This is the second instalment of my series where I look at Richard Carrier’s case against the resurrection of Jesus. The first instalment was quite some time ago, in May 2011. There I examined Carrier’s comparison of the historical evidence for the empty tomb versus the historical evidence for Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon. I attempted to explain why Carrier’s rejection of that analogy was inadequate. Part three will be the most important in the series, as it addresses the argument that Carrier continually uses to bear the main load of his case. That argument is the argument that Christianity did not need an empty tomb to avoid falsification when it first began, because the first Christians, Carrier alleges, didn’t really believe that Jesus’ body had been resurrected, believing instead that Jesus had left his old body lying dead and been raised to spiritual life in a new, non-physical body. But that argument can wait, for now. In this part I will look at Carrier’s second category of argument: General Case for Insufficiency. Let’s dive right in – As it’s Easter the timing seems most appropriate! Read the rest of the entry »
Episode 42 presents the “minimal facts” approach to the resurrection of Jesus.
This episode doesn’t just present the argument in order to persuade you, it’s also meant to show you what the argument is like so that you can use it yourself (if you find it persuasive of course). It starts out with four facts granted by the majority of New Testament critics, and then works towards an explanation of those facts.
In this episode I refer to other blog posts and podcast episodes, and as promised here are links to those:
In the last podcast episode on Plantinga and properly basic beliefs, I briefly discussed the “Great Pumpkin Objection.” As it’s a subject worthy of a blog post of its own, and given that I know some people prefer things in writing, I thought I’d add a blog entry focused on that objection.
Alvin Plantinga has hammered out and defended the notion that if God (the Christian God that he believes in) really exists, then a Christian’s belief in God can be construed as properly basic. A properly basic belief is one that is rationally held and yet not derived from other beliefs that one holds (this is another way of saying that it is not justified by what is often called evidence). We hold many such beliefs, for example, the belief that the universe was not created just five minutes ago, any beliefs based on memory, belief that other minds exist, the belief that we are experiencing a certain colour, and so on. Set aside, for now, the fact that a lot of Christians think that they can produce decent evidence for the existence of God. Plantinga argued – successfully in my view – that even if that’s true, theism can be construed as properly basic and hence suitably justified even without such evidence. God created us in such a way that when we function properly we believe in him. The normal epistemic response to creation is to believe things like “God created this,” or more fundamentally, “God is real.” For more details, check out the podcast episode.
One bandwagon that anti-theists have jumped on is to claim that if theists can claim that their belief in God is basic, then just anybody at all can do this in regard to their belief in just anything. Here’s one popular version of that objection: In the comic strip Peanuts, the character Linus believes that there exists a Great Pumpkin who rises from the pumpkin patch every Halloween and rewards good children with presents. If Christians get to think that belief in God can be properly basic, then why couldn’t a person (like Linus) think that belief in the Great Pumpkin is properly basic, and so claim the right to believe it even though he cannot produce evidence for the belief’s truth? Read the rest of the entry »
This is the third and final instalment in a short series of blog entries on the discredited but “popular on the internet” belief that not only is Christianity false, but Jesus of Nazareth never even existed at all. In the first part, I looked briefly at the unacceptable and controlling bias when demanding that only sources from outside the New Testament be regarded as historical evidence. In part two I looked at some historical sources that give further credibility to the historicity of the person behind the Christian faith, namely Jesus himself. Those sources, while clearly useful and such that they cannot simply be dismissed, were arguably of minor significance, often due to questions of when they were written.
In this third part, continuing to draw on the excellent work of Paul Eddy and Greg Boyd cited in the previous part, I’ll move on and briefly look at some early but extra-biblical sources on the historical Jesus that are more significant than those already mentioned, and which make a fairly compelling case that Jesus of Nazareth, the founder of Christianity, was known by many as an historical figure. Of course, our expectations need to be realistic. During Jesus’ actual lifetime, Jesus was virtually unknown apart from in the communities in which he lived and taught (and even then, many would not have known who he was). This fact makes the sources that do refer to him even more significant. Let’s take a look at three important such references now. Read the rest of the entry »
Recently I posted a blog entry on the rather radical outlook, held by a fairly slim minority, that not only rejects the truth of Christianity, but goes a step further and says that there literally was no such person as Jesus of Nazareth. One of the lines of reasoning that is used to defend this view of history is the claim that we have no early historical references to Jesus. Now of course, and as I pointed out in the last blog entry, a number of very early sources were gather together into what we call the New Testament. However, the fact that these are Christian documents, written by people who identify as followers of Jesus, causes some people to dismiss them without further question. After all, a person who believes in a historical Jesus of Nazareth who rose from the dead cannot be trusted, right? And so, the most important sources that do refer to the life of Christ that Christians believe in are rejected, not because they are late or otherwise unreliable, but because they present a version of history that many sceptics are unwilling to even contemplate, falling into a dogmatism and partisanship that is completely unacceptable in serious historical study. My first post on this subject, then, briefly explained what is wrong with the methodology of those who insist that the only kind of useful historical evidence that we could have must come from writings that never made it into the New Testament.
