Speaker challenges the reliability of resurrection accounts, arguing the order of Jesus' appearances does not match gospel accounts.
Transcript
So, without further ado, let's begin. Thank you so much, Chuck. Thanks, Jeremy, for being here. Thank you, Epic, and all the others who invited us here tonight. Personally speaking, I am convinced that the edge between faith and doubt runs through every single one of us. I can promise you it's difficult to have a relationship with an unseen God. i know of only one thing that's more difficult to have than having a relationship with an unseen god and that is having no relationship with god now why would i as a thinking human being believe that god exists not because i can prove god exists to prove means to show that it cannot be another way and i can't even prove that I'm not a bad dream you're having right now. It is possible. Anything's possible. I cannot prove to you that your mother's not just fattening you up to drop arsenic in your tea when you return home for Thanksgiving. It is possible. But the evidence is that I'm standing here and you're sitting there and the evidence is that your mom is not going to drop arsenic in your tea when you return home for Thanksgiving. And that is why you trust her, and that trust is faith. We all have faith. All of us have a worldview. Our worldview is the way we answer the questions, where do I come from, why am I here, how do I live my life ethically now that I am here, and what about the hereafter? Do I become fertilizer, extinct, or is there life after death? And every hedonist, every narcissist, every materialist, every Hindu, Buddhist, Jew, Christian has a world view. Meaning by that, we all are living for something or someone that none of us can prove is true. The question is, do you have evidence to back up your world view? Do you have evidence to back up whatever it is you believe in? Why do I believe that God exists? First of all, because the order and design of the cosmos points to an intelligent mind. I love to go through the woods in the summer and look at beaver dams. If you were to tell me that a beaver dam is a result of sticks coming down the stream and accidentally coming together, I'd be outraged. Why? Because when you study a beaver dam, it obviously points to the mind of a beaver. Incredibly creative, putting the sticks together and building a home. But in spite of the intelligence of a beaver, I am convinced that no beaver has ever built anything close to the Golden Gate Bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge demands a level of intelligence that a beaver dam does not. A beaver can build a beaver dam, but no beaver can ever build the Golden Gate Bridge or the George Washington Bridge. The degree of design, the degree of intricacy demands a mind. But it's quite a gap, isn't it? From a beaver dam to the Golden Gate Bridge and then to the cosmos, what an incredible jump. Designer genes point to a designer. A delicious meal points to a chef. A building points to an architect. A painting points to an artist. And I can promise you, when you study the intricacy of the human body, when you study the intricacy of the cosmos, it demands an intelligent mind. The second piece of evidence for God's existence is the anthropic principle it's the idea that if the earth was a little closer to the Sun we'd all fry if it was a little further from the Sun we'd all freeze it's the ductus arteriosus that everyone has when they were in the mother's womb the ductus arteriosus is a bypass vessel that goes right from the heart to the extremities of the body, not through the lungs. But the instant that a human being is born and starts to breathe, a flap comes down. And that blood no longer goes around the lungs, it goes through the lungs so that you can start to breathe. That little flap comes down, the blood is moved to go through the lungs and you begin to breathe and if that didn't happen you would not live you would die and then a muscle constricts the ductus arteriosus and you continue to have your blood go through your lungs now i stand in awe of that kind of physical phenomenon and i think it's real clear that the amazing intricacy of the universe and the way we live in a universe that sustains life instead of prohibits life points to an intelligent mind to some type of god third piece of evidence for the existence of god is meaning and purpose in life as i go around the world i find that we as human beings had this innate drive to understand meaning and purpose in life. As I go around the world, I find that we as human beings have this innate drive to understand meaning and purpose in life. But if there is no God, life is ultimately a crapshoot. It's ultimately absurd. It's ultimately meaningless. That's why Albert Camus begins his novel, L'Etranger, with the words of a young teenage boy who says, Yesterday mother died. Or was it today? Who gives a rip? Death simply ends the absurdity that birth began. Now, I have a great deal of intellectual respect for Camus, Sartre, Nietzsche. I have a great deal of intellectual respect for any atheist who communicates. Am I out of time? Sorry about that. Thank you. No, no, go right ahead. Go right ahead. I ran out of time. hello I don't think that Cliff's arguments there were sound. I think even if they were sound, they wouldn't actually get you to believe in a Christian God, but I will answer his claims in the rebuttal section. I want to give you my reasons for believing that belief in a God is not rational. First, the attributes of God contradict, especially in the light of what scripture tells us about him. For example, because a good being would not allow needless suffering, we cannot square an all-loving, all-powerful, and perfectly righteous God with the existence of hell. Apologists typically try to explain this problem by insisting that God gave us all free will. We can use that free will to disobey him, and since God is not only loving but also just, he must punish wickedness. But an all-powerful God is capable of creating beings who would freely choose of their accord not to sin. If you doubt this, you need only look to God himself, who is presumably free and also righteous. We are lower than the angels, but they are also capable of freely obeying God. And in the fullness of times when God ushers in his kingdom, the saved will also live with God, freely worshiping him without sin. Either the Bible lies and God lacks the power to create such beings, in which case God himself cannot be free and righteous, or sin and hell are unnecessary, but God deliberately created beings who he would then condemn to eternal torture for being so flawed, in which case God is not good. That's just one example of many where the attributes of God contradict one another. But the attributes are not only contradictory, in some cases they lack coherent meaning altogether. What does it mean for God to be holy? When I was a Christian singing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord in my church, I thought I knew what this meant. Because after all, the Bible is not silent on what is required for righteousness. