The Plausibility of Jesus' Rising from the Dead Licona vs. Shapiro

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The Plausibility of Jesus' Rising from the Dead Licona vs. Shapiro

April 23, 2025

In this episode of the Risen Jesus podcast, we join Dr. Licona at Ohio State University for his 2017 resurrection debate with philosopher Dr. Lawrence Shapiro. Dr. Licona argues that believing that Jesus rose from the dead is justifiable and that Dr. Shapiro’s arguments to the contrary fail as they present a flawed view of the gospels, do not consider evidence from New Testament scholarship, and neglect the most substantial proof available, Paul’s writings. Dr. Shapiro disagrees that the details of the New Testament are essential to this question, asserting that the postulation that Jesus came back to life is no better an explanation for the reports of his post-death appearances than any other hypothesis. Furthermore, he states that even if we grant these appearances occurred, the various theories are not independently verifiable, so we have no justification for believing one over the others.

Transcript

In today's episode of the Risen Jesus podcast, we listen to a special event at the Ohio State University called resurrected or reimagined. Christian and atheist professors discuss the plausibility of Jesus' rising from the dead. Dr. Mike Licona presents a case in which believing in Jesus' resurrection is justifiable.

He contends that the arguments of his opponent, Dr. Larry Shapiro, are faulty since they fail to adequately address the available New Testament evidence. Dr. Shapiro presents a philosophical argument to the contrary, arguing that no single hypothesis explains the reported appearances of a live Jesus three days after his crucifixion better than any other. Enjoy, and thanks for listening.

Hello, and welcome to tonight's special event called resurrected or reimagined. Christian and atheist professors discuss the plausibility of Jesus rising from the dead. My name is Julie, and I'm a fifth-year student studying psychology here at Ohio State University.

I'm involved with Crewe, one of our sponsoring student organizations, for tonight's event. The idea that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead has been a elevated topic throughout the centuries. Some have believed in the resurrection with what seems like blind faith.

Others are far more skeptical and believe that the idea of the resurrection is immensely implausible. Yet the idea that Jesus Christ physically resurrected from the dead is a central belief of the Christian faith and has been long been an important idea in the history of the Western world. Whatever you believe or disbelieve this evening, our sponsoring organizations are sincerely glad you've come to explore this topic and consider the perspectives of both professors.

We believe it is rare today to find productive dialogue between those with opposing perspectives. Our hope is that a respectful dialogue might be possible that can be carried forward by all of us long after this event has ended tonight. The sponsoring student organizations tonight are Crewe, a caring community, compassionate about connecting people to Jesus Christ, Rachio Christie, a movement that equips university students and faculty to give historical, philosophical, and scientific reasons for following Jesus Christ and the secular student alliance, an organization that hopes to demonstrate by argument and action that it is possible to lead a good and meaningful life without religion and that ethics and morality can be meaningfully based on rational and humanistic ideals and values.

Our presenters this evening are Dr. Michael Lycona and Dr. Lawrence Shapiro. Dr. Lycona is Associate Professor in Theology at Houston Baptist University. He is the author of numerous books, including Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? What can we learn from ancient biography and the resurrection of Jesus, a new historiographical approach? Dr. Shapiro is a philosophy professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

His research interests are mainly in philosophy of psychology and philosophy of mind and his current research focuses on issues concerning multiple realization and embodied cognition. He has completed a book on the topic of miracles called The Miracle Myth, why believe in the resurrection and the supernatural is unjustified. After the discussion, the professors will remain upfront to answer follow up questions that you might have.

Also, there will be book tables in the lobby if you would like to purchase some of the material that they have authored. Our moderator for tonight's dialogue is Dr. Stephen Brown. Dr. Brown teaches in the philosophy department at OSU and is Associate Director of the Center for Ethics in Human Values.

We will begin this evening by hearing presentations from both presenters followed by a moderated dialogue and will end tonight with Audience Q&A. To submit your questions for that Q&A time, please send your question in a text message to the following phone number as seen on the screen. This number will be visible again before we transition to the feedback card located on your seats when you came in.

After the moderated dialogue, we'll take a brief moment to pause and allow you to fill out and submit these cards to us. Our promise to you is that you will not be added to any spamming list and we will only respond to your feedback card according to any interest that you note on that card. Each card that is filled out will be entered into a drawing for a signed copy of each professor's book or a gift card to Brent's Pizza Company.

Our first presenter making the case for the plausibility of Jesus' resurrection is Dr. Lycona, while Dr. Shapiro will follow and will present an alternative view. Since our time is limited tonight to make the best use of it, we ask that you hold your applause and comments until the very end. Our hope is that this event would be a platform to foster a respectful discussion this evening and following our events tonight.

One of our sponsoring organizations took time to produce a video capturing people's thoughts on the resurrection around OSU campus. Let's take a look. My name is Amber and I'm out here on the campus of Ohio State and we're just getting students opinions on the topic of resurrection.

Do you believe that Jesus resurrected from the dead? I really do believe that Jesus resurrected from the dead. I believe that he suffered on the cross for us and then yeah died and rose from the dead. How do you think your life would look different if he hadn't rose from the dead? Well I think we wouldn't have any hope you know after this life and that we wouldn't have anything to strive for and believe in.

In this current life you kind of be wandering. I mean I'm Catholic and I was Catholic and educated too so I would have changed my education completely. I know where I think it would because Christianity is based on the fact that he did come back from the dead so yes I do think it would.

No not really. I think so but not in any sort of overt way. So do you think it's important that people talk about this topic across campus? Yeah I do especially if students are Christians it's important for them to know some people like want to know because they're confused so if they knew these things then if they were able to tell them then they would know.

Yeah for sure I just think that college can make a lot of big decisions around this time of your life so it's important to kind of have your beliefs figured out a little bit and try to. Not really because you know I don't make much sense unless you're Christian. Oh definitely definitely I think the exposure is very important because once you have exposure to something it's one of you want to believe it or not so that's definitely important for people to know about yeah.

Yeah um yeah these pretty important important for people to be aware yeah. You know nowadays there's a lot of safe spaces and all that and people aren't willing to listen to the other side so I think an event like this is extremely necessary and especially on a polarized campus that sometimes this turns out to be so I think this is an absolutely great event. First we will hear from Dr. Lykona.

Well thank you and good evening everyone I'd like to thank the sponsors crew Rachio Christie and the secular student alliance for sponsoring this evening's debate and for inviting me to participate in it. Well this evening I'm going to make two major contentions number one we are justified in believing Jesus rose from the first major contention. We are justified in believing Jesus rose from the dead.

Now let's make sure the power there we go. I'm going to try to make this very simple this evening and use as few details as possible so that even a Michigan wolverine can understand. My case for the resurrection is going to be based on two major building blocks facts and method let's begin with the facts.

