As I’ve already shown in Supernatural Causation: Why every argument for God fails. The resurrection of Jesus doesn’t prove Christianity true. Since today is Easter Sunday I’ll take this opportunity to tell you why I don’t accept the resurrection.
First let’s look at the evidence, that we have for this extraordinary claim: The Bible or more specifically the 4 gospels. None of the gospels are dated earlier than 30 years after Jesus death by most historians. I’m aware that apologetic sites try to push a different narrative but I accept the dates given by historians to be accurate. Even if they were written earlier a brand new problem arises: we only have copies of copies of copies etc.. This of course means the earlier they were written the more time passed between the originals and the copies we have at our disposal.
Normally the fact, that our sources for this claim are that weak should be enough to settle the issue beyond any reasonable dispute but of course it doesn’t when it comes to people of faith since they accept Biblical inerrancy a position that I find quite frankly to be untenable. For this position one needs to assume, that all the gospels were translated accurately without the slightest mistake.
We of course also have gospels outside the Bible but they suffer from the same problem our sources within the Bible do.
If we take a closer look at our sources then we see, that the first 2 gospels Matthew and Mark paint Jesus quite differently than Luke and John. They all proclaim him to be the son of God but Matthew and Mark tend to be more humble about his miracles while John goes all out boasting about the proclaimed savior. Who’s to say, that such an evolution didn’t take place in the first 30 years after the events? Maybe something ordinary happened and rumors turned it into a resurrection.
Maybe Jesus just had a Doppelganger. That’s a brand new theory, that would make sense of the evidence. It’s certainly more likely than a man surviving death.
As far as I’m concerned, the position, that a man came back from the dead based on sources, that we have no reason to trust on this extraordinary and quite frankly impossible claim boils down to insanity. It’s not reasonable to believe, that Jesus was raised from the dead when our earliest sources date to at least 30 years after the event and we only have copies of the originals. We frequently observe people distorting narratives, we also know that people lie and when we live in a world in which we experience naturalism every day then that’s exactly what we should assume. That a rumor got around or that the sources are intentionally trying to deceive us.
To quote David Hume: ” Which is more likely- that the whole natural order is to be suspended, or that a Jewish minx should tell a lie?”
If I did believe in prayer I would pray for one thing: A time machine so we could settle this issue once and for all. And if I’m wrong I’ll change my mind. Fortunately for me, the evidence suggests that I’m not.
Goodbye from yours truly,
Rene von Boenninghausen @Renevelation
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