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not bear false witness. We are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. The standard is clear and we all fall short. But God falls short of this standard as well. In Genesis, he commits global genocide with the flood. In Joshua, he commands the slaughter of men, women, children, babies, and livestock, everything that has the breadth of life. In 2 Samuel, God kills 70,000 Israelites because David didn't follow his instructions when taking a census. Even the Psalms of praise to this God of love declare, happy is one who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks. If such actions are permissible for a supremely good, morally perfect being, it's hard to imagine what action, if any, would be morally off-limits. So God's holiness is clearly not measured by the standard he has given to us. He is following some other standard altogether. But nowhere are we told what is required for God to be holy, or what for God would constitute an unrighteous act. Without such knowledge, to say God is holy is a completely meaningless statement. It conveys as much information as saying God is whole galactic. We're just uttering nonsense at this point. God's holiness is unknowable because it's different in kind from human righteousness, not merely different in degree. To prove me wrong on this point should be easy. All you need to do is identify an action that is not morally permitted for God to do. Just one would suffice. Our understanding of God's righteousness would be rather pitiful, but at least we could say God's holiness had a shred of meaning. But I've never met an apologist yet who could give me one example. Now, I found a few examples that might be candidates. God does not show favoritism. God will not break his promises. He will not leave or forsake Israel. Now, I think in the light of God's special relationship with Israel and his later rejection of them in favor of the Gentiles in Acts 28, we could challenge whether or not those meet the criteria, but we don't need to go there. If God will tell his prophets to lie, as he did to Samuel in 1 Samuel 16.2, if he puts lies into the mouths of prophets as he does in 2 Chronicles 18.22, or will send a spirit of delusion so that people will believe in what is false and not be saved as in 2 Thessalonians 2.11, then we have no basis on which to trust what God says about himself or any of his supposed messengers. We are forever uncertain about what it means for God to be holy. The problem not only remains, it becomes unsolvable in principle. The only way out of this is to bite the bullet Thank you for watching. We are forever uncertain about what it means for God to be holy. The problem not only remains, it becomes unsolvable in principle. The only way out of this is to bite the bullet and define goodness in a viciously circular fashion. Whatever God does, by definition, is good. But this reduces the good to the arbitrary whims of a divine dictator without any standard to live by, who can only be called an amoral being. Absolute morality has no ground except in God's infinite subjectivity, and we are left with moral relativism on a cosmic scale. As such, the only moral authority God would have over us could not come from reason, respect, or example, but only from the threat of force. Neither conclusion is satisfactory. If God's holiness is unintelligible or relative, then the foundation for Christian morality is also unintelligible or relative. It's not rational to believe in such a God. Jeremy raised the issue of suffering. That is one of the most difficult issues for me. If God is all-powerful and all-loving, then why do people suffer? Well, I can promise you, if God is really, really big, then there's absolutely no reason that God has to inform me why suffering exists. So I can promise you the existence of suffering does not wipe out the existence of God. Because if God is really all-powerful and if he really is the creator, he doesn't owe me an explanation of why he allowed suffering. Then Jeremy talked about free will. Great point. Free will is a piece of evidence that God exists. Because if there is no God, you and I are simply complex biochemical reactions. So I might like to think I'm free, but if I believe there is no God, I must be intellectually consistent enough to acknowledge I'm not free. I'm just a highly complex biochemical reaction. And the B.F. Skinner's behaviorism wins the day. Because if there is no God, all of reality is matter and energy. And that's all I am. Matter and energy evolve to a higher order. But my experience of life is that I can know myself. I can engage in self-reflection tonight. I can sit on my bed and I can judge myself. I can know myself. I can critique myself. And that clearly points me to the fact that I have free will. The American legal system is based on free will. It's based on the idea that you are free to live your life the way you choose to, but you are therefore responsible for what you do, and we will hold you legally responsible because you are free. Now, how does an all-powerful God create a person with free will? Obviously, by partially limiting his power. So when God chooses to create us free, he is limiting his power so when god chooses to create us free he is limiting his power and that's cool why is that cool because let's say you've been dating somebody and that person has told you i love you and they've repeatedly said to you i love you but tonight your father calls you up and says you know that person who's communicated that they love you well i've been've been paying him $1,000 a week to love you. You'd be royally bummed out. Why? Because love, in order to be real, has got to be free. Otherwise, it ain't love. And so God is a loving being who chooses to partially limit his power when he creates us free. Why? So that we can love. If you're not free, you cannot love. You cannot love a machine. A machine cannot love you because a machine does not have a free will. It takes a free autonomous individual to enter into a love relationship with you. And that's why you and I are so excited when someone says to us, I love you. It doesn't mean, you know, I've got this biochemical reaction inside and it's going off right now. And the way I describe that biochemical reaction is, I call it love. No, hardly. Instead, when someone says, I love you, we understand that is uncoerced. That is free. They are able to love you or to hate you. Then Jeremy talked about how the attributes of God contradict each other. No, the attributes of God do not contradict each other. God is good. And God's goodness is revealed in both His justice and His mercy and forgiveness. Because God is good, He is just. Which means evil will not win because God is just. But God is also merciful and He delights in forgiving. And it's the justice and the mercy of God that come together magnificently at the cross of Jesus Christ. For at the cross of Christ, the penalty for evil, which is death, is being paid for by Christ. It is the vehicle through which God offers us forgiveness. So God is not contradictory in His nature. God is good, and that goodness is revealed in his justice and in his