William Lane Craig RESPONDS to Bart Ehrman's Wild Comments on @CosmicSkeptic​

hey guys welcome to capturing Christianity today I've got Dr William Lane Craig with me we're responding to a interview to an interview between Dr Bart Ehrman and Alex O'Connor he actually recently changed his name from cosmic skeptic to just his real name Alex O'Connor which I think was actually a really smart move but I've got Dr William Lane Craig with me on to respond to the section of that interview where they interacted directly with the work of Dr William Lane Craig I am extremely excited about today's interview I was just talking with my wife before we went live today that it's been a while since I've been this excited about uh doing an interview on capturing Christianity it's we have I think nine total Clips pulled up to to play for you guys this is uh this is really exciting and um we wanted to say at least at the beginning of this uh some nice things about the interview at least about Alex so uh Dr Craig go ahead and take it away say what you want wanted to say about Alex before we thank you Cameron for having me on your program today I have to say I'm thrilled to hear that Alex O'Connor has switched his handle uh and gotten rid of the cosmic skeptic I encouraged him to do that and I thought it was just remarkable how this young man who is not yet a Christian believer was able to press Bart ehrmann so hard in presenting the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus the audience might not realize it from Bart's calm and uh confident manner that at several points in this interview O'Connor really has Herman's back to the wall and Irma has to wriggle to escape so well done Alex I was impressed yeah Alex did a really I I was equally impressed uh with Alex but uh on the flip side as I was listening to to Bart this is one of the reasons why I wanted to to do a sort of response video with Dr Craig on this is I was listening to Dr irman's responses I just remember thinking man this is this is just not very good like these responses just didn't really strike me like and this wasn't like apologetics Cameron like trying to just like come up with some reason why Christianity is true this was just really honestly like listening to what he was saying and just being like man that's that's not it that's not it Chief so so um but like I said I'm really excited to to get into some of the actual meat of their conversation so I think it starts at around the hour mark is when they start to talk about some of the work of Dr Craig and as I mentioned we've got about nine Clips total that we'll get through eight clips from the interview and then one other clip from another video uh which we'll see which one that's from uh but unless Dr Craig you've got an anything else you want to say at the beginning of this let's go ahead and get into the first clip and just do as much damage as we can so let's uh here's the first clip oh before we get to the clips one quick note on the clips so since we have so many clips and so much stuff to get through I actually sped them up this is the first time I've ever done this on stream I normally listen to YouTube at like 1.5 to 2 times speed anyways so um uh it's it's normal for me to speed up clips and like listen to things fast so it's not really it's not going to catch me off guard like if I'm listening back to this but just know that we did speed these clips up to one and a half times speed okay so it's gonna sound sped up it's gonna sound a little bit weird but we did that so that we could save time so uh just quick note on that all right here we go here's clip number one I've had an episode with William Lane Craig and he put forward a historical case for the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and I remember in that podcast I I sort of listening back I wish that I pushed back a little more and a lot of people actually noticed and they said you know I'm surprised that you didn't really give them a bit more grief for it but I figured that uh is that we have a few facts about Jesus that we can pretty confidently say are true firstly that you know an uncle Jesus existed and sort of going around teaching an ethical code of sorts and gaining followers uh got into distribute with the Roman authorities was killed by crucifixion and that afterwards groups of people claimed to have seen him do you think that all of these facts are sort of well established yes so given that how to explain the the uh you know the fact that all these are true at the same time oh well I don't stay in trouble at all I think of it I mean we have other figures in history for for whom we have things like that with those four facts I mean Romulus the founder of Rome um I don't know if he's a historical figure or not but people thought he was and and he certainly uh uh ended up somehow leaving the Earth and people uh their eyewitness are saying that they saw him alive afterwards I mean uh do we have sort of especially that are the sources as reliable are they as well attested that's another question see that's not one of your four things okay yeah but that's what I'm asking about this is when we say that these facts are well established the history so he's a Roman historian and he reports that um or apollonius of Tiana um we have um we have eyewitness testimony to his being raised from the dead okay so this first clip just to quickly sort of summarize so he says that Craig's four facts well these these four facts are about Jesus but they're easy to explain okay and then we also have like testimony from Romulus and apollonius who they report these sort of similar like Miracle claims and stuff but we don't really believe those and so these things can just be sort of easily explained away so what is your response to this Dr Craig well first I want to point out that Alex has got the four facts wrong uh that I appealed to for inferring the resurrection of Jesus the facts that I appeal to are first of all that after his crucifixion Jesus was interred in a tomb late on Friday afternoon by a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin named Joseph of Arimathea secondly that on the Sunday morning following the crucifixion Jesus tomb was discovered to be empty by a group of his female followers thirdly thereafter various individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive after his death and finally number four the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead despite every predisposition to the contrary and those four facts are widely agreed upon by the majority of New Testament historians today and supply and inductive basis for inferring to the resurrection of Jesus so those are the facts that I'm staking my claim on not the facts mentioned by Alex now irman's response to this is re really puzzling he agrees that the facts mentioned by Alex are historical facts he he admits that but he says these are easily explained why well because similar facts are attested by other figures in Antiquity like Romulus and apollonius now on the face of this this is bizarre suppose someone were to say how do you explain the facts of the assassination of John F Kennedy and you were to reply oh that's easy to explain uh President Lincoln and President McKinley were also assassinated those events wouldn't do anything to explain the facts of the assassination of JFK moreover those two individuals are historical persons right but in the case of Romulus and apollonius we're dealing here with mythological and quasi-fictional persons a Romulus uh is the figure in the myth of the founding of Rome who supposedly founded the city about 750 BC Urban himself you notices I didn't even know if he was a historical figure or not the first account of the founding of Rome by Romulus is from the third Century BC so hundreds of years later after the supposed event apollonius of Tiana was a first century philosopher and magician a kind of shadowy figure well over a hundred years after his death the Roman Empress Julia commissioned the writer philosstratus to write a sort of romance novel of the life of apollonius of Tiana and so most of this is just Fiction made up by philosophists and it is interesting that philosophists was commissioned to do this by the empress because she wanted to have a counterweight to the surging Christian movement in the early Roman Empire and so wanted to create a kind of divine man figure to compete with Christianity and so it's likely that apollonius actually knew and used or not Apollonia is a philosopher to us actually knew and used the gospels in writing his life of apollonius John Alsip has written a authoritative book on the post-resurrection appearances in the gospel tradition and here's what uh what Alsip says he says it is very probable in light of the chronological and biological factors that philosstratus in one sense or another is dependent upon the gospel accounts especially the Gospel of Luke and maybe upon the Emmaus story so these