Now I'm going to focus on three facts for which the majority of scholars today grant them because the supporting data is so good. I want to be clear that I'm not at all suggesting that we should believe these because the majority of scholars grant them or that they are facts because the majority of scholars grant them that's not at all what I'm saying. I am limited in time I only have 20 minutes I've written a 700 and some page book on this so I got to squeeze a whole lot into this period of time.

So I'm only going to be stating what facts a few facts that scholars whether they're atheist agnostic Jewish Christian they agree on these facts because the evidence is so good for them. So here are some three facts. Number one after Jesus death a number of his disciples had experiences they interpreted as the bodily raised Jesus appearing to them.

Now I've abbreviated that by just saying appearances to the disciples but what they're saying the scholars are saying is they all agree virtually 100 percent that the disciples had experiences that they interpreted as appearances of the bodily raised Jesus. Second an enemy of the Christian church named Paul had an experience he believed was an appearance of the bodily raised Jesus and as a result he changed from being an aggressive persecutor of the church to one of its most able defenders and three the disciples experiences occurred in both individual and in group settings. As I mentioned there are other facts I could mention here but these enjoy widespread acceptance by atheist agnostic Jewish and Christian scholars alike.

Now let's discuss the method by which historians determined whether something reported about the past is true. Historians find themselves in the same boat as archaeologists geologists and evolutionary biologists. They can't get into a time machine returned to the past and verify their conclusions so they employ strictly controlled historical method and use arguments of inference to the best explanation.

This is the way historians determine what is probable that's the tool they use. The way you use arguments of inference to the best explanation is to employ four important criteria in this. The first is called explanatory scope.

Explanatory scope is the ability of a hypothesis to account for the facts so think of a jigsaw puzzle you want to solve it if you leave pieces stranded that would lack say explanatory scope. In the three facts that I've mentioned a hypothesis that can account for all three has greater explanatory scope than one that can only account for one or two of those facts. Explanatory power is the ability of a hypothesis to account for the facts without forcing them to fit without excessive ambiguity stated a little differently given the truth of a hypothesis we would expect certain things to be true and to the degree we get those things that hypothesis may be said to have explanatory power.

So let's just say there was a guy who was in prison for 20 years overseas he had total lack of connection to the outside world he comes to the United States his brother greets him and says hey welcome back home brother but you're not going to believe what happened last year the Chicago Cubs won the World Series and he says you're right I don't believe that he said well what it take to convince well if the Cubs won then we would expect to see a celebratory parade so if you saw the evidence that you get what you would expect and so it has explanatory power. Less ad hoc ad hoc is a Latin term meaning for this we recognize ad hoc elements within a hypothesis when it it's contrived or non-evidence dissumption speculation improvisation so for example the the hypothesis that undetectable gremlins from Saturn are responsible for all the unexplained phenomena on earth is terribly ad hoc. Fourth is plausibility plausibility is the degree to which a hypothesis is compatible with our background knowledge so the story that a three-year-old girl bench press 300 pounds is implausible based upon our background knowledge of what humans at the age of three are able to do.

Now of course it would be a game changer if that if we said what the girl could bench press 300 under her own power yes that's implausible but it's a game changer if we said there's a bodybuilder also holding on to that barbell and he's assisting her he's doing the lifting that's the game changer and all bets are off in terms of plausibility when you have that external agent. Historians use these four criteria for assessing hypotheses the hypothesis that best fulfills these criteria is what's regarded as what probably occurred that's how historians work that's the tools we use. Now I'm going to illustrate this historical method with the hypothesis Larry provides in his book the twin hypothesis that hypothesis states that Jesus had an identical twin brother who took Jesus's corpse threw it down a wall well then pretended to be Jesus risen from the dead.

