The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[robvalue]

I don't know if this has been answered with any degree of satisfaction: so what if he came back to life? This is assuming it wasn't a case of him not being dead in the first place, or the person being spotted as the "resurrected" Jesus being someone else, or the whole thing being made up, or people hallucinating, which are all far more likely explanations.

If he did come back to life, what is this supposed to prove? Answer this: if I said to you, "I'm going to die and Allah will bring me back to life, because I am the son of Allah. Islam is true, Christianity is a lie. I will come back to life in 3 days, and you will see me and you'll know God is Allah." Now, you see me die right in front of you. Let's say I get absolutely pulverised. I get thrown in a car squashing machine, I'm truly done. There's nothing of me left but giblets. But guess what? 3 days later I just turn up, and I'm alive again! What does this tell you about the truth of my claims about Allah? Answer the question, or else I put a random person in the squasher too!

I'll try one more time with the "die for a lie" thing, although I think the video I posted takes that argument apart pretty conclusively.

Let's say there was an event, E. It may be that in fact the event was nothing at all, or nothing out of the ordinary. It may be that E is something incredible. We have no way of knowing at this point. The facts about this event are F.

Now, this is again giving the benefit of the doubt that the gospels were written by eye witnesses which is an unbelievable stretch but I'll allow it for the sake of argument. Let's say our author claims to have experienced event E. He may have experienced it, he may not have even been there at all, we don't know yet. He holds belief B about the event. And let's say his conviction about the belief is C, which would range from say 60% up to 100%.

There are three possibilities now:

B matches F exactly
B has some correlation with F but not entirely
B has no correlation with F

Again, we don't know which. Us, the readers, did not experience the event. We only have his beliefs to go by. So we don't know which of the above is the case.

So let's assume he really, really believes B to be equal to F. That is to say, he is utterly convinced beyond any doubt in his mind that his beliefs are accurate. Again, this does not mean the beliefs are accurate, or even slightly accurate; just that he firmly believes that they are. No matter how firm that belief, it does not tell us that he is right. Human beings are fallible.

Now I grab this guy and torture him and/or threaten him with death. I start doing all kinds of weird horrible stuff to him. Again, the fact that anything like this actually happened is part of the claim of the bible, not something we can verify before assessing the claim, but I'll allow it for the sake of argument. So I'm merrily torturing this guy, assuming he will crack. All he has to say to me is that his beliefs are wrong, and I'll let him go. He refuses, and I end up killing him without him admitting he is wrong.

What I have learnt by doing this? Do I know that he really, firmly held those beliefs? It seems fairly likely, but that is not a given. He may have other reasons for not wishing to deny those beliefs. There are many completely plausible explanations. But being the super generous torturer/narrator that I am, I'll allow that he really did believe it so much that he'd rather die than deny it, even to me. So we'll say C=100%. (Maths makes me horny.)

Now: what does this tell us about whether B is equal to F, partly equal, or not at all equal?

Nothing. It tells us nothing about it. If he was utterly convinced in his belief about what happened, if he was unwaveringly sure, then he would have followed through and been killed regardless of whether the belief was actually true. This guy I'm torturing (oh wait, he's dead now)... this guy I was torturing had no way to verify whether his beliefs were real. He was relying on his memory and his interpretation, both of which we know are fallible human tools. People get things wrong all the time. But you don't know when you've got something wrong, do you? If you knew that, then you wouldn't hold the wrong belief. How certain the guy is of the belief is only evidence to him; everyone else would be relying entirely on him accurately interpreting and remembering the events.

What we've actually learnt is that this guy cares more about not admitting his beliefs are wrong than he does about his own life. What does that tell us? Maybe he is stupid. Most people would just "admit" they are wrong, even if they think they are not, in order to stop someone killing them. It doesn't make their beliefs wrong because they pretend to someone that they are wrong. Maybe they weren't stupid, but they felt that admitting their lack of belief would cause harm to others so they literally martyred themselves. We're only speculating about their motivations here though, not about whether their beliefs are true.

So I hope it is clear that I've actually learnt nothing by killing this poor guy except that C=100%, if I'm being generous. From the torturer's point of view, his protestations of truth look exactly the same to me whether C=100% and B=F, or C=100% and B<>F. To claim otherwise is to say people literally cannot make a mistake.

This whole scenario permits an awful lot of details that I don't think should be given, but I do so to make the point. We have one dead guy, and we've learnt nothing about the truth. Nothing. I have no way of telling whether he was convinced of the truth, or convinced of a mistaken version of the truth. The idea that people would only stick to what is actually true with such convinction implies that they have some way of checking the accuracy of their beliefs. In this case, that would require the guy to be able to re-experience event E to see if he was correct. And he can't do that. All he has is his memory, which is fallible.

I expect the next objection would be that several people all got tortured and upheld their beliefs. I'll allow this again, for the sake of argument. Now we're dealing with the appeal to popularity fallacy: the truth of a belief does not depend on how many people hold that belief. It does not tell us whether it is true or not. People are routinely wrong about things, and it has been the case many times in history where vast numbers of people all believe something that is totally false. Ask a Muslim. Ask a flat earther, which used to be everyone. I myself have been so convinced of something before that I would say 100%. And I've turned out to be completely wrong. Would I have "admitted" under torture that my beliefs were wrong? Of course I would, because I'm not stupid. It doesn't mean I actually don't believe them, just that I am prepared to lie in order to not be killed. But say I thought that if I admitted I was wrong, they would then kill my wife and all my pets, as well as me. Then I wouldn't admit I was wrong, whether I was certain or not. See?

So it makes no difference how many people I torture to death. All I found out is about B, their beliefs. As I have no access to E, and neither do they; I am "seeing" through a human filter. One that is not reliable. Just saying it "could be reliable in this case" is both stating the obvious and begging the question.

In the end, if you just go ahead and believe yourself that B=F you have made a leap of faith with no justification. There can be all kinds of reasons why any number of people may firmly share the same belief B about the events E, and it is no way evidence that B=E. If anyone wants me to go into detail about that, I will.

I hope I didn't miss anything. Hey this guy is still moving a bit... *Whack* Sorted.