Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Did Jesus Rise Bodily from the Dead? Arif Ahmed vs. Gary Habermas Debate

There is a really good defense of Humean skepticism towards the Christian belief in the Resurrection by Prof. Arif Ahmed. I saw this a few months back via the Debunking Christianity website. I forgot to link it at the time and found myself trying to remember it recently. Luckily I was able to retrieve it (see below).

The form of Dr. Ahmed's arguments are very simple forms of Humean skepticism, and he was kind enough to email me a copy of the handout from his presentation:

The Case Against Resurrection (Prof. Arif Ahmed)

All the arguments assume that we have evidence far stronger than what is available in the Bible: in particular we assume that we have contemporary testimony from witnesses who are known to be both independent of one another and highly educated; and we assume that the testimony states directly that a corpse came back to life after three days as a solid body able to pass through rock (John 20:19, 20:26).

First argument
(1) If two hypotheses are compatible with the evidence we should prefer the one that we expect to be more frequent given evidence of that type.
(2) We have frequently observed and verified beyond doubt cases of independent and educated witnesses testifying at the time to something that didn’t happen.
(3) We have never observed and verified cases of bodily reanimation after three days or of solid bodies passing through rock.
(4) Therefore, it is more likely that the witnesses got it wrong.

Second argument
(1) If two hypotheses are compatible with the evidence then we should prefer the one that we expect to be more frequent given evidence of that type.
(2) We have frequently verified cases of an apparent miracle turning out to have an initially unknown natural explanation.
(3) We have never verified cases (except possibly that in dispute) of an apparent miracle having no natural explanation (known or unknown).
(4) Therefore, a presently unknown natural explanation is more likely than a supernatural Resurrection.

Third Argument
(1) If the evidence gives us no reason to prefer one hypothesis to another we should give them equal weight
(2) The evidence gives no reason to prefer Resurrection to any other supernatural explanation.
(3) Therefore a supernatural Resurrection is no more likely than a supernatural hallucination (or Satan, or Baal, or…)
See the video below:

Did Jesus Rise Bodily from the Dead? Arif Ahmed vs. Gary Habermas Debate (posted below) | YouTube link