Proving The Resurrection By the Minimal Facts Approach

[robvalue]

Here's another set of minimal facts:

1) The bible is the claim. The truth of what it says is the subject of debate. Any attempt to demonstrate the truth of one part of the claim by using another part of the claim at best only shows internal consistency. The gospel accounts are certainly not independent sources; at best they amount to two accounts rather than four and there's no evidence that they are anything other than hearsay.

2) The claims that are of any importance (the magical ones) are of an extraordinary nature. Anyone approaching the claims objectively and with any kind of rigour should therefor expect a similarly extraordinary standard of evidence before believing such claims. To accept anything less is the result of special pleading or points to someone who believes anything they are told at face value.

3) The only evidence we have outside of the claim is a bunch of vague references to the mere existence of one of the characters, and people's opinions and beliefs about him.

4) This level of evidence is barely enough to establish that one of the characters was based on a real person. It is about as far away from extraordinary evidence of these magical claims as you could get.

This should be of utmost importance to anyone who makes life decisions based on whether or not these claims are true. As it happens, I'm not one of those people. It wouldn't change a thing for me even if the magical claims were true. But I take it seriously anyway because such a large number of other people do.