Now Larry doesn't actually believe the twin hypothesis is true but he says that this hypothesis is more probable than the resurrection hypothesis so let's weigh these hypotheses using historical method and see if what he says is true. The twin hypothesis has excellent explanatory scope because it accounts for all three facts however it lacks in explanatory power if you talk to identical twins and I've probably had the opportunity to talk to two dozen over the last several years I've always asked them can you fool your parents can you fool your spouses can you fool your best friends and they'll say as long as we don't talk as long as we don't walk or do anything we can fool them but as soon as we start to say something our voices are different our facial expressions are different the way we carry or so they can tell immediately. So think about this Jesus disciples had been with them for one and a half to three years of course they'd be able to tell and then you've got the problem that well Jesus had a twin brother and he assumes Jesus identity well then what happened to his twin brother he's now off the scene our people asking well what happened to him and why is there no mention of him in the historical record whatsoever so it lacks explanatory power of course it's terribly at Hock there's not a shred of evidence for it um totally contrived but it is plausible because we see that there are identical twins and so the twin hypothesis passes to criteria and fails to in comparison the resurrection hypothesis has also has excellent explanatory scope because it accounts for all three facts has excellent explanatory power there's no forcing of the facts to fit no ambiguity in fact given the truth if the high if the resurrection hypothesis is true we expect certain things and those are precisely the kinds of things we get so it has explanatory power it's not ad hoc if Jesus did claim to be God's uniquely divine son and predicted his death as I think we can show historically well then the resurrection hypothesis is not ad hoc in the least but but the twin hypothesis of course would be now plausibility is a difficult one when assessing the resurrection hypothesis because our background knowledge informs us that corpses do not come back to life by natural causes when left to themselves no one would dispute that but nobody's claiming that Jesus rose by natural causes the claim is that he was raised by supernatural causes in fact again if Jesus predicted his death and resurrection and claimed to be divine himself well it's not not only ad hoc but it's you know in terms of plausibility and since we have the supernatural through I think some good evidence for strands you know we got paranormal experiences we have well evidence near death experiences for ridicule apparitions extreme answered prayer I wish I could get into these in detail they're quite fascinating with corroborated accounts even some scientific accounts pretty cool stuff so we we've got good evidence for supernatural component to reality we've got good evidence that Jesus claimed to be divine that he predicted his imminent death and resurrection I think that gives plausibility to the resurrection nevertheless in order to be just as fair as possible I'm just going to leave it as inscrutable it's not implausible by supernatural causes of course so we'll just say it's an inscrutable and even at that though if I'm being charitable we can see that the resurrection hypothesis is clearly superior to the twin hypothesis when subjected to strictly controlled historical method and therefore it is more probable than the twin hypothesis this is how historical investigation assesses probability so my first major contention holds we are justified in believing Jesus rose from the dead this leads us then to my second major contention that Larry's arguments to the contrary fail Larry's case against Jesus' resurrection in his recent book is twofold he criticizes the gospels then argues that even if they were entirely reliable we would still not be justified in believing Jesus rose from the dead because of the sheer improbability of the event Larry's an excellent writer and his book is an enjoyable read and is accessible to most readers however when he steps outside of his field of philosophy and on to the field of history Larry ends up misstating scholarly opinions both egregiously and often there are so many examples I could provide as one that that New Testament studies is my discipline however time allows only one Larry writes quote how do we know that the gospels published in today's editions of the New Testament contain the original text in fact we can't know that and this is because of what we do know New Testament scholars realized a long time ago that the gospels in their present form would be unrecognizable to their original authors nearly 2,000 years of errant translations and tendentious redactions have touched almost every aspect of the gospels the gospels in any relevant sense no longer exist new testament scholar Bart Erman has written a number of fascinating books on this topic and although many Christian Bible scholars reject some of Erman's conclusions few object to his historical claims about the when I first read these assertions by Larry because contrary to his claims that almost all New Testament scholars hold these views I can't think of a single New Testament scholar who holds them and it's my discipline including Erman himself in fact listen to what Erman himself has written and he's Erman's an atheist New Testament scholar he says the manuscripts of the New Testament do indeed have large numbers of variations in them but the problem is not of such a scope as to make it impossible to have any idea what the ancient Christian authors wrote if we had no clue what was originally in the writings of Paul or in the gospels this objection might carry more weight but there is not a textual critic on the planet who thinks this since not a shred of evidence leads in this direction and I don't know of it even any of any mythicists who is willing to make this claim as a result in the vast majority of cases the wording of these authors is not in dispute end quote therefore without exaggerating with what Larry has written is much closer to what we find in the da Vinci code than something written by a New Testament scholar even an atheist one like Bart Erman it does not represent the scholarship of our age or of any other but things don't get any better for by spending virtually all of his attention criticizing the gospels Larry missed the boat altogether since almost all scholars who study the question of Jesus resurrection agree that the best evidence for it comes from the Apostle Paul who had been a radical non-believer who had terrorized the church persecuting Christians arresting them imprisoning them consenting to as the risen Jesus appearing bodily to him and that experience radically transformed his life from being a persecutor of the church to one of its most able defenders Paul in fact ended up suffering persecution by being imprisoned whipped stoned and eventually he was beheaded outside of Rome for his gospel proclamation which makes Paul so valuable not only was he a non-believer and very hostile to the church at the time of his conversion the letters that he wrote that are preserved in our New Testament today are probably the earliest New Testament literature and almost certainly written before any of the gospels were written we can also certify historically that Paul knew the Jerusalem Apostles and was preaching the same gospel message they were preaching so when we hear Paul on the gospel message we are likewise hearing the voice of the Jerusalem Apostles unfortunately Larry mentions Paul only once in his book but there he quickly dismisses him merely saying that Paul had written decades after Jesus' death and was quote interested in glorifying Jesus and spreading his message end quote that is the entirety of Larry's treatment of Paul well if writing decades after an event is bad then far be it for any eyewitness to discuss the first world trade center bombing in 1993 the Los Angeles riots over Rodney King in 1992 or anything before then because the time lapse between those two events I just mentioned and today is the same time that has lapsed that lapsed between Jesus' crucifixion and when Paul wrote the letters that I'm referring to and if having an agenda when writing requires a quick dismissal of what the author says we should dispense with Larry's book just as quickly since he states his agenda plainly in the preface he writes my goal in this book is to convince you that no one has ever had or currently has good reasons for believing in miracles end quote in other words Larry admits that his agenda in writing is so that his readers will not believe in short half of Larry's case is mistaken because it presents a terribly flawed view of the gospels and is absent from what we do find in New Testament scholarship and it neglects any treatment whatsoever the strongest evidence for Jesus' resurrection the other half of Larry's case is that we are never justified in believing a miracle report because it's so vastly improbable at one point Larry says that miracles are so improbable that we should not believe even if we'd seen one now I'm all for mathematics and probability but I'm also for their proper application and I don't think Larry has it right here let's consider a hypothetical scenario let's say that right now during the course of this evening's debates and terrorists come in the room and they come up and they say Lacona you're a Christian to must die and so I'm beheaded right here in stage in front of everyone the terrorist fleet leaving my headless corpse up here on the stage an hour later while every one of you are outside of the auditorium being interviewed by police and the media I come walking out hey I'm alive look I'm here head attached scars smiling I said I've been to heaven in fact God brought me back he I saw me he told me he's going to bring me back to life so that I could verify the truth of Jesus' message and by the way Larry while I was there I met one of your relatives who died a decade ago and they shared with me a personal conversation you had had with them right before they died a conversation that no one else knew about I certainly could not have known now would such an event be a miracle