What Do Statistical Mechanics Have to Say About Jesus' Bodily Resurrection? Licona vs. Cavin - Part 2

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What Do Statistical Mechanics Have to Say About Jesus' Bodily Resurrection? Licona vs. Cavin - Part 2

July 30, 2025

The following episode is a debate from 2012 at Antioch Church in Temecula, California, between Dr. Licona and philosophy professor Dr. R. Greg Cavin on whether Jesus rose from the dead. Licona presents a historical case for the bodily resurrection of Jesus based on a set of almost universally agreed-upon facts and the methodology by which historians determine which explanation for an event is the most likely. Dr. Cavin finds Licona's arguments weak and contends that the Resurrection hypothesis fails to provide the explanatory scope, explanatory power, avoidance of ad hoc, and plausibility necessary to be the best hypothesis for the events reported to have occurred surrounding Jesus' death. Dr. Licona's response is to refute all these points directly. The back and forth continues as Cavin calls Dr. Licona's hypothesis "indefinite" and states that it fails to explain what the risen Jesus is, atoms or something else, and how he could be seen, touched, and heard as the gospels report. He later invokes statistical mechanics and the Postulate of Equal A Priori Probabilities to further his argument.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Risen Jesus Podcast with Dr. Mike Licona. My name is Dr. Kurt Jarrus, your host. Join me today for a spirited back-and-forth between Dr. Mike Licona and philosophy professor Dr. Greg Cavin as they discuss whether Jesus rose from the dead.

Dr. Licona argues that the resurrection hypothesis is the best explanation for the claims that the first Christian died. The Christians interacted with the resurrected Jesus because they have better explanatory power and scope, less ad hoc and more plausibility than the naturalistic hypotheses that have been proposed. Dr. Cavin claims the opposite, appealing to arguments such as the anti-resurrection probability argument and the postulate of equal-op-priory probabilities from statistical mechanics.

Tune in to discover what these are and who makes the better case. Thanks for listening. Dr. Cavin, well at this point we are going to move into the cross-examination period and so while we do that our crew here is going to set up the cross-examination staging.

Go ahead and get started with the cross-examination period so that we continue to move forward efficiently with the evening. In this time we will have Mike begin to examine Greg and ask him questions about the arguments that were raised. Mike will do so for five minutes and then Greg will have the opportunity to examine Mike for five minutes.

If you guys are a little thirsty, hungry, there are some refreshments in the back that you can help yourselves to as we continue to move forward with the debate. Let's go ahead and get the timer ready for five minutes in which Mike will examine Greg on the arguments that have been presented so far. Go ahead, Mike.

Okay, Greg. Hey, one of your main arguments was that you said God respects natural law to the point of never interfering. All right, what did you say? I said that the second law of thermodynamics makes it improbable that God would act highly.

I didn't say it made it that God would never act. In fact, I try to specifically emphasize the fact that the laws of nature are compatible with God's existence. They don't dictate what God must do but nonetheless, if the laws are true, they may tell us by natural revelation what God's own will is.

They may tell us or they do tell us. Pardon? They may tell us what his will do. They in fact do say this.

If indeed the second law of thermodynamics is a true law of nature, which the evidence seems to show, then that shows us by God's self revelation that he rarely intervenes supernaturally in the world. Okay, so rarely, rarely. Okay, so you're open to God rarely intervening in the world.

Mike, I think I made that clear from you. I'm just reiterating because, I mean, you had a lot of slides up there and you moved very quickly. So I'm just reiterating this.

Sure. So in that then, it seems to me that by your model, you are contrary to what you're saying, you're going by a relative frequency model, that you're saying these things really don't happen that often. And so they're improbable.

No, relative frequencies are one kind of evidence for statistical statements, but they're not the only kind. But that's how you base this. That was your idea, though.

I only brought up the relative frequency argument to respond to something you'd said in your book. My own argument is the scientific argument, which is not based on relative frequencies at all. Okay, so then how would we know, then, if you're saying God rarely gets involved in nature, how do you know that apart from statistical probabilities? Well, you use science, like I said, I talked to science can say that God intervened.

If you look at statistical mechanics, you look at the positive, equal, a prior probabilities, if you look at the number of microstates, of course, what would be those a prior probabilities? I'm sorry. Well, according to the postulate, all microstates having equal energy have equal a priori probability. Okay, this is a fundamental postulate of statistical mechanics.

And it's a postulate that is justified, not a priori, but a posteriori by its ability to, for instance, when we watch this glass of water, we don't suddenly load all that statistical mechanics that's based on this principle. And all the statistical analyses that you're doing only applies to natural processes given God's not acting. No, that's the whole point you're missing, right? The positive, equal, a priori probability shows that God has no favored microstates.

But you're making a, no, you're making a theological assumption. The only way that you could even state that was you'd be saying, well, I, he has that because he doesn't do it that often. We're back to a relative frequency.

That's not what I'm saying, Mike. I think, and here I think as a historian, perhaps you don't have a sufficient background in science and philosophy to understand this, but the postulate entails, right, that God has no favored microstates. Well, maybe that's what you're doing, but that I don't have to have that postulate in there.

I'm going to look at the evidence as a historian and I see that unique events happen. And if unique events happen, it seems to me that your model is going to rule out unique events. And that's why I think it's naive when it comes to historical investigation.

This is not so at all. I haven't brought a base theorem yet, but if I were to bring a base theorem, you can see easily from base theorem why an event that has a very low initial prior probability can have a very high posterior probability. You are certainly welcome to bring it up, Greg.

But I mean, I'll just say ahead of time that there isn't a single widely respected historian in the universe who uses base theorem and very good reasons for it, because as I pointed out in my rebuttals and that there are so many ways that we just cannot, I mean, again, how do you calculate the prior probability of the US dropping a nuclear bomb on Japan is very interesting. Well, it's very interesting. William Lane Craig himself wrote a paper on the tomb of Jesus arguing that it was not a criminal tomb.

And what did he use? He used base theorem to argue against the claim. All right. Well, I know that Bill Craig doesn't think that he's a personal friend of mine.

I know that he doesn't think, regardless of that article, I haven't read that article, but he doesn't think that you can use base theorem for something like the resurrection of Jesus. Well, but he did think you could use it to show that initially implausible adventure and probable event did occur. That was, I was answering your point.

Go ahead and ask one more question, Mike, and then we'll turn it over. Okay. All right, you said, all right, we look at what God would do and what God has a tendency not to raise people from the dead.

And I responded by saying, well, God, he might have a reason for not raising others. Just like with overriding laws, he would have a reason, he wouldn't have a reason to raise my dead grandfather from raising him from the dead, or many other people. But if this context in which Jesus lived and died were true, that he performed, and I never said that historians are unanimous that Jesus performed miracles.

I said historians are unanimous in saying that Jesus performed astonishing deeds that he and his followers regarded as divine miracles and exorcisms. I can't determine whether they were divinely, and scholars will other skeptics will say, well, he performed psychological healings, or it was magic or sorcery or things like this. They're not saying that they're divine miracles, but we do know from the historical evidence because it's in every layer of the gospel tradition.

