The Agnostic Blog

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A Non-believer's Case for The Resurrection

Imagine that some event in the past is documented. It has multiple attestation, it has explanatory power, etc. Would not such an event be accepted as a historical fact by many, including historians? The answer is yes.

But, then let's say that the event is a supernatural one, like the resurrection of Jesus. Now all of the sudden, the event is not accepted despite having the same level of evidence. To show the absurdity even more, let's say that Jesus's resurrection had many different sources, even from rivals. Even the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate that sentenced Jesus to death says that the guy is alive again somehow. That would of course be the strongest type of evidence that we could have for an event that occurred in the ancient past. Yet, it seems some of the experts in the field still wouldn't accept it.

The point I'm getting at is that historical evidence doesn't matter, and that's a bad thing of course. In my view, the real problem is ideology in that the resurrection goes against naturalism. Again, what should matter is evidence, and not what the evidence is of.

Two pieces of evidence that persuaded me of Jesus's resurrection:

  1. The origin and rise of Christianity. I don't believe you can have a Christianity without the resurrection (or at least the belief in such). People would not knowingly spread a lie with nothing to gain. The Apostles evangelism did not put them in some rock star status like what we see from evangelists today. To the contrary, following Jesus was probably unpopular after his death, and his death would've been a deterrence. Some apostles were imprisoned, suffered/persecuted (e.g. Roman Emperor Nero persecuted them), and likely died from punishment. There are no written records that the Apostles were martyred but their persecution makes that likely.

  2. Multiple attestation and witnesses for the resurrection. The resurrection is recorded in multiple sources, the Synoptic gospels (presumably started as oral tradition before being written down at a much later time), Gospel of John, by Luke in Acts (Luke is a secondary witnesses documenting what others say they saw), and by Paul in 1 Corinthians. That's at least 4 different sources.

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The skeptic in me looks at this evidence and says, "that's it". But then I remind myself that that is the nature of historical evidence. It is mostly testimony, what someone wrote, and that's true the farther back in time we go. This is why I only say that the resurrection is historically valid, which means that it likely did happen in the past.

I'm always open to changing my mind of course based on good logic and evidence.

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