sure could we prove that God did it rather than some other kind of supernatural being like an angel a demon or an et trying to fool us nope but could we still be certain that the miracle itself had occurred yep was it improbable only in terms of natural causes but of course if the event had occurred it would not have been we all would have known it would have been supernatural should you refrain from belief in what you had witnessed with your own eyes until such a time you become convinced that a supernatural being exists of course not the event itself would would prove the existence of a supernatural being in realm would such an extraordinary event require extraordinary evidence well think about it the event itself would indeed be extraordinary but all of you be and eyewitnesses would be quite ordinary in fact it would be just as ordinary as you be and eyewitnesses right now to this event so it's not that you need extraordinary and it's but you do need good evidence so where does this leave us with assessing the probability of a miracle strictly controlled historical method when our investigation of jesus resurrection is so susceptible to influence from our biases whether for or against the resurrection jesus it would be wrong either to assume a supernatural entity was involved or to exclude it outright since either move would be to weigh in with our biases and world view the very things the evidence must be permitted to challenge instead responsible historians will be open-minded and let the fact speak for themselves apart from pre judgments a failure to do so practically guarantees we will be guided by our biases rather than by the data the danger in this is quite clear bad philosophy corrupts good history the problem for larry is that when we subject competing hypotheses to strictly controlled historical method and esteem facts above our presuppositions the resurrection hypothesis can be shown then to be the most probable explanation of the data therefore we are justified in believing jesus rose from the dead and larry's arguments to the contrary fail i look forward to interacting larry more as the seed needs to be proceeds thank you well i'd also like to thank crew and the secular student alliance and ratio christy for bringing dr laconan and uh me here for this conversation uh and thank you for choosing to be here rather than watching the oscars um yeah i'm not an historian of the new testament um and there's a sense in which i think the details of the new testament aren't really important for adjudicating the case about jesus's resurrection um and i think uh after i explain to you how to think about justification we can revisit dr lacona's um example in which he uh is beheaded and returns 10 minutes later and i think we would still not be justified in thinking that uh he had been resurrected given that resurrection takes some sort of supernatural or divine cause so let me try to convince you of that now I'm sorry to see the result of the basketball game the other night i want to first distinguish two questions is it true that jesus was resurrected we could ask that that's the question that dr lacona was trying to address are we justified in believing that jesus was resurrected these are very different questions and it's very important to keep them distinct they're different because we can be justified in believing something even if it's false and we could be unjustified in believing in something even if it's true so you might be justified in believing that your car will start the next time you turn the key because the previous thousand times you turn the key it started but perhaps it doesn't maybe you left the lights on overnight your battery died so you can have a justified but false belief you can have an unjustified but true belief suppose someone says i really believe that life exists on neptune maybe it does but to date we don't have any justification for that so that would be a case where someone believes something that happens to be true but they're not justified in believing it they don't have evidence or support or warrant for the claim that's what i mean by justification my answers to those two questions are these is it true that jesus was resurrected i don't know i i have an opinion about it i don't think he was but no one in this room can tell you for sure whether jesus was resurrected i'm not going to try to address that question my question is this are we justified in believing that jesus was resurrected we've adequate support or warrant or evidence for believing that jesus was resurrected no and that's the case i'm going to make for you now and i ask you to treat my case with an open mind um one one thing about these debates is we all come into them thinking i believe jesus was resurrected and nothing i hear tonight is going to change my mind or i don't believe jesus was resurrected and nothing i hear is going to change my mind pretend you don't have that attitude for a few minutes that will that will make to tonight worthwhile okay so you don't know and you're asking yourself should i be justified am i justified in believing that jesus was resurrected here are two more questions that we need to think about and uh dr lacona didn't distinguish these um but i think they're worth distinguishing what's the best explanation for why the new testament reports that jesus died and then was seen three days later so we can ask why were these people and i i i i differ with dr lacona about the the quality of the evidence but but i'll defer to him in this case but why does the new testament contain these reports about jesus's resurrection what explains why people were making these reports that's one question we can ask here's another question we can ask click or stop clicking there if those reports are true if the reports in the new testament were actually true are actually true what's the best explanation for why jesus was seen three days after his purported death so the first question is a question about why those people said what they did and the second question is about what explains why it is jesus reappeared three days after his i lost my mic um okay here's a way to think about my my life here's a way to think about these questions suppose lucy says that her stage four cancer suddenly went into remission was this a miracle now let's think about our two questions what's the best explanation for why lucy said she's been cured is what she's saying true that would be one explanation for why she's saying she was cured because she was cured here are some others maybe she misunderstood the test results maybe she's just really hopeful that she was cured those are all explanations for why she just said to you hey my cancer is gone and we can ask the same about the new testament why did these people say hey i saw jesus given that the reports that lucy has given you are true what's the best explanation for why her cancer went into remission does the best explanation for why her cancer disappeared involve some kind of divine intervention or might it have occurred naturally okay those are the questions that we have to answer before we know where there was a miracle let's get back to jesus what's the best explanation for why the new testament reports that jesus was observed three days after his death were justified in believing the reports only if the best explanation for them is that jesus really did reappear three days after his death and given suppose those reports are true what's the best explanation for why jesus reappeared three days after his death so these are just the same sorts of questions i asked about lucy's cancer remission what explains why she's reporting her cancer went away and given that it went away what was the cause for it's going away given that or sorry we have these reports the new testament about jesus's death why did they why did they say the things that they did and if the reports are true what's the best explanation for why jesus reappeared three days after his death um were justified in believing it was a miracle only if the best explanation for his reappearance involves some kind of divine intervention so one thing i agree with dr lacona about is if there is a god and god intended jesus to be resurrected then he would have been resurrected okay uh thank you for introducing the idea of inference the best explanation and going over some of its details uh i'm going to approach it from a slightly different angle but we're in general agreement about how it functions okay we start with observations that we want to explain we then consider various hypotheses that combined with assumptions that we know to be true would predict these observations and then we're justified in believing one of the hypotheses we're considering only if it does a better job explaining the observations then the alternative hypotheses we're considering i'll show you how this works there's an empty cookie jar in the kitchen counter you want to know wish of your daughters you're going to punish so you start looking for evidence what are the observations well we've got crumbs we've got an orange fingerprint on the jar okay those are our observations now we look for the thief we have our observations the empty cookie jar the crumbs on the counter the orange fingerprint we have our hypotheses i hope you can see the print the first is that sofia stole the cookies that's one hypothesis the second is that thalia stole the cookies we're basically functioning like any sort of detective in a tv program about detectives who have to find the murderer you look for evidence your hypotheses are the various people who might have committed the crime and you try to figure out which of those hypotheses do the best job predicting the observations but you also need assumptions here's some assumptions sofia's messy and likes cheetos here's another assumption thalia's need she hates cheetos notice something about these assumptions they're each independently verifiable if you want to know whether sofia's messy and likes cheetos go to a room look at the empty cheetos bags on the floor look the laundry all over the floor look at the trash can that's overflowing and you can verify that assumption you go into thalia's room all the books are in a row the drawers of the dress are closed the trash can's been emptied we've now verified independently our assumptions and given these observations those two