Did the resurrection accounts develop in a suspicious way?

In the debate I discussed in my last post, Alex O'Connor raised a common objection to the resurrection accounts in the gospels. Supposedly, the earliest gospel, Mark, has the simplest material on Jesus' resurrection, and each gospel after that gets increasingly advanced in the claims it makes on the subject. See Alex's comments here. He especially discusses an increase in the number of resurrection appearances in each gospel - in the order of Mark, Matthew, Luke, John - though he doesn't limit his development argument to that issue.

There are a lot of problems with that sort of objection. As Jonathan McLatchie mentioned in the debate, the material on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 predates all of the gospels, yet is more advanced in some ways. I want to add some other points.

Did Paul experience a guilt hallucination on the road to Damascus?

Jonathan McLatchie and Alex O'Connor (CosmicSkeptic) recently debated the topic "Theism or Naturalism, which provides a better account of reality?". I want to comment on a couple of issues related to Jesus' resurrection that came up in the debate. I'll address one of those issues here and the other in a later post.

A Debate On Isaiah 9:6 And Jesus' Deity

Jonathan McLatchie and Samuel Green (Christians) recently debated Shabir Ally and Yusuf Ismail (Muslims) on Isaiah 9:6 and the deity of Jesus. They covered many related issues that went beyond that one verse. Here are some comments I posted about the debate on Facebook and YouTube, followed by links to other relevant articles at Triablogue:

The Evidence For Daniel's Prophecies

Jonathan McLatchie recently wrote an article about the dating of the book of Daniel. The article makes a lot of good points and is well worth reading. He's written a lot of other good material as well, which you can find here. He also has a YouTube channel.

Steve Hays wrote a lot about Daniel and the dating of the book. There's a section in the post here that links several examples. You can find more by searching our archives. The page just linked also cites posts we've written on other issues related to prophecy more broadly, and those have some relevance to Daniel. See here, including the comments section of the thread, for other online resources on when Daniel was written. For example, Glenn Miller has written a lot about the manuscript evidence and pre-Maccabean use of Daniel.

I've done some work on the evidence for prophecies of Daniel fulfilled after the Maccabean era, meaning that the fulfillments offer evidence for Christianity even if we accept a Maccabean date for Daniel or a portion of it. You can find some examples here. The post here discusses problems with arguing that Jesus fulfilled Daniel's Seventy Weeks prophecy by natural rather than supernatural means. When a fourth kingdom arises after Greece, in the form of the Roman empire, Jesus announces the coming of a kingdom of God during the days of that empire, that kingdom becomes popular to the point of being accepted by billions of Gentiles, Jesus identifies himself as the Son of Man of Daniel 7, he dies during the sixty-ninth sabbatical cycle after the decree to rebuild Jerusalem in Nehemiah 2, that death is perceived early on as making a final atonement for sin, and the Romans go on to destroy both the city of Jerusalem and the temple, you can't explain that series of events that line up so well with Daniel's prophecies by dating the book or a portion of it to the second century B.C.

A Good Discussion Of Many Resurrection Issues

Last week, Jonathan McLatchie did a question and answer session with Tim and Lydia McGrew on Jesus' resurrection. A lot of issues came up during the discussion, and it's worth watching.

You may also want to occasionally check Lydia's YouTube channel for updates, since she keeps adding new videos, like her recent ones on the historicity of the fourth gospel.

McLatchie on Swamidass

Jonathan McLatchie comments on Joshua Swamidass' theory regarding Adam and Eve and human evolution:

An innovative and provocative attempt to harmonize evolutionary theory with an historical Adam and Eve has recently been proposed by computational biologist Joshua Swamidass of Washington University in St. Louis. [10] Swamidass proposes that Adam and Eve lived approximately six thousand years ago, in accordance with the traditional creationist understanding. He argues that Adam and Eve did not have parents and were in fact created de novo, as described in Genesis 2. Consistent with a face-value reading of Genesis, Swamidass proposes that Adam was formed from the dust of the earth and Eve from Adam’s side. However, Swamidass argues that Adam and Eve were not the first humans. Rather, their genomes became ‘mixed’ with the rest of the human population outside of the garden through interbreeding (that is, humans who, unlike Adam and Eve, arose naturally through evolutionary processes), such that all extant humans can be said to trace their genealogical ancestry back to Adam and Eve, even though their genetic ancestry includes other lineages, unrelated to Adam, as well. Swamidass points out that universal genealogical ancestors (that is, individuals to whom all modern humans can trace their ancestry) are common, arising often throughout human history. Swamidass proposes that “Adam and Eve are to work as priestly rulers alongside Yahweh Elohim, to expand the Garden across the earth. Civilization is rising, and a new era is coming. Their purpose is to welcome everyone into their family, in a new kingdom of God.” [11] Swamidass distinguishes between what he calls “biological humans” and “textual humans.” [12] For Swamidass, “Biological humans are defined taxonomically, from a biological and scientific point of view. From at least AD 1 onward, they are coextensive with textual humans.” [13] On the other hand, “Textual humans are the group of people to whom Scripture refers. I argue that this group is defined by Scripture to be Adam, Eve, and their genealogical descendants, including everyone alive across the globe by, at latest AD 1. They are a chronological subset of biological humans, meaning that some biological humans in the past are not textual humans, but all textual humans are biological humans.” [14]

