I have finally got round to responding to Simon Humprehey's reply to my last post towards him. Life has been a bit busy, but here it is better late than never. What Simon offers this time is somewhat repetitive, so I will just respond to the main points.
Simon said this:
"But a balanced approach needs to consider things like a person walking on water as well, doesn't it? And that doesn't even come close to a ring of truth. If anything, it has the ring of fiction, if not outright fantasy."
To
be honest, I am not really sure what I can say to that other than to
point out that Simon's only reason for doubting the gospel
accounts seems to be a presupposition against miracles. His worldview
does not allow for the possibility of God acting within His creation, and due to his presupposition, he concludes that the gospel accounts
are to be disbelieved (or at least severely doubted). What he does not do however is provide any
justification for his naturalism. He just assumes it.
Simon said:
"How about the gospel description of dozens of corpses coming alive, climbing out of their graves, and returning to their families? If you read a report of that happening today in Christchurch NZ (where I am), would that have the ring of truth to you? Would your immediate reaction be "yeah, that sounds like it's true, why wouldn't I believe it"? Or not?"
Simon said:
"How about the gospel description of dozens of corpses coming alive, climbing out of their graves, and returning to their families? If you read a report of that happening today in Christchurch NZ (where I am), would that have the ring of truth to you? Would your immediate reaction be "yeah, that sounds like it's true, why wouldn't I believe it"? Or not?"
I
don't know of any sensible Christian who would have "yeah, that sounds
like it's true, why wouldn't I believe it"? as their immediate
reaction. I certainly have never advocated immediately jumping the
conclusion that a miracles has happened. I would make the following
points:
(i) I would certainly agree that we should have a healthy sceptism towards such claims. Miracles are afterall, special and very rare events. They would not be miracles otherwise. We should always seek to find natural, ordinary explanations first and only make the case for a Divine miracle once those are ruled out. The reason being that most of the time, such explanations account for what takes place in our universe. That is the logical process through which evidentialist apologists argue for the resurrection of Jesus. They examine all of the other possible explanations for the empty tomb (the disciples stole the body, the women went to the wrong tomb, swoon theory etc) and show they are not credible, as well as making the positive case for the resurrection actually happening.
(ii) Obviously, there are a number of questions you would need to ask about the kind of event Simon describes. Who is making the claim? Is it someone serious who has demonstrated themselves to be reliable or is it some whacky conspiracy theorist who is known for making wild claims that usually turn out to be bogus? Do they have anything to gain? Do they have anything to lose? Are there multiple witnesses that can attest to this or is it just one person or a few people saying this stuff?
(iii) For my third point I would like to direct the reader to the transcript of a conversation between William Lane Craig and Kevin Harris over at Reasonablefaith.org.
When Is It Rational to Believe in Miracles?
In particular, I would like to draw the reader's attention to what Craig says about the religio-historical context of a miracle claim. Craig put it this way:
"So, for example, the events in the life of Jesus, like feeding the five thousand, walking on the water, his resurrection from the dead are, I think, very plausibly miraculous events when given the significant religio-historical context in which they occurred. Jesus' own radical personal claims and ministry make it, I think, very plausible that these are miracles. In fact, I have to say I can't think of a single skeptic or critic who says, “Yes, I think that Jesus really did rise from the dead but this was just a purely natural event.” Given the nature of the resurrection and the religio-historical context in which it occurs, I think it is very plausible that if the resurrection happened it was probably a miracle."
The claims of the resurrection of Jesus and the other miracles attributed to Him are placed in the context of someone who operated within a theistic worldview, and who claimed to come in the name of the God of Israel. We are not just talking about some random miracle claim involving some bloke down the street, to whom there is no religio-historical context attached. We are talking about someone who made bold claims about who He was and what He would do, and then seemed to bring them about. If Simon's scenario had such religio-historical context, it would add to the plausibility of the claim.
(i) I would certainly agree that we should have a healthy sceptism towards such claims. Miracles are afterall, special and very rare events. They would not be miracles otherwise. We should always seek to find natural, ordinary explanations first and only make the case for a Divine miracle once those are ruled out. The reason being that most of the time, such explanations account for what takes place in our universe. That is the logical process through which evidentialist apologists argue for the resurrection of Jesus. They examine all of the other possible explanations for the empty tomb (the disciples stole the body, the women went to the wrong tomb, swoon theory etc) and show they are not credible, as well as making the positive case for the resurrection actually happening.