are a nose and comparable to the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus which were written down within the century of the eyewitnesses within the generation of the eyewitnesses the only thing that I was going to say in response to this first clip is that yeah these were not the four facts that that you mentioned the crucifixion empty tomb the appearances and then the origin of belief like those those are the four that you normally uh appeal to and that those are way more difficult to explain than uh the ones that that Alex mentioned in in the clip there and so I think though if if Alex mentioned those then uh yeah Bart would have because he he balks later on we'll we'll get to that clip when he talks about the empty tomb so if he if he would have mentioned the empty tomb here he would have mentioned what he's going to mention later on but yeah that was the only thing that I would have added there you know what I I wanted to say this so there's a friend of mine whom you know a mutual friend of ours uh Cesar Bernstein does that ring a bell Oh indeed I didn't know you knew him he yeah he and I are friends um he actually was the one who recommended we do this show together he watched the interview uh on barterman on Alex's Channel and he was like you know what you should have Dr Craig on and uh and have him respond to this and I was like you know what that's a good idea let me let me reach out to him and see if he's interested wow and uh so then he says he says hello he has done excellent work on the autological argument for God's existence really provocative yeah he's uh he's defended the possibility premise and super super interesting stuff but I just wanted to he he uh he sent me a text and said say hi for me so thank you so there you go all right let's get into uh clip number two where we talk about uh how Wayne Lane Craig adds other facts here we go clip number two well now let's see now you're getting into other facts see yes so so the question is what are facts so if you're just talking about those four elements then we certainly have those four elements so they're not difficult to explain uh what Wayland Craig wants to do though is to take those four facts and start adding others to them as if they're the same value what other facts are we talking about here like well he says that we know that there was an empty tomb and you don't think that's the case I don't know one of the things that I think Dr Craig might say on that point is that if people were claiming to have seen him if people were claiming that this man had risen from the dead the tomb was there it was something people could have gone to check and it would have probably been one of the first things that they did upon hearing that this Jesus there were no empty tomb surely someone would have discovered this is not good evidence confirming the idea that there wasn't Factor yeah this is this is one of the facts that uh that William and Craig thinks we we can say to established that he was buried in a tune I mean that's the thing he takes these four things that you know basically would agree on you know there's a man Jesus later people said they saw him alive so that that's fine and those four are easily explained um was there an empty term there are very big problems with thinking there was a tomb at all he's presupposing that the gospel story is right the Joseph of arimuthia took Jesus the afternoon he was crucified and put him in a family tomb uh and on the third day women came and found the tomb empty um okay so what is our evidence of it well the evidence of course is only the gospels Matthew Michael can John they say that um and it is the traditional Christians had had for for a very long time so it's certainly the the Christian tradition but there are lots of reasons for doubting that it's right that he's never taken very seriously so Dr Craig there are uh reasons for doubting the burial account that you don't take seriously uh what is your response to this what is must not be missed here is the concession that Bard Airman makes to Alex O'Connor Ehrman concedes that if the biblical narrative is historically reliable then it becomes extremely difficult to deny the historicity of the empty tomb because if the burial story is accurate that implies that the sight of Jesus grave was known to Jew and Christian alike in Jerusalem and therefore when the disciples began to preach the resurrection of Jesus that tomb had to be empty in order for belief in the resurrection of a dead man to originate and flourish in the very City where he was publicly crucified and his tomb was known so that means that Urban is in the very difficult position of having to disprove the burial account the person who believes in the empty tomb doesn't need to prove the bear aerial story he can have other reasons in support of the empty tomb account but the burial account is the cinequanon of the uh empty tomb story if you're going to deny the empty tomb then you've got to disprove the burial account uh well we've got uh good reasons to believe that the burial account is reliable we have at least five independent sources in support of the burial account moreover the burial of Jesus by a member of the Sanhedrin rather than by his beloved disciples or by his family as unexpected and therefore very unlikely to have uh beneficial or legendary Creation in the early Christian Community and therefore the vast majority of Scholars virtually all new testament Scholars agree that the burial story of Jesus corpse in the Tomb by Joseph is historical now irman asserts that there are lots of reasons to doubt that Jesus was buried but you notice he never says what they are instead he immediately changes the subject so if Ehrman is going to disagree with the almost unanimous opinion of New Testament scholarship that the burial account is credible then he needs to give us what these overwhelming reasons are yeah true true and then he asked what it what is our evidence of the empty tomb I suppose we can we can get to that in a second I did want to bring something up really quickly mentioned two facts uh Cameron that namely it has uh multiple independent attestation in five at least five uh different sources Independence that's one of the most important evidences for historicity and then also the unlikelihood of a burial of Jesus by a sanhedrist a member of the very Council that had condemned Jesus so I did also want to mention in addition to that we've got an article on capturing Christianity that was written by uh what is now an anonymous author uh but it's outlining nine reasons why Joseph of Arimathea was a real historical figure so if you go to capturingchristianity.com type in Joseph Arimathea you can find this article very quickly it outlines nine different reasons we're not going to go through all of these reasons right now but you can kind of see them if you want to you can pause the video and kind of look at them here or you can just go to the website and read through them but here are nine reasons this is based on actually a book this is a book review of Jesus in Jerusalem the last days so uh go check that out we've also got an article on our website that is entitled eight strong Arguments for the empty tomb which is based on actually the book The sunrises by Dr Wayne Craig the guy who I've got here with me today and uh he outlines on page is it I had the page pulled up maybe I don't have it anymore but when you start to talk about the empty tomb you give I think uh seven or eight lines of evidence for the burial narratives but one thing uh or I guess a couple things that I wanted to ask you about some additional lines of evidence that you haven't really mentioned uh here but you mentioned in your your written work is what about uh the Shroud of Turin do you think the shroud of uh is it turned or Turin tourism or in Italian Torino do you think that that provides any evidence for the burial account until the authenticity of the Shroud has proved I don't think it's wise to appeal to it it certainly is a stunning artifact uh no one knows how to explain the image of the man on the Shroud but until those carbon dating tests that showed it to be medieval are decisively reversed I think it has a question mark behind it so how about this would you support the conditional if the shroud of turn were authentic then the burial account would be accurate or something along those yes I think that it strongly supports the burial account that we have in the gospels if it were authentic if it so it depends on the probability that you think that the Shroud is authentic so for people who do think that the Shroud is authentic then it would it would lend incredible support for a burial account so this would be this would be good archaeological evidence apart from um you know any sort of like biblical or written evidence or or you can't get more tangible physical evidence than something like the shroud so what about the Church of the Holy