Mark Q, M, L, John, it's in Josephus, it's in Kelsus, it's in the Talmud, so it's in the unsympathetic. Okay, so that's fine. In this kind of context that I established here, it's within this context that Jesus, the evidence comes for him rising from the dead.

So I would think God is, we're looking at a specific situation in which God would want to raise Jesus if Jesus was who he claimed to be, and that's a game changer. Well, here's the thing in your book, you argue that we can't know what God would want to do. Yeah, I said, it's inscrutable.

God was a free agent. Yep. And you got this from Craig in one of his papers.

You said that we can't know enough about God to know whether he would or would not want to raise Jesus from the dead. Now suddenly, you're changing your argument and saying we have enough context to say we can know what God wants to do. Well, if you call in my opening statement, is it that we can't know that God? I have changed my mind and I changed it within probably the last two months.

As I said in my opening statement, I have wrestled with this over the years and I've been trying to be fair to think because, of course, I want to be able to argue that the resurrection is plausible, but I want to be really honest on this. And you know, if we can't argue that it's plausible, I'm fine with that. But with this, yeah, I've come to believe over the last few months that we can establish that God would want to raise Jesus from the dead.

I think we can build some sort of a case for that and therefore give the resurrection hypothesis plausibility. But I didn't argue for that. What is your argument? You guys can continue to talk.

I just want to keep the structure in the flow. Greg, I want to give you five minutes. Okay.

Continue on your line of all right. Well, first of all, I want to ask Mike, your definition of the resurrection through you give on page 500 and whatever it is, is viciously circular. Okay.

You include in terms of philosophy of science terminology and philosophy of history, and by the way, it has to be philosophy of history, your expo man's actually is defined in terms of your expo man that is to say you've defined your theory or you defined your cause in terms of your effect. Now, I don't care who the historian is. No historian out there who's worth a salt would ever do that.

But you have done that. So what I want to hear from you is give me a definition of the X-man theory that does not viciously circularly explain the facts to be explained. Okay.

How about a supernatural cause raised Jesus from the dead? Okay. Now, what do you mean by raised Jesus from the dead? Okay. Jesus died on the cross.

You mean by he rose to the dead, he died on the cross? He died on the cross, and then afterward he was raised from the dead. If I'm talking about now in my book, I'll tell you what, let's just make it simple for this evening's debate. God ray or a supernatural cause because I can't show it was God, a supernatural cause raised Jesus physically from the dead, bodily from the dead.

So let me ask you this, what was the body made out of? I have no idea. Okay. Well, by definition, by definition, physical means made out of the same kind of chemicals you and I are made out of it only if we're talking about this dimension and apart from a supernatural body, you can't tell me that a supernatural body, a resurrection body has the same kind of atoms that we have.

Are we really going to split hairs over whether a resurrection body has natural atoms from our universe? Well, you're missing the point, Mike. You're missing the point. I think I understand it.

You're missing the point too. The point is this. You claim that you can explain the appearances.

So far, you've not explained the appearances, right? You say God raised Jesus from the dead. Okay. Let's say he did.

And you appear to them as physically transformed corpse. He appeared to them as he appeared to them in his physically transformed corpse. So did this interact with light? If it didn't, how could they see him? Well, I suppose it did.

And his physically transformed corpse, light could reflect off of it. Okay. Well, in that case, he couldn't be immortal.

Well, how do you know that? How do you know that? How do you know that immortal material, resurrection material can't reflect light? I know this way. Because by definition, for something to be physical by definition, is for it to be made at the same kind of atoms you and I are made out of. And the kind of atoms you get that definition from.

Are you saying that supernatural resurrection bodies can't reflect light? You're going to say you know that for a fact. Physical bodies, what I'm saying is, is that for a body to be physical is for it to be made out of hydrocarbons. The same things were made out of and there cannot be an immortal body made out of those things.

Why not? That's just just a statement you're dropping on us without a shred of evidence. There's a complete shred of evidence. We'll give it.

Let's hear it. Okay. We know that carbon atoms bond together with a certain strength.

They can be ripped apart. And resurrection bodies are made of carbon atoms. You know that for a fact.

Well, you just got through saying they were physical. Yeah. And everything physical.

So in other words, you're saying, so are you saying they're physical or you're saying they're physical. I think you're saying they're physical. I said, I'm saying resurrection body.

Okay. What I'm saying is you're really saying X man, which I'm saying resurrection body. I'm saying an immortal body.

And I am not going as a historian to try to describe what a resurrection body is made out of. That would be terrible than you can't explain. In that case, Mike, though, you can't say that the resurrection body explains the appearances.

Well, sure, I can't. It's Jesus transformed physical corpse. He's raised from the dead and his transformed physical corpse.

And he appears to others because it's physical to say he appears to others is what you're trying to explain. You haven't been able to explain how because I can't explain what a resurrection body is comprised of. Oh, try it.

Typically, I have a theory. I have a theory that I can't explain to you what it is. I have a name for it.

I call it resurrection. I can't tell you what a resurrection is. I can't tell you what kind of a body is.

I'll use the word physical, but I won't pin myself down to what I mean by physical. And then I'll say, Oh, by the way, it explains appearances because it does. This is not a theory.

This has no explanatory scope. It has no explanatory power. I'm sorry.

Most all you could do, you could say at most that it's ad hoc, but it doesn't lack power in scope. Physicists do the same thing, Greg. Physicists look at current data phenomena and they posit theoretical entities.

Like, for example, black holes, quarks, strings, glones, but they can explain how those things. But they've never seen them. They probably never will.

They're theoretical unobserved entities that explain observable phenomena. Let me just one more thing. History is the same way.

The past is unobservable. We look at current phenomena and we explain the unobservable past. That's why priorities don't work in this way.

What you've given us is a theory sketch. Greg, we can ask one more question. You continue this line of thought and then we'll switch to the other.

So go ahead. Okay. Can I continue the same question? Yeah, whatever you want.

Again, what you've given us is the name of the theory. You say, Jesus had a body. I said, well, is it a body or a schmottie? And I said, it's physical.

You say it's physical. What you're doing is you're committing the logical fallacy of equification. Equification is when people use word with one meaning, someone else switches it and gives it a new meaning that no one else has.

If you say the resurrection body is physical, what do you mean by this? It's a corpse. Not only the Christian literature describes it. Not only the way the Christian literature describe it, but the Jewish literature, like Second Baruch, they describe the body.

You and then it's transformed into an immortal body. Now, I can't describe what that immortal body is like. Was it physical? At least when Jesus wanted it to be.

But when Jesus wanted it, like if we trust the gospels on this, and I haven't brought the gospels into this, but if the gospels are correct, don't say the road to Emmaus with the disciples, then he could appear and disappear at will. If Luke is correct about Jesus being able to appear behind locked doors at will, then he can disappear and appear at will. When he disappears, is he physical at that point? I have no idea, probably not at that point.

