Atheists and the Resurrection - Framing the Argument

The only rational position is to affirm the Resurrection of Jesus.

In order to understand the above assertion, we need to first understand what we mean by rational? When I use the term “rational” I mean that the rules of inductive and /or deductive logic have been used to draw a conclusion. So let’s rewrite the above statement to reflect this further insight: Using the rules of inductive and/or deductive logic, the only conclusion based on those rules is that Jesus rose from the dead.

Let’s break it down further. Deductive logic can be used in some situations to help establish facts, but since deduction deals specifically with math, tautologies and formal structure of syllogisms it cannot give us a conclusion when it come to events of history. For conclusions about history we must look to inductive logic. The principles of induction fall into three main areas: science, law and history. All three of these have their own specific methods using the principles of induction to come to cogent conclusions. “Cogent” means conclusions that are based on the evidence. So, let’s rewrite our sentence again: The only cogent conclusion, based on the evidence and historical methodology, is that Jesus rose from the dead.

One other thing we should say about our proposition is that inductive methodology is objective. In other words, it does not depend on our likes, dislikes or other preferences, but the conclusion is open to scrutiny by anyone who understands the methods and evidence. For instance one cannot say that the resurrection didn’t happen simply because it doesn’t fit my worldview. On the other hand, one cannot say that it did happen simply because it does fit my worldview. We must, at all cost, go with the method and the evidence. For it is the rational man that goes with the evidence and not against it. Once again let’s rewrite our proposition: The only cogent conclusion, based on the objective examination of the evidence and the objective application of historical methodology, is that Jesus rose from the dead.

In discussing the Resurrection with numerous Atheists over the years I have found that the last thing they want to do is to deal with the above proposition. I have also found that the level of education that the Atheist has is also irrelevant. They just don’t want to deal with this issue from a historical point of view.

This paper is meant to be a guide for Christians dealing with people holding to a tough Atheistic mentality. Not all Atheists are like that.

There are two well-presented arguments for the Resurrection in the public arena of ideas. The first one I call the “maximal argument.” This is the argument presented by John Warwick Montgomery in his book, “History and Christianity.” You can also find it in Josh McDowell’s “Evidence That Demands a Verdict.” I call it “maximal” because at the end the Christian gets everything he wants: the Resurrection, the deity of Christ, and the authority of the whole Bible. There are several parts to this argument, of which the resurrection is one part. The other argument is one I call the “minimal argument.” You can find this in William Lane Craig’s “Reasonable Faith,” and in J.P. Moreland’s “Scaling the Secular City.” I call it “minimal” because it brings in a minimal amount of evidence to prove the point and doesn’t seek to demonstrate anything other than the reasonableness of the Resurrection. Of course there are implications to the Resurrection, but they are secondary. I will not go into depth on these arguments; the reader can readily pick up the volumes mentioned above. This paper will show the Christian how to effectively use these arguments when talking to Atheists about the Resurrection. The methods below can be used with either of the arguments.

Part 1 – Where to begin

I have often heard Christians debating the Resurrection with Atheists. They usually begin by throwing out bits of evidence here and there. The Atheists simply swats them aside by saying, “That’s not good enough,” “that doesn’t follow the scientific method” or “that wouldn’t stand up in a court of law.” The Christian, who is a little flustered at this point, then throws out the rest of his evidence and is again met by the same objections. With nothing more to say, he walks away disappointed. All the evidence sounded so good when he read it in the above books, what happened? The problem is that our Christian jumped in at the middle and bypassed the beginning.

The beginning is the framing of the argument. Without this framing the Christian will get nowhere. It is in the framing of the argument that we eliminate the subjective and fallacious objections. Mind you, we will have to keep reminding the Atheist that he agreed to eliminate those objections, because he will continually try to interject them into the discussion, but the framing will make our job a lot easier.

Before we get into the framing, let me go over a few points you need to understand and fully grasp before we begin. These points would become obvious after intense study of the arguments for the Resurrection, but I will break them down for you to save some time. I suggest you get all the above books and fully study the arguments, outline them, copy significant and primary source quotes (you will need them handy), and practice explaining the arguments before trying to present them to anyone.

Tip 1 – There is more evidence and better quality evidence for the reliability of the NT and the Resurrection of Jesus than there is for any other book or event of the ancient world. Once you have internalized this, your job becomes much easier.

Tip 2 – The only way the atheist can get out of the Resurrection is to commit a logical fallacy.

Tip 3 – There is no objective historical methodology that will confirm other comparable historical events of the period and refute the Resurrection.

At this point I guess I should explain what I mean by “objective historical methodology.” By this term I mean those methods and criteria that historians use to determine if events and documents are reliable. And this is how we begin to frame the argument. You see, most Atheists have no idea how historians determine historical reliability. They don’t know the methods. They have no clue what criteria are used. So, there denial of the Resurrection is subjective and logically flawed.

Let’s look at a short dialog between an Atheist and a Christian:

Atheist: The Resurrection never happened!

