Is Belief in the Resurrection Unreasonable? Mike Winger vs. Matt Dillahunty

hey guys welcome to another edition of capturing Christianity I'm Cameron Bertuzzi here thanks for joining me and tonight's discussion we have Mike winger who has become a really great friend of mine over the past few months you guys probably know all about him this recent series that we did we also have Matt Dillahunty they'll be discussing whether belief in Jesus's resurrection is unreasonable Matt Dillahunty for anyone that lives under a rock he's an American public speaker avid gamer Matt what do you play actually everything so I played semi-pro pool a lot of chess board games a lot of computer games I just finished up Red Dead Redemption to working on trials rising and then I've got some mobile games I just love games you're also a magician that's correct I just got back from doing a magic show on a cruise ship with my new partner and then I had done a ten-city tour of Canada and intensity tour of the US with a magic and skepticism show that taught the principles of skepticism and use magic to kind of entertain and educate a bit so you've also hosted the austin-based webcast and cable access television show the Atheist experience since 2005 that's crazy that's a long time yeah I'm old well so you have I saw that you have Alex O'Connor coming on pretty soon here too right like when is it end of April the 28th basically going to the American atheist convention over Easter weekend then stopping in Memphis to visit my partner for a while and then going to Dallas for the faithless forum convention and the last day that weekend alex is coming down cosmic skeptic is coming down to Austin and he'll do the Atheist Experience show with me that day awesome yeah Alex O'Connor is cosmic skeptic for those of you that don't know his real name but okay so back to Matt he's regularly engaged in formal debates and he travels the world speaking to secular organizations churches and university groups on religion philosophy skepticism atheism humanism and magic alright so Mike winger is an ordained pastor at Hosanna Christian Fellowship in Bellflower California and he also teaches Bible think org he is a strongly committed strongly committed to a careful and thoughtful study of the Bible with a view toward answering skeptics challenges with reason and Scripture and he's also a successful youtuber that's probably what he's most well known for is his YouTube channel has over 50,000 subscribers I think it's at what Mike 5758 now I think it's 57 something yeah okay well it's a significant amount okay it's a lot of subscribers so your successful youtuber you kind of know what you're doing I mean I'm looking at your background here you've got these like pretty lights in your bookcase behind you it's very beautiful very beautiful stuff I'm very impressed cuz you guys are both got books behind you which makes you look intelligent and all my books are down on like five bookshelves downstairs where I'm not even filming so I'll just pretend I've never read anything well look Matt you have a little space behind you in the back there you could just throw them on the ground you could even do that while Mike's doing his opening oh there you go books up there nice alright well if you're new to this channel we do or if you're watching this on Matt Dale honey's channel I host live discussions like this about once a month on anything pretty much related to God's existence whether God exists but then also about Christian that's what this discussion is tonight about so we've also we've had discussions on the moral argument on the argument from continuance the Euthyphro dilemma the ontological argument all sorts of stuff and there's hours and hours of awesome content to see all the live discussions we've done visit the playlist it's in the description the link is right there for you so we also have a lot of cool stuff planned on our YouTube channel we're also pushing out these little short five to six minute videos response videos to atheists and this other stuff and keep in mind that we don't just have a YouTube channel we also have a beautiful website and a regularly updated podcast so all of that can be found at capturing Christianity calm alright with that out of the way let's jump into the discussion so the format of tonight it this is more of a debate at least the first part of it so it's going to be 20 minute openers for each of each of the guests so Mike is going to have 20 minutes he might go a little long we talked about this beforehand he's gonna try to keep it as close as he can to 20 minutes and then after that we're gonna pass it over to Matt so unless you guys have anything else to say I think we should go ahead and jump into it so that way we have more time later on okay throat for the atheist godless heathens that are out there watching it I was okay with Mike taking a little bit more time so don't start jumping down his how come he gives more time than Matt I was okay with it that's why yeah we talked about it beforehand Matt is apparently matt is a really nice guy so that's why he's doing it alright so here we go let's get started Mike you have the floor starting now okay first thanks for having me thanks Matt for being here I'm very excited to get to do this I'm a pastor I'm a Christian who really cares about truth I'm just a man who cares about truth so I'm not gonna pretend to be a scholar but I've worked really hard to try to understand this topic and I think I have something to bring that is worth talking about as far as evidence for the resurrection it seems to me that I'm a Christian for two reasons one I seem to have had a real genuine experience with God with a changed life and with the sense that I'm actually in a relationship with God revealing things to me I mean there's just there's a whole line of reasoning there but that's not what I'm bringing today the other reason why I'm a Christian this really is important to me is that there's a large amount of external evidence that keeps confirming the truth of Christianity and I'm talking about philosophy history science prophecy etc so while you can believe because of your experiences there's also support through evidence and that's what I'm planning to present today so I'm gonna give a two-part case for the resurrection of Christ why I think it's reasonable to believe Jesus rose based upon like I said two parts the first part is facts of history so these are like things that we can say very likely did happen in the first century in fact when I say facts that's what I mean I mean these are things that very likely did happen in the first century we're gonna pull these things together and house will have 12 facts that we can work with and then the second part is to say what's the best explanation of these facts so like detectives will look at the facts and ask what best explains these facts and this will be our common ground hopefully that so let me establish the common ground that's the first chunk of what I'm doing that's why I wanted so long you know my intro is to establish a large number of facts so first let me say this none of these facts that I'm giving you are miraculous none of them are miraculous in nature and they're all well evidenced there's specific lines of evidence supporting each fact and historians of all stripes atheist agnostic Jewish Christian they generally agree on these facts there's majority agreement at minimum majority agreement in some cases 99% agreement on these facts of history so let's go through them what I'll do right now is I'm going to share my screen and I want to give you guys the visual um of these facts there we go you should have it on your screens now here's the 12 facts I know you can't read that most of you but I want you to have it as a screenshot you could slow down and read them I will summarize them in a much smaller fashion now like this okay so the first fact is that Jesus died by Rome and crucifixion Bart Ehrman the atheist he says this is one of the most certain facts of history that Jesus was crucified on the orders of Roman prefect of Judea Pontius Pilate he offers eleven independent sources independent sources to support the death of Christ in this fashion I could quote atheist after atheists that actually support this idea who are historians and scholars in their fields the second fact if I can get my thing to scroll down there we go the second fact is that the soon after the crucifixion the disciples lost hope they were discouraged they were bereaved they were despondent they thought that everything was over and there's no wonder because they saw the death of Christ as proof that the Jewish leaders were right about Jesus that this guy was obviously from the enemy and not from God and the impact this would have will be the end of the movement as it ended every messianic movement in the first century when the guy died the third fact is that he was buried most likely in a private tomb this is connected to the fourth fact which is that Jesus's tomb was found empty soon after his internment now of all the facts I'm going to share with you guys these to the entombment and the empty tomb are the least supported by scholars so I'm putting that out there right about 75% of scholars will agree with both of these so there's still majority support and it's across various worldviews it's not just Christian or evangelical scholars but I'm gonna build a case for it so let me give you six lines of evidence that support the empty tomb and the first one is this um it's multiplied attested we have it in multiple sources in Matthew Mark Luke John as well as pre marking accounts the pre marking source material for mark sermons and acts we have it in that content as well we have it suggested in the writings of Paul so we have multiple sources attesting to this early sources as well number two its enemy attested we can get into more in this in the back and forth I just want to get this on the table for discussion its enemy attested in Matthew 28 we have the enemies of the of the Christians of the early Christians what they say about the death of Jesus is that his tomb is empty because it was robbed by the Christians they stole the body this continued on into the second century and Justin Martyr we hear it in Tertullian we hear it and in Celsus the critic of Christians he mocks Christians and says they stole the body so when the enemy polemic accepts the empty tomb I think we can say that it's very likely that it happened which leads us to the third piece of evidence supporting it there's no competing story there's no story from the first century even suggesting something other than this happened and we have multiple sources including enemy attestation that it did number four we have the testimony of women this is more impressive to those who study the history more because it was embarrassing back then the first people to proclaim the empty tomb were women yet women were not good witnesses to Jewish or Roman people at the time so it reads like real history the women are part of the story because they couldn't get them out of this story so embarrassing or not they had to include them in the story of the empty tomb Richard Baucom has done really great work in his book Jesus and the eyewitnesses on this as well that helps support the eyewitness account of the women number 5 Joseph of Arimathea scenes historical Joseph of Arimathea is the guy who buried Jesus he put him in the tomb he he's a member of the Sanhedrin so he would be known to the people of the time he's multiply attested and in mark John and Luke he's local to the area Arimathea was likely four to five miles northwest of Jerusalem and so it would have been testable by the people in the area and it was embarrassing that a Sanhedrin member actually helps Jesus when the cycles have fled so when people admit embarrassing things these things are more likely to be true when you're reading a historical account or anybody's account for that matter and finally the sixth reason I'll give for the empty tomb is archaeology we found three kinds of tombs from the time of Christ that have been discovered and Jesus's tomb fits one of those kinds in particular it's the most expensive kind which was known to be owned by get this people like members of the Sanhedrin think about this we have archaeological verification that the empty tomb story is historical in nature Jodi Magness who actually works at the same College as Bart airman she's an expert on Jewish burial practices she says the Gospel accounts describing Jesus his removal from the cross and burial accord well with archaeological evidence and with Jewish law so the conclusion is that it's supported by six different arguments and I actually don't know of a good argument to refute the empty tomb and people I talk to don't know one either even scholars I've asked they don't know a single good argument or evidence-based argument just ad hoc stuff but nothing based on evidence like these are G H van Dahlen concludes it's extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions you could look at the work of Bart Ehrman for example in that so number five let's go to the next the next one which is the appearances the fifth fact I'll say is well evidence from history is that the disciples have individual and group experiences that they believed were actual appearances of the risen Christ we have accounts of two people seeing Jesus seven people eleven multiple times where the disciples as a group did five hundred at once according to Paul in in 1st Corinthians 15 Paul he knows these people and personally he visited them and he's relaying as what was known and said by them all along that he appeared to Peter and he appeared to James and he appeared to the twelve so this is a multiple attestation in different sources in fact these sources are in and outside the New Testament we have other early accounts like Clement of Rome Ignatius just a martyr that also say yeah there were these group appearances whatever you want to say they were if you want to call it they were somehow delusional but it happened in a group they all seemed to be seeing it and it convinced them that Jesus rose Garrard Lou Diamond who's an atheist and a lead critic of the Resurrection he says it may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus's death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ Michael OCONUS says this conclusion about the appearances is granted by a nearly unanimous consensus of modern scholars and may therefore be added to our historical bedrock see this is important because when we talk about possible explanations for these facts we can rule out hallucinations because by nature of the fact that hallucinations don't happen in groups like this and we can actually quote I can cor sources in our discussion back and forth hallucinations just don't happen in groups in this fashion so this would be difficult to overcome let's add another one the due to the experiences the disciples lives were thoroughly transformed these appearances they transform their lives even being willing to die for the belief that they had seen the risen Christ and he physically risen from the dead again this is actually not