So the resurrection body can do all these kinds of wonderful things. This is a definition of physics. We're communicating.

We're going to switch the flow of argument back to Mike examining at this point for a period of five minutes. Okay. All right, Greg, you say that we have sufficient evidence to show that the prior probability of the resurrection hypothesis is extremely low.

Give us that again. Well, I'll give it to you again. First of all, there are three arguments.

We do have frequencies and frequencies work in this case. They don't work in every case. This case, they work beyond frequency.

Explain that then. We have, let's focus on that one for just a moment. So how do frequencies work with this? Well, let me ask you this.

Do you deny that it's unlikely for God to raise the dead generally? It depends what his motive might be for doing it. Well, let me ask you this. I would say he doesn't know.

How many have how many people has God raised from the dead today? Not many. Okay. How many did you raise yesterday? Well, I don't know.

I do believe that resurrections do occur today, by the way. Well, or I should say, divine revivifications. My claim was not that resurrections don't occur.

My claim is simply that it is unlikely for God to raise the dead. You see that because they don't happen that often, right? No, not because they don't happen very often. Well, but that's what you're saying, right? No, that's what you're saying I'm saying.

Well, what are you saying then? You're saying God doesn't do it often and what's the difference between that and me saying, you're saying it because it doesn't happen that because God doesn't do it often. I'm not offering as evidence that you're saying the prior probability of God raising Jesus is extremely low because God doesn't do it that often. What I'm saying is God has a particularly weak tendency to intervene supernaturally in the affairs of the world.

We see this every day, all of us all the time. Mike, if you're right and we can't know this, let's watch this bottle of water. I predict that within five minutes, God will not supernaturally raise this bottle of water off the table.

If you're right, we can't know one way or the other. All right. So in fact, if you're right, we could bet right now I could bet you $300 on this if you're right.

All right. But that's just natural law right here. There's no that's not there's no intent behind it.

Let's put it. Wait, Mike, let's watch God right now. Let's watch God if you lift up the bottle.

Maybe he doesn't want to do that. Well, maybe he doesn't. That's not my point, Mike.

He does it. Yours my point is he doesn't do it often. My point is not whether God wants or not.

My point is he's not raising it up. Greg, I'll be 51 in two weeks. Okay.

Now, this is my first time in Temecula. So I guess it's just not my in 51 years, however many days that is in 51 years, this is my first time to Temecula. So I guess you could say it's not really my tendency to come to Temecula.

So given this how often I come to Temecula, I'm not here this evening. Well, of course, that's not what I say, Mike. What are you saying? Well, Mike, you're confusing.

Mike's confusing two different kinds of probability. He's confusing prior probability with posterior probability. The prior probability that you would have been here tonight is very low indeed.

The posterior probability that you hear tonight is very high. So the prior probability is easily overcome by the evidence. In this case, yes.

And I would say the same applies to the resurrection. If you want to give the resurrection, you'd say, well, there's a one chance and 100 billion that God would raise someone from the dead. That's easily overcome by the historical evidence we have that the event occurred, given the context in which Jesus lives and dies, who he claimed to be what he did in terms of astonishing deeds.

And then we also have evidence that he did rise from the dead. Well, it would be if again, you could show that your hypothesis has, and here you're confusing the issues, explanatory scope, explanatory power. The explanatory scope is the range of facts a theory predicts explains.

So far, your theory explains predicts nothing, because you've given it. No, it's not predicts man explains. Now you're confusing scope and power.

Power is the prediction, not scope. Scope is the ability to count with you, Mike. The way you define those things, they're really, they're confused in your definitions of them.

You don't, you're about the only one that's you don't confuse. Well, I'm just going by what other historians, these aren't my definitions, philosophers of science, philosophers of logic and philosophers of history, philosophers of history, disagree with you on this fact. But the fact is, no, that's not true.

You read the philosophers of history. What was the last time you picked up history and theory? I have read philosophers of history way back since I was an undergraduate. What you have not shown is that if the resurrection occurred that we would find likely the empty tomb, the appearances to any degree.

By the way, I've not mentioned the empty tomb this evening. I know. I don't know why you keep bringing it.

Go ahead and ask one more question. You can, you can follow on this slide of reasoning if you want, and then we'll switch it over to Greg examining for a second round of five minutes. Okay.

I mean, it seems like I, I think I've covered just about everything in terms of his, his major objections here. I mean, he's not disputing the facts. He's disputing how this criteria and stuff.

Now, I'm using these criteria from the same way a lot of historians be Han McCullough is the primary one, but other historians talk about the same kind of criteria. I've just adopted their definitions, Greg. Well, so you can't say that the majority of the philosophers of history wouldn't say these things.

They're the ones I got it from. You can change your definitions tonight from what you say in your book. You change your definition of ad hoc, for instance.

William and Craig is different definitions than you do. They're not the same. So I say, they are the same.

You might describe them a little different, but I don't say that they're different. Complete agreement on these things. I would ask you to explain to a logician what the difference between explanatory scope and explanatory power is.

I don't think you could do it. Explanatory scope is the ability to account for all the facts, the relevant facts. So imagine a jigsaw puzzle, and you've got all these pieces, and let's say those are historical facts.

The solution that I provide, the one that includes the most pieces in the puzzle is to be preferred. That's explanatory scope. In other words, our relevant bedrock, our knowable facts, we want to include those, the hypothesis that includes the most of those, has the greater explanatory scope.

Explanatory power is the ability of a hypothesis to account for those without forcing them to fit or without excessive vagueness or ambiguity. Imagine, again, our jigsaw puzzle. You know, we've all played this game with the puzzle where you try to fit these pieces.

You know, it doesn't go there, but you're pushing it. You're making it fit. I think the natural resurrection hypothesis has great or terrible explanatory power.

You're forcing it to fit. Or let's say of mass hallucinations. Well, it just really happens, but this is just one of the case that a natural mass hallucination happened.

That would be lacking explanatory power because you're forcing it to fit. So these are two entirely different criteria. What do you mean by forcing to fit? Let's go ahead and shift and you can continue with that line of questioning and you've got five minutes now to examine.

Well, again, I'm not interested in that line of question. I'm more interested in Mike explaining to us how the resurrection theory explains the facts to be explained. So far, he's given us a viciously circular explanation.

You still think it's very beginning, circular after I clarified and further defined it? Well, you have not shown your circular explanation is a it relates the facts. Your new explanation that God supernaturally changed the corpse of Jesus into some kind of an unknown living body does not explain how Jesus could be seen. Well, that's just because I'm not trying to use natural science to explain supernatural entities.

So basically, is this a pixie dust theory? A what? Is this what we might call a pixie dust theory? I mean, what you're saying is, is I can't explain to you how my explanation, I have an explanation, but I can't explain to you what it does, how it works. I can't really explain to you what it says. I can explain this much.

