A long time since I have done a blog, but here we go again. Discussing the christian technique of defending the resurrection of Jesus. First I am going to look at the strategy employed by Christians today in defending the position and why it is a poor one. Then I will move on to a analogy to show just how ridiculous it is to believe the resurrection.
Lets get started. When Christians attempt to defend the resurrection, for the most part they will try to rule out naturalistic explanations that atheists have given for the resurrection. The irony of this is they do this by saying that any of these natural explanations are so unlikely that they can be ruled out. They do this for any reasons such as grave robbers, or the women went to the wrong tomb. What the christian is attempting to do is reduce the natural explanation to absurdity(reductio ad absurdum). This my friends is a poor strategy of arguing for anything, when you are dealing with a false dichotomy. The reason this is done on a false dichotomy is because the christian has only ruled out the possible natural explanations that we have thought of, he could not have possibly ruled out unknown natural explanations this way. So, when an apologist such as William Lane Craig or others does this, you must see he is committing a fallacy of false dilemma.
Now adding further embarrassment to the problem is the fact that apologists will claim that the naturalistic explanations are unlikely therefore the apologist says he is justified in believing in the resurrection. This is laughable as we know the odds of a resurrection are incredibly low. Statistically speaking based on what we know about deaths they are at least lower then 1 in 6 billion. Why does the apologist not rule out this explanation for the same reason. Well, special pleading of course. Now the common reasoning an apologist will give to argue against this, is that my odds assume no god. Well guess what, they make no such assumption. The only assumption my argument makes is what we see is reality. If what we see is reality then god does not routinely raise the dead. So even in the existence of a god, a resurrection would be highly unlikely. Lets just say god raised the dead is not a explanation that is likely for any case of an empty tomb.
Now I want to present an example to show just how ridiculous the empty tomb really is. Lets say we have 4 people who have just decided to renovate this abandoned house. The house is in need of repair but there is a large fence around the house keeping animals out. Now when the people go into the basement they smell the scent of piss. They cannot figure out where this smell is coming from. Then one women says " she saw the grave of an animal named fluffy outside, and that she had heard stories of a zombified cat getting up and walking at night on this property." So, the other 3 say that is ridiculous, and try to come up with more naturalistic explanations(notice right now you are not screaming naturalism of the gaps, idiot nate). Each one they come up with the women rules out as unlikely. The fence prevents animals from getting in. The women concludes it must be the resurrected corpse of fluffy. The other 3 say that while the other options are unlikely, they are still more likely then a resurrected cat, and also the possibility of a unknown natural cause is far more likely. They do not allow the woman into the conversation about solving the problem of the piss smell. They do this in spite of the women's insisting that you are ruling out the possibility of a god, who would want this cat to piss in the basement. Why you ask, because the resurrected cat theory is far more unlikely then any of the natural explanations and you the believing christian know this.
I hear the christians right now crying false analogy fallacy. Well get this here is the analogy broken down to show it is not a false analogy. The key points remain the same. In the Jesus resurrection resurrected corpses are responsible for exactly 0 known cases of tombs going empty, in the case of the piss cat, resurrected cats are responsible for exactly 0 known cases of basements smelling like piss. In both cases natural causes are still far more likely then a resurrection as resurrections by definition and shown earlier are unlikely. You also must see here that the Christians ridiculous claim that we are ruling out a god who would want this is nonsensical. It does not fly in the face of the piss cat example, because any god that happens to exist is highly unlikely to want any cat to resurrect, and we know that because any god who exists exists in a world where he does not routinely want cats to resurrect, you know reality, much like this god would exist in a world where he routinely wants humans to resurrect. Therefore on any given claim of resurrections of humans or piss cats we must be highly skeptical and look for natural explanations as they simply are far more likely. So, in the end any claim of false analogy would not actually get the point, because the points of analogy are equivalent and any differences in the stories are irrelevant to the analogy, and therefore would be a red herring to bring up.
I just dont' get how anybody can believe in the resurrection.
