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[Pat the Robot]

Miracles just don't make sense to me. They don't square with science, and they don't fit with reason. It just has to be that they were made up to enhance the story.

[jimwalton]

In our rigid cultural mentality, it is often thought that if something can' be proven by science, it's not true. It's an absurd concept, but unfortunately held by many today. It baffles me as much, apparently, as the mysticism of previous eras baffles you.

The people of the ancient Near East were not as scientifically advanced as we are, but they're not to be thought of as stupid. They still knew that pigs don't fly and monkeys don't come out of my butt. That they didn't know particle physics, however, doesn't mean that the things they saw didn't actually happen. A few years back I saw a catamount while I was walking in Vermont. The scientists say there are no catamounts in VT, but I know what I saw. I can't prove it; it was too brief to get a picture, but it was as clear as day. To disregard miracles outright is to not think the issue through logically. Logically speaking, miracles are possible. That doesn't claim they happened, but only that they could.

As far as the miracles of Jesus, there is even a mention of them outside the Bible. Josephus, in the Testimonium Flavianum, about Jesus writes, "...For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly." While some of what Josephus wrote has been called into question, this piece is considered to be authentic. It can be wise to be skeptical, but not if it closes our eyes to legitimate evidence.

[Pat the Robot]

Thank you for your response.

> it is often thought that if something can' be proven by science, it's not true.

This isn't really the approach rational people should take, and it certainly isn't mine (though some people do take it, you're right). Rational people should take the approach that if you claim something happened/can happen which cannot be presently observed and/or which violates laws of nature which we have previously established by repeated testing, then personal claims cease to be important pieces of evidence, and the reasonable thing to do is tend toward disbelief. Many people claim to be abducted by aliens every year, or to see bigfoot, but these events have no concrete evidence supporting them and so we see them as highly unlikely, even if two people on the same night make the same claim. Is it possible that aliens visited Earth and abducted a guy from a trailer park, or that some bipedal, giant ape is living in the woods of North America but is rarely sighted due to being a near-extince species? Sure. However, we don't value personal testimony in these cases because it is testimony of things which rely on phenomena that have not been shown to exist through testable evidence. Again, if we see a historical source that makes a claim that violates a known natural "law" (e.g. a man rising from the dead), we say "this source may have some validity, but this particular event probably didn't happen." That's because the alternate explanation "they made it up" relies only on a known phenomenon: people make things up.

> The scientists say there are no catamounts in VT, but I know what I saw.

A rational person should say that it is neither likely nor unlikely that you saw a catamount in VT. There are many known phenomena which could put a catamount in VT. A person could have kept a young one as a pet and then released it. A small population could have survived in that area (the environment does support them and they did live there in the past). There are also many known phenomena which could explain this in the other direction. You could have seen another animal which resembled a catamount from a distance. You could be lying. If you tell me that you saw a catamount there, I would consider it likely that you believe that you saw it, because you have no motivation to lie. I would not make a claim one way or the other on whether or not what you saw was in reality a catamount. From your perspective, assuming you believe you saw a catamount, you should consider it highly likely that you saw a catamount, but not certain. We know that our eyes can play tricks on us, or that we can have false memories. Research seems to indicate we have more true memories than false ones, and that we see the "correct thing" most of the time, so these options are less likely (from your perspective) than the alternative.

> The people of the ancient Near East were not as scientifically advanced as we are, but they're not to be thought of as stupid.

Certainly, I completely agree. In addition to being less advanced in the field of science, though, they were also coming from an environment that just treated "fact" differently than we treat it today. We draw a much more concrete line between history, myth, and entertainment that they simply did not have, as evidenced by ancient texts from pretty much every culture. It isn't that an atheist is singling the Bible out, it's just that we aren't singling it out whereas Christians are. I treat the Bible the same way I treat any other ancient source: it probably has some truth to it, but it almost certainly has embellishments, either from the authors themselves or the people who told them the stories. Aside from documents which were of legal importance, such as ledgers denoting ownership, there are very few historical documents which I would approach with the mindset that they contain no embellishments. Since it is safe to assume under that framework that the Gospel contains at least some embellishments, the claims which seem the most embellished are the most likely to have been embellishments. It probably wasn't an embellishment that Jesus was a carpenter, since we know carpenters existed and this wouldn't "wow" the audience. The raising of Lazarus from the dead probably was an embellishment because we've never seen a man get raised from the dead and this would have "wowed" the audience.