But beyond that, I can't say anything. But my claim is that it has scope and power. What I have yet to show is how it does have scope and power.

Well, I gave four facts. And I haven't shown how it has those as scope and power. Well, okay, the resurrection hypothesis accounts for the beliefs of Jesus disciples that he'd been raised from the dead.

How so that it? Okay, resurrection hypothesis says, Jesus rose from the dead and appeared others. So it explains why others had experiences that they blame that. I don't know what you're asking here.

Well, you say Jesus rose from the dead. And did so in confirmation of his claims. Then we can see, all right, then all of a sudden you've got appearances.

Well, Greg, how am I how can you explain the sinking of the Titanic? Well, I see you because I got eyewitnesses. Okay. But how do you explain that they saw it? I see you got the sinking of the Titanic.

How do you know the survivors really saw it? I see you have a normal physical body. Well, that doesn't really explain it. Well, the reason why is because you can't tell us what kind of a body Jesus has.

You might as well say Jesus has a schmottie. I don't know how these things work, but people can see them. I'm saying the resurrection body would be a transformed physical corpse and made of of supernatural material or it's a supernatural body.

Now, I'm not trying to explain it. In other words, by definition the resurrection body can be seen. Yeah, I'm by definition a resurrection body can be seen when the resurrected person wants to be seen.

Your argument becomes viciously circular. That's not circular. To find the resurrection theory to be a body that can be seen and was seen by these people.

Then this is saying my explanation is they saw Jesus because they saw Jesus. That's no explanation. Well, Greg, I guess it's one of those things like what comes first? Do you have the hypothesis first and then you look for facts to support it? Or do you look at the facts and formulate the hypothesis? You're going to have the same problem you're mentioning with virtually any hypothesis.

Well, scientific hypothesis and historical hypothesis have to lead to a likelihood or a probability of the facts they're trying to explain. Yeah, you haven't done that yet. Jesus explained it.

Well, the likelihood you talk based theorem given the truth of Jesus resurrection, given the truth of Jesus resurrection, if you give the resurrection, then the probability that you would have let's say an appearance to Peter or the 12 or to Paul, I think becomes very probable. Show that. I find that disputeable.

Really? Well, how would you dispute it? Well, because there's no evidence for it. So what I would accept the eyewitness testimony you can't explain. No, the eyewitness testimony doesn't show that it has this power.

That would be you have to show independently of the facts to be explained that the theory can in fact lead to those facts. The feature of the theory itself logically built in is his ability to lead to his facts. So the Holocaust happened.

How do you how do you do that with the eyewitnesses? Well, the Holocaust could be because this was normal physical bodies with light. You're giving us a supernatural body, which you can't tell us whether it could be seen or not. And so that's the big thing.

No, I did say it can be seen. Well, you defined it as something that can be seen. Well, that's because the eyewitnesses said they could see it.

Well, again, Mike, you're just giving a viciously circular explanation. Well, I don't see it as circular, Greg. I could say I have an unknown thing, but there's one thing I could say about it.

It could be seen. Well, it's not an explanation. Now, if you said that you had an apparition appear to you at night of a loved one that had been deceased for five years and that apparition talked to you, and let's say the communicated information to you that you couldn't have known otherwise, and you're able to relate that information.

And I said, well, Greg, what was the apparition made up? I don't know. Well, your argument's viciously circular then. How could I even believe what you're saying there? You can't even describe what it's made out of.

That sounds right to me. Okay. Well, I mean, here, I have a theory.

I can't explain what it is. All I do is I define it so that it can explain the facts to be explained. And this doesn't sound like much of a theory.

Well, there are many cases like this of these veritable apparitions where they do appear and they do communicate information, accurate information the person could have known otherwise. I'm not going to deny the occurrence of the event simply because I can't talk scientifically on the nature of the body and what it's made of, whether light can reflect off of it. I'm not asking you to explain scientifically what I'm asking you just to give any explanation of how these things could be seen.

And if I did that, I'd be terrible at hocks. We're going to go ahead and shift into our final round of examination. Mike, you can now examine Greg for five minutes.

You know, I'll just pass on this. I'll let Greg do it because I think we're just at an impasse here. Either I'm not really communicating with him or he's not communicating with me or one of us is being really stubborn and not admitting things, but I think we're at a kind of standstill here.

I just don't see the legitimacy of his argument. So I really don't have anything else to say. What I would say is I've given an alternative explanation that Jesus did not rise from the dead.

They can account for the appearances as well as your theory can because you haven't shown how yours can. It's more plausible. So I have an explanation that is far superior to yours.

Give me that explanation again. That's your hypothesis. Jesus did not rise.

It's just as good as yours because your hypothesis is even more indefinite than mine. Well, it isn't as good because again, I said when if Jesus didn't rise, the most probable thing to happen is nothing. You don't get any appearances.

Maybe you get one out of the bunch. You may get one appearance. You have no group of appearances.

You don't have the appearance of Paul. And those are facts. So the non-resurrection hypothesis has terrible explanatory scope.

If Jesus didn't rise, we don't expect any of these. So it has terrible explanatory power. It's not ad hoc.

I wouldn't say it's ad hoc and I wouldn't say it's implausible. But it certainly fails two of the four criteria for the best explanation. Whereas the resurrection hypothesis contrary to your claims passes three of the four with flying criteria and doesn't fail the fourth.

You don't necessarily have an expectation that he would be seen. He might not be. If he did in confirmation of his claims, and I've argued not only my book as you know, but also in the journal for the study of the historical Jesus, that the Jesus predictions pertaining to his death and resurrection are historical.

I've provided six arguments for these. So if Jesus actually predicted his death and resurrection and confirmation of his claims, then we would expect the appearances if. But again, that's an ad hoc hypothesis.

That's not ad hoc. I provided evidence. Well, many people, many historians disagree with you.

Many historians disagree with you with base theorem. It doesn't mean that they're wrong or right. We're not looking for a universal consensus here.

I argue it might explain the evidence on your theory. What do you mean? Well, Paul saw Jesus as a blinding light up in heaven. Post the resurrection.

The resurrection says Jesus is down here. How do you get him up there? Post the sentient appearance. He's in his glorified state.

Now we have to add to the resurrection hypothesis, yet another supernatural hypothesis of an ascension. And where exactly is Jesus now? Well, according to the scriptures is in heaven. But I'm not going to argue that for historically.

You asked me a theological question about Paul and why he thought. And by the way, if we can go two ways with Paul, we can go Paul on Paul. In other words, Paul using Paul's writings, or we can do Luke on Paul, Luke and Acts on Paul.

John Dominic Crosson and Jonathan Reid are so strong in thinking that Paul was teaching bodily resurrection that they said we can bracket the book of Acts. Just bracket it, throw it aside and go with what Paul says on resurrection. And he believes that he saw an appearance of the physically raised Jesus.

So I've only used Paul's writings tonight. And so if we do that, and I showed how Paul believes in bodily resurrection. So we get bodily resurrection with Paul without him describing the appearance.

