A simple challenge for atheists

[Mister Agenda]

I understand your explanation on special pleading.

Props for that. It's hard not to respect someone who can change their view on something even slightly these days.

Now I don't write these things out to rehash whether they were true or not. We have everyone's opinion on the quality of the evidence. I am trying to improve my argumentation. Thank you for your patience.

We are actually pretty helpful for that kind of thing. If you want to test run your arguments, this is a good place for it.

Okay, from the abstract to the specific. Just say there was better eyewitness evidence, and Jesus, who claimed to be God, was crucified and rose from the dead (predicting both beforehand).

I put 'historical Jesus' at slightly over 50%, and in any case am willing to accept his existence for the sake of argument. I have a little more trouble with affirming that he claimed to be God...we have no idea which words were put in his mouth by his biographers and which (if any) were his own. Same for his predictions, it's easy to write how something was predicted after the fact. And finally, it's asking a lot to acknowledge that he actually rose from the dead, but for the sake of argument I will agree that he at least appeared to have died.

We could observe that:

1. Being dead after a crucifixion was a well known and predictable state.

However, surviving crucifixion was not unknown. I can think of at least one account off the top of my head of a man being rescued from crucifixion after some days of it. Crucifixion killed slowly, it took days to die of it.

2. The extraordinary evidence required is not only Jesus healthy after a crucifixion, but for 40 days he appeared to many.

Granting those events, surviving crucifixion explains it just as well.

3. It is reasonable to assume the cause was the that which he claimed it to be: God.

It's only reasonable to conclude that's the cause if you already assume that he was God or informed by God and that he was much more special than the other supposed wonder workers of his day, all of whom seem to have raising the dead in their work history and at least one of whom preceded Jesus and was supposed to have come back from the dead after three days...but his cult didn't catch on.

4. There was a key theological component to the teachings of Jesus that only make sense in light of his death. For one example out of hundred, John the Baptist introduced him as the "Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world".

The bit with John the Baptist is one of the reasons I'm inclined to believe there really was a Yeshua bar Josef who was once one of John's disciples, because this part smacks of trying to retroactively explain why Jesus was once a humble follower of John baptized like anyone else. Too many people knew it happened, so they spruced the event up a bit so Jesus wouldn't appear to be subordinate to John. That certainly seems a more likely explanation than what you're proposing. At least you left out the magic dove as a selling point.

So again, if there was better evidence for this event and it was otherwise as the gospel writers described, it would not be illogical to assume:

A. There is no hidden scientific reason to explain this event.
B. There exists extraordinary evidence of the event
C. God was the likely cause of the supernatural event
D. The event was not to make a general point, but rather had a complex purpose.

It's almost always illogical to assume. Assuming should be avoided whenever possible. In logic, making the fewest assumptions possible is a virtue.

Are these reasonable conclusions drawn from this set of facts? Would it be correct to say that the rationality of Christianity increases the more reliable the gospels are proven to be.

Again, this is a thought experiment, not a gospel trashing exercise.

Your conclusion seems to be that if Christianity were better supported by evidence, it would be more reasonable to believe it. That's a reasonable conclusion, but it doesn't get you home. If there were more evidence of Santa's activities, it would be more reasonable to believe in Santa...but it would have to be extraordinary evidence to make it actually reasonable to believe in a real Santa with real magical powers who performs the miracles ascribed to him. A weird radar hit on Christamas eve and presents of unknown providence would more accurately be put as making it slightly less unreasonable to believe in Santa, but still not reasonable.

Are you familiar with Bayesian probability? Most of us use it intuitively. If you say you tied your shoes this morning, it's reasonable to believe you. You might be lying for some reason, but I have a lot of prior knowledge that supports the possibility of you telling the truth: shoes exist, shoe laces exist, feet to put them on exist, hand to tie them with exist, the skill to do so is very common, and morning is a usual time to be doing so. Acknowledging the possibility that I might be wrong about you not lying over trivial things, and bearing in mind that giving you the benefit of the doubt on the matter is inconsequential as far as I know, I should take your word that you tied your shoes this morning.

But, say you told me you flew around your room this morning using only the immaterial psychokinetic power of your mind. My prior knowledge does not work in your favor on this matter. To my knowledge that never happens, and when it appears to happen, there is trickery involved. It also seems to conflict with the laws of physics, and that never seems to actually happen either. If you're telling the truth, it is VERY consequential, and so is believing you if it isn't true, for me. I am not going to take your word on this. I want a battery of tests and some skeptical and disinterested scientists and magicians saying 'yes you can really do it' and 'no, it's not an illusion'. If you give me that, I will apologize for ever doubting you, though not believing you was the most reasonable thing to do at the time.

This by way of illustrating what we're talking about when it comes to extraordinary claims and evidence. The psychokinetic flying is an extraordinary claim because it violates our prior knowledge, and it requires extraordinary evidence that justifies revising our prior knowledge before it becomes reasonable to accept it as true.