> surprising deeds (Josephus)

It is a huge jump from this to "resurrected from the dead," "waked on water," or "turned water to wine." It's hard to say what Josephus meant by those two words, but bear in mind that Josephus was Jewish, so whatever he meant by it was something he found to be insufficiently convincing to convert to Christianity himself.

I personally find it highly unlikely that Jesus did nothing in his life that impressed some people: if he had done nothing of interest, then he probably wouldn't have gained the following that he did. The problem comes in with the game of one-upmanship that gets played with miraculous claims. "Jesus healed sick people" "Big deal, sick people get better on their own sometimes. I heard [x other figure from the time] raised a man from the dead;" "Oh yeah, well Jesus did that too!" or something along those lines. Alternately "Jesus was the son of God;" "Oh really, well I heard that he was hanged on a cross and screamed for God but his prayers weren't answered;" "Yeah, but then he came back from the dead, I saw it!" To me, the resurrection was the most suspect claim of all, because Jesus' followers needed this to sway the minds of people who saw the "god-man" die, or had heard of his death.

We even see the story evolving within the Gospels, from empty tomb to Jesus hanging out with everyone for a few days.

[jimwalton]

A simply excellent reply. Thanks for much for worthy dialogue. It's a pleasure to discuss this stuff with you.

> Rational people should take the approach that if you claim something happened/can happen which cannot be presently observed and/or which violates laws of nature which we have previously established by repeated testing, then personal claims cease to be important pieces of evidence, and the reasonable thing to do is tend toward disbelief. ... However, we don't value personal testimony in these cases because it is testimony of things which rely on phenomena that have not been shown to exist through testable evidence.

I generally agree. I don't believe in aliens or in bigfoot. I see the documentaries on TV about aliens, and some of it is quite intriguing, and it makes me wonder about it all, but I'm not ready to buy it. As you say, I "tend towards disbelief." Many of the miracles it the Bible can easily be in that category, but some of them, like those during the Exodus and wanderings, and particularly the resurrection, were witnessed by thousands and hundreds, respectively.

No miracle is testable. It happens suddenly and unexpectedly, and doesn't repeat. There is no opportunity for a controlled study, just like with a sudden and unexplained flash of light in the sky. You can't just set up your optical spectrometer and say, "Do it again." It doesn't DO again. And many miracles leave behind no residual evidence. When Jesus walked on the water, you can't follow up and look at his footprints. There is no residual evidence, no "testable evidence". The only evidence is testimony from the eye-witnesses, and now all listeners are confronted with a choice as to whether to believe it or not (ah, just like bigfoot). The issue with Jesus is that his miracles were not a one-shot (like bigfoot), but a three-year stream of one after another, mostly in public places in front of witnesses. Where are these witnesses, one might ask? They became Christians by the thousands after his resurrection. That's the evidence we have. But again, any individual 2000 years removed from that event has to weigh the reliability of the evidence: (1) the evidences for the resurrection itself, and the reason that weighs against it, (2) the sudden birth of Christianity in the capital city of a different religion; the conversion of thousands who could have been eyewitnesses to the events, and (3) the claim that hundreds upon hundreds saw him walking around and heard him talk after his death and resurrection. Again, all this must be evaluated and considered reasonably and historically. People do make things up, but the historical punch of this event (the resurrection) warrants more than a dismissive glance.

> catamount

Most likely, you would tend to believe or not believe me based on our relationship and what you know of me. If you knew me to be a rational person, honest, reliable, and not prone to making things up, you would likely believe me. And if you didn't know me, you would be more skeptical. You would tend towards disbelief, but your knowledge of me would be the factor that swayed you over.

Back to the Bible story. Great studies through the millennia have been done on what we know of the character and personalities of the disciples and apostles. They have been determined to be reliable and honest men, with basically everything to lose and not much to gain by perpetuating a fantastical story. But since you and I didn't know them, we have to decide what to believe.

