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Not just evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, but I want to talk about how skeptics react and respond to that evidence, specifically how they dodge that evidence. So I'm Mike Winger, and welcome to the Tuesday Livestream. This is a weekly stream. Every Tuesday, almost oh, there we go. Almost every Tuesday. Almost every Tuesday. In fact, next week we won't be doing it, but, um, where we deal with issues of theology and Apologetics six. And we tackle those issues and we try to think our way through them and we sort of plod through them. And basically we're building up the Christian worldview. We're asking ourselves to love God with all of our minds. And so, um, here's the setup as I explain, because I always like to start my videos by just telling you exactly what we're going to do before we, uh, do it. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to give you a very brief, summarized version of the case or the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Some of the evidence, not all of it. Then we're going to jump right into how skeptics respond to that evidence, how skeptics react to that evidence. Because it's in hearing their responses that you start to realize how good the evidence actually is. And I'm going to talk about specific skeptics. So we're going to do with like, Matt Dillahunty, David Hume, Sam Harris, um, uh, Dan Barker. Let's see, we'll do with Richard Carrier and um, Bart Ehrman as well. So a bunch of guys will talk about specific skeptics. All those guys that I just mentioned, uh, are atheists or atheist leaning. And here's why I'm doing this. Um, every year, and I mean every year we get junk, uh, on TV and on social, uh, media and in newspapers and articles and all this that is based on horrible, pathetic, laughable scholarship that's meant to attack the resurrection of Christ. Every year there's like a new movie or something that comes out that's meant to just basically defame or attack, basically using the resurrection, creating controversy, trying to make some money. But the scholarship behind it is laughable. Remember the lost tomb of Jesus? Remember that? That was such a joke. Or just recently, um, the whole movie with, uh, Joaquin Phoenix with, um, Mary Magdalene. And I only saw the trailer, so forgive me if the trailer misrepresented the movie, but if it represented it accurately, the trailer for this film shows Mary as being the secret disciple of Jesus who has more, uh, importance than all the other disciples. And it kind of hints at some special relationship between the two of them and all that. And the hints behind it are that it's going back to The DA Vinci Code, which is one of the worst examples of fabrication, the name of history that modern, uh, times have seen. So every year this kind of stuff just comes up and crops up and casually pokes at the Resurrection. But every year also, there are Christians who are going out there making the well researched historical case, evidence based case for the resurrection of Christ. Not based on Dan Brown's imagination, right? Not based on the lost tomb of Jesus stuff, but based upon actual historical documents that go back to the first century, based upon things that historians agree on. And they're saying, based on what historians agree on, we have good reason to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the evidence based case. Not a, uh, believe it because we say so, because it's religiously important case. That's not what it is. So today, um, we're going to look at that evidence based case. We're going to look at how skeptics respond to it. And that is where I think the gold is. So hopefully you'll stick with me all the way to the end. Because if you've heard this case before, just know I'm only going to give a summary of it. What you really want to get to is how they react because that's where I'm going to spend most of my time today. So that's what we're doing. Uh, let me just get the little slideshow ready because I have it up and I want to share with you guys, because in this case, you really need the visual. Uh, it helps it stick more in your head, for sure.

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All right, here's my little slideshow for you. Very high tech. I'm, um, going to give you five points that are historically accepted. These are not things I'm m making up on the spot. They're not things that are just totally conjecture. Um, historians generally agree. They generally agree. That's an important point I'm making about these five facts, okay? And different guys like Gary Habermas, William Lane, Craig, other, um, guys have made the same case and um, better than I will. But here's me putting it all in a cleverly packaged acronym to make it easier to remember. So the first piece of evidence is that, historically speaking, based on first, uh, century documentation, based upon evidence we have going back to the time we believe that there really was a death by crucifixion. Jesus really did die. The second piece of evidence is that ladies found the tomb empty. Uh, that it was women, uh, disciples. Now pause right here because already I'm losing some skeptics. I'm not saying we believe this, please hear me. I'm not saying believe this because it's in the Bible. No, I'm saying here's what people who don't believe the Bible, who are historians generally agree on when they talk about what happened in the first century. So ladies, women actually went to the tomb and found it empty. This has to do with things like the criterion of embarrassment. And I won't get into all that because, uh, that's not what this live stream is all about. Because guess what? I don't feel like I have to make a case for all these things. My whole point is that historians already have made the case. The whole point here is these are the agreed on facts. So we're trying to argue from agreed on facts to this question about the Resurrection. So the second one is, ladies find the tomb empty. The third is that there were independent appearances of Jesus alive after death. The vast majority of historians do believe this. They say, yeah, there were independent. That's like not one person, but separate different accounts where people said, I saw Jesus alive after his death. They believed this. They actually saw something. Um, now the historians, many of them won't answer the question of what did they actually see? Was it Jesus physically alive or not? They'll just back off that and they'll go, we're just saying the evidence says they saw something that was, quote, an appearance of Jesus, apparently. And then number four, we have the violence endured by the apostles. This has to do with after the Resurrection. Right? Before the Resurrection, they were cowering, they were hiding, they had forsaken abandoned Christ, and then they had a flip. And they were now preaching Jesus to the point of themselves being, uh, persecuted, tortured, and many of them even killed for this message that Jesus had risen from the dead. So that's another historical fact. They're just saying this actually happened. And then five, the enemies of Christ converted. The enemies of Christ converted. So specifically, the two that really come up the most in the debate about the Resurrection is James and Paul. See, James, the brother of Jesus, who did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah while he was alive, but after his death, saw him alive, according to an account that goes to within five years of the Resurrection. Again, I'm just summarizing this if you want to hear the whole case. Um, you can see it on my YouTube channel, evidence for the Resurrection. Or you can, uh, go to even hear a better case, go to, like, Garyhabermas.com or watch, uh, William Lane Craig and his debates or their presentations. It's all out there. It's great stuff.