While Swamidass’ model is superficially attractive in that it does not require positing thousands of gaps in the Genesis genealogies, the problems that it raises are too intolerably great for me to commend Swamidass’ solution. For one thing, in what sense, if any, can non-Adamic biological humans be considered to be fully human? Are they affected by original sin, and did Jesus die to save them? Swamidass conjectures that these biological humans bear God’s image but “are not yet affected by Adam’s fall. They have a sense of right and wrong, written on their hearts (Rom. 2:15), but they are not morally perfect. They do wrong at times. They are subject to physical death, which prevents their wrongdoing from growing into true evil (Gen. 6:3).” [15] The Scriptures, however, make no such distinction between biological humans and textual humans. Swamidass’ view would seem to suggest logically that those individuals who were biological (but not textual) humans are qualitatively indistinct from other animals. But in that case it makes no sense to call their deeds evil, or to postulate that they had a sense of right and wrong. Moreover, if they, as Swamidass suggests, “do wrong at times”, then does this not suggest that Adam’s fall is but one of many falls that have occurred in human history? The theological ramifications that accompany this scenario are too severe for me to entertain Swamidass’ proposal.

A few more tributes to Steve Hays

I recently saw some more tributes to Steve Hays that I thought would be worth linking to. However some are on Facebook so they might not be accessible to everyone. Please feel free to post more in the comments if there are others worth reading.

• John Frame
• David Gadbois
• Robert Gagnon
• Ryan Hedrich
• Phil Johnson
• Lucas & Tim B.
• Paul Manata
• Phillip Marshall
• Evan May
• Lydia McGrew
• Tim McGrew
• Jonathan McLatchie
• On the Pilgrim Road (Catholic Nicholas J. B.)
• James Bradford Pate
• reddit/r/Reformed
• Mike Robinson
• Dustin Segers
• Sam Shamoun & David Wood
• Slim Jim
• James Swan
• Ken Temple
• TheSire
• Wenatchee the Hatchet

McLatchie vs. Blais on miracles & probability

Just some observations after listening to the debate:

1. This wasn't primarily a debate over Hume and miracles. It started off that way, with brief argumentation involving Bayesian probabilities, but it quickly went off the rails. Rather the debate was a far-ranging debate that covered a lot of other topics. For example, some time was spent on debating Jesus' triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, biblical inconsistencies, undesigned coincidences, and the dates of the Gospel. I think Jonathan won these debates; Blais didn't seem terribly familiar with the biblical material except in broad strokes. Also, the last moments of the debate were mainly spent debating design. Jonathan easily won this part of the debate, hands-down. Blais was obviously out of his element.

2. That said, I think Blais spoke the most throughout the debate, both in terms of amount of words and amount of time. In fact, Blais seemed to realize this when at one point he admitted he didn't want to "dominate" the debate. Yet Blais still kept interrupting Jonathan throughout the debate.

In fairness, Jonathan could have been more assertive. And the moderator (not Justin Brierley) could have done a better job at steering and focusing the debate. The moderator was far too hands-off.

3. At times, Blais came across like he was attempting the Gish gallop. The stated debate topic was on Hume and miracles, but Blais brought up the existence of God, the various flavors of theism (e.g. Blais thinks the Norse god Loki counts), the historical reliability of the Bible, biblical inconsistencies, the reliability of testimonial evidence, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, the canonical status of biblical books (e.g. Timothy), scribal interpolations (e.g. the woman caught in adultery), Jesus mythicism, parallels between early Christianity and other religions (e.g. Mormonism), parallels or analogies between miracles and UFO sightings, the progress of science dispelling superstition, and so on as if he expected Jonathan to address each and every one of these. Yet each of these could make for separate debates in their own right.

4. Nevertheless, there wasn't anything particularly novel or unfamiliar with what Blais brought up, at least not to anyone who has followed Christian and atheist debates. Blais cites and is obviously heavily relying on secular atheists like Carl Sagan, Robert Price, Richard Carrier, Sean Carroll, among others. There have been reasonable responses to most if not all of these by Triablogue members and many other Christian apologists.