hypotheses and those assumptions well it looks like it's time to lock sofia under the closet for a few days right okay but here are some complications suppose thalia is neat hates cheetos but she's cunning and devious right now if we're able to independently verify that which of the hypotheses are we justified in believing turns out we can't distinguish these hypotheses now given our observations given those assumptions neither hypothesis is better than the other because they both given those assumptions do an equally good job explaining those observations we're stuck what do we do well one thing we might do is try to gather more observations we take the nanny can that's been focused on the cookie jar for the last 48 hours and we play the tape and we see thalia's doing the cookies okay thalia stall them we let's if he out of the closet and put thalia in there but what if someone says maybe thalia it wasn't me it was madeline that's a new hypothesis we need new assumptions madeline is messy and likes cheetos now which are we justified in believing of those three hypotheses looks like thalia's in the clear it was either sophia or madeline and we're not justified in believing is one or the other given the information available to us okay we collect another observation madeline's broken her leg it can't be her sophia goes back on the closet that's how inference the best explanation works you need observations you need hypotheses you need assumptions that are independently verifiable good now let's turn to the new testament reports why do the gospels recount that jesus died and then reappeared three days later what what were the gospel writers thinking what was paul thinking why did they say what they did those are our observations that we want to explain here are hypotheses jesus died and reappeared three days later that would explain it the witnesses to the event were confused or mistaken that would also explain it in the two thousand years since the event the copies of copies of copies of the scraps of papyrus that became the new testament have been embellished or they've been miscopied that would also explain it those are three equally good hypotheses all of which account for all the data so what assumptions do we have well people don't typically rise from the dead jesus's contemporaries believed many things that we now know to be false it wasn't just jesus who raised people from the dead it was apollonius it was alijah it was alisha this wasn't an uncommon well it was uncommon but it wasn't unheard of and we know they believed all sorts of other things that are false they believe that the way to treat an ear infection was with boars yearn they believed that the way to treat an eye infection was with saliva from someone fasting they believed a lot of things that we no longer believe so given those assumptions those observations i contend that the two hypotheses we should favor over the actual jesus died and reappeared three days later are that witnesses to the event were confused or mistaken or there are copying errors in the history of the new testament okay so of course the assumptions i looked at i think i don't want to put words in dr laconis mouth but if those were the assumptions then given those observations in our hypotheses it seems that the died and reappeared three days later hypothesis is certainly not better than the other two which is what is required for justification and probably worse but why not just assume jesus was divine now if that were the assumption then it looks like the hypothesis that we ought to like is the first one the problem is you can't simply assume that jesus was divine in order to support your hypothesis that jesus died and three days later came back to life because jesus's death and reappearance is supposed to be evidence for his divinity so you can appeal to his divinity in order to justify your hypothesis that he died and reappeared three days later okay first conclusion then why is the new testament report that jesus reappeared three days after his death the hypothesis that he really did reappear three days after his death is no better supported than the hypotheses that witnesses to the event were confused or mistaken or that in the 2000 year since the event the copies of copies of copies of scraps of papari that became the new testament have been embellished or miscopied therefore we're not justified in believing that the reason for the new testament reports was jesus's actual resurrection now suppose he really did reappear as dr lacona believes suppose dr lacona was beheaded and came back ten years ten minutes later and told me something that one of my relatives who died ten years ago said to me okay observations three days after his entombment witnesses saw jesus that's what we need to explain now hypotheses i forgot the one about the well falling in the i do have the duplicate brother here um jesus died and as a result of divine intervention returned to life that would explain the observations jesus died and as a result of inexplicable natural processes returned to life that would explain the observations too jesus died and as a result of an alien intervention returned to life jesus never actually died but it worked from a coma jesus never actually died but played in elaborate ruse on his friends jesus died and as undocumented twin brother was observed now all of these hypotheses explain that observation so now we need assumptions and i don't know what kind of assumptions to put under that category because they have to be independently verifiable we can't just assume well god did it because we can't verify that the way we can verify whether sofias sloppy or whether thalia is neat given these six hypotheses they all do an equally good job explaining those observations and so we've got no basis to favor one over the other so here's my second conclusion of our six hypotheses jesus has reappearance no better supports the hypothesis of divine intervention than it does any of the other hypotheses therefore believe that jesus's resurrection was a result of divine intervention is not justified and i would say the same thing if someone beheaded dr lacona and ten minutes later he was walking amongst us with his head reattached perhaps small scars i don't know we'd ask ourselves i mean think about it think about whether that if that really happened my reaction would be what the hell and then i'd start to think how did that happen one hypothesis god another hypothesis that lacona guy is really weird you can cut his head off and it comes back another hypothesis the aliens which should we choose why should we choose god over the others we have no justification given that they're all equally good at explaining these observations we've no justification for thinking that god was responsible for sticking dr lacona's head back on his shoulders so summarize to justify belief in the hypothesis one must show that no alternative does as well or better in explaining the observations in the case of new testament reports of jesus's reappearance three days after his death the hypothesis that this really occurred is no better supported than alternative hypotheses likewise even granting that jesus actually reappeared three days after his death the hypothesis that this was a result of divine intervention is no better supported than alternative hypotheses i conclude then that we're not justified in believing that jesus was resurrected thank you okay so we're going to do about 20 minutes of discussion just between us and then we'll be fielding some questions from you if i text messages is that up there it'll be up there in a little bit so you can texture questions so after hearing each other's presentations is there a question you might have for your counterpart so why don't you go ahead and go first on this one well i guess i would press my last point we see something that we can't explain now you made a point of evaluating hypotheses on the basis of whether they're ad hoc so if we come across something we can't explain like someone reappearing from the dead or your head being reattached to your shoulders it strikes me as no more ad hoc to say something very strange and inexplicable happened or aliens did this then it does to say there must be something like a god supernatural that just made it work that way that sounds to me the definition of ad hoc okay well the reason i would take the god as the cause the hypothesis that god was a cause let's say with the beheading over say an alien or somehow i did it myself is what i was claiming i come back and i say hey i i did this i went to heaven god told me that he's bringing me back and then i'm able to verify by talking about that conversation i had with a dead relative that i could not have that i had been there so i don't see that as ad hoc the others that you're bringing up aliens or i was just trick you know doing it myself somehow i had these amazing powers to do it those are ad hoc precisely because they are contrived it wouldn't be me contriving things to say that i'm coming back god sent me back that would be my claim but your alternative explanations would be contrived in order to seem to avoid the possibility of god or the supernatural and i would apply that to the competing hypotheses so like you made this the claim that all of these hypotheses for why the appearances could have been alien intervention maybe jesus didn't die it could have been an inexplicable natural cause or a number of things all of these suffer when when you compare them using the arguments of inference to the best explanation so for example to say it's there was an inexplicable natural cause for how jesus did appear alive after being brutally executed that would be ad hoc moreover it would be implausible based upon our our understanding of how the world works in natural law the apparent death would be implausible based on what we know about how people were the pre-crucifixion torture and the brutalities of crucifixion josephus mentions only one person surviving and he was intentionally moved and provided the best medical care whatsoever nothing like that given to jesus the alien intervention entirely at hoc so um the resurrection hypothesis doesn't suffer from those problems and so that's why i think the resurrection hypothesis it is a superior hypothesis all hypotheses are not created equal can i respond to that do it it seems