> they were also coming from an environment that just treated "fact" differently than we treat it today. We draw a much more concrete line between history, myth, and entertainment that they simply did not have.

I agree strongly with this. They did view things differently that we did. The hard part is evaluating whether their way was superior or inferior. In our cultural bias, we tend to label them as inferior. I'm not so sure that's fair. Our notions of positivism, scientism, skepticism, existentialism, and postmodernism (a whole lot of "isms" going on!), I'm not so convinced we are seeing things more accurately than they did. We are biased, clear and simple. Look at Van Gogh's self-portraits, and then look at photographs of him. Which captures the "real" Van Gogh? Which is the more accurate rendering? We will find many who say the painting is the "more accurate", even though it's "embellished".

> surprising deeds

You're right again. I'm loving this discussion. It IS a huge jump from "surprising deeds" to "resurrection." And it IS intriguing that Josephus wasn't converted or won over. But even the gospels tell that many saw his miracles and walked away. Maybe you assume one-upmanship, and maybe that's fair, but maybe it isn't. In ways it's one of the most skeptical approaches to Jesus' miracles, but again, you have no evidence for that perspective either. That came straight out of your skeptical imagination, not from any other source.

> the resurrection was the most suspect claim of all, because Jesus' followers needed this to sway the minds of people

This is where a careful study of the evidence and what is being claimed in necessary. We can't just look at the whole picture from a distance and claim, "Wow, that's pretty far-fetched." In a case like this, that has changed the world (the resurrection has affected literature, philosophy, art, music, history, and law; and billions upon billions subscribe to Christianity), it demands a careful examination with every tool at our disposal. As you know, those have been done, and many have found the evidence quite convincing, while others still walk away. It makes an intriguing study in human nature, the nature of evidence, the workings of the human mind and epistemology, and the strength of beliefs and their relation to knowledge. I, for one, as you might guess, have found the evidence convincing beyond a reasonable doubt, despite its "contrary to the laws of nature" properties.

> We even see the story evolving within the Gospels, from empty tomb to Jesus hanging out with everyone for a few days.

????, but I guess this is another discussion. What evolving, and what evidence?

[Pat the Robot]

I appreciate that you like to be challenged! I do as well! I worry sometimes that challenging these sorts of beliefs may come across as an attack, but it's really just me trying to get a more complete picture and I feel debate is one of the best ways to do it.

> No miracle is testable. It happens suddenly and unexpectedly, and doesn't repeat. There is no opportunity for a controlled study

I agree with this as it applies to the miracles of Jesus specifically. It isn't that there's evidence missing which I would expect to have, more just that there's evidence missing which I would like to have in order to form a complete opinion. I don't claim to know for certain whether miracles took place or not. Some miraculous claims have been testable, though, and every single testable miraculous claim has turned out to not be miraculous when tested. To me, this makes the established pattern "miracles are fake." Patterns can have exceptions, but the way I choose to live my life is to assume consistent patterns will remain consistent until concretely proven otherwise. Every alien abduction story has been either inconclusive or proven false, so I'll assume the pattern of falsehood will continue until I see live video of aliens, actual ship wreckage that cannot have earthly origin, or some other concrete evidence. Hundreds of people give eyewitness testimony of aliens, often corroborating each other's stories, but people are just unreliable sometimes. We are very open to suggestion, and our memories play tricks on us, not to mention sometimes we outright lie. In a way, it's kind of unreasonable for me to expect live video of an alien (how can I expect someone to have a camera on hand and be broadcasting live at the time when an unexpected event occurs?), but at the same time it's really the only strategy I can take unless I want to go around accepting everything that large numbers of people believe in (Elvis lives!).

Will the assumption that patterns continue always yield objective truth? Of course not. The example I like to use is Newton's physics. Newton observed a whole bunch of patterns in the behavior of matter, and for a really long time there were no concrete examples of things that violated those patterns (though there were certainly mythical things, like Perseus flying with winged sandals or Jesus walking on water, which violated them). Einstein and others eventually showed that there were some weird cases where things didn't play nicely by Newton's rules, so then we needed to revise the patterns, and actually we're still working on that! Even though the assumption that Newtonian physics apply to all matter is objectively incorrect, the only coherent thing for scientists to do was operate under that assumption until they made concrete observations to the contrary. That doesn't mean they blindly believed the rules and never looked for things which violated them, but that they assumed the rules would hold when making predictions about the behavior of matter.