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Um, so James, who he went after the death, he still didn't believe. But after the Resurrection, seeing Jesus alive, that's the claim, right? He suddenly converted. Um, Paul, the apostle, who had every inclination to be against the Church, says that he saw the living Christ and that was why he became a Christian. So these are like the five points. And if you catch the underlines, that just spells out the word alive. Um A-L-I-V-E. So a death by crucifixion. Ladies find the tomb empty. Independent appearances of Jesus alive after death, violence endured by the apostles, the enemies of Christ converted. Now, uh, I would normally spend a long time unpacking each of those, but the bottom line is this pretty much want to know. Um oh, and I should mention, if you're watching live you can put your questions in the comments. And, uh, my friend Kirk is monitoring the comments. He will send those questions to me. I will answer those questions at the very end of the live stream. I do ask that you offer questions that are specific, that are clear, so that people know when I read the question, really what you're asking.

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Um, and if you disagree with me, that's even better. I like those questions the best. Okay, so what are the alternate explanations? Like, if I'm going to take these five facts and say let's just say that these generally agreed upon facts, that these are all true, what explains all these facts? Well, obviously, the resurrection does. The resurrection explains not only the death, because you have to have a dead Jesus before you have alive Jesus, right? So it also explains the empty tomb. Um, it explains the independent appearances of Jesus, the violence endured by the apostles and the enemies of Christ converted. It explains all those things. What else does, though? That's the question. So here's the alternate theories. The alternate theories for Jesus, not Jesus, but somebody else. Some other explanation is the swoon theory. I'm gonna give you seven of them. The swoon theory is that Jesus didn't really die. He only looked like he was dead. He was like, if you're a fan of The Princess Bride, which I think is fantastic movie, I should probably go watch it again. Um, he was mostly dead, right? He was only mostly dead. He wasn't entirely dead. And, uh, so then the resurrection wasn't really resurrection. He just kind of got a little better. Then there's the twin theory. The twin theory would be that, um I'm not kidding that Jesus actually had a twin and that the twin was crucified, or the twin is the one who came back, one or the other. So one of them died, the other one came back. And this, of course, uh, um, yeah, the twin theory. Okay, so then we have the mass hallucination theory. I'll respond to these in a second. 1st, I'll just lay them out. This is actually the most popular theory even today. Amongst those who are willing to throw out a theory, they were just a lot of hallucinations. And so we'll come back to that in a second. Then there's the spiritual resurrection theory. Uh, some liberal scholars in particular believe that Jesus didn't rise bodily. He just sort of had some sort of difficult to describe spiritual resurrection experience. And there's a lot of things that come against that, but we'll come back to it. Then there's the wrong tomb theory, which is to say that they just got the wrong tomb. Um, he was buried in one tomb, but they went to a different tomb later and they opened it. It was empty, and that kind of triggered everything else. Oops, just like kind of like a GPS malfunction. And then we have the missing body theory. And the missing body theory is just that Jesus'body, um, was just missing for some reason. His body was gone. His body was missing. Maybe it was never even put in the tomb in the first place. It was thrown into a common grave, and then his body was gone. And so then it led to all these different things. And then finally we have the conspiracy theory, which is, um, probably the oldest of the theories. This conspiracy theory goes back to the first century. We know because it's in the mouth of the enemies, uh, of the Gospel. Uh, when the gospel writers are writing and they're saying, yeah, the story that the disciples stole the body of Jesus, that didn't happen because such and such. So they're actually combating this theory. That theory goes back to the first century. The conspiracy theory, um, it was a deliberate conspiracy. The apostles purposely lied. Paul James, these guys, they just lied about it. So those are independent, separate theories, explanations. Let's look at them one at a time. So the swoon theory.

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Now, follow me here. If anybody's maybe got a little lost in the mix here, we're going to now take the five facts and compare them to these alternate theories. Do any of these theories withstand the five accepted, generally accepted facts of history, meaning that they would explain away the resurrection? The swoon theory, um, well, that's refuted by a couple of different things.

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Number one, it's refuted by the death by crucifixion. The reason why number one is up there is because the description of the crucifixion, as well as the piercing and the specific details about it. If we're only taking the New Testament as historians do, not as religious people do, right, just historians take it, then we say, no, that would be a death like you died. Um, but it's also refuted, um, by the ascension because independent, um, appearances of Jesus alive after his death and his going up into heaven. And the type and manner of the description of those appearances don't describe a weak, impotent, barely alive, almost killed. Like, you were so badly hurt we thought you were dead. You laid alone in a tomb for three days. Somehow you got out. This doesn't inspire the faith of the disciples. The appearances of him alive after death don't match this. And of course, number four, what I just said is it's not inspiring the violence endured by the apostles. Doesn't make sense. If Jesus was just, um, hurt really bad, but not dead. Um, so the swoon theory isn't supported by hardly anybody, uh, for this reason.

