On the nine points posited by Christians (apologies for the lengthy comment):
- If one thinks that there are good independent reasons to be a theist, then (1) and (2) will not add anything to the intellectual price tag of the Christian theory.
- I'm not sure why (3) is surprising. If one thinks that God became incarnate partially to suffer alongside us, then a poor, subjugated region of an oppressive empire might be precisely the sort of place we'd expect him to appear. Also, the washing that Jesus condemns is a form of ritual purification, which was performed before the eating of bread. Jesus' point is that one should not prioritize external ritual observance over internal sanctity: as he says, "you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness" (Luke 11:39). This is part of a general pattern in the gospels, where Jesus stresses the subordinate role of formal rituals as compared with genuine righteousness (see e.g. his healing of a blind man on the Sabbath). He isn't just generically saying it's pretentious to wash your hands (though perhaps the mere possibility of misinterpretation on these matters is some evidence against Christianity).
- Point (4) seems to assume that self-revelation is a primary motive for the Incarnation. But while this is certainly *one* of the goods that the Incarnation achieves, it doesn't seem to be the *primary* good: Christ's mission was to bring about reconciliation between God and humanity, and (on all of the plausible theories of the Atonement) one does not have to believe in Jesus (or even have heard of him) in order to benefit from this. Also, perhaps one could employ here one's preferred response to divine hiddenness: for instance, maybe Jesus' refrains from appearing to everyone in order to give us the opportunity to help one another seek him out, to give evangelists the opportunity to help others find Christ, etc.
- Point (5) seems mistaken. You write that Jesus appeared "only... to his believers, such that they only began writing of this nearly a lifetime after it allegedly occurred." But this just seems wrong: our first source concerning Jesus is St. Paul, who wrote in the 50s (not "nearly a lifetime" after Jesus), and who was not a believer when his appearance occurred. St. James was also not a believer when Jesus appeared to him, assuming we think Paul is correct in claiming that this happened (though the evidence of his case is less weighty, since he was presumably grieving for his dead brother, and could therefore have had a grief vision). And of course, many people today claim to see Jesus, including a surprising number of non-Christians (see e.g. Wiebe's "Visions of Jesus" book).
- On (6), it's not entirely true that the objectionable OT stories were "not known to be metaphorical until the modern age." Many ancient Jewish and Christian thinkers (e.g. Philo, Origen, Gregory, etc.) allegorized large parts of scripture, and they were perfectly aware of the morally objectionable nature of literal readings (see Gregory's condemnation of slavery, or his reading of the killing of the Egyptian firstborns). Of course, one could still say that the relative predominance of literalistic readings is evidence against Christianity, and that's probably true.
- On (8), *most* of Jesus' apocalyptic teachings don't seem to pose any difficulty for the idea that he was God Incarnate (though the famous "some standing here shall not taste death" is certainly a difficulty).
- One doesn't *have* to accept (9) in order to think that Jesus rose from the dead (though of course I think one *should* accept it). It's also worth noting that if a low credence in the Trinity gives one reason to doubt Jesus, then if one thinks that the Trinity is independently plausible (e.g. if one happens to like Swinburne's or Sijuwade's arguments for it), then this would constitute evidence *for* Jesus being God Incarnate.
"There are decent odds that at least one religion is correct."
I would love to hear you elaborate on that, because I don't think this is true at all even if I were to accept your overwhelmingly strong case for theism fully.
Once you start considering religion in terms of its sociological functions, the importance of their veracity regarding a theistic foundation vanishes quickly, especially during those long stretches of human history when religion formed both the most important functional and moral institution at the same time.
In terms of naturalistic explanations for the empty tomb I didn’t see you consider the case that Jesus didn’t die on the cross but instead used yogi-type tricks to appear dead (hence why he died so quickly on the cross compared with expectations). This makes the empty tomb and several of the appearances eminently explicable. Admittedly his motives would be curious but not beyond imagining. For instance perhaps he wanted to cover his tracks on his escape to India so appearing as if reborn would inspire followers without inspiring pursuit
On another point, the idea that Christianity inspired a moral reform in that western society now values charity and decency over strength and power appears to me to be laughable
Are you gonna keep digging into other religions? I suppose the atheistic Buddhism is out for you, but you know, there's some pretty interesting stuff in the Upanishads, in Advaita Vedanta, and in Taoism, that is more palatable for the philosophical sorts. No miracles required! Or perhaps you would enjoy something even more in the intersection of philosophy and spirituality, like the Enneads or some of the pre-Socratics (Parmenides in particular).
