Reading Time: 7 minutes We’ve seen how badly the standard explanations of the empty tomb, the postmortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples’ faith stand when assessed by standard criteria for testing historical theory. They’re especially weak when it comes to explanatory scope and power and are often highly implausible. But does the Read more…
Reading Time: 4 minutes Explanatory scope The hallucination theory has narrow explanatory scope. It says nothing to explain the empty tomb. Therefore, one must either deny the fact of the empty tomb (and, therefore, the burial as well) or else conjoin some independent theory to the hallucination theory to account for the empty tomb. Read more…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Explanatory scope The apparent death theory also provides explanations for the empty tomb, postmortem appearances, and origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection. Explanatory power Here the theory begins to crumble. Some versions of the apparent death theory were really variations on the conspiracy theory. Instead of stealing the Read more…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Explanatory scope This theory meets the condition pretty well, it offers explanations of the empty tomb (the disciples stole the body), the postmortem appearances (the disciples lied about these), and the origin of the disciples’ (supposed) belief in Jesus’ resurrection (again, they lied). Explanatory power Here doubts begin to arise. Read more…
Reading Time: 2 minutes IWe have inspected all the popular opposing theories to the resurrection and found them wanting from an arguments perspective. The historical standards very much approve our five facts, now philosophically we want to see which theory makes the best sense of the data. We will proceed one by one through Read more…
Reading Time: 4 minutes An introduction into Near-death experiences This is something that provides a substantial challenge to naturalism. It can be said that NDE’s, by themselves offer evidence that naturalism is mistaken at a key point — that of life after death. We’re not interested in people who have experienced tunnels, lights and Read more…
Reading Time: 4 minutes What can the Sceptic do at this point? Well, I think their only recoil is to try and argue that God acting to raise Jesus from the dead is incredibly improbable. So even before investigating a claimed miracle, we know that there is a huge mountain of probability against it Read more…
Reading Time: < 1 minute Some critics say Christians need to disprove all other miracle claims for ours to be valid, or that non-christian claims make christian ones less likely. 1. Genuine miracles could happen among non-believers and still be entirely compatible with Christian belief, thus the christian has no obligation to disprove miracle claims Read more…
Reading Time: 2 minutes This objection does not so much question the evidence for a miracle, but wonders how we trace it to God. This objection is raised in various ways: Events do not come with name tags identifying their cause, so, short of such signature, how could we ever know God performed it? Read more…
Reading Time: 4 minutes Science must assume all events have natural causes. A scientist would affirm that even if there were good evidence that a dead man had been seen later, this would have to be explained in a natural manner. This objection could be dealt with using one or more theories from psychological Read more…