controversial persecution in the early church is attested to by multiple sources Christian and non-christian and we have especially strong historical support for Peter James and Paul yeah for some of the Apostles we're not sure how they may have died but we have strong support they were generally persecuted and specifically Peter James and Paul died of martyrdom what why is this important because being eyewitnesses means they're in a position to know if they had really seen those things seeing it in Greece mighty yeah real quick sorry to interrupt it looks like we've stopped that empty tomb that's the last thing that we see on the slides oh sure yeah I'm not sure why that is I did test this ahead of time I promise hmm well there you go there we go ask me why that happened I'm just gonna put them all on the screen here and then all that way I don't have to worry about that happening um okay so so what did I end off here sorry about that okay their lives were transformed and their persecution seems to indicate that they were just being sincere right when they were willing to suffer it means that they were telling the truth Paula Fredrickson who's not a Christian she asserts that the disciples conviction that they'd seen the risen Christ is part of historical bedrock fact known past doubting they they really weren't lying they really believed that they'd seen the risen Christ now flat fact seven and eight on your screen already are related to the apostolic proclamation of the resurrection that began very early when the church was in its infancy so that's the word early there and the number eight is the word Jerusalem the disciples public testimony and preaching of the resurrection it took place in the city of Jerusalem where Jesus had been crucified and buried shortly before these two are actually there well evidenced but they're uncontroversial I'm not going to try to explain everything in the brief time I have I'm trying to make my opening as quick as possible so we can get into the meat of our back and forth but these two early in Jerusalem they help rule out the idea that this was later legendary development or that it was simply a lie when the stuff these guys were claiming was readily testable by locals living right there in Jerusalem and then number nine the Gospel message centered on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ this is the center of the Gospel message that's what that word central on your screen this is just to say it hurts the legend of theory remember the negative impact the crucifixion had on the on Jesus's followers we actually have support on this from Tacitus who says that when Jesus was crucified it temporarily shut down the the movement and then it suddenly exploded shortly thereafter and spread throughout the known world and this is from a non-christian historian we're getting this data so this is what would happen but you know you'd expect the movement to die but it suddenly explodes this hurts the legend theory because some think the Church started the belief in the resurrection but the evidence from history seems to indicate its belief in the resurrection that started the church it was the the events around the death and resurrection happened before the church exploded maybe I can put it that way and then number 10 Jesus's movement was characterized by religious significance that's the word religious there which might seem odd to see it on your screen right there Jesus though it's generally accepted Jesus was a miracle worker Jesus was an exorcist and Jesus saw himself as quote God's eschatological agent this is not controversial right these this means Jesus thought he was fulfilling prophecy that's what that means he thought he was fulfilling prophecy and when you look at Psalm 22 Isaiah 53 it looks like Jesus did fulfill prophecy I mean just read them on theirs on their face I've read Isaiah 53 to people and they thought I was reading from the New Testament it's um it's remarkable and they're specially the specific points of these prophecies relate to the confirmed facts of history the death of Christ so what I'm saying here is if you're gonna say okay fine Jesus rose but don't tell me God did it I'm gonna tell you the religious context in which Jesus died in rose indicates that it was God who did it and we can talk more about that in the discussion back and forth number 11 is James oh and I don't have on your screen Paul it'll put him up there in a minute James was the brother of Jesus and he was a former skeptic who did not believe in Jesus when Jesus was walking the earth which is embarrassingly admitted in multiple places in mark as well as John however after the resurrection in acts 1:14 he's with the Apostles he's they're gathered together he becomes a leader in the early church he actually becomes an apostle and in 1st Corinthians 15 7 Paul who knew James and met with James he declares that James saw an appearance of Christ and that this is part of the bedrock foundation of Christianity Gary Habermas an expert in the historical Jesus studies especially around the resurrection he says that the majority of critical scholars writing on the subject grant the conversion of James as a result of what he perceived was a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to him Mike like Honus says there's a significant heterogeneity within this group that includes atheists agnostics cynics revisionist moderates and conservatives so this isn't a such a travursel claim I'm making here I'm just saying that um yeah it happened all right so it should I should have Paul on your screen there I'm not sure why I can't get that but I'll put Paul up here number twelve within a few years Paul also known as Saul the church persecutor he becomes a Christian due to an experience he believes was an appearance of the risen Christ we have Paul's own testimony for this in the epistles and he suffered greatly for these things now these facts that are on your screen none of them are miraculous they're all well evidenced they all have majority support across scholars of differing worldviews this should give us a good reasonable common ground for what happened in the first century you have five minutes just let you know I think you okay well all right watching my timers yeah yeah we'll go beyond that if we need to okay thanks so the question is what is the best explanation for all this evidence right let's just think as a detective if you're gonna try to explain all this stuff what explains it the resurrection is obviously a decent explanation for this evidence the disciples were in a position to know the truth they held to it under persecution the key elements around the story are confirmed the resurrection explains it but then what about alternate explanations how about conspiracy some people put up conspiracy as a possible explanation I I don't think that conspiracy works because it as you can see on your screen here it's simply um or you will see I keep having it lose-lose my uh I apologize for that I did test this I promise you okay there we go as you can see a conspiracy theory well it breaks the idea the disciples were sincere it doesn't explain why they went from lost hope to preaching the preaching the gospel doesn't explain the Jerusalem factor or James or Paul being converted it doesn't explain too many of these factors hallucination it gets even worse hallucination doesn't really explain these either in fact dr. Gary Sipsey he says he surveyed the professional literature on hallucination for 20 years worth of worth of research and he couldn't find a single documented case of a group hallucination that might account for these things not only this but hallucinations of lost dead loved ones don't result generally in people thinking they're risen from the dead it just doesn't seem to make a lot of and so then we can get to on other theories like legend legend is actually growing in popularity online but the problem is you're just denying all of the history unless you have a really nuanced version of legend and this is this is where I say you know what let's have a different conversation about how history is done and about why we should you know have these facts in the first place but the legend thing seems to be the laziest and most irresponsible solution to the problem but now here's where I hit a roadblock because there's a group of oh yeah there's a group there's group accounts you add hallucination plus legend plus confuse I almost forgot to mention this one this doesn't work because you're just adding the problems of hallucination to the problems of legend to the problems of confused the each of these will be refuted by known facts and that's why they don't work when you add them together and this is why none of these things conspiracy legend swoon theory hallucination or a combination of them none of them have gathered any support scholarly speaking they just don't get support scholars generally when they hit this they just don't comment on what the what these facts explain they'll agree to them but not tell you what they mean they will not endorse any of these solutions because they just don't work some people will take different tactics where they'll just have ways of saying who cares the Gospels contradict my case right now is not based on the idea that the Gospels don't contradict this is just a red herring it has nothing to do with my current case we're examining the New Testament documents as separate documents written in the first century we're asking how do you explain these things so I don't think the Gospels contradict but it's not relevant to the discussion others will just say things like and I've heard Matt share this several times that he's not convinced I'm just not convinced and to this I just say my job isn't actually to make someone be convinced it's to present a reasonable case your job is to get convinced by reasonable cases so I'm not convinced that someone not being convinced is a reason for me to not be convinced ultimately what it frequently comes down to is saying no evidence could ever convince me and this is something Matt at least in the past maybe not today but in the past he said over and over again that he can't even think of potential evidence that could convince him I could have video footage and DNA and there could have been a laboratory but it still wouldn't matter it wouldn't be that he's gonna believe in the God of the Bible that he raised Jesus and please correct me if I'm wrong on that Matt that's just what I've gathered from you know watching your previous discussions there's other ways of saying evidence doesn't matter Bart Ehrman does this when he says historians can only establish what probably happened in the past and by definition a miracle is the least probable occurrence this is what we call circular reasoning in other words the evidence doesn't matter I don't care how much evidence you have for the resurrection you can't say it happened this is circular reasoning I think normal people should be able to see right through this and take it off the table and ignore it like the silliness that it is another way of saying it is dead people don't rise from the dead they just don't okay this is again just reading my my current beliefs into the past I believe that this couldn't happen didn't happen and therefore I reject the resurrection of Christ so there's another one you can only offer and this is a quote from from Matt from previous debate I heard you can't offer a supernatural explanation until you prove the supernatural is possible but this is this is this is the proof this evidence for the resurrection is the proof that that something supernatural happened so what we're doing is we're ignoring we're saying the evidence won't count until you have evidence to prove the thing but do you does anyone else see this this is circular reasoning I'm ruling it out I'm not looking at the evidence so these are ways of avoiding the evidence and that's all I've got for the screenshare part of it let me I mean how do I stop screen sharing did I dot did I do it okay you're you're great yeah you're go all right I'm trying to be as quick as I can I would love for and hopefully for the rest of our discussion to be focused on either you know taking these facts and explaining why we accept to reject them or explaining what they mean when you add them together they point to the resurrection of Christ and I'm hoping that we can say that because there is a resurrection of Jesus size footprint in the first century and you look at it and you the more data you get because this is not just the three facts or four facts right we've been a lot of data here the more data you get the more it looks like Jesus rose from the dead Wow yeah that was that was uh that wasn't too bad that wasn't too too much further beyond the 20-minute mark actually my timer ran out and then you you basically finished about a minute and a half afterwards yeah my clock I went I went thirty seconds over on my clock but okay well let's shut up and get to Matt let it let's hear what he has to say Matt you have 20 minutes or if you want to go 30 seconds beyond feel free but and after that we'll just go straight to to dialogue so take the floor please sure so first of all thanks for having me back and thanks to Mike for doing this I don't know considering some of the things that were just said I'm convinced Jesus resurrected you guys win thanks for having me oh wait no that's not the way this works there were things said that I'll probably correct during the destruction that the discussion part but the subject is is belief in the resurrection unreasonable and I can say yes whereas that does not mean that it's not true or didn't happen this is just my case for why it's your reasonable my mom has told me that she has seen demons with her own eyes now I know my mom and she's a generally honest person do I believe for one instant that she actually saw demons no because what she's presenting is the claim and not the evidence now my mom's truthful enough that I'm willing to take her at her word that she experienced something and she's doing her best job to explain what it was using whatever language she has but that doesn't mean that there's sufficient evidence yet to warrant demons or her seeing demons so what is it that makes something convincing or what is it that should make something reasonably convincing well we have to evaluate the claim and then the evidence for the claim and one of the thing that Mike consistently did as he was talking was say this is evidence as evidence as fact this is evidence as evidence when virtually everything that he was talking about at some level is the claim and not the evidence for it right up to the end where he says oh well you know this is the evidence for the resurrection no these are the claims about a resurrection the evidence for the resurrection is something else other than a whole bunch of people say it they saw it happen or had an experience afterward he also noted that legend is the laziest in most responsible potential explanation for this collection of facts and I would argue that magic did it is the laziest and most irresponsible explanation for these facts legend is perfectly reasonable