Category Archives: Deep Dive>Religion

Biblical slavery: does regulation mean approval?

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Here’s an interesting angle on the debate about biblical slavery. Just because God regulated a practice in the Old Testament, this argument states, that doesn’t mean that God approved.

I’m responding to a recent article, Did God Condone Slavery? by Amy Hall of the Stand to Reason ministry. She notes that Jesus sometimes updates the Old Testament with new moral rules because Israelite society back in the Old Testament was immature. Here is Matthew 19:3–6.

Some Pharisees came to [Jesus] to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? … Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Biblical marriage

Be careful—biblical marriage is polygamy. Abraham had two wives, Jacob had four, and Solomon had 700. God said to David, “I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more” (2 Samuel 12:8). There are a few caveats, but in general God is fine with polygamy.

This appeal to a maturing society is just a transparent attempt to paper over the Bible’s embarrassing contradictions.

Paul is surprisingly unsupportive of what evangelicals call “natural marriage”:

It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman…. To the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do (1 Corinthians 7:1, 8).

If you want to excuse the Bible because it’s a reflection of the culture of the time, I can understand that. But then don’t insist that the Old Testament’s bluster about homosexuality or human rights or chastity are binding today.

Jesus rationalizes his new divorce rule

Hall continues the passage from Matthew:

“Why then,” [the Pharisees] asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” [a reference to Deuteronomy 24:1]

Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.” 

So God gave Moses a permissive rule about divorce and Jesus overrode that with a stricter rule (only the wife’s adultery permits divorce—see Matt. 19:9). Now show me the parallel with slavery. God legislated slavery for life (Leviticus 25:44–6) and gave the rules for beating slaves (Exodus 21:20–21), but where does Jesus override that with new rules? Your argument is that the Bible can change its rules, but you haven’t shown that it did in the case of slavery.

The Bible is contradictory

And consider the consequence of your argument. It shows that the Bible is contradictory. I agree, but do you really want to go there? Christianity from its birth in Judaism to the present continues to evolve. God gives the rules for divorce in Deuteronomy, and more than 500 years later in Matthew, Jesus gives different rules. This is how manmade religions work. It’s not surprising that a series of books documenting changing ideas over centuries don’t harmonize.

If God gave different rules for slavery back then, Jesus tells us, that was because the people were hard hearted. Does the new rule for divorce mean that the Jews have matured? But why would God need to wait for the Israelites to become mature enough to accept this new message? If they could handle the Moses version of divorce, they could handle the Jesus version. To take another example, God didn’t dribble out the Ten Commandments because they were too difficult for the Israelites to handle. They went live on one day, and the death penalty was the punishment for breaking most of them. There was no need for a centuries-long grace period.

Society must mature?

This appeal to a maturing society is just a transparent attempt to paper over the Bible’s embarrassing contradictions. Teleport an Israelite baby from 3000 years ago to the present, in a Western society, and it would adapt to Western morality like a modern baby in that society. Or imagine the reverse: God takes Western morality and imposes those rules on the Israelites of 3000 years ago like he did with the Ten Commandments. God never said that society needed to mature—he imposed rules, and the Israelites had to deal with them. Those rules could be Iron Age morality or, just as easily, modern Western morality.

Related: Contradictions in the Bible? No, It’s Progressive Revelation!

Consider the structure of this argument. Divorce is defined in an embarrassing way in the Old Testament, but luckily it’s redefined in the New. Slavery is also embarrassing in the Old Testament. That’s not corrected in the New, but the divorce precedent provides an opening to slip in some modern morality as a correction.

The first problem is that this opens the door for anyone to reinterpret the Bible to suit their fancy. The Bible becomes a mirror, and today’s 45,000 denominations of Christianity show the consequence of that.

Second, if you’re going to impose modern society’s view of slavery onto the Bible, why stop there? Why not apply modern society’s acceptance of same-sex marriage or abortion on the Bible, too?

Continued in part 2.