In this case, we're talking about the behavior of people instead of the behavior of matter. People flock to religions and myths for all sorts of complicated psychological reasons. In some sense the patterns are a lot more complex than physics, but one pretty good pattern we do have is that the people following a given religion generally have not witnessed a miraculous event, even though they may sometimes claim to. Usually it's that they believe someone else saw a miraculous event (e.g. people followed Joseph Smith because he claimed to have visions of an angel). If we start from the premise that at most one religion is correct, then whether or not any single religion is correct, we have huge swaths of people reporting miraculous experiences (either firsthand or secondhand) which must not have happened. As you pointed out, we are 2000 years removed from the events surrounding Jesus' death, and it's really hard to know who witnessed what and who got motivated by what. Maybe the thousands of people flocking to Christianity really did witness something miraculous. Maybe they witnessed something really uncommon that they thought was miraculous (like the "swoon theory" of the resurrection). Maybe they witnessed nothing at all, or deliberate trickery (like the followers of a modern cult). The same confusion applies to the spread of Islam or any other religion, especially the rapid spread of Islam in the modern world where clearly nobody is witnessing any great deeds performed by the long dead prophet.

> It makes an intriguing study in human nature, the nature of evidence, the workings of the human mind and epistemology, and the strength of beliefs and their relation to knowledge.

Couldn't agree more. Basically we're delving into why people believe what they believe, even though some of it has little or no evidence supporting it. Why did some people start worshipping the Buddha as a god when the man himself didn't claim to be a god? Why do some people genuinely believe they have seen Elvis, aliens, Tupac, or bigfoot? Personally, I think it makes most sense to look at the patterns we have: people sometimes believe they have seen things that they didn't see, and sometimes when people discuss experiences with each other our memories play tricks on us. I have an excellent memory, but there are times when I tell a story and I realize while telling it that I can't remember if the story actually happened to me, or if it happened to a friend, or if I saw it on youtube. You sometimes get whole towns of people claiming something is happening/happened that is false, like the Salem witch trials.

Could Jesus have been an exception to this pattern of humans being mistaken or misled? Sure! From my perspective, though, we are just too far removed from the incident to make that call. It's not that I'm saying "it didn't happen" or "it happened this way," just that I think we have too nice an established pattern of religions being human creations. Imagine I say the Earth's gravity was reduced to moon gravity for 20 minutes on one day in 2,000 B.C. in a small region in northern Africa. Seems unlikely. Now imagine that we have a documents from 1980-1800 B.C. detailing the events and even some Egyptian sources talking about how groups of immigrants have come in refusing to worship Pharaoh because they worship the god who made everything float. Does the story become more believable? I'd say it doesn't become more believable in any meaningful way. Can we prove that it didn't happen? No. However, we do have a lot of really nice patterns of the way gravity works and the way human behavior works to say "maybe there was some weird underground explosion that lifted everything into the air for a few seconds and the story got more grand over time, or maybe this was completely made up, but we shouldn't assume it's the truth unless we record a similar event in modern times."

[jimwalton]

Let's talk a little bit about Newtonian physics and miracles. People's main problem with miracles is that it messes with what they know about science, while at the same time having to subscribe to metaphysical realities like spirits and spiritual forces. But if we are honest philosophers and scientists, we have to be open to reputable questions (as any scientist would ask): Why can't the causal continuum be interfered with by supernatural and transcendent powers? Why are miracles necessarily incompatible with modern science? A little probing will reveal that they are not. They are only incompatible if it can be proved that nature is a closed continuum of cause and effect, and closed to any intervention from outside that continuum. Classical (Newtonian) science is nowhere nearly sufficient for anti-interventionism. Newton himself held that the laws he observed reflected the nature of what God had created. According to Newton, natural law describes how the world works when, or provided that, the world is a closed system, subject to no outside causal influence. In Sears and Zemanski's physics text, they claim, "This is the *principle* of conservation of linear momentum: *When* no resultant external force *acts on a system*, the total momentum of the system remains constant in magnitude and direction" (italics theirs). They add that "*the internal energy of an isolated system remains constant*. This is the most general statement of *the principle of conservation of energy*." The laws of Newtonian physics only apply to isolated or closed systems, but there is nothing in them to say there is or can be no God who can intervene is such system to make change to the matter or energy in question. Furthermore, it is not part of Newtonian mechanics or classical science generally to declare that the material universe *is* a closed system—because that claim isn't scientific, but theological, philosophical, or metaphysical. The laws don't tell us how things *have* to go, or even how they *always* go, but only how they go when no outside agency acts on them. Natural laws offer to threat to special divine action.

