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Actually got to church this morning for once, to discover that they're running a new-years 'basics' series, which started with one of those 'historical proof that Jesus rose from the dead' sermons. If you haven't heard one, the first page of Google results for 'historical resurrection' provides plenty; I could go into it if anyone was interested, but I'm not a historian and I'm sure other people have put it a lot better than me.
I was thinking, on the way home, of reasons why people hear what seems superficially like very compelling historical evidence (on the level with or better than most historical 'facts' they would cheerfully accept) but quite reasonably go away not believing a word of it - mostly as an exercise in 'how can these kind of sermons be improved', but also as an interesting question of what actually motivates human beings and makes them believe one thing or another.
So, in no particular order, some reasons I came up with - and if you have any further information or are generally thinking 'but that's not why _I_ don't believe it', please comment and tell me where I am full of shit :).
Note that I don't believe most of these statements; I do believe in the physical Resurrection, but not really because of the 'historical evidence'. This is what I think other people are thinking - if I'm wrong, which I quite likely am, please tell me!
1) The supposedly compelling historical evidence isn't actually very compelling if you look at it closely.
From inside my little bubble of Christian thought, there is a strong meme that goes like this: everyone who seriously researches the historical basis of the Resurrection from a truth-seeking point of view - even an antagonistic, 'I want to prove this didn't happen' point of view - finds out that they actually end up proving that it must have happened, and usually end up converting to Christianity.
I don't know if this meme is true or not; I don't have the intellectual tools (or the time and inclination, to be honest) to do a comparative study of academics who researched the historical basis of the Resurrection, see whether they ended up saying they believed in it, whether they converted, and whether they had any pre-existing beliefs that prevented them from being honest in their truth-seeking.
I mean, I know people have written books about stuff like the theory that Jesus didn't die on the cross and instead revived in the tomb and went to India or something, so I know some people _have_ looked into it and come to some other conclusion. But I don't know how rigorous and free of prior bias their work was - I haven't studied history and have no way of objectively judging good scholarship from biased nonsense in that field.
It's possible some of these people are just as good historians as the people who decided they'd found excellent proof for the historical resurrection; it's possible that the only reason I have the 'information' in my head that all serious studies have led to (historical-standard) proof is that I've been primarily fed from biased sources. If anyone has any information on this - especially comparative studies or well-researched pieces that argue against the historical resurrection - please point me at them so I can update my knowledge from less biased sources :).
2) I don't accept the 'historical' standard of evidence for things that I might actually have to care about if they were true.
I know I have a lot of scientists and engineers among my friends, and to someone who is used to mathematical proofs and experimental evidence, standards of 'proof' that are accepted in the field of history are generally pretty weak. So even if there was a compelling historical case for 'Jesus appeared to people acting very much like he was alive after he had been very much confirmed to be dead', it wouldn't necessarily meet the standard of proof that they would accept.
After all, most 'historical facts' just aren't that important to most people; it's one thing to accept that someone lived here and said these things and died there, it's another thing to accept that someone went around exhibiting signs of life after being very dead, without a plausible biological mechanism. And many things which are widely accepted as 'historical fact' on the same amount of evidence are almost as widely known to be simplifications or subsequently proven to be just outright false.
The 'Jesus was revived after crucifixion and didn't actually die there' meme seems to come out of this - there is a more plausible biological mechanism for 'people who didn't know much medicine thought he was dead then he wasn't' than 'he was actually dead and then he wasn't', and otherwise it seems to fit the most widespread historical facts (Jesus got crucified, there was a widespread resurrection story believed fervently by people who knew Jesus and saw something they were very convinced was Jesus alive again, the authorities couldn't produce the body).
Again, I don't know enough biology to definitively state that it was impossible that Jesus didn't die of the crucifixion process - people have made compelling-sounding arguments (including this morning) that after being beaten and stabbed and hung on a cross for a bit he was in no shape to go around looking healthy while the resurrection appearances were going on, but I lack actual reliable evidence sources here.