5. Blais expected testimonial evidence about miracles to rise to the standard of a randomized controlled trial in modern medical research. However, why should an RCT even be an appropriate test of miracle claims in the first place? Also, it's not as if it'd be empirically possible to do an RCT on someone rising from the dead. And as far as that goes, there's nothing necessarily wrong with accepting the reliability and credibility of a single case study that's been well documented. Indeed, it only takes one bona fide miracle to demonstrate the possibility of miracles.

6. Blais tried to draw parallels between UFO sightings and Christian miracle claims. However, he needs to present an argument for why UFO sightings parallel or are analogous to Christian claims about miracles in the first place. Otherwise it's like seeing parallels between (say) Jesus' death and resurrection and the Osiris myth, but on closer inspection they're not alike.

Is the Exodus History? A Conversation with Dr. Titus Kennedy

Does Evolution disprove Christianity?

One of those Bambi meets Godzilla debates:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Idyy8p4lShc&t=4616s

In addition to Jonathan's performance, a few observations of my own:

1. Jonathan McLatchie is well-qualified to discuss the issue. That said, the title is ambiguous. It could mean does evolution, if true, disprove Christianity. Or it could mean evolution fails to disprove Christianity because evolution is false.

2. A couple of issues:

i) Lim thinks disease is incompatible with God's existence, but diseases perform a necessary function in maintaining that balance of nature. In addition, most organisms were never designed to be immortal. 

ii) Lim fails to understand that there are constraints on what an omnipotent God can do by natural means. In many cases, God can bypass natural processes to produce a result directly, but if God is creating a cause/effect world, and God is using a physical medium, then that's a self-imposed limitation on God's field of action.

3. We also need to distinguish between Christianity and generic theism or perfect being theology. Even if we posit that disease is incompatible with an abstract concept of God that's a philosophical construct, the existence of disease in no way disproves the existence of the Biblical God. In Scripture, God coexists with disease. So disease in no way counts as evidence against the existence of Christian theism, but is entirely consistent with the God of the Bible.

4. Lim acts like the Genesis creation account indicates that God made all the species from the outset. But Gen 1 doesn't detail the species. Gen 1 doesn't preclude adaptation. Gen 1 refers to a few general taxonomies based on their natural habitat (land animals, freshwater or marine organisms).

5.  Since the issue of how best to interpret Genesis came up, here's a free, recent book: https://frame-poythress.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/PoythressVernInterpretingEdenAGuideToFaithfullyReadingAndUnderstandingGenesis1-3.pdf 

6. Lim constantly raises hypothetical objections to Christianity, but ignores al the evidence. He mentions prayer, but there are countless examples of answered prayer. The fact that many prayers go unanswered doesn't cancel out the evidence for the prayer requests that God does grant.

7. Lim then trots out Sai Babba, but from what I've read, there's lots of evidence that he's a fraud.

8. There are multiple problems with Lim's appeal to alleged pagan parallels between Jesus and hero archetypes:

i) You can't legitimately compare a well-documented historical figure with fictional characters in pagan mythology. Jesus is a historical figure. We have 1C historical sources documenting his life. 1C sources about a 1C individual. 

ii) You also have to take into account the chronological gap between a historical figure like, say, Buddha, and the dates of our earliest sources. 

iii) In addition, you have to take into account the Jewish worldview of the NT, which precludes pagan syncretism.

iv) Did the NT writers even have access to the pagan sources? 

v) How specific are the alleged parallels?

Q&A with Dr Peter Atkins & Dr Jonathan McLatchie

Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? Q&A Panel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06NtOP84rXo&app=desktop

1 Corinthians 15:3-8

Bad audio. Subtitles help.

Rounding Off My Response to Richard Carrier On Undesigned Coincidences (Part 6)

http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2020/04/rounding-off-my-response-to-richard.html

External Coincidences and Acts of the Apostles: Responding to Richard Carrier (Part 5)

http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2020/03/external-coincidences-and-acts-of.html

Is Redaction Usually the Better Hypothesis? Responding to Richard Carrier (Part 4)

http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2020/03/is-redaction-usually-better-hypothesis.html

Who Has Fabricated Data -- Lydia McGrew or Richard Carrier? (Part 3)

http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2020/03/who-has-fabricated-data-lydia-mcgrew-or.html

Can Scribal Errors Account for Undesigned Coincidences? Responding to Richard Carrier (Part 2)

http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2020/03/can-scribal-errors-account-for.html

Yes, Richard Carrier, There Are Undesigned Coincidences (Part 1)

http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2020/03/yes-richard-carrier-there-are.html

Dr Peter Atkins & Dr Jonathan McLatchie | Is there a God?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR5s0QnI0TU&app=desktop