What Do Statistical Mechanics Have to Say About Jesus' Bodily Resurrection? Licona vs. Cavin - Part 1

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What Do Statistical Mechanics Have to Say About Jesus' Bodily Resurrection? Licona vs. Cavin - Part 1

July 23, 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 Jairus, 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 was born. 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. Well, as I said, tonight's debate really is the conclusion of our broader series called the Jesus myth, mythological portraits of Jesus Christ in the media and in the church.

And this debate we are referring to as the Mars Hill debate because Paul in Acts 17 debated exactly this issue of the resurrection with the Greeks. In fact, in Acts, chapters 16 through 18, we see Paul over and over and over again after he gets kicked out of the synagogues for reasoning with the scriptures with the Jews. He then goes to the word in the Greek literally is debate with the Greeks.

And so what we're trying to do here at Antioch is bring back this incredibly biblical model of debate into the church. And specifically this topic of the resurrection, which was the main issue that Paul was interested in debating in earliest Christianity. And so tonight we come to ask the question, did Jesus rise from the dead? To my right, we have Dr. Michael and Kona defending that Jesus did in fact rise from the dead.

Dr. Lacona is the associate professor in theology at Houston Baptist University. Dr. Lacona, in my opinion, is the author of the most definitive, important defense of the resurrection in church history. And yes, that even includes in T. Wright's book on the resurrection.

You can pick up Mike's book out in the foyer. At a table out there, we have copies for sale. Can you please give a warm welcome to Dr. Michael Lacona.

On my left, we have Dr. Greg Cavan defending that Jesus did not in fact rise from the dead. Dr. Cavan is one of the world's experts on miracles and the resurrection. He is a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Cypress College.

He has a PhD in philosophy as one of the contributors anyway to what many consider to be the most important book leak critique of the resurrection, the empty tomb, Jesus beyond the grave. Can you please give a warm round of applause and welcome to Dr. Greg Cavan. Well, the format of this evening's debate will be as follows.

Each speaker will have 20-minute opening statements. These will be followed by two 12-minute rebuttals and then another two seven-minute rebuttals. And then we get to the interesting part in this evening's debate.

We're actually going to have a period of cross-examination where each of the speakers will have the opportunity to examine the other for five minutes on weaknesses. That they perceive in one another's arguments and we'll have three rounds of this. Mike will lead off and we'll go through three five-minute sessions of questioning at the end of the rebuttal period.

After that, we will have a time of concluding statements and we're going to give Dr. Cavan the final word since Mike will be opening. And then following the closing statements, we'll have a time of Q&A from the audience where you in the audience will be given the opportunity to ask your questions live at a Q&A, Mike in the back. And so stick around for that.

That is often one of the most fruitful times of the discussion. If you do have questions or if something's unclear, just jot it down on your insert for notes within your bulletin and we will address those questions as they come in. On the live Q&A, Mike, there's a number in your bulletins.

You can text in your questions. If we don't have enough questions on the mic, which I very seriously doubt, then we'll turn to those texting questions. So that is the basic format we're going to follow and Mike is going to lead off with his 20-minute opening statement.

Dr. Lucona. Well, thank you very much and good evening, everyone. It is wonderful to be here.

I would like to thank Andrew Pitts and the Antioch Church for inviting me to participate in tonight's debate. I've known Andrew for several years now and I've become increasingly more and more impressed with both the depth and breadth of his knowledge in the field of New Testament studies. And aside from that, he's a pretty cool guy.

I like his character. I like his knowledge. I like his clothes.

I like his hair. He's so handsome. He just makes you sick.

Anyway, I want to thank Greg Cavan, too. We had a little discussion prior to the debate and I'm really looking forward to a collegial time this evening. Well, the question being debated this evening is, did Jesus rise from the dead? This is a question of immense importance for the truth of the Christian worldviews, stands or falls on whether this event occurred.

The Apostle Paul wrote, if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless. Now, I've studied this question for several years as a historian and I'm going to be approaching it from that vantage point this evening. Before I get started, though, I want briefly to address two matters.

The first pertains to our expectations. Historians face the same challenges as archaeologists, geologists, and evolutionary biologists. They can't get into a time machine, return to the past, and verify their conclusions.

So, they employ method and they look for the most probable explanation, not absolute certainty, but the most probable explanation. So, this evening, my objective is going to be to establish that the resurrection hypothesis is the most probable explanation of the historical data, and thus should be regarded as an event that occurred in history. The second matter pertains to the limitations of historians.

Now, historians can determine that Jesus died by crucifixion. However, they have no tools whatsoever for determining whether Jesus' death atones for sin. What possible tool could they have for that? So, of necessity, the hypothesis offered by the historian, as historian, must be more modest than what the New Testament literature claims about Jesus' death.

In a similar manner, historians can, in my opinion, adjudicate on the matter and show that Jesus rose from the dead. However, there's no tools whatsoever for establishing theological components of Jesus' resurrection, such as that his resurrection body has all the eschatological qualities attributed to it in the New Testament literature, such as he could appear and disappear at will, that he sends a sending to heaven, or that he's there, that he's gotten sick or died since. We can't, as historians, do that or say that he's at the right hand of God.

There's just no tools historians can do, use for that. So, of course, my resurrection hypothesis is going to have to be more modest than what the New Testament literature claims of it. So, here's how I defined resurrection hypothesis on page 583 of my book and how I'm going to be defending it in this evening's debate.

Following a supernatural event of indeterminate nature and cause, Jesus was raised from the dead and appeared to a number of people in individual and group settings to friend and foe alike, and no less than an objective vision and perhaps within ordinary vision in his bodily raised corpse. Now, with these two matters stated, I'm now going to construct a positive historical case for Jesus' resurrection using two major building blocks, facts and method. Let's begin with the facts.

Now, I'm going to just march off a narrative that I'm borrowing from my friend and mentor Gary Habermas, and then I'm going to wrap that up with some facts from that. We start with Jesus' death by crucifixion. Historians are pretty unanimous that either happened in April of 30 or April of 33.

It's difficult to know which one, it's a toss-up, slight majority go with April of 30, so that's what I'm going to use this evening. It really doesn't matter. Shortly after that, there was a skeptic, a persecutor of the church named Paul, who had an experience that he interpreted as the risen Jesus appearing to him.

The experience radically transformed his life from being a persecutor of the church to one of its most able defenders. It's difficult to date that experience with precision. However, a lot of scholars will place that one to three years after the crucifixion.

Let's call it two years, and now we're in the year 32. Paul exchanged a lot of letters with the different churches, some of those he established, some he didn't, some of the individuals. There are 13 letters attributed to Paul in the New Testament.

Scholars are certain that he wrote seven of them, and the other six they debate over. Just to make things simple this evening, I'm only going to be citing from those letters written by Paul that were certain that Paul actually wrote. One such letter is Paul's letter to the church at Galatia.

In Galatians 1 verse 18, Paul says that three years after his conversion experience, 35, Paul goes up to Jerusalem and he meets with Peter the lead apostle there and spends 15 days with him. And he says he also saw James the brother of Jesus. It's interesting to note here that the Greek term that Paul uses for meet with Peter is hysteresae, from which we get the English term.

History. You see, Paul hadn't walked with Jesus. He wasn't familiar with all of his teachings.

