Investigating Christianity Part 3: Group Visions, Naturalistic Explanations, and Theistic Explanations?

Were there entire groups that saw Jesus? Can a non-Christian explain the relevant facts?

1 Introduction

Here I continue my investigation of Christianity (if you missed them, see parts 1 and 2). So far I’ve concluded that the apostles claimed to see the risen Jesus, including in groups, and that they were willing to face severe persecution for their faith, with some of them being martyred. In addition, there is a strong case for the empty tomb, yet not totally overwhelming.

One of the core facts is that the apostles later claimed that they had group experiences of the risen Jesus. This is attested to by Paul and in various gospels. Yet just because people attest to something doesn’t mean it’s true. So here I’ll investigate whether it’s plausible that the apostles would either have a mass hallucination or would later come to falsely believe that they had a mass hallucination.

2 The Ehrman theory

Bart Ehrman has an interesting blog post titled What Really Happens With Group Visions? His answer: mistaken memories of group hallucinations. Or, to quote his summary:

What I think is this: groups of people often *claim* to have seen the same thing at once, even though none of them actually saw that thing.  I’ll explain how it works by giving a psychological study in which – in a realm outside of religion – this kind of thing happens.  I’ve taken the example from my book Jesus Before the Gospels.

On October 4, 1992, an El Al Boeing 707 that had just taken off from Schipfol Airport in Amsterdam lost power in two engines.  The pilot tried to return to the airport but couldn’t make it.  The plane crashed into an eleven-story apartment building in the Amsterdam suburb of Bijlmermeer.   The four crew members and thirty-nine people in the building were killed.   The crash was, understandably, the leading news story in the Netherlands for days.

Ten months later, in August 1993, Dutch psychology professor Hans Crombag and two colleagues gave a survey to 193 university professors, staff, and students in the country.  Among the questions was the following:  “Did you see the television film of the moment the plane hit the apartment building?”    In their responses 107 of those surveyed (55%) said Yes, they had seen the film.   Sometime later the researchers gave a similar survey with the same question to 93 law school students.  In this instance, 62 (66%) of the respondents indicated that they had seen the film.   There was just one problem.  There was no film.

These striking results obviously puzzled the researchers, in part because basic common sense should have told anyone that there could not have been a film.   Remember, this is 1992, before cell phone cameras.   The only way to have a film of the event would have been for a television camera crew to have trained a camera on this particular apartment building in a suburb of Amsterdam at this exact time, in expectation of an imminent crash.   And yet, between half and two-thirds of the people surveyed – most of them graduate students and professors – indicated they had seen the non-existent film.    Why would they think they had seen something that didn’t exist?

Even more puzzling were the detailed answers that some of those interviewed said about what they actually saw on the film, for example, whether the plane crashed into the building horizontally or at vertical and whether the fire caused by the plane started at impact or only later.   None of that information could have been known from a film, because there was no film.  So why did these people remember, not only seeing the crash but also details about how it happened and what happened immediately afterward?

Obviously they were imagining it, based on logical inferences (the fire must have started right away) and on what they had been told by others (the plane crashed into the building as it was heading straight down).  The psychologists argued that these people’s imaginations became so vivid, and were repeated so many times, that they eventually did not realize they were imagining something.  They thought they were remembering it.  They really thought that.   In fact they did remember it.  But it was a false memory.   Not just a false memory one of them had.   A false memory most of them had.

The researchers concluded:  “It is difficult for us to distinguish between what we have actually witnessed, and what common sense inference tells us that must also have been the case.”   In fact, commonsense inference, along with information we get by hearsay from others, together “conspire in distorting an eyewitness’s memory.”   Indeed “this is particularly easy when, as in our studies, the event is of a highly dramatic nature, which almost by necessity evokes strong and detailed visual imagery.”

This was a memory of a large group of people who all remember seeing the same thing (or nearly the same thing) at the same time, even though none of them saw it.  If you don’t want to call that a group vision, that’s absolutely fine with me.  What I’m saying is that a group of people thought they saw something they didn’t see.  (The difference in this example, of course, is that the people in this study were not all standing together at the time when they had the vision – but we have records of that sort of thing happening as well.)

As I said in my earlier post, I don’t actually think groups of people all at one and the same time saw Jesus after his death, any more than I think groups of people actually see the Blessed Virgin Mary at one time today.  What I think does happen is that someone has a vision (non-veridical – that is, a hallucination or, as one reader of the blog has suggested, possibly an illusion).   He tells someone else who tells someone else (e.g., someone else who was there at the time) who tells someone else, and soon they all remember seeing it.  Only one of them saw it.  But the entire group remembers seeing it.  Vividly remembers it.