Sepulcher because you've talked about that in your in your Defenders didn't mention that because there is a very plausible historical claim that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem does in fact stand on the site of uh Jesus tomb um we could go into that if you want but I don't know if we have time no no we don't have to go into any details I just wanted to to see if you think that it does get and then we can point people to to go check it out for for more if they'd like to look into it further I think it has a very plausible claim to register on the side of Jesus burial okay all right yeah fair enough all right let's move on to clip number three where Ehrman has a I I I forgot to say anything about the evidence for the empty tomb I talked about the burial but sure let me just run through a a few evidences for the empty tomb namely holy apart from the burial account and its credibility there are at least six independent sources for the empty tomb some of which are among the earliest Source materials in the New Testament uh such as the pre-marken passion story secondly the marking account of the discovery of the empty tomb lacks signs of legendary embellishment or theological reflection that you would expect to find in a later legendary account thirdly the tomb was probably discovered empty by women any conceivable motivation for having women be the discoverers of the empty tomb would have been better met by having male disciples discover the tomb given the low status of women in a patriarchal culture and their inability to serve as credible Witnesses and then finally number four the earliest Jewish polemic presupposes that the tomb was empty the earliest Jewish polemic which I think goes right back to early Jewish Christian disputes in Jerusalem was that the tomb or the the body of Jesus was stolen by the disciples now think about that for a minute that the disciples stole the body that Jewish response to the proclamation the resurrection presupposes that the body was in fact missing it presupposes the historicity in the empty tomb so rather than point to an occupied closed tomb all the Jewish authorities dude could do was enmesh themselves in this absurd debate about the disciples stealing the body and so for reasons like these again I I want to say that the wide majority of New Testament historians today do agree that in fact the Tomb of Jesus was found empty on early Sunday morning by a group of Jesus women followers I think also what we're going to see in some of the future Clips is some of the reasoning that Ehrman has used that's led him to reject the burial account the empty tomb and stuff especially in this next this next clip we're going to see some of this human reasoning start to that's sort of seeped in to his reasoning and we're going to highlight that and sort of highlight what's wrong with it what is ironic about this is that irman himself in his lectures on the historical Jesus with the Teaching Company actually affirms the historicity of the burial an empty tomb this is what he says if I can quote um thank you he says with respect to Jesus burial and empty tomb the earliest accounts we have are unanimous in saying that Jesus was in fact buried by this fellow Joseph of Arimathea and so it's a relatively reliable that that's what happened we also have solid Traditions to indicate that women found this tomb empty three days later so that's what Erman used to teach about the historicity of the burial and the empty tomb of Google and I think it was only after he saw where this was leading uh that he began to backpedal men and try to deny the burial and empty tomb stories all right let's get to clip number three where uh Urban has a human understanding somebody last week was interviewing replaying some things that where he was drafting me for some debate we had 20 years ago where he said that you know the only reason I reject the resurrection is because I've got some kind of warmed over human understanding of things I've ever at him yeah it's like it's just such it is just so wrong it's just like it is just I mean it's just factually wrong but but apart from that uh you know he says that I'm not a I'm not a historian I don't know what he thinks I do know what he thinks he is he thinks that I'm a textual critic whatever he thinks that is and that's he's completely wrong too it's just like he knows nothing about me but he's making stuff up okay so yeah he you're you're factually wrong you say he's not a historian you know nothing about him and you're making stuff up yeah what is a textual critic a textual critic is someone who is an expert in reconstructing the original text of the New Testament he Compares manuscript evidence and on that basis reconstructs what the original reading of the text in the New Testament was he he's not a historian he's a textual scholar and uh that's what barterman was trained in now don't believe my don't take my word for it get the Wikipedia article on Bart Ehrman and read it and there you will read that Bard Airman earned his ba from Wheaton College uh he then earned a master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and then finally he took a PhD wherein I quote he studied textual criticism of the Bible development of the New Testament Canon and new Testament Apocrypha under the great textual critic Bruce Metzger and worked with Metzger in establishing the critical edition of the Greek New Testament and so here are the titles of irman's scholarly works didymus the Blind and the text of the Gospels the text of the fourth gospel in the writings of Oregon the Orthodox Corruption of scripture the effect of early christological controversies on the text of the New Testament the text of the New Testament in contemporary research the text of the New Testament its transmission corruption and restoration studies in the textual criticism of the New Testament so I I'm just baffled that Bart Ehrman would want to walk away from his fine work in textual criticism and his expertise in that area but the fact is that when he claims to be a historian this is mere posturing he has no training or degree in history he's a textual scholar and in his popular level books he likes to posture as as a historian now uh what about the claim that he uses an argument against the resurrection and miracles from David Hume well uh in a recent interview that I did with Kevin Harris uh Ehrman repeats this same human sort of argument uh that was featured in this debate that he and I had 20 years ago and I explained at that time why this argument is demonstrably fallacious and what I was shocked to hear was Erman propounding the same line today namely that a miracle is so improbable that it cannot be established to be probably historical and that is uh patently fallacious claim that derives from David hume's essay of miracles in the mid-18th century but what's weird is that he says that you're factually wrong about this he's he it seems like he's saying that he he doesn't have a human understanding he's not coming from Hume he's not giving a human argument however like you said he just gave one like he like let's let's actually play the clip I've got the clip pulled up let's play the clip from this interview with Paula Gia and let's let's hear him for himself like his own words if you've got how do you evaluate its probability historians can only establish probability that's all historians could do and so if you have an event such as Romulus ascending to Heaven which after Romulus allegedly ascended to Heaven There was a senator who came forward and said that Romney's had come down to him and talked to him and told him and explained to him he saw romile's afterwards okay so that's a historical report so if you get that as the historical report you have to ask does it happen or not no you don't say what couldn't happen because nobody's ever done that that isn't what you don't say it couldn't have happened because of that you say okay what are our options for explaining why somebody told that story so somebody will say well it's somebody who wanted the Roman people to say that Romulus had become a Divine being which they did as a god called rhinos or you could say that it was a senator who wanted to hide out the fact that the Senators actually had killed Romulus had hidden his body or you could say you know you come up with your list of explanations okay these are the possible explanations now which one is more problem is it more probable that he ascended to heaven and became the god core minus or is it more probable that the Senators who hated him killed it which is more probable it's not that it's a unique stack I mean it's going to be unique either way the question is which is more probable and this is where his warmed over human comes in which it comes in for him as well because he uses it with Romulus it's more likely that people who do this kind of thing all the time did this kind of thing in this case then that he did