So he wanted to get the whole nine yards from one of those who hadn't been and who better than Peter, the lead apostle. In Galatians 2 Paul says that 14 years later he went back up to Jerusalem. Text is a little bit ambiguous at this point.

We don't know if it's 14 years after his first visit or 14 years after his conversion. So we got to say 11 to 14 years after that or 16 to 19 years after Jesus' death by crucifixion. That places us somewhere between 46 and 49 AD.

Paul says the reason for going back up to Jerusalem was because he wanted to run the gospel message. Remember that gospel message that he had been preaching all these years. He wanted to run it past the pillars of the church and he names them Peter, James and John.

Second time meeting with Peter and James and then throwing John another of Jesus' closest disciples. He runs it past him because he wants to make sure he's preaching what they're preaching. He says so that I can ensure I hadn't been working in vain all these years.

Paul says that after hearing him they added nothing to what he had to say. They extended the right hand to fellowship to him. In other words they said, you're good Paul, keep up the good work brother.

So within 16 to 19 years of Jesus' death Paul says he's preaching the same things the Jerusalem apostles were on the gospel message. Now if all we had was Paul's word on the matter he might be telling the truth for all we know he wasn't. He was lying.

So her historians look for corroborating data and we're fortunate that we have it in this instance. Did you know that some of the apostles had disciples of their own? Peter had one named Clement of Rome, John had one named Polycarp. Anyone pregnant in here this evening? Some? Yeah, well if you end up having a boy just remember some of these names like Polycarp.

Now if Paul was teaching heresy we would expect Clement and Polycarp who wrote letters that we still have to chide and correct Paul on this. Not only do they not correct or chide Paul or speak poorly of them in any way they speak very laudatory of them. For example Clement places Paul on par with his mentor Peter.

Polycarp says that Paul and I quote accurately and reliably taught the message of truth both right after Paul's death. So this corroborates we got Paul saying they said he was teaching what they were teaching and then we have two of Peter and John's disciples saying yep Paul was teaching the word of truth he's teaching what they're teaching. So the nice part about this is when we're talking about the gospel message then we can be certain when we're here in Paul matter we're likewise hearing the voice of the Jerusalem apostles.

That's 46 to 49 A.D. A few years later Paul goes up to an ancient Mediterranean city named Corinth and he starts a church there. The first Baptist church of Corinth. And after establishing a church he leaves he goes and establishes new churches and around the year 55 he writes a letter back to the church of Corinth and answered some of their questions.

That letter we have is called first Corinthians we're going to spend a little time in that letter. Just to give you an idea though where the gospels are and I'm not really going to be using the gospels this evening. And Mark we don't know exactly when they're written 99 I'd say 99.9% of all New Testament scholars would say that they're all written in the first century.

The standard dating and these are disputed is Mark is written in the year 65 to 70 Matthew a little after that Luke a little after that John between 90 and 95. So 35 to 65 years after the crucifixion of Jesus relatively recent by ancient standards. The point I want to make though is first Corinthians and Paul's letters and first Corinthians is one of the latter ones that we'll be using.

First Corinthians is written at least a decade if not longer before the first gospels written. Now in chapter 15 Paul says verse one I want to remind you Corinthians of the gospel message that I preach to you and by which you were saved in continuous Christians. Wow the gospel message the very gospel message that he had endorsed by the apostles back here in that Clemente Polycarp said Paul was teaching the word of truth.

He's about to give this this gospel message. Ladies and gentlemen this is the kind of stuff historians dream of having. We're getting what the Jerusalem apostles were teaching certifiably what they were teaching.

Here's what Paul says. He says I delivered to you what I also received. Now remember when did he deliver to them.

This is 55 he delivered it to them in 51 when he set up the church and he received it before then and of course he's getting us from the Jerusalem apostles. I delivered you what I also received that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. And that he appeared needless six post resurrection appearances to Peter to the 12 to more than 500 to James to all the apostles and then Paul adds his own name to the list.

Three individual appearances Peter and James he'd already met with them twice remember and then Paul and then three group appearances. The group appearances are important because this strongly suggests that these aren't hallucinations since modern psychology suggests that group hallucinations are extremely rare if not impossible. Now a little about the nature of the appearances Paul doesn't mention an empty tomb.

So if I'm not using the gospels this evening how do we get you know how what Paul was teaching and the apostles teaching about resurrection. Couple verses later in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 20 Paul says Christ has been raised from the dead the first fruits of those who are sleep. In other words Christ is the first to be raised from the dead in a resurrection body that wouldn't die that was immortal all these kinds of really neat things that he could do.

This is what they're teaching. One's everybody else going to be raised. Blue believers Paul answers that three verses later he says each in his own order Christ the first fruits after that those who belong to him at his coming.

So Jesus is raised in the year 30 or 33 everybody else when Jesus returns. What happens to believers in the meantime Paul answers that elsewhere 2 Corinthians 5 he says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Philippians 1 he says you can die and be with Christ or remain in the body.

So the idea we have here with Paul and he also says the same thing pretty much in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 is that when a person dies their body is buried their spirit leaves their body and goes to be with Jesus in heaven and exists with him as a disembodied spirit. When they return when Jesus returns he brings the spirits back puts them back in the corpses resurrects the corpses and transforms them into an immortal glorious powerful body that's animated by the Holy Spirit. And so it's a physical bodily resurrection and if Christ is the first fruits of the dead and Jesus was right and we're going to be raised physically that means Jesus was raised physically.

So let me wrap it up here's what we have with our from the narrative this is what we have from the narrative. I'm going to give you four facts four facts fact number one is that just after and you can put the facts up now just after Jesus death shortly thereafter a number of his followers had experiences they interpreted as appearances of the risen Jesus. Number two these experiences occurred in both individual and in group settings.

Number three there was a skeptic and persecutor the church named Paul who likewise had an experience he interpreted as an appearance of the risen Jesus to him. And four the nature of these experiences were such that they believe that Jesus had been raised physically bodily from the dead. These are the four facts I'm going to be using this evening and we could see they have very strongly attested historically.

This leads us then to my second major building block method. What do we do with these facts? Well as I stated a few minutes ago historians can't get into a time machine and verify their conclusions. So they employ arguments of inference to the best explanation and use four general criteria for assessing hypotheses in this manner.

The first criterion is explanatory scope. This states the hypothesis accounting for the greatest number of relevant facts is to be preferred. In our case the resurrection hypothesis accounts for all four facts and thus it easily passes this criterion.

The second is explanatory power. Given the truth of the hypothesis would we expect to see our data at hand? Well if Jesus rose from the dead in confirmation of his claims we would expect all four facts. Thus the resurrection hypothesis easily passes this criterion as well.

The third criterion is less ad hoc. Ad hoc is a Latin term meaning for this. And hypothesis is ad hoc when it's contrived.

And we recognize a hypothesis as being ad hoc when there are no reasons for thinking it true other than it explains the fact. Now every hypothesis has a degree of ad hoc so we're looking for the one that is the least ad hoc. To illustrate we can account for the four facts I've just provided by postulating that undetectable gremlins from Saturn visited the earth in the early part of the first century.

They thought Jesus was self-deluded but they were appalled by what the Roman and Jewish leaders had done to him. So they reanimated his corpse, got inside and spoke through him to convince others he'd been raised from the dead in order to get back at the leaders. Now the gremlin hypothesis has fine explanatory scope and power.

