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Speaker 2: Today's video is brought to you by surf Shark. Hello
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Speaker 2: looking at a video on Dan Patterson's channel formerly called
Speaker 2: Questioning Christianity. The presenter is not Dan Patterson. I forget
Speaker 2: his name and didn't write it down. This video seeks
Speaker 2: to answer the question of whether or not Jesus really
Speaker 2: rose from the dead. Of course, we know their answer
Speaker 2: is going to be yes, but it's always fun to
Speaker 2: see how they get there. So let's take a look.
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Speaker 3: The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not just another religious claim.
Speaker 3: It is the claim of the world's largest religion, Christianity.
Speaker 2: So it's just another religious claim. I know that as
Speaker 2: a Christian it seems like the central claim of your
Speaker 2: religion deserves extra consideration over the claims of other religions.
Speaker 2: But something being important to you does not automatically make
Speaker 2: that thing important to everyone else.
Speaker 3: Christianity rises and falls with this, As the Apostle Paul says,
Speaker 3: if Jesus was not raised, your faith is futile. You
Speaker 3: are still in your sins. Everything hangs on this. Did
Speaker 3: Jesus really rise from the dead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's nothing really special about any of that. If
Speaker 2: the core claim of a religion fails, then that religion
Speaker 2: isn't true. This is true of any religion.
Speaker 3: But how do we even go about answering a question
Speaker 3: like that?
Speaker 2: The way I see it, you shouldn't have to. If
Speaker 2: God really is all powerful and really does want a
Speaker 2: personal relationship with everyone, then it's on him to answer
Speaker 2: that question, not you.
Speaker 3: Well, first, let's take a breath and ask, how do
Speaker 3: we answer any question about a past event When it
Speaker 3: comes to eyewitnesses to those events, we generally have three
Speaker 3: different options on the table for WIGNE testimony.
Speaker 2: Okay, before you get into it, let me guess the
Speaker 2: reliability of the witnesses, any potential biases they might have,
Speaker 2: and their proximity to the events that they are reporting.
Speaker 2: Am I close.
Speaker 3: Number one is deception the eyewitnesses were intentionally lying, fabricating
Speaker 3: the story, making it all up. Number two is delusion,
Speaker 3: the witnesses were confused, as in they were just misinformed
Speaker 3: or mistaken somehow. And the third option is devotion. The
Speaker 3: witnesses weren't deceiving or deluded. They were simply devoted to
Speaker 3: the truth of what really happened. And it's up to
Speaker 3: us now to try and piece together all of the
Speaker 3: information into a coherent whole.
Speaker 2: Huh. I see, you're just going for your own version
Speaker 2: of the cs lewis liar, lunatic lord trilemma. And as
Speaker 2: much as I love a good alliteration, I don't think
Speaker 2: it really works here. The way I see these categories
Speaker 2: is that either the witness is lying, they are correct,
Speaker 2: or they are mistaken. If you ask me the color
Speaker 2: of the car that just drove by, and I responded
Speaker 2: by saying that it's red. Then either I am lying.
Speaker 2: I know it's really blue, but I told you it
Speaker 2: was red. I'm correct, it really was red, or I
Speaker 2: was mistaken. I thought it was red, but it was
Speaker 2: really blue or something. And as fun as your alliteration is,
Speaker 2: I do not have to be devoted to the idea
Speaker 2: of the car being read for my telling you that
Speaker 2: it is read to be a true statement. Nor do
Speaker 2: I have to be delusional or deceptive to have done
Speaker 2: something like misremember a detail.
Speaker 3: That's more or less the trilemma we're left with when
Speaker 3: we consider the resurrection account of Jesus in the New
Speaker 3: Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The claim
Speaker 3: is that Jesus lived, that he died, that his tomb
Speaker 3: was found empty on the third day after his death,
Speaker 3: and his followers saw him alive.
Speaker 2: Well, that's actually several claims that can be examined relatively independently.
Speaker 2: I'm okay granting thee he lived and died, ones specific
Speaker 2: evidence for them can be rather scant, But at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, a guy with a common name
Speaker 2: was preaching a message that was fairly common in that
Speaker 2: time and location, and was executed by a fairly common
Speaker 2: method of execution. Is such a mundane claim that I
Speaker 2: don't really see the need to argue against it. The tomb, though,
Speaker 2: that is where we start to have issues. There is
Speaker 2: no evidence that Jesus was buried in a tomb that
Speaker 2: comes from earlier than seventy CE, and the evidence we
Speaker 2: do have, inasmuch as you can call it, that, is
Speaker 2: not from eyewitness accounts. It's the written accounts of stories
Speaker 2: that have been passed around for decades. By that point.
