Monthly Archives: April 2014

Innovative Responses to the Fine-Tuning Argument

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Fine Tuning Christianity Several years ago, I attended a lecture by John Lennox, an Oxford mathematics professor turned evangelist. He touched briefly on the fine-tuning argument, only to say that it doesn’t exclude God. Okay, that’s true, but “you haven’t excluded God yet” isn’t much of an apologetic argument.

I’ve discussed the role of the multiverse in dismissing the fine-tuning argument here, here, and most recently here. This time, I’d like to look at a few less-well-known arguments.

Coarse Tuning

The first argument that undercuts the fine-tuning argument comes from the article, “Probabilities and the Fine-Tuning Argument.”

First, start with the fine-tuning argument. We have a handful of physical constants so carefully balanced that if any of them were tweaked by the tiniest amount, life in the universe would be impossible.

Imagine an n-dimensional space, with one axis for each of the different constants we’re considering. Assume that these constants can (in principle) be anything. There’s a tiny volume in this space within which life is possible, but the total space is infinite in size. What’s the probability that you’d hit the sweet spot by chance? Tiny volume ÷ infinite space = 0, so the probability is zero. And that’s the punch line for this argument: if the likelihood of randomly hitting this life-giving sweet spot is infinitesimally small, there must be a designer.

Now, imagine that the volume is actually quite large—that is, that the values that define our universe could be changed in any dimension by ten orders of magnitude. This is the coarse-tuning situation. If we’re in the middle of a sweet spot that’s this huge—it’s 10 billion on each side—who would be making the fine-tuning argument now? But the problem remains! That vastly bigger volume ÷ infinite space is still zero. The likelihood of randomly hitting this sweet spot remains infinitesimally small, but we’ve agreed that this is not remarkable. Conclusion: the punch line that implies a designer fails. Said another way, the fine-tuning argument is no stronger than the coarse-tuning argument. Why then would no apologist make a coarse-tuning argument?

Monkey God

Physicist Vic Stenger directly confronts the fine-tuning argument with his Monkey God experiment (article here and simulation here). He takes four constants from which can be computed the average lifetime of a star, the size of planets, and other traits that would predict whether a universe might allow life. His simulation randomly varies these constants within a range five orders of magnitude higher and five lower than their actual values to see what kind of universe the combination creates. His conclusion: “A wide variation of constants of physics has been shown to lead to universes that are long-lived enough for complex matter to evolve.” We know so little about life that there is little to say about whether life would come from this complex matter, but this seems a strong counterexample.

Atheist Single Universe Hypothesis  

Another response is Keith Parsons’ critique of the Atheist Single Universe Hypothesis (ASUH). The fine-tuning argument says that the ASUH is very unlikely. The multiverse is the obvious atheist response, but the ASUH imagines a single universe. What response is possible if the multiverse isn’t an option?

If there is only one universe, Parsons wonders, what sense does it make to say that the constants that define that universe could be something else? How could they be anything without other universes for them to be in? “If the universe is the ultimate brute fact, it is neither likely nor unlikely, probable or improbable; it simply is.” We don’t have billions of universes to evaluate, some designed and some natural, so that we have some probabilistic framework in which to place our own universe. Therefore, imagining that we can evaluate the likelihood of our own poorly understood universe makes no sense. Our universe looks designed? Compared to what?

We must say that the values of the constants are neither probable nor improbable; they just are. In that case, as the proponent of the ASUH sees it, the only rational expectation of the values of the constants is that they will be whatever we find them to be.

ASUH supporters posit the universe and its laws as brute, inexplicable facts, but Christian apologists do the same. They posit God as a brute, inexplicable fact.

Parsons concludes by turning the fine-tuning argument on the apologist. If we’re insanely lucky to be in a life-friendly universe, there must have been a supernatural Fine Tuner to create this universe. But we must recursively apply this same thinking to the Fine Tuner. There’s a myriad of conceivable supernatural beings. Christians must marvel at our good fortune to have one who wanted us (rather than any of the infinite number of other possible intelligent life forms) and had the power to fine tune the universe so that we’re here to seek out this Creator.

Evaluating all the probabilities

Is the fine-tuning argument even well formed? It says:

1. The probability of Hypothesis 1 is very small

2. Therefore, Hypothesis 2 is true

Wait a minute—let’s find out the probability of Hypothesis 2 before we make any conclusions!