Very nice post. Let me add some more disputable claims.
Claim 1: Jesus the Jew exists.
Claim 2: Jesus predicted his death.
Claim 3: Jesus predicted his resurrection.
Claim 4: Jesus predicted that he will raise himself from the dead.
Claim 5: Jesus claimed to be God.
Now we have your 5 claims.
Claim 6: Jesus’s tomb was likely, though not certainly, empty.
Claim 7: Paul converted dramatically as a result of an experience of the risen Jesus.
Claim 8: James converted dramatically as a result of an experience of the risen Jesus.
Claim 9: Many including the women at the tomb, potentially the 500, and various apostles claimed to see the risen Jesus, including in groups.
Claim 10: The disciples lives were transformed and they were willing to face severe persecution.
What explains all of these claims? Jesus is God. That's why he knew the future. But not only that, he claimed to raise himself from the dead. How is that possible? Once you are dead, you cannot do anything. So Jesus was not an ordinary human but also God. That's why the disciples' lives were transformed and they were willing to face severe persecution: if Jesus can resurrect himself, then he would have no problem resurrecting everyone when the time comes. Why isn't Jesus in the business of resurrecting people left and right everywhere on earth? Because the time hasn't come yet for people to be resurrected to experience heaven / hell.
This is different I think from Craig's explanation: God raised Jesus from the dead; therefore God exists. But my explanation is that Jesus raised himself from the dead because he is God; therefore God exists.
Why didn't Jesus appear to all over the world? Well . . . Mormons believe that Jesus visited the Americas. Legend says Jesus went to Shingō, Japan. Setting these controversial claims aside, Jesus is a Jew, meaning that his disciples were also Jewish and had the context for Jesus's actions and mission. And in the Old Testament, God already had trouble convincing the Jews to trust Him when He lead them and Moses out of Egypt despite doing so many miracles. In the Gospels, Jesus did many miracles in front of Jews and they didn't believe (some of them even thought Jesus got his powers from Satan). Would the rest of the world do better than the nation of Israel? The Book of Jonah suggest yes, at least for a period of time, regarding the city of Nineveh by way of repentance even though later Nineveh was later destroyed due to wickedness from the Book of Nahum.
How to understand the Trinity? Consider this: What if reality as we know it is a story with God as both the author and the character? Jewish philosopher Samuel Lebens fleshes this out in his book: The Principles of Judaism. It gets more wild: Lebens thinks the author can insert himself into a novel as multiple distinct characters. If that is true, then the Trinity is just God as the author of the story of reality inserting Himself as 3 characters: The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit.
I agree with the majority of this post. I personally think the "initial collective euphoric religious experience that doesn't involve miracles, but which gets progressively embellished over time, with relatively little interest in collecting Michael Shermer-esque skeptical investigations about the embellishments, or perhaps low expected survival rates of any such investigations' negative findings over two thousand years" theory is pretty good. (Sorry, that sentence was a mouthful.)
However, I wanted to also touch on something that's related to the weakness of the Christian explanation of the theory. It's of course the standard apologetic move to argue that the testimonies to the resurrection are overwhelmingly probable conditional on the resurrection actually happening as described (and thus we have Bayesian confirmation of the resurrection). That of course seems plausible. But the real question that needs to be asked is if the testimonies are overwhelmingly probably given most of Christian theology! I realize this sounds like a trivially minor variant, but I think it's worth discussing, as you partially do in your point number 5.
The obvious answer to the aforementioned question is something like, "Of course Christ would appear to his disciples after his resurrection - he wanted to birth Christianity, and we know from history that this was a highly successful way to do it." But if you defend skeptical theism or invoke something like it in facing the problem of evil, it's no longer immediately clear that you can trust *any* merely human intuitions about what God would or wouldn't do, even given knowledge of his ultimate values. I realize that some skeptical theism defenders - and you - can attempt to sidestep this issue in the problem of evil case by shifting talk to expected values rather than probabilities. And maybe that defense works! In this instance, though, we're only asking about probabilities of events, not what actions we should or shouldn't be taking, so that's not going to work.
(Actually, a few people realized they can try generalizing this objection to "skeptical theism implies global skepticism," but I'd rather not go there in this comment.)