mercy. Now, why does hell exist? Hell exists because ultimately there is no future for evil. Why? Because God is good. You see, if there is no God, if there is no day of judgment, if there is no heaven and no hell, then guess what, folks? Evil wins. As Billy Joel sang, the good die young. And if you are able to buy the services of a talented lawyer who's talented enough, you can get away with murder. And justice is a joke. As Blaise Pascal, the brilliant 17th century French physicist, put it, the judges of my day wear white wigs to cover up their injustice. And yet isn't it phenomenal that we as human beings have this innate capacity to judge the judges and to say you know something you're unjust because someone paid you money under the table and you delivered an unjust verdict where does that ability come from it comes from our conscience which is it enables us to make a moral judgment well that moral judgment ties us into moral absolutes if a Bosnian Serbs says the reason I rape Muslim women is because of their ethnicity your conscience calls you to reel back in moral outrage and say that's wrong time it's more than wrong it's absolutely wrong because there are objective values cliff didn't actually address my arguments, He just dodged them. As far as the free will question is concerned, the questions are this. Do the saved in heaven have free will and yet choose to obey God? If you say no, then you contradict what the Bible says. If you say yes, then you've proven that free will and perfect obedience are possible. One can freely choose always to do the righteous thing. The same is true of angels. The same is true of God himself. God is free and righteous. So he didn't address that question. As far as the morality of God and is God's righteousness intelligible? He just says God is just. He just says that God is merciful. My question is, what does that mean that God is just and merciful? For example, in 2 Samuel, God kills 70,000 Israelites because David didn't follow instructions when taking a census. David didn't understand what God's justice was in that case. He said, I alone have sinned, but these sheep, what have they done? He doesn't get it because you can't understand that kind of justice. As far as love is concerned, what kind of person would create their children in a way that they would inevitably sin and end up torturing them for eternity in hell? If that is consistent with love, then it's hard to really say what love is. So the demand is, can we find any action to which God could not do and keep his perfect righteousness? What are the limits? What are the rules or standard that he follows? Now, Cliff's arguments for God were the design argument, the anthropic principle, and meaning. First thing I want to point out is any of these arguments, even if they were good, which they're not, they would not prove to you that there is one God as opposed to two, three, four, infinite. They would not prove that that God currently exists. It would not prove that he's all-knowing, all-good, all-loving, or all-powerful. In other words, we're still far away from the Christian God, and any other God or hypothetical being could equally fill that place. Also, God does not explain design, the anthropic principle or meaning, because God doesn't explain anything. It's just a placeholder for our ignorance. It only compounds the mystery. Saying God did it is just saying that some phenomena that is hard to understand is caused by some being that is impossible to understand. That's not an explanation. As far as design, we know what causes design in life. It's the environment. This myth that evolution is somehow completely random is not the case. Mutations are random. It's the environment that selects for which mutations are beneficial or maladaptive. As far as the origin of life, we don't yet have an explanation, but the gap between non-living matter and living life is closing all the time. Scientists in the laboratory have watched the growth of amino acids, simple proteins, structures similar to cell walls, even long chains of molecules that can make very crude copies of themselves. And I'm embarrassed by the fact that he would bring up the idea that our planet is perfectly situated, seeing as last week we discovered the first exoplanet that is in that Goldilocks zone that is perfect for life. It even has features to it because of its mass and its rotation that actually make it a better place for life than the Earth was I'll see you next time. perfect for life. It even has features to it, because of its mass and its rotation, that actually make it a better place for life than the Earth was initially. After 11 years of looking, we found one already and it's only 20 light years away. That's remarkably good odds that indeed the conditions for life are prevalent throughout the universe. Finally, meaning. Cliff's assumption here is that with meaning, if life is limited in duration, it somehow loses its value. But show me one other thing that loses its value when it becomes more scarce. Whenever somebody asks a question about meaning, purpose, or value, you should ask first, meaning to whom? In a world without any form of consciousness, there isn't any need for meaning and purpose. But all you need for purpose and meaning and value is a subjective consciousness that exists over time and can experience some states that are preferable to others. This won't guarantee that the meaning you choose is rational or ethical. Squandering away your life in service of a non-existent deity for example would not be very rational persecuting jews would not be very ethical meaning for your life but still the ability subjective consciousness allows for basic meaning in life thank you gentlemen we're going to shift gears here and address the question is the bible historically reliable cliff historical knowledge is not like scientific knowledge scientific knowledge is based on the repeatability of an experiment historical knowledge is not based on repeating the assassination of abraham lincoln every september it's michigan state in your history class. Rather, historical knowledge is based on the trustworthiness of eyewitness testimony. Someone saw Lincoln assassinated, they recorded what they saw, and Michigan State University charges you guys money to take history courses. Why? Because historical knowledge is a legitimate form of knowledge. Now, how do you determine whether a document, any document, is historically reliable or not? I would encourage you to come up with some tests to determine historicity. For myself, there's nothing sacred about them, but I have four tests. The first test is literary style. What is the literary style of the document? Is it once upon a time in the land of Nod, Wink and Blink and Nod took a boat ride? Well, that's the literary style of the document is it once upon a time in the land of nod wink and blink and nod took a boat ride well that's the literary style of fairy tale mythology or is the literary style of the document at this time in this place with these people around this person said this that person did that in other words does it read like the new york times or the la times