Vorkosigan

I'm between semesters here, so I thought I'd look at another of the arguments here. Again, Phil's site is in red, mine is in black.

More from Phil's EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST: A Challenge for Skeptics web page.

Refutation of the Hallucination Theory: Thirteen Arguments
If you thought you saw a dead man walking and talking, wouldn't you think it more likely that you were hallucinating than that you were seeing correctly? Why then not think the same thing about Christ's resurrection?

Right away we start with a problem. We have no first person accounts, so Phil's question assumes the history as presented in the Gospels is correct; in other words, it assumes what it is trying to prove. What we have, essentially, (for example), is Luke's claim that the disciples saw Jesus at Emmaus. Thus, what Phil should be asking is: "If A claims that B said she had a vision of the Risen Jesus, what should your response be?"

(1) There were too many witnesses. Hallucinations are private, individual, subjective.

This, of course, is rank nonsense. See visions at Lourdes, Medjugorge, etc. There are many examples of claims of collective visions, even across wide areas.

Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene, to the disciples minus Thomas, to the disciples including Thomas, to the two disciples at Emmaus, to the fisherman on the shore, to James (his "brother" or cousin), and even to five hundred people at once (1 Cor 15:3-8).

This makes two glaring errors. First, it claims that "Christ appeared." Whereas, the reality is that we can never know what Mary Magdelene and the rest saw; all we know is what they reported. Thus, a real argument would state: "X, Y, and Z claimed to have seen Jesus."

The second error, of course, is that it takes the Gospel accounts at face value.

Even three different witnesses are enough for a kind of psychological trigonometry; over five hundred is about as public as you can wish. And Paul says in this passage (v. 6) that most of the five hundred are still alive, inviting any reader to check the truth of the story by questioning the eyewitnesses -- he could never have done this and gotten away with it, given the power, resources and numbers of his enemies, if it were not true.

The remark of 500 witness in 1 Cor, as Robert Price has pointed out, is classic fairy tale formulation and a signal of falsehood. Paul's presentation contains what many have seen to be an anachronistic error: Jesus appear to 'the Twelve" although there were only eleven at the time. Thus, in many manuscripts of 1 Cor, Paul's "error" is "corrected" by later scribes.

This is topped by the usual argument from incredulity -- Paul never could have gotten away with it because of the power of his enemies. Why not?

(2) The witnesses were qualified. They were simple, honest, moral people who had firsthand knowledge of the facts.

Note the class bias: the witnesses were "simple" people. "Simple" people lie just as often and effectively as complex people, especially when the prize is increased status in their chosen social groups.

(3) The five hundred saw Christ together, at the same time and place. This is even more remarkable than five hundred private "hallucinations" at different times and places of the same Jesus. Five hundred separate Elvis sightings may be dismissed, but if five hundred simple fishermen in Maine saw, touched and talked with him at once, in the same town, that would be a different matter.

This argument shows the usual (1) naive assumption that the text relates a true story and need not be explored or probed and (2) that "simple" people do not lie. The good fishermen of Maine are, believe it or not, highly complex social primates well capable of concocting stories. This verges on a kind of ethnocentricism.

(4) Hallucinations usually last a few seconds or minutes; rarely hours. This one hung around for forty days (Acts 1:3).

This argument shows the usual naive assumption that the text relates a true story and need not be explored or probed. "Forty days," a common biblical time period, is enough to relegate this to the realm of fairy tale.

(5) Hallucinations usually happen only once, except to the insane. This one returned many times, to ordinary people (Jn 20:19-21:14; Acts 1:3).

(6) Hallucinations come from within, from what we already know, at least unconsciously. This one said and did surprising and unexpected things (Acts 1:4,9) -- like a real person and unlike a dream.

Again, the text is taken at face value.

(7) Not only did the disciples not expect this, they didn't even believe it at first -- neither Peter, nor the women, nor Thomas, nor the eleven. They thought he was a ghost; he had to eat something to prove he was not (Lk 24:36-43).