Speaker 2: The evidence for the resurrection is somewhat amusingly a bit
Speaker 2: stronger than the evidence for the tomb, though that's still
Speaker 2: not saying much. But at least we do have the
Speaker 2: writings of a guy who actually was witnessed to a
Speaker 2: post resurrection appearance. I mean, the actual description of his
Speaker 2: experience wasn't written down for at least twenty years, and
Speaker 2: then by the author of Luken Acts, rather than by
Speaker 2: Paul himself, who had been dead for quite a while
Speaker 2: by the time those books were written. What little there
Speaker 2: is of Paul's first hand writing of his own conversion
Speaker 2: makes it seem like a vision rather than a bodily apparition,
Speaker 2: going so far as to tell Usingalatians one that he
Speaker 2: did not receive his gospel message from any man, but
Speaker 2: through a revelation from Christ. Quote for I would have
Speaker 2: you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by
Speaker 2: me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive
Speaker 2: it from any man, nor was I taught it, but
Speaker 2: I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. So
Speaker 2: there's no reliable evidence for a tomb burial, and the
Speaker 2: best evidence for a resurrection is one guy who gave
Speaker 2: us a rather vague he was revealed to me statement. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He also added his name to the list of people
Speaker 2: who had seen arisen Jesus in First Corinthians fifteen. But again,
Speaker 2: that is worded in a way that makes it unclear
Speaker 2: whether this was a bodily resurrection or just an appearance,
Speaker 2: which might seem like splitting hairs. But I feel like
Speaker 2: it's a lot easier to wind up with mistaken witnesses
Speaker 2: if the event they supposedly witnessed was inside their head
Speaker 2: to begin with.
Speaker 3: First deception, this idea that Jesus' disciples concocted the whole
Speaker 3: resurrection story. There are number of different ways that people
Speaker 3: make this case.
Speaker 2: There are, indeed, and well, it is not the option
Speaker 2: that I personally hold to. It is entirely reasonable to
Speaker 2: think that a handful of people made up a religion
Speaker 2: for power and profit. A common response to this is
Speaker 2: to point out how humble the early church leaders like
Speaker 2: Paul were. And yeah, in the letters that Paul wrote
Speaker 2: to convince his followers that he was but a humble
Speaker 2: servant of God, he definitely came across as a humble
Speaker 2: servant of God. But if we put our skeptical hats
Speaker 2: on for a moment, let's hypothetically start with the assumption
Speaker 2: that Paul was making it up for power and profit.
Speaker 2: Would we expect him to just come out and say
Speaker 2: that in his letters or would we expect him to
Speaker 2: pump up his image as a humble servant of God?
Speaker 2: And humans kind of suck. There are plenty of people
Speaker 2: who go on power trips over tiny things that don't
Speaker 2: matter in the slightest. My partner is on the PTA,
Speaker 2: and the treasurer of the PTA is a person who
Speaker 2: uses her position as treasurer to exert her authority over
Speaker 2: everyone else. She has had to be reminded several times
Speaker 2: that once the PTA has voted on something, her sole
Speaker 2: job is to sign the check. She doesn't have veto power,
Speaker 2: even though she seems to think that she does, and
Speaker 2: we're not talking about massive expenditures here. She's caused problems
Speaker 2: over things like buying a caraft to put hot chocolate
Speaker 2: in during certain school events. Point is, some people go
Speaker 2: to weird lengths to assert even the smallest bit of authority.
Speaker 2: So even though I don't personally think this is what happened,
Speaker 2: it's not implausible to suggest that this is what Paul
Speaker 2: was doing when he decided to join the newly formed
Speaker 2: Christian community.
Speaker 3: Perhaps the oldest one is to stolen body theory, mentioned
Speaker 3: in the Bible itself Matthew twenty eight eleven through fifteen.
Speaker 3: Here the claim is that the Jewish leaders started the
Speaker 3: rumor that Jesus' friends snuck into the tomb when the
Speaker 3: gods were asleep or something like that, stole his corpse,
Speaker 3: and fabricated the whole resurrection story for some sort of
Speaker 3: social or political gain or influence.
Speaker 2: Ah. So for this one, I don't think we even
Speaker 2: have to go as far as suggesting that anyone was lying,
Speaker 2: Given that the most likely scenario for what happened to
Speaker 2: Jesus' body is that it was left on the cross
Speaker 2: for several days before being thrown into an unmarked mass grave.