is it eyewitness reportage that's what the gospels are They're recording at this time, in this place, Jesus said this, he did that. The literary style is not mythology, it's not fairy tale, it's not romance literature, it's not even the epic poetry of a Homer. Instead, it's historical narrative. The second test that I apply to any document that claims to be historical is internal consistency. Meaning by that, are there major contradictions within the text that point to massive confusion on the part of the author's no in Matthew Mark Luke and John although you have different perspectives there are no major contradictions in fact there are differences in the Gospels and I celebrate those differences because it shows that they are unique eyewitness accounts or Luke talked with with the eyewitnesses, he was not an eyewitness himself, and he recorded what the eyewitnesses shared with him. The third test that I apply to any document that claims to be an eyewitness account, an historical account, is archaeological evidence. Are we talking about the island of Atlantis out in the ocean that none of us can verify? No. Jesus was not born on the island of Atlantis. He was born in Bethlehem. He grew up in Nazareth. And the archaeological evidence is that Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem are real places. Now, skeptics used to go to John chapter 5 and say, well, the pool of Siloam doesn't exist in Jerusalem. And that was true until just a few years ago when archaeologists dug a little deeper and lo and behold, the Pool of Siloam, surrounded by five covered colonnades, was right there in Jerusalem. All archaeology does is to verify the place names, the names of the rulers listed in the New Testament Gospels. The fourth and final test is, hey man, haven't you ever played the game telephone? You sit in a circle, you whisper a secret in the ear of the person next to them, They whisper that secret in the ear of the person next to them. And by the time the secret reaches the end of the circle, it's totally twisted, totally perverted. Yes, I've played that game. No, that is not how we have the New Testament Gospels handed down to us. The New Testament Gospels that we have in English today have nothing to do with the French or Spanish versions out of Western Europe. The New Testament Gospels that we have today are based on over 5,200 Greek manuscripts or pieces of manuscript found from Rome, Italy, down around the Mediterranean, to Alexandria, Egypt, all agreeing to an infinitesimal degree. There is no document from antiquity that can even approach the New Testament Gospels in manuscript evidence. Aristotle, Plato, Caesar, Tacitus, Thucydides, Herodotus. All of their works have, at the most, 20 extant manuscripts. For the New Testament, over 5,000. What about the gap between the writing and the first manuscript that we have? Well, the gap between the writings of Aristotle, Plato, Caesar, Thucydides, Tacitus is approximately 700 years to 1,400 years. The gap between the writing of the New Testament and the first extant manuscript that we have is 30 to 60 years. That's amazing. The earliest fragment that we have of the Gospels is located at the John Rylands University Library in Manchester, England. It's a fragment of the Gospel of John. It's John chapter 18. It's dated 117 to 138 A.D. And John wrote his Gospel between 60 and 90 A.D. So the overwhelming evidence is the Gospels are historically reliable. Simply read them as history and ask yourself, does the historical evidence point to Christ being reliable or does it not? I have some criteria of my own whether or not we should consider the Gospels historically reliable. I'll be talking just about the Gospels. Actually, there's quite a bit of overlap with Cliffs. I would agree that internal consistency counts. I think eyewitness, multiple independent eyewitness accounts are also important. I think these accounts should not show evidence of being contrived to suit parochial or theological concerns. Also, we should be able to find some corroboration for these events from extra-biblical sources from that time. That's not sufficient to say that they are totally reliable, but it is at least necessary. But I don't think the Gospels can pass even this low bar for historical reliability. First, the Gospels are not independent accounts. 89% of the contents of Mark are repeated both in Matthew and Luke. much of it is word for word, verbatim, or with only slight modification. Matthew and Luke cannot be independent if they are copying most of their material directly from Mark, and this fact cannot be explained away by appealing to an oral tradition either. If that were the case, we would expect near total agreement when it came to the important sayings and teachings of Jesus and then a fair degree of flexibility in recording the inessential details. But the gospel actually shows the opposite pattern. Passages that contain the Lord's Prayer, for example, show dramatic changes across the gospels, while minor narrative details like, he left that place and went to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan, are preserved verbatim. This is only possible if the Gospel writers were copying from source material and then altering what passages they were dissatisfied with to suit their own purposes. The Gospels are not eyewitness accounts either. First of all, John is the only Gospel that even claims to be an eyewitness account. But John, like the other Gospels, does not have the character of an eyewitness account. As mentioned, all of them, save Mark, are clearly copying from other sources, but also all of them record events that they could not have possibly been eyewitnesses to. They share private stories, such as Jesus' temptation in the wilderness, Jesus praying to God in private, the Pharisees plotting to kill Jesus, private conversations between Jesus and the high priest or Pontius Pilate, the paying of blood money to Judas and his later suicide at Potter's Field. The Gospels do not present us with objective eyewitness accounts, but rather religious texts created for an evangelistic purpose. As far as extra-biblical sources, we only have three. Tacitus, Suetonius, I will acknowledge the archaeological support, so I'm not contesting that. But as far as testimonies outside to Jesus, we have Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus. Tacitus and Suetonius really tell us nothing, as they are only repeating rumors of what Christians believed at that time, and they don't really give much information at that. The authenticity of Josephus' brief account of Jesus is rejected by most modern scholars, even conservative scholars. At Grace Bible College, my teacher didn't believe this either, because the earliest manuscripts of Josephus do not contain the passage referring to Jesus, and there's evidence of what critics call literary seam in that passage. In other words, the passage abruptly interrupts a thought that's already in progress, and when it's removed, the text flows smoothly, indicating that it was probably never there in the first place. So I don't believe we can claim historical reliability. And I want to note one other