I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
-Stephen Roberts, otherwise known as, NonStampCollector
Thousands of years ago, millions of people prayed to Zeus, Apollo, Jupiter and others. Why? For the same reason that Christians pray to their god today: answered prayers. The prayer requests to these gods were “answered” just often enough to convince ancient peoples that their gods existed and that their gods responded to human prayer requests.
No one today believes that these gods exist.
How is Christian answered prayer any different? If ancient people were praying to non-existent gods and occasionally receiving “answered prayers” why isn’t the same phenomenon happening with Christians today? Can Christians prove that the frequency of their “answered prayers” to Jesus is greater than “answered prayer” said to Zeus, who everyone agrees, does not exist?
Don’t waste your time trying to convince a Christian that a natural explanation is more probable than a supernatural explanation for the missing body of Jesus. If you do, he (or she) will chuckle and reply with something similar to the following:
Ah, the old “probability” trap….. Hume thought he had this one figured out.Unfortunately, there is no way to calculate the probability of a supernatural being that has agency making a decision to do either one thing or another at any given time, unless somehow, it’s possible to know that being’s thoughts and timeline beforehand. So, the question of “what’s more probable” simply doesn’t apply at all.
Why don’t they use this same logic when their keys are missing???
Imagine a world where a supernatural explanation must be considered for every odd event. What chaos! The local bank is robbed and one of the tellers tells the police that she had a vision that Jesus took the money! Jesus took the money to distribute to poor people in the Third World! Should the police be obliged to take this claim seriously? Should the police spend valuable resources investigating this supernatural explanation for an empty bank vault?
Of course not!
Dear Christians: Please admit the truth. The reason why you jump to a supernatural explanation in the case of the first century missing corpse of Jesus is because every fiber in your body wants the supernatural explanation to be true!!!
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Dear Christian:
For all odd events, I, like most skeptics, assume that a rare but natural cause is much more probable than a supernatural cause.
You, on the other hand, assume for most odd events in your life the very same: that a rare but natural cause is much more probable than a supernatural cause. However, when it comes to a first century empty tomb, you assume that a supernatural cause is more probable than several, possible, rare but natural explanations.
The big question is: Why?
Copied from John Loftus blog, Debunking Christianity:
Meta-apologetics is concerned with apologetical issues, especially with regard to which apologetics method is the best one for defending the Christian faith, if one exists at all. I’m introducing a previously ignored meta-apologetical problem for Christian apologists to answer, if they can answer it at all. It constitutes a serious problem aimed at the whole apologetical enterprise. Why does it take so much effort and sophisticated knowledge to defend the Christian faith?
The probability that the Bible is God’s word is inversely proportional to the amount of work it takes Christian apologists to defend it from objections to the contrary (that is, the more work its defense requires, the less likely the Bible is God’s word), and it requires way too much work to suppose that it is.
Consider the sheer numbers of Christian apologists/scholars and books that have been published by the following author/editors: C.S. Lewis, Norman Geisler, William Lane Craig, Richard Swinburne, Paul Copan, Alvin Plantinga, N.T. Wright, Chad Meister, J.P. Moreland, Gregory Boyd, Gary Habermas, Steven Cowan, Douglas Groothuis, Peter van Inwagen, Randal Rauser, Michael Murray, William Dembski, Richard J. Bauckham, Michael Brown, Dan Wallace, D.A. Carson, G.K. Beale, Craig Blomberg, Craig Evans, Stephen Davis, Donald Guthrie, Ralph Martin, Richard Hess, Dinesh D’Souza, and Timothy Keller to name some of the more noteworthy ones. While some of these authors deal with the same issues most of their material is unique to them, for further defending their faith. If we add in their magazine and journal articles we already have a small library of works. If we were to get and read the references they quote from we have a whole library of works in defense of the Christian faith, a comprehensive case. That’s what a comprehensive apologetic requires. The important question left unaddressed by them, as always, is why a defense requires so many books? Why does Christianity need such a defense at all?
Gary: Christians allege that a first century, brain-dead human being came back to life possessing a transformed body with supernatural powers and attributes. They allege this resurrected body was seen by hundreds of people at the same time and place. They allege that at least a dozen people saw this resurrected body slowly levitate into space. And yet, no public university history text book on the planet lists this incident as an historical event. Why? It can’t be a bias against Jesus, because most of these same historians believe that Jesus was a real historical person. Is it therefore possible that the lack of mention of this event in any public university history text book is due to a lack of good evidence???
Christian: Gary, you KNOW the reason. You read [Bart] Ehrman’s blog, and he’s talked about the “historic methods” extensively. “History”, as a discipline, doesn’t do the supernatural. It’s about finding “naturalistic” answers, in the same fashion that science, as a discipline, doesn’t do the supernatural, either – for the same reasons. It’s a pointless argument. The fact that the resurrection doesn’t show up in a “world history” book doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with whether it occurred or not; it has to do with the fact that history, as a discipline, doesn’t delve into the supernatural. You really ought to know that, with as much reading as you claim to do. Especially if you read Ehrman’s blogs (which I know you do).
Gary: It is true that neither historians nor scientists can examine the evidence for the supernatural resurrection of a first century body as such a supernatural event defies the methods used by these disciplines to determine facts. However, historians could provide evidence of the date this event allegedly occurred, a list of persons confirmed to have been there, the location, etc.. We can do this for other alleged supernatural events, such as the alleged sighting of the Virgin Mary in Fatima Portugal in 1917 and her alleged sighting in Knock, Ireland the summer of 2017. We have first hand accounts of these events. We have confirmed eyewitness reports. We have news coverage of these events. Yet, we have ZERO contemporary reports of the greatest (alleged) event ever to happen on planet earth!!! Zip. Nada.
Think about this: The author of the Gospel of Luke states that he carefully evaluated eyewitness testimony to write his gospel. Many Christians take this to mean that Luke interviewed eyewitnesses for his gospel. Yet, neither Luke nor any other author of the Christian New Testament records the date of the resurrection of Jesus! No Church Father records the date of this event. The sad fact is, Christians do not know the date or even the year of Jesus’ resurrection, the greatest day in the history of the Christian religion, and allegedly, the greatest event in the history of the universe! Why???
Isn’t it obvious? The reason why the resurrection of Jesus is not listed in history textbooks even as a “probable” event is because the evidence surrounding this alleged event is so very, very poor.
End of post.
The Christian apologist in this short video claims that atheists have mischaracterized the true meaning of faith. Faith is NOT belief without evidence. According to him (and many other online Christian apologists) faith is trust grounded in reason and evidence. Check out his critique of Street Epistemology, which he labels as “atheist evangelism”:
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