Speaker 2: The story of the disciples stealing the body probably developed
Speaker 2: in tandem with the story of the empty tomb. To
Speaker 2: be clear, this is just a hypothetical here, but it
Speaker 2: seems entirely plausible to me that at first nobody knew
Speaker 2: where Jesus' body was, and all of his appearances were
Speaker 2: spiritual anyway, so what is it even matter. But as
Speaker 2: the story was told and retold, eventually someone thought to
Speaker 2: ask where his body was, because it seems weird that
Speaker 2: such an important person wouldn't have a proper burial. So
Speaker 2: the tomb story began. But the resurrection was still spiritual,
Speaker 2: so it's weird that you can't tell me where the
Speaker 2: tomb is, and so on and so on. At no
Speaker 2: point in the development of the story did anyone have
Speaker 2: to be lying. It could easily have grown in this
Speaker 2: manner through the same kind of apologetic reasoning that we
Speaker 2: see happening today with stories like the death of Judas
Speaker 2: the Bible covers three aspects of judas death. First, what
Speaker 2: happened to the thirty pieces of silver? Second the manner
Speaker 2: of judas death, and third why the field is called
Speaker 2: the field of blood. In Matthew, Judas throws the silver
Speaker 2: into the temple, which the chief priests collect and then
Speaker 2: used to buy the potter's field. Judas then dies by
Speaker 2: hanging himself in an unspecified location. And the reason the
Speaker 2: potter's field is called the field of blood is because
Speaker 2: the chief priest used blood money to buy it. In Acts,
Speaker 2: Judas himself uses the thirty pieces of silver to buy
Speaker 2: a field. He dies by falling headlong and bursting open
Speaker 2: in the middle, and it is the field of blood
Speaker 2: because of the gruesome death that he experienced there. These
Speaker 2: are too fairly simple and obvious contradictory accounts, But when
Speaker 2: you look up what happened to Judas, you'll find a
Speaker 2: fairly common story on pretty much all of the apologetics websites.
Speaker 2: In most cases, it goes something like this. Judas threw
Speaker 2: the money into the temple, then he went and hanged himself.
Speaker 2: His body went undiscovered for long enough that it became bloated,
Speaker 2: and eventually either the tree branch or the rope snapped,
Speaker 2: dropping his body, which, because of the bloating, burst open
Speaker 2: on impact. The chief priest then used the money to
Speaker 2: buy the field that Judas died in and named it
Speaker 2: the field of Blood. Also, the priest buying the field
Speaker 2: with Judas money counted as Judas buying the field, because
Speaker 2: how else are you supposed to make that one makes sense?
Speaker 2: Setting aside that this isn't really a satisfying harmonization, you'll
Speaker 2: notice that the Bible makes no mention of his body
Speaker 2: being undiscovered for any amount of time, the bloating of
Speaker 2: his body, the rope or branch snapping, or his fall
Speaker 2: being a post mortem event. But these details being absent
Speaker 2: from the Bible do nothing to dissuade the Christian organizations
Speaker 2: from treating them as almost canonical facts. So with the
Speaker 2: example of the Judas story in hand, we can see
Speaker 2: how people who sincerely believe positing what they think are
Speaker 2: plausible responses to criticism can result in the story growing
Speaker 2: over time, with more and more details being added to
Speaker 2: fill in skeptical questions later, and as a bonus, this
Speaker 2: explains a lot of the contradictions in the Gospels. They
Speaker 2: didn't have the Internet, so apologist couldn't just reference each
Speaker 2: other and come to a singular conclusion like they seem
Speaker 2: to have with the Judah story. So each community's version
Speaker 2: of the story developed in slightly different ways.
Speaker 3: But the problems here abound. But one, Roman guards don't
Speaker 3: just sleep through a grave robbery, and Jesus followers, frightened,
Speaker 3: scattered teenage women amongst them weren't exactly a covid ops
Speaker 3: team capable for the task.
Speaker 2: Oh, so you're going with the apologetic tactic of assuming
Speaker 2: that the Bible is accurately recording events and then using
Speaker 2: that assumption to conclude that the Bible accurately recorded events.
Speaker 2: If I doubt the resurrection as recorded by the Bible,
Speaker 2: why would I accept the guard at the tomb, especially
Speaker 2: given that it only appears in one gospel, and in
Speaker 2: that gospel it is specifically there to set up a
Speaker 2: counter to the accusation of body theft. I don't think
Speaker 2: that Jesus was ever in a tomb, so why would
Speaker 2: I believe that there was a Roman guard guarding the
Speaker 2: tomb that I don't think existed.
Speaker 3: Also, if the body was stolen, why didn't the au
Speaker 3: already simply produce it to end the momentum of this
Speaker 3: movement before it.
Speaker 2: Began, assuming that the authorities actually cared to stop the
Speaker 2: movement before it began. If his body were unceremoniously tossed
Speaker 2: into a mass grave, then it is incredibly unlikely that
Speaker 2: they would be capable of identifying it, even if they
Speaker 2: wanted to.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not like Jesus' friends ran away to
Speaker 3: some far off country to begin telling this tale. They
Speaker 3: started talking about it days after jesus public execution in
Speaker 3: the very same city that it all went down.