The holocaust happened and
presented an incontrovertible proof
that Yahweh is dead.
Even if he had existed once,
he too perished in the gas chambers.
— Vitaly Malkin

William Lane Craig wrong about morality again as he justifies Hell

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Can a loving god send people to hell? Almost thirty years ago, Christian apologist William Lane Craig debated atheist professor Ray Bradley on this topic.

That’s a good question. Let’s critique Craig’s answer.

Craig’s odd conclusion

William Lane Craig (WLC) acknowledged that this topic is potentially embarrassing for Christians, and he began by outlining the problem.

On the one hand, the Bible teaches that God is love, and yet, on the other hand, it warns that those who reject God face everlasting punishment, and it contains frequent warnings about the danger of going to hell. But aren’t these two somehow inconsistent with each other?

So we have “God is all loving” vs. “Some people go to hell.” That sounds bad, but WLC wonders if there is necessarily a problem. These two aren’t literally contradictory in the way that X and not-X are.

WLC says that the skeptic is making two assumptions (I’ve paraphrased them to make them more general):

  1. If God is all powerful, then God could create a world in which everyone freely lives their life in such a way that they merit getting into heaven.
  2. If God is all loving, then he would want such a world.

Given these, WLC concludes,

Now notice that both of these assumptions have to be necessarily true, in order to prove that God and hell are logically inconsistent with each other. So as long as there’s even a possibility that one of these assumptions is false, it’s possible that God is all-loving and yet some people go to hell.

Yeah, that’s a compelling message: “It’s possible that God is all-loving and yet some people go to hell.” Alternatively: it looks like God is a moral monster, but you can’t actually prove it.

Why is that not a popular sermon? I’d come to hear it.

A Christian response to Craig

Let me try to work within the Christian paradigm to see where that leads us. Let’s assume Christianity and also assume that free will is required for a fulfilled human life. This is supported by many Christian apologists who use the free will argument against the Problem of Evil. (I discuss this in more detail here and here.)

People in our world have free will, and yet most don’t meet the requirements for heaven. We know this because Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13–14). Few go to heaven, so the remainder must be destined for hell.

One way to salvage God is to argue that this world must be the best of all possible worlds. That is, God wants the best for us, but, imperfect as this world is, any alternative world would be worse. If God could’ve create a more-perfect world, he would have. This was the argument of Gottfried Leibnitz.

Conclusion: if God could’ve created a world populated by humans with free will such that everyone was good enough to deserve heaven, he would have. Since he didn’t, such a world couldn’t exist.

But hang on—don’t we already know of such a world? It’s heaven!

Heaven must have free will, since apologists tell us that God doesn’t want mindless robots programmed to love God. But heaven must be a fundamentally different place than earth. You might be able to put up with your nosey neighbor or your buffoon of a boss or your annoying in-laws for a limited time here on earth, but what if you were stuck with them (plus millions more just as imperfect), unchanged, for a trillion years? A heaven that put you in frequent contact with these bumpkins would soon become hellish.

Since we’re taking free will as a given, the answer is clear. That free will must come with the wisdom to use it properly.

Here on earth, we have the animal wisdom to know that deliberately hitting your hand with a hammer would be stupid, so we don’t do it. The profoundly wise beings in heaven would go beyond that. They’d have the free will to do bad things, but their wisdom would never go there. In heaven, your perfectly wise neighbors would have the free will to steal your wallet, but why would they? That would be just one of a vast number of stupid things, like hitting one’s hand with a hammer, that they would never bother pursuing.

This creates a contradiction. The existence of a heaven with free will says that, no, life on our earth isn’t the best of all possible worlds. Give us the wisdom to properly use free will (think of that wisdom as free will’s instruction manual), and we will freely choose to be moral and so merit heaven. And yet, using the best-of-all-possible-worlds hypothesis, we concluded above that earth was as good as it gets.

It looks like God is a moral monster, but you can’t actually prove it. Why is that not a popular sermon?