Secondly, however, even once we adopt this strange and biased methodology, the claim about the historical Jesus is still highly dubious at best when it comes to the historical existence of Jesus. Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd address this question of historical evidence (among other things) in their magisterial work, The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition.
Eddy and Boyd are realistic about sources: some simply aren’t as useful or important as others. In fact some are frankly useless, such as those written centuries later and quite clearly as a theological polemic against a very well developed Christian tradition examples of this type would include rabbinical writings against Jesus or the Qur’an. But beyond sources like these, there are still further grades into which sources fit: sources of minimal value, and then important sources. I’m not going to try to reproduce the diligent work of these two writers here (who are in turn drawing on a wide range of careful and weighty scholarship, for example the work of Craig Evans), so I’ll just offer an overview. If you’d like something more in depth, follow the link above and get yourself a copy of this excellent work. Bear in mind as you read this that there is one and only one question before us: Was there even such a historical person as Jesus of Nazareth upon whom the Christian movement was based? Let’s proceed with this in mind. Read the rest of the entry »
I like people who cite my work (for the right reasons, that is). People like Joel Watts over at The Church of Jesus Christ.
Joel links to my material on the well and truly debunked copy cat theories surrounding the origin of Christianity. According to those theories, Christianity is founded on myth, and the person that Christians refer to as Jesus of Nazareth is a fictional re-writing of any one of – or perhaps a mixture of – saviour hero figures from various other ancient religions. I’ve commented at length on such creative revisionism before and may do so again, but won’t be doing so today.
What prompted me to blog today was the very first comment that appeared on Joel’s blog entry, made by one Robert Wilson.
There’s no such thing as an “historical Jesus”, since there are no non-Biblical records supporting the existence of the Jesus character.
Thanks to the internet, a number of people believe this. They don’t necessarily believe it because they’ve looked in the direction that any of the relevant evidence might lay, although some of them may, in all fairness, have looked at someone’s presentation of the evidence (that is, the alleged evidence that there are no non-biblical records supporting the existence of the Jesus character. Among ancient historians, the thesis that there literally was no historical Jesus on which the early Christian movement was based is like belief in a flat earth. It’s silly, not taken seriously, and there’s really no need to so much as acknowledge the fact that such a theory even exists. But the internet is another story. In order to get online, nothing has to pass peer review. There are no expertise-based prerequisites to post something at a blog (and yes, that applies to my blog as much as to any other). Stories – the wilder, the more damning of people with whom you disagree, and the more scandalous the better – spread online. This story is one of them, leaping like a virus from one message board to another, from one blog to the next. There is no evidence, we are told, none of any sort – and certainly not from ancient historical records – that there even existed a first century person who we now refer to as Jesus of Nazareth. And by “historical,” we naturally mean “outside of the Bible.” Of course. Read the rest of the entry »
The kalam cosmological argument is a version of the argument from first causes. It is part of a philosophical case for the existence of God, and goes like this:
Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence (This is the major premise)
The universe began to exist (This is the minor premise)
Therefore the universe has a cause of its existence (This is the conclusion)
A response has been offered to the argument. You won’t find this response in textbooks or peer reviewed journal articles on philosophy of religion, but it’s out there – on movie and video game discussion forums, in YouTube clips (and in the comments section of YouTube clips) and the like. Read the rest of the entry »
Episode 35 is an analysis of a recent talk given by Sam Harris on science and human values. The talk was part of a TED conference, and you can see part 1 here. Harris thinks that he has argued that moral facts are actually scientific facts. I think he has failed, and here I offer an explanation of how I think he has failed. In brief, I think his entire presentation is an exercise in circular reasoning.
Harris has a new book on the subject, The Moral Landscape, which is to be released later this year. If you’d like to order a copy, please use this link and the Book Depository will look kindly on me.
The other day I blogged to remind people that in spite of the fact that I’m more than a little sceptical, jaded and cynical about people who claim that they know of a miracle that has occurred, I believe that they can and do happen. The case of Duane Miller is powerful testimony to that. But I saw this today, just another reminder of why I am so cynical about such claims in general:
This man is part of the reason that so many people write Christians off as gullible simpletons who will believe anything if it furthers their cause. This is why Christians need to be sceptical, because what you see in this video clip is alarmingly common.
