SnapThought – Wrested from My Hands

Did you not read what I wrote? I never cited these as historical. I said in order to perform moral calculus on the Israelites/God you would have to enter the story regardless of its historicity.

Yes, it’s the same as a moral analysis of Alice and Wonderland, of course that’s the case.

If you are concerned with what actually happened, you have to look at other arguments. I do have reasons to think the Christian deity exists. They are not the type of reasons I can shove in your face and call you irrational for not accepting. Nor, are they reasons that can be published in a peer reviewed science journal. Nor, are they all just “inner” testimony type things.

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Matt, when I had deconverted I had concluded just as you have that the bible had no privilege over the Koran or the BOM or any other religious document. In fact, it made me angry how people didn’t realize that.

Then, when I was persuaded that the resurrection explained the birth of Christianity, I was a blank slate. My approach was, “I believe in the resurrection, but everything else is up for debate.”

So, I guess my belief in the resurrection is the anchor that made me take the rest of scripture seriously. Like it made me consider that it could be divinely inspired in various ways.

No one can prove that anything is divinely inspired. However, one thing we can say is that religions are incoherent, that if one is true, the others are necessarily false.

Christianity was started by evangelism about the resurrection,
Islam was started by bloody wars and rejects the resurrection,
and Joseph Smith fits the profile of a conman and Mormon theology contradicts Christianity.
Hinduism is pluralist thereby doesn’t recognize the fact that religions all fundamentally contradict.
Scientology was invented by a science fiction writer (Need I say more).

Now, that doesn’t mean there isn’t wisdom from all these traditions, there most certainly is. But, the contradicting truth claims means that if one is true, the other religion’s truth claims are false.

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Matt,
I hope you keep in mind I can never argue something in such a way to suggest that my positive belief is more rational than yours. I can, however, argue against some of this to challenge your thinking. 😀 Some of what I wrote is a little feisty, so please don’t take those parts personal, my friend!

You bring up three perfectly valid points/questions: what did the disciples mean by “resurrection”, the reliability of the OT, and the meaning of atonement/sacrifice/cross. For you I think the most important issue is the reliability of the OT.

Reliability of the OT
To be clear from the get go, I think the creation story fits the genre of ancient mythology and was intended to teach theological truths rather than scientific. And, I think there is more than sufficient evidence to say that the Noah and some other stories are also mythology or legend or whatever. And, the genealogies contained fabrications. Now, Abraham and Moses. . .

Rant start. I have never in my life seen so much narrow-mindedness in skeptics. The capital T Truth is that not a single person knows for sure if there is a historical core in these stories. And, a democratic vote of “archeological authorities” to determine this is laughably unscientific and un-skeptical. “But, there’s no evidence!” Alright, so say there is currently no supportive evidence, don’t say there is no historical core beneath the ancient embellishment and redaction. Put on some intellectual humility like a true skeptic for crying out loud. /rant done

But, you take the issue a step further and claiming that we need to prove a historical core for the text to be an interpretive reservoir for early Christians. What’s the rationale to this? Because, I’m sitting here brainstorming and I can’t think of any possible reason for this assertion to be true. So long as something was written and practiced and believed by the first century, why can’t it be a valid interpretive reservoir? We know that it was written, practiced, and believed long before Jesus via the Dead Sea Scrolls.

On the resurrection
I don’t prima facie disagree with the jist of your contentions about the resurrection claim and its uniqueness having no bearing whatsoever on it being a real event. And, I sympathize with your criticism of MF. But, there is more data and specifically framed questions for you to consider.

Here, IMHO, is the most important questions to ask: what birthed Christianity and shaped its core beliefs? I think that the resurrection is an inflection point in history, an epicenter that shaped all of Christianity, just like Big Bang did to cosmology. Interestingly, both are signs pointing toward the Creator.