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Then we have the twin theory. The twin theory, of course, um, would be refuted by a couple things. So we have, um, the empty tomb. Number two, if there was a twin that died, there would be two bodies, not one. So the empty tomb doesn't make sense. The, um, independent appearances of Jesus alive after death are to not strangers. He appeared to some strangers or people didn't know him well, but they're also to those who were following with him every day for years, for years, every day, in and out, living with Jesus. Then we have, um, his family, his mom, his brother. Like, number five enemies of Christ converted. That doesn't get explained. Now, there's longer refutations of these. I'm just giving you a couple points because I want to get into Hume and Barker and all those guys in a second. So, um, the twin theory, then we have the mass hallucination theory. And this is, um richard Carrier. He likes to borrow pieces from the mass hallucination theory. Um, but this is also going to be refuted, um, by the number three independent accounts of Jesus alive after death, not one time, but multiple different people on multiple different occasions. That doesn't fit Mass hallucinations as well as several individuals at one location, where they're all seeing the same thing at the same time. The idea behind a hallucination is it only happens in here, right? So when we're all experiencing the same thing out here, that is not a hallucination. That's how you know it's not a hallucination. Hey, do you see that too? Yes, I do. Okay. It's not a hallucination. Um, so that doesn't easily work. Um, one Corinthians 15, which goes back to within five years of the resurrection, it talks about how over 500 at once saw Jesus. So we're talking about quite a mass of hallucinations, um, being claimed here. So that explanation doesn't seem to work very well.

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Then there's the wrong tomb theory, um, the wrong tomb theory, or excuse me, the spiritual resurrection theory. The spiritual resurrection theory, which this is honestly, this is what irritates me about how sometimes theological liberals will talk, because they will, on one hand, say, I'm a Christian, and on the other hand, then they deny core doctrines of Christianity, but then they say, no, it's never really been that important. And then they talk in wishywashy terms and they make it all into poetry. And then they like, I think they irritate everybody. Um, I mean, I'm not emotionally mad at them. It's just like, how are you to arrive at truth when you treat truth like it's a contortionist? Um, so the spiritual resurrection theory is kind of like that. Like there was something of a resurrection, but this doesn't fit the empty tomb. The body was raised.

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The body of Christ was actually raised. That doesn't fit the empty tomb. There was violence endured by the apostles. The reason why they endured the violence is because they believed in the physical resurrection. And this gets into the very meaning of the word resurrection. Nt Wright has done a lot of study on the actual meaning of the word resurrection to first century people, to the Jews in particular, because this is a Jewish movement, remember? And there's no way that the word meant a spiritual resurrection. That's not what the word meant. And so Nt Wright's got a ton of work he's done on that, and some, uh, people who used to say this now agree, uh, with him. So the spiritual resurrection theory doesn't fit those facts either.

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Then we have, um, what's next?

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We have the missing, uh, the wrong tomb theory. It's refuted by a description of the tomb given both in the before and the after. The, um, number three, four, and five independent appearance of Jesus alive after death. That doesn't happen when you lost his body. You don't endure violence because of those things. And the enemies of Christ don't get converted because you can't find the body of Jesus. They could have easily just brought the body back out at any point later. Um, and then we have the missing, uh, body theory. And this again is refuted by three, four, and five independent appearances don't happen when the body of Jesus is just missing. Then we're back to just a hallucination theory, um, which has its own issues. The violence in drove by the apostles doesn't happen because of that. The enemies of Christ aren't converted because of, uh, the body was missing. And then the conspiracy theory, which is basically like, wrong tomb, missing body combined.

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The problems with the conspiracy theory are all the same as the problems we've mentioned so far. Um, it just adds that the disciples knowingly intentionally did all this on purpose, knowing it was a lie, so they knowingly died. I mean, the mass hallucination theory has to do with them being deceived. The conspiracy theory has to do with them purposely lying and deceiving people about it. But it doesn't bear up.

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They gained nothing. They lost everything. And it was all because of the claim about the Resurrection that they did. Um, so those are the historical facts compared to the alternate explanations. This is all just the intro. We're about to get to the good stuff. Then we have the one rational explanation, which in my mind is Jesus is alive. I mean, does Jesus being alive explain the crucifixion, the empty tomb, the appearances, the violence, and even the enemies of Christ being? Yeah, yeah, Jesus being alive explains all that. Okay, so that's the quick rundown fast. And of mean, I fully admit, you guys, I've lost some details in here. There's a better case that can be made for and against the things. I just am giving you a quick summary, and the reason is because now I want to talk about specific skeptics and how they react to the evidence for the Resurrection.

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So David Hume david Hume is let me show you him right here. There he is. Okay, he's not modern, he's not his current right, but he is used by all the modern guys and used by all the current guys. And if you get into a debate on the Resurrection, this guy is going to come up in that debate. David Hume will pop up in that conversation. David Hume lived in the 17 hundreds and he was a philosopher. And he says about the resurrection that it didn't happen. And here's his reason. Not because he has a better explanation, but because any explanation is better in his mind. Let me explain. In David Hume's mind, miracles are impossible. Period. End of story. And therefore, no matter what the evidence is, we deny the resurrection. That is his position. Let me read to you one of the things he wrote.

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He says, the plain consequence is, and it's a general maximum worthy of our attention, that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle. No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle. That's his general maxim. That's his position. There is no such thing as enough evidence to say that Jesus Rose. You'd be surprised how many people today hold the same position.

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So, um, if you're the skeptic and you're watching, I want you to notice the commonalities between Hume Ehrman, Carrier, Barker, all the guys I'm going to talk about, because it is a blind faith position of methodological naturalism. I do not say that as an insult. I say it as an observation and tell me if you do not notice the same thing. So, uh, David Hume goes on and he says the only time he'd accept a miracle is if there was two competing miracle claims and he would take the lesser of the two. That's the only time he'd accept a miracle. He wrote an inquiry concerning human understanding. So that was David Hume. Then we have, uh, bart, ehrman? Bart Ehrman is one of the look, if you're an atheist, you know who Bart Ehrman is, right?