I think mistaken memories of group hallucinations are quite a bit more plausible than any detailed mass hallucination. It’s hard to imagine that people would be looking around and pointing at Jesus, believing themselves to be talking to him, but he wouldn’t actually be real. I think that the two main possibilities are: 1) false memories of a mass experience of Jesus and 2) a group of apostles begun to expect to see Jesus and so then saw, e.g. a guy who looked like Jesus in the background, and then declared that it was the risen Jesus. Here, I’ll investigate the first option.

The Ehrman option seems plausible. You can imagine the disciples traveling around and then one of them saying “I saw Jesus last night,” though perhaps in a dream or hallucination of some sort. Another reports the same thing—and over time as the stories are told, they gain more and more memories of reports until they come to believe that Jesus appeared to all the twelve. Memory is a funny thing—if people can be mistaken about whether, for instance, their genitals are shrinking, they can be mistaken about this. Fodor lists more examples of reported mass hallucinations here.

There are lots of objections to mass hallucinations—the idea that people can all think they’re seeing the same fake thing at once. But those don’t apply to the idea that one could falsely remember seeing a mass hallucination. In response to this argument, in his book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, Licona quotes Gary A. Sibcy, a “licensed clinical psychologist with a Ph.D. on the subject” stating:

I have surveyed the professional literature (peer-reviewed journal articles and books) written by psychologists, psychiatrists, and other relevant healthcare professionals during the past two decades and have yet to find a single documented case of a group hallucination, that is, an event for which more than one person purportedly shared in a visual or other sensory perception where there was clearly no external referent.

Licona additionally says:

Far more punishing to such a proposal, however, is the requirement of mind-boggling coincidences. Despite the fact that hallucinations are experienced by roughly 15 percent of the general population and a much larger 50 percent of recently bereaved senior adults (only 14 percent of which are visual in nature), an incredible 100 percent of the Twelve would have experienced a hallucination, of the risen Jesus (rather than something else such as guards), simultaneously, in the same mode (visual) and perhaps in multiple modes

But it seems to me much more plausible that just a few of them had a hallucination—maybe Peter and the women, and then later, after many retellings, the others formed a false memory of having seen the women. After telling a story so many times, especially given the pressure to embellish persuasiveness for apologetic reasons, it’s not hard to imagine that the details would get played up.

I looked in various books by Licona and Habermas and tried googling around. I wasn’t able to find any proposals for why this is supposed to be faulty. So I conclude that the skeptic can explain away this data, though at a cost. To quote Dustin Crummett, in a private message:

Of course confabulation happens--one imagines it's easiest with common events you've seen before (video of a plane crash) and where the memory is sort of otherwise indeterminate (you could have the video at any point...) How often do people confabulate seeing a dead person (or angel, or Mary, etc.) in a group with other people who also saw it, at a specific place and time? Idk, but I imagine not often. In the most famous group visions of Mary (Zeitoun, Fatima) the people definitely did see something, whatever the explanation was.

The Mormon witnesses are, basically, an example of people falsely claiming to have a group vision, but the answer there isn't confabulation either

They "saw" the angel with their "spiritual eyes" only under pressure from a very manipulative Joseph Smith (you imagine him saying, "Look, the angel is right there, don't you see!") who then got them to sign something and took control of messaging.

I also think that a small mass illusion that got embellished over time through repeated storytelling is a plausible naturalistic explanation of the events.

3 Compiling the evidence for the resurrection

I think the best case for Christianity appeals to the following 13 facts, not all of which are historical.

1. Jesus’s tomb was likely, though not certainly, empty.

2. Paul converted dramatically as a result of an experience of the risen Jesus.

3. James converted dramatically as a result of an experience of the risen Jesus.

4. Many including the women at the tomb, potentially the 500, and various apostles claimed to see the risen Jesus, including in groups.

5. The disciples lives were transformed and they were willing to face severe persecution.

6. There are decent odds that one religion would be correct.

7. Jesus claimed at least to be the son of man, and unlike most other people who claim that, he didn’t seem to be outwardly crazy or lying.

8. Christianity prompted a profound moral reformation of the sort one might expect God to bring about.

9. Jesus was very morally exemplary.

10. Jesus claimed to be, at least a divine agent.

11. Jesus claimed to have revelation from God.

12. There’s solid evidence for modern Christian miracles.

13. Philosophically, it’s plausible that God would suffer alongside us, rather than stay in the clouds.

Facts 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, and 13 merit some explanation as they are neither minimal facts nor other things I’ve discussed.

