Monday, April 23, 2012

The Resurrection Hypothesis

The Resurrection Hypothesis (RH) is that “God raised Jesus from the dead.” RH is used to explain the evidence surrounding Jesus of Nazareth’s death. Some of the evidences are: the empty tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, the post-mortem sightings experienced by the disciples and others, and the origin of the disciples’ belief in the Resurrection.

RH is used as an inference to the best explanation. This means that no matter how probable or improbable it or its competing hypotheses are, RH is the most probable of them. Probability is judged on background knowledge, and specifically what the probability of the evidence being present is if a hypothesis is false. William Lane Craig wrote recently, “Rather what’s crucial is the probability that we should have the evidence we do if the extraordinary event had not occurred. This can easily offset any improbability of the event itself”[1] (emphasis in original) Let’s call this, for this article only, the “absence test.”

Historians and skeptics alike have tried for quite some time to come up with a plausible hypothesis that accounted for all of the evidence and that would be just as probable or more so than RH. The problem is that the proffered hypotheses just did not make any sense. Virtually no one (in fact, no one I have ever heard of who lives today) advocates the Swoon theory as such an alternative, because it is medically certain that Jesus died. It holds the necessary explanatory scope (over all of the evidence), but not the same power (Jesus would have been dead, unable to escape a guarded tomb [or really any sealed tomb at all], the disciples would hardly have been roused to belief in a half-dead, but somehow Resurrected and triumphant, Messiah, etc.). So it is with varying other hypotheses.

But what if one came up with a plausible, yet naturalistic, hypothesis for each of the facts? What then? If each of the facts were to be explained, then the entirety of the evidence will have been explained without resort to God, and hence RH is not the best explanation after all.

First, it must be pointed out that simply providing a plausible explanation for each of the facts only serves as a competitor to RH, not as an overriding defeater or something. It’s not enough that it seems plausible; each hypothesis must itself be more probable than RH on its own.[2] Next, three separate hypotheses almost assuredly will not be able to compete, probabilistically, with one unified hypothesis (such as RH). They do not have the ability to pass the absence test nearly as well as RH.

Suppose we offer the fact that the tomb was unguarded and Jesus’ disciples stole his body from the tomb. But we cannot rule out the other background knowledge we do in fact have, such as the fact that the disciples, embarrassingly, returned to fishing and did not believe in the Resurrection. What is the probability that we would have the evidence of an empty tomb and the disciples’ unbelief/abandonment of their message, even in the face of testimony of the empty tomb, if the hypothesis that “the disciples stole the body” was false? I would say that would be pretty good! Therefore, the stolen body hypothesis fails the absence test. Each individual hypothesis given to individual pieces of evidence suffers the same fate.

Moreover, because of the nature of the evidences, a unifying explanation such as RH should nearly always be preferred over any set of individual explanations. For even if the stolen body hypothesis had overcome the absence test, it still could not explain post-mortem experiences very well, and even if it did so, would not explain the disciples’ actual belief in the Resurrection (dying for a lie does not seem likely, and mass delusion fails). In short, if a single hypothesis has the appropriate explanatory power and scope, passes the absence test, and so on, it should always be preferred to individual explanations. RH is the best explanation of the evidence. Jesus is risen!

                [2] This is because if RH is more probable than any of the proffered competitors, then RH should be preferred in the case of that piece of evidence. But if it is to be preferred in that piece of evidence, then it is to be preferred in all of them, for RH just explains all of the evidence.



  1. Randy,


    Right, ok, so it is more likely that he died and was resurrected than that he survived the crucifixion? That is, it is more likely that the trillions of micro-physical particles which constituted Jesus arranged themselves in such a way so as to reanimate Jesus' body such that he could eat food, shake hands, and walk through walls than that he survived the crucifixion?

    That aside, the so-called 'evidences' ('evidences' is a terminus technicus of apologetics, no?) are themselves so poor (inconsistent and tenuous) that nobody should consider them sufficient to oblige Caltech and Fermilab scientists revise their views on the conservation of momentum and energy and the other three laws of thermodynamics, which is essentially what you are saying they should do in light of your 'evidences'.