We’re evaluating the probability of our universe with its parameters (H1) against the probability of God (H2) without having any idea what the probability of God is. And since the fine-tuning argument is trying to establish the probability of God, it’s circular reasoning if that’s one of the inputs to the process!

One snappy answer is to say that most people throughout history have been theists, so atheist skepticism at least loses the popularity contest. However, this unanimity falls apart when we ask these theists the most basic questions: How many gods are there? What are their names? Why are humans here, and what is our purpose with respect to these god(s)? Pick any religion, and the majority of the world thinks that its answers to those questions are wrong.

What does the theist admit when using this argument?

Consider the theist’s desperation in advancing an argument like this. For most plausible claims of existence, we are given evidence. You want to know what “the sun” is? Just look up on a sunny day. Sometimes it’s direct evidence, though sometimes it’s evidence through instruments (telescopes, microscopes, etc.).

For God, though, we get just a vague shadow. If God loves us and desperately wants us to know him, he would make his existence known. He doesn’t.

So—option B—we assume God’s existence (for no good reason, but ignore that for now) and say that he wants to be an enigma for his own reasons that are unknowable to us. This thinking is necessary for the fine-tuning argument. But, of course, if he wanted to be hidden, he would be so! If you’re playing hide and seek with God, you will lose. He’s God—he could leave no trace, and there would be no enigma.

That leaves only option C for the Christian: that God deliberately leaves just the vaguest of clues—only enough to tease the seeker. This is rarely enough to give complete confidence, so the Christian is always on edge, never quite sure whether he’s got it right or that he’s going to hell. The Christian is like a pigeon in a B.F. Skinner experiment on intermittent reinforcement.

Mother Teresa wrote about her doubts, “The damned of hell suffer eternal punishment because they experiment with the loss of God. In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss. I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist.”

By arguing for deistic arguments like the fine-tuning argument, apologists argue for this trickster god.

The skeptical mind prefers to rest in the mystery of the visible world
without going beyond it to a further invisible mystery.
— John Hick

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Sean Carroll Slaps Down Fine Tuning Argument

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Christianity Fine TuningThis is the conclusion of a summary of the recent debate between philosopher William Lane Craig and cosmologist Sean Carroll. In part 1, I summarized Carroll’s response to the Kalam cosmological argument. Here, it’s a response to the other half of Craig’s argument, the fine tuning argument.

Carroll began with a compliment of sorts.

This is the best argument that the theists have when it comes to cosmology. That’s because it plays by the rules. You have phenomena, you have parameters of particle physics and cosmology, and then you have two different models, theism and naturalism, and you want to compare which model is the best fit for the data. I applaud that general approach. Given that, it is still a terrible argument. It is not at all convincing.

1. What fine-tuning problem?

Carroll raises five points. First, he’s not convinced that there is a fine-tuning problem. Yes, changes in the parameters that define our reality would change conditions, but it does not follow that life could not exist. “I will start granting that [life couldn’t exist with different conditions] once someone tells me the conditions under which life can exist.” We don’t even fully understand life on this planet, nor do we understand it on the other planets in the universe that hold life (if any), nor do we understand it within the other possible universes (if any).

For example, is life just information processing? That raises lots of possibilities for life. “They sound very science fiction-y,” Carroll admits, “but then again, you’re the one who’s changing the parameters of the universe.”

2. Don’t limit God

God can do anything, and he isn’t limited by the parameters of the universe. If life were impossible naturally, God could make it happen anyway. Carroll says about theism, “No matter what the atoms were doing, God could still create life.” That means that apparent fine tuning points to naturalism, since it must do everything naturally and has no fallback. If you insist that the parameters must be just so, then you’re arguing for naturalism.

Physicist Vic Stenger made the point this way in The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning:

Certainly an all-powerful creator could have made a universe delicately balanced to produce life. But he also could have made life exist in any kind of universe whatsoever, with no delicate balancing act necessary. So if the universe is, in fact, fine-tuned to support life, it is more—not less—likely to have had a natural origin. (p. 115)

3. Illusory fine tuning

Some apparent fine tuning vanishes on closer inspection. The expansion rate of the early universe is often cited as one example of fine tuning. In fact, Stephen Hawking in his A Brief History of Time says that it was tuned to 10–17, to the delight of apologists. What they avoid quoting is Hawking just a few pages later:

The rate of expansion of the universe [in the inflationary model] would automatically become very close to the critical rate determined by the energy density of the universe. This could then explain why the rate of expansion is still so close to the critical rate, without having to assume that the initial rate of expansion of the universe was very carefully chosen.