The usual follow-on argument is 'if he _was_ revived rather than resurrected, he would have needed some help; and the help would have had to be a) very competent and b) none of the disciples or their confidantes, because those guys went on to die for their belief in his resurrection and that isn't something people generally do for a lie they know is a lie'. It's often brought out in these sermons (it was this morning) and unfortunately it again is only superficially compelling - it doesn't seem that implausible to me to posit a bunch of other people whose names history has forgotten who did the 'inner circle' work and orchestrated the birth of the religion.
3) I don't actually care whether Jesus was resurrected historically or not. Unexplained stuff happens all the time. It doesn't affect my life or mean the rest of Christianity is true.
There was a kind of coda on the end of the sermon which hung a lampshade on this point - that it's entirely consistent to say, 'so, okay, it looks like something scientifically unexplained happened and the easiest explanation for the historical facts is that Jesus was dead and then he got up and had breakfast with his mates; but that doesn't mean he was God, or that God exists or is anything like what it says in the Bible, or any of that'.
Unexplained phenomena happen; people are 'miraculously' healed, as in the doctors don't understand what fixed them, on a regular basis, for instance. Many of those cases are likely to turn out to be something we just didn't understand about the human body yet. People are very sure that all kinds of non-Christian supernatural forces exist, for all kinds of reasons.
Even if the historical Jesus did rise from the dead, this doesn't somehow magically prove the rest of Christianity; it could have been some other force entirely, or a fluke of nature we don't have the context to understand, or a carefully planned episode from an inner circle who didn't leave their footprints in history and didn't face sufficient consequences for their beliefs to recant sufficiently loudly to derail the whole thing.
So it's nice to have 'proof' of the historical resurrection, but it isn't sufficient to then turn around and go 'so, because this one unexplained event happened, the rest of all this stuff is true as well'.
There's another offshoot of this which says 'okay, maybe this _is_ real - but in that case, God is evil and we should oppose him'. The historical case for the resurrection makes no claims about the _character_ of supernatural power, only that it exists and intervened in this case; it doesn't even make any serious evidence-based claim that Jesus wasn't deluded as to why he was being resurrected, so using his words as a guide to the 'meaning' of the event isn't actually an evidence-based position.
4) I don't actually care if it is true - I live in my own truth / I would have to change too much / it's just not relevant to me.
There are two things here, but they're pretty much the same answer: quite a lot of people just don't care about the 'objective' world at all.
Maybe they have a solopsistic or simulationist view of reality - either it's all in their head, or it's all a computer simulation some unimaginably advanced civilisation is running for shits and giggles / science / whatever, and therefore it doesn't need to be consistent. Or some other worldview, which maybe involves other supernatural powers of some description, or something else which means 'proof' doesn't matter because the game can change unpredictably from moment to moment anyway.
Maybe they just carefully don't have a view of reality at all. Attempting to think about objective truth is difficult and uncomfortable; it's often just easier for most people to say 'that's nice, but it doesn't feed the kids / get me the promotion / entertain me / stop wars / solve the problem of suffering' and not even look into the evidence (especially as 'evidence' is pretty difficult to dig into in most fields - as I've admitted above, I'm pretty much completely lost to tell facts from falsehoods outside my field, and I consider myself to be relatively good at that kind of thing!).
'Historical evidence for the resurrection' style sermons are likely to be lost on these people anyway.
----
So, why _do_ people believe?
I think most people believe in whatever world they want to be the case. People believe in religions because they want there to be a God / gods / supernatural powers / whatever; people believe in science because they want the world to be understandable; people believe in the many worlds theory / we're-all-a-computer-simulation / solipsism because they want it not to matter that they haven't got everything right and everything is a bit rubbish really.
(I know some of you will be aggravated with lumping 'believing in science' with 'believing in religion', but what I mean by that is not 'believing in gravity / evolution etc' (which almost everyone can do on top of whatever else they believe) but more like what I think is technically called 'materialism'? - it's about what you believe the fundamental basis of reality is, whether it's turtles all the way down, mind as just an emergent property of matter, or there is some kind of creator intelligence, or there is no objective reality at all.)