    1. The question is there ENOUGH to turn to God and ask him about Christ. Its so easy to identify the lost because they have not done this--otherwise they would already have the truth.
      These people seem to think our belief is based on these arguments when we constantly tell them they are not. But then they couldnt use their straw man arguments then. We dont believe...we KNOW because we turned to God for the truth. I dont pray to a God I think might be there based on probability. Yes, I turned in faith when I first went..but we know now.

      There is just enough proof to turn to God and just enough doubt to just say its all crap. This way you are Free to reveal yourself. These people dont want anything to do with Jesus Christ or they would have turned--instead they turn away.

      What the hypothesis and Bayes theory show us is that it would have to be the con all of time to dupe the world that Jesus rose from the dead. Hundreds of people spread this lie and went to their deaths teaching the diabolical message to love their enemies. For what? AND it was believed--HOW? Its like 5 Guatemalans rowing to shore in America and claiming Jose was God. What are the odds that is believed?
      Understand how people felt about the jews at the time. How is it that the Romans bowed to a Jew? Explain that. Explain how all the Kings of Europe also got duped--and now 2 billion modern humans? This isnt like Islam --which is a cultural arab religion. Look on the Map..its like you threw a hand grenade in the middle east---AND its based on the Bible-- saying Jesus was NOT resurrected. So the opposite message spread too.
      Being honest..there is only one game in town. There is enough to ask God so there will be no excuses. If Gods power were not behind Christianity's spread it is the most improbable occurrence in human history--and it also explains Islams rise as a counter message

  2. P.S. Many Muslims advocate the Swoon theory (of one sort or another).

  3. Hi Aaron, nice to see ya!

    I don't think, on the face of it, it is more probable that RH than that he lived. But that is only one part of the probability calculus, covering only one part of the evidence ("evidences" has become a sort of shorthand in apologetics, for "pieces of evidences" or whatnot, so yes :) ). What tends to tip the scales is whether or not the absence test works and explanatory power as well. The Swoon theory doesn't come very close at all.

    Next, RH doesn't require that the three laws are false; it would only require the view that they cannot ever be broken by anything to be false. i.e., it requires supernaturalism to be at least possible. When one advocates RH, no one means "God raised Jesus naturally from the dead." Whatever that may mean, RH is not it!

    As to Muslims, I had heard this, but in my limited interactions I've never heard it directly (no doubt it's been written on in the past). Muslims today sometimes even acknowledge the crucifixion and death, but dismiss the Resurrection. I've also seen the substitute theory by Muslims a lot (it wasn't Jesus, but a look alike; whether they intend this as a supernatural switch or not I am not sure).

  4. Randy,

    Some event which is purported to contravene a physical law (e.g. resurrected bodies) is not considered impossible but merely ridiculously improbable-- you seem to fail to make this distinction regularly.

    That aside, "explanatory power" is in and of itself incoherent. Rather by "explanatory power" we should talk of likelihoods, that is, the likelihood of the evidence on the hypothesis (explanation). If the evidence is extremely likely under an hypothesis with a very low, non-zero probability, and extremely unlikely under its competitors, it is true that the low priors can be overcome. However, concerning the particular case at hand, (1) determining the likelihood of the (qualitatively very poor) evidence on the Christian god hypothesis (i.e. it exists and wants to raise Jesus from the dead) is extremely difficult (if not impossible), and (2) even if the likelihood of the evidence on the Christian god hypothesis were very high in this case, I would argue that they are insufficient to overcome the extremely low priors.

    In addition, re (1), I would argue that there is no scientific or historical basis upon which to base any calculable probabilities whatsoever, and thus when one does assigns likelihoods, one assigns, in numerical form, one's prejudices and biases. That is to say, probability assignments made independently of intersubjectively determinable relative frequencies, proportions, and other empirical data are utter bosh.