Again, the text is taken at face value. One should note that according to the Gospels the disciples were told repeatedly that this would happen, so why shouldn't they expect it? Eating as a way of demonstrating that Jesus was not a ghost is a fairy-tale motif already foreshadowed in Mark 5, when Jairus' daughter was raised.

(8) Hallucinations do not eat. The resurrected Christ did, on at least two occasions (Lk 24:42-43; Jn 21:1-14).

Again, the text is taken at face value. John 21, for example, is in my view the original ending of Mark, and the eating scene in there recalls the scene in Mark 5.

(9) The disciples touched him (Mt 28:9; Lk 24:39; Jn 20:27).

(10) They also spoke with him, and he spoke back. Figments of your imagination do not hold profound, extended conversations with you, unless you have the kind of mental disorder that isolates you. But this "hallucination" conversed with at least eleven people at once, for forty days (Acts 1:3).

Again, the text is taken at face value.

(11) The apostles could not have believed in the "hallucination" if Jesus' corpse had still been in the tomb. This is very simple and telling point; for if it was a hallucination, where was the corpse? They would have checked for it; if it was there, they could not have believed.

This "simple and telling point" depends on a simpleminded understanding of resurrection and visions of the dead in ancient cultures. Consider that in the Odyssey Odysseus sees numerous different shades in Hades, some of whose bodies were burnt in front of him, others the shades of those still alive, such as Heracles, who married Hebe and was banqueting in Olympus as an immortal! Further, in early Christianity it was understood that the mortal body and the resurrected body were made of different materials, as both Paul and Mark aver.

(12) If the apostles had hallucinated and then spread their hallucinogenic story, the Jews would have stopped it by producing the body -- unless the disciples had stolen it, in which case we are back with the conspiracy theory and all its difficulties.

Once again we have the anti-Semitic "the Jews" as monolithic enemies of Christianity. The reality is that the later writers back-projected these problems into Jesus' times. There were no "the Jews" out to get Christianity in Jesus' time. Thus this point collapses.

(13) A hallucination would explain only the post-resurrection appearances; it would not explain the empty tomb, the rolled-away stone, or the inability to produce the corpse. No theory can explain all these data except a real resurrection. C.S. Lewis says,

Alas, there are many models of early Christian origins that explain this very well. One needs to start, though, by exploring the texts and their world, and not take what they say at face value.

Some of these arguments are as old as the Church Fathers. Most go back to the eighteenth century, especially William Paley. How do unbelievers try to answer them? Today, few even try to meet these arguments, although occasionally someone tries to refurbish one of the three theories of swoon, conspiracy or hallucination (e.g. Schonfield's conspiratorial The Passover Plot). But the counter-attack today most often takes one of the two following forms.
I. Some dismiss the resurrection simply because it is miraculous, thus throwing the whole issue back to whether miracles are possible. They argue, as Hume did, that any other explanation is always more probable than a miracle. For a refutation of these arguments, see our chapter on miracles (chapter 5).
II. The other form of counter-attack, by far the most popular, is to try to escape the traditional dilemma of "deceivers" (conspirators) or "deceived" (hallucinators) by interpreting the Gospels as myth -- neither literally true nor literally false, but spiritually or symbolically true. This is the standard line of liberal theology departments in colleges, universities and seminaries throughout the Western world today.

The third line, taken by sensible skeptics and scholars the world over, is that the formative moments of early Christianity did not happen as the Gospels and Acts present them.

Vorkosigan

Peter Kirby

Vork, I believe we have a new epistemological principle for authenticating history: "Trust the Gordon's fisherman!"

best,
Peter Kirby

Steven Carr

In my experience,fishermen are notorious liars

Probably Peter was going around telling people about the Saviour they had ,while boasting about the size of the Saviour that got away.