thing about Cliff's arguments, maybe a little bit early, and that is the idea that there's so much manuscript evidence for the Bible. That is most certainly true in comparison to other historical texts. However, it does not actually demonstrate anything other than that the manuscripts were transmitted accurately from one copy to another. It doesn't actually prove that the events in them are more reliable for that reason. It should be obvious why. If I were to write something down about how I perceived this debate as going and then photocopied it a couple hundred or thousands of times, that would not make the credibility of my initial account any more valid just because there were actually many different duplicates. So I don't need the rest of my time. Are the Gospels independent? Of course they're independent. Did they use notes? Of course they used notes. Was the oral tradition strong among the Jewish people? Of course it was strong. The Gospels were not written until 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 A.D. Why? Because people, the first century followers of Christ, when they met together, they didn't want to read a document. They wanted an eyewitness. They wanted to hear from an eyewitness, what did Jesus say? How did Jesus live? But as the years began to pass, obviously, eyewitnesses began to die off. that's when the written documents the gospels became more and more important are there similarities between the synoptics matthew mark and luke of course there are but matthew contains the sermon on the mount matthew chapters five six and seven mark doesn't and luke does a partial job of a sermon on a plane that has parallels to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, but it is obviously not a carbon copy in the slightest. Obviously, in John, you've got all the I am statements of Jesus. I am the good shepherd. I am the bread of life. I am the door. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the resurrection and the life. You have none of those statements in the synoptic Gospels. The Gospels are unique, independent accounts of Christ. Do they use notes? Of course they use notes. I sure hope they use notes. Is there a strong oral tradition behind the gospels? Of course there is. Jesus spoke in parables. Why? Because those are easily remembered. Jesus spoke the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Those little triads are neat, simple things to memorize. So yes, obviously, there was a strong oral tradition. Yes, Jesus spoke in parables and in neat phrases that could be easily memorized. No question about it. That doesn't mean that the Gospels aren't reliable. It means that there was a strong oral tradition, and Jesus was an incredibly gifted, talented communicator. No question about it. The parable of the Good Samaritan, the parable of the prodigal son, parables are easy to put to memory. Now, was Matthew, was Mark, was John an eyewitness? Obviously, yes. Matthew was one of the apostles. Mark was not one of the apostles, but he was a disciple who followed Christ. He probably was the first streaker who lost his garment in the Garden of Gethsemane, as he records. A soldier grabbed him and he unraveled and ran. Obviously, Mark was very tight with all the apostles. He was tight with the apostle Paul. Paul, at the end of 2 Timothy, says, Send Mark, because he is helpful and fruitful in the ministry. So these are people with tremendous credibility. Now, when you read the Gospels, one of the things you can't miss is their honesty, their vulnerability, their transparency. Who was Peter in the first century church? He was one of the leaders. Well, when you read the Gospels, do you read a glowing picture of the apostle Peter? Hardly. In Matthew chapter 16, Jesus asked the guys near Caesarea Philippi, who do you think I am? And Peter says, you're the Christ, you're the son of the living God. And Jesus commends Peter and says, blessed are you, Peter, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my father in heaven. commends him a few verses later jesus is saying guess what guys i'm going to go and die on a cross and what does peter say no way i'll never let it happen and boy does jesus rebuke him get behind me satan you do not have in mind the things of god but the things of men why would peter if he's a manipulative rascal why would the the Gospels, if they're simply propaganda tracks, include in living color, repeatedly, the sins, the mistakes, the blind, foolish statements of the leader of the first century church? One of them, the Apostle Peter. No, when you read the Gospels, you'll notice that there's a tremendous transparency on the part of the authors, on the part of the individuals. There's a tremendous honesty. There's a tremendous willingness to say, you know, I got feet of clay. I got doubts. What about Thomas? He's one of the twelve apostles. And when Jesus rises from the dead, Thomas doesn't say, oh yeah, of course, I was expecting this. No. Thomas says, not unless I can see Christ with my own eyes, not unless I can put my hands in the nail prints in his hands. Not unless I can take my hand and thrust it in the spirit in his side will I believe. And when all the disciples are together, including Thomas, and suddenly Jesus stands among them, and he walks right up to Thomas and says to the man right here, take your hands and put them in the nail prints in my hands. Take your hand and thrust it in the spirit in my side, and you're an idiot for doubting. No. That is not what Jesus said. He said, and believe. believe why because you're insecure and weak why believe because you don't have a brain no Jesus didn't die to take away our brains he died to take away our sins and he says to Thomas believe in me because here's the evidence I'm risen from the dead well once again cliff didn't actually address my points he only dodged them you can't just then and maintained that they're independent, once again, Cliff didn't actually address my points. He only dodged them. You can't just then maintain that they're independent. Of course they're independent. You have to give a reason why. And as I pointed out, 89% of the contents of Mark are repeated both in Matthew and Luke. Much of it is verbatim. You can crack open your Bible and see this. The patterns of agreement and disagreement in the text do not suggest just eyewitnesses watching something. Again, the details would be different. We would have very, very close similarity in the sayings of Jesus and freedom dissimilarity in some of the minor editorial details. That's not what we actually show. That's why most modern scholars and even a lot of conservative biblical critics accept the idea that these were not independently written. They were borrowed. They were borrowed from earlier sources. That's not to deny that an oral tradition didn't inform them initially, but that cannot explain the way that Matthew and Luke relates to Mark. Now, I want to make one final point on his initial argument that the Gospels are internally consistent. For the most part, they are, but there are significant differences, even in passages that are crucial to Christian doctrine. So I want to talk about