    That said, you mention something curious: When one advocates RH, no one means "God raised Jesus naturally from the dead." Whatever that may mean, RH is not it!

    In response to this, three brief points.

    (1) If you are willing to interject a Christian miracle into your account in order to accommodate the impoverished historical evidence, you are pretty much excusing yourself from rational discourse. E.g., a Muslim may interject a miracle to explain Jesus' surviving his execution-- in fact, they do--, and a Jew can interject a miracle to explain the so-called post-mortem 'sightnings' (e.g., they could claim Yahweh sent a spirit of delusion, something he is prone to do, no?). In fact, one is at liberty to interject any number of miracles in order to bolster one's preferred mythology.

    (2) You use the resurrection of Jesus as evidence for your flavor of theism, but we see that you must first posit your flavor of theism in order to make the resurrection plausible. This is known as petitio principii, and it is not permitted.

    (3) Saying some event is occurred via unnatural means is not explanatory. To the contrary, in fact, it is explaining the obscure with the more obscure: “How did the particles, molecules, nerves, neurons, etc., regenerate?” “Oh, not by way of any known force of nature! It was supernatural!” “What does 'supernatural' mean? That seems be like saying something mysterious happened in a way more mysterious.”

  5. Randy,

    Re: Muslims on the resurrection.

    From my (albeit limited) knowledge of Islam, it is considered blasphemy to insist that Allah would permit Jesus to be crucified. They either say he survived through some miracle of Allah or that Allah switched Jesus on the cross with some docetic version.

  6. Hi Aaron--but it just doesn't matter that it's only improbable, because if it's even possible, then so much the worse for using the three laws!

    As to prior probabilities, we don't need to know exact numbers with scientific precision in order to make some close judgment about said probability. Even if you think it is very low, for instance.

    Next, you don't offer any reason why the said historical evidences are "very poor"--especially considering they are widely accepted. You don't offer any reason to say this is irrational. The abductive argument doesn't beg the question any more than any other abductive argument does--unless you have a bias against abduction altogether. Finally, there's just no reason offered against non-natural explanations. I hate to say it but these are all just intellectual handwaving attempts, interacting with none of the evidence. At this point, it comes off more like trying desperately to avoid the conclusion than anything else!

  7. Randy,

    The issues raised here are many and my comments concentrated on merely a portion of them, namely, that even if the historical evidence were of the quality you think that it is, it would not permit the inference that the Christian god (magically / mysteriously / supernaturally) resurrected Jesus.

    In addition, you did not adequately reply to (1) - (3). You attempted to address (2) in saying that what you are doing is some form of abduction, but this raises two issues.

    First, if you were not aware, you should know that inference to the best explanation is largely viewed as meaningless when not cast in probabilistic terms. That is to say, utterances such as "explanatory power", "explanatory scope", and "simplicity" are not well-defined-- indeed, not definable-- in non-probabilistic terms. Ergo, my comment about deriving probability assignments, which, I should add, in no way implies that I hold probabilities must be quantifiably precise (whatever that means) in order to assess hypotheses. (For what it is worth, I don't think probabilities [with the possible exception being in quantum mechanics and thermodynamics] can ever be 'precise'.) Rather, I asserted that probability assignments must be made in light of empirical regularities and all relevant empirical data, otherwise they are incoherent and thus cannot be used to assess hypotheses.

    Second, the particulr (so-called) abductive argument you are attempting to pass is circular, and primarily for reasons stated in (1). The Muslim and Jew are both at liberty to assume their deity and its intentions and then say: “Well, you see then, if we assume (Allah / Yahweh), the historical evidence all makes so much sense!” The Christian posits the miracle at the resurrection. The Muslim posits the miracle at the cross (or shortly before). The Jew posits the miracle afterwards. Your story is mere postulations all the way down. Bertrand Russell sums up my view on this:


  8. Re: Physical laws

    Physical laws are on much surer epistemic grounds than the god hypothesis or the historical evidence in favor of the resurrection is or could ever hope to be. The physical laws, amongst other things, allow us to infer the plausibility of various claims, e.g., whether Jesus could walk through walls. This is not to say that said claims cannot not be made plausible-- they can--, but in order for them to be made plausible, the evidence must be of an extraordinary quality. So, if you elect to suspend physical laws as your religious needs see fit, you are (again) walking down a primrose path to irrelevancy.