I was thinking, on the way home, of reasons why people hear what seems superficially like very compelling historical evidence (on the level with or better than most historical 'facts' they would cheerfully accept) but quite reasonably go away not believing a word of it - mostly as an exercise in 'how can these kind of sermons be improved', but also as an interesting question of what actually motivates human beings and makes them believe one thing or another.
So, in no particular order, some reasons I came up with - and if you have any further information or are generally thinking 'but that's not why _I_ don't believe it', please comment and tell me where I am full of shit :).
Note that I don't believe most of these statements; I do believe in the physical Resurrection, but not really because of the 'historical evidence'. This is what I think other people are thinking - if I'm wrong, which I quite likely am, please tell me!
1) The supposedly compelling historical evidence isn't actually very compelling if you look at it closely.
From inside my little bubble of Christian thought, there is a strong meme that goes like this: everyone who seriously researches the historical basis of the Resurrection from a truth-seeking point of view - even an antagonistic, 'I want to prove this didn't happen' point of view - finds out that they actually end up proving that it must have happened, and usually end up converting to Christianity.
I don't know if this meme is true or not; I don't have the intellectual tools (or the time and inclination, to be honest) to do a comparative study of academics who researched the historical basis of the Resurrection, see whether they ended up saying they believed in it, whether they converted, and whether they had any pre-existing beliefs that prevented them from being honest in their truth-seeking.
I mean, I know people have written books about stuff like the theory that Jesus didn't die on the cross and instead revived in the tomb and went to India or something, so I know some people _have_ looked into it and come to some other conclusion. But I don't know how rigorous and free of prior bias their work was - I haven't studied history and have no way of objectively judging good scholarship from biased nonsense in that field.
It's possible some of these people are just as good historians as the people who decided they'd found excellent proof for the historical resurrection; it's possible that the only reason I have the 'information' in my head that all serious studies have led to (historical-standard) proof is that I've been primarily fed from biased sources. If anyone has any information on this - especially comparative studies or well-researched pieces that argue against the historical resurrection - please point me at them so I can update my knowledge from less biased sources :).
2) I don't accept the 'historical' standard of evidence for things that I might actually have to care about if they were true.
I know I have a lot of scientists and engineers among my friends, and to someone who is used to mathematical proofs and experimental evidence, standards of 'proof' that are accepted in the field of history are generally pretty weak. So even if there was a compelling historical case for 'Jesus appeared to people acting very much like he was alive after he had been very much confirmed to be dead', it wouldn't necessarily meet the standard of proof that they would accept.
After all, most 'historical facts' just aren't that important to most people; it's one thing to accept that someone lived here and said these things and died there, it's another thing to accept that someone went around exhibiting signs of life after being very dead, without a plausible biological mechanism. And many things which are widely accepted as 'historical fact' on the same amount of evidence are almost as widely known to be simplifications or subsequently proven to be just outright false.
The 'Jesus was revived after crucifixion and didn't actually die there' meme seems to come out of this - there is a more plausible biological mechanism for 'people who didn't know much medicine thought he was dead then he wasn't' than 'he was actually dead and then he wasn't', and otherwise it seems to fit the most widespread historical facts (Jesus got crucified, there was a widespread resurrection story believed fervently by people who knew Jesus and saw something they were very convinced was Jesus alive again, the authorities couldn't produce the body).
Again, I don't know enough biology to definitively state that it was impossible that Jesus didn't die of the crucifixion process - people have made compelling-sounding arguments (including this morning) that after being beaten and stabbed and hung on a cross for a bit he was in no shape to go around looking healthy while the resurrection appearances were going on, but I lack actual reliable evidence sources here.
The usual follow-on argument is 'if he _was_ revived rather than resurrected, he would have needed some help; and the help would have had to be a) very competent and b) none of the disciples or their confidantes, because those guys went on to die for their belief in his resurrection and that isn't something people generally do for a lie they know is a lie'. It's often brought out in these sermons (it was this morning) and unfortunately it again is only superficially compelling - it doesn't seem that implausible to me to posit a bunch of other people whose names history has forgotten who did the 'inner circle' work and orchestrated the birth of the religion.
3) I don't actually care whether Jesus was resurrected historically or not. Unexplained stuff happens all the time. It doesn't affect my life or mean the rest of Christianity is true.