However it's terribly ad hoc because it's contrived and there's no reasons for thinking it true other than it explains the facts. Well in comparison to what degree is the resurrection hypothesis ad hoc? Not very much. The four facts I presented earlier occur in a context charged with religious significance.

At the very minimum this context consists of three facts. Number one, Jesus claimed to have a special relationship with God. Two, Jesus taught that God had chosen him to usher in his kingdom.

And three, Jesus performed deeds that awed crowds and that both he and his followers regarded as divine miracles and exorcisms. All three of these facts are so strongly evidence that they are virtually undisputed by historians of Jesus today. Thus within this context if you had lived in the first century and seen Jesus within this context and you saw him executed and then a few days later you saw him alive you would normally conclude that he'd been raised from the dead.

And thus there's no, this hypothesis, the resurrection hypothesis is not contrived and the ad hoc component is minimal. The fourth criterion is plausibility. This criterion assesses the degree to which a hypothesis is compatible with our background knowledge.

The hypothesis that the disciples experienced mass hallucinations is incompatible with our background knowledge relative to psychological phenomena since the mental health, profession regards, group hallucinations as being extremely rare if not impossible. Thus the mass hallucination hypothesis is implausible. What about the resurrection hypothesis? Well our background knowledge relative to science and medicine informs us that the dead do not return to life unassisted or by natural causes.

We know that. However the resurrection hypothesis is that Jesus was assisted by a supernatural cause. And there's no scientific or medical knowledge that would tell us that a supernatural being could not raise Jesus from the dead.

In other words assisted. To illustrate this important nuance consider the plausibility of the statement that Ralph walked on lukewarm water unassisted. Well we know that's implausible given the laws of nature.

But suppose we change that hypothesis to Ralph walked on water assisted and that Ralph is a three year old. His dad has held his hands above his head supporting his weight completely and held him over his swimming pool allowing him to walk on water. That changes everything and what applied to Ralph unassisted does not apply to him assisted.

The same applies to the resurrection of Jesus. Of course it's implausible to say he was raised from the dead unassisted or by natural causes. But that's not the resurrection hypothesis.

So the resurrection hypothesis is not implausible. But is it plausible? Well over the past several months I've come to believe that it is. I've wrestled with this over several years and tried to be fair with my self on this.

But arguing such the positive plausibility would be take more time than I have in my 20 minute opening statement. So due to time limitations I'm going to be content this evening to argue that the resurrection hypothesis is not implausible. But even then the resurrection hypothesis still passes three of the four criteria with flying colors and doesn't fail the fourth.

Now that's far more than can be said about competing hypotheses. None of which can fulfill the criteria as well as the resurrection hypothesis. Now of course I don't have time to deal with all naturalistic hypotheses this evening and defend the resurrection or build a positive case as well.

I have addressed the ridiculous one, the gremlin hypothesis and a popular one, the mass hallucinations. So in conclusion I want to issue a challenge to Greg this evening. I challenge him to present and defend what he thinks happened to Jesus.

I can't deal with him all but I can deal with his naturalistic hypothesis. Tell us what he thinks, defend it and I can guarantee the resurrection hypothesis will still come on top because by far it is the best historical explanation of the data and thus should be regarded as an event that occurred in history. Thank you.

Well first of all I'd like to thank you for inviting me to come and be in this debate. I'd like to thank Mike for agreeing to be in the debate and I'd like to thank Andrew and Chris for arranging this and putting it all together. I think it's wonderful that your church is a very intellectual church and is probing these issues and questioning and debating so I think you owe yourself a round of applause for being this kind of church.

Then I'd like to also ask you this, how many of you in the room are Christians tonight? Just a show of hands, so vast majority. Are there any skeptics in the audience? I've been acquainted in that and so it's a few. Okay.

Let's talk about the other of the resurrection. Be on my side now. When you look at Mike's argument tonight you're going to see him doing just this, straining gnats while swallowing whole camels.

Let's talk about the resurrectionist. Hey, Jones, look, there's a gnat in your soup. But Smith, I see.

Yeah, I see. There's a camel in the resurrectionist soup. I'm going to talk tonight about 15 deadly camels of the resurrection.

And the first one I'm going to talk about now is, the skeptic falsely assumes that God does not exist and therefore the skepticism about the resurrection is unjustified. This is not an issue tonight in this debate. It's a myth.

The existence of God is not an issue. As St. Paul himself called it, it's a false stumbling block. It's a red herring.

I'm going to assume tonight not only that the God of Western traditional theism exists, I'm going to assume that he's been proven to exist. So that's simply going to be a non-issue and our debate. Number two, that the resurrection cannot occur by purely natural means.

In fact, that's wrong. Let's take a look at the resurrectionist in this argument. Resurrection from the dead by purely natural means has super low prior probability.

But my hypothesis is that Jesus was raised from the dead supernaturally. I can show you easily that resurrection from the dead by natural means is not improbable at all. In fact, it's simply a matter of moving atoms in the body from their dead state to their living state.

In fact, this is being worked on right now by Alcor in Scottsdale, Arizona. You can actually buy for $50,000 a stainless steel tube that'll put you in it and raise you from the dead later in the future when they have the medical nanotechnology to do it. So natural resurrection from the dead is not by any means impossible or likely.

Behold, natural resurrection via what we might call the Christ and Stein machine. Who knows? Let's turn to, I think what Mike's main objection is going to be, I call this divine interference objection. The skeptic wrongly ignores God's supernatural action in history by saying the resurrection has a low prior probability.

Let's take a look at the argument the skeptic gives. You skeptics ignore God, but prior probability must be based on God's supernatural power. The 100 billion people who've died and stayed dead prove at most that when God does not intervene, the dead stayed dead.

However, if God wanted to raise Jesus and it's 100% probable that the resurrection would occur. Considering the analogy, floating above water in your swimming pools, look, here I am floating above water in my swimming pool. Mike wants to say skeptics dismiss this because they exclude the possibility of God as an external agent.

They say, I think I just lost my microphone. But all bets are off, Mike says, if we take into account God's supernatural power as an external agent. So look, here's an external agent holding me up from the water, right? That's certainly as possible.

Likewise, Mike says you can't say that a resurrection has a low prior probability because doing so ignores the supernatural intervention of God. Well, he says you employ too far of a simplistic manner of determining prior probabilities by leaving out God. What's more, Mike says, God is a free agent and as a free agent, we can't know a priori what it is that God would will to do.

Because of this, we're forced to say the prior probability of the resurrection, Mike says, is inscrutable. So finally, there's a challenge. The challenge is this.

If the prior probability of the resurrection is low, then I, the skeptic, need to give the necessary background information to show, in fact, that it is low. Well, I say to this, no problem. Okay, I'm going to show you right now.

I agree that God is all powerful. I agree he is all knowing. I agree he's morally perfect.

I agree that he can supernaturally intervene in the world any way he wants to. However, that is irrelevant. God made the laws of science.

He can overturn them when he wants to. They have no power over him. All that's true.

So then how can I say that the resurrection of Jesus by God as a supernatural event, not a natural event, but as a supernatural event, has a low prior probability. Well, it's very easy. Well, possibility is not probability.

Second of all, if does not mean does. If God will not turn into a gigantic green cucumber, then indeed I will turn into a gigantic green cucumber. But it's very unlikely that God will such a thing.