Interestingly, quantum mechanics offers even less of a problem for special divine action than classical science, since quantum mechanics is characterized by (among other things) indeterminism: a spectrum of probabilities to the possible outcomes. QM doesn't by necessity prohibit any answers to prayer, raising the dead, or walking on the water.

Looking at miracles even another way, it's absurd to think that everything must be subject to scientific proof and evidence, and miracles is one of those that is in that category as well. We are wrong to even think that miracles should be or can be subject to scientific inquiry. Here are a few of thousands of things we know that are not subject to scientific proof (as you want miracles to be): I like apple pie, I forgive you, I felt chilly yesterday, I saw a beautiful sunset 5 days ago, Bill is my friend, that wasn't fair, I'm in love with Jennifer, I'm afraid of heights, my favorite movie is Gladiator, I feel at peace with myself. There are millions of these. We're just in the wrong arena to think that we can use science to prove these things. There are also things that exist, that are coherent, but not scientific: peace, justice, love, memory, reason, values, to name a few. There are disciplines that have nothing to do with science, but they are still legitimate ways to know things: jurisprudence, economics, history, literature, politics, art, philosophy, logic, and theology. As it turns out, probably most of what we know is not subject to scientific verification, or can be considered scientific knowledge. Miracles also fall into this category. It is both illogical and unreasonable to apply scientific reason or necessity to the veracity of miracles. While we can bring some scientific thinking to bear as we evaluate them, they are just as much outside of the purview of science as "I forgive you."

[Pat the Robot]

> People's main problem with miracles is that it messes with what they know about science, while at the same time having to subscribe to metaphysical realities like spirits and spiritual forces.

This is the main problem of some people, but it's actually not mine. It has much less to do with the fact that it messes with what I know about science and a lot more to do with the fact that it messes with what's been shown to be true about people, namely that they have a tendency to make things up or be confused by things that they see. This is the pattern that allows me to dismiss bigfoot stories, the pattern that allowed my insurance company to dismiss the false claim a guy made against me that I hit his car, and the pattern that allows our criminal justice system to keep innocent people out of prison when witnesses against them don't have their story straight.

It also messes with patterns that I have observed in nature. The distinction between "messes with patterns I see in nature" and "messes with science" is kind of blurry, but I think aliens are a great example of this: stories of aliens visiting Earth do not violate any laws of physics. Occasionally QM gets involved when the aliens are described as having crazy technology, but in some cases the descriptions don't even violate Newtonian physics. However, I still don't believe these stories, because the pattern I observe about aliens (i.e. that they never appear in places where they can be confirmed concretely) is not strong enough to overwhelm the pattern I observe about human beings (i.e. that people make false claims).

I also have a hard time chalking it up to coincidence that the true God decided to appear to people in the gap between "too ancient to have significant surviving records" and "modern enough to have accounts from all of the hundreds who saw what happened." If Jesus walked on water in America in 1996, there would be video footage and hundreds of civilians as well as respected journalists documenting the situation with stories containing more or less matching descriptions regarding the location, date, time, and nature of the event. The whole world minus maybe North Korea would know about it. Heck, if Jesus had walked on water in 1776 we'd still have pretty good historical consensus about it, since we're able to come to pretty good consensus about what parts of revolutionary war history are myths. If Jesus had walked on water in 1100 B.C. in Greece, we probably wouldn't have any surviving written description of the event dated within 200 years of the event itself, so again there would be very little debate historically (everyone would agree that it was made up, as we generally agree that the supernatural events of the Iliad are made up, opting only to accept the bare minimum facts for which there exists archaeological evidence). Instead Jesus appears in the gap where we have enough documentation to yield some belief but not quite enough documentation to eliminate reasonable skepticism.