    That said, if you want, we can discuss the merits of the particular (so-called) historical evidence. We can discuss why the gospel accounts are probably not independent eyewitness reports. We can discuss the inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies of the gospels. We can discuss the mythical elements of the gospel accounts. Granting that there is some eyewitness reports, we can discuss the poverty of the eyewitness accounts in particular and eyewitness testimony in general. We can discuss 1 Corinthians 15. We can do all of that, but what we cannot do is become emotional and make statements like this: “At this point, it comes off more like trying desperately to avoid the conclusion than anything else!”

    I could make similar statements regarding your credulity, but because I respect you as an epistemic agent I do not.

    If the evidence were such that the only rational stance was to believe that Jesus rose from the dead, I would believe it, and I assume likewise for you. I simply hold to the maxim that it is wrong everywhere and at all times for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. The resurrection does not have sufficient evidence. Thus, it is wrong to believe it occurred.

  9. Hi Aaron, I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean. Abductive arguments of the sort being advocated just say thigns like "based on the evidences, this is what we would expect," black hole arguments work this way. If you would attempt to say that some Muslim argument or alternative account will work, it just about always fails in scope (btw, scope has nothign to do with probability--it is over the entire range of facts, or how many of the facts the explanation covers), or explanatory power (or sometimes both). I don't see any reason we can't assign probability judgments to the relevant factors, and even if we cannot it only follows we remain agnostic about it (that is, we think it is just as likely as not if we cannot assign any probability to it). I also see no reason why we must know *all* relevant data in order to assess a certain probability; then we could never know whether our assessment of *any* particular data is correct, or likely to be correct, for we would need to know all other relevant data, which we would not.

    I just don't take you seriously when you say things like what appears in your third to last paragraph. I have taken a somewhat "hard-liner" stance; if someone claims to know better, but repeats the kinds of things found above, either it is the case that he has not investigate the evidence, he doesn't understand it, or he has but is being disingenuous. If the second, I would understand, but I doubt it.

  10. Hi Randy,

    I was recently rereading a debate between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman on the Resurrection. At one points Craig responds to Ehrman's charge that the body of Jesus may have been stolen by saying:


    Now, I've read enough Habermas, Licona, Craig, etc., to know that the theft hypothesis is quite implausible and obviously, at most, it'd only explain the empty tomb but would leave the post-mortem appearances untouched. Anyhow, that said, I wonder if Craig is too confident in suggesting that only Joseph, his servants, and the women saw the body interred?. As far as I know the traditional site of the tomb is not too far from Golgotha and is it too much to assume that some bystanders would have been watching the crucifixion (maybe for their own amusement) and that they simply carried on watching as Jesus was taken to the tomb? (especially since we have supernatural events [darkness, etc] occuring at the time of death which may have made them more curious). Obviously, even if this were true, it wouldn't help the theft theory much anyway but I still wondered if you'd agree with Craig here?

    1. Hi James. :) To be fair, I think Craig meant that of the supporters of Jesus, only these people knew. He wouldn't be addressing apathetic or hostile people (like bystanders who have no reason to get involved or the Sanhedrin who had every reason to place a guard at the tomb), or the guards themselves.