On the nine points posited by Christians (apologies for the lengthy comment):
- If one thinks that there are good independent reasons to be a theist, then (1) and (2) will not add anything to the intellectual price tag of the Christian theory.
- I'm not sure why (3) is surprising. If one thinks that God became incarnate partially to suffer alongside us, then a poor, subjugated region of an oppressive empire might be precisely the sort of place we'd expect him to appear. Also, the washing that Jesus condemns is a form of ritual purification, which was performed before the eating of bread. Jesus' point is that one should not prioritize external ritual observance over internal sanctity: as he says, "you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness" (Luke 11:39). This is part of a general pattern in the gospels, where Jesus stresses the subordinate role of formal rituals as compared with genuine righteousness (see e.g. his healing of a blind man on the Sabbath). He isn't just generically saying it's pretentious to wash your hands (though perhaps the mere possibility of misinterpretation on these matters is some evidence against Christianity).
- Point (4) seems to assume that self-revelation is a primary motive for the Incarnation. But while this is certainly *one* of the goods that the Incarnation achieves, it doesn't seem to be the *primary* good: Christ's mission was to bring about reconciliation between God and humanity, and (on all of the plausible theories of the Atonement) one does not have to believe in Jesus (or even have heard of him) in order to benefit from this. Also, perhaps one could employ here one's preferred response to divine hiddenness: for instance, maybe Jesus' refrains from appearing to everyone in order to give us the opportunity to help one another seek him out, to give evangelists the opportunity to help others find Christ, etc.
- Point (5) seems mistaken. You write that Jesus appeared "only... to his believers, such that they only began writing of this nearly a lifetime after it allegedly occurred." But this just seems wrong: our first source concerning Jesus is St. Paul, who wrote in the 50s (not "nearly a lifetime" after Jesus), and who was not a believer when his appearance occurred. St. James was also not a believer when Jesus appeared to him, assuming we think Paul is correct in claiming that this happened (though the evidence of his case is less weighty, since he was presumably grieving for his dead brother, and could therefore have had a grief vision). And of course, many people today claim to see Jesus, including a surprising number of non-Christians (see e.g. Wiebe's "Visions of Jesus" book).
- On (6), it's not entirely true that the objectionable OT stories were "not known to be metaphorical until the modern age." Many ancient Jewish and Christian thinkers (e.g. Philo, Origen, Gregory, etc.) allegorized large parts of scripture, and they were perfectly aware of the morally objectionable nature of literal readings (see Gregory's condemnation of slavery, or his reading of the killing of the Egyptian firstborns). Of course, one could still say that the relative predominance of literalistic readings is evidence against Christianity, and that's probably true.
- On (8), *most* of Jesus' apocalyptic teachings don't seem to pose any difficulty for the idea that he was God Incarnate (though the famous "some standing here shall not taste death" is certainly a difficulty).
- One doesn't *have* to accept (9) in order to think that Jesus rose from the dead (though of course I think one *should* accept it). It's also worth noting that if a low credence in the Trinity gives one reason to doubt Jesus, then if one thinks that the Trinity is independently plausible (e.g. if one happens to like Swinburne's or Sijuwade's arguments for it), then this would constitute evidence *for* Jesus being God Incarnate.
"There are decent odds that at least one religion is correct."
I would love to hear you elaborate on that, because I don't think this is true at all even if I were to accept your overwhelmingly strong case for theism fully.
Once you start considering religion in terms of its sociological functions, the importance of their veracity regarding a theistic foundation vanishes quickly, especially during those long stretches of human history when religion formed both the most important functional and moral institution at the same time.
In terms of naturalistic explanations for the empty tomb I didn’t see you consider the case that Jesus didn’t die on the cross but instead used yogi-type tricks to appear dead (hence why he died so quickly on the cross compared with expectations). This makes the empty tomb and several of the appearances eminently explicable. Admittedly his motives would be curious but not beyond imagining. For instance perhaps he wanted to cover his tracks on his escape to India so appearing as if reborn would inspire followers without inspiring pursuit
On another point, the idea that Christianity inspired a moral reform in that western society now values charity and decency over strength and power appears to me to be laughable
Are you gonna keep digging into other religions? I suppose the atheistic Buddhism is out for you, but you know, there's some pretty interesting stuff in the Upanishads, in Advaita Vedanta, and in Taoism, that is more palatable for the philosophical sorts. No miracles required! Or perhaps you would enjoy something even more in the intersection of philosophy and spirituality, like the Enneads or some of the pre-Socratics (Parmenides in particular).