These are some arguments from the very first video that piqued my interest in resurrection which was by NT Wright (YouTube video title = “Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead? Dr. N.T. Wright”):

Why the modifications and the consistency?
Afterlife beliefs tend to be very conservative. However, Christian views branched off in unique and radical ways and were very consistent. Here is a list of several ways that Christianity consistently modified the concept of resurrection from Judaism:
1. Within religious movements there tends to be a spectrum of afterlife belief (i.e., Jews, Paganism). However, in Christianity there is virtually no spectrum of belief on life after death. There is virtual unanimity about resurrection.
2. The Jewish conception of resurrection is imprecise, but the Christian conception is that of transformation to an incorruptible new body, an added precision.
3. The Jewish conception of resurrection only occurred at the eschaton, whereas in Christianity Jesus was the “first fruit” of this resurrection, uniquely happening before the eschaton.
4. Christians uniquely interpreted the resurrection as a call to change one’s life in the here and now, “Die to your sins and live to Christ”.
5. In Judaism resurrection is a metaphor for the restoration of Israel, but in Christianity it is metaphor for baptism.
6. In Judaism the Messiah was expected to be a warlord and never die thereby excluding resurrection, in Christianity the Messiah died and resurrected.
The fact that these are unique mean nothing in themselves as we have already pointed out. The important question is, why did it happen precisely this way? Is there an epicenter of all this? Could it be that the disciples really did experience a mind-blowing phenomenon and called it “resurrection”?

Another why?
We have evidence of several other messianic movements which routinely ended with death of the leader. Why not admit their leader died and pick out a brother like James to be the new messiah?

Four strange features of the resurrection accounts in the Gospels which point toward very early tradition:
1. There is a sudden silence of quoting and alluding to scripture when we get to the resurrection accounts. This seems to point toward the Gospel authors using tradition that formed before reflection as opposed to, say, Paul who ransacked scripture to find prophetic support for resurrection.
2. Women were the first witnesses of the tomb which indicates unmodified tradition as opposed to Paul who seems to have airbrushed women out of the formulated creed in 1 Cor 15. This supports unmodified early tradition.
3. Jesus’ body is not “shining like a star” as in messianic prophecy. He appears like a human but with very strange properties for example the ability to enter locked rooms and the disciples have this reaction as if they know its him but barely recognize him. Why this innovation?
4. There is a curious paucity of mention of the Christian hope of our resurrection in the Gospels. It seems to point toward using tradition that predates reflection on the meaning of the resurrection for us.

More questions to consider: The ancients had language to describe visions and apparitions, why not use this to describe the phenomenon? There’s no particular reason to reject a vision or apparition. And, why didn’t the early church venerate Jesus’ tomb? For example, if he had been seen as an apparition, they might still venerate his tomb as was common at the time.

Final remarks on this reply
Matt, I realize I just blasted you with tons of information that you may even already know. I think the disciples and Paul experienced some sort of shocking an unbelievable anomaly. It was totally unexpected and changed their lives forever. It was some sort of body with nonhuman properties, so they could not think of any better way to describe the phenomenon than call it “resurrection” and when Jesus left them they described this the only way they could think of as well, “He ascended to heaven.”

Now, about the “blood equation” stuff I could write 3 more pages to try to show you how sophisticated the idea of atonement and sacrifice really is and that it is not anything like “an equation” as the evangelicals have preached, but I think this much information is already challenging enough to go over unless you’ve mulled over it before.
-B

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Matt,
“It would be good for you to consider the content of my thesis a bit”
Found it. I’ll give it a read over and see where you come from.

And, I’d like to see your case for needing the kind of criteria you describe. It seems you are describing a sort of ultimate litmus test that everything else fails but Christianity passes. By this you seem to reject the case-by-case approach that we use to adjudicate matters in law courts and with historical method and archeology and historical science (i.e., Big Bang). Should you decide to post something about your approach, I’d be interested!