Christian: Interesting, how do you know that?

A: There is no evidence for it.

C: I have seen a great amount of evidence for the Resurrection.

A: There is no evidence that is any good.

C: Then surely you would have had to use some methodology used by historians to determine the quality of the evidence and conclude the Resurrection didn’t occur. Would you mind sharing that objective methodology with me?

At this point the discussion will come to a screeching halt. For most Atheists, the only criteria for determining that the Resurrection did not occur is that they don’t like it. Most Atheists will not be able to give you any methodology or criteria. You see they have no real way of knowing the Resurrection didn’t happen. This is where the above-suggested arguments by Montgomery and Lane come in. Both arguments are based on methods and criteria used by secular historians to determine the truth-value of historical claims. You need to push this point when discussing the Resurrection with an Atheist.

Tip 4 -Do not get into the evidence until you have a structure set up to determine if the quality and quantity of the evidence is sufficient to affirm the Resurrection.

Which brings us to our structure or frame. What the frame consists of is an objective way to evaluate the evidence and come to an objective conclusion. Since you are probably not an historian you will want to use the means and methods developed by historians. It is no accident that the arguments given by Montgomery and Craig use methods developed by historians. A set of criteria is used to determine the quality of the evidence. The next question is, “How much evidence is enough?” For this we use a baseline. How much evidence was needed to affirm other documents were accurate and how much evidence do we have for other events of the period? The criteria and the baseline becomes your frame.

If the Atheist doesn’t have criteria that are used by historians ready and available, he may try to make one up. This is OK. You simply suggest that he follow four simple guidelines in picking each criterion:

1) The criterion must be able to be met, at least in principle. Sometimes people will make demands for evidence that cannot be met. The Atheist may ask for evidence that will prove with 100% certainty that Jesus rose from the dead. If you are unable to provide such evidence, the Atheist will then consider his unbelief justified. What the Atheist doesn't realize is that he has committed a categorical fallacy!

There are two types of reasoning that we use to determine truth deduction and induction. Deduction deals with formal logic that produces necessary conclusions; conclusions that are 100% certain. Induction deals with informal arguments and yields probable conclusions. These are conclusions that rational people adhere to, because the rational person goes with the evidence and not against it. When dealing in the areas of law, science and history we need to use inductive reasoning. All of these areas can only yield probable conclusions. As you can see, if the Atheist demands 100% certainty, he is asking for a deductive argument. But historical investigation is an inductive process. Here the Atheist is demanding a deductive conclusion to an inductive argument. He is asking that the characteristics of the one category (deduction) be applied to another category (induction). This is fallacious reasoning and must be pointed out. This type of criterion cannot even be met in principle. If the test cannot be met, at least in principle, then it is not a real test. It is simply masquerading as a test.

2) The conclusions of the criterion cannot conflict with known fact. It is also improper to have a test that not only falsifies the issue at hand, but other issues we already affirm to be true. For example, let's take David Hume's tests for the miraculous that are found in his "Treatise on Human Understanding." Here Hume set up a battery of tests. In the end these tests show that no one can affirm that a miracle ever took place. However, in Hume's own day it was shown that, given these same tests, no one could affirm that Napoleon had been Emperor of France, or that he had ever lived. This was an intriguing idea since Napoleon was still alive and living in exile.

3) The criterion must be objective. In other words, the test should yield the same result, regardless of the personal opinions of those applying it. If the test only disproves the Resurrection when an Atheist applies it, or only substantiates the Resurrection when a Christian applies it, the test should be rejected.

4) The criterion must be one that has been used in historical research and has been demonstrated as a reliable way of determining history. I was recently reading a paper written by an Atheist. In the paper he admits that there is more evidence for the reliability of the New Testament than any other book of ancient times. However, he still rejected the Resurrection because he felt there was not sufficient evidence for the reliability of the documents or the event. He listed what he considered to be sufficient evidence. At the top of the list was videotape of the event. If we could produce videotape of the Resurrection of Jesus, this Atheist would be tempted to believe. Besides the obvious absurdity of this criterion, this criterion is not now, nor ever has been a criterion used by historians to determine ancient history. It is an instance of the logical fallacy "Special Pleading." It is a criterion which is set up with the sole purpose of disproving the event at hand, an event the Atheist does not like, but is never used to evaluate other events of the period.

These guidelines help us get rid of the subjective and most of the common logical fallacies right up front. We will see these guidelines applied again later when dealing with the objection that extraordinary event require extraordinary evidence (see my paper on this subject).

But even with these, you will sometimes get someone who will try to come up with something they think will get around the guidelines. Here is an example of a set of criteria that one Atheist tried to use in an e-mail debate with me:

1) Any reports about the event could not be from people who were biased for or against the person.

2) We need several of these witnesses

3) These eyewitnesses would have had to written about this person and events in his life within thirty years of the occurrences.

4) We have to have complete copies of their mss., that are no older that 50 years from the date of their writing.