If it isn't coincidence, we have two options: either God picked 1st century Palestine for some reason, or the cultural conditions were just right for a long-standing religion to form from little to no factual basis. If God picked 1st century Palestine, we have to question why that would be beneficial. I can see a reason for not appearing earlier, because you could easily say people "weren't ready" by some arbitrary criteria, but why not wait until later, when there would be less dispute? Or why not appear somewhere with more comprehensive record keeping, such as the city of Rome itself? Was there some crisis of humanity that was averted by Jesus' message being introduced when and where it was? We can't say for certain, but all the evidence at hand suggests that humanity continued very much along its usual course, even after Jesus' life and death. There were more Christians in name, but the Christians pretty quickly became just as greedy and violent as any other group in power. Humanity as a whole doesn't seem to have changed that much based on Jesus' influence, so there's little apparent reason why some major disaster would have befallen our species had Jesus held off another few centuries.

To me, the second option, a religion arising from little to no factual basis, fits the established pattern better. Religions pop up all over the place throughout human history, and yet of all these thousands of religions 4 of the 5 in wide practice today appeared between 900 B.C. and A.D. 500. All the religions before and since (and there have been many on both ends) failed to gain traction. Earlier, because there wasn't enough communication to spread a religion or preserve it after a civilization fell, and later because there was too much skepticism. People are skeptical of a lot of true things, of course (like the moon landing), but the established pattern is that the stronger the evidence the fewer skeptics, and the weaker the evidence the more skeptics. In fact, I would go so far as defining the strength of evidence as the rate at which it can convince people, since that's really the only scale that matters. That makes the strength of evidence subjective, which makes sense. To use an example, we should expect photographic evidence to become weaker as photo editing techniques become better.

> I like apple pie, I forgive you, I felt chilly yesterday, I saw a beautiful sunset 5 days ago, Bill is my friend, that wasn't fair, I'm in love with Jennifer, I'm afraid of heights, my favorite movie is Gladiator, I feel at peace with myself. There are millions of these.

I definitely agree that there are some things which are too abstract for evidence to come into play. When somebody tells me they "feel" the Holy Spirit, and that is what causes them to believe, I will not demand evidence of that. The difference with miracles, though, is that they generally involve concrete, physical events (such as a man walking on water) that would be testable if the right person were there at the right time. I believe Christians sometimes refer to "Big T" Truth vs. "little t" truth to make the distinction between these types of things. The story of the garden of Eden, for example, is said by most Christians to not be literal "little t" truth, but to contain "Big T" Truth. If you said the same thing about Jesus' resurrection then I would agree, proof is an absurd concept. However, most Christians claim that the resurrection factually happened. That crosses the line into the realm where proof makes sense. I think, if you want to look at it that way, there is a lot of "Big T" Truth in the New Testament. Love your neighbor, pay your taxes, all people are equal. I'm more than willing to read the whole this as a helpful story about human behavior the same way I read the Illiad. They may both have basis in history, and they may both contain embellishments, but the embellishments don't diminish the value.

The problem I see is twofold: first, the claim that the events took place as described despite strong patterns indicating that it didn't. This isn't that big of an issue by itself, because aside from being, in my view, a foolish way to look at a historical document, that conclusion that Jesus really rose from the dead doesn't in and of itself do anything different than believing aliens abducted you, and I'm not debating alien abductees. The second problem is the implication that because Jesus rose from the dead that his words, as recorded in the Bible, must contain absolute morality. Without the former, the NT is just a story that seeks to teach us some things about being human, which is fine. Without the latter, the NT is a story which you believe and I am skeptical about but that's fine because it really has no bearing on our lives. It's only when the two are combined that I feel inclined to debate.

[jimwalton]

Excellent, excellent! I'm loving this discussion. You're so right about so many things, and I agree with you over and over. Your skepticism is healthy, and I see things the same way (aliens, the moon landing, etc.)