to me that if we were all imagine with that we were a room full of people who had never heard of god before and we were just told the story of jesus's resurrection or better we just saw dr lacona beheaded and his head reappear i'm not endorsing that we've never heard of god before and someone says let's try to explain this maybe dr lacona is some kind of human being or maybe he's not even really a human being he's something really weird who maybe like a salamander that can regrow its tail dr lacona can grow his head and we think about that and then someone say i have a better idea there were insects in this carpet here who started to emerge from the carpet and sew his head back onto his shoulders and we'd all be like oh i guess it could happen or maybe not and then someone said no there's this all-powerful guy who just puts heads back on people i mean why would we think that's not ad hoc or more ad hoc or less ad hoc or the others but what about this there's not and this is a genuine question i don't want to be flipped why not think that there are two equally powerful gods and one of them says you think we should put lacona's head back on and the other says let's think about that for a minute yeah it's a good idea why is that more or less ad hoc than one christian god okay well a good question so in answer to the first one you said suppose all of us in here we'd never heard of god before number one that's not the case probably everyone in here has heard of god and so they would have an idea of what i was talking about that's what makes it hard but even if they had not heard about god and i said x brought me back i doubt that people would be saying i mean you'd probably have a few inveterate skeptics who would just want to be contrary and say well maybe it was y that brought him back or z that brought him back but i think most people would be saying never heard of x tell me about x let's go ahead and ask you a question well i'll tell you what from my question i'll say well mike how would you respond to to larry's other question about why believe just one god rather than multiple gods well because number one jesus claimed that i mean i can show historically where you claim to be i know that's not what this debate is over but anyone interested could go view debate dialogue that i had with dale martin who teaches at Yale he's a prominent new testament scholar on this issue did jesus think he was divine and i gave historical reasons for thinking so and i've also published in the journal for the study of the historical jesus on the historical evidence that jesus predicted his death and resurrection so i would say we have good reason to believe these things on historical grounds and if jesus is claiming to be divine and predict his resurrection and then he's seen we have good reasons to believe that over the multiple god hypothesis but finally i'd say that given the multiple god hypothesis yeah that's ad hoc but even if a person said like yourself said well still you know ad hoc aside i can't determine all the time make decisions and adjudicate on the occurrence of an event without adjudicating on the calls of the event so like the Reichstag when it was torched in in berlin in 1933 even today we don't know if it were the nazis or the communists who torched the place but we still conclude that the Reichstag was was torched so do you have a question yeah what do you think of that mary why i think uh i think you're saying i think you're being inconsistent because on the one hand you're saying historians don't speculate about causes but on the other hand they do all the time oh i thought you're saying they don't speculate about causes no i mean i mean historians will give reasons why they might think the nazis did and others will have at the conclusion that an event occurred uh without making a determination on what was the cause of the event right that okay that's what i thought you said so if we got evidence for the resurrection we can look at that and say jesus rose and and leave the cause undetermined right but then we don't know whether he rose as a result of a divine intervention or whether he rose because he was a really unique individual that that's true but the question is was jesus resurrected or reimagined not how was jesus raised all right and in your book you say the reason we can't be justified in believing a miracle occurred one of the reason is we can't determine the cause well if we determine the cause is supernatural it doesn't matter whether it's one god six gods an angel a demon or in super et from a parallel universe but isn't the idea that we say that again i mean that the assertion here is that we haven't established if we're just saying there's this evidence jesus rose in the dead it doesn't it's not necessarily a miracle we would then have to go further in order for ticones and miracles yes we would have to establish them as a supernatural cause yes and no i mean i'd say if jesus rose from the dead we certainly would know based on our understanding of natural law that this did not occur by natural causes that's exactly what's understood right so we would be safe in that point to infer supernatural cause and i'm not saying it's a matter of i can't think of a natural cause it's the resurrection or that the heading is of such a nature that we know it's not a natural cause it would have to be assumed that you disagree about that yeah i disagree about that all right i want to ask ask another question here um i i so seriously i'd like to know why you disagree with that okay lots of time um okay so both of you are uh focusing on this question are we justified in believing in jesus' resurrection um you say yes you say no um as is all too often the case in philosophy the answer is typically well that depends um and uh one of the things that some philosophers suggest it might depend on is whether you are a person who already believes in god so let me just uh create two fictitious characters we'll call them luke and leah um so uh both of them have done their homework they've looked at the arguments for and against god's existence uh they've both come to fairly confident beliefs but they're on the opposite ends of the spectrum so luke is a pretty confident theist and leah is a pretty confident atheist so i'm going to give you luke and you leah and ask a question about those can i have leah no so okay so luke he's a theist he's done his homework he's a confident theist um but he's unsettled about any particular type of theism so he's not jewish he's not christian he's not islamic he's not a sick he's just a random vanilla theist um now he listens to these arguments about jesus's resurrection and he comes to this conclusion that actually provides me with some reason to be a christian theist rather than some other kind of theist in other words um do you think that evidence for the resurrection might count as some kind of tiebreaker or play some kind of evidential role in the life of a theist or is it just that it's out altogether regardless of whether you're a theist or not i'm having a hard time understanding your question it's your question given that i'm a theist yeah am i going to find evidence for the resurrection more compelling so if you're a theist you've already got it in your background believes that there is a being which can raise things from the dead yeah maybe you have other things in your background beliefs given your other beliefs about theism the idea i think is supposed to be that the improb of the prior improbability of of resurrections is now a lot higher than it was if you were say neutral with regard to theism or a committed a theist so do you think it's possible for um a resurrection account perhaps not to take someone from atheism the theism or even agnosticism the theism but from one kind of theism to another kind of theism they're the resurrection is serving an evidential role uh just not the one that we've been considering uh well i i think we have good empirical evidence that there are plenty of theists who are not at all convinced by the resurrection story right uh and i suppose if you're predisposed to attribute things that you don't understand the supernatural causes then um you wouldn't disregard the possibility of jesus's resurrection but um so it depends i mean you might say suppose you suppose you believed in all sorts of supernatural causes you might think i've met the devil raised jesus because i think god would really detest followers of jesus and so satan is going to see to it that jesus rises from the dead and convinced converts a lot of people now in order to to um dispel that hypothesis you need some independently verifiable assumptions about god what god's intentions are and i don't i don't know how you confirm those assumptions all right leah so uh she's considered the evidence she's a committed atheist um you make this argument to her we're justified in believing and she says look i've got a pretty well established belief that supernatural stuff just doesn't exist uh so even though it sounds ad hoc to suggest that it's an alien thing or a twin brother or i mean maybe just don't hang out with enough magicians but uh there some some very strange looking things um happen on stages all the time and we think well it actually didn't really happen that it sure sort of looked like it happened um do you think that the evidence for the resurrection is resurrection is strong enough that it could take someone like that from say committed atheism to a little more agnostic or all the way to theism or do we kind of have to already be open to the supernatural world before an argument like this is really going to take hold yeah that is a great question well i think that we always no matter whether we're a believer in whatever religion or an atheist or an agnostic we should always be open to look at data because we have to be open-minded to let the data like i said in my opening statement let the data speak for themselves apart from prejudgments because someone's wrong right i mean larry and i both can't be right here one of us is wrong uh or both or we both could well it's it's not between ground either jesus was raised or he wasn't so one of us is wrong here that should work um so i wasn't talking about whether he was raised but whether we're justified in believing he was raised okay but i know but but you don't believe jesus was raised but