4.12 Accusation: Delusions explain the account

Published by 1c15 on 27th November 201927th November 2019

Sometimes groups embrace false beliefs. E.g. Marshall Applewhite of the Church of Venus who committed suicide with 38 followers in 1997 was believing that a spaceship hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet would pick them up after the event. Cult leaders like Jim Jones (Peoples Temple, 1978) and David Korea’s (Branch Davidians, 1993) also willingly died with the hope that their leader would lead them to a better place in eternity. You don’t need hallucinations for these accounts. Why not employ the delusion theory on the resurrection? Could charismatic Peter have convinced the other disciples that they had seen the risen Christ, thus explain the beliefs of the disciples?well delusions are problematic as they fail to explain much of the known data.

1. They do not explain the conversion of church persecutor Paul & 2, They do not explain the conversion of sceptic James.

Candidates for delusion believe something that overrides their logic, while some accuse the disciples of being in this frame of mind, neither Paul nor James wished for the return of Jesus. Paul was having Christians beaten and killed. He perceived Jesus’ followers were following a false Messiah, cursed by God, one of many cults seen over the past few hundreds years, nothing knew to the Jews these types of cults. Perhaps the sceptic might posit that during the period in which Paul persecuted Christians, he began to feel sorry for them or for some other reason wanted to stop persecuting them and was self-deluded into believing that he saw the risen Jesus. The writings of Paul provide very early testimony about him and also his testimony in Acts are incompatible with this self-deluded theory. Therefore we can reason that, unless the sceptic can provide good evidence that these were indeed the thoughts of Paul, this theory can be rejected. From what we know of James, in our presented evidence, he was a sceptic before the resurrection, there is no hint he wanted Jesus back. 

He was a pious Jew committed to Jewish law, who viewed Jesus the same as Paul. Paul and James do not fit the delusional format.

3. The delusions cannot account for the empty tomb. 

In Fact, no psychological cause suggested in order to account for the appearances can explain the empty tomb (unless all of Jerusalem got caught up in a mass ecstasy and they all hallucinated and then forgot about the body in the tomb later. That’s a little bit ad hoc).

Delusions can account for various cults but it cannot account for the known facts for the resurrection.

In summary

Delusions usually fall into the following categories: persecutory (” I am being followed”), jealous (” My spouse is unfaithful.”), referential (” That group is secretly talking about me”), grandiose (” I am very important and have special powers”), erotomanic (” She loves me and will not admit it”), and somatic (” Something is wrong with my body”). None of these definitions fit the evidence presented

Structured response

1. Delusions do not explain why Paul converted, he was killing christians and was undeterred
2. Delusions do not explain the conversion of sceptic James, he was a pious Jew without any positive affirmation towards his brothers Messianic claims
3. The tomb is still empty, and is in any psychological theory.

Sources for ‘Delusions’

• Delusions – Philip C. Kendall and Constance Hammen, Abnormal Psychology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 296.
• Could Peter have mislead? — Gary Habermas has named this latter thesis “the illumination theory” in “The Late Twentieth-Century Resurgence of Naturalistic Responses to Jesus’ Resurrection,” Trinity Journal 22NS, 2 (Fall, 2001): 188–90.
• Paul threatening to kill Christians — 17. Acts 7: 58–8: 3; 9: 1 –2; Philippians 3: 6.