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Um, in fact, if you're Islamic, you know who Bart Ehrman is because a lot of his stuff is geared towards attacking the Bible and Islamic apologetics requires attacking the Bible. So Bart Ehrman, um, he basically responds to this evidence by hand waving and he's done debates on it. He's done debates, and I'd encourage you guys to check him out. I love watching debates personally, but the trick is following the arguments, like tracking with the actual arguments. So Bart Ehrman, he says, um, that the biggest reason why we should not the singular reason, the most important reason why we should not believe that this evidence says Jesus Rose is because miracles shouldn't be believed, even if they happened.

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Did you hear me? I'm not making this up. This is Bart Ehrman's position. Even if they really happened in history, miracles should not be believed.

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Does that not sound like a religious position to you?

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This is Bart, ehrman? Right. Even if it happened, it shouldn't be believed.

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He says this now, he had a debate, um, with William Lane Craig where he granted all of the facts. William Lane Craig had the same facts as me, pretty much. He just phrased them differently. I put them into an acronym. So it's easy to remember alive. Um, and so Bart Ehrman actually granted all these facts. But how did he respond to it? He just said, as a historian, you're not allowed to postulate miracles. It's just wrong. Like, you just can't. So there was no miracle. So what's interesting is, after that debate, bart Ehrman changed his position, and now he no longer grants all the facts. He now denies the burial. He thinks that Jesus'body was thrown into a common grave. And I think it's pretty clear, at least it seems clear to me, um, that the most likely reason why Bart Ehrman did this is because the evidence was so strongly pointing to the Resurrection that he decided he couldn't grant all those facts. It would push you towards the Resurrection. He had even taught previous students of his, don't try to come up with an alternate theory because they will tear you apart, right? If you use the Hallucination theory or the Swoon theory, he goes, don't do that. They'll tear you apart with the evidence.

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Uh, so his way finally around it after, I think, being pinned to the wall by guys like, ah, um, William Lane Craig, getting to the point where now Bart emmer is just saying, hey, look, I've got a presupposition that Jesus didn't rise. So what's the point in a debate when you just start with a presupposition? And then, uh, his way around that now is to say, oh, no, the empty tomb is not historical. There was no tomb. Which starts to get a little more complicated, uh, and a little bit, uh it's a little ad hoc, if you ask me. So he now denies the burial, um, and I think for self serving reasons. So let's look at the next one. Richard Carrier. I got to talk about Richard Carrier. It's not because he's so highly respected. Look, I'm like you guys. I live in the world where I'm not just familiar with all the ancient German guys, but I'm online and I see the debates and I see the discussions, and I encounter atheists for years now online, and I see the people that they're looking up to and that they're quoting all the time. A guy that's getting quoted more and more nowadays is this guy right here, Richard Carrier. Richard Carrier has multiple cases against the resurrection. So his response to these facts of history is to deny all five facts. He says he denies not only those five, he denies a lot more. Richard Carrier says Jesus didn't exist at all, that it's a myth. He's what's called a mythicist. He's one of the very small number of guys who actually is credentialed, who believes Jesus didn't exist a very, very minutely small number, um, of guys in that particular position. And they don't generally agree with each other either. So you can't really lump them together like they have the same theories. They're sort of all, um, islands.

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But in his denial, what he has to do is he has to take the evidence that causes people to believe those five facts, and he has to reinterpret it. So how does Richard Carrier deal with that evidence? Well, he starts to come up with not one theory, but an amalgam, like a Frankenstein theory. I got to do more stuff on Richard Carey in the future, but let me just give you a couple of things that he believes. He teaches that Paul, the apostle in one Corinthians 15, that Paul is saying that Jesus did come and die and rise again, but it all happened in outer space. In outer space. And he seriously means it. He teaches that this stuff happened in outer space. And that's why there was no physical Jesus with a physical death and resurrection. It all happened in outer space. He teaches that the but his theories are different for the apostles and different for different people. So, um, the apostles were basically the, uh, disciples were a large gathering of schizophrenic individuals.

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They were schizophrenics who happened to congregate together and have mass hallucinations or something like a mass hallucination. At least this is what I've heard from him. Uh, then when it comes to Luke or the actual gospels themselves, richard Carrier has this really complex web of theories about how Luke must he basically constructs the stories of Jesus pulling from every ancient piece of literature you can think of. He, um, must have had a big library to pull from. So myths and stories, he's pulling from all these, and he's creating like an amalgam in Jesus. So that way Richard could say, um, Jesus did this thing. And that is kind of like something that happened in this story over here. And so Luke must have used this story to make up that. But it's ad hoc. This is the problem. It's ad hoc. I'll do more stuff on Richard Carrier one day. Uh, in the future. I think it would be a good idea.

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Okay, so let's look at the next one. Dan Barker. Dan Barker was a former Christian who is, um, a former Christian who, uh, wrote music and stuff like that. But now he's part of what's called a Freedom from Religion foundation. And, uh, Dan Barker goes around debating and teaching people on basically why we shouldn't have religion or believe in Jesus or any of that stuff. He actually gives four reasons dan Barker he gives four reasons why we should reject the resurrection of Christ. And I'm going to name them, and then we'll talk about them for a minute. So, first, the problem of history.

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Second, the possible natural explanations. Third, the internal contradictions in the Bible. And then fourth, the legendary growth of the story. So briefly, it would take forever to do all these in detail, but briefly, dan Barker's case against the resurrection. First, he says the problem of history. Now, this is where he does the same thing as. Hume and Bart, ehrman? And he says, you have to assume miracles don't happen. That's how history works. And I quote him now, he says, if miracles do happen, we still can't learn that from historical evidence.