something that's like so spectacular it's like it's never fluorescence so it's not the single so he he literally says he doesn't but then he also says that you do it too so he's not denying he's not denying that he does this sort of reasoning he's saying that you do it too and how how do I do it too well he's saying that well he I think he's saying that like everyone does it so like when it comes to Romulus everyone everyone just denies that he was this miracle worker that ascended to heaven or anything like that so I think that he's I think he's saying like everyone when they approach that story they become a little warmed over him between the facticity of the Romulus story and the best explanation for some purported historical fact as I pointed out at the beginning of this podcast the stories of Romulus and apollonius of Tiana are mythical and quasi-fictional so there's nothing to be explained by contrast we have good historical evidence for such things as the burial the empty tomb the post-mortem appearances of the of Jesus and the origin of the Christian faith and so given those facts the question now becomes what is the best explanation of them and Herman's claim is that the supernatural explanation or miraculous explanation is always less probable than some naturalistic explanation and that is demonstrably fallacious that is hume's argument is that it's invisible to identify any of that as a miracle and that was basically what he was saying with apollonius just now in that that clip he's saying we've got this pool you come up with your pool of explanations that explain the data and then you pick the one that is the most likely but what he excludes is anyone any explanation that is sort of miraculous or Supernatural or anything like that and so and then he just applies the same standard to the resurrection you know and this is this was kind of what what Hume did is like anything any testimony of the miraculous like what is more likely that it's a miracle or that the you know the person who's giving the testimony was lying or mistaken or something like that right and that that's basically what what huma's arguing now I I do have a couple questions for you um you you've mentioned in your work hume's abject failure a couple times as a good resource for uh for people that are interested in this question of of David Hume and and whether or not you know he's uh his arguments hold any water but I was wondering by the philosopher of science John ehrmann yeah not not ER not Airmen but Airman right or ear man it's spelled ear man uh yeah no it was a really good book I really enjoyed that one um but another book that I'm curious if you've read or heard about is uh is called Hume holism and miracles by David Johnson no I don't know that book so this one is my favorite book that I've read on this subject on this particular subject and I recommend to uh to everyone to go pick this up I actually got lucky and I got this for like 10 bucks on Amazon it was on sale one day um but I I enjoyed this one a lot because well a it was shorter but then B he really uh shows how David Hume was just quite clearly begging the question and so it was it was just a really really good succinct book on uh the problems of of David Hume so I just wanted to give a quick plug on that one all right let's go ahead and move on to uh clip number four if I can find my mouse to scroll up in our notes here this one is what happened to crucified victims what did Romans do to the crucified victims here we go we do have a number of references to what Romans did once the person died on their crosses and the accounts are consistent that what they did is they left them on the crosses as part of the humiliation yes um that they would decompose on the cross and be attacked by scavengers and so we have off the cover marks and a number of sources that that's just what they did um and so there are debates about that we can have debates about whether that happened within Judaism or not people say yeah Jews didn't allow that it's absolutely right Jews didn't allow it but the Jews weren't killing it the Romans were killing and so and so forth and so on so okay yeah so multiple accounts say they left them on the cross Jews wouldn't have allowed it but Romans did it right so we're back to the question of the historicity of the burial narrative and as I've already explained uh by Far and Away uh most Scholars are convinced that in Jesus case the body was not left on the cross but it was taken down and entered in a tomb and I think as Ehrman hints in his reply you cannot let Roman practice outside of Judea indicate or dictate uh what they did in Judea pilate respected Jewish sensibilities uh in order to keep the peace and the Jewish authorities would want the body taken down from the cross before nightfall especially because of impending Passover one of the holiest days because the body left on the cross would defile uh the land and so I think we have really good evidence that the San andreasan hedrist did assume responsibility for enduring the body of Jesus uh in a tomb and I would mention as well that we actually have archaeological evidence that uh victims of crucifixion in Judea were properly interred in a tomb uh there was an archaeological discovery of a man named Jacob which still had the crucifixion nail in the ankles with a piece of wood from the uh cross affixed to it because apparently the nail had hit a knot in the wood and bent so that it could not be extracted and the fact that this was preserved shows that the body was put into a tomb where the flesh would Decay and then it was placed into an ossuary or or bone box let me cite of an important article from the New Testament scholar Craig Evans on the burial of Jesus that is relevant to this um he points out that in a recent publication Bart Ehrman has embraced the dubious hypothesis of John Dominic crosson that the body was left on the cross Evan's comments I am not aware of any archaeologist or historian who accepts this quirky argument Roman legal material explicitly states that the bodies of the executed if request is made can be taken down and given Proper Burial and he references de guesta chapter 48. our surviving literary evidence suggests that the bodies of those who were executed in and around Jerusalem during peace time were not only permitted to be buried but were expected to be buried before Sundown on the day of death This was done in order to preserve the purity of the land Josephus writing in the 70s states that in his time even the bodies of quote those sentenced to crucifixion are taken down and buried before sunset end quote that's from Jewish War chapter 4 section 317. because only Rome possessed Capital power in Judea and Samaria in the time of Jesus this means that those crucified by Roman Authority were nevertheless permitted burial according to Jewish law and Customs those executed or crucified were buried and in fact from the Jewish point of view had to be buried to prevent the defilement of the land Josephus remarks that during peacetime the Romans did not require the Jewish people to violate their laws and customs that's from against Appian 2.73 and then he mentions the skeletal remains of johannan and he says these are not the only evidence for the proper burial of a victim of crucifixion the remains of a man both crucified and beheaded were recovered from what is now called the Abba cave once again in the Jerusalem neighborhood of give out nails were recovered from the ossuary One Nail was still embedded in the man's hand so we have literary evidence as well as archaeological evidence that in Judea during peace time um the Romans respected the Jewish custom of immediate burial of crucified victims on the day of crucifixion sorry I've got a dog barking in the background someone just rang the doorbell so if you hear some some barking back there just uh try not to pay too much attention to it try not to be too distracted I actually wanted to uh to pull up oh we've got a little bit of echo there I wanted to pull up a uh uh a scripture passage from Deuteronomy 21 verses 22-23 which supports this idea from Craig Evans that well let me just read it out here so it says and if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death and you hang him on a tree his body shall not remain all night on the tree but you shall bury him the same day for a hanged man is cursed by God you shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance and so that's like the the Jewish custom of the day that was yeah I believe the first time that I saw this was in the book that was co-authored by Craig Evans and NT Wright called Jesus the last days so I just wanted to throw that out there really really interesting verse actually relevant to the whole uh debate here so yeah with that let's go ahead and unless you've got anything else to add there let's go ahead and jump to clip number five okay and clip number five is where he says no other