7.1 Best explanation: Scoring the theories

Published by 1c15 on 14th December 201914th December 2019

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 the popular theories to assist in our level of historical certainty which we believe the evidence meets, but first I will refresh your memory on the definitions briefly. It’s worth noting, none of these theories, perhaps fraud at most have a principle of testimony from antiquity (Fraud theory at least has people claiming the body was stolen). 

I have used William Lane Craig’s book On Guard to generate the majority of answers for this and take no credit for it. The same is to be said for the majority of prior content which is from and inspired by Gary Habermas and Mike Licona’s ‘The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus’. I have added to it myself and not to his works, I just want it made aware if the man (Craig) words it better than me, then why change it? Besides, you should buy his book anyway, it’s brilliant! It was only a few pounds on the kindle store!

Explanatory scope: A theories ability to account for all the relevant facts 

Explanatory power: Accounting for all the relevant facts without forcing the data to fit 

Illumination of history: offering insight into other areas of history (e.g. the origins of Christianity and belief of a physical resurrection)

Level of Ad hoc: The least amount of additional beliefs added is the least ad hoc and least contrived (e.g. assuming mass ecstasy in Jerusalem to explain all group hallucinations in and around Jerusalem for 40 days post Jesus resurrection).

Plausibility: Where the reasons for accepting the evidence far outweighs the evidence for rejecting the theory (Most reasonable, it may not be absolute as you weren’t there 2,000 years ago) 

We will only deal with a few primary theories as there’s so many awful ones they don’t deserve philosophical assessment. I will assess the four most strongly held to theories: The Conspiracy/Fraud, Apparent death/swoon, hallucination and the resurrection. The conspiracy theory will be investigated because this it was what the first Jewish rabbi’s believed; The Apparent death theory because many Muslims attain to such a theory; the hallucination theory because many secular scholars hold to it and finally the resurrection theory due to the Christian belief in holding to it. 

So our criteria in summary for these four theories will be:

Whatever has…

1. The best explanation will have greater explanatory scope than other explanations. That is, it will explain more of the evidence. 
2. The best explanation will have greater explanatory power than other explanations. That is, it will make the evidence more probable. 
3. The best explanation will align with what we know from history, that is, illuminating the historicity of an event and its consequential events.
4. The best explanation will be less contrived than other explanations. That is, it won’t require adopting as many new beliefs that have no independent evidence.
5. The best explanation will be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than other explanations. That is, it won’t conflict with as many accepted beliefs.