and there's nothing supernatural or required to appeal the supernatural outside of that I'm not going to be presenting anything myth assist other than noting that we have a problem and it's a real problem for Christianity in that not all myth assists are wrong and they're not all exaggerating but this notion that oh here's all these points I would like us to focus on these points and present counters if we have a murder and somebody says I'm convinced the butler did it the butler doesn't have an alibi and there's somebody over there who thinks they saw the butler is that enough to convict no it's not and at that point I don't have to in any way demonstrate that the butler had an alibi or that the butler didn't do it it's simply insufficient evidence to reach the conclusion that somebody's trying to push the whole resurrection claim is a is a big case of special pleading in that we have zero evidence of anyone ever being resurrected in in the sense that it's described in the Jesus story where somebody is dead and seem to be dead and well three days later or a day and a half if you do the math they rise from the dead that we have no evidence for that we have no reason to think it's possible and all the evidence about reality seems to show that it would be impossible this is not a claim that miracles cannot occur it's simply we don't have evidence for that when I say something like in order to to reach to the supernatural as a potential explanation you would first have to show that the supernatural is real and can interact with reality I'm talking about just having a sound epistemology it's not the fault of sound epistemology that claims about the supernatural are unable to meet those standards simply saying well you can't exclude these claims are the the evidence for no they're not they're the claims when I'm presented with a new claim or even a claim I already accept there's a number of questions a little heuristic model that I go through in my head I don't do all these all the time and they're not always explicit but the types of things you ask yourself if you're trying to be skeptical about something is number one do I already believe it and by the way if the answer to that's yes that doesn't mean you shouldn't question it you should still question it even if you already believe it otherwise these conversations would be pointless the second one is is this claim consistent with my current understanding of reality because if it is then we're talking about something that's mundane and you know it's going to require a different standard of evidence than something that completely undermines the well-founded understanding of reality the next question and these aren't in a specific order what which of my beliefs would I have to change if I were to accept this new claim and so if I accept this new claim how is that going to fundamentally undermine other things that I already understand and believe in except about reality and is the evidence for this new thing so overwhelming that it Trump's all of the evidence for this other thing what about my life would change what evidence is there for the contrary and then it gets to what do I know about the person who's making the claim in the case of my mom telling me she's seen demons I know a lot about the person and I generally find him truthful or her truthful I just don't find that her claim is in and of itself sufficient evidence do that does this person who's relating the information do they have a motivation to deceive me including the hey why would I say something like that unless I was telling the truth why would I say that he appeared to women when we know we don't trust women you cannot use that as if it's evidence for because it could go either way it could be the you know the double bluff type scenario and in any case appealing to that with regard to testimony still doesn't get you to the truth of the matter you now you're talking about how reliable are these people in other circumstances and should we extend that reliability but the fact that I say I tell you 10 things and eight of them are correct tells you nothing at all about whether the other two are correct each of those claims has to stand and fall on its own merits and its own evidence is there any known mechanism to support this claiming that magic did it that oh well Jesus was special or God is special and God is able to you know exempt things from what we understand to be the laws of reality in these limitations call magic or whatever you want it's just case of special pleading and you would need to demonstrate that this is an actual viable candidate explanation we put together all the facts you list the candidate explanations for this and that's all you get to pull from because if the Candida explanations are conspiracies which we know occur legend which we know occurs mistakes which we know occur exaggerations which we know occur and all these other things and then resurrection something we have zero supporting evidence for we have lots of claims but nothing to show that this ever did happen or could happen you don't get to include that you'd have to demonstrate why that is the more likely explanation and I don't know how you can do that when you can't demonstrate that this is something that can occur in to borrow from Hume twice actually when somebody presents this case the question is is it more likely that they are deceived or deceiving then that the claim is actually true and then what Hume would advise us to do is to reject the greater miracle that does not mean to accept the lesser miracle that's something else entirely but let's look at the account let's look at what the Bible is actually trying to do and if you look at the whole model what you have is God who has come down and taken human form if you're buying into the Trinity which is already a logical mess that doesn't make sense doesn't mean it's not true doesn't make sense so unreasonable but it comes down and takes human form and sacrifices himself to himself to serve as a loophole for rules that he is in governance of it includes this notion of ancient blood magic rituals the same reason that people were sacrificing animals which is already a patently absurd thing here's the creator of the universe and we've got this intellectual and emotional exercise and oh wait you you stole something from someone so we're gonna kill an animal slaughter it and burn it because the blood and the smoke is pleasing to God somehow this magically transfers sent away from a person and so we just extend that model to Jesus where God comes down and becomes Jesus or Jesus in human form God in human form has Jesus and then becomes the sacrifice to end all sacrifices not only is this just blood-magic absurdity that I think modern people should not only recognize but is bizarre you're the you're the creator and governor of the entire universe and the best solution you can come up with is a brutal bloody sacrifice because somehow this alleviates people's responsibility for their sin which already we have a problem with the notion of sin in some cases but he not only does that but he picks a time in a process that isn't properly subject to investigation just the other day or today actually but a month ago I also saw it there was a video that hit the Internet of a resurrection occurring at a Christian meetup in South Africa I believe it was there's a dude laying in a coffin there's tons of people standing around it's all on film and everything else and the pastor's ignore the praying and this guy sits up and everybody in the crowd freaks out now I don't believe that that was an actual resurrection I have no idea if Mike believes it's a resurrection but the thing is any Christian could look at that and say yeah I have no reason to doubt that that was a real resurrection because that's the kind of thing God can do because they've started with the notion that God can and will and likely could resurrect somebody but if they say that that one we've got on videotape was not an actual resurrection I want to know what their justification for that is because they're accepting another resurrection that has less supporting evidence has witnesses supposedly that you cannot interact with and investigate at all nothing God picked a time in a place to make this impossible for modern generations to ever properly investigate this isn't just an absence of evidence for the case it is evidence against God would have to be boneheaded ly stupid to have the single most important thing that he would ever have happen happen in such a way where it could not be reliably attested to that you would only have AI witnesses or actually what we have anonymous authors of Gospels that are copies of copies of translations of copies with no originals reporting of verbal history and yes we're talking for the earliest ones a couple of decades after the fact but that's still a problem if somebody came up to me too a and said hey when Elvis died he was resurrected a little while later here's a couple of national Enquirer's that show elvis in a supermarket here's all the people who say they talked to Elvis after the dead I'm by the way I'm not making this stuff up if you go in research you will find people to claim that they talked to Elvis after they're dead now you can build a case out of that and that's within the last 50 years in a modern era where everything is reported in news I'm not saying either way what happened but you cannot be anachronistic and look back and judge those older generations based on modern standards but you can say what are good standards of evidence and good standards of evidence are ubiquitous they it doesn't matter wouldn't something becomes believable isn't based on well 20 people told me so it must be the case that may be the case for 20 people witnessed an auto accident and you can compare their stories but it doesn't mean that 20 people witnessing a UFO makes it believable which we have cases of that happening there are people who claim to have seen UFOs who have been abducted by UFOs and it happens in groups and group hallucination is real although I'm not offering group hallucination as a response to Mike's points because in very few cases is there anybody that we would have to account for that was actually in a group when you say Jesus appeared to the 500 that's just a claim we've spoken to no one from the 500 no one who was there to to even speak to the 500 or anything else when you present these things as evidence they are in fact just more and more claims from essentially the same sources from anonymous authors now I'm often asked what we changed my mind about this or any number of things and as Mike alluded to I've said I have no idea what would changed my mind but when he was talking about it he said that that was equivalent of saying nothing could convince me and that is absolutely false my inability to understand or express what could or should change my mind is not the slightest bit a claim that nothing would change my mind I will believe anything for which there is sufficient evidence the problem is that the very nature of the claim and the fact that there is no way for me to test or investigate the supernatural there is no other example of a resurrection means that I am simply incapable of telling you exactly what sort of evidence would convince me and it's partly because of you know arthur c-- clark snowed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic i don't know what it would be that's humility that is not a closed mind and if there is a god that god could certainly present whatever evidence he wanted that would absolutely convince me and God would know what would convince me I asked a believer in in during a debate in Canada what would what it would take to convince him that the resurrection didn't happen and his answer was well you could produce Jesus's body so and that was the only thing he could come up with that might change his mind the problem is that's impossible it's not like we have any kind of DNA evidence even if we got a tomb that said Yeshua then Joseph and there was a body in there I'm convinced that believing Christians would either one say that's not Jesus or to say well when it says he was raised bodily that's not necessarily the case it could be that there was still a body there and and then you have to get into this discussion about what happened with it you know why do you claim of an empty tomb and all this other stuff but I'm convinced that there would be some sort of way out of this day so that not only is this something we couldn't present but I don't think it would actually be convincing which is what now it's unfair of me I'm not gonna saddle mic with somebody else's statement about what would convince them that they're wrong maybe we'll find out what would convince him he's wrong the other thing is that we're talking about something from which there is zero evidence from contemporary sources and Mike will list a ton of sources none of which are contemporary not even the Gospels or contemporary Paul is in contemporary the various historians that people are likely to reference Clement the first is probably the closest to contemporary because he was at least born around the time that the crucifixion the resurrection would have heard occurred but at a minimum when he becomes and when it gets in a position to report stuff we're still talking decades later and so we've got this weird single case of special pleading now there's people who would list all the evidence and Gary Habermas is famous for the minimal facts approach and I would argue that Mike presented a version of the minimal facts approach with essentially 12 facts instead of 5 so I don't know if this meets the threshold of a novel approach and actually adding Gary's original and had like 12 so it might be similar I did a video in which you can go and watch on what my problems are with the minimum facts of approach it's not that there are actual facts it's not that people are being unreasonable the problem in part is that if you begin with the notion that there is a God who can create things and do things and be things then all of a sudden talking donkeys and talking snakes and blood magic rituals and Trinities and taking human form and dying and being resurrected all of a sudden become plausible because you've poisoned the well by accepting a proposition and what mike has kind of done at the start of this is to say well really here's all this evidence and it's the evidence for the supernatural and you don't just get to throw all of it out but it's not the evidence it is the claim it is a bunch of claims and it is claims upon claims as well it's entirely possible to be reasonable and wrong there are inconsistencies I think you know and might mention that the Gospels don't contradict but it's not relevant I would argue that they do in fact contradict and it is relevant because what we're addressing when the bulk of all of the information and the bulk of everything that he's speaking to is contained in the Bible then the Bible's reliability is relevant and if the Gospels do contradict that doesn't mean the story's not true but it will impede our ability to accept some of the facts and before we started