(ii) Obviously, there are a number of questions you would need to ask about the kind of event Simon describes. Who is making the claim? Is it someone serious who has demonstrated themselves to be reliable or is it some whacky conspiracy theorist who is known for making wild claims that usually turn out to be bogus? Do they have anything to gain? Do they have anything to lose? Are there multiple witnesses that can attest to this or is it just one person or a few people saying this stuff?
(iii) For my third point I would like to direct the reader to the transcript of a conversation between William Lane Craig and Kevin Harris over at Reasonablefaith.org.
When Is It Rational to Believe in Miracles?
In particular, I would like to draw the reader's attention to what Craig says about the religio-historical context of a miracle claim. Craig put it this way:
"So, for example, the events in the life of Jesus, like feeding the five thousand, walking on the water, his resurrection from the dead are, I think, very plausibly miraculous events when given the significant religio-historical context in which they occurred. Jesus' own radical personal claims and ministry make it, I think, very plausible that these are miracles. In fact, I have to say I can't think of a single skeptic or critic who says, “Yes, I think that Jesus really did rise from the dead but this was just a purely natural event.” Given the nature of the resurrection and the religio-historical context in which it occurs, I think it is very plausible that if the resurrection happened it was probably a miracle."
The claims of the resurrection of Jesus and the other miracles attributed to Him are placed in the context of someone who operated within a theistic worldview, and who claimed to come in the name of the God of Israel. We are not just talking about some random miracle claim involving some bloke down the street, to whom there is no religio-historical context attached. We are talking about someone who made bold claims about who He was and what He would do, and then seemed to bring them about. If Simon's scenario had such religio-historical context, it would add to the plausibility of the claim.
Simon said:
"I claimed that there is not one mention of any of the incredible
things Jesus is supposed to have done, mentioned by any commentator at
the time."
This
has already been answered. I point out again that he is ignoring the
gospel accounts even though there is (as I pointed out previously) good
reason to believe that they were written by eye witnesses or those with
access to eye witnesses. He is ignoring Paul's epistles even though
they are believed to be very early (16 - 20 years after the Earthly life
of Jesus), as well as people like Tacitus and Josephus (although he
discounts them because they were not contemporary). Apart from that, I
gave three reasons why you would not expect to find anything more than
what we have attesting to Jesus (see my response to Question 6 in my previous post). Just
repeating back the same point after it has been dealt with is not overly
impressive.
The reader may recall that in my last post I asked Simon about a hypothetical scenario where there was a major volcanic eruption in the First Century. I asked him how many written accounts he would expect there to be of such an event. In the "Unbelievable Facebook" group Simon said:
"Something tells me this is not a hypothetical eruption. But yes, I would expect that I wouldn't have to wait until the following century to hear about it in the historical record."
Simon is of course correct that I had a real event in mind. I was of course thinking of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. This major first century disaster would have been witnessed by as many a quarter million people. At least 1600 people would have been killed, two major towns Pompeii and Herculaneum were completely destroyed. The eruption of Vesuvius obviously was far more significant in the eyes of Rome than stories of some (in their eyes) low class Jewish peasant supposedly performing miracles. Yet, how many written accounts do we have of this event? One. Yes, just one account written thirty years later by Pliny the Younger, whose uncle Pliny the Elder died in the eruption. If Pliny the Elder had not died in the eruption, his young newphew may very well have not seen fit to write about this event, in which case we would have had no written account of it at all.
The point I am making should be obvious. It simply doesn't follow that we would have a truck load of references to amazing and spectacular events from the ancient world. As I pointed out last time, people like Tacticus and Pliny the Younger were not modern day tabloid journalists. They did not write about stuff because it was exciting or amazing. They wrote about things they considered useful or valuable to their readers. The idea that we should have loads of written accounts about Jesus because he did such amazing stuff is a really bad argument and the lack of written material attesting to the 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius makes this clear.
Simon said:
"What do you do? Refer to things that were not written at the time. Hell, you refer to commentators that weren't even born at the time! Written at the time doesn't mean written decades later, or some time in the next century. You cite Tacitus. Come on. He began his writing in 97 and did most of it in the first couple of decades of the 2nd century."
Where does Simon get this idea that in order for something to be accepted as historically reliable, the person reporting it had to be contemporary? Can he point to any real historians who operate like this? Because as far as I can see, you would have to throw out much of ancient history if you were to be consistent in applying this principle. Much of what we know about people of the past comes from second hand accounts, written by people who were not around at the time.
"We are offering a $100 reward and an appearance on our radio show where we will admit we we're wrong to the person who can set a precedent that other important historical figures exist without contemporary evidence. Provide us with the names of five important historical figures that were not written about until at least 25 years after they died (like Jesus)."