5) We need lots of copies of these early manuscripts.

At first glance this might not seem to out of line. But what you must realize is this set of criteria was reverse-engineered. The Atheist took the available evidence and came up with criteria that the evidence for the Resurrection could not meet. So, how is this handled? Remember Tip 1? It reads: There is more evidence and better quality evidence for the reliability of the NT and the Resurrection of Jesus than there is for any other book or event of the ancient world. I simply pointed out to the Atheist that in addition to devastating the NT, his criteria devastated all of ancient history. I then challenged him to use his criteria on any ancient document and prove me wrong. Of course, he could not. There is no document from ancient history that could meet his requirements. Here is the corollary to Tip 3:

Tip 5 – Any criteria or methodology that disproves the NT and Resurrection will also disprove virtually every other ancient document and event. In other words, the only way to be consistent and get rid of the resurrection is to get rid of all of ancient history.

Tip 6 – When an Atheist presents some way-out criteria always challenge him to apply it to some other historical documents from the period that are already accepted as reliable to see if it will verify or falsify those documents.

What will usually happen once the Atheist cannot come up with a valid methodology or criteria is that they will challenge you to come up with one, thinking that you will not be able to do it. This is where you present either the maximal criteria or the minimal methodology.

Part 2 – The Extraordinary Objection

The next thing that the atheist will insist on is that an extraordinary claim, like the resurrection, requires extraordinary evidence. I have dealt with this topic in depth in another paper, but let me recap here.

The main question must be what is “extraordinary evidence” and how is it determined. Do we mean we need a greater quantity of evidence? Do we need a better quality of evidence? Do we need a different kind of evidence? Most atheists will not be able to answer these questions. Those who do will simply be making something up. I say that because they really have no objective way to determine what is “extraordinary evidence.” I often ask atheists to provide their method for determining “extraordinary evidence,” I have never had a response as of yet. What the atheist usually means by extraordinary evidence is one more piece of evidence than what you have, and if you get any more evidence, then one more piece than that.

The request for extraordinary evidence is also an opportunity to get the atheist to see the absurdity of his position. Consider the following conversation:

Atheist: Extraordinary claims, require extraordinary evidence!

Christian: Then we can agree that there is already sufficient evidence to affirm the Resurrection under normal conditions.

A: There is no good evidence for the resurrection.

C: Then why would you demand “extraordinary evidence?” You should simply be able to use an objective criteria and baseline that is already used to determine historical reliability and show that the evidence for the resurrection is insufficient compared to other events and be done with it.

Of course, the atheist can’t do this, because any criteria and baseline that allows in other events of the same period is going to overwhelmingly allow in the Resurrection. This is one big problem that the atheist has to deal with:

Tip 7 – The request for “extraordinary evidence” is an inadvertent admission that there is more than sufficient evidence to support the affirmation of the Resurrection. If the evidence for the Resurrection is insufficient, extraordinary evidence is not needed to show that we shouldn’t accept the Resurrection. The regular rules of historical investigation would suffice to show the evidence insufficient. The only time that extraordinary evidence is needed would be when the evidence for the resurrection is equal to or better than the evidence for other comparable events.

Tip 8 – Any attempt to define “extraordinary evidence” is mere subjectivism.

Part 3 – Going Outside The Evidence

Another neat trick the atheist might advance is what I call, “going outside the evidence.” This is any attempt to reject the resurrection on other than the use of a historical methodology and the evidence.

There can be any number of arguments in this category. They all share one common denominator: They try to get around the evidence and the use of historical methodology. This is usually a philosophical argument. For instance, Hume’s attempt to disprove miracles with the argument that since our experience of nature is uniform, any violation of that uniform experience (i.e. a miracle) cannot be trusted. One of the problems with this argument is that it does not reach conclusions about history using methods that are used to give us reliable conclusions about history. The evidence is avoided, as is any historical methodology.

These types of arguments are once again an inadvertent admission that there is more than sufficient evidence to support the affirmation of the Resurrection, for the same reason mentioned above. If the evidence were insufficient the atheist wouldn’t have to go to these lengths in avoiding the evidence. They could simply use any historical criteria to judge the quality and quantity of the evidence, and then compare it to a baseline of other documents from the period to show that the evidence is insufficient.

Tip 9 – Does the argument deal directly with the evidence, the criteria and the baseline? If not, then it can tell you nothing about history.

Conclusion - The only rational position is to affirm the Resurrection of Jesus.

Conclusions about history based on evidence that has been tested by historical criteria and measured by a baseline is what we mean by rational. These criteria are based on the principles of inductive reasoning. Any other attempt of trying to determine history is irrational and fallacious. If you read many of the papers on the Internet or in books by atheists concerning the Resurrection, you will readily notice that they run as fast as they can away from examining the evidence by way of a standard historical methodology and baseline. This means that you must have a good grasp of those methods and criteria.

Tip 10 – Logic is your friend and the enemy of the atheist position.