the resurrection accounts. Even a casual survey of the resurrection accounts will note several discrepancies in them. Were there one, two, three, five, or five women at the tomb? Was it still dark? Was it towards dawn or after dawn that they visited? Was there a young man at the tomb, an angel or two angels? I'll admit that many of these can be harmonized, but you can't escape all of the contradictions in this way. For instance, both Matthew and Luke's account, Mary is visited by the angel at the tomb, and in fact, Jesus in Matthew's account visits her at the tomb before she goes to tell the apostles the amazing news that he has risen. But in John, Mary only sees the empty tomb, not the angel or Jesus she doesn't know that he's resurrected when she reports this news to the disciples so John 20 verse 2 says so she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciples and the other disciple the one whom Jesus loved and said to them they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have lain him here Mary isn't following the angels instructions to go tell the eleven the good news. She is distressed. She believes that someone has stolen the body. This cannot be reconciled with the other accounts, nor can it be reconciled with the stone, which was already removed before the women arrive in every other gospel except for Matthew. It's unclear, but Matthew sure reads as if the stone had been moved away in the women's presence but what is crystal clear is that the angel is sitting on top of the stone and ushers the women in to see for themselves that Christ is not there in the Matthew account this is simply impossible to square away with John's account and actually I could go could go on and on about this, asking, did Jesus first appear to the disciples in Galilee or Jerusalem? Was Thomas there or not? Did he ascend at Bethany on the same day as his resurrection or at the Mount of Olives 40 days later? This is not just some cute little passage that is unimportant to Christianity. This is the most important event in the entire Bible. This is the resurrection event. And they don't seem to agree on most of the details. Since I have one more minute that I hadn't planned on having, I want to point out another element here. Let me read Luke 24, 11. This is after in in Luke, where Mary goes and reports to the disciples that Jesus has risen. Luke 24, 11 says, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb, stooping and looking in, and he saw the linen cloths by themselves. And then he went home, amazed at what happened. I'm going to read the passage again in John 20, verse 2. She ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loves, and said, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have lain him. Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. Did you catch that? In John's account, the other disciple, they're very concerned about showing that he gets there first. That's because they wanted to establish their teacher was John, was more important than Peter. There's other verses that go along with that. Thank you, Jeremy. Our final topic this evening that Jeremy just touched on is, is the resurrection of Jesus an actual historical event? Did Jesus Christ really rise from the dead? In approximately 52 AD, the Apostle Paul wrote a letter to the Corinthians. And in chapter 15, verses 3 through 8, the Apostle Paul writes, What I received, I received this. this what i received i passed on to you as a first importance that christ died for our sins according to the scriptures that he was buried that he was raised from the dead on the third day according to the scriptures that he appeared to peter and then to the 12 after that he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers, most of whom are still living. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, he appeared to me as to one abnormally born. That's in 52 AD, approximately. 50, 51, 52, 53 AD, Paul is writing that. Notice, that is 20 years, years approximately after the historical event and what he's saying is i received this now when did he receive it in all probability he received it three to four years after the event occurred when after his conversion, he went back to Jerusalem and sat with Peter and James and the other leaders of the first century church. That's when he received that information. So in first Corinthians 15, you have historical information about the resurrection of Christ that is going back all the way to approximately 35, 36 AD, two or three or four years after the resurrection. Now, the first question is, did Christ really die? In the Gospel of John, John did not understand the medical facts, but he records that Christ died on the cross, but just to make sure that he was dead, a Roman soldier went up and stuck a spear in the side of Christ, and an issue of watery serum, separate from red card clotted blood from the side of Christ they did not understand that medically in their day but we understand that if you have a major gap in your body cavity a major wound and if watery serum flows out separate from clotted blood you ain't been sucking wind in the past five minutes it's a sign of massive heart failure clotting of the arteries you are dead stone dead not stone dead. Not lapsed into unconsciousness, but dead. They take his body off the cross, and they don't hide it in a secret tomb. Joseph of Arimathea was one of the leaders, political leaders of Israel. He was part of the Sanhedrin, a group of 62 leaders, political, powerful leaders. Very well known, Joseph of Arimathea. They take the body of Christ, they put it in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Most people knowing who Joseph of Arimathea is. His tomb, readily identifiable. His disciples are not true believers. His disciples are a bunch of Christ deniers, Christ deserters, Christ betrayers. They are not expecting to see him risen from the dead. They disperse in disillusionment. Three days after he is put in that tomb, he appears risen from the dead, and the gospel writers make a big mistake. The gospel writers write that he appeared to women risen from the dead. Sexism is bad today, but it was horrible in the first century. Women were not even allowed to testify in court. But the gospels have the ring of authenticity as Christ attacks that sexism and appears, first all to some grief-torn women then over a period of 40 days he appears to over 500 people paul writes there in first corinthians 15 who see him risen from the dead women those are the first eyewitnesses of christ not a good way to construct a lie if your intent is to fabricate a hoax or a myth. Similarly, read To Kill a Mockingbird. And in To Kill a Mockingbird, we read about a lawyer who understands, there's no way I'm going to get Tom Robinson off free. Because this is in the South, in the Depression era. And this is a he said, she said. And the only problem is that he is a black man and she is a white woman and there's no way that a white woman a white woman is not going to win over a black man when she accuses him of rape and sexual molestation well tom robinson didn't have any credibility in that white courtroom and he was