this there were there was a quick discussion between Mike and myself on email about an email about what kind of facts I would go ahead and stipulate to try to save time and I told over that and really did my best and I what I ended up saying for almost all of them was I will accept that these are the claims but not that they are the facts you know oh jesus had 12 disciples yeah I'm pretty if you said the Bible says Jesus had 12 society disciples boom yes that's a fact the Bible does declare that but whether or not Jesus actually had 12 disciples is another issue and so while I have no real problem with the notion that that is likely to be true or probably true or possibly true I can't stipulate to it as as an actual effect and that's the problem because what we have here is this list of claims coming from a source the Bible's the source not the evidence is the source of the claims not the evidence oh well I'm a magician the amazing Randi used to decapitate Alice Cooper on stage every night and for during one of the tours I think it was a billion dollar babies to her and then of course Alex would revive now obviously it's just a magic trick it's never portrayed to anybody as if it were really happening and so that puts us in a different context because I would agree this isn't merely a conspiracy a conspiracy is something that you would have to provide evidence for that this was a an intentionally fabricated construction but when we look at the actual claims we consider the fact that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable that the scenario involved with Jesus dying and resurrecting doesn't seem to make any sense and doesn't have any physical evidence for it and God picked a time to do this when they're specifically couldn't be the best possible like the best time would be today to have Jesus come forward today and say I'm going to be killed and three days afterwards I will be resurrected and then toss his ass in the electric chair shock until he's dead get doctors to actually verify that he's dead with all of this being recorded then three days later though he's alive that that would be amazing that would be leaps and bounds ahead of what we have from a 2000 year old document by anonymous authors who were not eyewitnesses who may not even have been it may have got their information second or third-hand from eyewitnesses even and I don't know any of them when my mom tells me she saw a demon I trust my mom but I don't believe that and so now when an anonymous author tells me that somebody relayed this story and I have no way to question that person I have no understanding of who they are anything else I don't even know if they're real because it's very easy to just say hey this happened like the recent book about the person who had the the near-death experience and going to heaven and then when they're finally busted on it they come forward and say oh yeah that actually wasn't true it didn't happen people do make things up and sometimes they make things up for good reasons this notion that oh they wouldn't have died for something that they knew to be false well that's not necessarily true I would argue that people probably have died for things that they know work false but that's not even necessary because if you become convinced you're no longer dying for something you know to be false you're dying for something that you think is true and whether or not you think it is true is independent from whether it is true which is also independent from whether or not it is reasonable to think it's true this preposterous loophole blood magic thing that didn't even involve a sacrifice you know if you told me today you could end world hunger by killing me permanently I'd take the deal if I if I had you know strong assurances virtually certainty that this would actually work boom kill me in world hunger poverty whatever if you said that you'd do it and you killed me and in three days I get to be God forever that's not a sacrifice there's nothing about this that is a sacrifice having a bad weekend even the worst weekend which I would argue this is not necessarily the worst weekend when you look at people who are living in in anguish and poverty with disease and illness and other things and none of it makes sense but what makes the least amount of sense is how we can look at a story and say we don't know who wrote this we can take them at their word that they're trying to honestly relay information but it is propaganda at best they're reporting things from people that we can't interview they're reporting facts that we cannot investigate and yet somehow 2,000 years afterwards because the story is persisted and people become convinced by it well we can't it would be silly to go with legend or conspiracy or any of these others so we just have to go with resurrection that is something that I've called Doyle's fallacy after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who famously wrote for Sherlock Holmes once you've eliminated all other possibilities whatever remains however improbable must be the right answer the problem there is that you have to assume that you have in fact eliminated all other possibilities and that is the fallacy to say well it can't be this it can't be this it can't be this therefore it must be resurrection that is by definition an argument from incredulity it is Doyle's fallacy as best as I can tell and we can demonstrate why this is problematic for example if I take 2048 people and I send half of them a football prediction for who's going to win the first game and the other half a different prediction one of them wins one of them loses we get rid of half then we're down to 1028 and I split that in half and give them two predictions so we keep going keep going we're gonna find somebody who has been miraculously in air quotes Sint 9 correct predictions in a row that from their perspective with the limited information they have makes it incredibly reasonable to presume that the 10th one that I'm going to give them is more than likely correct and yet it's not these are coin tosses and it's because you don't have all of the information and for me it's not that I'm saying the resurrection never occurred I'm saying it is absolutely not reasonable to believe that the resurrection occurred because there is insufficient evidence for it for anything like it you have to assume all sorts of well you have to assume a God who can do anything you have to assume a a model that makes no sense you have to disregard conflicts within the accounts and just cherry-pick out what you want to say is reliable and then failing to discount things claim that this means that resurrection is the best explanation for it and I met the best technician is I don't know what that's actually a great point to jump into the dialogue and Matt you went a little bit over on time I wanted to let you get it all out and I think that was actually a really good summary there at the end so why don't just I would thought I was 30 seconds over right there but good to go okay great so let's jump into dialogue and Mike why don't you take the floor because I mean it was it was a lot of stuff on both sides right so let's let's go to Mike what do you want to come back with what do you want it where do you want to take this great so if I could respond to the to the content I just heard from Matt Matt what I heard from you it sounded to me if I if I was to take everything you said and just kind of go back and listen and kind of put it all into categories because it was very sort of wandering in my opinion a lot of stuff was vague what if what if what if but no not tying it to specific evidence not tying it to any of the details of the first-century other stuff was in my opinion bad analogies like comparing it to the Doyles fallacy that I don't know that the real fallacy but you know Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had Houdini telling him hey this is fake it's just a trick don't believe it he had every reason to doubt it whereas with the crucifixion that doesn't parallel it's just not a parallel parallels to the Cottingley fairies really doesn't parallel to the resurrection sure it does how so it's a claim of something paranormal and supernatural that Doyle accepted because he could not find a better explanation than that it was real okay but that's not the evidence for the resurrection this is what happened in your discussion with nothing no for the resurrection there are claims that's actually something I'd like to look at really quickly because that was I heard you make there I heard you say that a few times in your in your opening Matt so claims verse evidence q would you mind defining those two like what's that distinction well so a claim is an assertion that something is such and so and evidence is actually evidence that supports the fact that it's thus and so and so like and and Mike was the number of times I and I jotted down notes or number times where he would say like archeological evidence support this well that is simply false because what Mike was saying was that when Joseph when we talked about the tomb and Joseph of Arimathea it was this particular type of tomb and then archaeologists pointed out that that is consistent with types of tombs at the time that is not archaeological evidence supporting it that is a confirmation that the people of the time we're talking about facts of the people of the time it's not archaeological evidence for Jesus being buried for Jesus existing for Joseph of Arimathea for Joseph of Arimathea stoom it's nothing it is simply saying that when people talked about a tomb this is something that actually happened and when you do it look at view it like that it's roughly the equivalent of archaeologists in in two thousand years finding evidence of buildings in New York and saying this is evidence for spider-man so if you were to have let's say that you have in that first century a description of the tomb and then we come back 2,000 years later we we dig in the area and we find that tombs don't exist in the area nothing like it exists and in fact the description of the tomb it seems like it couldn't even physically exist in the area of Jerusalem at all that would probably count as evidence against the tomb right yes it would so when we find a description of a tomb that fits the description the guy that's described as burying it it fits the the context it fits the archaeology that we discover how does not this not count as corroborated evidence that this is more likely true than before we knew about it if I talk about how you gave me a million dollars and in two thousand years somebody researches and find out there was no such thing as dollars now that would be disconfirming evidence but if they find out there were dollars now the only thing that is evidence of is that I am speaking accurately about immaterial tertiary facts about the time it doesn't tell them anything at all about whether or not you gave me a million dollars of course people in their time are likely to describe the mundane it would be absurd it would it would actually be more miraculous to find out that they described a tomb that wasn't likely or probable for the area than not so outside of Jerusalem outside of Palestine where it's theorized that these Gospels were written three of the four are supposedly written outside Palestine and your opinion you take the late date so you're saying that they were written you know 3290 I've heard you say 30 to 90 years later which I never heard that late but let's say that that's the case there in the outside Palestine yet they seem to know details about the sanhedrin details about the empty tomb about the kinds of tombs details about the debates between the Pharisees and Sadducees details like in John it records that there was a sycamore tree in Jericho and those trees didn't didn't even grow outside of Palestine in the area where there where's thought John was written like how did they know Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore tree like these are confirmatory details saying that hey this stuff when you put it all together there's a reason why mat historians would would roll their eyes at this at the stuff that you're saying about how oh those are just claims they don't count rather they're there adding it all together they're not evidence or they're not evidence for the resurrection confirming that somebody is accurately relaying elements of a story does not confirm the other elements of the story saying that Zacchaeus what's that sometimes it does no it absolutely does not it cannot if I make ten claims the fact that eight of them are true tells you nothing at all about whether the other true true nothing at all each claim is independent so this is where I think this is a morality it's meet the actual details of the history of things so what we do is we can take the claims and say hey the Gospels tell us that Jesus was crucified that he was buried that the disciples were despondent and had lost hope now when we look at other messianic movements of the time and we see that they all died as soon as the Messiah character died we go oh that corroborates the idea that the disciples were despondent at the time and we see in Tacitus that they says that when Christ was crucified that it had checked for the moment the following of Christ and later it exploded that also is a confirmatory detail so the only thing that's required could get out of them the only thing that's required to get over that is for people to believe the story not the story to be true the story doesn't have to be true in order to compel this what needs to happen is for people need to believe that the story is true the problem I have with this is that these are just super vague generalities I want to here you take these generalities and like the details around the death and resurrection of Christ know what you're asking me to do is to prove facts wrong and it's in it's irrelevant as to whether or not I can do that as I said at the outset these aren't vague things I'm talking about what I'm talking about is not evidence against the resurrection it is a demonstration of an epistemology that is sound and the resurrection claims do not rise to that level okay I think we're shifting gears now we're all are talking about the history there is is it unreasonable that is epistemology and it that is absolutely all about epistemology which is what this debate has to be about it so I presented to Kate a two-part case right my one part is hey we have these non miraculous reasonably believable facts of history right and then the second case the second part is and I think the resurrection best explains it so yes II argue against both sides one side is you're arguing against the evidence itself in which case I'm trying to say generalities don't do it we need details and then you're also saying epistemological II that you can't conclude the resurrection because and this was like circular reasoning because it's not circularly prove it till you prove it I'll reject the evidence that proves it because you have to prove it but I won't allow evidence prove the thing that I'm saying you can't prove it it's just no pinnacle circular no sir circular