Speaker 2: If I grant that, keep in mind that this is
Speaker 2: a major city. Its population during the first centuries estimated
Speaker 2: to be somewhere between twenty and one hundred thousand. Not
Speaker 2: a lot by today's standards, but it's not insignificant. For comparison,
Speaker 2: I live in a town of about thirty thousand people.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty two, there was a brutal murder in
Speaker 2: an apartment building that is within walking distance of where
Speaker 2: I lived at the time. The victim's body was found
Speaker 2: in a storage shed belonging to a church that I
Speaker 2: had attended VBS at as a child. That's Vacation Bible
Speaker 2: School for those of you not blessed with a Christian upbringing,
Speaker 2: A shocking crime happened quite near me and what is,
Speaker 2: by today's standards a fairly small town and involved a
Speaker 2: church that I have relatively close ties to. Do you
Speaker 2: know when I found out about this attack today? When
Speaker 2: I was looking for information on a different murder that
Speaker 2: happened on the street that I lived on at the time,
Speaker 2: within a block of where I was living, and which
Speaker 2: I didn't find out about for several years. So in
Speaker 2: my lifetime in this small town, there have been two
Speaker 2: murders within walking distance of my home, and even in
Speaker 2: this age of the Internet, it took me years to
Speaker 2: find out about them. My point is a lot can
Speaker 2: happen in a town of this size without everybody knowing
Speaker 2: about it. So there is no reason to think that
Speaker 2: even if the Disciples began preaching about it days after
Speaker 2: the crucifixion, they wouldn't have just flown completely under the radar.
Speaker 2: But there's also really no reason to think that the
Speaker 2: Disciples began preaching that early or in that region, or
Speaker 2: that all of them even joined in. There's actually another
Speaker 2: potential apologetic in Matthew that would explain the noted absence
Speaker 2: of several of the disciples. Matthew twenty eight sixteen through
Speaker 2: seventeen says, quote, now, the eleven disciples went to Galilee,
Speaker 2: to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them, and
Speaker 2: they saw him. They worshiped him, but some doubted, which
Speaker 2: to a first century Christian would explain why they aren't
Speaker 2: here preaching today, despite the fact that they're such a
Speaker 2: prominent figure in the story. Also, notably, Galilee is not Jerusalem,
Speaker 2: and this is the first appearance of Jesus to the disciples,
Speaker 2: So no, at least according to the Book of Matthew,
Speaker 2: the disciples did not start talking about it in Jerusalem
Speaker 2: days after the execution.
Speaker 3: Perhaps the reason the authorities didn't produce the corpse is
Speaker 3: simply because they had no corpse to produce.
Speaker 2: Which would be the case if his body were thrown
Speaker 2: into a mass grave. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
Speaker 3: Even more compelling, though, is why would Jesus followers willingly
Speaker 3: suffer for a claim that they knew was a lie?
Speaker 2: Who says they did. The sources for the martyrdom of
Speaker 2: the disciples are extremely dubious, and none of them actually
Speaker 2: say that they were ever given a chance to save
Speaker 2: their skin if they were canted, Can we really say
Speaker 2: that they died for the lie? If they were never
Speaker 2: given a chance to live. If they admitted it was
Speaker 2: a lie.
Speaker 3: They had nothing to gain and everything to lose. It's
Speaker 3: a well documented fact that for the first two to
Speaker 3: three hundred years of the early Christian Church, Christians would
Speaker 3: brually tortured and killed for their beliefs in the Resurrection
Speaker 3: of Jesus.
Speaker 2: Ooh, buddy's being really slippery here. What does this say
Speaker 2: about your case if you have to be so deceptive
Speaker 2: in order to make it notice? How he neatly transitioned
Speaker 2: from the question of whether the disciples would be willing
Speaker 2: to be tortured for a lie to it being a
Speaker 2: well documented fact that Christians were persecuted for the first
Speaker 2: four centuries. In the time when the original Eleven Disciples
Speaker 2: would have been doing their preaching, there was zero precedent
Speaker 2: for Christian persecution. Religion in the Roman Empire was a
Speaker 2: largely local affair, and they were generally quite tolerant. The
Speaker 2: first century Jews even had several exemptions specifically to accommodate
Speaker 2: their religion, and for quite a while after Christianity's origin,
Speaker 2: it was essentially a sect of Judaism, so the first
Speaker 2: Christians had no reason to think that they'd be any
Speaker 2: more or less persecuted than the Jews. It wasn't until
Speaker 2: Nero needed an escapegoat for the fire in Rome in
Speaker 2: sixty four CE that persecution actually began to specifically target Christians,
Speaker 2: more than thirty years after Jesus would have been crucified,
Speaker 2: and even then the persecution were local, not empire wide,
Speaker 2: at least not until Diocletian began issuing edicts regarding Christians
Speaker 2: than three zero three CE, meaning that, yes, Christians were
Speaker 2: persecuted in the Roman Empire, but that persecution was sporadic
Speaker 2: and local, meaning that most Christians could expect to live
Speaker 2: relatively normal lives. So there is little to no evidence
Speaker 2: that the disciples were martyred, and the average Christian of
Speaker 2: the time could reasonably expect to be left alone by
Speaker 2: the authorities. So yeah, there's really not much here, is there.
