Talking to myself.

My last post was a lengthy quote of something I wrote when I was still a Christian. I made a couple of arguments then that I no longer find compelling. Since they also correspond to arguments that some of my friends give for the truth of Christianity, I think I should respond to them here.

The Bible, in particular the old testament ... clearly explains the character of God and His relation to us. Furthermore, it gives evidence that it is the word of God. The different books were written by different people in different places and cultures, but they all agree with one another and with the state of the world and have the same ultimate purpose; to give glory to God. They clearly explain the human condition in a way that resonates with the heart, though at the same time it offends. They contain many prophecies. Some of these prophecies were claims about what would happen in the future but before the end of the world. These prophecies have all come true, and not in such a way as to have been planned. Read any of the gospels, and you will see frequent references to predictions in the old testament of the events that occurred. For example, a description of the suffering of crucifiction was given before it had been invented.

I rather overstated the case here. The different books clearly demonstrate that they were written in different places and cultures by the differences in what they say. It is a stretch to say that, for example, the book of Esther's purpose is to give glory to God, when it doesn't even mention Him. There are huge numbers of prophecies, some of which are recorded as having been fulfilled. There is no unified explanation for this; several factors must be considered:

• There are a lot of potential prophecies, most of which don't obviously refer to anything concrete.
• The fulfilment of some of the prophecies was clearly planned and deliberate.
• Some of the events recorded as having been fulfilments of prophecy may not have happened.
• It is often necessary to be generous in the interpretation of the original language to make the prophecy stick.
• Some of the prophecies (of the exile, for example) may have been written after the fact.
• Treating biblical prophecy as predictive has repeatedly been shown to lead to disappointment.
  

The first, second and fourth points in particular apply to the prophecies of the crucifixion.

Evidence for this is to be found in documents of the new testament. We have manuscripts of these documents, some of which were written by eyewitnesses, going back to within a generation of the originals. It is possible to argue the truth of the resurrection from the internal textual evidence of these documents, but I do not have space to do so here, nor am I an expert in textual criticism. The other historians of the time mention the crucifiction, and they also document the spread of Christianity. The early witnesses claimed that Jesus had risen from the dead. At the time they could have easily been proved wrong by simply producing Jesus' body: Nobody did so, though the Jewish establishment had strong reasons to. They claimed that the body had been stolen, by those same witnesses. But the witnesses clearly believed what they were saying; they were prepared to die in painful ways rather than to deny it. This would not have been worth it if they had made it up. Nor were there just a few witnesses. Look at 1 Corinthians 15:3-7. Here Paul makes a big claim; that huge numbers of people saw Jesus after his resurrection, and that they were still around; that you could check by going to ask them. Again, he could have been easily discredited if he was wrong, unless large numbers of people were so convinced of a lie that they were prepared to die for it.

We have a great deal of evidence, in the form of the gospels and other contemporary documents. We wish to distinguish between the following two scenarios:

Scenario 1: Jesus' life, death and resurrection happen pretty much as recorded in the gospels, and as a result the early church grows rapidly. In this scenario the disciples behave in a rational kind of way, and the main problem is the miraculous nature of the physical events.

Scenario 2: The key miracles recorded in the gospels (for example the resurrection) do not occur. Nevertheless, the disciples very quickly begin to tell everybody that Jesus was raised from the dead, and are prepared to stick to this story to the point of death. This teaching spreads rapidly and the church grows at an enormous rate. In this scenario there is nothing to confuse a physicist. The problem is the rather odd behaviour of the disciples.

Now, since scientists began to look seriously at the world, they have been surprised by just how regular it's behaviour is. It is now extremely difficult to convey just how accurate the predictions of, for example, quantum electrodynamics are. On the other hand, the behaviour of people is normally observed to be far less rigid. However much it may damage our pride to think it, humans very often do not behave in a rational (or even rationally explicable) manner. It is well documented that we often make (and indeed believe) extraordinary but false claims. The phenomenon of cult suicide shows that, in the right circumstances, people will even die for beliefs for which they do not have sufficient grounds.

It is therefore to be expected that, at least scientifically, there is no explanation of the events of scenario 1. Any such explanation must be supernatural. What is slightly more surprising is that it is possible to find reasonable explanations for the events of scenario 2. That is, the odd behaviour of people is of such a kind that it is perfectly possible that they would behave as in scenario 2. I shall deal with this aspect of the particular points raised in the quote above later.