If we go with Acts, he talks about a glorious appearance of Jesus. But the nature of that appearance was such to him that he's still interpreted as the physically raised Jesus. And if you grant Acts 9, you also grant Acts 13.

Where Paul says, David died according to Psalm 16. It says, you will not allow your son or your body, your holy one to decay. David died, was buried, his body decayed.

Jesus died buried, his body did not decay, but God raised it, you know, that were eyewitnesses. So Paul does believe whatever the nature of those experiences were, Paul was convinced Jesus was raised physically bodily from the death. So the question was not answered.

And that is how exactly did Paul see Jesus? I don't know. But with the nature of the explanation, I don't know. But the nature of those experiences is that the nature of whatever that experience was, convinced in that Jesus had been raised physically.

That could be a hallucination. A hallucination. He wasn't a good candidate for hallucination.

He wasn't believing over Jesus' death. Jesus would have been the last person in the world, Paul would have wanted to see. I think Paul could have hallucinated, but that's not the point.

The point is this. You still haven't explained how the resurrection theory explains Paul's appearance. If, well, you give Paul, Paul himself says.

Okay, let's say Jesus is up in heaven. How does Paul see him? Well, I don't know. Yeah.

I mean, okay. So the court, if we take the acts account, we have an explanation. I don't know.

If we take the acts of Greek explanatory scope, I have Greek explanatory power, but I don't know how it works. That is not an explanation. That's not how historians work.

That's not how science works. That's just pixie dust theory. We don't know how a lot of things in science work, Greg.

And I mean, until recently, it's like we can't figure out how wave and particle work together. They seem contradictory, and yet science says, well, there's got to be some way for actual work. Well, actually, we have a mathematical theory.

It's called quantum mechanics, accurate to seven decimal places. We understand that exactly. But you can't even give us any explanation at all of how it was that Paul could be down here and see Jesus up there.

And yet you claim that you have scope and you have explanatory power. I'm not scoping power. I don't have to explain everything about everything in order to have scope and power.

You said you could explain these four facts. You can't explain one of them right there. I don't have to explain everything about them.

I can explain Jesus died by crucifixion. I don't have to explain the atoning nature of that in order to have explanatory scope and saying that Jesus died. You have an experience to Paul, you haven't explained it.

I said that Paul had an experience that he interpreted as the risen Jesus appearing to him, and that he believed Jesus had been raised physically from the dead. We agree. But your theory can't explain that.

It doesn't lead to any expectation. I can't explain the nature of the experience in terms of what Paul actually saw in detail, unless I take the actual nature of the experience, I'm simply asking you to chisel me how on your theory this experience would be explained. You just keep repeating that you have, but you haven't done it.

I think you're asking for things that historians just can't do, Greg. It's just unrealistic. Okay.

Well, it's unrealistic. I think then what you mean by explanation, what you mean by scope and power are not, for instance, what logicians mean by these things. And you keep deferring to historians.

I think, ultimately, it's logicians who have the top say. If a historian says this is someone says this has historians work, but if violates the canon of logic, then I'm going to go with the logicians, not the historians. Well, I would too.

If it violates the canon of logic, but I don't, I fail to see where it's done that, Greg. Well, I would suggest you read a book by Irving Kapi and a book by Klein and Ullian that go into the criteria of adequacy you use. They give different definitions than you give, and they are top logicians.

Well, they may be, but they're not philosophers of history, and philosophers of history use the four criteria for the best explanation. Well, in that case, it means logic doesn't matter. History, well, it means logic matters.

It means your guys aren't thinking the same way as historians do. So we're just going to reposition the stage one last time, and then we're going to have two five minute closing statements. Michael Stark, Greg will finish, and then we'll open up to Q&A.

We will go ahead and call Dr. Michael Lincona up to the podium for his final closing statement. Dr. Lincona. Well, thank you.

I've enjoyed this this evening, and despite our spirited exchanges, I've really enjoyed this, and I respect Greg, and this is fun, and we've talked about catching a meal together when I come back out and teach it by all of his fall, and I'll look forward to that. This has been fun, and I'm glad we could have a collegial time despite our sharp disagreements. In my opening statement, I did present, again, a positive historical case for the resurrection of Jesus using two major building blocks, facts and method, like to just assess how we fared in tonight's debate.

Concerning our facts, I presented four facts. Number one, shortly after Jesus' death, a number of his followers had experiences they interpreted as the risen Jesus appearing to them. Two, these experiences happened in both individual and in group settings.

Three, a persecutor and skeptic named Paul had an experience that he believed was an appearance of the risen Jesus who appeared to him. And four, the nature of their experiences were such that they concluded that Jesus had been raised physically bodily from the dead. Now, none of those went disputed in this evening.

What we did go with is our method now, and how do we explain these? And in my method, I said that historians employ arguments of inference to the best explanation and use four general criteria for assessing hypotheses in this manner. Explanatory scope, the ability of a hypothesis to account for all the relevant facts. I showed how the resurrection certainly does this.

Explanatory power, can it do it without forcing him to fit? Would we expect these? And yeah, I think it would. It has great explanatory power, resurrection hypothesis. Ad hoc, is this something that we would think true other than it explains the facts? And I said, given the truth of the resurrection, yeah, we would expect these kinds of things to happen.

There's no non-evidence assumptions in here. We would expect these things. There's no improvisation that has to be involved here.

And finally, plausibility. Plausibility assesses the degree to which a hypothesis is compatible with our relevant background knowledge. So, we know our relevant background knowledge tells us that the dead aren't raised unassisted or by natural causes.

But there's nothing from science or medicine that tells us that a supernatural being like God could raise someone from the dead. Just as historians can't tell whether Jesus' death of tones for sins, scientists can't tell anything about what a supernatural being would or could not would or would not do. Now, Greg takes issue with this and he says, well, no, the laws of science, natural law, tell us what God would want to do.

I think this is a non-evidence assumption right here. There's no evidence. You'd have to know God's mind this to know this.

You'd have to know that God wouldn't want to ever override the laws of nature. He says, well, yeah, but God doesn't do it that often. Well, that doesn't mean anything.

I mean, really, again, we don't find nations nuking other nations that often either. But that doesn't mean the United States didn't drop nuclear bombs on Japan in World War II. You can't use prior investigation.

He says that we can, but we can't. Historians don't do that. It's the wrong tool.

He's not trained. He might have had some, read some books on the philosophy of history, but he's not using or going by that method. We just don't.

It's the wrong tool. It's like bringing a calculator to an archaeological dig. It doesn't work.

Well, then he says about, well, I mean, hypothesis or actually he said that the most probable thing to happen would be Jesus didn't rise from the dead. Well, naturally speaking, yes, but not supernaturally speaking, we have to look at intent here. I mean, there's billions of women in the world.

I married one. Does that mean the prior probability of my wife was one and however many billion? No. There's intent there.