probably not okay so i want to say no well all right well not everybody can be right though correct if we just say not just you and i but everybody in atheism and theism cannot not be true and so someone someone is wrong and whoever it is whether someone like myself which i you know i don't think i'm wrong but i could be no one's a hundred percent you know we can't be so um i think we all should be open-minded and so i would say if i were an atheist your question if i were an atheist and the evidence for the resurrection was presented to me i should at least be open-minded to consider it and allow the data to challenge my worldview a responsible person does that no matter what side they're on they allowed the data to challenge their worldview maybe that in and of itself it depends on the person they all have different burdens approved for how they're much they're locked into their particular worldview but you know another thing i could do is look at the supernatural and i mean i've been doing this for the last couple years now it's just a supernatural and honestly i i think the evidence for the supernatural dimension and reality is so strong it's hard to imagine someone denying it and think of themselves as a realist if they have looked at the evidence for just the supernatural i mean i could give so many different accounts um some of them corroborated we probably have just time for one more question among us before we take some from the audience so i like this question a lot let's do this one um what's the most personally challenging evidence that could support the other's view why do you maintain why do you maintain your view in spite of this challenging evidence what do you like about this guy well i gotta say he's a good dresser okay the argument the art normally i would be dressed more like him but Steve said no you better wear a tongue yeah i got dressed up well here's something that i'm skeptical of that dr lakuna might be able to convince me of he'll never convince me that there's supernatural things at work i mean because as far as i know that's a hypothesis that can never be better than alternative hypotheses but he can convince me that the um the quality uh not the quality is not the right word he convinced me that the new testament is a more reliable account of jesus's life than i currently believe he did so i want to make sure i understand the question so it's if i'm being honest what what's the best evidence against the resurrection or something like yeah what's the part that keeps you up with that a little bit oh oh that's easy because i'm a perpetual doubter i am and not just faith in one month we'll celebrate our thirtieth wedding anniversary me too yeah and she she's an absolutely wonderful woman she really so um but she'll tell you i mean she hates to go shopping with me because it's like i can't choose between stuff um and even to the state even though we're married 30 years maybe not so much like he used to but even up through 20 27 years i would have doubts whether i'm married the right woman sure and it's not because of i'm a person i know and she knows this you know but she knows it's not because of her it's the way i'm wired yeah and it's like well if i'm going to doubt something like that and listen i mean i was really cerebral i mean i had my emotions involved of course but i was really cerebral in choosing a wife i mean i had a folder and i wrote down all these things and asked questions and all this stuff and so you do this with the resurrection well yeah i mean this is just the way i am my second guess triple guess everything and something as important as one's world view i'm always reassessing self here's what keeps me awake at night what if i'm wrong um and it's like the way i would describe it you take something as wide as the stage at least from the screen to there and tell me to walk across it i could walk across i could run across it walk backwards run backward no problem but stick something this wide between two skyscrapers 500 feet above the ground and i i'm going to it's going to worry me i know i can do it i look at this i said of course i can do it i said well what if what if i stumble and fall off the side and go 500 feet down so it's like i look at the evidence and i'm pretty convinced by the evidence that jesus rose in the christianis true but what if i'm wrong there've been brighter much brighter minds over the years than me and so that's why even though there are multiple strands that convinced me that jesus rose and that christianity's true it's like hey if they discovered the bones of jesus in an ashwari and jerusalem next month and there's a piece of papayri and written on greek we fold the world until today that's signed by matthew mark luke and john and somehow they're able to verify that that is actually the bones of jesus i would give up my face yeah i i'd have to if i'm being non-sperson so um yeah great um so we're going to transition to q and a when you came in there should have been a small card on your seat if you could fill that out now okay so this is a question for dr shapiro can natural occurrences be considered to be caused by supernatural influence why or why not i'll put my cars on the table i don't believe in the supernatural i think the idea of something supernatural is it's pretty much incoherent i mean here's an example to illustrate why i think this suppose that um you came across a sample of water and you lower the temperature to zero degrees fahrenheit and it didn't freeze it seems like a natural law has been violated there or maybe what we should say is hmm it looks like there might be some conditions under which water doesn't freeze until it reaches zero below zero fahrenheit um we're going to face this kind of question whenever something unexpected purportedly unnatural happens and there's no reason to think something is intervening into the world that's not natural rather than there's some natural explanation that we're unaware of now i don't know why you would want to think that natural occurrences are considered by something supernatural if we already have a fairly good naturalistic explanation for why why things are happening so so in in my world there's nothing that happens outside of nature can i have a quick response to that sure yeah well the way i'd responded as i would say that you know yeah i i can understand the analogy there about the water and someone maybe the equator wouldn't understand that and maybe think that's supernatural but here in western culture we've gone way beyond that with science and everything and it is if i did walk out of the solitary i'm having been beheaded you saw me in the story of you know i relate that we know enough about nature right now and the laws of nature to know that that is impossible by natural causes and we'd be safe to infer it's supernatural to say nope i'm going to wait for a natural cause that's a nature of the gaps not a god of the gaps but a nature of the gaps that maybe i'm not getting this question but it reads to me like uh what about ordinary natural occurrences like regular old water freezing at regular old freezing temperature uh isn't it possible that that is caused by something supernatural i think you'd want to say yes right we just wouldn't be able to know that well it's possible yeah i mean it's possible we'd never be justified in believing it right you know all right next question how does paul's death mean that what he preached is true could he have been deceived that's for you yeah good question well because uh he was willing to suffer and die for his beliefs doesn't necessarily justify us believing that what he believed is true but what it does suggest and justify belief is that he believed that what he believed is true so when you have jahattis who are blowing themselves up it's they we know one thing about it they sincerely believe in their cause and the disciples willingness paul's willingness to suffer and die for his beliefs doesn't mean they're true but it means that they that he believed that what he believed is true liars make poor martyrs okay so you with with then you'd say well how do we know it's true rather than i mean why does it matter that he believed it well then when you it's not just paul i mean if you only had paul an appearance to paul and that's all we had his testimony then you might just write that off as a hallucination or an anomaly but that's not all we have we also have the appearance peter we got the appearance the skeptical brother of jesus james you got three group appearances things like that you throw all that together you see that group of hallucinations are extremely rare if not impossible um like tom's daughter you just you got your degree in psychology if you study hallucinations you know that about group hallucinations in this way you put all these kinds of things together and resurrection is the only thing that works you want to jump in on that real quick no all right so uh what would be the harm or loss in believing that jesus is resurrected why are you so concerned about this question i love this question um let's ask let's put it this way should it matter to someone whether uh jesus was resurrected or not and of course this depends on how how meaningful the resurrection is in someone's life so let me use an example suppose that um you came back with a positive test result for for strep throat and you're wondering whether it's worth your time getting a second and third test result and you think it's just strep throat i'll take the amoxicillin no big deal okay so that's something that because it doesn't matter so much the consequences you're not too concerned about verifying the reliability of the test now suppose you come back with the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer well this is a big deal because if you've got pancreatic cancer you're unfortunately not going to live too long so you better get a second opinion you better get a third opinion because that's something that's going to make a big difference to have you live the rest of your life so if belief in the resurrection is something that matters a whole lot to you then i think um you ought to be really really sure that you're justified in believing it because your life is being defined by this kind of belief whereas if you're the kind of christian who thinks yeah maybe it's resurrected maybe not um where the