Carroll makes the same point when he says that the apparent fine tuning vanishes when you look to general relativity. The probability of the universe expanding as it did wasn’t 10–17; it was 1.

4. Multiverse

Apologist Richard Swinburne isn’t on board with the multiverse. He says, “To postulate a trillion trillion other universes, rather than one God in order to explain the orderliness of our universe, seems the height of irrationality.”

He doesn’t acknowledge that we have no supernatural precedents by which to evaluate the probability of his god proposal. He doesn’t seem to know that the number of other universes isn’t the point—there are an infinite number of integers, for example, but bringing integers into a discussion isn’t infinitely complicating. He doesn’t admit that the multiverse is a prediction of well-established science.

Carroll disagrees that the multiverse is extravagant: “It’s a prediction of a simple physical model.” The multiverse hypothesis can make testable predictions. He showed a graph of the density of dark matter in the universe as an example. “You do not see graphs like this in the theological papers trying to give God credit for explaining the fine tuning because theism is not well defined.”

5. Theism isn’t the default

Even if you reject naturalism as an explanation, you can’t fall back on theism. To be taken seriously, apologists must come up with a model of a universe that one would expect with theism and then compare it to the data to see if it fits. So, what would you expect a theistic universe to look like, specifically?

Theism would predict a just-right tuning of parameters, while we find that the entropy of the early universe (to take one example) was far, far lower than it needed to be for life. Theism would predict far less matter than the 100 billion galaxies (each with 100 billion stars) in our universe. Theism would predict that life would be important to the universe; naturalism says that it’s insignificant. Theism demands that we look at the Hubble Deep Field image of thousands of ancient and incredibly distant galaxies and conclude, “This is all here because of us!”

Over and over, the data shows a universe that matches the predictions of naturalism and not theism.

Which worldview predicts best?

He went on to contrast the predictive success of theism vs. naturalism.

  • Theism predicts that God’s existence would be obvious (in fact, the evidence is poor, and faith is not only required but celebrated)
  • Theism predicts that religious belief should be universal; there should be just a single, correct religion (in fact, we have thousands of denominations within just Christianity, plus many thousand more other religions)
  • Theism predicts that religious doctrines would be permanent (in fact, they evolve and adapt to social conditions)
  • Theism predicts that moral teachings would be transcendent and progressive (in fact, Western society rejected slavery and embraced civil rights in spite of Christianity, not because of it)
  • Theism predicts that sacred texts would provide practical advice like how to stay healthy
  • Theism predicts that life is designed (in fact, evolution explains life’s Rube Goldberg features)
  • Theism predicts a mind independent of the body (in fact, “mind” changes as the brain grows or is damaged, or even if one is tired or hungry)
  • Theism predicts a fundamentally just world without gratuitous evil (in fact, the Problem of Evil is often cited as Christianity’s toughest challenge)

Carroll is quick to agree that, yes, the theist can whip up reasons to explain away any of these problems. It’s not hard because theism is not well defined and can be reshaped as necessary, like clay. Ad hoc justifications are easy to come up with, but no, that’s not a good thing.

Contrast that with science—when new data causes problems for a theory, science looks for a new theory. And that is a good thing.

The reason why science and religion
are actually incompatible is that, in the real world,
they reach incompatible conclusions.
— Sean Carroll

Photo credit: strollerdos

Carefree Christian Dinghy Hits Immoveable Rock of Reality: Thoughts on the Craig vs. Carroll Debate

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Craig Carroll cosmology apologetics debateDuring the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial, talk show host Dick Cavett mused about bumping into Simpson at a cocktail party. In such a situation, he anticipated that he would say, “Well, there are so many people here who haven’t murdered anyone, I think I’ll go talk to them.”

And that’s my reaction to hearing philosopher William Lane Craig blather on about his opinions on cosmology (read: how he’s picked facts to support his conclusion). When I’m curious about the origin of the universe, I think I’ll go talk to the cosmologists.

William Lane Craig, cosmologist. Or not.