Response to Craig

Now return to WLC’s conclusion: “both of these assumptions have to be necessarily true, in order to prove that God and hell are logically inconsistent with each other.” Let’s review those assumptions.

Assumption 1 is, “If God is all powerful, then God could create a world in which everyone freely lives his life in such a way that they merit getting into heaven.” Agreed: heaven, with free will plus the wisdom to use it properly, is that world.

Assumption 2 is, “If God is all loving, then he would want such a world.” This also seems true. I can’t imagine any argument that concludes it’s a good thing to deliberately create imperfect people, knowing that they will wind up in eternal torment.

This has admittedly been an informal response to WLC’s answer to the debate question, “Can a loving god send people to hell?” Nevertheless, I find this a satisfactory answer to his challenge.

No, Dr. Craig, a loving God and torment in hell are inconsistent. It’s surprising that the atheist needs to teach the Christian about morality.

If you could reason with religious people,
there would be no religious people.
— Dr. House

When your gut tells you something is wrong with evangelism

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I’d hate being forced to evangelize Jesus to someone. I’m not a Christian, so I don’t anticipate having to do so anytime soon, but it’s a difficult kind of public speaking that I would find punishing.

Imagine a Christian preparing to go out to share the Good News in person. The first task is preparation. You’d need to know the arguments for and against Christianity well enough to hold your own in a discussion. Next, you must have at least a bit of debating skill so you can spot fallacies, not get flustered during the debate, remain polite, and so on. Finally, you prepare an organized agenda of the main topics you need to cover.

You think you’re ready, but Christianity is a difficult argument to make. You must anticipate the hard or awkward questions unique to this task like, how does the Trinity work? If the universe needed God as its creator, why doesn’t God need a creator? If the other thousands of religions throughout history were all manmade, why imagine that the one you believe in just happened to be the one correct one? How can you enjoy heaven if you know about the torments in hell?

You need to expect mocking questions—did the talking snake and the talking donkey ever get together to chat? Was it part of God’s perfect plan that Adam and Eve’s children had to make babies with each other? If God regulated lifelong slavery in the Old Testament, is he angry that we made it illegal? Why is God indistinguishable from nonexistent?

A recent podcast (“Why Are We so Afraid to Share the Gospel?”) adds another dimension to the challenge. Jim Wallace of Cold Case Christianity observed, “It’s one thing to bomb in front of a stranger; it’s another to look foolish in front of your friends.” Looking stupid or weird can have lasting consequences within your social group. This is especially true for young adults, the ones most often encouraged to evangelize. This visceral fear of looking foolish is perhaps the biggest obstacle.

Thought experiment #2

Compare that with a different kind of evangelism. Now you’re trying to convince an anti-vaxxer, in person, to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

This is like evangelizing the Jesus story in that you’re trying to avoid a calamity in both cases. In the Christian case, it’s going to hell. In the vaccination case, it’s dying from COVID, suffering from long COVID, or catching it and spreading it to a vulnerable loved one.

There are other similarities. In both cases:

  • your target has already heard your argument, at least approximately
  • the arguments could be intellectual or emotional (likely both)
  • your target has probably already considered and rejected your position
  • you might fall into a morass of tangents and waste hours. In an online argument, you could easily go at it for months. (I speak from experience.)

But there’s one big difference. When arguing for Christianity, the fear of looking stupid or foolish or gullible is always present or just below the surface. Not so when arguing for vaccination.

The reason? You’re with science when arguing for vaccination but against it when arguing for the virgin birth, and God’s odd fixation on this one planet out of 100 billion in our galaxy, and three gods who are actually one god, and failed guarantees of answered prayer, and a Second Coming that’s been just around the corner for 2000 years.

Replace “science” with “reality” and you see why evangelizing for Jesus feels so awkward. Your gut is trying to tell you something.

