Steelmanning Christianity

I'm not a Christian but here's my best case for it.

1 Introduction

I imagine—especially since he referred to Christianity—that he was thinking about some type of historical evidence that has to do with, say, Jesus or something.  Maybe something related to the fact that he did lots of miracles, and rose from the dead, and was seen by many eyewitnesses, who themselves did several miracles, leaving a band of committed followers to this day, who sometimes do miracles in his name, including naturalistically inexplicable healings with solid medical documentation—have I made my point yet?

—St. Wall

I’m not a Christian. I think, however, of all the major religions it’s probably the most plausible. The evidence for the resurrection is quite a bit better than the evidence for all the other major religious claims. So here’s my best attempt to argue for Christianity. Part of this will, of course, depend on whether God exists—I’ve argued elsewhere that it’s pretty likely that God does, in fact, exist. I won’t repeat those arguments, but they are a key ingredient in any argument for Christianity specifically.

Most people arguing for Christianity don’t do it very well. It can be easy to think that a view is obviously implausible based on the poor quality of its proponents. Yet there are many serious scholars—historians, philosophers—who argue for Christianity, and as a result, it’s important to engage the best case for Christianity that there is. So here’s my attempt to provide it.

2 Priors

The prior probability of a theory is how likely it is before you look at the evidence specifically. I think there are various features of Christianity that make it uniquely privileged among religions, especially likely to be right. Not only does it better explain a lot of historical facts, it’s just more intrinsically probable. Most of these arguments come from Swinburne’s book on the resurrection.

Suppose that someone claimed to rise from the dead. You’d need very strong evidence to think that they had risen from the dead. The prior probability of them rising from the dead is absurdly low—there’s nothing special about them—so you should be very skeptical. I don’t think Jesus is like this—I think he’s part of a category of people uniquely likely to be subject to a miracle like rising from the dead.

First of all, if one is convinced that God exists, they should think there are decent odds that one of the religions would be right. If God exists, it’s decently likely that he’d intervene in the world in some way, to some degree. If he wants to guide humanity, he’d be likely to set up a religion. Thus, as long as Christianity beats the other religions in plausibility, one should think it’s decently likely to be right.

Second, Christianity is unique in claiming that God becomes incarnate. But it’s decently likely that God would become incarnate. A God who stays aloof in the clouds, not experiencing the suffering on Earth seems in some way deficient. This is particularly because God’s experience as an incarnate being would help strengthen our relationship with him, just as two people who have undergone the same experience might bond over that. The prior probability that God would become incarnate can’t be too low—and so the prior probability of Christianity, the only reasonable view on which God becomes incarnate, is also not too low.

Third, God would be expected, if he became incarnate, to establish a major institution of some sort. If he wants to influence the course of history, he’d set up something like a Church. Given this, the Christian explanation is decently probable for it makes sense of why the guy claiming to be God set up a Church.

Fourth, he’d be expected to be morally exemplary. God wouldn’t be incarnate as just anyone—being perfect he’d be incarnate as a morally exemplary individual. But Jesus does seem pretty exemplary—telling people to love their neighbors, turn the other cheek, etc. That’s one reason Christianity has had such a positive impact.

All of this is to say that even if the resurrection evidence—and the other evidence I’ll discuss—wasn’t very good, Christianity would be still somewhat plausible on purely philosophical grounds.

3 The evidence

The Christian narrative is that Jesus rose from the dead and is God. For the reasons I described before, something like this isn’t that improbable. Fortunately, it’s supported by quite a lot of evidence.

First, Jesus’s disciples claimed to see him after he died. This fact is widely agreed upon by historians. In fact, they claimed to see him in big groups according to early creeds, all the gospels, and the epistles. 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 reports:

3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

Normally, after a person dies, we don’t have uniform reports of all of his followers and 500 others seeing him waltzing about. In fact, this scenario is historically unparalleled in world history, to the best of my knowledge.