In the first place, Craig isn’t an expert on the topic. For this 2/21/14 debate, the topic was, “The existence of God in light of contemporary cosmology.” In the second place, experts are readily at hand—for example, his opponent, Sean Carroll, who earned a doctorate in Astronomy and Astrophysics from Harvard and is currently a professor at CalTech.

Craig has made clear where his truth comes from. He states in Reasonable Faith (2008):

Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa. (p. 48)

See what I mean about his picking his facts to support his conclusion? Perhaps that also explains his unwarranted confidence in getting into the ring with someone who is actually an expert on the topic.

There’s not much to say about Craig’s 20-minute opening to those familiar with his arguments. He used two of his favorites, the Kalam cosmological argument and the fine tuning argument. One surprise was that his arguments were more remote than usual. The average Christian may have difficulty with terms like entropy, singularity, and arrow of time. Here, Craig also used, without definition, the terms cosmogonic, de Sitter space, “unitarity of quantum theory,” and Boltzmann brains.

However, I was pleased that he avoided my usual complaint, which is his using “just think about it” to introduce some bit of pop philosophy. Yes, common sense is tempting, but it’s not the final arbiter at the frontier of science. Maybe he knew that this kind of argument would be laughed down by an expert. If so, let’s remember that next time he uses such an argument when Sean Carroll isn’t around.

Sean Carroll’s response

Carroll began by making clear that this debate is not an ongoing one within the cosmology community. You’ll hear theories of origins debated at cosmology conferences, but there is no discussion of God as a plausible explanation.

He responded to Craig’s Kalam argument by attacked point 2 (the universe began to exist). He noted that Craig gave no evidence to back up the claim and, indeed, there isn’t any.

The bigger problem is that the point isn’t even false since Craig doesn’t use the right vocabulary for discussing cosmology. Carroll said, “Aristotelian analysis of causation was cutting edge stuff 2500 years ago; today we know better.” Referring back to his opening point, he noted that you don’t find the words “transcendent cause” in a cosmology textbook; what you find are differential equations! There simply is no need for metaphysical baggage on top of the known physics.

Borde Guth Vilenkin

The idea of a beginning to the universe suits Craig. He’s concerned about the naturalist who says that, even if the Big Bang were the beginning of our universe, it could have come from an eternal multiverse. To anticipate this, Craig invariably brings up the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem (BGV), which says that the multiverse did have a beginning.

Carroll responded by ticking off variant universes. A universe with a beginning but no cause? There’s a model for that. A universe that is eternal without a beginning? There’s a model for that, too—indeed, there are at least 17 plausible models.

BGV demands a beginning to the universe, but it starts with assumptions. Discard those assumptions, and the rules are different and eternality is possible. What BGV says is simply that our ability to describe the universe classically, that is, without quantum mechanics, gives out. Craig is simply wrong when he insists that BGV proves a beginning to everything.

Potpourri

It was a pleasure to see a competent physicist dismantle Craig’s cosmological dabblings. Craig cited the Second Law of Thermodynamics to support a finite universe, and Carroll responded that he’d written an entire book on the subject. About the puzzle of why the universe began with low entropy, Carroll said, “To imagine that cosmologists cannot answer that question without somehow invoking God is a classic God-of-the-gaps move. I know that Dr. Craig says that that’s not what he’s doing, but then he does it.”

About Craig’s criticism of Carroll’s own cosmological model, Carroll responded, “[Dr. Craig] says that my model is not working very well because it violates unitarity, the conservation of information, and that is straightforwardly false.” He then pointed out how Craig took a Hawking quote “completely out of context.”

I appreciated Carroll’s polite but direct approach. (I’ve written more about Carroll’s insights here and here.)

Cosmology vs. Theism

Carroll pointed out that a major problem is the very definition of theism. One theist may give a thorough definition, but then dozens (or thousands) more will give competing definitions. More to the point, theism is not a serious cosmological model. Cosmology is a mature science, and models are expected to address real issues. For example: What is the predicted spatial curvature of this universe? What is the amplitude of density perturbations? What causes the matter/antimatter asymmetry? What is the dark matter? And so on.

Theism doesn’t even try. It has nothing to offer.

Some things happen for “reasons” and some don’t,
and you don’t get to demand
that this or that thing must have a reason.
Some things just are.
Claims to the contrary are merely assertions,
and we are as free to ignore them
as you are to assert them.
— Sean Carroll

Photo credit: brett jordan

Shroud of Turin: Easter Miracle or Hoax?