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Okay? That's just blinders that are being put on. Um, you can't ask a question you're not allowed to answer and then pretend like you've answered it, okay? So this problem of history, that's his first one. The second one the problem of possible natural explanations. Dan Barker is a big advocate for alternate explanations, but he won't pick one. He just says maybe one of those. But he knows if he picks one, then it pigeonholes him. And now he has a case that he has to defend, and none of them stand up to the evidence. Um, then he gets into what he calls are his two real reasons to reject the resurrection. And this is really interesting, dan Barker. I mean, look, he is like an inspiring atheist to many people, right? An intellectual, even to many. Um, he says, one, that there are internal contradictions, and two, that there's a legendary growth of the story.

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First off, uh, in this case where we're saying that Jesus rose from the dead based upon the accepted facts of history, we don't need the Bible to not contradict. What I'm saying is, I don't think the Bible contradicts. But even if Dan was to prove the Bible contradicted, it wouldn't change these five facts. So this is what we call a red herring. This is just a distraction. And he considers that one of his best reasons not to believe the resurrection. And then for the legendary growth of the story. And here's where he'll pick the order in which he thinks the Gospels were written, starting with Know, ending with John. And he'll show how there was, like, the story got crazier m and more miraculous as these different gospels were written. Except that he's cherry picking. If you really take the gospels and line them up, you'll see sometimes Mark has a more miraculous moment. Sometimes john does. Sometimes Luke does. It's an abuse of the stuff. And this matters because your best stuff is assumptions and red herrings and misrepresentation of the text. So that's Dan Barker. And then we have Matt Dillahunty. Matt Dillahunty, uh, host of The Atheist Experience. Well known atheist. Um, he's a tough one, Matt Dillahunty, because it's hard to nail him down. Matt Dillahunty won't take a position if he doesn't have to because he's more about attacking other people's positions. And he tries to not have a position. A lot of the time. I've listened to his discussions, his debates, he tries to not actually have a position. Um, and so that's part of his strategy. He'll do it over and over again. Watch his debates, and you'll see it. You'll realize he's not even taking positions. He's just throwing rocks at the others. Um, he says he's not convinced of the facts themselves, though. So he leans it seems he leans towards the mythicist position. And in a long two hour discussion with, um, ah, Junta, a Christian apologist I can't remember his first name right now. Matt junta. Dale junta something. I forget his name. One of you might know it.

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It's like an hour and a half in. And then finally, the Christian gets Matt to admit that he basically disagrees with the vast majority of historians and thinks that he's not even convinced Jesus existed or that those facts are real. Then he was asked, okay, but if the facts are real, how would you explain those? Matt? And this guy's a really smart guy, right? He should be able to explain that. He says, I'll take any other explanation.

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Okay, that's a nice, sweeping statement, but what explanation works for you? And he won't answer. Matt won't answer. He, uh, refuses to pick an explanation to explain those five facts because he knows they're indefensible. Then he moves into what I think is Matt's default position for when he really gets cornered in theist discussions. He says, I don't know. And me not knowing is an elite position. That is wonderful, and I'm going to mock Christians for saying that they do know. And that's kind of the direction he goes. He goes, I don't know. I don't know what it was, and I don't have to know. And that's the elite position, you're silly, for trying to know. Then Matt was asked in the same debate, what evidence would convince you?

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And this is again where I think, um, hard nosed, blind faith skepticism is represented, um, as a position. He says, what evidence would convince you? And Matt says, I can't think of any evidence that would convince me. But surely if there's a God, then God knows what evidence would convince me. And since he hasn't given me that evidence, he either doesn't want me to know or he doesn't care, or there just is no God. You see? Even him refusing to believe is somehow evidence against God. Uh, honestly, like, if you're a skeptic and you're hearing me here, does that sound reasonable to mean I know it flies as far as sarcasm and mocking and criticism goes, but is it reasonable to say, here's the evidence, and you say, let's follow Matt's logic here's these evidence historians agree. I deny the historians. But what if they're right? Okay, even if they're right, I think any other explanation is good. But which explanation? I have no idea. But you know what? The fact that I don't know is noble, and I'm more elite than you because I don't know. Okay, well, I have the evidence. I have one working explanation. You offer no alternative. And I think the evidence is explained by this. And so your conclusion is that what more do you want? I don't know. But the fact that God hasn't given it to me proves that this is, um, this is these guys. There's one more, Sam Harris.

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Sam Harris says that no evidence is good enough. Um, this last atheist, Sam Harris, very smart guy, really intelligent guy, well spoken. He talks very slowly. Let me read a quote from you, from him to you. Sam Harris said, even if we had multiple contemporaneous eyewitness accounts of the miracles of Jesus, this still wouldn't prove sufficient basis to believe that these events actually occurred.

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Even if we had more evidence. Whatever the evidence, it doesn't matter. Evidence doesn't matter.

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You shouldn't believe it.

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That's the thing I see through every single atheist and skeptic now, is we don't care about the evidence.

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We don't believe it. You shouldn't believe it. You're a fool for believing it. And we're justified for not. And that's our position. So, um, there's a rundown of skeptics, modern day skeptics who come against the evidence for the resurrection of Christ. And I do encourage you to check out their videos and the things that they say and ask yourself this when are they just making an assumption that it didn't happen? When are they offering real evidence? When are they changing the subject to a red herring? Like, um, let's talk about Bible contradictions. Um, when you're like, okay, but the whole point of my case was that I was taking accepted historical facts, not coming to you, telling you, uh, that you have to use the, uh, Bible as inspired.