There's reason. There's reasons for why we do things. God, if the New Testament is correct, God would want to raise Jesus and not others.

He would want to raise Jesus because this was his divine son. He would want to do it to corroborate Jesus' teachings, to put a stamp of approval on it. There's nothing unlikely at all about this from a supernatural perspective.

And again, if you're saying that supernatural doesn't happen today, I think given all the evidence out there from miracles evidence, near-death experiences, varitical apparitions, answered prayer, you can't be a realist if you deny the supernatural out there today. So we can see that my case for the resurrection of Jesus still stands and Greg's case to the contrary has failed under critical scrutiny. Thank you, Dr. Lacona.

And now we will have Dr. Cavan's closing statement to wrap up this evening's debate. Please welcome yet again Dr. Cavan to the podium. Well, as you can tell, I disagree with Mike.

I agree with Mike's four facts. That's not the issue. I do disagree with him on methodology.

We haven't talked about the Bayesian approach. What Mike doesn't know is that Brian Scurm's and other philosophers have shown that less plausibility in these other criteria are probabilities, they're irrational. I don't know if historians know this or not.

I don't know how much logic historians read. But this has been shown. So ultimately, if Mike can't fit what he has into Bayes' theorem, it shows logically and probabilistically this is incorrect.

In fact, Dutch books can be made against Mike where he will lose everything he owns and he'll think it's fair that he loses it this way. We didn't have time to talk about that tonight, but I thought I'd bring it up briefly now. Mike repeatedly says the X-man theory, as I'm going to call it, explains the facts.

But I kept pinning Mike to the ground to try to tell me what the X theory was, the X-man theory. Basically what Mike repeated over and over again is I can't tell you anything about it, except God changed a corpse. Well, what did he change you to? Well, physical.

What do you mean by physical? Well, I don't know. I won't tell you what I mean by physical. Basically what Mike did was he evaded all of my questions.

Now, if I gave you an explanation or a proffered explanation, you said, well, explain to me how that works and I couldn't do it. You wouldn't say to me, well, Kevin, you don't have to go into the details. You press me for the details.

What you can see here is that Mike's theory leads to no expectation that we would have an empty tomb. We have no idea what a Jesus made of atoms or schmatoms would do. We have no idea if he would appear to the women.

We have no idea whether he would flee from the women. Maybe Jesus in his maybe once he rose and said, my God, look, I'm alive again. I'm happy.

I don't want to live that life I lived. Maybe he would forsake the disciples. Maybe he would not.

We simply don't know what a risen man would do because we have no experience of what the resurrected do. The only case we would have is Jesus and it begs the question here to say we would know what he would do. So again, I would say to Mike, if he's atoms, we can see him, but then he can't be immortal.

Then he would be stuck down on earth. He couldn't appear to Paul. Mike never answered that point.

If Jesus is atoms, then he cannot appear to Paul. On the other hand, if Jesus is schmatoms, he can't even interact with the universe at all. He couldn't be seen.

So either way, we do not have a good explanation of the four facts that Mike wants to explain. I also argued that the resurrection is highly astronomically improbable based on the assumption that God exists, that God has supernatural power. What I argued on three different reasons, frequencies and two scientific theories.

One is thermodynamics and one is statistical mechanics, and I could have talked about quantum mechanics, but we didn't have time, that it is astronomically unlikely that God interferes supernaturally to do anything at all, let alone raised the dead. So if we put these facts together, what do we get? Mike's X-man theory is a big question mark. We really don't know what it is.

He's indefinite about that. Because of that, it can't have explanatory scope. It can't have explanatory power to have those Mike will have to add a variety of ad hoc assumptions, making his resurrection theory highly ad hoc.

It has a low plausibility. It also has a relatively low, I forget your last illumination. Now let's take a look at the theory that Jesus did not rise in the theory that's an X-man theory.

An X-man theory leads to no expectation of these facts at all. Even a crazy mass hallucination theory leads to some expectation that we would get an empty tomb and that we'd get appearances. So what I want to argue is as bad as the naturalistic alternative desire, the resurrection theory does poorly still.

Even if it only does that much poorly, it's still poorer. On the other hand, the naturalistic theories have a super high plausibility. We put all that together.

The non-resurrection theory wins and is overall the theory that best satisfies Mike's criteria of explanatory scope, power, plausibility, illumination, and plausibility. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Dr. Cavan.

Again, we're going to reset the stage one last time. It'll take us about a minute and then we're going to move into your questions for the last 30 minutes of this evening's discussion. So stick around.

That always promises to be a very fascinating part of the debate and we will move into that in about one minute. Okay, well, let's come back together for the final 30 minutes of what has already been a very exciting debate. With that, before we get into the questions from the audience, Scott Waterberry, we have your insurance card.

So if you're still here, you know, Scott, we'll be able to get you your insurance card after this Q&A session. Well, we'll start now with the questions and I'd just like to open up with a question and then we'll put some basic guidelines on the Q&A period. These are the debaters tonight, not you.

And so let's leave the questions up to being actually questions. And so they shouldn't be many lectures or many debates in themselves, but just try and keep it concise. Not these big long elaborate explanations, but a concise question that's clear and that they were able to answer no more than one minute to be certain.

And then they're going to each have two minutes to respond to the questions and that'll allow us to get through quite a few questions. And so I'll open up with one. It'll be for Dr. Kevin and then Mike can talk to that as well.

So Greg, you took issue with Mike's saying that Christ having a resurrection body is not a well-defined thesis. But take, for example, the theory of quantum mechanics. There are at least six and maybe more interpretations of quantum theory that can be divided into deterministic and indeterministic models, for example, deterministic models such as the Copenhagen theory.

Now, because that's indeterministic. Yeah. Right.

Right. So we have this agnosticism, perhaps, between maybe maybe I come to quantum theory and maybe I'm agnostic about whether it's deterministic or indeterministic. That doesn't mean it seems to me that we throw out quantum theory.

How then is that different accepting quantum theory but remaining agnostic on whether it's indeterminate or determinate. How is that different than accepting the resurrection thesis but remaining agnostic on the precise kind of body atoms or schmatoms? Here's how here's how that's different. Quantum mechanics, although it has seven different interpretations, you're talking about David Boehm's deterministic interpretation, yes.

Quantum mechanics has a mathematical formalism that leads to definite predictions to seven decimal places, the most accurate scientific theory we've ever had. Mike's resurrection theory doesn't do anything even remotely like that. Now, of course, I don't expect Mike to give us quantum mechanics.

But what I do expect is Mike to give a theory where he can show how it leads to the facts to be explained. Quantum mechanics, no matter what interpretation you take, the mathematical formalism shows how it leads to the facts to be explained. If I have a theory that if I see Caesar crossing Rubicon, I can give you a theory where I can explain how I see that because Caesar is made out of atoms and photons.

It is atoms that are absorbed, they're emitted, they come into my retina, except so forth, you know the story. See, there I have a theory that explains how it is, why it is that I see Caesar crossing Rubicon. Mike can't do this with his theory.