Second, we have many different accounts that Jesus’s apostles were willing to suffer and some of them were willing to be martyred. This makes sense if Jesus rose from the dead miraculously and promised salvation, but if his resurrection hadn’t happened, it would be surprising that it’s apparent occurrence had so dramatically transformed the lives of so many people. People don’t die for things they know to be false, so non-Christian explanations have to posit that somehow many disciples came to falsely believe that Jesus appeared to them in large groups. So somehow, lots of different people came to sincerely believe that they’d seen Jesus in groups—but group hallucinations are very hard to have.

Third, we have solid evidence that Jesus’s tomb was found empty. It’s not totally dispositive, but there’s at least good evidence for it from a few sources. First, if the tomb hadn’t been empty, Jesus’s enemies would probably have dug it up and paraded it about to discredit early Christianity. The fact that we have no reports of this makes it likelier that his tomb was actually empty. Second, we have pretty early reports of it being empty, in the Gospel of Mark as well as all the other gospels. Paul also reports something similar in the aforementioned passage from 1 Corinthians.

Third, the Gospel of Matthew reports that it was believed by non-Christian Jews that the disciples stole the body. But they’d have no reason to believe that unless the body was stolen. Now, as Dale Allison notes, it could have been that this was a later belief only after Christians had claimed the tomb was empty for a while. But it’s also decently plausible, given how early the gospel of Matthew was, that it was an early belief made to try to explain the empty tomb. It’s weird that we have no records of any early non-Christians denying the empty tomb but some of them trying to explain it away.

Fourth, the Gospel of Mark reports that women were the earliest people to see the tomb. If the story were made up by Mark, he’d have had men discover it given the sexism and patriarchy of early Jewish society.

Fifth, it’s hard to imagine Christianity taking off unless the tomb was empty. Why wouldn’t it have been checked by the early Christians? This seems pretty decisive. These considerations have been enough to make the substantial majority of publications on the topic support the notion that the tomb was empty. So I think the third piece of evidence—the empty tomb—is pretty convincing.

The fourth piece of evidence is the conversion of Paul. This is reported by Paul himself, as well as the Book of Acts. He went from being the main Church persecutor to someone willing to suffer and die for it. This is really, really weird, yet nicely explained by Jesus’s supernatural intervention. As Aron Wall says (if you don’t read his blog, you really should):

We have Paul's testimony against himself that before his conversion he "persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it" (Gal. 1:13).  Then, as a result of an experience which he interpreted as a Resurrection Appearance of Jesus speaking to him, he become a Christian and immediately began to preach the new faith.  (If one additionally accepts the accounts in Acts 9, this experience was accompanied by phenomena which affected his travelling companions, and resulted in his temporary blindness until 3 days later, when someone named Ananias came to see him as a result of a vision of his own, after which "something like scales" fell from his eyes.)

This last fact is staggeringly implausible from a naturalistic point of view, even ignoring the additional details from Acts.  This can be seen by imagining yourself in the situation beforehand and then asking how surprised you'd be if it happened.  It's a lot like Hitler converting to Judaism after being struck by lightening, and then later being accepted into the Jewish community and becoming a highly respected rabbi.  That's a 1-in-a-million event right there, folks.  If Christianity isn't right, it's still true that they were fantastically lucky in the case of Paul, at a very critical moment in their history.

Fifth, James, Jesus’s skeptical brother, also converted after Jesus was claimed to have risen from the dead. My brother is pretty awesome, but it would be hard to convince me that he was the incarnate God risen from the dead. So something extremely significant must have happened to convince James.

Sixth, Jesus seemed to neither be liar or lunatic. Now, while I think it’s conceptually possible that he never claimed to be God, it’s well attested that he claimed to be the son of man—in the Gospel of Mark, for instance. The son of man is the character in the book of Daniel, of whom it is said:

13 “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. 14 And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

Normally, people who claim to be the one who will be given everlasting dominion over all things, who will ascend from the clouds to restore order to all things, are crazy. Yet Jesus didn’t seem crazy—he seemed quite thoroughly good and honest. So non-Christians have to think that Jesus was either lying or crazy, yet lying so badly that he ended up getting persecuted and crucified for no material reward. If he was crazy, he was history’s most extraordinary maniac, who successfully managed to start the biggest religion in world history.