      So although I can't say for sure this is what Craig meant, I do know that Craig acknowledges a guard at the tomb, and so, charitably, this is how I interpret him here. :)

    2. Ah, OK. Just on the topic of the "theft theory," it seems that for the unbeliever a major problem is finding a plausible candidate to carry out the theft. The disciples seem the most unlikely candidates to my mind. Grave robbers I suppose are possible (I'm assuming for the sake of the argument that there was no guard), though I usually see writers note that grave robbers want valuables and wouldn't bother going to the trouble of moving a body, unless maybe we postulate that they thought it'd be funny to move the body and hide it as a sort of a slap in the face to Jesus's followers. I suppose if vandals did get at the tomb we might presume that we'd find in the literature of time some mention of this by the enemies of Jesus - sort of similar to the polemic we see in Matt's gospel regarding the alleged theft by the disciples? What are your thoughts on that idea?. The only other thing I can't think of is sorcerers stealing the body but I did read a good rebuttal to that in JP Holding's book on the resurrection and he notes, amongst other things, that the idea of sorcerers being at work in a place like Jerusalem is laughable in the first place.

    3. What's important in this part of the debate is not that we can eliminate all other explanations. Rather, what's important is that the explanation "God raised Jesus from the dead" is the most plausible explanation. Therefore, with competing explanations, they need not be eliminated beyond all doubt or possibility; just beyond the plausibility to make them markedly less plausible than the God hypothesis. We can multiply many possible hypotheses, including that the disciples were infected with a heretofore unknown psychosis that leaves its victims insane for 24 hours, and they "resurrected" the body, thought he was alive, and then went on, unaware that they were insane. But obviously that's quite far-fetched. We need something that has the degree of evidence that the God hypothesis has!

    4. Hi Randy,

      Yes, agreed. I was thinking though that from the naturalistic POV they may note that bodies do get stolen from tombs (though according to WLC the only extant evidence we have of grave robbery comes from Gentiles regions but not Jerusalem) , so theft is really more plausible than resurrection; though, as I guess you might point out, when we take into account that this event occurred inconjunction with post-mortem appearances to groups not just to individuals, then we recognise that this outweighs (because group hallucinations have such huge problems) any appeal to theft even though theft may be plausible from the naturalistic POV if looked at in isolation from the rest of the data

    5. Right! It's also important to note that, in explanatory hypotheses, if there is a hypothesis that accounts for all of the data, in the simplest manner, with the least amount of gratuitous or ad hoc assumptions, then it is to be preferred. This means grave robbing won't work, because it's not comprehensive. It only explains the empty tomb, not the disciples belief that they had seen the Messiah, other post-mortem experiences, etc. So then, even if we were to accept the grave robbing, we would have to postulate other explanations for the other facts of the matter. And the simple fact is, the probabilities for all of those explanations being true surrounding the facts of the event will decrease as they are multiplied together.

      We also need to assess, then, what the probability of the evidence is given the particular hypothesis (which I alluded to a moment ago). It seems the probability that we would see the evidence we do see (empty tomb, post-mortem appearances, etc.) given the Grave Robbery Hypothesis is low, perhaps .2 (and that's being very generous). So then we need to see what the probability is of GRH without the evidence we do have; that is, would we expect Jesus' grave to be robbed apart from the facts of the matter. Let's suppose that we either don't know or it is just as likely as not. That means that we assign it a probability of .5. So for our numerator in Bayes' theorem, we'll get .2 x .5, which is .1. Now we need to see what the probability is of the evidence we do see happening apart from GRH at all. While surely the fact of seeing the empty tomb apart from GRH is low, the probability of seeing the evidence without GRH seems high (since the probability of the evidence we have plus GRH is lower than just the evidence alone); I would say at least .7. So now what we have is .2 x .5, divided by .7, which is .14, which is to say, very low indeed, even on somewhat generous numbers.

      Whereas, the RH might be in better shape. The probability of seeing the evidence we do see, given RH, is fairly high, perhaps even .9 (it would seem odd to think it at all implausible that, given RH, the empty tomb and post-mortem experiences happen). Let's lower it to .7, to be fun. What of the probability that RH is true apart from any evidence at all? Well, dead people tend to stay dead, so let's say .2. So now we have .7 x .2, which is .14. Now we need the probability that the evidence would take place without RH. I personally think it's very low; let's say it's .5. So now we have .7 * .2 / .5. That is .28. A low probability, to be sure, but that's with extremely generous numbers, and it doubles up GRH. I actually think with fairer numbers given our background knowledge, we would come up with more like .9 x .2 / .2, which comes out to be .9. But skeptics would scoff at that. :)

  11. Jesus' Tomb was not Guarded or Sealed the entire First Night!

    Holy Grave Robbers!