account uh exists of anyone being buried on an afternoon of crucifixion here we go I don't know of any instance uh where we have a verified account of anybody being buried on the afternoon of the crucifixion in a known tune so How likely is it that they made an exception in the case of Jesus I mean we think he would they would because you know he's the son of God and so he's exceptional but I mean pilate didn't know that Jesus was the son of God he was just one of the guys who's crucifying that it's still quite an exceptional case I mean pilot seems quite distressed at the fact that Jesus ends up going to according to the crucifixion but this is a this is a possibility it's possible it's possible you said about one of the other two guys if it is true that you have an instance of really not not thinking that this man will be crucified and asking the crowds no but I don't think that's historical why would we think that's historical I guess I'm not trying to make the case that it's that we can know that this is the case but this might be an explanation as to why we do have an instance of the Romans making an exceptional not just because he was the son of God because of course I don't believe that the Romans wouldn't have believed that but that it was still an exceptional case why I guess in the case of pilot at this moment we read and then deserve to be crucified why because this would be the case if the gospel narratives are correct if it's written that is correct that's right yeah they are but if they were this would offer an explanation but the argument then is if the gospel narratives are correct then the gospel narratives are correct and so that's not an argument Okay so we've got here yeah no reason to think that Jesus is an exception to the rule and then relying on gospels for information about the bureau account is circular yeah as we just saw from the literary and archaeological evidence Jesus was not the exception to the rule taking the bodies down and bearing them on the day of crucifixion was the rule that was followed in Judea moreover uh the reason that Jesus was treated that way or the reason we should think he was treated that way is not because he was the son of God rather it's because we have very good reasons to believe that the burial narrative is credible uh and it is evidence that is convinced virtually all Scholars uh today and that's not circular because we have good reasons to think that the gospel narratives about the burial are correct remember I mentioned that we have multiple independent attestation in at least five different sources some of which are among the earliest in the New Testament uh such as the pre-paul line formula quoted in First Corinthians 15 and the pre-mark and passion story and this is one of the best tests of historicity is to have multiple independent and early testimony to a particular event moreover we saw that the burial of Jesus by a Jewish sanhedrus is unlikely to be a Christian invention this is the Criterion of embarrassment at work uh something that would be an embarrassment to the early Christian Movement is likely to be historical because it's unlikely to be made up and and for these reasons um the evidence in favor of Jesus burial has convinced uh virtually all new testament Scholars so one thing that I wanted to sort of pick up on here is Bart seemed to or Dr ehrmann seemed to sort of appeal to an argument that like and this was one of the things that I was mentioning at the very beginning of the stream where I was listening to him listening to this interview and I was just like that is so wrong that is so wrong and it was it was when he was saying well you know you can't really trust it if it's if it's in the gospels and you can't really trust that right because it's it's circular it's almost like you're trusting it because it's there something along those lines and uh so I wanted to to just say that what you're doing if you're reading the gospels and you're believing it because it's in the gospels what you're doing is you're treating the gospels as testimony and that's a completely normal thing to do so like um suppose that you hear uh you're you're a uh a juror in a court case okay and you hear and all that's available is the testimony of someone who is sexually assaulted and that's all the evidence that you have to go on in that case like would it be circular to rely on the testimony of the person who is claiming that they were assaulted uh no that wouldn't be circular at all you'd be relying on the testimonies testimony is a very well-known source of justification you can actually go look that up in the Stanford Encyclopedia of uh the the the Journal article on epistemology you can look that up testimony is a valid source of justification um so in this is not controversial in philosophy at all so and then I think that this is also why it's it's super important like before you come to conversations about evidence it's important to have your epistemological grounding um and this is why philosophy is so important you've got to to know epistemology this is one of my sayings that I love epistemology covers a multitude of sins good epistemology sorry good epistemology covers a multitude of sins if you have like a good epistemology you're going to to weed out a lot of like bad inferences and and bad thoughts that you're going to have along the way when you're trying to evaluate a case like this and so um another thing I wanted to mention is swinburne's principle of testimony so what he says what Richard swinburne argues is that when it comes to testimony unless like unless you just want to be a skeptic about basically everything that you hear from everyone you've got to operate on the assumption that what you hear from other people is true unless you've got reason to doubt it so basically you've got to work on the assumption that what you're hearing from people is accurate unless you've got a reason so it's not to say that you just believe everything but rather it's to say that you believe it on you know with the with the Clause unless you've got sufficient reason to to doubt it okay so when someone's coming at the gospels they're reading it and they're saying you know this just seems like this is what they were reporting they saw and this is what happened and I don't really have any reason to doubt this and so I'm just going to believe this and there's there's epistemologically zero wrong with that and with regard in particular to the burial of Jesus Herman doesn't have any reason to think that this is not historical all he can point to is General Roman practice outside of Judea um but doesn't draw the relevant comparisons in uh for Century Israel right yeah exactly you've got to show that this is what was going on in Jerusalem yeah yeah and even then like you're still relying I mean I haven't even really talked about this yet but you're still at that point you're still relying on the sort of um freak frequentest interpretation of probability where your the probability of of some event occurring in history is determined by how many times it happened elsewhere or like how many Trials of that event occurred in history so like you you might as well just argue that like most people uh don't rise from the dead so Jesus didn't rise and like that's your argument for why Jesus didn't come you know rise back from the dead like just just say that like if that's if that's ultimately what you want to say that like you don't have to go through all of these different steps and deny all these different historical facts just just say that but but apart from that like a frequentis interpretation of probability is the wrong interpretation of probability and I feel like we're kind of getting into into some of the weeds here but but I think that's ultimately like um we're getting into like the heart of of the matter and I think think this is why again philosophy is so important is because you if you don't really know your philosophical assumptions going into it then you're going to make inferences where you don't know the assumptions behind them you don't know that what you're doing is you're assuming that frequencies are going to determine the probability of some historical event whereas that that is just in general the wrong way to go about determining probabilities and so unless you've got anything else to add on that we can go ahead and move on to well I just it recalls uh to mind an illustration that John Airman gives in the book you referred to where uh scientists have been investing millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours trying to detect an event of proton decay and they have yet to do so well on a frequency model of probability it would therefore have a zero chance of occurring and all of those man hours and millions of dollars are being squandered of for something that could never happen and that's obviously absurd and shows that this frequency model of probability is simply wrong right right