There was a kind of coda on the end of the sermon which hung a lampshade on this point - that it's entirely consistent to say, 'so, okay, it looks like something scientifically unexplained happened and the easiest explanation for the historical facts is that Jesus was dead and then he got up and had breakfast with his mates; but that doesn't mean he was God, or that God exists or is anything like what it says in the Bible, or any of that'.
Unexplained phenomena happen; people are 'miraculously' healed, as in the doctors don't understand what fixed them, on a regular basis, for instance. Many of those cases are likely to turn out to be something we just didn't understand about the human body yet. People are very sure that all kinds of non-Christian supernatural forces exist, for all kinds of reasons.
Even if the historical Jesus did rise from the dead, this doesn't somehow magically prove the rest of Christianity; it could have been some other force entirely, or a fluke of nature we don't have the context to understand, or a carefully planned episode from an inner circle who didn't leave their footprints in history and didn't face sufficient consequences for their beliefs to recant sufficiently loudly to derail the whole thing.
So it's nice to have 'proof' of the historical resurrection, but it isn't sufficient to then turn around and go 'so, because this one unexplained event happened, the rest of all this stuff is true as well'.
There's another offshoot of this which says 'okay, maybe this _is_ real - but in that case, God is evil and we should oppose him'. The historical case for the resurrection makes no claims about the _character_ of supernatural power, only that it exists and intervened in this case; it doesn't even make any serious evidence-based claim that Jesus wasn't deluded as to why he was being resurrected, so using his words as a guide to the 'meaning' of the event isn't actually an evidence-based position.
4) I don't actually care if it is true - I live in my own truth / I would have to change too much / it's just not relevant to me.
There are two things here, but they're pretty much the same answer: quite a lot of people just don't care about the 'objective' world at all.
Maybe they have a solopsistic or simulationist view of reality - either it's all in their head, or it's all a computer simulation some unimaginably advanced civilisation is running for shits and giggles / science / whatever, and therefore it doesn't need to be consistent. Or some other worldview, which maybe involves other supernatural powers of some description, or something else which means 'proof' doesn't matter because the game can change unpredictably from moment to moment anyway.
Maybe they just carefully don't have a view of reality at all. Attempting to think about objective truth is difficult and uncomfortable; it's often just easier for most people to say 'that's nice, but it doesn't feed the kids / get me the promotion / entertain me / stop wars / solve the problem of suffering' and not even look into the evidence (especially as 'evidence' is pretty difficult to dig into in most fields - as I've admitted above, I'm pretty much completely lost to tell facts from falsehoods outside my field, and I consider myself to be relatively good at that kind of thing!).
'Historical evidence for the resurrection' style sermons are likely to be lost on these people anyway.
----
So, why _do_ people believe?
I think most people believe in whatever world they want to be the case. People believe in religions because they want there to be a God / gods / supernatural powers / whatever; people believe in science because they want the world to be understandable; people believe in the many worlds theory / we're-all-a-computer-simulation / solipsism because they want it not to matter that they haven't got everything right and everything is a bit rubbish really.
(I know some of you will be aggravated with lumping 'believing in science' with 'believing in religion', but what I mean by that is not 'believing in gravity / evolution etc' (which almost everyone can do on top of whatever else they believe) but more like what I think is technically called 'materialism'? - it's about what you believe the fundamental basis of reality is, whether it's turtles all the way down, mind as just an emergent property of matter, or there is some kind of creator intelligence, or there is no objective reality at all.)
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Date: 2012-01-15 08:05 pm (UTC)From:A) You've missed a big reason in your list. The historical evidence for Christ? Every other religion can also produce historical evidence in their favour that's just as reliable. Makes it difficult to say which is the correct one.
B) I'm prepared to accept various historical facts of the same reliability as the bible for most things, because they have little bearing on me. For example: It doesn't matter overly much if the battle of Hastings happened or not. By the time you get close enough to modern day to really matter, the standard of evidence is a lot higher (It would be harder to Disbelieve WW2 for example).
However, the existence of God is a Huge game changer, with massive effects on everything. Insisting on a higher standard of proof than for other historical events is pretty reasonable.