reasoning is when the conclusion is entailed in the premise and my conclusion is not the resurrection didn't occur or that supernatural can't occur my conclusion is that the resurrection hasn't met its burden of proof and the fact that it can't do that or seems to be unable to do that is not circular and it's not a problem for epistemology it's a problem for the resurrection which is why I'm pointing out you had a two-part case here's these 12 facts which okay some of them I find incredibly questionable and you know I some of the sources that you cited I have issues with but that's not your fault come on can we like pause and like maybe look at this 2-part case real quick and like maybe just go through the first part and see which facts you take issue with or not because I don't want to call them facts right because these are just like what Mike said the most or through the list it's really easy can you Mike can you put that back up on the screen oh um I can it's gonna take me just a moment to do that cuz I closed it it's funny so the death of Jesus yeah isn't in any way evidence for the resurrection yes it's a required thing that he must have died before he's resurrected but the fact that he died is irrelevant to whether or not he was actually resurrected but do you agree with that like you agree that he was crucified under Pontius a storybook that whose veracity cannot be verified I don't have any way to investigate this there are no contemporary accounts not even not even in the Bible there aren't contemporary accounts we don't see the sort of things that we would expect we don't see you know the Romans reporting on you know it's all we found a document that shows hey here's the date we Christopher I should have been Joseph that that just doesn't exist we don't say we don't tend to hear about anybody else who saw zombies rise up in march on Jerusalem when the crucifixion occurred we don't have any record reporting's of the sky growing dark or the temporal world splitting those things have nothing to do with my case that I'm talking about yes okay I will agree because I just said that the death of Jesus has nothing to do with the resurrection you know the apart from that it was necessary but these are things that are part of the same story the same telling sometimes just a handful of verses apart as a matter of fact if we go with the ending of mark 16 at 8 there's nothing other than the women don't tell anybody so when I'm looking at the Bible I have to consider its reliability and so when it says hey when Jesus was crucified the temple veil split this this guy went dark and zombies rose up and marched on Jerusalem if we don't have any independent accounts of those things isn't that proposed Inc zombies marched on Jerusalem and I think that that is a really ridiculous way to put it and like the hold on a second let's be mature here is that this is this is what I see all the time when I encounter and engage with the Atheist community it is constant mockery it's like painful for Christians they ask me how do you handle it Mike because the constant mockery of Christian faith let's just take it straight Matt there's no zombies in Scripture it did one March turning your soul about several people who were raised raised Saints coming into the city this however has nothing to do with my case there are scholars who would reject I don't reject it but who would reject that account in Matthew they still would accept the facts that I've given you today you're shifting the burden of proof to where I'm supposed to prove I'm not I was sure to talk about a historical case for the resurrection I was asked to explain something and I'm trying to do so the reliability of Scripture in general is key to whether or not we can ride about it on the other things the facts that historians will attest to and by the way some of them attest to more than I think they should are simply mundane things there it's not like there's historians who are saying yes the resurrection occurred what they say and what you attested to in some of these discussions is there are people who who claim to have seen Jesus after he was dead I have no problem with the fact that people claimed to see Jesus after he was dead good that isn't evidence for the resurrection that is the claim hey I saw somebody and by the way as you read it they see him in different ways Paul has a saw as this road to Damascus thing with an apparition James doesn't tell us it can we talk about Paul for a minute you say apparition how do you establish that that what Paul saw was an apparition well what's his description well it's your case you're the one that said he saw an apparition so like you are you robust with ace against that but I'd like to hear you make a case for it despite what you think I am NOT trying to strawman Christianity Paul's description let's see make sure I'm getting it accurately the middle earth with him stood speech was hearing a voice but saying no man Wow hey Matt while you're looking while you're looking that up let me talk to the audience real quick we're gonna try to take questions so if you guys can just write down in the comments we have a couple moderators that are helping so we're going to try to take questions I don't know when we're going to be able to do that probably nine-thirty in about 25 minutes after we do a little bit more back and forth so if you can just start writing your questions down we'll take the best ones and we'll try to get some of those answered so so I'll just read it meanwhile saw was so breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples he went to the high priest and asked him for ledges the synagogues in Damascus that he found anyone belonged to the way whether men or women he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem as he neared Damascus on his journey suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying Saul Saul why do you persecute me who are you lord Saul as salsa asked I am Jesus whom you are persecuting he replied now get up and go into the city and you'll be told what to do they've been traveling with Saul stood there speechless they heard the sound but didn't see anybody Saul got up from the ground but when he open his eyes he could see nothing so they led him away by the hand into Damascus for three and he was he was blind and didn't eat or drink anything I don't know how to describe that other than a vision it's not like there was at no point does it say there was a person there Saul was blinded and heard a voice I don't mean that oh I've got I said apparition earlier is that I if I said apparition earlier then I'll retract that it was a sloppy word to describe a non physical manifestation so make sense non-physical so do you think that Paul thought Jesus was non-physical after his resurrection so he describes himself as a AXI Paul's described as seeing Jesus Jesus says I'm Jesus whom you are persecuting him is cleaning Jesus that's him hearing Jesus the event the event if I said seeing sorry he's described as encountering Jesus is the same thing with seeing an apparition so we'll call it it had it had a actual effect and impact on those around him a light shone from heaven around him others other people saw that as well it seems this is this is some kind of a group experience falling to the ground he heard a voice so he fell to the ground this thing caused him to fall to the ground and it says it's Jesus so the question is did Paul think that because we don't have a clear description of what Jesus was he bodily or not bodily there did Paul think Jesus was bottom rock he couldn't have been bodily because the men heard the sound but did not see anyone so the men heard a disembodied voice but now that that is definitely reading into the text so let me go to our earliest source I said what are you first seven the men traveling with Saul stood there speechless they heard the sound but did not see anyone Mike what were you saying you have a earlier so the earliest count from Paul is in first Corinthians 15 and Paul in this passage indicates what he thinks happened to Jesus when Jesus died he says that he died for our sins according to scriptures that he was buried that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and a lot of debate and then he appeared to cephas to the twelve to five hundred at once to James and finally to me last of all yeah notice he thinks last of all like these appearances G is their temporary that Paul was the last one but the thing is um in T right did a whole like 500 page word study on on what Paul was talking about here when he says Jesus was raised when Jesus was resurrected and there's no way around it they believed that it was a bodily resurrection that it occurred and anybody anybody saying that they okay let me finish this please anybody saying the Jewish mentality would have been okay with thinking someone had been resurrected when they had merely appeared in a ghostly form or invisible just an invisible voice is just not fitting with the history of the time this is why we have confirmatory evidence you're spending a lot of time defending a position either expressed nor hold you said it was an apparition I the word apparition which I also retracted in the description there so you're defending that Saul thought that Jesus was bodily raised and I never I never addressed that at all that's my point I have no problem with the fact that Saul thought Jesus was bodily raised I was talking about the Damascus Road experience which does not expressly say that he met a body he heard a voice and was blinded that is that is annex Ingle experience which is completely independent of what he believed about the resurrection so you're you're defending a position I never expressed and don't even hold I think you might be I hear you Matt but I think you might be misunderstanding what I'm trying to say you are trying to defend that you are that you're defending against something that comes up from others who say that Paul never knew about or talked about Jesus what I'm saying because that's mean to me what I'm saying you originally said apparition you took that back thank you for that is it wasn't an apparition that acts acts 9 is not clear on what Paul saw it would be consistent with several different kinds of interpretations it's not clear so I don't we didn't see let me finish please so I don't think that we can go to acts 9 to establish what Paul thought he saw so what we can do is we can go to other passages it's mentioned twice in acts also in 1st Corinthians 15 where he makes it clear that he thought Jesus bodily rose and was physically physically resurrected in a glorified body and we can go to acts 13 where Paul describes Jesus and you're gonna bring acts into the case Paul says Jesus was killed by Pontius Pilate he was buried in a tomb the tomb he vacated the tomb bodily and that he was seen by the disciples and that we including Paul are witnesses of this bodily risen Jesus like that's acts 13 so there's no way Paul thought this was an apparition or anything like that it's like we're speaking two completely different languages I swear to the God that I don't believe in that I just got done saying you are defending against position I never expressed and do not hold I have no problem with the notion that saul thought Jesus was bodily raised I was reading what it says in Acts about that instant not in any way presenting this case that you're defending against which other atheists have presented which is like Saul never knew of Jesus and never thought about Jesus in the terms of by other thing this all happened in some apparitions in in space in a spiritual area here that's not what I'm defending against at all musics you were defending against a position that he and others have offered which I have not presented and all its doing is detracting from from actually getting to me addressing the points lame offers two words for the last sake of clarity here I'm not saying all I'm saying is if we're asking in acts 9 what did Paul see according to the story we should not conclude based on acts 9 it was a body list Christ because we have a lot of other you know support that what he thought he saw was a physically risen Christ so now we're back to what I retracted seven or eight minutes ago and it was only a sloppy word that never meant to imply that the first place okay well I was one what I've been listening for and I asked you to back it up and I'm glad you're retracted it okay can i it's just a go ahead I was just gonna guide it back to something that you said earlier Matt and this was another thing that came up a bunch you talked about candidate explanation it has to be demonstrated that it can occur before it can be considered a candidate explanation sure huh Mike do you want to engage with that at all Wow okay you want to explain it one more time Matt no I was I was still trying to answer the question from before we got derailed because I accidentally said apparition because because the thing is what Saul believed about Jesus is what Saul believed it's not what's true it's not what is reasonable to believe it's not what is evidenced and so during Mike's opening when he talks about James the brother Jesus believed because he saw the risen Christ James never tells us that it's Paul who tells us that Paul is writing all this stuff and relaying all this information on behalf of third parties hey he appeared to the twelve he appeared to the 500 he appeared to James well first of all I have no evidence from any of those individuals who were cited that this attestation is accurate and second of all even if I did we still have this problem of how do we establish that it's true just because somebody believed it this is why it doesn't matter to me whether someone is convinced that Paul thought of Jesus as an actual physical resurrection or a spiritual one because while all believes is completely irrelevant to what is actually reasonable to believe and what is supported by evidence when when you are going through this opening you're talking about oh the empty tomb is multiplied attested to in the Gospels in premarket counts and it's even enemy attested to in Matthew 28 no it's not enemy attested to in Matthew 28 Matthew 28 reports something that if it were true would account as an you have to assume that it's accurately reporting this okay now where is the actual enemy attestation because historians when they view something if there is two accounts and an actual enemy written account affirm something that is an enemy attestation the winning side writing that an enemy affirmed it is not an enemy attestation that is just flatly false okay well I this is this all I want to point out for the sake of the audience is that this is Matt private opinion here the way that Matt is recharacterizing the history of it is not the way historians look at it why do you Matt why do you think that historians who don't believe the Bible who don't think that Jesus rose who are not Christians and even many who are atheists think that this counts as enemy attestation do you think they do you that's just you telling me that they do I have not seen again do you think that they're just being dummies yes if in fact if in fact they are saying