and then and then it doesn't account for the fact that there can be anomalies you can have some anomalous event occur even when most other things happen some other place uh some some different thing happens in a different place right and so uh especially historical events like that they those those sorts of things happen all the time especially in different cultures where different things are allowed right so these are the sorts of things these are the sorts of factors that you have to take into consideration when you're trying to do some sort of historical analysis you've got to take in those cultural considerations um but then you've also just got to reject for quintism as an interpretation of probability you got to get rid of that and you gotta you gotta lean on something like uh an inference to the best explanation or you've got to lean on something like a Bayesian type uh view of probability you've got to uh lean into to something that's more respectable as an interpretation of probability all right let's get into uh clip number six and we're kind of running out of time so we'll get through these as quickly as we can so click number clip number six is what ultimately needs to be explained here now a moment ago you said that okay uh you know William and Craig is wrong because he says that we know there's no stupid we can't it seems to be a relatively minor detail in that you said yeah we have these these four facts uh including that Jesus was crucified including the groups of people claimed to see him after he died okay this is what I wanted to to pick up on you said that this can be easily explain what what is it that you can be explained the fact that we have records of groups claiming see Jesus the fact that groups did actual claims to Jesus the fact that individuals claim to see Jesus what are the things that you think oh this isn't troubling for us to explain without having to invoke a resurrection I don't think it's struggling to invoke the idea that there were individuals who claim this on Jesus alive afterwards I don't think we have good attestation uh for it uh I think Paul Paul the Apostle Paul claims he saw Jesus alive a few years afterwards and so I think you know I don't think he's lying but I think he probably thought he saw Jesus Paul also being our earliest source of the New Testament claims at one point that Jesus appeared to 500 people that's right that's right this seems to be some good evidence that we do have oh no I don't think so Paul knows there's a story that 500 people saw him but I don't think that's evidence of 500 people saw him that that's a claim and so a claim isn't evidence evidence is when you try to substantiate the claim and so how do you go about establishing whether 500 people actually saw Jesus well you like what Paul says and then you see other sources to corroborate it um Paul writing before the gospels uh none of the gospels mentions anything about this uh or the gospel sources uh so Paul's our only source and um so is he right or not well it seems like the 500 people saw him that this would be something that other people would mention um so I don't think we know yeah so so a good attestation for appearances no there's no good attestation uh claim is that evidence evidence is when you try to substantiate the claim and then uh is there any evidence that corroborates the 500 claim yeah here we move now from a discussion of the empty tomb and burial to a discussion of the post-mortem appearances of Jesus and the fact is that the appearances of Jesus alive after his death that are listed by Paul in this very old tradition that he hands on in First Corinthians chapter 15 show that these um Resurrection appearances to different individuals and group are multiply attested and the most significant group appearance would be to the 12 which is attested not only in the old tradition delivered by Paul and vouch for by him who had personal contact with the twelve but is also found in uh the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Luke now um what about the 500 Brethren that Paul mentions I think that the footnote that Paul adds so to speak to this Resurrection appearance is significant he says he appeared to more than 500 Brethren at one time and then he says most of whom are still alive though some have fallen asleep that is have died now what this shows is that Paul was familiar with who these people were he knew that some of them had died in the interim but that most of these people were still about and Paul is saying in effect the Witnesses are there to be questioned the listing of witnesses was the most important attestation of historicity in the ancient world and this is the procedure that Paul uses of listing the witnesses to the resurrection appearances and he notes of the one to the 500 that most of them are still about at the time of his writing to the Corinthians in A.D 55. now this appearance could well be mentioned in the Gospels it could be the Mountaintop appearance in the 28th chapter of Matthew on the mountain in Galilee this is the only Resurrection appearance that was by appointment the disciples went to the mountain where Jesus had appointed to meet them and your member was in Galilee the thousands had flocked to hear Jesus give The Sermon on the Mount and and to teach the the crowds and I think it's not at all improbable that uh 500 Brethren might have gathered on that mount in Galilee where they witnessed that Resurrection appearance that Paul refers to in this old tradition so one thing that I wanted to to point out and I've made a whole video about this is when he says that uh claim is not evidence uh I think that's honestly just silly like it's not it's not something that we should take seriously if my daughter came home one day and was like Daddy someone hit me at school today I would take that seriously I would be calling the school I'd try to figure out what happened like I would take that as very good evidence that something happened and that she was hit I would take her claim as very good evidence and so I think it's just honestly Bonkers that someone could say that you know a claim is not evidence but then he it seems like he wants to say that a claim like one person's claim is not evidence but if you have a whole bunch of claims from different people then that's evidence which if that's his standard then I think in the case of Dr Craig's case each of the facts that he mentions do have like multiple attestation is in place for these folks for the empty for for the burial for the empty tomb for the appearances we've got multiple attestation so I think Bart Ehrman would have to admit that we've got evidence for each of these facts so I think that like go ahead well I was agreeing and wanted to say that the comparison with figures like Romulus is uh fatuous um there is nothing comparable to the resurrection appearances in Antiquity and this has been demonstrated uh authoritatively by the New Testament scholar n.t Wright in this massive book the resurrection of the Son of God this is a treasure Trove of ancient source material Pagan and Jewish uh on uh appearances after death and and uh resurrection and so forth and what right shows is that there's nothing in either ancient paganism or Judaism comparable to the resurrection appearances of Jesus pagans believed that death was a one-way Street and therefore p people did not come back from the dead now certainly pagans believe that you might see a ghost or you might see a vision of a dead person but as right points out for the ancient uh Pagan uh seeing a vision of a dead person was not evidence that he was alive it was evidence that he was dead now for Jews by contrast they believed in Resurrection of the dead but not within history the resurrection of the Dead was a corporate event that always occurred after the end of the world on Judgment Day when the dead would be raised and God would judge people for what they had done in the Earthly life and so these Resurrection appearances of Jesus are incomparable to what you find in the literature of antiquity in both paganism and Judaism well Dr Craig were at about the hour mark unless you're burning to get to the last two clips why don't we go ahead and end it there I feel like this is a good place to to end it uh I am happy to continue if you've got the time and view of the importance of these things but if you need to cut it off I understand no I I don't I I was just uh I'd like to respect your time so no but uh yeah let's let's uh let's keep on going so we've got uh two more Clips as I mentioned so here's clip number seven uh clip number seven is what is the explanation then for the facts surrounding Jesus and so then uh Dr Ehrman gives his explanation of what happened and what is the most likely explanation in your view for for these facts what what do you think happened is someone lying is someone mistaken I don't think anybody's lying dude this whole thing I just think you know I think