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Matt, court cases are judged by differing standards of evidence such as “preponderance of evidence” or “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The types of evidence and chain of custody vary. For example, DNA became permissible evidence in the 90s. But, ultimately each case is different. There may be a “gold standard”. Video footage acquired by proper chain of custody + multiple eyewitnesses + forensic evidence will prosecute anything.

As for science there are huge, huge problems in biomedical science as to what should be considered sufficient evidence. That’s why its estimated that the majority of the literature is worthless. It can’t be replicated. And, I understand this firsthand. I’ve been a biomedical researcher for roughly 2.5 dedicated professional years. I have done perfectly controlled experiments and gotten opposite results, and I mean with spot on internal controls. I think the biggest problem is that the systems we are studying are exceedingly complex to tease out causal relationships. And, when we reduce them (in vitro) its difficult to make this reduction relevant to the whole system (in vivo).

So, I think there are problems saying what is “sufficient evidence” for both law courts and science. There are clear cut cases of sufficient evidence, but there are grey cases that rely more on a sort of the application of reasonable judgment. The more complex systems are more difficult to study.

These are just some sort of “what can I think of in 10 seconds” ideas. But, still I’d like to know your thoughts on Christianity and evidence/criteria if you ever get a hankerin to blog it.

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Ohhhhhhh I see what you’re going for, Matt. I think maybe I can help you understand what kind of criterion I have used.

To measure the validity of religious claims against each other we can use the laws of logic. I’ve already mentioned how they contradict each other such that if one is true, logically the remaining unique claims are false. For example, a religion that says to kill the unbeliever is not compatible with Christianity. A religion that denies the resurrection Jesus is not compatible with Christianity. A religion that says you must be married to attain the highest level of heaven which means owning your own universe is not compatible with Christianity.

There are further criteria. Any religious claims that are tested and shown false invalidates a religion. This specifically cannot be an argument from silence or the intellectual gymnastics of Bart Ehrman. It needs to be a religious claim that really can be empirically tested. A great example is the Mormon claim that the Native Americans are descendants from Israel. Mitochondrial DNA studies refute this notion with certainty. Another beautiful example from Mormonism is that Joseph Smith translated Egyptian hieroglyphs before the Rosetta stone was put to use, and his translation was falsified!

Other criteria can be found in the scientific and historical method as you mentioned. Especially when studying the inception of the religion we can apply things like explanatory scope, explanatory power, less ad hoc, etc. I’m sure you will recognize that this is straight out of Licona’s playbook. If you apply this to Paul I think the very least we can say about him is that he sincerely believed Jesus had “resurrected” and sent him to proclaim the gospel. Joseph Smith on the other hand seems to be gaining so much glory for being God’s prophet, he was able to reinstitute polygamy and commit pedophilia, he had monetary support, and religious and political power. A better explanation for Smith is that he was self-deluded and driven by his own desire for sex, money, and power. As much criticism as I deal him, I sympathize with him for being human.

I understand from here the counterargument goes that a claim like resurrection goes against scientific knowledge. And, since it relies on eyewitness testimony and we know that this is very problematic (i.e., DNA exonerations), it cannot reasonably be believed. But, there is more data to be considered. . .

One needs to consider a larger dataset. What do we even mean by “resurrection”? For me, the most helpful place to go is the Big Bang. The Big Bang is not proof of anything. It does, however, raise the possibility of a Creator. The Big Bang makes the Creator resistant to Occam’s razor. There is no way to rationally decide between an eternal universe and a Creator. Here’s an interesting question I like to interject at this point. Could a powerful and wise Creator make an eternal universe? Yes, of course! Then, why make an evident beginning? I think the beginning is a sign for us modern people. So, I step back and look at this and I’m compelled to think that there is a Creator and that the “resurrection” was precisely a powerful creative act just like the Big Bang. It was taking the matter that formed Jesus’ dead body and transform those quarks into something entirely new, an incorruptible body, given as the sign of Jonah to vindicate Jesus’ message and begin spreading it over the face of the earth so that all may see salvation.