See also: Missionary John Chau Died for Nothing: Why the Great Commission Didn’t Apply to Him (or to You)

Related post: Christianity Needs Promotion, Like Soft Drinks

I’m continually amused that so many people
have stepped forward to explain what God meant,
because that clearly tells us how sincerely they understand
that the all-knowing, all-wise one wasn’t up to the task himself.
— commenter Richard S. Russell

Two similar tragedies produce opposite approaches to prayer

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“Faith” has two meanings. It can be permission to believe without a good reason, or it can be belief well grounded in evidence. Changing the definition as necessary is a game that many Christians play.

We find a similar have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too approach with Greg Koukl, a popular Christian apologist from Stand to Reason who responded in contradictory ways to two similar tragedies.

Case 1: critical injury to a staff member

In a podcast just before Christmas a few years ago, Koukl talked about the health of Melinda, a staff member who was in critical condition after a recent head injury. His appeal for prayer was what you’d expect.

I don’t know what God’s thinking about things, but I know what Christians are doing and I hope you’re doing with us—you’re praying like crazy. And that’s what we want you to keep doing—praying Melinda out of this….

Lots of people have come out of [medical situations like this without supernatural assistance], but with God’s help, of course, that gives us a massive leg up and that’s why your prayers for Melinda and for the Stand to Reason team are the most important thing right now….

God is holding us up. He’s keeping us on our feet, which I attribute to his grace and to your prayers, so keep it up.

Koukl isn’t downplaying expectations with tepid claims for prayer that it’s meditative or therapeutic for the person praying. No, he’s making the familiar Christian claim that prayer is useful. It causes positive, big change. It delivers in the here and now.

Case 2: Texas church shooting

Six weeks earlier, Koukl responded to another tragedy within the Christian community. A shooter had killed 25 and wounded 20 in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas on November 5, 2017.

Presumably, people in a church in fear for their lives were doing a lot of praying. That obviously didn’t stop the injuries and deaths. Koukl illustrated this with a couple of comments from atheists: “The murdered victims were in a church! If prayers did anything, they’d still be alive” and, “It seems your direct line to God is not working.”

Christian response: be careful critiquing worldviews

Koukl responded that it’s a mistake to critique another worldview from inside your own. He illustrated his point with an exchange during a Christopher Hitchens debate with Jay Richards. Hitchens said, “Do you believe in the resurrection?” When Richards assented, Hitchens responded, “I rest my case.”

Here’s an example of mine that I think illustrates Koukl’s point. Suppose Hitchens was making lasagna and Richards was making barbeque pork. Now imagine Hitchens criticizes Richards by saying, “You can’t use barbeque sauce in Italian cuisine.” That may be true, but the rules of Italian cuisine don’t apply to barbeque recipes. Similarly, “Resurrections are ridiculous” is true within atheism but not Christianity.

The first problem with Koukl’s point is that atheism isn’t a worldview. It’s just one answer (“No”) to one question (“Do you have a god belief?”). What he wants to respond to instead is a naturalistic worldview, the belief that only natural, not supernatural, forces operate in the universe.

The second problem is that Richards already does pretty much accept that worldview—that evidence is important, that hypotheses should be tested, and so on. I’m sure he uses evidence to cross a street, learn a language, or select medical treatment. (Of course, Richards would reject any claim that only natural forces are in effect.) When followers of Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba claim that he could be in two places at once or when Uri Geller claimed to be using the supernatural rather than performing stage magic, I’m sure Richards is as skeptical as the typical atheist.

It’s not like there are two worldviews, Christianity and naturalism, and they’re equally plausible. Naturalism is the default. We all accept that science informs us so well because it takes a naturalistic approach. Christians live in a house of naturalism, but they go into their Christian room from time to time.

The value of prayer

Despite what he would soon say about prayer’s value in Melinda’s situation, Koukl said,

People from the outside think for some reason (and maybe Christians have given them reason to think this) but that if God really does exist and we pray to him, then we get what we want from God, which includes physical protection.

Koukl may not think it works this way, but Jesus did:

I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete (John 16:23–4).

The story eliminates any second-guessing about caveats when we read a few verses later,

Then Jesus’s disciples said, “Now you are speaking clearly and without figures of speech” (John 16:29).