I think a lot of atheists have this kind of binary right if it didn't happen and somebody's lying about it and that's just crazy I mean all of us have stories told about us that are not people lying about us but sometimes people just don't know any better I mean Wayland Craig thinks that I like I was trained as a textual critic he honestly thinks that it's not he's not lying about it he just doesn't know so so he doesn't know that so people don't necessarily lie um I think what in the case of the stories about Jesus I think the most my my opinion is that the most plausible explanation is this we we have you know we know that Paul said Paul says that he saw him and I don't think Paul's lying about anything Paul saw something he thought he saw Jesus three years afterwards um we have pretty good evidence to suggest that Peter was claiming that he saw Jesus I mean he's he's the he's Paul says he was the first to see Jesus and in the gospel accounts he's one of the early he's there Mary Magdalene uh I would suppose Mary Magnum probably has some kind of vision of Jesus my my sense is that these three people independently saw something they interpreted to be Jesus they may be they may if you had a vision sometimes they mistook an identity what they had they had they had a dream I don't know something happened to them uh each of them and they told others who told others and told others and the story is propagated yeah so this this is interesting because what we get is we get like his his explanation of of what allegedly actually happened right so he's he's got Paul Peter and Mary Magdalene experience individual appearances of Jesus Through Visions dreams or mistaken identity they then told others who told others who told others who told others and then that became the Christian story um it just it's remark like it's remarkable it's remarkable that that people believe this stuff I don't know I I and I don't want to try like I don't want it to come across as like uh belittling Dr Urban or anything like that like it it just it's remarkable to me that people can come up with these explanations and then think that they're plausible yeah um there is no doubt that these appearances of Jesus did occur even Herman himself concedes that there were individuals who saw post-mortem appearances of Jesus and this would include appearance to the 12 the 12 the group of the Twelve Disciples uh this is the best attested of the Resurrection appearances so the question is how can they best be explained can these appearances be explained psychologically in some way well here I think the difficulty is that these appearances and the explanation they gave for them contradicted Jewish beliefs in two fundamental respects first of all Jews believe that the resurrection of the Dead was only a corporate event not the resurrection of an isolated individual apart from the rest of the people and secondly they believed that the resurrection only occurred after the end of the world so even if the disciples had had visions of Jesus much less dreams they would not have preached that he was resurrected from the dead at most they would have said that he was assumed into heaven this is an entirely different category in Jewish thinking than resurrection of the Dead the Assumption of someone into heaven is the snatching away of someone out of the space-time world into the uh Heavenly Realm a resurrection is the raising up of the dead man the the corpse to life in the spatio-temporal world and the origin of the Christian belief in Jesus resurrection requires some sort of explanation for why the disciples came to believe that he was risen from the dead on the basis of these appearances and empty tomb rather than had simply been assumed into heaven what about mistaken identity again I'm just like I'm I'm thinking about this as a possible explanation I just can't even take it seriously but for the overwhelming numinous quality that these appearances evidently had that was so life changing for these disciples remember when I take Peter yeah I mean Peter was his PR his chief disciple like this guy's the one who like he's got a maybe he saw him in a crowd or something and like he thought he was he was returned from the dead or did he go talk to him did he did he yeah that that's not credible no one I think believes that that would be a credible explanation of these appearances because it doesn't take seriously how devastating the crucifixion of Jesus was for these people they had pinned their hopes on Jesus as the Messiah and Judaism had no idea of a messiah who rather than triumphing over the enemies of Israel on establishing David's throne in Jerusalem would be brutally crucified humiliated and killed by his enemies that was simply Unthinkable in Judaism nor was there any idea that Messiah would be raised from the dead those ideas just weren't connected at all and therefore the disciples were absolutely devastated uh by this event I put a question mark behind everything they believed and so these appearances had to be incredibly powerful overwhelming events in order to transform the lives of the disciples and lead them to believe that Jesus was risen from the dead now psychological Visions hallucinations could indeed be very powerful but as I've just explained they would not lead to belief in Jesus resurrection because that contradicted fundamental Jewish beliefs in at least two respects rather given their Jewish a first century mindset visions of Jesus after his death would have had led them at most to believe that Jesus had been assumed into heaven glorified and that is where they saw him and that would cause them to look forward to the end of the world and the Judgment at the last day when they and all the righteous dead of Israel would be United in the kingdom of God but it would not lead them to Proclaim that he was already risen from the dead contrary to Jewish beliefs so now on the nature of the appearances it seems like this is maybe an area where you would differ from say the work of Mike Lacona and Gary habermas where they're going to appeal to facts that are sort of minimal right where they're not going to to get into much detail about the nature of the appearances whereas you it seems like you want to say that you know we know from the nature of the appearances in the gospels that they were very tangible very physical and would you include some of those facts from from what we learned from the gospels in your case we have good evidence that these were not merely Visionary experiences that is a subjective intramental experiences but that they were instrumental experiences of of an objective reality in the real world and I see that not only on the basis of the gospel evidence but also on the basis of Paul's evidence concerning his teaching about the nature of the Resurrection body the strategy of those who are skeptical of physical appearances is to try to drive a wedge between Paul and the gospels with respect to the physicality of the appearances and I think that that wedge strategy can be decisively uh refuted uh Paul believed in a physical Resurrection body and therefore physical Resurrection appearances just as much as those portrayed in the Gospels what is the evidence that Paul believed that Jesus had a resurrected body as opposed to a resuscitated body well it would be the lines in the narrative that says that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures and he was buried and then he appeared on the third day according in accordance with the scriptures the death and burial of Jesus are Central to this early tradition that Paul hands on and the um appearances or that that he appeared to the uh disciples that requires then the fact of the empty tomb so I think the given Paul's belief in the death of Christ which he affirms over and over again it's clear that he believed in Jesus resurrection rather than just that he was resuscitated take it that you mean a return from someone who is apparently dead but then they're brought back to life somehow yeah and that could all that could also be over the course of a couple days so like someone could be dead I mean a couple days and then come back to life and 15 goes on to teach about the glory uh and incorruptibility and immortality of the Resurrection body he has the same sort of doctrine of glorified Resurrection bodies that you typically find in Judaism so he describes the resurrection body as Spirit directed um Immortal uh Incorruptible and powerful and glorious uh which is not a return to the Earthly life but a transformation of the body to a new mode of existence and in context that happens immediately after the beginning of chapter 15 it happens immediately after talking about Jesus's Jesus Jesus resurrection yes you see the reason that he recounts this early tradition to prove that Jesus rose from the dead is because there were people in Corinth denying the Escalade logical res at the end of the world uh for what reason we don't