Killer Mike

I always like "apologetics" that Christians come up with :rolling:
They're like taking stories about Santa Clause and trying to defend them as some sort of historical event, like an attorney would in a court of law. I mean all those "witnesses" who saw Santa could not be making it up or having the same mind altering experience, could they?
Anyone who has studied the origins of Christianity knows the Gospels contain myth and legend. We know for example, Jesus was probably never even buried in a tomb, as described in the Gospels, this is because it was common practice for the Romans to let bodies hang on the cross for days following their executions allowing the bodies to decay. This was done to intimidate people and remind them of the penalty for not following Roman authority.
Anyway I just sit back and laugh at how silly Christian attempts can be

exile

As Thomas Paine pointed out, if we were having a trial - say, a case accusing the Apostles of stealing Jesus' body - and we had the writers of the 4 gospels on the witness stand, the prosecution would have a field day.

They couldn't agree on basic facts. How many angels at the tomb? Who went to the tomb?

Killer Mike

Thomas Pain is correct but even he assumes too much. I mean we dont know if there even was a tomb. In fact we know there probably was none (see my post above). I mean its not like there are discrepencies within the evidence itself, its more like there is not even enough evidence to present to a jury.

Just one interesting finding within the Dead Sea Scrolls:
Isreal Knohl of the Hebrew University is a bible scholar who is an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls. In these scrolls there is a written story of a messianic leader who died in the year 4BCE (one generation before Jesus) by the Romans in a revolt. The Romans refused to let the body be buried and the disciples of this leader believed him to have risen from the dead on the 3rd day! Check out his book "The Messiah Before Jesus. The Suffering Servent of the Dead Sea Scrolls" 2004.

leonarde

Partial post by VorkosiganUh, problems here:

1) there was one and only one visionary at Lourdes. Bernadette. Whether one believes her or not, the CONTENTS of the vision are not a 'mass hallucination'. They would be a private, even idiosyncratic one, if hallucination they were. (Other subsequent 'visionaries' who showed up at Lourdes were generally discredited fairly easily; NONE convinced the mobs that began to accumulate at the Grotto that THEY, the crowd members, saw the Virgin too)

2) as to the 'cures': the overwhelming majority of pilgrims with physical illnesses report NOT being cured of those illnesses. What then would be the contents of the 'mass hallucination' on THAT score?

3) those few dozens cures certified by the Lourdes medical board are spread out over almost a century and a half; many 'occurred', if occur they did, among THRONGS of other people who WEREN'T CURED (at least physically). So again, we would have to posit 'mass hallucinations' in which a tiny percentage of the pilgrims REPORT BEING cured (even if we lump in the 'cured' but never certified as such).

4) Medjugorje is sort of the same deal: 6 visionaries but they usually 'saw' a Virgin whom no one else could see (this in the early 1980s); since then, they have mostly had their visions individually. No 'mass hallucination' by any count. Also Medjugorje is credited with 'healings' but since many millions have visited the site since 1981, it would ALSO be accurate to say that the overwhelming numbers of physically ill aren't cured at Medjugorje.

"Mass hallucination" is NOT a certified psychological phenomenon.

exile

OK, what about Fatima. 70,000 witnesses?

leonarde

Well, Fatima's a little different: it's true, tens of thousands of people reported seeing a bizarre and unprecedently widespread 'optical event' (I'll call it). Yet:

1) we know that among the IMMEDIATE crowd there were DOZENS (if not HUNDREDS) of skeptical people, ie people who either weren't religious or at least thought that no Virgin was going to appear to a bunch of hick Portuguese children out in the boonies. Yet, THOSE people saw the same thing as the 'true believers'. Not likely if we are talking about something produced by 'mob hysteria' or 'mass psychology'.

2) the accounts of that day ALSO include people who were FAR from the site of the visions: SEVERAL miles away. And they include persons who were themselves unaware that a vision was going on between the visionary children and 'the Virgin' at that exact time. In a word, they weren't in the 'mass' that was purportedly having the 'hallucination'.....
(see: first paragraph under second photo here (village 18 kilometers from Fatima: http://www.fatimacrusader.com/crintro/crintropg16.asp )
(same link page gives name and newspaper affiliation of anti-clerical journalist who...witnessed same event: "Avelino de Almeida, the chief editor of "O Seculo," the large "liberal" anticlerical and masonic daily of Lisbon."

exile

OK - so you think the sun REALLY moved? Without 2 billion other people noticing?