6 claims that Christianity starts with a sizeable prior probability given that it’s not terribly unlikely that one of the religions would be correct. God is reasonably likely to want to provide people with revelation—maybe a bit below 50%. So then if Christianity can beat the competitors by a lot, it can envelop a sizeable share of the prior probability of one of the major religions being correct.

8 is defended in Tom Holland’s book Dominion. Holland argues that Christianity brought about a profound moral reformation. The values of the modern-day Western countries are not the values of Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, and Leonidas—values which prize strength and honor over charity, love, and decency. I haven’t investigated this especially thoroughly, but it seems rather plausible historically.

9 is the type of thing that one would expect of God. Were God to become flesh and incarnate, one would expect him to be quite morally exemplary. So…was he?

4 How good was Jesus, are there other Christian miracles, and would God suffer alongside us?

Jesus had many teachings that seem like the type of thing a divine being might teach, for they are important sentiments. For example:

1. Matthew 5:3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

2. Matthew 5:9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

3. Matthew 5:39 “But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”

4. Matthew 5:44 “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

5. Matthew 6:2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.”

6. Jesus healed a man with leopracy allegedly.

7. Matthew 9:11-13 “When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

And I found all of this just going through a few random passages in the book of Matthew. A full accounting of Jesus’s benevolence would have many more verses. At the same time, however, some of Jesus’s teachings are more questionable and many potentially valuable teachings are absent. It is strange, for instance, that he did not think to mention any important ethical truths, like the wrongness of slavery or meat-eating, that were especially specific. It’s similarly odd that he did not condemn anti-semitism, an oversight which lead to severe anti-semitism among Christians for thousands of years. And there are a whole host of seemingly objectionable verses; thus, I don’t think Jesus’s goodness is an established fact.

As for modern Christian miracles, I think they’re surprisingly well-attested. I’ll mention just two: our lady of Zeitoun and Joseph of Cupertino. Over a hundred people, everywhere Joseph went in Italy, attested that he flew, telling remarkably similar stories. He had no motivation to pretend to fly: he faced persecution for doing so. As Jackson says:

• Joseph, upon seeing a large Madonna atop the chapel, quickly flew up to grab onto the structure, "At the sight of her [the statue], [he] gave a huge scream and flew about thirty meters [about 98 feet] in the air, embracing her." This is generally considered the highest height of Joseph's purported levitations on record.

• Several shepherds testified that they had seen Joseph, at the sound of pipes, began to dance to the sound of the music as he "flew up in the air like a bird, halfway to the ceiling, where he continued dancing above the main alter".

• Joseph once granted another friar temporary suspension from gravity, "he lifted [one of the friars] off the ground with great vigor of spirit, using only one hand under the arm, and swinging him around as though he weighed nothing, even though he was surely stronger, taller and heavier than [Joseph] himself."

• A man with a mental illness was brought to Joseph for healing, and was suddenly lifted up into the air with Joseph before being cured, "he went into a rapture, rising from the ground up high, and bringing the madman with him. They were both suspended in the air for almost ten minutes....[afterward] [the man]seemed perfectly sound of mind and went home."

Let us not forget that on more than one occasion, such purported levitations occurred under relatively controlled conditions by which others checked to see if any sign of trickey could be detected. In one account involving the maestro Antonio Cossandri, we read the following: [18] 

"One of his biographers, Roberto Nuti, records the fact that on one occasion during the singing of the canticles it was noticed that Joseph was apparently kneeling in space, although part of his habit [robe] still touched the ground. Wishing to be certain of his complete levitation, one of those present passed his hands beneath him, thus assuring himself that Joseph was completely raised from the ground."

The naturalistic explanations of this event are totally goofy. They claim that he just like jumped and people got confused. That’s absurd! While there are some optical illusions or tricks of light that one can fall for, it’s hard to believe that hundreds of witnesses from every town he went in Italy, who wrote sworn affidavits would get confused by his jumping.

Our lady of Zeitoun involves an apparition of Mary appearing atop a Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt. Despite extensive investigation, no device in the surrounding area capable of projecting such an image was ever discovered. Huge numbers of people saw it, and some even took photographs of it. The president of Egypt saw it. No plausible naturalistic explanation has ever been given for Zeitoun.

Still, the world is a big place. One would expect, over time, some apparent miracles to crop up. There will always be a few unexplained events. So while it’s a bit hard to believe that there’s a naturalistic explanation for these events, it’s not too hard to believe that, given that one only hears about the impressive miracles, the miracles one hears about would be hard to root out. It’s also a bit hard to see why, if God is going to intervene in the world, he’d do it to make a monk float into the air rather than, for instance, killing Hitler.