okay here's the thing it's this is really simple this is this shouldn't even be controversial this is basic reasoning and skepticism if I write a story and in that story I have a fact and I say and then Mike came at me and made this accusation which attests to this fact that is not evidence that Mike actually did that it is not a Mike attestation it is me claiming what Mike said when if historians are looking at this and saying well that's an enemy attestation they are simply wrong okay now why and how are they doing it maybe because they grew up in a culture that just accepted these things as true and so when they read the Bible rather than saying oh hey this was written by an anonymous source and when he quotes somebody who seems supportive and yet as an enemy that must be the case because otherwise we'd have to say that this is a fictional it's fictionalized account in a previous video Matt you were if I remember correctly I think I do you suggested that the account of the guards at the tomb was invented by Christians because of the rumor that Jesus had stolen the body this was something you'd suggest in a video do you still think first of all at no point what I've ever said anything is silly is Jesus had stolen the body Jesus I sorry those are just a miss book so because supposedly the disciples had stolen Jesus's body is that something that you still think that the account of what the guards at the tomb is a result of response to the claim that the body had been stolen I think that that is one of many plausible reasons why that might be included my would that not imply that this is enemy attestation that the body was stolen no and and here's the here's another example from the same thing because I don't know if I if I said that but on many occasions I've said lots of things because when we talk about a number of explanations for why something might be included early on there was the the notion of this swoon theory basically enemies of Christianity would say well how do you know he was really dead and of course they would point to the record and they would highlight the fact that a soldier stuck a spear into his side and he bled until there was water now the question is did that actually happen was it in the original narrative or was this in something that was added as an exaggeration to be convincing because when somebody says how do you know he was dead you've got to come up with some explanation and saying oh he was stabbed any bled in until he bled water that would seem to be convincing to people if they accept it but that doesn't tell you whether or not it actually happened or whether it was an after-the-fact addition and in a book where we know there are after the fact additions I have to at least consider that a possibility I'm not saying that it didn't happen it may be the case that he died and that he bled until he I'm not even an advocate of the swoon theory I'm looking to take it stabbing with instruction the story no edited I'm gonna take a stab at this one real quick but I'm gonna predict that when I offer historical evidence that that lends corroboration to the story of the piercing of Jesus by spear that you'll say that that's proof that it didn't happen and maybe I'm wrong wait you're gonna offer evidence that this actually happened and I'm gonna say it's pertinent it didn't right yeah let's see if I'm right quintillion is a Roman rhetorician and he's he mentions that the that the Romans would allow the burial of a crucified victim providing they had first been pierced this implying that a confirmatory stab of the victim to make sure they were dead before they were buried was part of standard protocol so this seems to say hey this wasn't just added to exaggerate this looks like a historically valid detail so what what do you think of that map sure is assuming that that's accurate then I would say that that seems to be I don't even challenge the fact that he stabbed with the spear but bleeding until he bleeds water may have been a detail that was put on and no he was dead stabbing with the spirit could still lead your life I'm not happy this is why I was trying to say just second ago and I was I was literally like four words from being done I'm not advocating this wound theory I cannot rule it out even if I knew for a fact that he was stabbed with a spear that doesn't necessarily rule it out my question was how did it enter the story it's not the spear part that was objectionable or questionable as much as bleeding water until our bleeding until there was nothing but water because that is the thing that would attest to death not the medical research that's gone into this content specifically about the death of Christ the blood water being poured out I don't know am i familiar with the medical research on the blood of Christ there is none it's I think you're purposely marginalizing what I just said I'm trying to understand it okay so when Jesus was pierced blood and water poured out trying to have one of two causes either the pericardium around the heart was pierced in which case blood and water would pour out or Jesus had died through the typical way someone dies on the cross asphyxiation and then the the water in the lungs was gathering as a result after his death so the piercing would have confirmed it and I mean the purpose of the piercing would be to confirm it it would be to give blood and water to pour out to make sure the guy was dead yeah and this is a prime example of what I objected to in the opening the way that you go about phrasing things is and I apologize but considering I've already been done called on the carpet for zombies sloppy because when you ask me about are you familiar with the medical research involved with the piercing of Christ the answer is there is none if instead it would be do you understand what the reason for that might have been or what the explanations for why there might have been blood and water yes of course I've heard about those things and it would not have been that remarkable it reminds me of when people say well the the Bible or the Quran attest to this scientific fact that people at that time couldn't have known and yet it's absolutely understandable that people at the time could have known that it's modern people who don't seem to understand things like you know hey what far are familiar with so this is what I expected it's just about right in a way because if you just said piercing confirms death and there are medical explanations for the blood and water maybe it's a mixture or maybe the pericardium has been ruptured etcetera I would have said yes those are all just medical facts but when you phrase it as archaeological evidence for this medical evidence for the wounded Jesus in Jesus aside there's a freezing there that smuggles in something and I'm not even saying it's intentional I don't think you have any oh well I think you're from all my interactions with you you're a patient and great guy who is honestly trying to relay what you mean but I am intentionally precise and pedantic when I can be because I understand that the sloppy phrasing is what allows us to smuggle in things it's what allows us to say oh well there's all this evidence when what we're really talking about is mundane things that are that just are hey this occurred in this time period crucifixion was real stabbing was real yeah I know all that so we're gonna go to questions and answer is not right now but in just a few minutes so just there's something I really want to get after which is has nothing to do with evidence and I think it's actually at the core of Matt's objections Matt I've watched every video I could find of yours on your beat sorry I'm legitimately sorry on your atheist Debates project your interactions on atheist experience and your debates with guys like Jinta and like Kona and all that so I've really tried to understand your perspective and to me the evidence is secondary to you and if I was Matt Dillahunty I think if I could categorize it I would say I can come up with complaints about your evidence all day long but in the end there's a bigger obstacle for you Mike and that is this is just plain irrational to believe no matter what the evidence so let me let me put something on the table for you get your input on it okay let's suppose that Jesus did what you suggested and he came right now today and he was killed in an electric chair and scientifically confirmed that he was dead and then he came back to life would you then believe God exists and that Jesus God had raised Jesus from the dead Oh a very cleverly crafted question know what I believe that Jesus was now alive again yes and that was the thing that I was going to conclude my my opening with was even if we established the resurrection we still don't know why or how it happened that is an explanation that has to come secondary that that this you're right this does get to the core here because if if Jesus had done the things that I said would be the best way to demonstrate it would I'm not even sure that that would necessarily be sufficient to convince me of a resurrection it may be when I say that I'm not sure what would convince me I'm being honest and I'm not saying nothing would convince me would it convinced me of a resurrection maybe possibly probably even very likely had I had access to that actual evidence and rather than just reporting's of that evidence that but my reason for raising that wasn't to show that that that this would also be unbelievable where this would be what would be believable it's to show that God picked a time to do this where none of that is available and that is stupid okay so would you say this if I was you I would let me say I'm gonna be I'm gonna be Matt Dillahunty for a second tell me if I'm saying it right you failed last time but I think you demonstrated that you wouldn't that no evidence effectively doesn't matter but look what this way no no can you conceive oh my god no no I cannot let you get this out you talk like minutes I said one sense in Europe interrupting me that's because your sentence was to accuse me of evidence doesn't matter that's how a debate works Matt you got to let me talk no this isn't your show man you gotta let me talk I I don't have to stay is what I'm saying would you stop characterizing me as if evidence doesn't matter when what I've said to you is that evidence is all that matters and the evidence for your claim does not rise to the level of reasonableness in my estimation is there any conceivable evidence in your mind that would give you the resurrection of Christ and God did it is there any conceivable evidence I have no idea as I've said umpteen times and as you paraphrase me at the beginning what that evidence would be which is completely irrelevant because I'm not saying that I can't be convinced I'm saying I don't know what would convince me but what I'm also saying is what has convinced other people is not a good standard of evidence because it does not exclude competing claims that resurrection video I saw the other day do you think it was a resurrection no I saw that video the guy was breathing literally breathing and moving inside the coffin it was clearly clearly false the video started after the resurrection process had started so here the video started when he recovered his breath how do you just count that it's a nice ad-hoc statement but it's clearly ad-hoc yeah I agree and yet you accept something with less supporting evidence that yet you accuse me of evidence not mattering when the evidence is the only thing that matters it doesn't matter how many people believe dat how sincerely they believed it what religious context something was put into or the fact that we couldn't come up with a better explanation what matters is the evidence and the fact that I cannot tell you what evidence would establish a resurrection is not a problem for my epistemology it is a problem for the resurrection claim there are countless things that I believe and I believe them based on evidence and for somebody accused me of not caring about evidence when it's clear that I do believe things and I believe them based on evidence and I'm willing to accept things including your your attestation for the spear being and a common part or a standard part of crucifixion process I'm willing to take you at your word for that because the claim is not extraordinary it is extraordinary claims that require extraordinary evidence and the notion that this person was raised from the dead is absolutely extraordinary and there is no physical evidence for it there is no contemporary evidence for it there's no evidence that this is even possible and yet you just want to dismiss it as if Matt Matt won't accept evidence no Matt won't accept insufficient evidence and neither should other people okay well I have a couple things I'd like to share about that um you you mentioned a quote I've heard many times I've heard especially in the skeptics community which is the idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and and I want to hear your opinion on this but I think that this is circular let me explain why I think it's circular and you tell me where you think I'm wrong here if I have an extraordinary claim like Jesus is risen from the dead and you require that I have extraordinary evidence to prove it whatever evidence I offer that's extraordinary will in itself be a claim that's extraordinary to which you can respond I won't believe that until you have more extraordinary evidence well if I do bring that well that's also extraordinary which you don't believe unless you have extraordinary evidence and this just circularly goes on forever ruling out ordinary evidence or hypothetical extraordinary evidence that can never pass never even enter the conversation no the the statement is extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence when you say if I present extraordinary evidence that's now extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence no that is not an extraordinary claim it is evidence that would satisfy the extraordinary a better way of phrasing it might be that in order for the belief to be warranted evidence must be sufficient or rise to the level of the extraordinariness of the claim if if I say hey I just bought a winning lottery ticket that's an extraordinary claim when I have the money that is the extraordinary evidence that the claim was true I think it even better piece of evidence would just be I watched the lottery numbers or I look them up online and then you show me your ticket and it has the right numbers on it and that's really ordinary evidence because I can print a winning lottery ticket I'm a magician magicians do this trick on stage all the time if the extraordinary evidence is actually getting paid by the lottery commission not just look I have something that matches those numbers this is the failure of skepticism that you are engaging in in this process okay I would add that's great to see you actually get paid the money that's also really good but this is kind of ordinary events one person giving another person money unless the quantity of now it's considered extraordinary and we fight say the number of appearances of Jesus are extraordinary report of