christmas presence then you don't really have to worry so much about whether he was justified right but so what's the harm in believing or not believing i think that sort of depends on you but one of the motivations i had for writing my book was i am very upset about the way um believers in jesus often think that their beliefs put them in a position to regulate certain things that i don't think should be regulated like who gets to marry whom whether someone needs to have a baby um these are issues that if you're imposing those views on people because of your belief in jesus then you ought to be really really sure that you're right so that's a case where uh harm can come from believing in the resurrection harm to others and and that's why you're you owe a special obligation to making sure that you're right about that don't jump in yeah oh i'll i'd say he's right i agree with them and the converse is true that if jesus rose from the dead then it it is to one's benefit or loss on what they do with that decision um eternally and i know a lot of you in here i mean i'm 55 a lot of you are young very young your college students you're not thinking about death but man this life goes by quickly doesn't it larry yeah i mean it really quickly um and um so that's one thing and then i'd say another thing larry's talking about and i agree with him here is it does result in um as you can see what he said uh it matters because if jesus didn't rise from the dead christians are out there and and we have a say every american has a say in the american political process and where the elections go and in this past election evangelical christians had a pretty big say and who got elected president and so you could see what larry was saying here obviously you were on the other side of of that and and it does make a difference what you believe not only if if if jesus rose it makes a difference with one's eternity if he didn't rise then we help lead culture in the wrong direction um so there is a culture war that's going on a definite one right now and the resurrection of jesus does make a big difference on where you stand in that right so we have another question for you how is it any less plausible that jesus told his disciples prior to his christifiction to spread that he had resurrected in an attempt to set a moral precedent so kind of conspiracy view no but a noble lie conspiracy view yeah well i think that one's easy to answer uh number one that means they were all willing to suffer continuously and all willing to die for a really noble lie a noble lie it had to be really noble right yeah a noble lie so you got jesus saying be honest don't lie and then he's teaching to go out and lie right so you got that problem and they know it and so they're dying for a known lie plus that would not account for the so it doesn't explain that it wouldn't explain the conversion of a skeptical brother james who most scholars who quote or who comment on that about 90 of them would say james converted as a result of an appearance of jesus we see in the gospels it's an embarrassing testimony that none of jesus brothers believed in him they thought he was beside himself and um so and even at jesus death you find the gospel of john saying that um jesus entrusted to care of his mother to the beloved disciple not one of his brothers who would have certainly get the not and then afterward we find jesus brothers believing in him james is the head of the church church in Jerusalem and you find josephus clement of of of alexandria and hagasipas all reporting the martyrdom of james the brother of jesus because he wouldn't deny his brother was the lord well what it take to convince you that your brother's the lord you know the fact that he went from skeptic to now leader in the church and willing to die for his his faith um this is not perpetrated by the noble lie jump in it's not it's not unheard of that you have cults whose members are willing to believe and die for a leader but they think it's true yeah right we're talking no more conspiracy oriented right that this is that jesus sort of playing the whole thing from the beginning yeah i mean count me out take take a cult leader i see your members drink the kool-aid yep they're you're a charismatic leader they will die for you so some of the we have some conspirators and they're so good at it that everybody else falls into line yeah i mean this happens the difference is they're dying for what they believe is true those the cultists there the disciples were were this person's pot positing that they died for what they knew was false and there's a world of difference between the two all right we have a question did you want sorry no you don't want to cut you off um okay so this is for both of you have you had a life experience that has shaped your worldview why don't you come in here first well i have someone i love very much died that's all i want to say about it shaped my worldview i mean a life experience i could say that you know my investigation of this stuff has gone on for a few decades so it's been a long time like that really looking because this is the most important question in my life about this for me this means everything for me this is something i don't want to get wrong because i'm wasting my life in a big way if jesus didn't rise from the dead um but and if some other religions true you know i want to follow that religion if that religion is true rather than uh christianity i mean because i might only get get one chance to get this right unless Hinduism or Buddhism is right and then i'll have many opportunities you know to get it right so um it's this long you know this long thing so you know um okay so um i've been struggling with figuring out how to read this dramatically but uh so paul says that jesus was raised according to the scriptures so this is something that gets uh said multiple times in the new testament why would he argue that way instead of just insisting with the jus but guys we really saw him like physically i guess it's mine okay i mean i think that's for you buddy remember this oral tradition from which is according to scriptures this is in first korean's chapter 15 verses three through five i think and um the according to the scriptures this is oral tradition that's formulated and in the church of Jerusalem of which are comprised of jewish leaders jewish christian leaders like james and peter and things like that people like that so for the jews the scriptures were everything the messiah had to be in fulfillment of the scriptures and that's why it was important and paul would adapt his message the message would stay the same but the way he would communicate it would be different according to his audiences so in act 17 he said it's his custom every sabbath he'd go into a synagogue for three sabbaths and argue from the scriptures with the jews that jesus was the messiah who had to suffer die and rise from the dead but when he's talking to the philosophers and Athens he never mentions the scriptures he uses their own thing he says this is one of your own poets have said any reasons within that way the message is the same but the way he communicates it is differently and this is coming from the jewish church in Jerusalem one other thing i'd say he's doing both because not only says that he was raised on the third day according to scriptures what comes immediately after that with nothing in between and then he appeared to peter then to the 12th then to more than 500 at one time then to james then all the apostles and then last of all he appeared to me so he's doing both he said but guys we really saw him individuals in groups friend and foe like yeah we saw him it's according to scriptures and we saw him so he's doing both you want to jump in here no all right so this one's for you it's a little further afield is there's such a thing as harm or evil in a naturalistic worldview so you're not only talking about the resurrection you kind of have this background assumption that the natural world is all there is if you have that kind of a view what do you say about harms or evils in general this is a question that i'm always amused when someone says to me knowing that i'm an atheist why don't you just go around murdering people what why aren't i doing that it's because that would be wrong it's because i'd be causing harm of course there's harm in a naturalistic worldview you you harm someone when you when you hit them you harm someone when you starve them you harm someone when you are cruel to them these are these are harms they cause people to suffer and and the flip side of that is about 2,500 years ago played o in a in a dialogue called the youth afro demonstrated in a way that that no theist has been able adequately to respond to that it makes no sense to say that goods derive from god's word because that would make goods and harms completely arbitrary because god could say i'm going to wake up today and decide that rape is good murder is good and we think hold on god wouldn't do that and why not it's because rape isn't good murder isn't good and that's why god can't simply by telling us what's good or not make something good or not so so the theist and the atheist i think are in the same footing with trying to decide the status of harm and evil in the natural in the world i guess the only thing i said i don't want to to pull this off topic but when he said it would be wrong to hurt someone i want to know well how do you determine what's wrong because in a godless reality there is no objective morality and so no basis to really call something wrong objectively but i don't want to get us off topic most likely have a whole new topic that's uh that's a non-sequitur just because god doesn't exist doesn't mean there's no objective morality and as i just pointed out the objectivity of morality is something that exists independently of god that's what Plato demonstrated but okay if you want more we have a lovely philosophy department here at the Ohio state university i encourage you to take an ethics class um in the back you'll find some buck-eyed donuts you should eat those these two gentlemen will be at the end of the stage if you want to talk to them there's also some books for sale in the back we're done have a good night thanks for joining us today if you'd like to learn more about the work in 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