Going for the Jugular (Habermas & Licona Part 3, Post #23: Kicking the tires)


Open series outline: Going for the jugular

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Dear Friends,

Last time, we concluded our review of Part 2 of The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, by Gary Habermas and Mike Licona. In that section, they presented their argument for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, and I don’t know about you, but I found it fascinating.

We now move on to Part 3, where they address naturalistic explanations of the events following the crucifixion.

Yes, I am biased

I freely confess my bias against these explanations…after all, I’ve been trying, in my stumbling way, to live in the light of the Resurrection for quite a long time now. And I have close relationships with others in the same boat.

But I can’t change my history; the best I can do is try to fairly consider the skeptics’ arguments. And if the arguments are sound, then I hope I will accept them. If they’re unsound, then my continued belief in the Resurrection becomes more justified, because I’ve at least considered the opposing views.

This is just a warm-up

As I mentioned at the beginning of this series, I’m actually planning to blog my way through 2 books by resurrection skeptics, just as I’ve been blogging my way through the Habermas/Licona book. Therefore, I’m not going to go into great detail on Part 3.

Today, I will just list all the naturalistic arguments that the authors address, and I’ll very briefly summarize their rebuttal (mixed in with my commentary) to each argument. If I decide to expand on any of these arguments/rebuttals, I’ll do that in a later post.

One last comment before we get started…I really have to hand it to the authors for addressing so many objections, first of all, and also for providing their rebuttals in not one, not two, but three formats (prose, diagram, and bulletized outline).

Naturalistic arguments against the Resurrection

  • “Legend theories assume the story grew”
  • “Nonhistorical genre theories assume it was just a story”
  • “The Resurrection story is a variation of myths in other religions”
  • “Fraud theories assume the story was a deception”
  • “Witnesses went to the wrong tomb.”
  • “Apparent death theory”
  • “Hallucination explains the accounts.”
  • “Delusion explains the accounts.”
  • “Vision explains the accounts.”
  • “Conversion disorder explains the accounts.”
  • “Other psychological theories target Paul”
  • “A combination of theories can explain the Resurrection.”
  • “There are discrepancies among Resurrection accounts.”
  • “The Resurrection accounts are biased.”
  • “A risen Jesus would have made a greater impact.”
  • “The disciples experienced ‘something.’ What it was will never be known.”
  • “Jesus was an extraterrestrial alien.”
  • “Only what science can prove is true.”
  • “Science proves that people do not come back to life.”
  • “Science can explain everything, so we don’t need a God.”
  • “If God exists, he cannot intervene in natural laws.”
  • “Science must assume a naturalistic explanation for everything.”
  • “Even if a miracle occurred, we could never know that it was a miracle.”
  • “Miracles in other religions count against Christian miracle claims.”
  • “There is a huge mountain of probability against an event ever being an act of God.”

Naturalistic arguments against the Resurrection, with rebuttals 

One explanatory note before presenting the rebuttals. When a rebuttal starts with “does not explain”, this is generally different than saying “OK, that’s a decent explanation for Fact A, but what about Fact B??” For a bit more on this topic, see “A combination of theories can explain the Resurrection” below.

And now, without further ado…

Click here to see brief rebuttals

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The historical record does seem to indicate that…

…Jesus, after His death by crucifixion, was seen alive by people who were in their right minds and possessed all of their normal human faculties.

We analyzed numerous alternative naturalistic explanations today, and personally, I found the hallucination argument to be the strongest one, but it has serious flaws, as I mentioned above.

In the absence of a credible naturalistic explanation, I contend it’s reasonable to affirm this powerful truth:

He is risen!

God bless you my friend,

TFOTF

Links:

(1) Jesus on Britannica

(2) Swoon hypothesis on wikipedia

(3) Reconciling the resurrection accounts on Answers in Genesis

(4) Tiberius on wikipedia

(5) A big mess in hominin origins

(6) Yale computer scientist says farewell to Darwinism

(7) Dawkins on DNA

TFOTF

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