know but they they didn't believe in the resurrection at the last day and so what Paul wants to say is that if Christ has not been raised then the dead are not raised and uh and yet Christ has been raised and this is our guarantee that we too will someday be raised from the dead and so then that the whole question is what does it mean to be raised and yeah and then he's he's described described him in 15. graphic in terms right all right let's move on to uh clip number eight this is our last clip for today's stream um this has been so much fun I I've really enjoyed uh this stream today and as you say this is this is a really important topic so um I'm really uh appreciative of you coming on to to do this with me today so here's uh here's clip number eight here we go bad thing happens all the time and so when you get uh both the synoptic gospels oh uh and and the Gospel of John but I guess not in Mark you do get a sort of an anticipation of the group appearances we have a written account of group a group of people physically in a room seeing the figure of Jesus is this just a story that sort of develops out of nowhere I mean if this event didn't occur it shows up in all these girls of course because people are saying I've seen Jesus but if if you think it's explosible that individuals might have seen Jesus yes and maybe there are some sort of ideas floating around that you know this person told they saw Jesus this person thought they saw Jesus but the idea of a group of disciples some people getting together in a room some of them saying that they're seeing Jesus and Jesus appearing so sort of vindicate his his resurrection to them is this the sort of thing that can just sort of develop is this sort of like a how do rumors start anyway I mean how do you restart that you know that uh you know a thousand people saw this thing you know uh you know 20 people saw this UFO where does that come from it's not somebody's lying about it and it's usually not the funny people saw it so it just happened that kind of thing happens when you tell stories but I want to insist that we don't have any of these group members saying that it happened the other thing we haven't pointed out you can't just take the gospels and face value for this because when you compare their narratives of the Resurrection they're more contradictory than the stories of the birth narratives we don't have a consistent independent narrative but we have our independent narratives that contradict each other that are all written 40 50 60 years later by people living in a different part of the world who didn't know any eyewitnesses who aren't even speaking the same language I mean so what do historians do with sources like that they don't simply accept what they say because they have to agree with their religious views they evaluate them in light of what we know at the time their consistency even though if they see if they collaborate with each other these are the kinds of things that historians do when you do that with these sources I just don't think that you know you you make a compelling case Okay so yeah so to to quickly summarize there how does anything get made up and he says this thing kind of happens when you tell stories we don't have any of these group members saying that it actually happened and then you can't take the gospels at face value because when you compare the accounts they're contradictory and then as historians we've got to like figure out what actually happened he's certainly right that historians uh don't just take it at face value but they will explore the credibility of the accounts that we have and when they do that with regard to the gospels as I say we have multiple independent data station not only of these various appearances uh such as to the 12 but also of The Honorable burial and the empty tomb of Jesus uh and for that reason ehrmann uh is an outsider with respect to what most New Testament historians believe about um these facts as for the so-called contradictions what these concern are minor um secondary details in the narratives uh it doesn't touch the historical core which is what I've described uh in our podcast today and talking about these four events so while there may be differences in among the narratives in the circumstantial details the historical core of the Traditions is remarkably consistent and is multiple multiply and independently attested in extremely early sources that go back to within the first uh decade after Jesus crucifixion what I was when I heard this I was thinking like imagine again going back to like a court case example imagine you have two witnesses and both of them tell stories that mostly line up but then they have like contradictions in the secondary or Minor Details and then you hear that and you realize okay well actually you know this person says that the lights were on this one says that the lights were off they both saw the same person run out but uh the the lights you know this there's a situation with the lights like would you throw out the all the testimony at that point no you wouldn't throw out the testimony you wouldn't you wouldn't just be like okay both these guys are unreliable let's get rid of these guys like let's just rely on on other evidence or just throw it all out like if if that was the only evidence that we had like suppose that the cameras weren't working at that time like it's just remarkable again to me that you you were just disregard everything just because you find a couple contradictions like that that's the option that you that you go to it just it just strikes me as it's just all you know encourage me Cameron that in one sense Urban has never really shed his fundamentalist upbringing he still seems to have the idea that the exposure of one inconsistency or one contradiction in the narratives leads you to throw the whole thing out and cause everything into question and he ought to know that's not the way historians work hmm yeah it's it's really unfortunate but uh so as we as we wrap up the show today that's all the clips that we've got is there anything that you like to say uh about the the clip overall as we as we sort of wrap everything up just that I think that Urban does a great job of um calmly and confidently presenting his aberrant views so that unsuspecting laymen could well be deceived by what he's saying and I hope that folks have been able to see that um credible Scholars like n.t Wright and others that I've referred to I have a slight different view of the matter than does barterman uh he is um an outsider he's in the tiny minority in denying things like the burial an empty tomb of of Jesus and the appearances uh to the to the to groups uh and I hope folks um will not be deceived by what he's saying well thank you Dr Craig for joining me today thank you guys for joining me thank you for watching as always please leave your comments below uh I actually do read comments so please let me know what you think about today's show thanks for joining if you'd like to support capturing Christianity you can always just subscribe that's a free way to support the ministry if you'd like to become a financial supporter We Exist over on patreon.com capturing Christianity if you'd like to support us financially we appreciate that um but other than that thank you guys for watching we've actually got a debate uh that I've been working on for months actually coming out on Tuesday my opening statement will be released on Tuesday on this channel uh a debate with an atheist on does horrendous suffering prove that God does not exist very interesting debate really looking forward to getting some feedback on that from you guys but I look forward to sharing some more content with you guys soon so thanks for tuning in see you guys soon hey it's me again uh actually don't leave yet I've got some something super super important to tell you so first of all you're awesome like you you just watched a really really long video just now and you're still watching it that is actually pretty amazing secondly we have hundreds literally hundreds of other apologetics related videos for you to watch on our Channel go check them out I've interviewed Exorcist hosted debates between Christians and atheists I've even made response videos to atheists all of that is available on our Channel go check it out third I rely on people that see value in my work people like you that watch videos to the very end to keep the lights on around here literally this is how I feed my family so if you see value in the work that I do please consider supporting this ministry and becoming a patron links to that are in the description oh and uh have I mentioned that Christianity is true

Channel: Capturing Christianity

Views: 252,678

Keywords: capturing christianity, cameron bertuzzi, apologetics, god, atheism, existence of god

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Length: 79min 4sec (4744 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2023