appearances of Jesus are not appearances of Jesus when I say I have a winning lottery ticket that's an extraordinary claim because while it happens fairly regularly it's still extraordinary it's it's more extraordinary than saying I have a losing lottery ticket and if I just show you the ticket that's not extraordinary evidence extraordinary evidence is when the I confirm that this is in fact a winning lottery ticket I get paid because that is an event that is more extraordinary than having a losing lottery ticket all that all that claim is saying is that the the quantity and quality of evidence for a claim is dependent on how extraordinary that claim is if you say I just got a pet puppy I need nothing more than your word because as I pointed out I already know there are puppies I know people have puppies as pets there's nothing extraordinary about this you could be lying but the only risk to me in believing you and taking it you a word is that I ultimately find out you're a liar now I don't I don't I may I may have reasons to not want to find out that you're a liar like I don't want to find out my mom's lying about the demon thing I'd prefer to think that she's just you know either not able to present her evidence or that she was confused or whatever but if somebody says Jesus rose from the dead that's an extraordinary claim that has fundamental impact on everything that everything else in my life and that's why I say that the evidence for that needs to be not only sufficient to that claim but needs to overcome all the evidence for all the beliefs that contradict that so we're at the diner t mark are you guys ok if we switch to questions sure sure honey what if Mike had another one I'm fine too but you're running the shop my only other question that I'll get out real quick if I can is I just wanted to know have you tried to examine like what historically happened in the first century to come up with like a real like sort of thoughtful not vague but like a thoughtful explanation for the evidence that's available so I don't know how what was going on in the first century would necessarily be relevant because for Marie to Jesus in his resurrection specifically just I don't want you to spend a bunch of time on it I'm misunderstanding there sorry go ahead the short answer to question is no and the reason for the know is that what I have for a bunch of claims and the what was going on in the first century around this time is while it's supporting evidence that could be showed that something claims are consistent like here's the way people were buried here's what was going on religiously here was the conflict between you know Judea and Rome and I'm familiar with some of them but I haven't spent time trying to come up with a better explanation for this because the current explanations don't have sufficient evidence to warrant them and I see no way how investigating this in that context is ever going to provide any because you can build a much more cohesive story but that still doesn't tell you that it's true there's not you can't get to anything that would be extraordinary evidence unless I were like to go to archaeological digs myself and find the Roman records of Jesus's crucifixion and first handwritten accounts from the supposed 500 but I'm not an archaeologist and by the way nobody should have to be expected to do that research if the the model is true not only did God make a mistake in picking the time but it falls into this notion of divine hiddenness because if God has a message is important for the world it's God's responsibility to make sure that the evidence is available to make it reasonable for people to accept it and if God's punishing people for using their brain and saying whom I'm not convinced and then sending them to hell forever then he's a moral monster I'd like to respond to that that has nothing to do my question but I would like to respond to it that is it's just an unfortunately unfortunate mischaracterization of the facts but I came to Christ I was 12 years old through the work of the Holy Spirit in my life you don't have to believe this but let me just put it at least out there is I'm convinced that this is true and I didn't have any of this data I looked at it secondarily as like what if I'm delusional I want to find out like I expected no evidence from the first century to confirm this stuff because it's 2,000 years ago there's hardly any evidence to prove events from you know the distant past when I found this mountain of support it blew me away and I think it's a wonderful thing I don't want to shake my fist at it because it's not something it's not but but I have I have both personally I have the personal testimony yep god me self real to me but also the support from history and I think that those are those are you know what you just described you believed first and then examine the evidence and found it consistent that is the exact backward way of sound epistemology sound investigation critical thinking and skepticism you should follow the evidence where it leads not make sure that it's consistent with what you already accepted well that's what you're doing when you say you won't accept a supernatural explanation no it's not existent with what you already accept do you not know the bio where I was saved at the age of five and was active in church and believed all this and then when I began to understand epistemology that I could not evaluate the evidence beginning with belief and then making sure that it fit because once you believe there's a god who can do anything everything fits instead you have to follow the evidence where it leads and if it turns out the evidence is insufficient to establish the thing you believe then you have to examine why you believed it in the first place and it turns out I have no good reason to believe that there's a god or that Jesus was divine okay so let's turn to questions now that you guys are pausing whatever whatever you guys are doing alright question question time Samuel Park for Mike can you respond to the point about Jesus's resurrection being arbitrary and time happening 2,000 years ago when human history has been longer and when there were no cameras you know I've given some thought to this first off I don't think cameras would help us because I think people would disregard it just as quickly with camera evidence as they do with anything else as soon as you have cameras you have doctoring of the footage from cameras but but look at the time when it did happen at the time the the Greek language had spread throughout the known world the Roman roads had been built so that they could travel quickly throughout large portions of the world and the it happened just at the time when the Codex became popular it toward the end of the first century beginning a second century the Codex is a modern book the book form is basically even the best way to communicate information over long distances and what we have is unifying languages easier travel around the world and a fixed point in history that also matches later population explosions it seems to me that the the the timing of Jesus is strategic for getting the message out to large numbers of people in languages that they'll know and spreading it out in a very good way I think that this kind of counts against it when you evaluate it very carefully yeah okay so next question is for Matt this is from praise I am that I am my question is the dill honey who made you or any eighth or any atheist the arbiter of an epistemological contract called evidence Wow what a strange question I never claimed to be the arbiter of any epistemological construct evidence to what extent it is an epistemological construct the evaluations of epistemological foundations is something that philosophers have discussed and argued with about for ages and it's not that we have necessarily the one end-all be-all epistemology but we do have a good understanding of logical reasoning such that we can identify logical fallacies and when an argument is fallacious that doesn't mean the conclusion is false it means you cannot affirm that the conclusion is true that that's I mean of all of all the things that either one of us said is uncontested that's the granddaddy of all of them Aristotle and his band of mind auditions sorted out all syllogistic forms we know all of them we know we have all them you can research that compared them and show that these valid structures true premises lead to true conclusions and when the premise in invalid structures it doesn't matter because your conclusion cannot be affirmed as true that's the type of epistemology when I'm talking about what my personal standard of evidence of how much evidence there needs to be for something I'm not being the arbiter for anybody I'm arguing for this and my justification for other people for my thinking that other people should accept this as well is because the standards of evidence that mike is advocating are fallacious they're not supporting evidence it's claimed after claim and they would if you were consistently to apply those you would wind up believing multiple things that are contradictory it's like how do you rule out this God or that God if if the nature of the evidence was a personal experience and then this is consistent with my understanding it that's what I'm arguing for but I'm not the arbiter uh and I'll be all of epistemology I should be but I'm not okay next one is from Ronald Minh Danka I mean is it all right if I respond to that he made a claim about my epistemology okay uh I I didn't get a chance to respond to yours so and if we do that then we're just gonna like never really get any because it wasn't about the question it was about me address is epistemology and I'll avoid doing that in questions that aren't directly to both of us okay so and take ten seconds Mike and then and then we gotta move on sure um it's in the comparison when I take and have a consistent view of how to find truth how do we know things and I compare it to Mormonism and I compared it to weird Indian gurus who have getting fed from their mouths supposedly I find that with the same with the same standards for evidence I find that Christianity is true and those other things are false that's been consistent over and over again so I don't have to believe a bunch of contradictory claims okay all right moving on so this one is from modeled min danke I don't know how to pronounce that all right it says whether you call them zombies or not do you think the graves of Jerusalem opened and people greeted their dead relatives yes but let me explain dead relatives I don't know what the relatives part but the but the graves of Jerusalem some of the graves definitely some open I do think they went in and we're witnesses but the thing is this while I believe this and I think it's important and I think it's something I want to stand on as a Christian I could be wrong about that and it wouldn't affect my case for the resurrection I'm presenting tonight so I just want to point that out okay this one is for Matt it's the dude it's the dude question is his name isn't testimony considered evidence in a modern court I sure it's also referred to as anecdotal evidence testimonial evidence the question isn't whether or not it should count as evidence it's whether or not it could ever be sufficient and so no amount of people the truth is an impact that anyway by the number of people who believe it how long they believe it how sincerely or how many attest to it so when I say there's no what in and I was very specific with my phrasing there was no contemporary evidence that is true because even the testimonial evidence that we have is not contemporary it's reported second or third hand and you would have to begin by assuming that it is reliably reported and you're free to do that I'm not necessarily convinced it's reliably reported but it's certainly not contemporary it's all secondhand even even the early I mean even if I went with Mike's dating we would still be a decade or so how from then before you know the first stories could really have a foundation that would lead to the written text this one is actually related so and it's another one for you Matt is from Keith eller I'm not even gonna try to pronounce this name okay if the words of historians aren't evidence enough for our history that we can't verify for all reasons you described do you believe in Alexander the Great Aristotle anyone some of them yes some of them I have no real opinion on because it doesn't matter so when people take take a claim you know say well there's more attestation for Jesus than there is for you know Aristotle Socrates whoever else my response is so what the the truth of Socrates words isn't in any way contingent upon whether or not Socrates existed or if he was a fictional creation the truth of Jesus's words are absolutely entailed that he existed that that is a subtle difference I have no problem with the notion that he existed III didn't even argue against that so the number of adaptations for somebody existing is great the number of attestations that somebody rose from the dead isn't enough all right this one is from shad spark question it says it's for both what I'm gonna point this at Mike would you what would you consider evidence that a pharaoh is the embodiment of Horus should evidence for that claim exist I would I would think that I mean first off yes it would be a problem because I already have evidence that Jesus is God in the flesh so that that would be a problem because the embodiment of Horus would conflict with that so would conflict with something that's already been confirmed but the kind of evidence I have for Jesus is the stuff I presented today as well as prophecy which is a huge topic I think that's untapped by a lot of scholars and apologists that needs to continue to be pushed I can see I'm planning on pushing it more and more on the content I produce but if you were to show me you have documented evidence that of prophesies that then he was able to fulfill if he had perhaps died and rose again and there was good support for it like the multiple facts from the first century that support the evidence for Jesus then I would have to take it seriously if I'm gonna be consistent that's the thing is I don't think it's right to say I'm going to just be obstinately against any supernatural thing but it's also silly to say I'm gonna be openly blunt you know mindlessly accepting every supernatural thing that comes across my path what I'm really trying hard to communicate is you can evidentially test a supernatural claim to say hey did this event happen and then be right is it is it attributable to that cause and I think with Jesus we can say yes to both of those questions and obviously with Horus we don't okay so going back to Matt this is what this one is from Dean meadows he says you've said that you can't know if Jesus crucifixion is historical yet Erman Crossin and lunamon state that it is a historical event do you have evidence they're wrong no okay that was quick all right how about how about an irrelevant question the fact that somebody is convinced of something and I'm not doesn't mean that I'm we've now shifted the burden of proof to saying