So, the criterion used here is to integrate the maximal amount of data and render it an interpretation. Not an explanation which can be intellectually forced on other people, but an interpretation of this universe. When I see the resurrection arguments, I don’t think of the resurrection as “the best explanation” which makes it a sort of intellectual game. The evidence is actually signs that point towards the resurrection, which itself points towards God, which fits in with a larger narrative that I am overall compelled to believe is true. I hope that was a more helpful response.
-B

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Matt, I’m very tired right now but I really wanted to reply to this because I’ve been thinking about it recently. Progress is always good. 🙂

So, I’m trying to imagine the lure here hoping that I don’t end up on a cutting board and filleted. I think I finally see what you are going for. The threshold is difficult to define because it is not empirically accessible. Some have invented categories for “where” it is such as calling it the supernatural. If Christianity had a supernatural origin, and Islam had a natural origin, the former is true. I hope I’ve stressed well enough that I do not require the supernatural category, although I’m not rejecting it all out. I just do not require it. Also, we could replace “supernatural” with divine or maybe other concepts.

There’s another category that gets mixed in these discussions, materialism. Of course it doesn’t make sense, who knows exactly what “materialism” should be and what the limits of space-time and matter actually are. I don’t find materialism to be a very helpful category. Typically its proponents artificially fix the limit to matter we currently have instruments to detect without any consideration of future instruments or higher TeV energies at the LHC. We discover new particles and conceive of all sorts of strange possibilities with our physical theories, whose is to say that will end anytime soon. That’s not to say we will somehow find proof of God, rather an admission of what is mystery.

Since I’ve basically tossed aside these concepts, I need to come up with something else. This is what I’ve been thinking about. I’ve been thinking about the beginning of my own reconversion and the specific threshold I had to meet. I think it is this: otherness. Or, otherworldly. It’s a much less specific and much more modest idea than the sort of sharp divide and massive realm that “supernature” suggests. One needs first to consider it possible that Paul and the disciples experienced something with their five senses that was strange and otherworldly. It was confusing but exciting, maybe even terrifying for Paul. If you believe that much, that it was kind of strange phenomenon of re-experiencing the person Jesus with an otherworldly body that formed their interpretive grid, that they adopted the word “resurrection” to describe it, then you have crossed the threshold, you must now take the idea of the divine seriously.

It’s a very simple idea, otherworldly, not meant to be construed into something as large and clunky as immaterialism or supernatural and similar as specific as divine, although it should subsequently make the divine be taken more seriously. Now, how exactly do you get there? I don’t think it’s a specific method. I think you need evidence, that evidence and historical considerations are the conduit by which you cross the threshold, but you need a background context as well. For me, the context was the idea that this religion can be moral, and that I didn’t need to have everything ironed out all at one time to keep risking it. At one point in time I agreed with Ehrman, that Paul only wrote 7 letters, the “undisputed”. And, I had a relatively low view of the Gospels. But, I believed that something otherworldly had happened and this formed the basis of Paul’s theology and also the impetus and meaning of Christian theology and afterlife belief.

And, faith is a journey, it’s risky and extremely challenging and exciting even. OK, I’m tired. . . Let me know if that comes close to addressing anything you are thinking about.

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Wow, Matt, this is strong thinking! You offer two difficult but foundational problems:
Supporting premise 1: “If Jesus was raised from the dead, then salvation is available to mankind.”
And, “How then, do we falsify claims to theological/spiritual/otherworldly information?”

As for premise 1, both Jesus and Paul gave interpretation of the cross. Jesus said:
“For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45, NRSV, also see Matt 20:28)
Paul said:
“. . . they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement* by his blood, effective through faith.” (Romans 3:25a, NRSV)
*also translated as place of atonement according to NRSV
The question is, what would legitimate either Jesus or Paul’s interpretation? One argument is that they both performed miracles, so this is a sign of God’s approval of their interpretation. The problem is that we have little evidence for these miracles.

