This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, William Lane Craig.

Question

Dear Dr. Craig,

I am an earnest seeker. I have become convinced by philosophers like Thomas Nagel, Edward Feser, John Searle, and Raymond Tallis, that the mainstream materialistic-cum-mechanistic understanding of the world is false (oddly enough, most of these philosophers are atheists). I currently am a theist and came to this conclusion after long philosophical contemplations on the contingency and intelligibility of being. I mostly subscribe to a classical theistic understanding of reality. The next step is to assess whether or not God/the primary cause, has somehow intervened in history.

I am familiar with the historical arguments for the resurrection given by you (especially your thorough 1989 publication), Wright, Licona, and Habermas. Currently I've come to the conclusion that I am rather agnostic with regards to the resurrection. My reason being that, even with Paul's attestation and his deliverance of certain witnesses, I still think we're not justified in a supernatural explanation when history is ultimately obscured to us. If I found ancient writing where someone mentioned a blue levitating panda appearing to them and others in the Roman forum and that there were 500 witnesses that are still alive, I would immediately doubt the veracity of such claims because they invoke a supernatural event. Even if a prophet foretold this I would still doubt it. In fact I would think that such a prophet had predisposed his followers to such hysteria. I would probably assume some misidentification, mass hysteria, etc. This makes me think that a viable explanation for the early Christian witness of a risen Christ is some sort of mass hysteria.

Some Jews believed in a final resurrection of the dead so they would have been predisposed to categories such as hysteria of Christ as someone who had risen from the dead. In fact if, as some Christian scholars argue, Christ had predicted his resurrection, this would only further the case that the disciples were predisposed to this hysteria. No doubt this is also why many Christians believed the end times were near, because they had visions of Christ which they assumed signaled the initiation of the final resurrection. Perhaps Paul was also exaggerating supporting evidence in order to justify his own hysteria. As long as viable natural explanations can be offered, do we really need to assume a supernatural one?

Thanks for reading,

Bruce

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