Thoughts on Atheism and Apologetics

[Randy Carson]

1. You're right. After the crucifixion, I think the apostles were in shock...and this despite Jesus' promises AND the miracles they had seen. That seems kinda normal to me and lends some credibility to the whole thing by virtue of the criterion of embarrassment. IOW, the apostles didn't try to hide the fact that they had doubts; they were honest about it...which is sort of embarrassing if you're telling everyone that you spent three years with God. And you still lacked faith? Ouch!

Not only would it be embarrassing to spend three years with god and lack faith, it's almost inexplicable.  It's more of the pattern that I see in the Bible, where ordinary people experience transcendent things, and a surprising number of them seem utterly unimpressed.  Three years of watching Jesus do and say so many things that John ends his gospel by claiming that he 'didn't think there were enough books in the world to write them all down.'  Jesus explains to them several times that he will die and return shortly after, and this concept is so foreign to them that when it happens they're dumbstruck?  These were men who, in some cases, immediately dropped what they were doing when Jesus first called on them to become his followers.  But after three years of having that intuition reinforced, they become bumbling and confused dimwits?  It doesn't make sense.

And after the day of Pentecost?

They went out and turned the world upside down. How did that happen?