Big mistake. The responses were overwelming. At this point I am going to link a page written by someone who responded to the Rational Responders who provided a good many examples of historical figures who are only known due to the writings of non-contemporary persons:
http://christiancadre.blogspot.co.uk/2006/07/foolishness-from-rational-responders.html
I'll add one of my own. I will add Boudica, queen of the British Iceni tribe who led an uprising against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire in 60 or 61 AD. Most of what we know about her comes from Tacitus who as Simon noted was not born until 97 AD and didn't start writing until a few decades later. It is believed that his father-in-law Gnaeus Julius Agrocola provided him with an eyewitness account of Boudica's revolt, but Tacitus himself was not around at the time. If we were to follow Simon's reasons we would throw all of information about Boudica out, but historians don't seem to want to do that.
It is quite amazing that we have the references to Jesus that we do have in light of what has been discussed. The only real reason for questioning the miracle claims of Jesus by Simon appears to be a presupposition against miracles which has not itself been justified. There is in fact good reason to believe in the Christian faith.
The reader may recall that in my last post I asked Simon about a hypothetical scenario where there was a major volcanic eruption in the First Century. I asked him how many written accounts he would expect there to be of such an event. In the "Unbelievable Facebook" group Simon said:
"Something tells me this is not a hypothetical eruption. But yes, I would expect that I wouldn't have to wait until the following century to hear about it in the historical record."
Simon is of course correct that I had a real event in mind. I was of course thinking of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. This major first century disaster would have been witnessed by as many a quarter million people. At least 1600 people would have been killed, two major towns Pompeii and Herculaneum were completely destroyed. The eruption of Vesuvius obviously was far more significant in the eyes of Rome than stories of some (in their eyes) low class Jewish peasant supposedly performing miracles. Yet, how many written accounts do we have of this event? One. Yes, just one account written thirty years later by Pliny the Younger, whose uncle Pliny the Elder died in the eruption. If Pliny the Elder had not died in the eruption, his young newphew may very well have not seen fit to write about this event, in which case we would have had no written account of it at all.
The point I am making should be obvious. It simply doesn't follow that we would have a truck load of references to amazing and spectacular events from the ancient world. As I pointed out last time, people like Tacticus and Pliny the Younger were not modern day tabloid journalists. They did not write about stuff because it was exciting or amazing. They wrote about things they considered useful or valuable to their readers. The idea that we should have loads of written accounts about Jesus because he did such amazing stuff is a really bad argument and the lack of written material attesting to the 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius makes this clear.
Simon said:
"What do you do? Refer to things that were not written at the time. Hell, you refer to commentators that weren't even born at the time! Written at the time doesn't mean written decades later, or some time in the next century. You cite Tacitus. Come on. He began his writing in 97 and did most of it in the first couple of decades of the 2nd century."
Where does Simon get this idea that in order for something to be accepted as historically reliable, the person reporting it had to be contemporary? Can he point to any real historians who operate like this? Because as far as I can see, you would have to throw out much of ancient history if you were to be consistent in applying this principle. Much of what we know about people of the past comes from second hand accounts, written by people who were not around at the time.
To illustrate this point, I
would like to draw the reader's attention to the antics of the so called
Rational Response Squad back in 2006. Back then they issued a
challenge:
"We are offering a $100 reward and an appearance on our radio show where we will admit we we're wrong to the person who can set a precedent that other important historical figures exist without contemporary evidence. Provide us with the names of five important historical figures that were not written about until at least 25 years after they died (like Jesus)."
Big mistake. The responses were overwelming. At this point I am going to link a page written by someone who responded to the Rational Responders who provided a good many examples of historical figures who are only known due to the writings of non-contemporary persons:
http://christiancadre.blogspot.co.uk/2006/07/foolishness-from-rational-responders.html
I'll add one of my own. I will add Boudica, queen of the British Iceni tribe who led an uprising against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire in 60 or 61 AD. Most of what we know about her comes from Tacitus who as Simon noted was not born until 97 AD and didn't start writing until a few decades later. It is believed that his father-in-law Gnaeus Julius Agrocola provided him with an eyewitness account of Boudica's revolt, but Tacitus himself was not around at the time. If we were to follow Simon's reasons we would throw all of information about Boudica out, but historians don't seem to want to do that.
It is quite amazing that we have the references to Jesus that we do have in light of what has been discussed. The only real reason for questioning the miracle claims of Jesus by Simon appears to be a presupposition against miracles which has not itself been justified. There is in fact good reason to believe in the Christian faith.
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