The problem here is that God can supernervine the fact that he can doesn't mean that it's likely that he will. So let's return to Mike's swimming pool analogy. Take a look at the pictures here.

It's not unlikely for me to be able to float on the water by buoyancy on my own. That's possible very likely. And even though it's possible, it's not very likely that someone's going to pick me up and carry me in the water, letting me float above the area of the water.

That's possible but not very likely. Observation shows that the frequency of external agents lifting me out of the water is very low indeed. And while it's scientifically possible, believe it or not, to float above the water without physical support, it's very, very unlikely that this would happen.

And probability theory shows that this is even more unlikely if God were to cause it to happen. So there is the hand of God that's even more unlikely yet. We now have an event that is astronomically improbable, a supernatural action.

It's a blatant straw man by the way to say that we have to determine what God would do by a priori means. The problem with Mike is that he ignores God's self-revelation through nature. We can determine a posteriori by looking at nature what God will do.

To see why supernatural intervention by God is antecently improbable, we have to look at two things, natural theology and specifically at the via negativa, the way of negation. So let's turn to St. Augustine of Hippo who said, nature is the will of God. There it is in Latin.

Most commodities, a great Jewish theologian, added that we can know about God by seeing what he does not do what he's not, by the via negativa, the way of negation. We learn about God by seeing what he is not. So God's self-revelation in nature shows that he has an exceptionally strong tendency not to interfere supernaturally in the course of nature.

We hardly ever see God intervening supernaturally. God removes himself in the situation. We can see more specific God reveals every day in our every day experience and in science that he possesses an exceptionally strong tendency not to supernaturally raise dead people from the dead.

I know so far of no dead people who God has raised from the dead in my own life. Since when God wills to happen and must happen, it follows that the antecedent probability that God will rule that Jesus Christ and dead is astronomically low. And since God is omnibenevolent, it follows me to have the best reasons for choosing not to raise Jesus from the dead.

All right, this enables me to form the following anti-resurrection prior probability argument. Let's take a look at it. 99.999999% of the dead are not supernaturally interfered with by God, and he does not raise them from the dead.

Jesus was dead, so it's virtually certain that Jesus was not supernaturally raised from the dead by God. There you have it, a supernatural resurrection of Jesus from the dead by God has a extremely low prior probability. This is an instance of a very important kind of argument form called statistical syllogism.

Okay, I'm going to have to step back as I can't read this very well, and I have to do what you have to bear with me here. Let me talk briefly why I think the resurrection is not a very good explanation. This is camel number four.

Resurrection say the resurrection is a good explanation. I want to argue that it's not. There are four major problems here.

First of all, as the resurrection theory becomes a viciously circular explanation. Suppose we ask why did individuals and groups, both friends and foes, experience appearances and objective visions, or with an ordinary vision of Jesus in his bodily upraised corpse? And suppose we're told that simple. I explain the fact that these people experience these appearances of Jesus by means of the resurrection hypothesis, which I explicitly define as the hypothesis that these very same people had these very same experiences.

If someone gave an argument like that, we would call it blatantly circular, and that is exactly what Mike has done. Let's take a look at his definition here. I define the resurrection hypothesis follows.

Following a supernatural event of an indeterminate nature and cause, notice what he says. Jesus an objective vision and perhaps with ordinary vision in his bodily raised corpse. All he's telling you is that these people have these experiences because these people have these experiences.

It's a viciously circular explanation. It's logical. Illogical.

You cannot define the resurrection theory in terms of the fact you're trying to explain the way Mike has done. So I'm going to challenge him tonight to give me a non-circular explanation of why the appearances in the empty tomb occurred. This leads to our second problem for the resurrection theory.

Once you no longer define it as a circular explanation, you'll see it completely lacks explanatory scope and explanatory power. To see this, let's look at the parable of Mr. Jones. Let us suppose Jones' house is found empty by Peter John and the two Marys.

Let's suppose later that morning, Jane Jones is seen by the two Marys. Later that day, Jones is seen at the club by his employees. And three years later, Jones is seen up in the cloud skydiving.

Now, suppose we asked why was Jones' house found empty and someone says to us, well, that's simple. It's because Jones woke up. Well, we would reject that as a completely preposterous explanation.

That's no explanation. To explain why Jones' house is found empty, we'd have to say that he left his house. Now, suppose we ask why Jones was seen by the two Marys and we're told, well, that's easy.

It's because he woke up. Again, that is a completely explanation. It doesn't tell us what we need to know.

We have to suppose that he encountered them to be able to explain why they saw him. Let's suppose why Jones was seen by his employees at the club and we're told yet again, well, that's simple. It's a snap because Jones woke up.

Well, again, that's a completely bogus explanation. To explain why he's seen at the club, we have to again suppose that Jones encountered his employees at the club. And suppose now we ask why Jones was seen skydiving three years later and suppose we're told, well, that's obvious.

It's because Jones woke up three years earlier. We would completely dismiss this as ridiculous explanation. Okay, so here we'd have to suppose Jones jumped out of an airplane to explain what we're trying to explain.

So let's suppose what we're really trying to explain here is not Jones skydiving, but something entirely different. Let's say Jones was seen floating about the clouds in heaven and re-spun the glory. And let's suppose we asked someone, well, what's the explanation for this? And they say, well, that's obvious.

It's because Jones woke up. Well, we would say that is absolutely preposterous, utterly. We would say we have to explain why Jones is floating the clouds in glory, and we have no explanation of that.

And you can see the resurrection is doing exactly this with the resurrection theory. Here's the moral of my parable. The hypothesis that Jesus rose from the dead can no more explain the empty tomb and the appearances to the witnesses than can the hypothesis that Jones rose from his bed explain his empty house and the appearances he made later that day and three years later.

For the resurrection theory to explain the empty tomb and the appearances, we're going to have to add assumptions. We're going to have to add more than the resurrection theory. We're going to have to talk about the post-mortem activities of Jesus that actually went out and found the women, that he went to the disciples, that somehow he was able to ascend up into the sky, up into heaven, and appear from there.

In fact, we'll have to add at least two hypotheses to the resurrection theory that Jesus could ascend and that somehow once he got up there, wherever heaven is, he was able to figure out what was going down on earth. And once he knew that, he was able to produce visions of glory of himself up in heaven. Well, we can see that left to its own device is the resurrection theory lacks explanatory power and explanatory scope.

The bare resurrection theory alone is not sufficient. We have to add more to it. That leads me to the third problem for the resurrection theory.

The resurrection theory is extremely ad hoc and exactly the way Mike was talking about because these assumptions that have to be added to it are not entailed, they're not implied by the resurrection theory, nor are they implied by our existing knowledge. They are completely additions that are highly improbable and questionable. My fourth problem for the resurrection theory.

Let's suppose we go back to Mike's definition of the resurrection, but strip it now of those features that make it viciously circular. What we're left with is this, a supernatural event of an indeterminate nature and cause involving Jesus as a bodily raised corpse. That's all we have left once we take out the parts that make a deliciously circular explanation.

Here's the problem. The problem now is that the resurrection theory becomes so indeterminate, indeterminate we really don't know what to say about Jesus. Jesus becomes a veritable X man on Mike's theory.

We don't know what an indeterminate cause is. Is he composed of atoms or is he composed of some unknown something else that for lack of a better term we can call schmatoms. What I want to give you my atoms and schmatoms explanatory dilemma.