    Anyone could have stolen the body during those 12 hours!



    —Matthew 27

    1. Hi Gary, thanks for this question: "Isn’t that a huge hole in the Christian explanation for the empty tomb??"

      The short answer is "no." You see the chief priests and Pharisees ask Pilate for a guard, for the purposes of making the tomb "secure," which they equate with prevention of an empty tomb. In verse 66, they made it secure, sealing the stone and setting a guard. With all this concern over the tomb's being empty, it's not even remotely plausible they wouldn't have notice the tomb's being empty.

      If this is all that stood in your way, I hope you'll become a Christian!

    2. Implausible: not seeming reasonable or probable; failing to convince.

      But there is a big difference between implausible and impossible, wouldn't you agree? So which is more implausible:

      1. The members of the Sanhedrin were sloppy. They didn't post their own guard to prevent a body theft after rolling the stone in place (but not sealing the stone) and prior to the arrival of the Roman guards.
      2. A three day dead, decomposing, bloated body walked out of its grave.

      I would bet that most non-Christians would say the latter is the most far.

      The Resurrection must be believed by faith alone. The "evidence" to support its historicity just isn't there.

    3. Hi Gary, you seem to be confused! The question is which is more plausible: that they, wanting to seal the tomb in order to prevent an empty tomb, didn't care enough to see to it, despite the fact that it's indicated they did, or that they did not, which literally has no textual indications.

      You also might want to ask yourself what your purpose is in posting here: are you attempting to convince *me*, or convince *yourself*? Or some third thing?

    4. No, I am trying to help you see the difference between something being implausible and something being impossible.

      If we could be 100% sure that Roman guards faithfully guarded Jesus tomb from the moment Joseph of Arimethea placed the body inside until Sunday morning, that would be a big boost of credibility for the explanation that a resurrection was the cause of the empty tomb.

      However, if there was even a period of ten minutes time that the tomb was unguarded and unsealed, in the dark of night (after sunset), then the probability that the tomb was empty due to someone moving the body is much more probable than a supernatural resurrection.

      You can say the idea that the Sanhedrin would allow the grave to be unsecured for even ten minutes is implausible, but it is not IMPOSSIBLE, and that is all that is needed to sink the Christian apologists' use of an empty tomb for proof of the Resurrection.

    5. Sorry, Gary, that's not quite right. No Christian philosopher rests his or her case on the Resurrection being the only possible explanation (in any case, I certainly don't), and the Resurrection isn't posited as the explanation for the text you're using; this is why I said you've malformed the question. The best explanation of the Matthew 27 text you've quoted above is not that the Pharisees, being concerned to make sure the tomb is not empty, instead ignored whether or not it was empty. The best explanation is instead that they checked and it wasn't. There's simply no textual evidence to the contrary sufficient to overturn this. Will you grant this? If not, there's little point to continuing our conversation. I don't let people bounce from topic to topic, least of all fundamentalist atheists!

    6. Sorry, Gary: I warned you I would not let you bounce from topic to topic. Do you admit the best explanation of the text is that the tomb was not empty? This is your last chance. Have a good day! :)

    7. I warned you! Hope you have an awesome day; let me know if you are ever open or have any questions. :)

    8. I would, and do, go to someone scholarly--journal articles, peer-reviewed anthologies, etc., as opposed to non-serious pseudo-intellectual fundamentalist atheism!

    9. I've already told you, Gary, I won't allow any comments further from you until you go back and admit your first objection was incorrect. Until you're serious, there's nothing that can be done for you.