Seventh, Jesus’s disciples founded the biggest and most diverse religion in the history of the world. This religion, as Tom Holland argues in his book Dominion, brought about a profound moral transformation that dramatically reduced the scale of barbarism, malice, and cruelty. This is, again, what we’d expect from a good God.

Eight, Jesus’s followers in more recent times often perform miracles. Caleb Jackson has highlighted some important examples with a lot of evidence, as has Craig Keener. I’ll list just three, and only one of them in any detail, but these are the tip of the iceberg (one doesn’t find similarly impressive miracle reports from other religions).

First of all, there was a Saint called Joseph of Cupertino (most of my information comes from the book The Man Who Could Fly. This dude definitely flew!

He was tried for flying, with the prosecution and defense agreeing that he flew, just disagreeing about why he flew. Joseph kept being shuffled around from Church to Church because he flew during mass, in a way that many people reported finding disruptive (I can see how that would be disruptive, to be honest). During the trial, he was ordered to say mass, and it was reported he flew while saying mass. The reports of him flying come from “observations in daylight, letters, diaries, records from the Inquisition, numerous written depositions, and a thirty-five-year-long career.” The Man Who Could Fly notes (p.71):

We find reports from every town and city in Italy where Joseph resided. People swore they observed him aloft in Grotella, Assisi, Rome, Naples, Perugia, Osimo, Fossombrone, and Pietrarubbia in churches, convents, and conventinos all over Italy. Wherever he went he created a sensation and left a trail of haunted, aroused seekers who wanted, often desperately, to see, touch, or consult with him. People from all walks of life were affected, some very distinguished like John Casimir Waza, a spiritual son of Joseph who became the King of Poland; the Duke of Brunswick (the employer of Leibniz); and the passionately spiritual Infanta Maria, the Princess of Savoy, in the end rebuffed by Joseph.

One surgeon, for instance, reported that while they operated on him, they saw a spectral image of him floating above the table. The extent of eyewitness testimony is pretty astonishing—quoting The Man Who Could Fly:

Crucially, let me underscore: Joseph's case doesn't depend on a few good observations, one or two scenes that so-and-so mentioned, but on thirty-five years of roughly continuous eyewitness testimony. About 150 sworn eyewitness reports have been deposed, according to Parisciani-ordinary men and women, masons, surgeons, artists, popes, cardinals, ambassadors, theolo-gians, inquisitors, dukes, kings, and princesses from all over Italy and parts of Europe The nober cited refers to written testimony; the actual number of witnesses had to have been far greater. Given a public life of thirty-five years, at Mass, at trials, at festivals, on holy days, in his cell, and so on, many hundreds would have witnessed the phenomena, if not thousands.

The naturalistic explanations are all utterly absurd. They require hundreds if not thousands of people hallucinating in consistent ways, in total daylight, in groups, for hours on end. The Man Who Could Fly notes:

Arguments suggesting that the effects were due to trickery, expectation, or illusion-inducing circumstances like stage props, or inadequate lighting, or deliberate dupers, have nothing to support them; Joseph's levitations occurred in daylight, suddenly, without warning, all over Italy. The ecstasies and flights occurred often while he was saying Mass in the presence of numerous people. Public life was so disrupted by them that his superiors were often forced to protect him from unruly crowds. Joseph suffered from the public reactions to his involuntary behaviors, and he was completely unable to suppress them. If the levitations were illusions or hallucinations, they were massive, coherent, and persistent- strangely, as realistic as reality itself

It’s really extraordinary just how poor the explanations are. As The Man Who Could Fly furthers:

But to explain the whole mass of reports and claims as pie in the sky, we would have to assume that large numbers of people were having the same illusion, systematically misinterpreting the movements of one friar for thirty-five years, and that all grades of people were swearing in public that they saw things they only imagined. We would have to assume that numerous Church authorities were lying or exaggerating and for some unknown reason hiding and shunting around a completely innocent, nonlevitating friar. One would have to posit an incredible amount of mendacity and stupidity on the part of Rosmi, Nuti, Bernini, Lambertini, and all the processi deposers who recorded their observations.

Caleb Jackson furthers:

The most impressive reports of Joseph's flights, most of which derive firsthand from sworn eyewitness testimony recounted under oath, include but are not limited to the following:[17]

• 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."

