{"id":54529,"date":"2021-12-07T21:31:30","date_gmt":"2021-12-08T04:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/franklycurious.com\/wp\/?p=54529"},"modified":"2021-12-07T21:31:44","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T04:31:44","slug":"christian-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/franklycurious.com\/wp\/2021\/12\/07\/christian-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"Evidence of Exceptional Stuff or “How Many People Saw Elvis Alive After He Died?”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Peter<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been listening to a lot of responses to Christian apologetic arguments. I like the people who create these but there is <\/em>something that bothers me. They tend to demand the same level of evidence for normal matters as they do exceptional matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter and Paul<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Think about the two (reasonably) well-documented post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. (These are well-documented in the Bible<\/em>; they aren’t documented anywhere else. So we are starting on very favorable ground for the apologists.) Paulogia<\/a>, for example, responds that one was clearly a vision (Paul) and the other (Peter) could well have been a post-bereavement hallucination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fair enough. But suppose you could find some well-documented source stating that all the disciples saw Jesus risen from the dead. Should we believe this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would certainly accept that kind of evidence if the claim were something simple, “Jesus walked 150 miles in 5 days.” Okay. That’s a lot but it is certainly plausible. I know that I could do that and that some people can run 150 miles in a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’d need more than that if the claim were, “Jesus flew 150 miles in 5 days.” And that claim is far more reasonable than that Jesus died and came back to life three days later!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Motivated Reasoning<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There’s another issue. Peter had an enormous amount to gain from claiming that Jesus had risen from the grave. So did Paul!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I understand that there is a social aspect of apologist-skeptic dialog. The skeptics don’t want to be seen as dicks. They don’t want to claim that the founders of the Christian religion were charlatans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem with this is that we have so many examples of modern cults starting in exactly this way. It isn’t as simple as people lying. As Upton Sinclair put it, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All I’m saying is that it’s easy to convince yourself that you saw Jesus after he died when saying it is paying the bills and getting you invited to all the best suppers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or they could have been lying. They could have simply thought that Jesus’ teachings we so important that it made sense to fabricate the resurrection narrative. (Paulogia has suggested just that.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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