critical scholars accept one or more arguments for the empty tomb:

Of these scholars, approximately 75% favor one or more of these arguments for the empty tomb, while approximately 25% think that one or more arguments oppose it. Thus, while far from being unanimously held by critical scholars, it may surprise some that those who embrace the empty tomb as a historical fact still comprise a fairly strong majority.

So, we're still on pretty solidly accepted ground, here.

As Grant writes in Jesus on page 176:

Even if the historian chooses to regard the youthful apparition as extra-historical, he cannot justifiably deny the empty tomb. True, this discovery, as so often, is described differently by the various Gospels- as critical pagans early pointed out. (3) But if we apply the same sort of criteria that we would apply to any other ancient literary sources, then the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was indeed found empty.

There are several points that support the historicity of the empty tomb (Dr. Craig lays out eight here, for instance), but I'll just mention the three I find most convincing.

1) The Disciples and early Christians preached the risen Jesus in Jerusalem, the very place he was buried. The Roman authorities and Jewish leaders found this rather inconvenient, and could they have produced the body, they would have, ending the whole thing right there before it could even begin.

Further, it seems inconceivable that the disciples could convince anyone (including themselves) that Jesus had bodily risen from the dead if they could just pop over to the tomb and see the body still there. And someone would have, if for no other reason than that Second Temple Judaism burial practices involved removing the bones from the tomb after a year or two, for placement in ossuaries to await the ressurection at the end of time.

2) As with the story of the burial of Jesus, we have very early and multiple independently attested sources indicating that the tomb was empty.

3) Perhaps the most persuasive argument is the fact that the Gospels report that it was women who found the tomb empty. Again, we can apply the Criterion of Embarrassment.

The story of the women finding the empty tomb is highly embarrassing and difficult for the early Christians for two reasons.

First, it shows the Disciples in a rather bad light. Even though mere women (keep in mind that this is first century Palestine we're talking about) remained loyal and had gone to the Tomb to annoint Jesus' body, the Disciples at the time were huddled in a room, in hiding, having lost their faith, and basically looking totally pathetic.

Second, under Jewish Law, women weren't even allowed to be witnesses in court. Highly embarrassing, as the primary witnesses to the event were totally worthless by the prevailing cultural standards.

In any case, though it does not enjoy quite the same support among critical scholars, the strength of the evidence makes me comfortable asserting the historicity of the empty tomb. As Dr. Craig notes in the article I linked above:

Taken together these eight considerations furnish powerful evidence that the tomb of Jesus was actually found empty on Sunday morning by a small group of his women followers. As a plain historical fact this seems to be amply attested. As Van Daalen has remarked, it is extremely difficult to object to the fact of the empty tomb on historical grounds; most objectors do so on the basis of theological or philosophical considerations.{87} But these, of course, cannot change historical fact. And, interestingly, more and more New Testament scholars seem to be realizing this fact; for today, many, if not most, exegetes would defend the historicity of the empty tomb of Jesus, and their number continues to increase.{88}

Inference to the best explanation: the argument

Having listed these six facts, what are we to do with them? (Here of course, I diverge from the majority of critical scholars, though in logic, not in evidence. )

In order to determine what most probably happened, historians use a technique known as “Inference to the Best Explanation”. This technique says that the theory which best fits all the facts and has the most explanatory power, without being ad-hoc, is the most likely to be true, and while I would agree that naturalistic explanations should be given priority in historical investigation, no non-adhoc naturalistic explantion exists that fits all the facts.

For example, the idea that the early Christians experienced guilt-induced visions for failing their leader fits the fact that they had some sort of experience with the risen Jesus, but cannot explain the empty tomb, or the conversion of Paul and James, who had no reason to feel guilty. It also fails because as we have seen, the disciples had no reason to expect to meet the risen Jesus, and every reason not to. If they had been hallucinating, they would have seen something they expected, such as Jesus in Abraham's Bosom. They certainly wouldn't have imagined their dead leader as a Messiah.