condemned in spite of the fact that he was innocent and I can promise you women did not have any credibility in the first century it was sick the sexism and chauvinism but the Gospels record that Christ first appeared risen from the dead to women over at a period of 40 days he appeared to over 500 people and he appeared to his apostles those Christ deniers Christ betrayers Christ deserters and guess what all of those apostles stood before a Roman soldier, and the Roman soldier said, Caesar is Lord. Maintain that and live. Or else maintain that Jesus is Lord, that he's risen from the dead, and we will execute you for it. And every single one of them said, Jesus is Lord, and they died. Not for a belief. They died for what they have claimed to have seen, the dead Christ risen from the dead. What would it take to prove a miracle like the resurrection? At the very least, we would need to rule out that any alternative explanation that is more plausible than the miracle itself. So in this case, we would need to know that those who purport to have seen the miracle were not themselves deceived or attempting to deceive us. That's an entirely reasonable yet very high burden of proof. But many apologists claim that they can meet that burden. The Bible records that at least a few of these apostles were martyred for their beliefs. But why would anyone die for what they know to be a lie? And apparently to many apologists this action is so unimaginable that the only explanation for it is that Jesus really did rise from the dead. But does anyone actually believe this? Imagine you are a common fisherman that has abandoned your family, home, and livelihood to follow a teacher whom you revere. Then the unthinkable happens, and your leader suffers a terrifying and humiliating death. Under such pressure, can we not imagine that one might believe this must have happened for a reason? He must still be alive, or even, I have seen him with my own eyes. If that is too much, could we not conceive of a religious leader, revered by his followers, facing execution and deciding that the shame of publicly confessing to a lie would be more unbearable than death itself. If both of these scenarios seem incredible to you, then I must ask, why the sudden lack of imagination, especially in the light of what we know today about human psychology? Cognitive dissonance studies show us that when people are confronted with facts that challenge their most deeply held beliefs, their beliefs actually become stronger. Terror management theorists have shown us that increasing one's anxiety about death causes them to cling more tightly to their worldview, and social psychologists have known for a long time that all persecuted groups, not just first century Christians, tend to circle the wagons and become more entrenched in their beliefs when faced with opposition. Is it any surprise, then, that survivors of the Jonestown Massacre reported that many who killed themselves We'll be right back. tend to circle the wagons and become more entrenched in their beliefs when faced with opposition. Is it any surprise, then, that survivors of the Jonestown massacre reported that many who killed themselves had already become disillusioned with Jim Jones at the time, or that Joseph Smith, who was clearly a fraud, would face persecution and death to preserve his cult? It is far more plausible to believe that people would die for a lie than to believe a man rose from the dead. I already know what Cliff is going to say. He's going to say, but the Gospels report that the 11 saw Jesus and even touched the wound in his hands, that the Apostle Paul says that the risen Christ appeared to as many as 500 people. What amazes me is that apologists expect us to accept such claims at face value when they would never consider doing the same for the scriptures of other religions or other supposed messiahs at the time of Jesus. Honi the circle drawer lived a century before Jesus, and Hananiah Bendosa lived a generation after. But both were from Galilee, both purportedly healed the sick and cast out demons, and both were called the son of God. Apollonius of Tyana healed the sick, raised the dead, was executed by Roman authorities, and appeared afterwards in bodily form to his disciples. Why do you believe in Jesus over Apollonius? Because Apollonius only has one surviving gospel to his name instead of four? If we discovered three more written shortly after his death, would you believe them then? Of course not. Because you're an intelligent person and you know better than to take firstcentury religious texts at face value, at least most of the time. The Gospel of Matthew reports that some people even believed that Jesus himself was John the Baptist resurrected from the dead. Apparently, people at this time were dying to believe in such things. Intellectual integrity demands that we hold ourselves to the same standards that we use to judge others. If you are willing to accept that the resurrection for no other reason that the Bible says it happened then by what standard do you reject that the Buddha was enlightened or that Muhammad was visited by the angel Gabriel who dictated to him Allah's final revelation if you are unwilling to take these testimonies at face value then you must show the same degree of skepticism towards the resurrection. Obviously miracles don't happen. If. these testimonies at face value then you must show the same degree of skepticism towards the resurrection obviously miracles don't happen if if there is no supernatural God it is stupidity to think that Jesus rose from the dead if you do not allow for a supernatural God but if a supernatural God exists then miracles are very rational and reasonable why if there's a supernatural God exists, then miracles are very rational and reasonable. Why? If there's a supernatural God, it means that the, quote, laws of nature were created by this supernatural God. And what's a miracle? A miracle is simply the changing of a law that God created in the first place. There's nothing irrational about that. There's nothing stupid about that. So you see, it begins with your philosophical presupposition. Do you believe that there's a supernatural God or not? Now, obviously, if there's no supernatural God, then it's impossible for someone to rise from the dead. And there is no life after death. And we all die and we all rot and we all become fertilizer. That's obvious. But if there is a supernatural god then it's possible that there's life after death and it's possible that jesus rose from the dead so the first issue that you have to grapple with is does the evidence point to a supernatural god or does it not then the second issue you have to grapple with is does the historical evidence point to jesus rising from the dead now i'd be very very careful to not try to minimize Thank you for watching. point to jesus rising from the dead now i'd be very very careful to not try to minimize the experience of a large number of first century palestinian jews and i would be careful not to minimize the fact that these first century palestinian jews deeply committed to truth claimed that they saw christ and they were willing