See also: National Day of Prayer Wasting Time

Koukl continues:

It strikes me as such an absurd thought, why anybody who has even a modest understanding of Christianity and the history of what Christians have endured for thousands of years . . . [would] think that this [shooting] is somehow inconsistent with Christianity.

Uh, because Jesus promised that prayers are answered? Or is this a trick question?

Jesus promised persecution

Koukl next claims that we shouldn’t expect protection from murderers. To underscore this, we get a little persecution porn as Koukl ticks off verses where Jesus promised that Christians will be persecuted.

Do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:12–13)

[Jesus said:] “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:10)

Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. (1 John 3:13)

Koukl tells us that prayer works and that we should pray for Melinda, and the Bible agrees (“Ask and you will receive”). But he laughs at the foolish atheists who think that God would answer prayers for protection against a murder.

Koukl again:

There is … no rationale, no line of thinking that if God does exist that only good things happen to people, particularly people who believe in God, especially Christians.

Nope. The Bible promises exactly that in both the Old Testament and the New:

The LORD will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life (Psalm 121:7; see also 34:17).

No harm overtakes the righteous, but the wicked have their fill of trouble (Proverbs 12:21).

We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them (1 John 5:18).

Let’s return to the issue as Koukl himself raised it. The original atheist objection was: “The murdered victims were in a church! If prayers did anything, they’d still be alive.” And those objections were correct.

Koukl juggles two Bible claims, that Christians will have hardships and that Jesus promised that prayers are answered. He takes the typical Christian route of encouraging prayer when it suits him, but when slapped with inconvenient evidence that prayer does nothing, he reminds us that Christians will have hardships.

This does nothing to fill the awkward silence when Christians pray for something and only chance replies.

Prayer is an act of doubt, not faith.
If you really thought your god was watching over everything
and you genuinely trusted in his “plan,”
you wouldn’t be praying in the first place.
— seen on the internet

Dr. Craig: how plausible would a resurrection be?

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How plausible would a resurrection be? And how hard would it be to make a compelling case for one?

This is the last article in this three-part response to William Lane Craig. Part 1 is here.

Eyewitness testimony

Craig said:

I’ve already emphasized that the argument for the historicity of the empty tomb or Jesus’ resurrection doesn’t depend on Matthew’s being an eyewitness. Rather, it depends upon the reliability of the traditions that Matthew hands on.

I agree—the gospel authors don’t have to be eyewitnesses. I never said they did. But didn’t you say they were eyewitnesses? You said, “The dominant view is that the passion narratives are early and based on eyewitness testimony.”

In your quote above, you said, “[The strength of the gospel story] depends upon the reliability of the traditions that Matthew hands on.” That’s right—but that tradition isn’t strong.

We’re talking about someone being raised from the dead. How skeptical would you be if you read about such a claim, from some tradition besides Christianity, happening just last week? I’m guessing very, very skeptical.

Look at the tenuous links in the chain of Christian claims: first, the inherent unlikelihood of a resurrection. Then the decades of oral history until the first gospel records the story. Then the centuries that separate the original documents from our oldest copies. Then the many ecumenical councils that hammered out doctrinal questions that are essential but oddly not made clear in the Bible such as the Trinity.

Or, see it from the other direction. Finish this sentence: “The Resurrection is likely a historical event because ….” Now imagine a different religion that beats your Christian argument on every point. Would you adopt this religion?

Do Christians believe because they were raised as Christians? Or because their religion comforts them? If so, then stop saying that weighing the evidence without bias will make you a Christian.

Alternatively, do Christians believe because the evidence points to the Bible as a reliable historical record? But if historical reliability is your goal, you should become a Mormon, because at a tenth the age of Christianity, Mormonism’s historical record is much more reliable.

See also: 25,000 New Testament Manuscripts? Big Deal.

Independent attestation

Craig said:

With respect to the empty tomb, as I’ve shown, we have in the traditions behind the Gospels (which these authors mediate) multiple independent attestation to the fact of the empty tomb.