Another idea might be that the disciples were lying (and perhaps stole the body). This would cover the empty tomb, but does not account for the fact that the disciples genuinely believed they had experienced the risen Jesus, to say nothing of the fact that liars make poor martyrs. It also doesn't explain why Paul and James would be on board.

All other naturalistic explanations similarly fail, or are so ad hoc as to be useless, and some facts, such as the drastic changes in beliefs about ressurection and the Messiah within the devout Jews that comprised the early Christian movement, are difficult to explain naturalistically at all.

On the other hand, we have seen that there are good reasons to believe in God generally, so we should at least include the possibility that God exists and took action in our pool of live options when looking at possible explanations.

Further, Jesus made claims and statements that indicated a divine self-understanding, so explaining the Ressurection in that context is not ad hoc.

Finally, let's look at the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead. Such a thing, we have seen, can be in our pool of live options. It is not ad hoc, because Jesus had a divine self-understanding. The disciples claimed it was true. It fits all the facts, and has a great deal of explanatory power.

It explains how the tomb could be empty after Jesus was executed and buried.

It explains the otherwise inexplicable change in the views of those devout Jews about ressurection and the Messiah, and why those Jews, despite having no reason to believe it and every reason not to, suddenly and sincerely came to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead.

And, it explains how James, a skeptic embarrassed by his brother, and Paul, a virulent enemy, would suddenly become a follower of the man they rejected.

It is easily the best explanation, outstripping all rival hypotheses.

God really did raise Jesus from the dead.

This verified his claim to divinity. Jesus was (is) God.

Further Reading

That's just one approach. For more, I recommend the following articles. Dr. Craig is my favorite author on the subject, though his stuff is more scholarly. I also list some more popular level stuff.

Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ by Dr. William Lane Craig (probably the best)

The Evidence for Jesus, also by Dr. Craig

The Resurrection: Fact or Fiction? by Pat Zukeran

Cruci-fiction and Resuscitation: The Greatest Hoax in the History of Humanity? by Russ Wise

Evidence for the Ressurection by Josh McDowell

Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History? by Edwin M. Yamauchi

Beyond Blind Faith by Paul E. Little

Finally, one very good book on this subject is The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. He used to be an atheist and a reporter for the Chicago Tribune (so he's a good writer). In the book, he goes around the country and interviews a variety of top-notch experts on issues surrounding Jesus of Nazareth and his claims. I've already sent a few copies to Extremeskins members, but the offer is general.

PM me your address, and I'll send you a copy, free of charge.

[techboy]

I have something to confess. The story in the OP is just a coverup. The truth is I started posting there recently, and my bandwidth usage crashed their servers. I apologize to all affected by the loss.

[SEF]

Same old crap. Thanks for playing. Exactly what I asked you NOT to do. Your cut and paste skills aren't evidence. Neither is heresay or wishful thinking. Idiotic fine-tuning and "oh lawdy how would we be moral without god" isn't evidence. But, you know that. Don't you?

[mjah]

The truth is I started posting there recently, and my bandwidth usage crashed their servers.

I could see that. I'm amazed that the ES servers haven't been brought to their knees by this thread. I thought my posts were long, but I'm humbled.

[techboy]

Your cut and paste skills aren't evidence.

If you're willing to entirely dismiss the fields of history, science, and philosophy, as well as simple logic and reasoning, then yes, there's no evidence.

P.S. While I did cut and paste from myself (I see no reason to retype it every time), the term you were actually looking for is "expert citation".

P.P.S. If you have a substantive objection beyond sticking your fingers in your ears (hands over your eyes?) and saying (typing?) "la la la", I'd be happy to consider it.