Oh Matt must provide evidence that they're wrong no if you want to take Urban's word for it that's fine but I find it funny that Christians and others will cite omen to the extent that they agree with them and then utterly disregard them when when he acknowledges that he's an atheist who doesn't accept the resurrection this is convenient citing and if his epistemology that led him to want in conclusion is consistent with the other conclusion then it's the people that are selectively citing him who are being hypocritical I'm just saying I'm not convinced in the way that he is all right this one is for Mike and this one is sort of tangentially related royal wolf 7 question when Paul says Jesus died and rose on a third day according to the scriptures which scriptures was he referencing question mark question mark this is a big question for him apparently um double question mark okay well there's actually a reference in 1st Corinthians where Paul talks about Jesus being the firstfruits of those who fall into sleep that this I just did a series on Jesus in the Old Testament in there I talked about the feasts of Israel and how they relate to Christ and I'd recommend checking that out I get into that in that series it's all on YouTube and the feast of firstfruits was on the day of the resurrection of Christ so Paul may be referring to an in-and-out analogous kind of fulfillment with Jesus rising on the day of firstfruits but in addition to that that there's a third day motif in the Old Testament when you when you follow along like in Hosea on the third day he shall restore us it's like a motif found throughout the Old Testament he might be referring to that as well and in addition he may just be simply saying he rose on the third day and it's according to the scripture that heroes not just the third day part but the concept of the third day was so central to the to the early proclamation of the resurrection the church started meeting on Sunday and so it was there's several reasons why he may have phrased it that way all right this one is format gut raagh Oh to question wouldn't written testimonies be the best way to record evidence since there was no other way to record events yes written if there was no that whatever the best way to record at that time is is the best way but best does not mean sufficient to warrant belief the best way for somebody to tell a story is to tell that story including writing it down but that's independent from whether the story is true this is like when when Paul relays his encounter with Jesus and this is this is a question I've asked over and over again and yet have no satisfactory answer to because when I complain about God doing it at this time when we couldn't investigate to the extent that we do now and pape as people have noted you know miracles seem to drop off directly analogous to our ability to actually investigate them or some of them them will joke you know like as video cameras become more accessible miracle claims begin to drop but the truth is if Jesus can appear to all of the people that Paul claimed including Paul without this being a problem then Jesus should be able to appear to everybody and then we would all a Damascus Road experience for all would be a perfectly acceptable way for God to demonstrate the truth of all this and I find it curious that this does not happen okay so let's move to closings I want to make sure that we have enough time for all of that because well I want to give you guys enough time all right so Mike if you want to switch gears real quick or did you you have your girl okay yeah let's do it let's do your closing first and then I tried to make sure that the non-christian always gets the last word so let's do we actually want to do that do we want to do what well first of all I didn't I didn't have any closing prepared am i close is gonna be particularly short but and I don't care what format you want to do it in I was happy to have him go first and to the QA and I'm happy to go first with closing if he wanted but I'll do it however you want is just struck me as strange without trying to be fair okay no well well usually in the debate since he went first then he would go first in the closing I understand that tends to apply to debate formats where there's time directed cross-examination I'm finally go ahead I'll shut up well let's actually switch it up why don't you go first Matt and then we'll have Mike close it out sure we'll let him take you know another hour without you talking yep however you want to do it yeah in closing this is really simple and by the way I would I think I probably be more beneficial to just sit down with Mike sometime and have a conversation about these I think it'd be fun I think it'd be educational I'd like to think that we could get to the core because I think Blake Johnson and I got to the core of where we fundamentally disagree and after that there wasn't a lot of reason to do debates in this case the question was is it unreasonable to believe in the resurrection I can only give you my personal answer and then argue for why I think that's the case now Mike seemed to say well it was all vague stuff and that's because a lot of people begin with this expectation that I'm that Mike is going to present a fact and then I'm gonna come and say oh no no that's not a fact and in some cases I would argue that I actually did that in other cases I find what is being presented as evidence totally unremarkable oh there's multiple attestations yes in the Bible which is a hand collected a set of books that were considered divinely inspired while disregarding other books that were considered divinely expired like Shepherd of hermas and others and then getting rid of books that had information that wasn't the same and it's possible that we have it's possible the Bible may be the most accurate record of all of that my my claim or my point that that it was put together by men over a period of time and half a naseous of Rome just made a list and everybody said yep that's the list that doesn't change whether or not it's true or whether it is the most accurate telling but even if it's the most accurate telling that doesn't necessarily mean that what it's telling is accurate and even if it were largely accurate that doesn't mean that there's sufficient evidence to warrant someone today believing that that's the case when Mike talked about you know hey Jesus's death temporally shift on the movement like other movements and then then it exploded and the best explanation for that is that he was actually risen well I would agree that if in fact he were risen that would do it but the truth is that people only needed to believe that he was risen or and this is dastardly believe that others believed and believed that the importance of relaying this message was tantamount people don't have to be lying and this comes up a lot where it's like liar lunatic Lord and then I would add legend but I don't think that apostles needed to lie I'm not convinced how accurately we have things reported if you go to mark chapter 16 it ends at verse 8 and the best man scripts where the women walk away not telling anybody and then if you read verses 9 through 20 it starts with in verse 10 the women go and tell people now that's a bizarre bizarre thing that people actually have to account for mark the earliest written gospel telling the story of this have women go find an empty tomb and then leave telling nobody and then later additions to mark even by most Christian scholars would acknowledge this that this is not mailed as the best manuscripts you get verses 9 through 20 which begin with the women turn around and go tell people and then it continues on with you'll know that these are my followers because they believe I handle snakes and drink poison without any harm of following them and cast out demons kind of a restatement of the Great Commission with here's the evidence that will accompany company these things and yet there's no accounting for why that addendum is there and why the earliest ones don't have it and if the women left and didn't tell anybody how could the author have known that they then went and told somebody and why would they've included the first verse this is the women didn't tell anybody if they knew two verses later that the women told somebody and all of these are about the resurrection in the events after it these are real problems I didn't raise them in my opening because I was trying to talk about what would make it reasonable but I think that these things add to the notion that it is in fact unreasonable to accept this along with the fact that we have zero evidence physical evidence anything beyond reports of a resurrection actually occurring and therefore I cannot considered a candidate explanation it is far better for us as skeptics as critical thinkers to say I don't know what the true explanation is for the claims in this book if they are true and there was a resurrection is it an it is incumbent upon God to make sure that there is sufficient evidence to warrant people believing it and and the believers just keep pointing at me and saying oh well evidence won't convince Matt or Matt's just to skeptical and yet there are countless things that I believe on evidence but it is not the failing of me or scientists who don't get to consider the supernatural to note that when somebody says oh this is evidence not only for the claim of the event but that you can tie it to the supernatural for us to say no that's simply not true that is a fallacy you hat you you may be able to confirm the event but you have not established what the cause is and you could never establish that the supernatural is the cause merely by ruling out other candidates because you first need to establish that the supernatural is a candidate that's me okay before we move to Mike I just want to remind you guys to subscribe and like this video subscribe to the channel turn on notifications all that good stuff we have a couple live discussions coming up one on May 9th with inspiring philosophy and david Fitzgerald oh they'll be discussing Jesus's death and resurrection and then we also have dr. Graham oppy and dr. ed phaser on July 25th so those videos are basically if you go to our channel you can see them and you can get alerts for those and everything so just want to let you guys know because after Mike is done then we're going to be closing this out so Mike take the floor great Matt thanks man thanks and thanks for the offer to dialogue with you more I'm definitely interested at least you know I'm serious and genuine thank you yeah that would be that would be neat I would love that and I appreciate it cuz well obviously I want to evangelize your audience be completely open right but though here I want to remind us my case tonight it was not based on the reliability of the Gospels which I believe are reliable but that wasn't the foundation of my case because I felt like that was gonna be hard for me to argue because it just goes in so many areas my case is based upon normal historical methods of research with like you know things like explanatory power explanatory scope looking for multiple sources early sources confirmatory evidence through other disciplines like archeology like that's that's what I've built my case on I used majority opinions of scholarship and I'm asking you to consider that and say what's the best explanation okay so that was my case and I think the resurrection is the best explanation I think that if I could recap my opinion at least is that Matt had sort of two general approaches one is to ask kind of open-ended questions to cast doubt upon the these sort of facts of history but not to actually offer alternate explanations he felt strong about just kind of open-ended questions and like my friend Cameron Bertuzzi says questions are not arguments it's that's just that's just not good enough and I think that Matt's been in the game too long to not have more of a historical you know girding underneath his his challenges to these pieces of evidence he's been in the game too long it's been in doing more debase than I have this is like my third debate or something like that so I think he has a view of history that's not handling the evidence very seriously but I think the greater issue is the epistemology issue which hopefully we talked about I won't try to rehash at all I'm not trying to put Matt on blast here but I think it comes down to how open we are to allowing this evidence get to give us the conclusion that Jesus rose from the dead and that may come down to a different debate or a different discussion that maybe that's what we should spend more time on the bottom line is this when I was going through a season of incredible doubt incredible doubt personally and I wanted to know if there was historical evidence for the resurrection because it's at the center at the core of Christianity I didn't expect to find much and what I found really honestly blew me away I didn't study it to tell anyone else I didn't study it to do apologetics it was totally just for me and I was just so excited by what I discovered and I really feel that this is strong evidence and I've just given you some small pieces of it here I encourage you to research it on your own I encourage you to consider it and don't let just the nagging question be the thing that causes you to dismiss the evidence go after the answers because questions aren't good enough man we want we want answers to those questions the the truth is the evidence from the first century supports the idea that Jesus rose and not only can we investigate it now in the 21st century but we can investigate it better than anyone else because of the gathering of the data and because of all the historical research that's gone into it so we're in a really good place to reflect thoughtfully on the events around the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ without being said what Matt said earlier that if Jesus did rise it changes everything it does change everything and I encourage you to put faith and trust in Christ to repent because at the bottom line it all comes down to God really does love you he really did pay the price for your sins and this isn't just a fairy tale from children's church this is the reality of the world we live in that there's a God who is reconciling us to himself through Jesus his son and and I believe it I believe it intellectually I believe it emotionally and I think that it can be demonstrated to be true so thank you again so much for having me you can check me out mike winger on youtube and i'll be making videos and stuff and things and it's been good alright guys thanks for joining me and we'll see you guys later alright thank you i have a good night

Channel: Capturing Christianity

Views: 759,582

Keywords: Christian Apologetics, Philosophy of Religion, Christian Apologist, resurrection, matt dillahunty debate, mike winger debate, mike winger matt dillahunty, resurrection debate, christian atheist debate, matt dillahunty debate resurrection, mike winger debate resurrection, #hangoutsonair, Hangouts On Air, #hoa

Id: Z2FGgkubhZM

Length: 117min 50sec (7070 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2019