“Independent attestation”? Matthew and Luke borrow enormous amounts from Mark. In fact, only three percent of Mark is not borrowed by Matthew, Luke, or both. And what about John—how certain can we be that its author had never read one of the other three gospels?

I see little to support your claim of independent attestation.

The ending of Mark

Craig also pushed back against my observation about Mark’s abrupt ending, where the women are terrified after seeing an angel and run from the tomb. They tell no one. Craig said:

Now, as for Mark’s account, the fact that the Gospel ends as we have it today with verse 8—that they ran from the tomb in fear and trembling and said nothing to anyone—doesn’t mean, I think, obviously that the women never, ever told anybody about what happened when they visited the tomb that Sunday morning.

Craig grants himself a lot of leeway in interpreting the Bible. With everyone interpreting confusing, bothersome, or contradictory passages as they see fit, it’s no wonder there are thousands of denominations. I can’t imagine Craig is this generous with everyone else’s religious works.

Craig continues:

It simply meant that the women didn’t tell anybody as they fled to return to the disciples where they were staying and to tell them what they had experienced just as we read in the other Gospels. So I think that Bob has seriously misunderstood Mark’s intent here.

I’m the one who misunderstands? If there is a single, neat interpretation of Mark 16:8, why were four longer endings invented for Mark?! It sure looks like many people had trouble with that ending, even if Craig didn’t.

Here’s the ending in the most reliable versions of Mark: “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid” (NIV). And that’s where it ends.

Make sense of Mark by letting it speak for itself. Drop the assumption that the entire New Testament must unite into a single, unambiguous jigsaw puzzle. It’s a human book, not a book that fell from heaven.

If historical reliability is your goal, you should become a Mormon.

Homework

Dr. Craig’s cohost is Kevin Harris, and he wrapped up the video response with a little homework for me. Here he’s speaking to Craig:

I would encourage [Bob] to read your work, Gary Habermas’ work, and the work on it. He’s got his work cut out for him and a lot of material to cover to deal with his work. But don’t just go with these little superficial things. If you want to know about it (the criterion of embarrassment and these things), dig into the work.

I assume he’s thinking of The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Habermas and Licona. I read that ten years ago, and I’ve lost count of the articles I’ve read on the subject. I’ve seen Habermas lecture in person at Christian conferences. I honestly don’t think the problem here is a lack of understanding of the Christian position on my part.

The naturalistic explanation of nature is sufficient, leaving God out of a job.

Man must surely be mad!
He cannot make a worm,
but he makes Gods by the dozen.
— Michael Montaigne

Dr. Craig and the women-at-the-tomb argument

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Many Christian apologists focus on women finding the empty tomb. But if women were second-class citizens in ancient Jewish culture, why give them this prominent role in the story—unless that’s actually what happened? (Part 1 of this debate with William Lane Craig is here.)

To be an eyewitness to the resurrection of Jesus, you must see three things: you must see him alive, then see him dead, and then see him alive again. If you didn’t see all three, you might be able to document the event with reports from others, but you wouldn’t be an eyewitness.

Women at the tomb

The earliest gospels report that “all the disciples deserted [Jesus] and fled” (Matthew 26:56b) before the crucifixion.

Dr. Craig responded that the women were there. That’s true, and (according to the story) they were eyewitnesses, but they probably weren’t authors of a gospel.

Then he said that the Romans could be counted on to do an execution properly, so hearing the death sentence was as good as seeing the corpse. Perhaps, but the gospel authors still wouldn’t be eyewitnesses.

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. I’m simply saying that only an author who saw Jesus alive, then dead, then alive again would be an eyewitness, and the earliest gospels make clear that the disciples weren’t.

In my article, I noted the popular argument that women weren’t reliable witnesses in Jewish society at that time. If the gospel authors wrote through gritted teeth that it was women who were privileged to first see the empty tomb, then it was more likely to be accurate. If they invented the story, they’d probably use men.