Speaker 3: How do we explain they resolve in the face of
Speaker 3: such persecution or the subsequent sweep of Christianity across the
Speaker 3: Roman Empire that went on to reshape the world as
Speaker 3: we know today.
Speaker 2: The resolve of the average Christian is explained in the
Speaker 2: same way as the resolve of modern examples of religious
Speaker 2: people dying for their beliefs. The nine to eleven hijackers
Speaker 2: died for their beliefs. Does that mean Islam is true?
Speaker 2: But the result of people who would have been in
Speaker 2: a position to know if the whole thing was a
Speaker 2: lie is pure speculation. As to it sweeping through the
Speaker 2: Roman Empire, that's not really much of a mystery. Once
Speaker 2: the Roman Emperor converted to Christianity, How on earth could
Speaker 2: Christianity we have spread so fast. It's not like it
Speaker 2: was being propped up by the most powerful military force
Speaker 2: in the world or anything.
Speaker 3: However, you explain that, I'd submit to you that deception
Speaker 3: at the heart of it all by Jesus' friends and
Speaker 3: followers is an unlikely reason.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's unlikely. I just think that a
Speaker 2: handful of his followers being honestly convinced by some sort
Speaker 2: of experience like a bereavement hallucination is more likely than
Speaker 2: them being dishonest s grifters. But hey, it's not like
Speaker 2: Christianity suffers from a lack of dishonest s grifters, So
Speaker 2: it wouldn't actually be all that surprising to me if
Speaker 2: that were indeed how it started.
Speaker 3: So that leaves us now with a second possibility. If
Speaker 3: Jesus followers weren't deceivers, maybe they were simply deluded.
Speaker 2: Again, I'd prefer mistaken to dilute. It covers more bases
Speaker 2: that way, But yeah, I am a fan of pology
Speaker 2: as minimal witnesses hypothesis the idea that potentially as few
Speaker 2: as one of the disciples had an experience of some
Speaker 2: kind that they interpreted as being arisen Jesus, and this
Speaker 2: experience was the spark that started the fire of Christianity.
Speaker 3: On this score, a number of popular theories have been
Speaker 3: put forward. One is the so called swoon theory, which
Speaker 3: suggests that Jesus didn't actually die, but fell into a swoon,
Speaker 3: a deep coma like state, and later revived in the
Speaker 3: cool of the rock cut tomb or something like that.
Speaker 2: I'm no expert, but wouldn't him not dying and then
Speaker 2: everyone lying about his having died be a betterfit with
Speaker 2: the deception category? Or are you saying that him swooning
Speaker 2: was thought to be his death by everyone him included,
Speaker 2: and so they were all mistaken about it. Either way,
Speaker 2: I'm not really a fan of the swoon idea. It
Speaker 2: seems like it overcomplicates the matter. I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 2: and skip all the swoon theory stuff. It just doesn't
Speaker 2: interest me in the latest.
Speaker 3: Maybe they were deluded in thinking he came back alive.
Speaker 3: Enter the hallucination theory. The basic idea here is that
Speaker 3: Jesus friends were so grief stricken that they began to
Speaker 3: imagine him alive.
Speaker 2: Not imagine hallucinate. Bereven hallucinations are a thing. Thirty to
Speaker 2: sixty percent of people who lose a loved one will
Speaker 2: experience some kind of bereaven hallucination, which could be anything
Speaker 2: from just sensing a presence to having a multisensory experience
Speaker 2: of the deceased. And before he dismisses this idea as
Speaker 2: not being enough to convince someone that their dad loved
Speaker 2: one is alive, let me share my own personal experience here.
Speaker 2: My first wife died in twenty twenty one. Shortly thereafter,
Speaker 2: and on several occasions, I had experiences that I'd actually
Speaker 2: be hard pressed to describe, but left me feeling like
Speaker 2: her death was a mistake of some kind. Now, keep
Speaker 2: in mind. I was fully aware of the phenomenon of
Speaker 2: bereaban hallucinations, so I knew that this was something that
Speaker 2: could happen. But I still found myself rummaging through paperwork
Speaker 2: related to her death and wondering how I could possibly
Speaker 2: explain having reported her death to multiple banks as well
Speaker 2: as the government when she wasn't actually dead. As an
Speaker 2: atheist who doesn't believe in ghosts or any kind of
Speaker 2: afterlife and is fully aware of bereavement hallucinations, I was
Speaker 2: fully convinced multiple times that a dead person whose death
Speaker 2: I had witnessed for myself was alive. Because of my
Speaker 2: own experience with this phenomenon, I find it incredibly hard
Speaker 2: to believe in the impossibility of someone who wasn't familiar
Speaker 2: with bereavean hallucinations coming to believe in someone being brought
Speaker 2: back from the dead because of one.