Mike gives us the X-man theory, which is simply a blank waiting to be filled in with a genuine theory. All Mike can say is a guy that's something at the corpse of Jesus, what he did Mike cannot say. So the two, the analogy is actually about analogy with quantum mechanics because there we have the formalism that's the same for all seven interpretations.

Mike, I guess I had to respond that this is just indicative of Greg bringing the wrong tools to the table. He's not a historian. He's talking about quantum mechanics that is based in mathematics.

You can't bring mathematics to history. It's a different discipline. Again, it's the wrong tool.

It's like using a telescope to detect cancer. It's just the wrong tool. You don't have a physician bring his MRI machine in order to find out what's wrong with his car.

It's just the wrong tool. By asking me to explain what is a supernatural body composed of, and then because I can't answer that he calls it the X theory, then therefore I'm not supposed to be able to say as a historian or even say it's a supernatural body. I mean, if quantum physicists are disagreeing and have six different models on how it works, I mean, obviously they're all not so predictable or if that's the case, they've got to reassign or readjust their method if that's what's going on.

But you just don't apply mathematics to history. It is the wrong tool. Good.

Thank you, Mike. And we'll just start back in the back there with you, sir. Go ahead and ask your question.

My name is Jeffrey Frischner, and I'm a believer for about 26 years. I'm Jewish, but I became a believer. And this is a very important discussion for me because I actually felt that Jesus, well, actually the Father God spoke to me at that point.

And so I've been working out my faith for 26 years. And it seems like the basis for what I've understood from who who's the question directed toward? Well, really both of you, but it's about the essential of the of the Christian faith called the resurrection and and that and I love the fact that this discussion tonight, because it seems like that is coming to question or whether that is actually because that's the apostles creed and in the apostles crease and it does seem the the basis for that seem to be testimonies, historical basis for it is to our testimony. So, but yet there there doesn't seem to be probability for it, but yet you seem to be a believer, Dr. Kevin.

Correct? Am I a believer? Yes. No. Oh, you're not? No.

You're not a believer. No, I'm not a believer. I'm a believer.

I was. So it was the study of the evidence of the resurrection that led me to disbelief. So the what the question is, can you believe be a believer? I guess for you, Andrew, and and you, Dr. Laconic, can you believe or not believe in the resurrection? No, the Apostle Paul wrote, if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised them from the dead, you'll be saved.

So resurrection, belief in Jesus resurrection is one of those necessary or essentials for salvation. Greg, what do you think? I think it's necessary. Well, I don't think there's salvation.

So I do believe there's a God, at least I have a 50, 50 percent belief in God. I believe that when we all leave tonight, whether Jesus rose or not, we're not. Okay.

Great. Thank you. Next question.

Yes, sir. You guys very much for coming tonight. I've been listening all night and it sounds that you're having two entirely different arguments.

One is historical, which seems to have the only basis of fact is testimonials. The other is based on probability. So my question, if the Bible attests to Jesus the whole time, you talked about prophecy, that there are some that haven't come true.

You didn't back that up with anything. You went to the next point. So if it's not true, then what about all the evidence that they're saying? All these testimonials, people saying that they actually did see him, bodily risen, that Thomas touched the holes in his hands, that Jesus ate broiled fish, that they actually recognized him, not his, the schmatoms, they didn't recognize schmatoms, they recognized a man.

And in, I mean, it doesn't seem like you've addressed that at all. And in regards to probability, I just like to quote Mark Twain, he said there are lies, damn lies and statistics. Dr. Kevin, I think that's for you.

I didn't, I did not detect the question. Yeah, what question is about the historical accuracy, whether you believe there is any historical accuracy for the actual testimonials in the Bible, which is the entire argument that, yeah, I think he sees asking, yeah, is there the ability to construct a reliable historical picture of Jesus from the New Testament? Of course, there is. I would agree with anti-rights reconstruction to a large degree.

In fact, I think anti-right plays nicely into the hands of the anti-resurrectionist. And Mike, what do you think? Well, I think when it comes to the resurrection narratives in the gospels, I mean, I believe they're reliable, but they're a lot of part of it that I can't prove as a historian. And I mean, there are just certain things in the Bible we can prove with better certain.

We can prove Jesus was crucified. I believe that we can prove that he rose from the dead. I can't prove his virgin birth.

I can prove that he did deeds that appeared to be miraculous in nature. I can't prove that he walked on water. Does that mean I don't believe it? No, but I believe it by faith, not because historical investigation yields that sort of conclusion.

Thank you. Okay, great. Thank you for that question.

Josh, what's your question? Hi, my questions for Greg. You say you are of a proper methodology as logic. You say that there is not enough probability of God raising Jesus from the dead because of no prior examples of God doing so.

But my question is, it seems you have failed to address the prior historical evidence of prophetic history in which Jesus spoke. He was fulfilling, including his life, death, and resurrection. Therefore, isn't there a greater probability based on pre-historical writings of God's will for Jesus that God's will was to raise Jesus from the dead based on prior prophetic scriptures? And Jesus himself saying he was fulfilling those scriptures, including he was saying it was God and would be acting as God in full power and after being risen from the dead.

Based on this pre-historical explanation by the scriptures, how can you say there was no expectation? You have failed to address the prophecies of Jesus' life at death and resurrection as historical probability. My question is why does not this alone create higher plausibility that the expectation of God was to raise Jesus from the dead as immortal? Okay, thanks, Josh. Greg, why does an Old Testament prophecy in Jesus' own prophecies create an expectation that God would raise them? I did mention the view of James Robinson, who speaks for so many scholars, that the Old Testament gives us prophecies that the New Testament never fulfills.

The New Testament gives us fulfillments, the Old Testament never prophecies. For instance, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus comes riding in on two donkeys. That's because the author of Matthew misunderstands Hebrew synonyms parallelism.

He sees it repeated twice in the Hebrew. The Hebrew is only talking about one event, the author of Matthew completely misunderstands synonyms parallelism. You end up having Jesus ride in on two donkeys and Matthew not in Marker Luke.

That's an example of a prophecy that the Old Testament doesn't make that the New Testament fulfills. Matthew is full of things like this. There is nothing in the Old Testament that prophesies the coming of the kind of Messiah Jesus was supposed to be.

I think in T. Wright is correct that Jesus basically redefined what Messiah's ship was. There's nothing in the Hebrew Scriptures that prophesies that Jesus would rise from the dead, nothing. So that's not going to help us here.

I believe that Jesus probably predicted something based on possibly the justle and stone. He had some kind of a belief, I believe, that he would become alive again after he died. But certainly that's not enough evidence to change the low otherwise prior probability we have for the resurrection theory.

By the way, if you look behind me on that table, you'll see that my glass of water or my bottle of water is still on the table. It hasn't risen up once. And by the way, if God wanted it to, if he willed for it to, it would have risen.