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So I'm going to take a few other things, and then I'm going to get to your guys questions because I want to hear from you what you have to say, maybe a challenge that you have to present to me. It should mean something to you, though, that lead atheists, model atheists, atheists that represent other atheists in their thinking, the atheists that atheists learn from, that they have such seemingly foolish, unreasonable, blind faith responses to the evidence for the resurrection of Christ. And there is more evidence. This is only five facts. There's other facts we could add in there, too. Um, there's other lines of reasoning we can use as well. This is just one case through a series of evidence. So here's other answers. It might already be in your mind. You might be like Mike, but you're using the Bible. You can't use look at this. You can't use the Bible. You can't use the Bible. That's one book, that's one source, okay? That betrays an ignorance about the Scriptures. The Bible is actually multiple. There's 66 different documents in the Scriptures written over hundreds and hundreds of years of time. Um, the Bible itself, even just the New Testament, is multiple documents through multiple authors. And we are treating them as simply historical documents. In fact, the first century documents we have about Christ are primarily now carried in the Bible. Um, so you do take these and skeptics who are historians, they use the Bible. This is a normal thing for them to do.

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Uh, not well known. But you can't simply be like that's the Bible. So throw it out because all that is, is a blind faith position against the Bible. You should take the Bible, if nothing else, at least as a historical document in this discussion.

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Um, some people like Richard Carrier, he likes to say that people who, um, believe that Jesus really existed or believe in the Resurrection, they're Christians. And this is like, that's all it takes in some people's minds to discount everything that they say. Oh, yeah, of course, of course. William Lane Craig, after doing all his historical research, he believes Jesus rose from the dead, but he's a Christian. Except that the problem here is that now, because if you believe Jesus rose from the obviously you are a Christian. That's like a central doctrinal distinctive of Christianity. So you're a Christian. But now by disqualifying all of them, I'm assuming my conclusion that Jesus didn't rise. That's why what we did here was we didn't say people who believe, believe, and people who don't, don't. We said, here's the facts that lead us to believe.

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Now let's draw reasonable conclusions from those facts.

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Um, it's difficult to get sometimes skeptics to actually respond to the evidence and not just attack ad hominem, uh, Christians. So some would say, Mike, aren't you just hijacking history for apologetic reasons? This I get sometimes from, uh, my friend, um, um, Doug the Atheist, who is a YouTube channel, Pine Creek. We've done a couple different discussions online and debates. And he likes to say apologists like it's a dirty word, like apologists.

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And it kind of grosses him out. Um, and so apologists were just hijacking history for those reasons. But here's the thing is, as an apologist, a Christian who does apologetics, I'm not creating five historical facts using apologetics to then no, no, I'm going to the historians. I'm saying, what facts do you have about the time period of the death and resurrection of Jesus? And then saying, huh, huh, look at what they said. Look, this does lead us to believe in the resurrection. It is actually the skeptics, I think, that butcher the historical disciplines and prop up guys like Richard Carrier and um, uh, the other, uh, um, handful of guys, robert Price and stuff. A handful of guys who just throw out history. And that's why Christians often point out, if you're going to deny the evidence for Jesus, you're going to end up denying the evidence for a lot of historical events. Because we arrive at belief in the evidence for Jesus for the same reasons as we believe in those other historical events.

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Some other person would say, um, I'm just going to compare Jesus to other miracle claims. And I'll say, well, don't you believe? You don't believe that like the Guru Majukabuka over in the middle of the mountain range, wherever. You don't believe that he really walked on water yesterday, do you? And I go. Well, no, I don't. And they go, see, you only believe your own miracle claims. But again, it's almost like we're talking past each other now because what we've done is we've said, okay, does Magupa M. Boopa or whatever I said, does this guy have the same evidence for his miracle claims as we do for the resurrection? Does he have the same kind of evidence? And the answer is always no. All the comparisons always fall flat once you actually hold them up and compare them evidence wise. Not just claim for miracle, claim for miracle. If you believe one, you have to believe them all. Uh, one atheist told me that I had to believe Harry Potter if I believed the Bible, that I had to think Harry Potter was real. And all I can say is you're so far gone that you can't even think clearly about the subject that you're mocking Christians, but you're the caricature, not them. And it's really unfortunate.

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Um, okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to take your guys questions and I hope that this has been, um, interesting to you. What I've done is something that generally doesn't get done. I've covered the atheist's objections to the evidence for Jesus, not just the evidence for Jesus. So, um, I'm going to take those questions now. Let me load them up real quick. If you have something to say, you can put it in the comments section. Um, oh, I'm, uh, seeing the comments there. There's Doug right now. He says he has 100 questions. Well, you can ask one.

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Okay.

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Jeffrey McDowell, um, says, could you please ask Mike when he's going to, uh, follow up with a video addressing flat earth claims strictly from a biblical perspective? He, um, said he was going to do this several weeks ago. Um, yes, I'm definitely going to do it. So here's the update on the flat earth video.

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Like a ton, a landslide of content given to me that relates to the whole flat earth stuff from the Bible and I want to patiently look through it all. My schedule has not allowed me to do this very well yet. So once I get through it all and do the fair hearing, then it'll be something that's really worth listening to, right? I won't be just giving you off the cuff, off the top of my head interpretations of passages. I'll really give you something that I think will be usable and reliable and ironclad. Something you could have for years to come to look back on. Because this debate is not going to go away anytime soon. So I am going to do it. But it's going to be at minimum, say two or three weeks out. At most, like two or three months. Um, I'm sorry. I will give you an update when I have one on that.

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Um, okay, so from, ah, JD. Wolf Seven says, can you please ask Mike how dangerous. Easy believism is my stepmother is falling for it. Okay, so there's a phrase I've heard, easy believism. And I have to be honest, I'm not 100% sure what's meant by it. I feel like some people say easy believism, and what they mean is mere, um, intellectual assent to the doctrines of Christianity means you're saved, which is not true. Right. Other people say Easy believism, and what they mean to do is smuggle works into the Gospel.