It sounds as if (if I am reading and interpreting you adequately) almost this whole kit-and-caboodle hangs on the resurrection. If the evidence for the resurrection is convincing, then the other miracles can be easier to accept, the belief of Christians is more understandable, and there is a rational and evidentiary basis for the teachings of the Bible, such as absolute morality. You seem to think there are "strong patterns indicating that it didn't." That would be interesting to pursue. I'm sure you're well aware that the resurrection has been gone over with every fine-toothed comb on the planet and through history. The evidence is strong and convincing, but not absolute. So some people buy it, and some don't. We sure can go in that direction if you wish, but I won't foist it on you. I won't even begin without a green light. If you want to go through the resurrection, since all seems to hinge on it, I would be pleased to. If you don't, we won't.

[Pat the Robot]

> It sounds as if (if I am reading and interpreting you adequately) almost this whole kit-and-caboodle hangs on the resurrection.

Pretty much dead on. I think you and I (and everyone else) have the same evidence; the question is, where do we each personally draw the line at what's convincing and what isn't?

For me, that line varies based on two main criteria: one (as I've mentioned) is how much the claim violates the patterns that I have seen or come to believe through previous claims which had evidence up to my standards. The second, which I haven't really touched on until now, is how much altering my belief will affect the way I live my life.

On one end of the spectrum, you might claim that your middle name is Richard. That doesn't violate any patterns I've observed, it doesn't affect my life at all to believe it, which means I could be convinced with basically 0 evidence beyond your word. Towards the other end of the spectrum, you might claim that my brother is a murderer. This violates patterns that I've observed (namely that my brother is a pretty nice guy), and it requires I make some pretty big shifts in my life (namely, avoiding my brother and possibly alerting the authorities). For that reason, I would require a lot more evidence.

With the story of the resurrection, we have a claim that pretty much maxes out the scale on both ends. If it were factually true, it would violate patterns regarding the formation of religion, permanence of death, reliability of ancient documents, and even the way reality itself operates. It would also involve me needing to pour over the Bible trying to glean an understanding of how to live my life, which must be a very difficult and time-consuming thing to do considering the wide array of messages people have gotten from it and the amount of debate that occurs over the smallest of nuances.

All this is the long way of saying that, unfortunately, the claim itself pushes my personal standard of evidence to a point that such evidence as would convince me would be unlikely to be uncovered at this point regardless of whether or not the event was true. For example, a letter from Pontius Pilate to his superior describing the resurrection would be a pretty good piece of evidence, but if we don't have that now we're very unlikely to ever have it. If you know of any rarely discussed archaeological evidence related to the resurrection, I'd love to hear about it, but beyond that it's really more a personal matter of what each of us thinks constitutes good evidence for an event.

Thanks so much for the discussion, though!

[jimwalton]

Thanks for your honesty. I've enjoyed the discussion. As I've discovered through other conversations, your interpretations of history are a function of your presuppositions, philosophical and religious convictions, life experiences, education, and intuitions. None of us is truly being objective, but subjective according to about a dozen parameters that went before and shape our interpretation of history. This is particularly true in relation to Jesus and the resurrection. If you don't even believe in the possibility of miracles (if you have a metaphysical bias), all the extrabiblical corroboration in the world won't convince you. You take miracles to be impossible, and that presupposition forms your historical interpretations. This is not a slam; we all view history through our personal lenses.

We don't need a letter from Pilate; we have four letters from others who were not expecting the resurrection and didn't believe it when they heard about it, but those letters "don't count" in your mind because they saw and believed, and therefore they are "biased", by your reckoning. But the information we have of the Roman Empire written by Roman historians is considered legitimate. Go figure.

This is not to say that all of us are incorrigibly warped. Many of us hold many perspectives on history that are mostly accurate, based on the information we have and our general agreement about how to interpret those facts. We all try to assess the material according to as many sources as we can.

> If you know of any rarely discussed archaeological evidence related to the resurrection...

There is no such thing right now. The evidences and non-evidences for the resurrection are well known. Nothing new has come to light in a long time.