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Shroud of Turin, DebunkedThe Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot-long linen cloth with the faint image of a man. Imagine the cloth going from feet to head along a man’s back, then folding over the head to continue back to the feet.

Many Christians think that it is the burial shroud of Jesus and that the supernatural energy of resurrecting his dead body burned an image into the cloth. It first appeared in history in 1390 in France, and it was moved to Turin, Italy in 1578. Fire and water damage from 1532 are visible on the shroud.

Proponents argue that marks from Jesus’s last hours are on the figure—the nail wounds, the scourgings, and the cuts from the crown of thorns—but is this the real burial shroud of Jesus?

Which do we believe: the Shroud or the Bible?

The first problem is scriptural. The shroud doesn’t fit with the story of the empty tomb from the Bible.

[Simon Peter] saw the strips of linen lying there [in the tomb], as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. (John 20:6–7)

Strips of linen (presumably for the body) and a separate head cloth is not a single shroud. And there is no evidence besides the shroud itself to imagine that first-century Jews buried their dead that way.

They took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. (John 19:40)

This wasn’t just a pinch of spice—it was 75 pounds worth (John 19:39). The bare body we see in the image shows no evidence of this massive amount of spice.

If the Shroud were real, what would the image look like?

Next, an artistic problem. If a linen cloth were laid over a prone person, it would drape over the sides of the face. That is, it would wrap around to some extent.

A typical man’s face is roughly six inches wide. But it’s more like eleven inches from one ear, across the face, to the other ear. Granted, the shroud wouldn’t be vacuum-sealed to hug the face completely. But we would expect to see some wraparound distortion to the image when the shroud was later laid flat. The face image is actually thinner than an ordinary person’s face, not wider as it ought to be. Even when ignoring the lack of distortion, the head is far too small. The brain size would’ve been about two thirds that of an ordinary human.

The figure on the shroud politely covers his nether region. Try lying down and doing the same thing—your arms won’t be long enough.

He’s also about six feet tall, while the average Jew was roughly eight inches less, and yet nothing is mentioned in the gospels about this remarkable height.

How common were forgeries?

Could this have been a hoax or some other fake? Traffic in holy Christian relics was big business during the medieval period—it’s been said that there were enough pieces of the cross to build a ship and enough nails from the crucifixion to hold it together. This wasn’t the only shroud—history records forty of them. Obviously, at least 39 of these must be false.

In fact, our first well-documented discussion of the shroud in 1390 states that it is a forgery and that the artist was known.

(An aside: I’ve written before about the apologists’ Naysayer Argument, the claim that the gospel story must be true because, if it weren’t, rebuttals from contemporaries would have shut it down immediately. The Shroud debate nicely defeats this argument. Our oldest reliable source is a rebuttal of the supernatural claim of the shroud, and yet this obviously didn’t eliminate Christian belief in it.)

The image of a person being magically transformed into an icon (like a face onto a cloth) is called an acheiropoieton. The shroud is just one of several examples, including the Image of Edessa, Veil of Veronica, and Virgin of Guadalupe.

Skeptical critique 

Many problems argue against the shroud being the real thing. Carbon dating says that the linen is from the 1300s, there is evidence of tempera paint creating the image, 2000-year-old blood should be black and not red, pollen on the shroud seems to be only from Europe and not also Israel, the weave of the fabric doesn’t appear to be authentic, and so on. Christian apologists have a different way to rationalize away each of these problems, but the most economical explanation, the single argument that neatly explains the evidence, is that it’s a fake.

There’s a surprisingly large amount of information on this topic. It is clearly important for a lot of people. The best that can be said of the shroud is that we can’t prove that it wasn’t the burial cloth of Jesus. But that’s no reason to believe that it was, at least for anyone who cares to follow the evidence.

To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary.
To one without faith, no explanation is possible. 
— Thomas Aquinas

Photo credit: Wikimedia

(This is a modified version of a post that originally appeared 4/4/12.)

500 Eyewitnesses to the Risen Christ? 9 Reasons Why It’s Not Likely.

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1 Corinthians Paul epistle 500 eyewitnessesThe apostle Paul throws down the gauntlet in 1 Cor. 15:6, and many apologists see it as powerful evidence in favor of the resurrection story. Paul in effect dares his readers to go check out his claim if they want. Who would make a claim like this, making himself vulnerable to readers catching him in a lie (or at least an embarrassing error), if he didn’t know it were true?