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So I don't use the phrase because I'm too much, because I'm afraid that it'll be misused. So, yeah, anybody who believes that they can be saved by mere intellectual ascent, but without a real faith commitment that results in actions in their lives, I encourage them to read the Book of James. Um, that's what it is. Now, the Holy Spirit's obviously going to push you away from that sort of thing. Someone is obviously laboring under self deception if they think that they can merely intellectually agree with the Gospel, and that results in salvation. That's not a placing of my trust in the person of God, in the person of Christ, and it doesn't result in transformation, which means that's evidence that that isn't really happening.

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George, uh, Cook says which apostles in the Bible didn't meet Jesus in person? What's the earliest record in Scripture of the, um, apostles? Okay, the word apostles used in a couple of different ways in Scripture. So there's two questions here.

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Um, all of the apostles, obviously, that walked with Jesus, traveled with him. Uh, also Paul, the apostle, he met Jesus in person. That's his claim. And then it's possible, I think. Let's see. Luke, I think, is referred to as an apostle, maybe Timothy. I'm trying to remember off the top of my head. And we don't know if they met Jesus, but they were not considered apostles in the same sense. And so that's where you get into the word being used in multiple ways. Sometimes it just means I'm sending you out. Apostolo, I send out. That's where the word comes from, apostle. So one who is sent out almost like a missionary type thing, versus, uh, one who is carrying the Gospel with a special calling, like Paul to the Gentiles or Peter to the Jews, um, that's the short answer to that question. The second question is, what's the earliest record in Scripture of the Resurrection? Um, the vast, and I mean vast, vast, vast majority. Like, well over 90% of the scholars will say it's one Corinthians 15. And it is. I'll I'll read it to you in a second here. Well over 90%, they agree that this is I'm not kidding within five years of Jesus's crucifixion. Within five years? Five years. Um, and I could build a case for that here. Uh, but my point is, I don't have to. Like, this is where the scholars have already agreed on skeptics atheists alike. So one corinthians 15. It says this for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received within five years that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and that he appeared to Cephas and then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, last of all. As to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. That addition, verse eight is probably, um, the addition. The rest of it, one Corinthians 15, three through seven is the original within five years. Um, not enough time for some legendary development. And it includes the death, the burial, the resurrection, and the appearances, um, including over 500 brothers at once. Like, if you want to say that's legendary development, that's pretty quick. Legendary development, over 500 at once.

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Um, let's see, we got more questions, a lot of questions from you guys today. I thought it might be, uh, an interesting live stream.

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Uh, twisted wrench 90 says, call me Doubting Thomas. My question as a 90% Christian is what are the physical signs that I can see this have happening happened today?

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I have a hard time with believing in personal recollection of stories.

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Um, I'm not sure if I understand your question. Twisted wrench. Um, what are the physical okay, so the physical signs today? Okay, let me encourage you with this. Uh, there's a book written by a guy named Mike Lycona. And in the beginning of the book, the first several hundred pages actually, well, at least 100 pages or so, is all about the historical method and how we come to historical knowledge in the first place. And it's just meant to be a survey of different ways of learning history and what you look for as a historian, that kind of thing. Um, and I can't remember the title of the book, um, um, but look, Mike Lycona, it's something about the resurrection of Christ, evidence for the resurrection or something. And I recommend something like that for you, at least to get you grounded on, because here's the thing, you're like, why should I even trust those facts of history? What can I look at today? Okay, well, that's what I'd recommend for that. Um, I think there's probably a lot more that we could talk about, but that's all I can really get out of that little question you asked. So George Cook says, Mike, what's your take? That unbelievers are blind, god just hasn't revealed it to them yet. Uh, believers are miracles. Considering they see the truth, it's going to take a miracle for them to understand.

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I, um, don't like pigeonholing unbelievers. I think that when you make generic statements about everyone who disagrees with you, then that is always prone to problems. That's why what I did today was I showed you like five or six specific examples so that I could then generalize about those guys, not about everybody.

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Um, so why are unbelievers blind? I mean, there's spiritual issues, there's sin. I mean, some people can't, they can't see the truth because of sin. They have biases, they have desires, they have pride, they have who knows what goes on in their hearts? All things that I can't see.

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So, yeah, m, thank God for opening eyes and showing us truth, but I think he's laid us quite a breadcrumb trail for truth. Um, Philip Rushing says, uh, Mike, have you heard that some churches, namely the Episcopal Church, believe that the resurrection was not a physical one, it occurred in the hearts of the disciples? Yes. Yeah, I've heard that. That would be that spiritual resurrection theory. Um, it doesn't withstand the meaning of the word resurrection. That's what I was saying. Nt Wright wrote a whole bunch of stuff on was that the very concept of the resurrection, the Jewish concept of resurrection, it wasn't a flexible word, right? Like, we know what this meant. Uh, very clearly, they thought Jesus bodily rose. The Gospel records are clearly trying to proclaim a physical risen Lord. How he eats with them. He says, Touch me. Um, all the stuff that happens is meant to declare that he physically rose from the dead. He got that regeneration before anybody else.

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Um, so my take is that they're abandoning a central tenet of the Gospel of Christ. Um, Joseph Nay says, can you ask Mike what happened in one chronicles 2030 or 20, verse three? Oh, goodness. Okay, this is the kind of question because you're saying there's four translations for me to look at, that would be really, possibly, really boring for all you guys. But let me bring it up first, Chronicles 23. I might have to answer this in a message in the comment section afterwards because I'd have to look at four translations, consider the differences, maybe look at some of the original language to try to figure out why things are different. You're pitting the new King James and ESV contradicting the NASB. Tell you what, Joseph Nay, I will answer that in the comments section. As soon as the live stream is over, I will jump right to the comments. I'll pin it to the top so you'll have the answer to this question, but I don't know. I have to find the problem before I can find the answer and I don't want to necessarily do all that during a live stream.