In the appropriate sense, I am a sceptic (and no, my American friends, I did not misspell that). Some people claim to be sceptics when all they really mean (or at least all they accurately convey) is that they are passionately devoted to the thesis that God doesn’t exist and religion is bunk. They’re not really that sceptical. I think I am. If someone tells me that a miracle occurred at her local church last Sunday and someone’s filling was turned to gold (and yes, I have heard precisely this claim made), I doubt it. I’ve been to plenty of churches and meetings where there were preachers who believed in such things, and I’ve been to meetings where people claimed – right then and there, that a miraculous healing had taken place. Every single time it was false. I have witnessed no such thing actually take place right in front of me, and I tend not to believe such claims because I don’t believe that they are substantiated. But I said “tend.” I don’t dogmatically assert that they are impossible, and I don’t rule them out.
I am, after all, a Christian. I believe that God is real, and some of the most important facts of history are facts about miraculous events (most obviously and importantly, the resurrection of Jesus). Being as sceptical and cynical as I am, and trying as hard as I have tried to avoid the hysteria and gullibility that runs rampant in some Christian circles, I run a real risk – a risk that I sometimes, unfortunately, succumb to – of acting as though such things cannot happen at all. That’s not what I believe. What’s more, to the person who is not ideologically committed to ruling out the possibility of miraculous or supernatural things happening in the world, the evidence is there for any sincere seeker that such things have in fact happened. Setting aside for now the big kahuna – the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth – there are other examples in history, including modern history as well. Are they common? No. They’re miracles and strange occurrences. If you do go looking for examples, you will find dozens and dozens (and DOZENS) of frauds. I’ve watched enough of them in person and on Youtube to have cringed hundreds of times at the credulity of some people. But serious examples are there. Here are three examples. Read the rest of the entry »
This is the second instalment of my series where I look at Richard Carrier’s case against the resurrection of Jesus. The first instalment was quite some time ago, in May 2011. There I examined Carrier’s comparison of the historical evidence for the empty tomb versus the historical evidence for Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon. I attempted to explain why Carrier’s rejection of that analogy was inadequate. Part three will be the most important in the series, as it addresses the argument that Carrier continually uses to bear the main load of his case. That argument is the argument that Christianity did not need an empty tomb to avoid falsification when it first began, because the first Christians, Carrier alleges, didn’t really believe that Jesus’ body had been resurrected, believing instead that Jesus had left his old body lying dead and been raised to spiritual life in a new, non-physical body. But that argument can wait, for now. In this part I will look at Carrier’s second category of argument: General Case for Insufficiency. Let’s dive right in – As it’s Easter the timing seems most appropriate! 
Episode 42 presents the “minimal facts” approach to the resurrection of Jesus.
In the last podcast episode on Plantinga and properly basic beliefs, I briefly discussed the “Great Pumpkin Objection.” As it’s a subject worthy of a blog post of its own, and given that I know some people prefer things in writing, I thought I’d add a blog entry focused on that objection.
This is the third and final instalment in a short series of blog entries on the discredited but “popular on the internet” belief that not only is Christianity false, but Jesus of Nazareth never even existed at all. In the first part, I looked briefly at the unacceptable and controlling bias when demanding that only sources from outside the New Testament be regarded as historical evidence. In part two I looked at some historical sources that give further credibility to the historicity of the person behind the Christian faith, namely Jesus himself. Those sources, while clearly useful and such that they cannot simply be dismissed, were arguably of minor significance, often due to questions of when they were written.
The kalam cosmological argument is a version of the argument from first causes. It is part of a philosophical case for the existence of God, and goes like this:
Episode 35 is an analysis of a recent talk given by Sam Harris on science and human values. The talk was part of a TED conference, and you can see part 1 
In the appropriate sense, I am a sceptic (and no, my American friends, I did not misspell that). Some people claim to be sceptics when all they really mean (or at least all they accurately convey) is that they are passionately devoted to the thesis that God doesn’t exist and religion is bunk. They’re not really that sceptical. I think I am. If someone tells me that a miracle occurred at her local church last Sunday and someone’s filling was turned to gold (and yes, I have heard precisely this claim made), I doubt it. I’ve been to plenty of churches and meetings where there were preachers who believed in such things, and I’ve been to meetings where people claimed – right then and there, that a miraculous healing had taken place. Every single time it was false. I have witnessed no such thing actually take place right in front of me, and I tend not to believe such claims because I don’t believe that they are substantiated. But I said “tend.” I don’t dogmatically assert that they are impossible, and I don’t rule them out.