Very nice post. Let me add some more disputable claims.
Claim 1: Jesus the Jew exists.
Claim 2: Jesus predicted his death.
Claim 3: Jesus predicted his resurrection.
Claim 4: Jesus predicted that he will raise himself from the dead.
Claim 5: Jesus claimed to be God.
Now we have your 5 claims.
Claim 6: Jesus’s tomb was likely, though not certainly, empty.
Claim 7: Paul converted dramatically as a result of an experience of the risen Jesus.
Claim 8: James converted dramatically as a result of an experience of the risen Jesus.
Claim 9: Many including the women at the tomb, potentially the 500, and various apostles claimed to see the risen Jesus, including in groups.
Claim 10: The disciples lives were transformed and they were willing to face severe persecution.
What explains all of these claims? Jesus is God. That's why he knew the future. But not only that, he claimed to raise himself from the dead. How is that possible? Once you are dead, you cannot do anything. So Jesus was not an ordinary human but also God. That's why the disciples' lives were transformed and they were willing to face severe persecution: if Jesus can resurrect himself, then he would have no problem resurrecting everyone when the time comes. Why isn't Jesus in the business of resurrecting people left and right everywhere on earth? Because the time hasn't come yet for people to be resurrected to experience heaven / hell.
This is different I think from Craig's explanation: God raised Jesus from the dead; therefore God exists. But my explanation is that Jesus raised himself from the dead because he is God; therefore God exists.
Why didn't Jesus appear to all over the world? Well . . . Mormons believe that Jesus visited the Americas. Legend says Jesus went to Shingō, Japan. Setting these controversial claims aside, Jesus is a Jew, meaning that his disciples were also Jewish and had the context for Jesus's actions and mission. And in the Old Testament, God already had trouble convincing the Jews to trust Him when He lead them and Moses out of Egypt despite doing so many miracles. In the Gospels, Jesus did many miracles in front of Jews and they didn't believe (some of them even thought Jesus got his powers from Satan). Would the rest of the world do better than the nation of Israel? The Book of Jonah suggest yes, at least for a period of time, regarding the city of Nineveh by way of repentance even though later Nineveh was later destroyed due to wickedness from the Book of Nahum.
How to understand the Trinity? Consider this: What if reality as we know it is a story with God as both the author and the character? Jewish philosopher Samuel Lebens fleshes this out in his book: The Principles of Judaism. It gets more wild: Lebens thinks the author can insert himself into a novel as multiple distinct characters. If that is true, then the Trinity is just God as the author of the story of reality inserting Himself as 3 characters: The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit.
What do we call this? Author surrogate? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Author_surrogate
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AuthorAvatar
I agree with the majority of this post. I personally think the "initial collective euphoric religious experience that doesn't involve miracles, but which gets progressively embellished over time, with relatively little interest in collecting Michael Shermer-esque skeptical investigations about the embellishments, or perhaps low expected survival rates of any such investigations' negative findings over two thousand years" theory is pretty good. (Sorry, that sentence was a mouthful.)
However, I wanted to also touch on something that's related to the weakness of the Christian explanation of the theory. It's of course the standard apologetic move to argue that the testimonies to the resurrection are overwhelmingly probable conditional on the resurrection actually happening as described (and thus we have Bayesian confirmation of the resurrection). That of course seems plausible. But the real question that needs to be asked is if the testimonies are overwhelmingly probably given most of Christian theology! I realize this sounds like a trivially minor variant, but I think it's worth discussing, as you partially do in your point number 5.
The obvious answer to the aforementioned question is something like, "Of course Christ would appear to his disciples after his resurrection - he wanted to birth Christianity, and we know from history that this was a highly successful way to do it." But if you defend skeptical theism or invoke something like it in facing the problem of evil, it's no longer immediately clear that you can trust *any* merely human intuitions about what God would or wouldn't do, even given knowledge of his ultimate values. I realize that some skeptical theism defenders - and you - can attempt to sidestep this issue in the problem of evil case by shifting talk to expected values rather than probabilities. And maybe that defense works! In this instance, though, we're only asking about probabilities of events, not what actions we should or shouldn't be taking, so that's not going to work.
(Actually, a few people realized they can try generalizing this objection to "skeptical theism implies global skepticism," but I'd rather not go there in this comment.)