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Cam uh, spears. Hi, Cam, good to hear from you. He says, I have a question for Mike. Which Gospel was written first and when was it written?

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Good, um, question. I don't know. But here's the thing.

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One of the areas where I want to do more study is in the specific work of historicity and authorship of the New Testament documents. So I want to do more work on that on my own before I can stand up and make big proclamations. That's why I'm speaking of consensus answers for the questions of the resurrection. This isn't based on my work, it's based on theirs. Um, so I don't know. But I do know this, that some of the arguments for, say, the marking priority mark came first, and that some of the gospels used mark, or there's arguments about Q, that there was this other document that they all used, or just, uh, it gets complicated. And I have never waded through all don't know, I don't know. But I also know that sometimes it's like a house of cards. So you build up an organized way of thinking that it was this, this, but then that whole order can shift and switch if you just change a couple of assumptions, or so I have been led to believe. So that's something I haven't gotten into. Pine ah creek. Doug asked me a question. Uh, do you accept the scholarly consensus that six of Paul's letters are forgeries? If not, why? Um, no, I do not accept that. I don't know how much of a consensus it is. I'm not saying it's just I don't know, I haven't looked into it. That's one of the things I definitely got to look into when I have time. Currently, I'm just trying to find time to sleep.

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Um, for anybody who's watching, who doesn't know this, doug always asks baited questions.

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But that's what makes it fun. Um, there is a group of people who are scholars who do think that some of Paul's writings are forgeries in the New Testament. I think everything was written by Paul except for Hebrews. I don't have any reason to believe that Paul wrote it or to care about that. I think all the other ones were written by Paul. And you could say that my own personal position has been that I have so much evidence supporting the truth of Christianity that I can base that belief on the truth of Christianity, and that Paul, having written those works, comports better with Christianity being true than him not having written those works. But I don't know that I would go out and try to prove it to you that way. I think I would need to prove it to you probably in a different fashion, which I haven't even tried to do.

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Rachel uh, Novosalak says, even if Jesus was resurrected, how do I know he wants to be my friend in my heart, et cetera? How do I know he has done anything after going up to heaven? Well, I suppose, um rachel I suppose you might ask yourself, what alternative are you proposing here? That Jesus came, fulfilled scripture, fulfilled prophecy, died on the cross, said it was for you, rose again, said that whoever believes in him would have everlasting life, but that it was all a deceit like that it was a trick.

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Because this is that if Jesus was mean, if Jesus was resurrected, then that puts the seal of approval on Christian truth.

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So there's your evidence. I think that the resurrection becomes the evidence that God loves you, becomes the evidence that Jesus really did die for you, that he really accomplished the sacrifice for your sins on the cross.

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I think it becomes the evidence, and I think an alternative theory of, well, maybe he's just messing with me. I don't think that's very likely. Um, thankfully.

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Um, okay, so a couple more questions. Um, Cam says, is there any factual claim in the Gospels that you think probably didn't occur? Uh, nope. And Doug, uh, says, do you lower your confidence on a historical claim if there's only one source for the claim? Yes, generally. And then Cam says, would your confidence in the ascension of Jesus be lowered if this was claimed by and believed about other ancient figures before? No. Um, no, it wouldn't. And the reason for that is this.

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Let's say that you have death and resurrection accounts of somebody before Jesus, but they don't have the evidence to support them that the resurrection of Jesus has.

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Why would I believe that?

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Like, it doesn't have the five things that we mentioned today, but it also doesn't have, like, the prophetic forerunner. It doesn't have the transformation of your own life. It doesn't have the rise of Christianity that gets explained through this. It doesn't have those evidences. Plus more, why would I believe it? If the point is I believe it based on evidence more than just a claim, then why would just a claim suddenly become all the evidence I need?

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All right, there it is. Now, what I don't want for Cam and Doug I appreciate you guys being here. What I don't want is for this to turn into an Se interview where you guys try to ask me trick questions all day long.

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Um, so thank you guys so much for being here on the live stream. I do appreciate the questions, appreciate everybody coming alongside. I hope you find it beneficial for you.

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Here's the bottom line.

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I have two serious skeptics in the comments section right now. I, uh, got Cam and Doug guys I know who have not responded yet to the actual evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. What they have done is offered questions meant to try to start to build a case for doubt, which I understand, especially Doug. That's his direction. Um, but more than that, here's the evidence. What's your alternate explanation? This is the thing it's difficult to get someone to do, and saying anything else works. That's not an explanation. That's hand waving. Saying our priority cannot believe in the resurrection is not an explanation. That's a faith position. And so I think that those things, um, are really good. And if I missed something that you put in the comments, forgive me. That was not on purpose. All. These comments are staying up. The live chat will stay up permanently. And everyone's welcome to read that and consider the things you guys had to share. So, thank you guys. Here's my announcements for you real quick as we close. I will not be doing a live stream next week. I won't have a Monday video or even a Wednesday video. I'm taking a week off. I am, uh, just, uh, needing a little bit of a break. Easter is going to be a very busy week this week and I will not be able to do anything, um, next week, um, with the right heart.

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I'm going to take a little break. So, um, yeah. God bless you guys. I'll hang out in the chat for just a moment and I'll be watching the comments down in the video below afterwards as well. So God bless you and have a wonderful Easter. The most important holiday of the Christian faith. It is the resurrection of Christ. And, um, it blesses me every year to be part of it.