Craig is a big fan of this thinking:

I have to say that this argument more than I think any other has caused a reversal of opinion among New Testament scholars with respect to the facticity of the empty tomb. Compared to back in the 1940s when skepticism about the empty tomb was rampant, by far and away the majority of historical Jesus scholars today would affirm the historicity of the empty tomb, and they would do so on the basis of this criterion of embarrassment and the role of the women in discovering the tomb empty.

Craig says that the remarkable role of the women discovering the empty tomb convinced “the majority of historical Jesus scholars today.” But expand the scope to religious professionals worldwide, and this becomes a minority view. Religions worldwide are so hopelessly fragmented that they can agree on little more than that the supernatural exists, and perhaps not even that.

I wonder if the fact that the vast majority of historical Jesus scholars are Christian is why they accept this argument. Let’s explore this with a tangent and consider Muslim scholars. They respect Jesus as a prophet, and they have no problem with the supernatural, but they universally reject the Resurrection. Maybe because they’re biased? Maybe because they were trained to think that? Sure, that’s quite likely—as Muslims they’re pretty much obliged to think that way. But then how is bias not the reason for the Christian scholars’ contradictory opinion?

See also: William Lane Craig Replies to My Attack on Faith Statements

Where was everyone Easter morning? The women knew where the tomb was, and everyone should’ve been camped out awaiting the joyful reunion.

Does the Criterion of Embarrassment apply?

But are the women embarrassing? Would it have been more plausible to have men visit a tomb to apply spices? I argue that this was women’s work in this culture and that the story only makes sense with women finding the empty tomb.

Craig’s response:

What he just said is false. It is not true that Jewish culture was one where caring for the dead was women’s work particularly for the disposal of criminals’ bodies. Notice that it is a delegate of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish court), Joseph of Arimathea, who takes charge of the disposal of Jesus’ body. This is in common practice with the Jewish treatment of condemned criminals.

What is interesting about the treatment of the body of a criminal? Craig doesn’t say. And anyway, Joseph of Arimathea only appears in the gospel of John.

I’m saying that women typically dealt with the dead, not that they universally did so. Here’s where I get this from:

This claim that it was specifically women who found the empty tomb makes the best sense of the realities of history. Preparing bodies for burial was commonly the work of women, not men. (Bart Ehrman)

It was the women’s task to prepare a dead body for burial. (Women in the Bible)

In the ancient world it was common for women, usually family members, to wash a corpse and lay the body out for burial. (Women in the Bible)

(The “Women in the Bible” site contains the contents of the book Women in the Bible (Harper Collins, 1997).)

Could men have prepared a body for burial? Sure. All I’m saying is that women going to the tomb was not only unsurprising but expected, and a story that has them visiting the tomb shortly after the burial to wash the body and apply spices isn’t embarrassing. And if women finding the body makes you anxious, you can rest easy because Luke and John have male disciples run back to see for themselves.

Why was anyone surprised by the Resurrection?

This is a tangent but a fun one. The three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), each have Jesus repeatedly explaining how things will end. Here is the first instance, halfway through Mark:

[Jesus] then began to teach [the disciples] that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this. (Mark 8:31–32a)

Jesus knows how things will play out, and he’s open about it. Combining these ten instances, we learn about his upcoming betrayal, his rejection by the Jewish establishment, his suffering, death by crucifixion, and the resurrection after three days. Several of these say that the disciples didn’t understand, but none of the instances in Matthew say this, so Matthew at least should have the inner circle preparing for the miraculous reunion.

Why then is everyone morose about the crucifixion? It’s part of the plan, and Jesus wouldn’t be gone long. Where was everyone Easter morning? The women knew where the tomb was, and everyone should’ve been camped out awaiting the joyful reunion.

This is an enormous inconsistency.

Concluded with the short ending of Mark and a wrap up on eyewitness testimony.

We can easily forgive
a child who is afraid of the dark.
The real tragedy of life
is when men are afraid of the light.
— attributed to Plato