[Perky72]

I have something to confess. The story in the OP is just a coverup. The truth is I started posting there recently, and my bandwidth usage crashed their servers. I apologize to all affected by the loss.

heh. They should've just deleted a few of yours rather than 30,000 others--same savings :pfft:

I shouldn't have dropped Phil 101 I guess because a lot of this is above my head, but I'll offer some simple questions or disagreements:

2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.

I read his explanation of this but don't quite see any evidence or logic for it. The idea of a conscious Creator does actually seem as bizarre as the idea of a number being the creator, both seem as poorly grounded in physical explanations within the known Universe, so both would seem to be equally good/bad explanations of the "creator". Assuming a backwards infinite is true and there has to be a single creator, outside of time/space, I don't see how we could possibly know the attributes of that creator, in particular why it's "God" rather than anything else, whether the creator was a consciousness, had any intent whatosever, and so on.

Additionally, which God? Why not a pantheon?

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

• 
  2. The Universe began to exist.
  3. Therefore, the Universe has a cause.
  

Theists and atheists alike have always agreed that there must, at the beginning, be an uncaused cause. Theists have always said that this was God. Until recently, atheists could say that no, the universe is eternal.

The best science of the day, though, now tells us that the universe came into existence about 15 billion years ago. Further, the Borde Guth Vilenkin Theorem shows that any expanding universe (such as ours) cannot extend infinitely into the past.

I'm not sure how accepted it really is that the "Big Bang"--expanding Universe--contracting Universe (for example) can't be events that are replicated infinitely, but even granting that this argument seems to have one major flaw that I didn't see answered by Dr. Craig, or in other offerings of the argument.

If everything that begins to exist has a cause, what is the cause of "God"? Without an explanation the argument seems to simply shift a backwards infinite series of causes from physical phenomena to a series of Gods creating more Gods. Instead of turtles all the way down, it's Gods all the way down.

My favorite general argument for the existence of God (and the one I find to be the most powerful), though, is the Moral Argument. Imagine a world in which Jeffrey Dahmer, rather than being condemned by society as the monster he is, is instead lauded as a hero because he advances the cause of social Darwinism by removing the weak from the gene pool. If there is no God, no source of objective morals and duties, then we have no grounds to condemn him. Society has decided that he is good. What grounds do we have to disagree? Without some higher standard, our condemnation loses any force, and becomes yet another opinion.

I think morals are ultimately opinion or opinion/emotion (i.e. subjective), so the premise "2. Objective moral values and duties exist" fails.

That doesn't mean I have no morals, it simply means my morals are not based on a non-personal objectivity. I have pretty concrete morals based on my own principles (mostly "Golden Rule" reciprocity), but I recognize that they cease becoming objective beyond me. I'm not sure what I'd classify as meta-wise, a moral skeptic, contextualist...in some ways a practical absolutist but in others a consequentialist... but I'm pretty darn sure morals are not big "o" Objective.

Premise 2, as I said, matches our moral experience and is agreed upon by most everyone.

I don't know about that. But yes, many other atheists I talk to profess some sort of objective morality, usually couched as the article says in evolutionary psychology or something. I disagree with them whenever they verge into big "o" Objective. It's all still subjective imo, be it subjective to homo sapiens, or subjective to a particular society, or to a particular person. Subjective and generalized. "Objective" morals tend to be the ones that are most popularly held, but this breaks down the more discrete we get in number of people in the sample.

The Summation: One note here: I haven't once mentioned the Bible or Jesus, and yet we're at a place where simple logic points us to an all-powerful, personal creator that exists outside time and space (the Cosmological Arguments), that carefully fine tuned that universe to support life (Fine-Tuning Design Argument), and that is moral (Moral Argument).

I'm pretty ignorant on fine-tuning, haven't looked at it enough. But do disagree with or remain unconvinced by the other arguments.

[Prosperity]

oh boy... while a lot of these arguments in my opinion ultimately fail to show what they want to show, don't doubt TB's tenacity. He will bury any respondent under great walls of text. But, the goal should be education and not proving someone else right or wrong, so it may not be a waste of time.