Odd behaviour, even of people, is still odd, and so the events of scenario 2 are still improbable. However, even this improbability is greatly reduced by the following consideration. There were quite a few itinerant miracle workers and teachers in the time of Jesus. Almost all of them are now lost to history; their followers did not consistently claim that they had risen from the dead or, if they did, they failed to ignite a revolution on the scale of the early church. This failure is, in fact, why we have not heard of most of them. The fact that there were so many, however, makes it more plausible that one of them would have such an effect that we would still be deeply influenced by them today. In order for that to happen, though, it would be necessary for people to behave in a way that, in retrospect, looks odd in just the way that we see.

To illustrate this last point, consider the national lottery. For any particular person, it is extremely improbable that they should win. But when we see a news story about somebody who has won, we are not particularly surprised. The reason for this is that there are so many people competing, and we would not expect to hear about all the others who did not win.

This kind of analysis is one reason why not all historians are Christians.

Of course, given the presupposition of a benevolent and omnipotent God, scenario 1 is very easily explicable. Accordingly this line of thought in no way disproves either that God exists or that Jesus was God and was raised from the dead. But these things cannot be presupposed in an argument for the existence of such a God. To see this point more vividly, consider that the presupposition of a deceptive and quite potent God makes scenario 2 extremely easily explicable. But it would not be valid to therefore conclude the existence of such a God from the available evidence.

Evidence for this is to be found in documents of the new testament. We have manuscripts of these documents, some of which were written by eyewitnesses, going back to within a generation of the originals.

It is disputed whether the authors were eyewitnesses. The documents were written, at best, 30 years after the events they record. We must not expect them to be accurate. This is particularly true of their accounts of the appearances of Jesus after the resurrection, since the earliest does not mention any resurrection appearances at all, and the other 3 narratives diverge widely at this point.

The other historians of the time mention the crucifiction, and they also document the spread of Christianity.

There is little doubt that the crucifixion occured, or that Christianity spread widely. Many religions spread rapidly despite major setbacks; look at the Jehovah's witnesses. I don't claim to understand how this happens, but it appears to be a part of normal human behaviour rather than a supernatural phenomenon.

The early witnesses claimed that Jesus had risen from the dead. At the time they could have easily been proved wrong by simply producing Jesus' body: Nobody did so, though the Jewish establishment had strong reasons to.

These claims were not made in public until at least 7 weeks after the crucifixion. By that time, in that climate, the corpse would have been unrecognisable.

The witnesses clearly believed what they were saying; they were prepared to die in painful ways rather than to deny it. This would not have been worth it if they had made it up.

The apostles did not die explicitly for a claim, 'We saw Jesus after His death,' but for a movement in the spread of which they had invested their lives. That people are prepared to die does not even mean that they have sufficient reason to believe in their cause, as martyrdoms of people with conflicting views throughout history show.

Look at 1 Corinthians 15:3-7. Here Paul makes a big claim; that huge numbers of people saw Jesus after his resurrection, and that they were still around; that you could check by going to ask them. Again, he could have been easily discredited if he was wrong, unless large numbers of people were so convinced of a lie that they were prepared to die for it.

If we include verse 8 too, we see that Paul listed the damascus road experience as one of the appearances. This indicates that the appearance to the 500 people he mentions may have fallen similarly short of the detailed tactile experiences in the Gospels. It's certainly a leap to suggest that, if Jesus wasn't raised, all 500 had made up lies for which they were prepared to die. What's more, it wouldn't have been all that easy to check up on Paul. The world wasn't as well connected then as it is now, and the claim is difficult to falsify: You may just be speaking to the wrong people. The letter was written to Christians, who almost certainly didn't check the claim out thoroughly.

Having dealt with some individual details, I should mention that I don't know exactly what happened. This is unsatisfying (in that I would very much like to know), but I do not think it violates intellectual integrity. Since we are dealing with people, and since the events were thousands of years ago in a different cultural context which we do not fully understand, it is not possible to give a definitive timeline. Nor is it necessary. The fact that I do not have a simple, coherent, and definitive storyline worries me as little as the fact that I do not have a simple, coherent and definitive storyline explaining every claim of alien abduction that has been made.