What I want to argue is that there are two possibilities. On the one hand we could say that Jesus was composed of atoms. On the positive side that meant he could interact with the physical world.

He could be seen, heard, touched, pick up meat, eat fish. He can move about without passing through the people's bodies, things like that. He can be seen by Mary Magdalene for instance, in the disciples and to Paul.

Yet the question resurrectionist can't answer is how this is supposed to explain it. So far they've not done this. Mike's not done it yet.

He's assumed but he's not explained. There are only two possibilities here both possibilities fail. The first one is as I said horn one atoms.

I want to ask Mike tonight is the body of Jesus made out of atoms the resurrected body. If it is we have big problems in explaining the appearance to Paul. A body of atoms cannot explain the appearance to Paul.

You can't really explain the other appearances as well. On the positive side as I said a body of atoms can interact with the physical world but on the negative side we have that someone who's made of atoms is physically weak. They're subject to injury, decay, to aging, they're mortal, they'll die again and the thing is they'll know all this.

They know they're stuck to the earth, they know they can't go up to heaven. So imagine now if Jesus had simply been resurrected by God supernaturally with atoms. Then he would not be the triumphant savior we see in the gospels.

He would know that he could die again. He would know if soon as he gets out and to Jerusalem it's over for him a second time. He's not going to be any kind of triumphant savior.

He's not going to appear to the disciples the way he did. He's not going to walk through doors through them. He's not going to disappear from Emmaus and appear in the upper room.

He's not going to send up to heaven and appear to Paul three years later. None of this can be explained if you assume that Jesus was made out of atoms. Plus even if he weren't killed by the Romans Jesus would soon die again by natural causes.

You would not have Christianity the way you have it today. The resurrection theory on a Jesus made of atoms has no explanatory power. It has no explanatory scope.

Around this you have to add ad hoc hypotheses. They're not entailed by the resurrection theory as Mike stated it as something that is indeterminate nor can you explain it by adding in the ad hoc hypotheses because they're not accounted for. They're not implied by our existing knowledge.

Let's turn to the second part of my dilemma. Well I didn't have time to talk about this. Even if you assume Jesus was made of atoms it doesn't mean that he was made in human form of atoms.

So you could have alien Jesus, you could have beast Jesus. And the point is there's nothing in Mike's hypothesis that tells us the form in which Jesus was resurrected. Mike's hypothesis is that an indeterminate cause, indeterminate nature, right, appeared to these people.

So if you have something that's indeterminate you can't say what form it will take. So you can't say it has its planetary power. The only way Mike can get around this is by saying it's no longer indeterminate by having specific features the risen Jesus has.

It's not enough to say he simply became back to life again. He has to be more concrete thesis. So I'll stop at this point, pick it up when I have my next 12 minutes.

Well at this time we are going to move into the rebuttal phase of the debate. And Mike is going to start out with a 12 minute rebuttal to Greg's opening statement. Welcome Dr. Mike Lincoln again to the podium.

Well thank you Greg. In my opening statement I constructed a positive historical case for Jesus resurrection using two major building blocks facts and method. I'd like now to review that case in light of what Greg just offered.

Let's begin with my facts. And here I offered four. Number one shortly after Jesus' death a number of his followers had experiences.

Do you need me to stay in the middle? They had experience that they interpreted as the risen Jesus appearing to them. Two, these experiences occurred in both individual and in group settings. Three, Paul a skeptic and persecutor the church also had an experience.

He interpreted as the risen Jesus appearing to him. And four, the nature of their experiences was such that they believe that Jesus had been raised physically bodily from the dead. Now all four of those facts went uncontested in Greg's opening statement.

And so I don't know what he thinks about them for but for purposes of this evening's debate they still stand. This leads us then to my second major building block method. And here I contended that historians employ arguments of inference to the best explanation and employ the four criteria for the best explanation to assess hypotheses to see which is the best one.

These are explanatory scope, explanatory power, less ad hoc and plausibility. And this is where Greg takes issue with my case this evening. I had argued that the resurrection hypothesis fulfills these better than any other naturalistic hypothesis.

Let's see how he responded. First of all, in terms of explanatory scope and power, he gives the example of Jones waking up and going parachuting, falling out of the sky. He says that this is pretty similar to the resurrection hypothesis.

But it has to assume too much in terms of Jesus that he's in heaven and all of this stuff. And so it lacks explanatory scope and power. Assuming if I was making any assumptions about Jesus being in heaven that he's looking down and he wants to appear to people and visions and all this, that wouldn't be explanatory scope and power.

That would be ad hoc. So he's confusing the criterion here. It doesn't lack explanatory scope because as he pointed out the Jones thing, it does cover all that.

The Jones hypothesis that he woke up would have explanatory scope, would have explanatory power. And so does the resurrection hypothesis. It is the kind of things that we would expect if Jesus was raised, say, physically bodily from the dead.

But what about the ad hoc criterion? He says, well, it's ad hoc because we have to assume too much. Things like Jesus was comprised of atoms. But then you have to assume that they were atoms rather than schmatoms.

And I guess we can call Western and give you a new coin, a new term there. So, and so he says because of this, we can't conclude that Jesus' body could do all these wonderful things that it's in heaven today, that it's immortal, glorious and so forth. This is what his essay in that book was about.

And he's right. I didn't respond to it. I hadn't read that essay.

I'm embarrassed to say at that point when I wrote my dissertation. But I think it's still a very, very weak argument. Do you recall that I said in my opening statement that just like historians can't, they can show that Jesus died by crucifixion, but they can't show his death, the tones for sins, and therefore their hypothesis about Jesus' death of necessity must be more modest than what the New Testament literature claims of it.

So we can say Jesus died by crucifixion, but we can't say as historians that his death of tones for sins. We don't deny it. We just can't affirm it as historians.

The same applies here. And this is, I think, is just a devastating critique of Greg's entire essay, which I just think is just completely mistaken. Historians don't have to verify everything that the New Testament says in order to verify some things.

Historians can verify lots about Jesus in the New Testament. I gave three facts that virtually 100% of scholars study in Jesus today acknowledge whether they be Jewish, agnostic, atheist, liberal, conservative Christian, they all acknowledge that Jesus performed deeds that all the crowds and that he and his followers regarded as divine miracles and exorcisms, that he taught of things, that he thought he had a special relationship with God, that God had chosen him as his agent to usher in his kingdom. These are virtually acknowledged all these things by 100% of New Testament scholarship today, even very skeptical ones.

So they can verify these things by learning from the New Testament literature and they don't accept the resurrection, but they would accept these other things. So I'm saying you've got to have, as historians, we have more modest hypotheses. I think as a historian that we can verify that Jesus was raised from the dead.

I think that we can show this. I think we can show it was a supernatural cause. We know this doesn't happen by natural causes contrary to what Greg said.

He said he was going to offer an argument. We never heard that. So people don't come back by natural causes from the dead, especially executed people.

You don't have any scourge and crucified person who dies and then comes back from the dead naturally. That's implausible. Such a hypothesis would fail the plausibility criterion.

It wouldn't be what we would expect. So it fails the hot or the explanatory power. It would have explanatory scope.

Well, it wouldn't even have that because it wouldn't explain how the disciples in Paul came to believe Jesus had been raised physically. You got to remember if Jesus was raised naturally, not by supernatural cause, he came back to life after being scourged and crucified. Think of what he would look like.

