My review of Lord or Legend, part 1, by Christian authors Gregory Body and Paul Eddy:
Of course, since we all agree that events generally happen in accordance with natural laws, it makes sense to prefer natural explanations over supernatural ones, all other things being equal. But this is quite different from assuming at the onset that all events must be explained in naturalistic terms. A more open-minded, scholarly approach would be to hold that, if all available natural explanations become implausible, we should consider explanations that go beyond the known natural laws that describe how the world generally operates.
–p. 23
Gary: I am so sick of hearing Christian apologists make this insincere statement. What they really mean is: “I want you atheists to accept a priori the reality of the supernatural. In addition, I want you atheists to abandon a standard of probability based on cumulative human experience for the last 100,000 or so years, and in its place, I want you to accept a view of probability based on the assumption that supernatural events occur all the time.”
What BS!
But then ask Christians to evaluate the supernatural claims of Islam or Mormonism and you will see them revert to the very same standard of probability used by skeptics.
Christians are hypocrites on this issue. They don’t want to admit that their supernatural claims are just as implausible as are the claims of Islam, Mormonism, and other religions.
The plausible natural explanations for the Resurrection Belief are numerous. Here is just one:
- Someone moved the body.
- Cognitive dissonance (the psychological attempt to make a disagreeable reality congruent with your hopes and dreams) led to a new interpretation of the Jewish teaching on resurrection.
It’s that simple.
Read part 2 here.
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End of post.
Escaping Christian Fundamentalism 
“… if all available natural explanations become implausible, we should consider explanations that go beyond the known natural laws that describe how the world generally operates.”
And how does one tell the difference between an unknown natural law (or perhaps many laws), and something that is supernatural? That would seem to be a significant problem for the supernaturalist. But here’s where I’m ready to cut the apologist some slack. When they have a demonstrably plausible supernatural explanation I’ll be here and willing to consider it.
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Muslims are open to supernatural claims, yet they don’t believe the resurrection occurred. And the reasons they don’t are exactly because they do believe in supernatural claims – a supernatural revelation telling the story of Jesus to Muhammad!
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