A Challenge I Found Online

[tonsofquestions]

All right, after examining everything, I have decided that the contradictory accounts of Post-Easter events do not prove that Scripture is false. I have several other issues, but I’ll address those in other threads. Thank you to all those who responded!

 

[anEvilAtheist]

I did want to respond briefly to the criticisms of my earlier post.

You opened this discussion with a challenge to reconcile the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection, which differ in some details (mainly specific chronology).

It’s perfectly reasonable (and expected) that accounts won’t agree in every aspect. I remember my high school graduation, but I’m sure my account would not agree with everyone else.

Well, I didn’t open the discussion. And in my first post in this thread, I agreed that this wouldn’t be a big problem for Catholics who do not have a literalist interpretation.

But it seems you’ve moved far beyond this topic. It’s almost as rational as suggesting that my high school graduation never took place, simply because my account of it would not exactly agree with everyone else. But I’m pretty sure I graduated, even if I’m not clear on the exact details and chronology.

Well there are several problems with your analogy. For one thing, you have firsthand experience of having gone to your graduation. For another thing, in the case of a graduation, we would have hundreds or thousands of eyewitnesses. But with the Bible, we only have recorded accounts from a handful of people, none of whom have been shown to be eyewitnesses. For yet another thing, there is nothing inherently unlikely about a graduation. Even if I only had second or third hand information about someone’s graduation or name, I would think that it was probably accurate. But if a friend told me that his friend told him that he had a dragon in his basement, I would be much less likely to believe him.

I said I’m a skeptic, and I’m skeptical of your theory. If several (12, 40, 400) people tell me a story which is essentially the same, then I tend to believe it. Especially if none of them has anything to gain (and everything to loose – including their lives) in telling me.

You should be skeptical of it. I have no evidence that it is true. Although it is plausible, I have no reason to think it is definitely what happened. This is one of many alternative possibilities. I have no idea if this one is right, or if any of them are right. But I think that when there are reasonable natural explanations for something, it no longer provides good evidence that something supernatural took place. If the gospels were firsthand accounts from four different witnesses, then I agree that the evidence would be a little better than it currently is. Though from what I’ve read, the human mind behaves a lot more weirdly then we think it does, and can cause us to believe that things happened even if they didn’t.

I have one question for you though. Do you consistently apply your standards of evidence to other situations? For example, do you believe that the Hindu milk miracle was an actual miracle? Countless thousands of people witnessed statues drinking milk and despite the claims by scientists (that the milk was drawn up by capillary action and ran down the sides of the statues), the witnesses swore that all scientific explanations were inadequate and an actual miracle took place. Some of the witnesses were even nonbelievers and found it so convincing that it caused them to believe. Based on your standard of a large number of witnesses with no ulterior motive, it would seem like you should accept this as a miracle. But then you have the problem of why an omnibenevolent God would do something that would cause people to be less likely to ever accept the true religion.

I don’t believe in “mass hypnosis” or “mass delusion” or any other such nonsense. You seem to be considering such a hypothesis. Do you really believe these people collectively imagined the whole thing, and were then tortured and killed because they refused to renounce it? Sorry, as a skeptic, I find that considerably harder to believe than the Resurrection.

I am considering a hypothesis in which some of the apostles had dreams or visions of Jesus after his death. I do not think that they all necessarily had visions or dreams (since very few of the apostles are actually known to have died for their beliefs). But I think that given their mental state at the time, dreams or visions were highly plausible. I heard an interesting conversation on the resurrection between a young atheist blogger and Michael Licona, a New Testament historian, Christian apologist, and author of The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. Licona feels that Jesus’ supposed appearances in group settings are the hardest to explain, though I disagree (because the actual dreams or visions could have been exaggerated and embellished upon before they were finally written down). However, even he admits that the disciples were probably in a mental state that made hallucinations very likely (transcribed from archive.org/download/ConversationsFromThePaleBlueDot002-MikeLicona/002-MikeLicona.mp3 about 25 minutes from the beginning):