[Jesus] appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have [died]. (1 Cor. 15:6).

Paul’s number has a default credibility like Joe McCarthy’s numbers of Soviet spies did. Who would say a number if it weren’t correct, right?

But this confident defense of the resurrection wilts under scrutiny.

Let’s think this through. Imagine that we’re in that church in Corinth and we have just received Paul’s letter.

1. What does “appeared” mean? Jesus “appeared” to Paul as a vision (Acts 9:3–9), but Paul uses the same verb to refer the appearance of Jesus to Peter, James, and the 500 as well as to Paul. Could Paul think that the appearance to everyone was as a vision?

2. Who are these 500 eyewitnesses? Names and addresses, please? To find out, someone would need to send a letter back to Paul, at that moment 200 miles across the Aegean Sea in Ephesus. If a church member had the money, time, and guts to write this letter, why would Paul have deigned to reply?

Even if Paul had witnessed Jesus in front of the 500 (he hadn’t), it’s possible he wouldn’t have known a single person in that crowd. And even if Paul thought the number were accurate, “500 eyewitnesses” might be all he had heard, and he wouldn’t have been able to back it up with any evidence.

3. How many will still be around? Paul wrote this epistle in about 55CE about a supposed event that occurred over 20 years earlier. Of the 500 eyewitnesses, how many are still alive and still in Jerusalem, ready to be questioned?

4. Who could make this trip? Jerusalem is 800 miles away, and getting there would involve a long, dangerous, and expensive trip.

5. How many candidates for this trip? Paul had only started the church in Corinth a couple of years earlier. There would probably have been less than 100 members.* Would even one have the means and motivation to make the big trip to Jerusalem?

6. Who would challenge Paul? If the founder of the church says something, who’s likely to question it? There might well have been people who were unimpressed by Paul’s message, but these would never have joined the church. Others within the church might have become disappointed and left. Even if these people had wanted to embarrass Paul, they wouldn’t have been in the church community to learn of the claim.

7. What did the eyewitnesses actually see? Let’s imagine that we have the money and daring to make the trip, we have a plan for whom to interview in Jerusalem, and we’re rebellious enough to spit in the face of our church’s founder to see if he’s a liar.

After many adventures, we reach Jerusalem. What will the eyewitnesses say? At best they’ll say that, over 20 years ago, they saw a man. Big deal—that’s uninteresting unless they saw him dead before. Had they been close enough to the movement to be certain that they recognized Jesus? Human memory is notoriously inaccurate. There’s a big difference between the certainty one has in a memory and its accuracy—these don’t always go together.

8. So what? Suppose all these unlikely things happen: we make the long trip, we search for eyewitnesses, and we conclude that Paul’s story is nonsense. If we successfully make the long trip back, what difference will this make? Even if we had the guts to tell everyone that Paul’s story was wrong, so what? Who would believe us over the church’s founder? We’d be labeled as bad apples, we’d be expelled from the church, the church would proceed as before, and Paul’s letter would still be copied through the centuries for us to read today!

9. Why is this even compelling evidence? No gospel uses this anecdote as evidence. For whatever reason—that they’d never heard it or that they had and felt that it was uninteresting—the gospels argue that this is unconvincing evidence. Why should we think otherwise?

In my post on the Shroud of Turin, I noted that our very first historical record of the Shroud is a letter stating that the shroud was a fake. That’s done nothing to steer people away from a belief they want to hold. As with the Naysayer Hypothesis, apologists imagine that this argument is far stronger than it is.

Who would imagine that a supernatural claim written two thousand years ago would be compelling when we wouldn’t find it compelling if written two minutes ago?

Let’s consider two possible conclusions about this verse.

1. The resurrection happened supernaturally as the gospels describe it. (Let’s pretend that the gospels all tell the same story.)

2. Tales circulated orally in the years after the crucifixion among Jesus’s followers, with the number of eyewitnesses to the risen Christ growing with time.

Why imagine a supernatural story when a natural story explains the facts?

If you can’t be a good example, 
then you’ll just have to serve as a horrible warning.
— Catherine Aird

Photo credit: University of Michigan

* Prof. Philip Harland’s “Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean” podcast #1.5 (“Paul and the followers of Jesus at Corinth, part 2”) argues that each Greek house church would’ve only had dozens of members.

(This is a modified version of a post originally published 12/21/11.)