Speaker 3: But again, there are problems here. Hallucinations, as we know,
Speaker 3: are typically private, individual events. Yet the reser direction accounts
Speaker 3: speak of group appearances on roads in homes over meals
Speaker 3: individuals to crowds. But not only that, this theory doesn't
Speaker 3: go on to explain why the tomb was empty to
Speaker 3: begin with.
Speaker 2: Again, these are only problems if we are taking the
Speaker 2: Bible stories at face value. And if we start from
Speaker 2: a point of taking the Bible stories of face value,
Speaker 2: then why would we even be questioning the resurrection in
Speaker 2: the first place.
Speaker 3: And beyond all of this, I think the nail and
Speaker 3: the coffin of the hallucination theory is that the resurrection
Speaker 3: simply wasn't on the mental radar of any first century
Speaker 3: Jew for them to even hallucinate about.
Speaker 2: Weird how he jumps back and forth between taking Bible
Speaker 2: stories at face value and ignoring them. Jesus flat out
Speaker 2: told his disciples that he would be resurrected several times. Sure,
Speaker 2: it also said that they were complete morons who didn't
Speaker 2: understand what he was talking about. But you can't say
Speaker 2: a thing that Jesus explicitly said was going to happen
Speaker 2: wasn't even on anyone's radar at the time.
Speaker 3: For many Jews at that time, they believed in something
Speaker 3: like a general resurrection at the end of the world,
Speaker 3: when God would raise all the righteous dead to life. Certainly,
Speaker 3: not a single man in the middle of history.
Speaker 2: If we give him the benefit of the doubt and
Speaker 2: assume that he is correct, here. All that means is
Speaker 2: that Christianity was the origin of the idea of a
Speaker 2: singular resurrection. That doesn't mean that it actually happened. Nobody
Speaker 2: made a video game about a bug made of void
Speaker 2: who would destroy their possessed sibling to purge the infection
Speaker 2: of the radiance from hallow Nest until Team Cherry did
Speaker 2: it in twenty seventeen. But that doesn't mean that those
Speaker 2: events actually happened. But as it turns out, we don't
Speaker 2: need to give him the benefit of the doubt. He's
Speaker 2: ignoring the prophets Elijah and Elisha. Each of them raised
Speaker 2: a deceased child, and Elisha's bones had the power of
Speaker 2: resurrection even after he died. When a corpse was thrown
Speaker 2: into Alisia's home, it touched his bones and came back
Speaker 2: to life. So there are at least three instances in
Speaker 2: the Old Testament of individual resurrections in the middle of history,
Speaker 2: thus completely dispelling the notion that nobody would have ever
Speaker 2: considered the possibility of a single man being resurrected in
Speaker 2: the middle of history. Also, to take it back to
Speaker 2: my personal experience, I don't believe in any resurrections, but
Speaker 2: I was still temporarily convinced of what would amount to
Speaker 2: a resurrection had it been true. So I just don't
Speaker 2: buy the idea that you can only become convinced of
Speaker 2: a resurrection through hallucination if you are first predisposed to
Speaker 2: believe in such things.
Speaker 3: So while we might struggle with the idea of resurrection today,
Speaker 3: like typically dead people don't come back from the dead,
Speaker 3: but for first century jew they had that suspicion as well.
Speaker 3: But for them the problem was even greater because they
Speaker 3: didn't just have cause to doubt dead people not coming
Speaker 3: back from the dead, they had religious reasons to resist it.
Speaker 2: Christians do know that the Old Testament is the Jewish
Speaker 2: Holy Book, right like there are some differences between the
Speaker 2: Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, but the stories of
Speaker 2: Elijah and Elisha are in First and Second Kings, which
Speaker 2: are both included as one single book in the Hebrew Bible.
Speaker 2: Christianity began as a sect of Judaism. Most of the
Speaker 2: Christian Bible is actually Jewish scripture. The Christian stuff is
Speaker 2: the twenty five percent that's just tacked on at the end.
Speaker 2: Help We could even go back into the taking Bible
Speaker 2: stories seriously mode and run with the criticism that ancient
Speaker 2: pagans like Celsus levied against Jesus. He was not the
Speaker 2: son of God, he was just a magician. As such,
Speaker 2: we can then accept that he raised Lazarus from the dead.
Speaker 2: So now, even if individual resurrection was unheard of in
Speaker 2: Judaism before, then there is precedent for his disciples to
Speaker 2: think something similar might happen to him. Obviously, this is
Speaker 2: not what I believe, but it is at least as
Speaker 2: plausible as his actual resurrection.
Speaker 3: Yes, there are many other theories out there wrong toomb,
Speaker 3: identical twins, misidentified bodies, but I don't think when you
Speaker 3: weigh them, any of them sufficiently account for the accepted
Speaker 3: historical facts. That Jesus died, the tomb was empty, his
Speaker 3: followers claimed to see him alive, and the Christian movement
Speaker 3: exploded from the very place that he was crucified.