Do you think he's going to convince them that he had been raised in a immortal resurrection body? Peter's saying, gosh, Jesus, I can't write out of a resurrection body just like yours. That's not going to happen. So it doesn't have explanatory scope.

It doesn't have explanatory power. It's terribly ad hoc. It's completely contrived.

I've just showed that it's implausible. The natural resuscitation or resurrection hypothesis fails every criterion for the best explanation, whereas the resurrection hypothesis passes three of the four with flying criteria and doesn't fail the fourth. Now Greg says, so he does say the natural resuscitation or resurrection hypothesis is not unlikely.

I really look forward to hearing his reasons for that. Greg then says that it's unlikely that God would raise Jesus from the dead because God gives us self-revelation through nature. Well, it seems to me that this makes one terrible non-evidentist assumption.

It assumes that God, creating natural law, would have chosen to always work and give us revelation through nature. Maybe Greg can give us some reasons for this. I don't see any reason why this would be the case.

It also assumes that God wouldn't have any reasons whatsoever for overriding the natural laws he created. Well, I can think of one real quickly. Maybe he would override the laws of nature in order to get the attention of humans who are just going to be looking at nature.

Well, a miracle happened here. Well, God did it and he does it to get his message across. So we can see that there would be a very plausible reason for why God would override his law.

So there's no reason to believe that he's only going to give us revelation or speak to us through natural law. Then Greg says, he talks about relative frequency. We don't see God raising people from the dead.

There have been 100 billion people estimated to live and die on our earth. And we don't bracketing Jesus at least. We don't have any good evidence of God raising any of those.

And so therefore, the prior probability of Jesus being raised from the dead is, let's say, one in 100 billion or something like that, one chance on 100 billion. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a really bizarre way of calculating probability when it comes to historical investigation. This is why historians don't do these kinds of things with these kind of statistical inferences.

Imagine if historians were to do that with the hypothesis that the US dropped nuclear bombs on Japan in World War II. In all of human history, how many nuclear bombs have one nation dropped on another prior to World War II or after? It's never happened. So we therefore say that the prior probability of the US dropping nuclear bombs on Japan is one chance on 100 billion? Of course not.

That's an insane way of doing history. Not saying you're insane, friend. Not saying it.

It's just a crazy way of doing history. Historians don't do that. We would look at the evidence.

There's the claim the US dropped nuclear bombs on Japan in World War II. What's the evidence? We assess the evidence and then we look at different hypotheses and we choose a hypothesis that best explains the evidence. Prior probabilities don't work in this way.

Besides, even if we were to use a prior probability, they're often easily overcome by evidence. Imagine that we have a ferry that has successfully crossed the Mississippi River tens of thousands of times without incident during the past 50 years. One day let's say I'm down by the river and I see a guy with a sad face and he tells me that he just saw the ferry sink and all of its passengers carried downstream.

The prior probability established by tens of thousands of successful crossings without a single incident is easily overcome by just a slight amount of testimony. Again ladies and gentlemen, historians don't use this kind of probability for historical hypotheses. They use arguments of inference to the best explanation and we've seen how resurrection hypothesis fulfills three of the four criteria with flying colors and doesn't fail the fourth.

Remember, explanatory scope is you got to count for all the facts. Resurrection hypothesis does that. Explanatory powers, given the truth of the hypothesis, would we expect these? In other words, does it account for the facts without forcing them to fit? Of course not.

The resurrection hypothesis goes hand in glove with those four facts that Jesus, that a number of people thought that he had been raised and appeared to them, individual group settings, friend and foe alike and they thought he'd been raised physically, bodily from the dead in a resurrection immortal body that fits hand in glove. Is it ad hoc? Again, not within the context if we consider the context in which all this occurs. It's kind of like saying this.

Say we got a blind man walking down the street with his wife. He's been born blind, never seen, never prayed for a sight. He's an atheist and all of a sudden he gets a sight.

Is that a miracle? I tend to think not. It's just an anomaly. But let's suppose same scenario, same guy, atheist, born blind, never prayed for a sight walking down the street with his wife and a guy walks up to him, a total stranger and says, in the name of Jesus, you will now see and at that point he gets a sight.

Is that a miracle? I think so. But what's the difference between the two? The latter occurs in a context charged with religious significance. It's more than just coincidence.

And so this is not ad hoc in any way because the evidence for Jesus' resurrection occurs in such a context as this. And again, it's not implausible because there's nothing in science and medicine that says that someone a supernatural cause cannot raise someone else from the dead. So we can still see then, therefore, that not only do my facts stand, but the method is still in place and the resurrection hypothesis remains the best explanation for the historical data and thus should be regarded as an event that occurred in history.

Thank you. I'm going to put the computer up here because I don't like looking at the side screens. Is that okay? I want to say that Mike has not responded to my specifics.

I pointed out the God has a strong tendency not to raise the dead. His attempt to refute that was by saying it's possible God could raise the dead. Well, of course it's possible that's not the issue.

The issue is God has an exceptionally strong tendency to raise the dead, not to raise the dead, and to not to intervene supernaturally. Mike has not addressed that. Let's talk about horn number two, which I call schmatoms.

We don't know what schmatoms are. Look at the picture. They're my little graphic.

Schmatoms are a complete unknown. Mike talks about Jesus being transformed into some holy other kind of life. Maybe he's outside of space time.

Maybe so. Maybe he's the so many maticon talked about Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, an impartial body that cannot die, cannot age, that is strong, weak, powerful, strong and powerful. Let's say that's right.

There is no way to guesstimate from the indefinite theory that Mike gives us which of these possibilities is correct. If you have an indeterminate cause, you can't say whether it's atoms, you can't say whether it's schmatoms. You simply can't say one way or the other.

And because you can't say, you have to look at both possible explanations. So the atom's explanation is very weak indeed. What about schmatoms? Well, what does a risen body look like? Maybe it looks like this on the schmatoms definition.

Maybe it looks like something like this, right? Mike gives us an indefinite theory. Does the risen Jesus look anything at all like a man? Now, of course, Mike can change his theory tonight. I ask him to do that and tell us that the risen Jesus looked like he looked like when he was a man on earth.

But his indefinite hypothesis can't do this. Maybe schmatoms, Jesus looks like this. Now, here's the point.

There is no way to even guesstimate what kind of effects what Jesus would do if he were raised this way by God. We have no idea what he would be, no idea what he would do. This leads to a very negative consequence.

Here's Mary trying to schmatoms don't interact with the real world, right? Light will pass right through a schmatom, Jesus. So the disciples, Mary, would not be able to see him in the first place. So here we have an explanatory power of exactly zero, no explanation at all.

What we have here is the true X-man hypothesis. If you have an indefinite theory, you have an X-man. You can't say what the risen Jesus is one way or the other.

Again, I ask Mike tonight and I challenge him to specify what the risen Jesus actually is and tell us how Jesus is able to be seen and touched and heard by the disciples and the women in Paul. Is he made out of atoms? Did they actually see light? Or is he made out of schmatoms and at some special supernatural power given by God? So far, Mike does not have an explanation of the appearances or the empty tomb because he did not explain to us how Jesus is able to be perceived by the different people. Here you have no explanation at all and I want to flip over to the slide.