As for a God who suffers alongside us, I find this plausible. Stump and Marily McCords Adams have turned this notion into a theodicy which is, I think, a core part of solving the problem of evil. So while it’s not guaranteed that God would suffer, it’s somewhat plausible that he would come down to earth rather than remain in the clouds.

5 Naturalistic explanations

Here is what a non-Christian should think about the resurrection. I think they should deny the empty tomb and think that a few of the apostles had early hallucinations. Over time, after repeated retellings of the story, various other disciples came to believe they’d seen the risen Jesus, though there was no mass hallucination. These tales spread, becoming more dramatic over time, leading to the conversion of James who was previously skeptical. Because many of the early people telling stories were women, it was claimed that women discovered the tomb. Perhaps also something happened with the women, and over time that grew into the empty tomb narrative. Paul converted, perhaps as a result of guilt over persecuting Christians, perhaps because of mental illness, or perhaps for some other reason (other dramatic conversions have occurred but they’re pretty rare). Modern Christian miracles are either direct actions from God—if one is a theist—or they are not, if one is a naturalist, and are anomalous quirks. The apostles were willing to be persecuted because they came to believe that Jesus was risen as the stories spread. This theory thus has a few parts which are intrinsically not very probable:

1. Early apostles had hallucinations.

2. They later claimed that they’d had group hallucinations though they hadn’t.

3. The tomb wasn’t empty but for some reason sexist early Jews said that women had discovered the empty tomb.

4. Paul converted based on a hallucination.

5. James, Jesus’s skeptical brother, converted.

6. The early stories spread to such a great degree that people were willing to die for them.

7. Christians went on to usher in a profound moral transformation of the world.

8. Jesus happened to seem remarkably sane despite believing crazily that he was the son of man.

Positing 8 things, most of which are not super likely, does not make a good theory. But crucially, I think that the Christian story is even worse and also has to posit various odd things including:

1. God exists.

2. God would be broadly in the business of intervening to carry out miracles (something which I think we have philosophical grounds to reject).

3. God would become incarnate in 1st-century Roman Palestine, giving some rather strange teachings, including condemning the practice of handwashing as pompous and pretentious, all the while sharing no especially strong details.

4. The way he’d make his teachings known would be by enabling humans to write books after the fact. Strangely, rather than getting people to write about this early, commanding them to write down his resurrection quickly, the first writings would be decades after the fact. The evidence would thus not be overwhelming—the way one would come to him who was not steeped in a Christian upbringing would be by inference to the best explanation of several historical facts which, while somewhat well-attested, are not beyond dispute. This is a rather curious way to make himself known.

5. Jesus would, after death resurrect and appear to the disciples. This is naturally explained by disciple hallucinations, but not by Christian theories. He could have appeared to any groups all over the world, or flew around before the emperor of Rome. So why did he only appear to his believers, such that they only began writing of this nearly a lifetime after it allegedly occurred, in wildly contradictory books full of bizarre fabulations of censuses, saints rising from the dead and walking around (a fact strangely commented on by no other people), and more? Why is it that only the later Gospels describe in detail multi-modal experiences?

6. He’d do this all the while claiming to fulfill the teachings of a deeply barbaric Old Testament filled with appalling verses supporting slavery, genocide, and a creation story that seems to be typical of the anticipations of ancient and scientifically illiterate people. Of course, a Christian should interpret all of those as metaphorical, but it’s hard to see why a perfect being would have so many metaphors about genocide, slavery, and conquest—ones which were not known to be metaphorical until the modern age.

7. On top of this, he’d be sufficiently coy about his beliefs on hell that billions of people end up believing a horrifying doctrine of hell in which those with the wrong beliefs get tortured forever. Even if one rejects ECT, they probably have to hold the implausible belief that God will condemn many people to hell.

8. Then he’d give teachings consistent with being an apocalyptic prophet, claiming that his generation won’t pass without God ascending.

9. Furthermore, one would have to believe that God is a trinity, a strikingly hard-to-parse philosophical doctrine that one should think is likely incoherent.

These 9 facts—and this is just scratching the surface—strike me as far, far less plausible than the 8 facts that skeptics have to posit. Christians like to point to contrived naturalistic explanations—e.g. the swoon theory—but the explanation that God wanted to become incarnate in first-century roman Palestine, so he did while condemning handwashing, commanding slaves to obey their masters, suggesting that at least many would suffer in hell, and giving false predictions of the coming messianic age is also a contrived and deeply improbable explanation. The odds that one of the naturalistic explanations is true is surely higher than the odds that the Christian story is.