Right now, I can tell you categorically God does not want that bottle to rise off the table. If he did, believe me, whatever God wants happens, it's stuck to that table. What do you think, Mike? What about prophecy? I would agree.

I would agree, first of all, that God probably doesn't want that bottle to raise off the table or it would. And likewise, he probably doesn't want the majority of the 100 billion people who lived on New York to raise at this point or he would have done it. There's no reason for him to have wanted to do it.

There are reasons for him to have wanted to raise Jesus from the dead if Jesus was who he claimed to be. And that's the game changer. In terms of prophecy, I haven't been a student of prophecy.

I remember looking at a lot of the things that people were claiming were prophecies like Jesus fulfilled over 300 and I wasn't impressed with the overwhelming majority of what they were claiming. Again, I haven't been a student of prophecy. I do think that there's some really cool stuff in Isaiah and the Psalms that seem to talk about the death of Jesus.

However, I do find it hard to see stuff that relates to his resurrection. I do think, as a historian though, that makes it kind of interesting because one of the main scriptures that the New Testament authors quote would be Psalm 1610 that says, you will not allow your holy one to see decay. That Psalm was written of David and so for the Christians to claim that as a fulfillment of prophecy for Jesus is remarkable in my opinion because it's like they would have claimed it and the Jew of that day would have said, are you kidding? That's referring to David and God did rescue him from death.

He didn't allow his body to see decay, meaning he didn't allow him to die. But we saw Jesus crucified the only reason that the Christians would use that in the earliest part of the church is because they had some experiences that really convinced them. Jesus had been raised from the dead.

They went to the scriptures to try to make sense of it and that's the verse that they made sense of it. So it's almost like they kind of had to force it, the prophecy there, going back based on their experiences of arisen Jesus. And that just seems to just convince me more that I think that's a good argument to show that the disciples truly had experiences that they believed were appearances of arisen Jesus.

Great. Thank you, Mike. We're going to take one more question and the discussion can continue among yourselves.

Mike will be around and so will Greg at least shortly after this. So you can continue to talk to them as well. Go ahead Chris, I believe it is.

Is that Chris? I can't see back there. Go ahead with your question though. No, the person with the mic, yeah.

Okay. Dr. Kevin, in the beginning of your talk you said the first premise was that God, it's unlikely for God to erase someone from the dead. Jesus was dead and for God did not raise Jesus from the dead.

And then you said that you agree with the Western deistic view of God. And I'm wondering if that's maybe the problem of your argument is that what if what if you changed your view of God to not the Western theistic which says that God is upstairs in humanities downstairs and God has no intervention but the Jewish Israel view of God which says that heaven and earth are interlocking realities and they would point to creation and temple the covenants and so on. And this is why I would like for you to respond to rights argument for the resurrection which is Christianity was a movement that proclaimed the kingdom of God how to come.

And the perception of the kingdom of God in the first century Judaism was that the temple review bill, the energy be defeated and so on. I'm sure Michael Cohen had to name the rest for me. Yet the Christians believe that the kingdom of God how to come was the explanation for that.

How did he get? And yet the temple was not rebuilt you know the Rome would still empower what happened and right would say the resurrection. What's your response to that? Well your argument your question is very complicated but it seems to me that you misunderstand what I meant by Western generic Western monotheism. Western generic monotheism includes Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism and Islam.

All those religions believe exactly what you were talking about so I think you simply misunderstand what Western generic monotheism is. It's simply the disjunction of Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam. Now if you want to repeat the second part you start talking about the temple and things like that I wasn't sure what you were driving at.

I guess I was just asking right would say the beliefs about God and first century Judaism was that the enemies that we destroyed and the temple review rebuilt and so Christianity became a movement that proclaimed that kingdom of God had come which should mean the temple should be built and the enemies be destroyed but that didn't happen so how did they become a movement to proclaim that kingdom of God had come even those things that didn't happen and what was saying. Mike and I don't disagree about one thing I agree with him I believe this for years that there's no doubt the disciples believed they had seen Jesus no doubt about this no doubt that the Christian movement sincerely believed that Jesus had risen from the dead at least they used that expression exactly what they ambiguous in his book on purpose because scholars not agreed on that so the question is not I think what you ask the question is not that they really believe and certainly that explains the fervor and everything that happened afterwards there's no doubt that the rise of the early church can be traced back to their belief the question is what caused their belief and to repeat myself once again Mike has not really given a hypothesis that gives an explanatory cause and he can bring up history in all this all he wants but just by the ordinary more basic fundamental criteria of logic he simply has not given what logicians would call an explanation and I'm sure that if we had secular historians in here we're listening to him they would say you know what that's not the way we apply this criteria Mike how is your theory different from an explanatory cause and not a hypothesis at all I want to say that Greg's hypothesis doesn't explain it either he doesn't explain the origin of the church or how they came the expansion of the church he doesn't explain how the appearance has happened by saying Jesus didn't rise from the dead his hypothesis explains absolutely nothing so it has no scope it has no power it's not really a hypothesis he can say Jesus didn't rise but he hasn't told us did he think that what were these appearances were they hallucinations what were they so he hadn't told us anything and so remember when we're comparing hypotheses let's just say he's right I think he's wrong in saying the resurrection hypothesis doesn't have explanatory scope or power but even even if he's right in saying it lacks it it still has more greater explanatory scope and power than what his has because at least mine tries to explain something his doesn't this just says Jesus didn't rise and hypotheses go by which one has greater explanatory scope which one has greater explanatory power he says well okay well historians secular historians would would disagree with me and how I'm applying the criteria well Bihan McCulloch is a prominent secular historian and a philosopher of history and he is on record to say and that the resurrection hypothesis has great explanatory scope and great explanatory power now he happens to think it's ad hoc and lacks implausibility and he and I have locked horns on this in the forthcoming issue of the southeastern theological review so it's something that we can disagree on but there's a historian there a secular historian philosopher of history who says resurrection hypothesis is great explanatory scope and power Greg do you want to give a closing comment and then we'll wrap things up well I just want to say in response to that again between a theory where I say he simply didn't rise to the dead very unspecific theory I grant and an x-man theory where we don't even know how it works clearly my theory must have although very very weak explanatory power and scope still it must have superior even slightly to mics and because my theory has greater plausibility than this for the reasons I've given and is no more ad hoc than his again my hypothesis satisfies mics criteria adequacy far better than his own theory well thank you that brings our 30 minutes of Q&A to a close I just like to thank Dr. Greg cabin for being with us thank you very much thank you thank you thank you Dr. Ramona thank you Mike thank you Missy please yeah thanks for joining us today if you'd like to learn more about the work and ministry of Dr. Mike Lacona visit RisenJesus.com where you can find authentic answers to genuine questions about the reliability of the gospels and the resurrection of Jesus be sure to subscribe to this podcast visit Dr. Lacona's youtube channel or consider becoming a monthly supporter this has been the Risen Jesus podcast a ministry of Dr. Mike Lacona.