to die. Not for a belief. They were willing to die for what they claimed to have seen. The dead Christ risen from the dead. Study the first century church. This is not a group of weird people. This is not a group of people who are desperate and are thinking about suicide and to try and compare this first century group of people like saul of tarsus who writes romans first and second corinthians galatians ephesians philippians some of the most profound works of literature that we possess to try and compare that to a jonestown suicide mania, is embarrassing. Really embarrassing. I would never go there. When you read Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, you are grappling with a huge intellect, Saul of Tarsus, who became the Apostle Paul. And to think that this guy was a little tipsy, a little out of touch with reality, in light of the writings that he put together, and in light of the way some of the most brilliant minds of Western civilization have thrived in working through the thoughts of the Apostle Paul, be it Augustine, be it Martin Luther, be it Wesley's, who started the Methodist Church, to try and posit that the Apostle Paul is this intellectual ignoramus who's irrational, and these first century Palestinian Jews who were the eyewitnesses of Christ were emotionally disturbed people who just desperately needed a risen Jesus. No, they didn't, quite thank you. They were monotheistic Jews. They were very secure in their Jewish monotheism. In fact, they were so secure that they were very, very successfully resisting the most powerful empire in the world, the Roman Empire. So go back and study your history more carefully and realize that these first century Palestinian Jews were not a bunch of insecure wimps, not a bunch of mesmerized fanatics, not a bunch of candidates to commit suicide like Jonestown. They weren't blind, inept puppies. You cannot read the writings of the New Testament and conclude, oh, you know, these are uneducated bumpkins. These are hicks from out in the country who really just don't know what reality is. No, they were highly intelligent people. And all you need to do is study Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, it becomes clear that saul of tarsus had a booming intellect and had an ability to think with precision with clarity in an incredibly rational way in such a way that the art the music some of the best art the western world has seen some of the best music the western world has seen was inspired by these incredible men and women of faith who didn't jettison their brains at the door and blindly believe. No, quite to the contrary. They were skeptics, and they demanded evidence before they believed. And to dismiss all of that as simply emotionally unstable people who desperately needed a panacea to deal with their fears and insecurities is a trite oversimplification. And I'm sure if you take the time to read the Gospels and to read the writings of Paul, you will see exactly what we're talking about. I wasn't saying they were insecure wimps or unintelligent. In fact, I have far more respect for the Apostle Paul than that. That's just an appeal to outrage. It's just a red herring to get you away from the point that I was trying to make, which is, what is our threshold for evidence for believing in something as amazing as somebody rising from the dead? And somebody's testimony is not good enough. He brought up all these number, this large number of Palestinian witnesses, but I would remind everybody that we don't have access to these eyewitnesses. We don't even have their testimonies. All we have is Paul in one sentence saying that these people were out there. We can't go out and confirm. And as far as pointing out to the intellectual integrity of these men or as far as the intellectual powers of these men and the sophisticatedness of their writings, this isn't any different for the writer, for Apollonius of Tyana. It's not any different for the Buddhist Pali Canon. It's not any different for the Koran. So pointing out that these people were intelligent and could write a very good piece of ancient history or epistles or something like that is not an argument for the fact that they're all true, unless you're willing to apply that standard equally and accept the claims of Buddhism and accept the claims of Islam and so on. There are, of course, many discrepancies within that resurrection account, and that gives us enough basis to doubt its historical authenticity. And, in fact, when you actually look at the dates, the probable dates for where the Gospels were written and match them up with their contents, you do see the story getting more and more detailed as it goes along in time. For example, Paul, who's the earliest writer who mentions the resurrection, never mentions the tomb, never mentions the resurrection event at all. He just mentions these visions that people had of him appearing, appearing to Paul as in kind of a beam of light type of thing, shining light. When we get to Mark, his account of the resurrection, this is where the original ending of Mark is. But he said unto them, this is the angel talking to Mary, do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth who is crucified. He has been raised. He is not here. Look, there is the place they have laid him. But go tell the disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him just as we told you. And what happens next? So they went out and fled from the tomb for terror and amazement had seized them. And they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid. That's where the gospel of Mark originally ended. The probable dates for that are 65 to 70 CE. That's where it ended. We do not get the short endings that are tacked on until much later. We don't get them until the late 100s, so a couple decades later. And if you look at these endings, they are clearly tacked on. They even restate some of the details of the earlier accounts. Then you move on from there, and you look that Matthew and Luke and John gradually acquire more and more detail. This is evidence, like some of the evidence I pointed out in my earlier argument, that these things were contrived. For example, Paul. Paul is the closest witness. Now, he never actually saw a bodily Jesus. He saw him, again, in a vision on the road to Damascus. But he recounts, supposedly, what these eyewitnesses testified. I'm embarrassed that I don't actually have all the verses right out in front of me to show it. So don't believe me here until you go home and check for yourself. But if you compare Paul's account of the order of the appearances in which Jesus appeared to different people, they don't match the gospel accounts at all. They're very different from what the gospel, the order of the gospels give. So how we can just pretend, stand back and pretend like we can accept this all at face value, especially when the event in question is something as momentous as somebody rising from the dead, which I think we all have to admit doesn't happen that often. I don't see how we can take this at face value. Thank you, Jeremy. Ladies and gentlemen, would you please give our guests a warm applause? Thank you.