Jackson adduces quite a bit more evidence—his piece is worth reading. If one is committed, as an article of faith, to the idea that miracles don’t happen, then perhaps they can explain it away. But I don’t know how. And such an article of faith should be built on something beyond bare irrational prejudice against supernatural explanations. When hundreds of people report seeing something that’s hard to be mistaken about, that’s very strong evidence that it happened.

A second impressive miracle is Our Lady of Zeitoun. An image of Mary appeared atop a Coptic Church. It was seen by many thousands of people, photographed, and investigated by the Egyptian government. No naturalistic explanation ever was turned up, no device capable of projecting it was ever discovered, despite its repeated appearance. All of the skeptical theories used to try to explain it are wildly implausible.

A third one—and this is one I’ve heard about firsthand from Bob Dutko (otherwise a religious fanatic who thinks that the Earth is 6,000 years old and man lived alongside dinosaurs because Marco Pollo once gave a description of what might have been a crocodile but what also might have been a dinosaur). He says his heart beat irregularly. He told his wife about it, she prayed about it right after, and it was fixed immediately after. Both he and his wife confirmed the story to me. It had beat irregularly for many years, yet mysteriously stopped right after she prayed. Now, it’s possible they were lying, but there are millions of stories like this, as Keener documents—it’s unlikely they’re all wrong.

So to recap, Jesus claimed to be God and lived an extraordinary moral life, indicative of being neither crazy nor evil, unlike basically all other people who claim to be God. Then after he died, his tomb was found empty, a bunch of people reported seeing him in big groups, the main persecutor of his followers had a powerful experience that made him convert, his disciples were willing to suffer and die for the cause, and his skeptical brother converted. Jesus’s teachings were so great that his followers founded the largest and most diverse religion in world history which created an unprecedented moral revolution, never before seen in history. His followers to this day are often subject to miracles, some of them attested by literally thousands of eyewitnesses and admitting of no remotely plausible naturalistic alternatives. No other religion can claim anything remotely in the vicinity of this kind of evidence, and alternatives have to posit bizarre improbable sequences of coincidences.

So let’s calculate (this analysis is based heavily on Aron Wall’s)—assume conservatively that prior to looking at the resurrection facts and modern miracle claims that I describe here your credence in Christianity was 1:1,000 (meaning that Christianity being false is about 1,000 times likelier than it being true). The near-unanimous reports of the eyewitnesses willing to be martyred should be good for about 1,000:1 evidence—and that’s pretty conservative. That would predict that there should be reports from a bunch of eyewitnesses of about 8,000,000 living people rising from the dead (well, a bit less because Jesus is especially likely to have eyewitnesses think he rose from the dead, but even if we cut the reference class by a factor of a million, we should expect that of the current generation, when they die, 8 of them will be reported unanimously by all their followers to have risen from the dead).

Paul’s conversion should be good for about 100:1 evidence—in fact, that’s pretty conservative. If we assume that there have been 100,000 movements with persecutors in history, that would predict 1,000 people having powerful experiences that make them instantly convert. Then, the tomb being found empty should be good for about 10:1 evidence—if he wasn’t resurrected it would be weird that his tomb was empty. The conversion of James should be 2:1 at least, and the modern miracles are, I think, at least 1,000 to 1—there are literally thousands of witnesses of these events that are hard to miss. Then if the liar, lunatic, lord stuff is 5:1 evidence and Christianity being massive and bringing about a profound transformation is 50:1 evidence, the overall probability of Christianity will be 500,000,000:1. And these are some pretty darn conservative estimates of the evidence that would predict very huge numbers of events that we don’t observe occurring in great frequency.

Now, you might be suspicious that the evidence could be that good. If you are, well, even if I overstate the case by a factor of literally 50 million to 1, you should think Christianity is probably right. But often times true theories are massively lopsidedly favored by the evidence—obviously, a real person’s credence in Christianity shouldn’t be 500 million times their credence in naturalism, but that’s because they should be uncertain about incorrectly evaluating the evidence. Lots of historical evidence can give ridiculously strong evidence—the evidence that George Washington existed easily favors his existence by a factor of well above 500 million to 1.