Now take something like a hallucination hypothesis, it accounts wonderfully for Jesus’ death by crucifixion which would certainly have put the disciples in a frame of mind that would have made them candidates for hallucination because they were grief stricken, it was sudden, it was brutal, they were fearful, now they were confused, they were prime candidates for a hallucination. Throw in Peter’s denial of Jesus and now he has guilt. Wow, so that fits wonderfully with the hallucination hypothesis.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

I disagree. My dad was around 14 yrs old during WW2 (in the middle of Italy) and he recently wrote a detailed autobiography of his and his family’s experience during the war. He can recall things with absolute clarity of the events (time, place, names of people, what they said, how they reacted, etc) all this he can write about more than 60 years after the event. But, if you were to ask him to recall exactly what happened to him 5 years ago, he probably couldn’t tell you with the same clarity as his WW2 experience. The reason is that that most monumental event has etched itself in his memory unlike any other event in his life. The same can be said for the gospel writers / apostles. They were simple people living simple lives and if the things that ended up happening to them didn’t happen, they would have lived the rest of their lives doing the things that they had always done. The fact is that that monumental event, Jesus, coming into their lives had etched itself into their memory so much so that they could never forget what happened during that time and the rest of the New Testament tells us of what they did afterwards.

Also, I would be curious if you could tell me if their were no photographic evidence or video of the holocaust during WW2, would you believe the survivors account of that event or would you dismiss their accounts as exaggeration?

I agree that the passage of a few decades does not necessarily make all memories unreliable. The difference with your father is that he was an eyewitness, you know him to be a pretty sane person, and it would be very unlikely for a pretty sane person to claim to have this detailed set of war memories if nothing ever happened. Furthermore, there is nothing inherently unlikely about your father having served in the war, so there is less reason for skepticism. But if your father had been 5 years old when the war ended, it would have been very implausible that he could have had all of those experiences given his age. If I had a large group of reliable witnesses for the Holocaust, then of course I would accept it.

 

[PhilVaz]

Tons << I assumed someone would have refuted this already, but I can’t seem to find anything. The few people who try simply seem to sidestep the issue, and I can’t find anyone who presents a logical explanation. Could anyone show me a link to a site that has refuted this already? Thanks! >>

Dan Barker was answered 25 years ago in a book by John Wenham The Easter Enigma – orig 1984, repub 2005 by Wipf and Stock. Although he recognizes problems and “improbabilities” in the Gospels, he suggests a possible harmony scenario. Another Wipf and Stock book I recommend is William Lane Craig’s The Son Rises (orig 1980, repub 2001) on Craig’s powerful argument for the bodily resurrection as the “best explanation.” The old Catholic Encyclopedia (1909-1913) article on Resurrection also presents a possible harmonization of the Gospels. Here is another harmony by Anne Kim (from GodAndScience.org).

Barker is a nice piano player and debater, but philosopher and biblical scholar he was and is not. James White took him apart recently in another debate.

Phil P

 

[DavidFilmer]

Where do you get this assertion from?

(responding to my assertion that the author of Matthew was unlikely the Apostle Matthew)

Well, from nearly each and every reputable Biblical scholar since the 18th Century (both Catholic and protestant). I doubt you can locate a reputable scholar from the past 200 years who would claim otherwise. If you could, s/he would be in a tiny minority.

For many years, folks generally assumed the Evangelist and the Apostle were the same because they shared the same name. Yet, of Our Lord’s Apostles, only half had unique names. There were two Simons, two Johns, and two Judes (one commonly differentiated as Judas). In a group of 12 men, six did not have a unique name. So a coincidence of similar names is hardly out of the ordinary. And there is reason to believe the author was not the Apostle.

For starters, the author of Matthew never claims or suggests that he is the Apostle Matthew (unlike John, who attests to being a firsthand observer). Other than the coincidence of the name (which is meaningless), there is no Biblical reason to believe these are the same person.

Furthermore, Matthew contains practically the entire Gospel of Mark, and is clearly a derivitive work of Mark’s Gospel. Mark was a gentile convert who probably never met Jesus during his earthly ministry. Why would an educated firsthand witness of Jesus’ ministry borrow so heavily from a secondary source?