You have a probability of zero in both in the second case. So either way, whether you go atoms or schmatoms, we have a very weak explanation for the empty tomb and the appearances. So here I have a graphic showing you the probability of the tomb and the appearances on our X-man theory, which is equal to this.

The first of those two terms are unknowns. One is very zero. When you put all that together, for a power and scope put together of the resurrection theory is simply very low and unknown exactly how low it is, but it's certainly not to hide the way Mike thinks it is.

Mike thinks the resurrection theory alone satisfies the criteria of adequacy. I say that's a myth. Let's take a look at a chart for Mike's book.

He looks at all these other theories and then he finally looks at the resurrection theory. He says pass, pass, pass, pass all the way through. What I've shown is that the resurrection theory cannot account for Paul, it lacks scope.

It can't account for the appearance to the disciples because we don't know what the reason Jesus was the same thing for the women. We don't have scope for the same reason we don't have power. I showed that the resurrection theory is highly mechanics.

Statistical mechanics tells us that microstates having the same energy have the same a priori probability. In fact, this is known as the postulate of equal a priori probabilities. Mike does not talk about this in his book.

Now, the name equal a priori probabilities is a misnomer. That makes it sound like it's all a priori. It's not.

The principle is actually a very well empirically confirmed postulate that explains a great wealth of data from various branches of science. So even though it's called the principle of equal a priori probabilities, it's actually an op-hostiary principle. Now, statistical mechanics tells us this.

It tells us even if God has a chosen people, he has no chosen microstates. What I mean by that is all microstates having the same energy have exactly the same degree of probability. God does not change that.

Now, the microstates of Jesus together with its surroundings were of equal energy because all that Jesus in his surroundings did was interchange energy between themselves in the form of heat work, things like that. But the equal problem of microstates in which the corpse of Jesus is dead vastly outnumber those in which he is alive. So if you look at the graphic up here or over here, you'll see microstates of death.

That's where the body is being decompartmentalized. Over here, you see microstates of life. That's where the body remains compartmentalized.

There are gazillions of microstates of death and decomposition, but there's relatively few microstates of life. In fact, look at my graph that you'll see right now a living person compartmentalized. Gradually, he dies and deep compartmentalization takes place.

Each of those microstates has the same probability. Watch it again. You'll see a hole open up in the head and eventually everything spills out.

You get equilibrium. Now, let's look at a resurrection. You begin with equilibrium and God supernaturally caused the particles to come and form a human being again, right? A living human being, not a dead human being.

The problem here is that if all microstates have the same equal a priori probability, then because there are gazillions of more microstates of death and decomposition and relatively few of life, that means at each stage of Jesus, once he's dead, it becomes increasingly probable it'll go on to the next stage of death and decomposition that he will not be resurrected by God. So here's a objection based on science too. Not on frequencies.

So if someone tells you God and science don't mix, in fact, science has strong implications for God. It doesn't say what God can't do. It shows what it's unlikely for God to do.

So it follows that the prior probability of a specifically supernatural resurrection of Jesus is astronomically low. Again, verifying my comment earlier in my grid that the resurrection theory has the lowest plausibility of all. Now, Mike might want to say this, my argument can't be right because prior probability must be based on total evidence, something we don't possess.

But that misunderstands the total evidence requirement. The total evidence does not require that the total evidence must be used in reaching a conclusion. That's for postures because we never have the total evidence on anything.

Mike's heir here is to leave out the keyword available in his book. You never see this, right? What the requirement of total evidence actually states is that the total available relevant evidence must be used in determining the probability of a conclusion. And you get this if you read Wesley Salmon's book on inductive logic among others.

My argument based on the evidence, on natural theology, states the total available relevant evidence to the resurrection. All this boils down to two points. God has an extraordinarily weak tendency to raise a dead or strong tendency not to raise a dead and Jesus was dead.

Now, what about the skeptic ignores the oligo-historical context of the resurrection that Mike brought up? I want to say that Smith. Do I have five more or is that that includes the five? Okay. What I will do is I'll defer to Mike and I'll come back and pick up this point following Dr. Cavan.

At this time, we'll have two seven-minute rebuttals. Dr. Michael O'Connell will lead off. Please welcome Dr. Michael O'Connell back to the podium.

Okay. Well, let's just continue with the debate this evening. And again, in my opening statement, I constructed a case for resurrection using two major building blocks facts and method.

I gave four facts over here. These still remain uncontested by Greg. And so we just go with method.

And this is where we continue to debate this evening where the issue lies. I presented arguments of inference to the best explanation is how historians work. And we use explanatory scope, explanatory power, less hat-hock and plausibility.

And I've been arguing that the resurrection is by far the best historical explanation in terms of fulfilling those four criteria for the best explanation. Greg comes back and he says, well, the resurrection hypothesis does lack explanatory scope and explanatory power because it doesn't describe the resurrection body. That is not scope and power.

That has to do if I were to do that because I can't go that far as a historian. I can't talk about all the eschatological attributes of Jesus' resurrection body because I just can't do that as a historian. You know, he's saying, I'm supposed to as a historian tell what it's like for Jesus in heaven right now.

How on earth could I do that? Greg is not schooled in the philosophy of history. He's not a historian. And I think we're seeing some of the reasons for some of his arguments in this this evening.

You can't do this as a historian. It doesn't mean I'm lacking explanatory scope and power. It just means I'm not going beyond what the evidence can bear.

And this wouldn't be scope and power anyway. It would be ad-hock. So he's confusing this with the ad-hock criterion.

Again, I'm only going as far as the evidence can bear. In terms of ad-hock, he says, well, he's challenging me. He wants, I challenge Mike to tell us whether Jesus' resurrection body is made of atoms because if so, it's a weak body.

Well, I don't know what Jesus' resurrection body is made out of. I don't know what resurrection bodies are made out of. I don't know what supernatural bodies are comprised of.

If they're material, what kind of material, if it's atoms like we have here, if it's a different, since it's a different dimension, what's in that dimension, I can't answer that as a historian. And I'm not going to try to. I could answer it perhaps as a theologian or philosopher, but not as a historian.

So it's not ad-hock. He didn't follow the plausibility anymore, but he did say, he talked about discussing the state of molecules of death. Well, that's fine and everything, but it only tells us what molecules do at the state of death, given a natural body that has no intervention by God, period.

Now, he says, he wants us to know what his hypothesis is. It's just that Jesus wasn't raised. That's the best hypothesis.

Well, and he says, that fulfills the criteria for the best explanation better than the others. No, it doesn't. In fact, as Lydia McGrew says, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, the most probable thing to occur is nothing.

There's no hallucinations. There's no group hallucinations. Paul doesn't become a Christian, and the Christian movement just falls apart, and we don't have anything today.

That's the most probable thing to happen if Jesus didn't rise from the dead. But we have these things. So in other words, let's say Jesus didn't rise from the dead.

That's a hypothesis. Would we expect things, what we would expect would be nothing. But instead, we've got appearances to all his friends or his followers in individual and in group settings.

We even have one to a foe. We wouldn't expect that. And they come to this conclusion that Jesus has been raised physically bodily from the dead.

That's lack in explanatory power. It can't account for these, any of these facts. So it lacks explanatory scope.

He's not even trying it to. I guess you could say it's the plausibility there is that Jesus didn't rise from the dead. It would pass that criterion.

And I wouldn't say it's ad hoc either, but I would say it lacks explanatory scope and power. So it would pass two of the criterion, the non-resurrection hypothesis. But you compare that with the resurrection hypothesis, it passes three with flying colors and doesn't fail the fourth.