The following is a digression on these atonement ideas that can be skipped by going to the next bolded section
Let me digress for a moment. When I reconverted I believed in the resurrection, but the idea of the atonement was weird, I didn’t know what to make of it. I could say, “It was just a Jewish interpretation of the event.” Chalking it up to Jewish interpretation put up a wall especially because I hated the penal substitution theory of atonement. (I still reject it and find no evidence for it). Now, one thing that happened in my journey was that my belief in God changed. God was initially only weakly believed in and was a deistic and mechanistic power. Then, something dramatic happened and I believed in a personal God and this, I found, was key to understanding atonement.

A personal God rather than mechanistic/deistic is key to understanding atonement.

The idea of atonement introduced in Leviticus is actually very sophisticated. They sacrificed animals by exsanguination which is the least painful way to die. This occurred when a person “bore their iniquity” meaning took responsibility for their sin and requested forgiveness and mercy from God. The lawful sacrifices were precisely a proper and penitent means to request forgiveness and mercy from the Creator. The same goes for Jesus as an atonement. Jesus death provides a place to request forgiveness and mercy. This is not a game of divine bookkeeping, rather requesting from the personal God, please forgive me for hating your people and hating your creation. Please, have mercy on me. And, send into me your Spirit that I might love. God’s love and mercy are boundless in this respect.

Also, some people criticize Judaism for portraying God as angry or jealous. This is “anthropomorphizing” and is primitive. I think this is wrongheaded. God is invested in his creation, so it makes sense that God will be angry when we are wicked and destructive. And, when we worship a created object or feeling or experience, we do not acknowledge the supremacy of God, so it makes God jealous. A sacrifice of atonement is the proper way of requesting forgiveness and mercy and it also placates God’s anger.

What about the idea of ransom? The major question is, to whom is the ransom paid? Theologians have asked, is it paid to Satan who holds us captive? Is it paid to God who needs a payment of righteousness? My thinking is that the ransom is paid to humanity itself. Humans are self-captive to their own brains which drive them to all sorts of passions. Paul expresses this and I feel very connected to this idea in my experience. Believing in Jesus had the power to set me free. I think the belief and trust radically restructuring how I view the world and my subsequent interaction with it, people, animals, and creation. We do not need to invoke the supernatural, I think of it as the natural consequence of belief and trust.

Next section
So, how can we legitimate Jesus and/or Paul’s interpretation of the cross given the fact that we can’t prove miracles? I think this is where the resurrection, the sign of Jonah, comes in and provides reason to accept Jesus’ interpretation. And, if we take notice of Jesus’ view of Judaism, we should take seriously the interpretation using Jewish ideas of atonement. Here is the main argument as a syllogism:

I. Jesus provided a powerful sign.
II. Jesus interpreted this sign.
III. Providing a powerful sign legitimates your interpretation of it.
Therefore, Jesus’ interpretation is legitimate.

I think the most likely contended premise is number III. I would agree if that’s what you think. Probably what it would come down to in less formal terms is trusting Jesus’ interpretation. This trust is an aspect of faith, but I think for someone breaking into Christianity from atheism, this trust might be a later development as it was for me, and the mere belief in the resurrection would be the dominant aspect of faith by which to build off.

The second major question you raised was: “How then, do we falsify claims to theological/spiritual/otherworldly information?”
A classic example of falsifiability is evolution. It has been said that if we found a fossil rabbit in the Precambrian layer, evolution would be falsified. In this vein, if we found a first century document that thoroughly refuted the resurrection and/or Jesus’ interpretation of the cross, then these would be falsified in the same sense. In both cases (evolution and Christianity) this amounts to discovering revolutionary new information by digging up something. Is this the sense of falsifiability you refer to?

If this is not the sense of falsifiability you are referring to, can you express it in terms that would work for both evolution and Christianity as I have? This is because I assume you believe in evolution.

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