Speaker 2: The historical facts, if we want to go the Havermass route,
Speaker 2: are that he died by crucifixion. Some of his followers
Speaker 2: had experiences that they thought were real that they were
Speaker 2: willing to die for their beliefs. That the resurrection was taught.
Speaker 2: Very soon after the crucifixion, and that a couple of
Speaker 2: specific individuals converted. I'd argue that not all of these
Speaker 2: facts are as factual as Habermas would like. But you'll
Speaker 2: notice that not only is the empty tomb not on
Speaker 2: the list, that he was put into a tomb at
Speaker 2: all is conspicuously absent and honestly wrongtom Identical twins and
Speaker 2: misidentified bodies would actually explain all the Habermass facts better
Speaker 2: than an actual resurrection would. But as I've already stated,
Speaker 2: my money's on something like the minimal witnesses hypothesis, I'm
Speaker 2: skipping ahead a bit now. When we come back in
Speaker 2: he will have introduced his third d Devoted and said
Speaker 2: that he thinks the explanation is that the disciples were
Speaker 2: devoted to the truth of the resurrection, and that's what
Speaker 2: explains it.
Speaker 3: But you might say, Dave, resurrection theory isn't exactly a
Speaker 3: simple explanation either, and I'll grant you that. But Christianity
Speaker 3: doesn't ask you to check your brain at the door
Speaker 3: on this score. Truth invites questions, and there are very
Speaker 3: thick books written on this subject, in addition to the
Speaker 3: Bible for you to consider and weigh.
Speaker 2: For yourself pretty sure. He's once again referring to Habermass
Speaker 2: and the very thick books that he wrote on a
Speaker 2: subject which I'm not really going to get into here,
Speaker 2: aside from once again linking to pologia. He has done
Speaker 2: what I'm not willing to do and actually read the
Speaker 2: damn things, and he's been a bit of a thorn
Speaker 2: and Habermass side through this whole process.
Speaker 3: But here's what I can tell you. The resurrection of
Speaker 3: Jesus is the most stubborn, an inconvenient, paradigm shattering claim
Speaker 3: of history because it forces you and I to make
Speaker 3: a decision will we accept it or not?
Speaker 2: The claim of gay unicorn Gary imprinting everyone with the
Speaker 2: desire to participate in a gay orgy does that as well?
Speaker 2: Do you accept it or not? The fact that one
Speaker 2: can make a supernatural claim in such a way as
Speaker 2: to present you with an actual dichotomy does not inherently
Speaker 2: make that claim profound or significant.
Speaker 3: Let me just be real with you. I have more
Speaker 3: questions now than I ever have before. I work for
Speaker 3: an organization called questioning Christianity after all.
Speaker 2: Actually, good point that I forgot to bring up when
Speaker 2: you mentioned the really thick books you can read about
Speaker 2: the resurrection. The existence of such books and organizations like
Speaker 2: the one he works for that seek to answer the
Speaker 2: questions about Christianity implies that the Bible is insufficient. It's
Speaker 2: not enough to read the Bible. If you want to
Speaker 2: understand Christianity, you have to watch videos by apologists, read
Speaker 2: massive boring tones trying to argue Christianity's case. Engage in
Speaker 2: Thorough's study seems like a really inefficient way for God
Speaker 2: to actually reach people. Anyway, Go ahead and finish that sentence.
Speaker 3: And yet I have never been more sure that Jesus
Speaker 3: rose from the dead.
Speaker 2: Okay, so he's got more questions now than ever before,
Speaker 2: but he's never been more sure that Jesus did, in
Speaker 2: fact rise from the dead. Remember this next time you
Speaker 2: hear an apologist demand that you explain the intricate details
Speaker 2: of cosmology in order to justify not believing in their
Speaker 2: imaginary friend. It's okay to have a bunch of unknowns
Speaker 2: when you accept their claims, but if you want to
Speaker 2: doubt their claims, you have to be prepared to answer
Speaker 2: all of the tough questions that experts in multiple scientific
Speaker 2: fields struggle with. Seems like a bit of a double standard.
Speaker 3: And I could spend all day talking about why I
Speaker 3: am so convinced. But if Jesus really did rise from
Speaker 3: the dead, if he got up, if he walked out,
Speaker 3: if he spoke with friends, eight with them, showed them
Speaker 3: his scars, then you know what that tells me Everything's
Speaker 3: going to be okay.
Speaker 2: And what I'm getting from this is I believe in
Speaker 2: Christianity because I am comforted by the idea of a
Speaker 2: higher power being in control of everything. Well, given the
Speaker 2: behavior of this higher power in the Bible, I am
Speaker 2: not comforted. Help forget the Bible. How many times have
Speaker 2: we had to hear that a hurricane or earthquake was
Speaker 2: sent by God to punish people for being gay as
Speaker 2: a Q in the LGBTQ. Why on earth would I
Speaker 2: find that comforting?