Clearly, the resurrection hypothesis is still superior. Greg says that science tells us that resurrections are astronomically low and that we live in a physically isolated system. That is a closed universe.

But again, science only tells us what happens to the dead apart from a supernatural cause. In other words, when they're not assisted. In other words, dead critters stay dead apart from the act of God.

And in terms of it being a physically isolated system, a closed system, that is a metaphysical assumption he's making there. We don't know that we live in a closed system. And when you look at the laws of thermodynamics, they stay clearly in the definition that these apply in a closed system.

But what if God decides that he wants to act in our system? All bets are off. The second law doesn't apply to him. And if he's God who creates these laws, he can override him any time he wants.

That's why you can't look at prior probabilities this way. You've got to look at where the evidence lays. And if we, if Jesus rose from the dead, guess what? We live in an open system in which the external agent does act in our system.

And ladies and gentlemen, when you see the great evidence we have out there today, he says miracles don't occur. Well, of course they occur. Craig Keener has just written a massive two-volume subtleness document in the book.

I've witnessed miracles. I know people who have been parts of miracles. Miracles do happen today.

When you consider the existence of miracles, near vertical apparitions, well-evident near-death experiences of which Gary Habermas can list a hundred or more of them. And answered prayer, well gosh, the evidence for a supernatural realm is so strong today that anyone who denies a supernatural component to reality cannot be a realist. Greg says there is nothing in my hypothesis that says what a body is made of.

Well, I did in my book distinguish between a bodily resurrection hypothesis vision, resurrection hypothesis bodily. I assessed both of those by the criteria for the best explanation. And in my book I show that the resurrection hypothesis bodily outperforms the resurrection hypothesis as an objective vision.

That's in my book. 32 seconds. Sorry.

He says the prior probability is very low for the resurrection. He did not answer about what I said about the US bombing in Japan in World War II. You can't calculate a prior probability for that.

What's the prior probability of winning the lottery big? That's pretty easy to calculate, about one in a hundred million. But what's the prior probability of black holes? What's the prior probability of US bombing Japan with nuclear bombs in World War II? You can't answer that with prior probability historians, don't use it for that reason. And therefore the resurrection hypothesis still remains our best explanation.

Thanks. Well, it's obvious that Mike has misunderstood many of my arguments. First of all, I made a careful distinction between physical isolation and causal isolation.

I said the universe is not causally isolated from God. I admitted there's a God and God can intervene in the affairs of the world when he wants to. But the second law of thermodynamics says that God does not intervene in when a system is physically isolated.

Mike may not like that, but he has not responded to that point. I asked Mike very pointed questions about the resurrection theory or as I will call the X-man theory. Mike so far has not explained how the resurrection theory is able to explain the empty tomb or the appearances.

He has repeated the claim that it can, but he's not yet shown as how. He says, well, I can't tell you whether it's Adams or Schmadoms. Well, if you can't tell us that, then you can't explain to us how it can account for the facts.

Was Jesus seen with visible light? Mike says, I don't know. Okay, was he seen by some other means? Mike says, I don't know. So Mike is offering us a theory that he himself calls indeterminate.

And when you ask him, well, tell us how this explains these things, his answer is, I don't know. So what kind of a theory is it that you say it has scope and power when you ask specific questions about it, the answer is, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, but there's one thing I do know. It has scope and power.

Mike owes us an explanation of what the theory is and how it works so far he's given us nothing. And remember, Mike has yet to answer my point earlier on that the way he defines the resurrection theory, he gives a viciously circular explanation of the facts to be explained. Mike actually defined the resurrection theory in terms of the appearances he's trying to explain.

Mike has yet to deal with that problem. Mike misunderstood my argument from statistical mechanics. Right, he said it only talked about right the particles of a dead body.

The point is this, that God has no favored microstates. If God has no favored microstates, then they all have equal a priori probability. If they have all equal a priori probability and the dead states outnumber the living states, then Mike has admitted right there that automatically it is highly improbable that God would supernaturally raise Jesus from the dead.

Mike tried to answer this but he showed by what he said he didn't understand my points. So I invite Mike to understand the points and respond to them correctly in addition the argument from thermodynamics. Okay, let me go back to the power point now if I can.

Okay, I just want to talk about the so-called religio-historical context that Mike brought up. Right, I got you now. You leave out the evidence concerning the religio-historical context of the resurrection.

Well, let's take a look at that supposed evidence. The message, ministry, messianic claims to build prophecies, miracles, sinless life of Jesus, and have these fit into the Heilzgeschichta of Israel. Mike has repeatedly said all these New Testament historians believe that Jesus did miracles.

Well, yes and no. He's taking this out of context. John dominant cross and does not believe Jesus did miracles.

Marcus Borg does not believe Jesus did miracles. Almost all New Testament scholars believe that Jesus did not do miracles even though he thought he did and people thought he did. This is simply an unproven claim.

By introducing this as evidence, Mike has introduced something inadmissible until he proves that Jesus has done miracles. How is Mike going to prove that Jesus lived a sinless life? Right? Jesus was undoubtedly a sinner like the rest of us. There is no evidence that he was sinless.

That is simply a dogma of faith. In fact, that's the problem here. These aren't items of evidence.

They're simply dogmas of faith. You cannot face an argument on dogmas of faith. James M. Robinson says this is the fulfilled prophecies of the Old Testament that actually the Old Testament gives us prophecies that the New Testament never fulfills.

The New Testament gives us fulfillments that the Old Testament never actually prophesied. You can see this throughout the Gospels if you read carefully. Available evidence must be more probable than its denial.

Here's the problem with these items Mike has sought to introduce. Let's take the Loch Ness Monster. You may have read about it recently that a group of people, a church in the south, is offering Loch Ness Monster's evidence against evolution.

Right? Here you go. We can't do that because we don't know whether there is a Loch Ness Monster. Right? It's improbable.

It can't be used as available evidence. So bottom line, I'm not denying that Jesus is the Son of God. I'm not denying that he died for our sins or that the resurrection is a super miracle.

What I'm saying is Mike has yet to give any evidence for these items. So because he's not, the only available evidence we have is the evidence I've given you from thermodynamics and from statistical mechanics that God has an overwhelming strong tendency not to supernaturally raise dead and that Jesus died. Those are the only items that we all agree on and know for sure.

Even Mike admits that God has an overwhelmingly strong tendency not to raise the dead. So what Mike is going to need to do is give us some evidence to show that these other things are true. Before he does that though, I'd like him to show me how he can explain the appearances without giving a circular definition.

Also he has not yet dealt with my argument from faith and philosophy and Tet. He mentioned it but he didn't actually deal with it. Let's move on to one more topic here and that is the reference class objection.

Mike says we can't figure out the probability of dropping bombs on Japan. We can't figure out so many different kinds of prior probability. He's right about this but it doesn't follow from that that we can't figure out this particular prior probability.

The fact that you can't figure out every prior probability doesn't mean you can't figure out some. In this case we have sufficient evidence of their prior probability. The fact that you can't figure out every prior probability doesn't mean you can't figure out some.

In this case we have sufficient evidence to figure out what the prior probability of the resurrection is which is virtually zero. It looks like I'm out of time so I will come back and finish up with this one. We'll come back.

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.

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