Speaker 3: Because if easter is true and despair is just on
Speaker 3: borrowed time.
Speaker 2: Well, as long as you are one of the extreme
Speaker 2: minority of people throughout history who have believed in Jesus.
Speaker 2: If you're in the majority, you get sent to Hell
Speaker 2: for permanent despair. And I'm gonna leave it here. He
Speaker 2: just goes into preaching mode at the end today's comment
Speaker 2: to the day comes to us from John Thumbull five
Speaker 2: one to five four, who says, oh, so scholars agree
Speaker 2: that it's a genocide, scholars agree that Jesus was the
Speaker 2: Song of God. Seriously, Rhino, I assume that Song of
Speaker 2: God was a typo and it's meant to be Son
Speaker 2: of God. But honestly, that's some creationist level argumentation. Do
Speaker 2: you know how many times I've heard a creation to
Speaker 2: say that you can't trust academia or scientific studies because
Speaker 2: they'll lose their job or funding if they call evolution
Speaker 2: into question. For context, this was in response to a
Speaker 2: different Comment of the Day segment where a previous commenter
Speaker 2: had told me to do some fact checking before read
Speaker 2: the bullsh at Israel's committing a genocide in Gaza, and
Speaker 2: in my response I pointed out that I had fact checked.
Speaker 2: I referenced both the UN commission that spent two years
Speaker 2: investigating the matter and concluded that it was a genocide
Speaker 2: and a report by the International Association of Genocide s callers.
Speaker 2: I am now two Comments of the Day deep into
Speaker 2: this argument, and so far none of you have brought
Speaker 2: anything to the table to back up the idea that
Speaker 2: Israel is not engaged in genocide. The reports are there,
Speaker 2: you can read them for yourself. The UN report, for instance,
Speaker 2: includes details like statements by Israeli officials such as when
Speaker 2: President Isaac Kurzog said, it's an entire nation out there
Speaker 2: that is responsible. It is not true. This rhetoric about
Speaker 2: civilians who were not aware and not involved. It is
Speaker 2: absolutely not true, indicating an intention to retaliate against the
Speaker 2: entire nation, civilians or not. It includes a letter net
Speaker 2: Yaho sent to the Israeli soldiers telling them to remember
Speaker 2: what Amelek did to you, which, if you'll recall, is
Speaker 2: a reference to quite possibly the most explicit genocide in
Speaker 2: the Bible. It goes over the military tactics that Israel
Speaker 2: has used, including the destruction of important heritage sites, fucking
Speaker 2: humanitarian aid, targeting hospitals and other healthcare infrastructure, the direct
Speaker 2: targeting of children, and so on. It is quite thorough
Speaker 2: and well sourced. If you don't believe the details, they
Speaker 2: tell you where you can go to check up on it.
Speaker 2: If you're going to come here and claim that these actions,
Speaker 2: along with the explicitly expressed intent of the leadership, do
Speaker 2: not amount to genocide, then what that tells me is
Speaker 2: that you care more about splitting definitional hairs than you
Speaker 2: do about protecting innocent people who have lived their entire
Speaker 2: lives under the constant threat of extermination. And no, I
Speaker 2: don't want to hear what about Hamas as a response. Yes,
Speaker 2: Hamas is bad, they also have genocidal intent, but I'm
Speaker 2: not sure how them also being bad is somehow justification
Speaker 2: for murdering children in hospitals. So go ahead and miss
Speaker 2: me with this creation's level bullet of scholars who disagree
Speaker 2: with me can't be trusted. Thanks for watching. Don't forget
Speaker 2: to go to serfshark dot COM's Last Rhino for an
Speaker 2: extra four months for free. I'll be back next Friday
Speaker 2: with more, but if you need to get your right
Speaker 2: effiics in before then. I live stream of service every
Speaker 2: Wednesday eight thirt Eastern on my other channel, The Watering Hole,
Speaker 2: and periodically publish shorts on the channel Vice Rhino shortsks
Speaker 2: Piper for being my editor and special things is always
Speaker 2: do my patrons who are the individual resurrection happening in
Speaker 2: the Old Testament? That is my channel. If you'd like
Speaker 2: to have an old man smush his mouth onto your
Speaker 2: Corpse seriously read the stories. They're kind of fucked up.
Speaker 2: You can join us on Patreon for as little as
Speaker 2: a dollar per week over at patreon dot com, slash
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Speaker 2: to my other projects. If for whatever reason you want
Speaker 2: to send me stuff my pobox addresses in the description
Speaker 2: see and next time double O seven bating. I know
Speaker 2: I make that joke every time I cut in it
Speaker 2: seven seconds, but it's you're just gonna have to live
Speaker 2: with that.