4S and friends: Evidential
Dale and I kick it old-school and do a marathon show. the usual suspects were in the peanut gallery causing their usual chaos in the comments. It was a great show. Expect more like this in the future. What follows is Dale’s writeup and then mine. Enjoy:
Dale's case: Christianity & Evidentialism and the Making of Apparent Strange Bedfellows
Dale’s Claims (I have the Burden of Proof): (1) Evidentialism is the proper Epistemological standard for belief & (2) Christianity (as per Jesus and the “12”) endorsed Evidentialism (esp. specifically with respect to Jesus’ Resurrection).
The Atheist host of the Skeptics and Seekers Podcast, David Johnson, has recently responded to my show on the Ultimate Resurrection Panel, celebrating the legacy and research of my friend Dr. Gary Habermas (see his comment here = http://disq.us/p/32xctfs).
Gary Habermas is famous for arguing his “Minimal Facts” case for Jesus’ Resurrection as a provable fact of history using secular history’s own standards. In his online book, The Uniqueness of Jesus Christ among the Major World Religions (free here = https://garyhabermas.com/Evidence2/Habermas-Uniqueness-of-Jesus-Christ-2016.pdf ), Gary goes into exquisite detail showing that of all of the other major world religions, only Christianity provides the Evidentialist with what they want most, evidence proving that the essential claims of the religion are in fact true!
But David Johnson sees this whole enterprise as a fools errand, he says, “Evidentialists like Gary have walked away from the [Biblically prescribed] path [to faith] and chosen a more secular approach”. Worse yet, David accuses Christian Evidentialists of degrading the Gospel message itself, he says; “They [Christian Evidentialists] want to seal the deal with evidence. And in trying to do so, they unknowingly mock the simple presentation of the word of god to the receptive heart”.
Is this true? I, myself, am a Christian Evidentialist and I came to faith in Christ solely on the basis of the evidence. If Christianity and Evidentialism are truly the strange bedfellows that David makes them out to be, then I want to know about it! Seems to me the first step toward figuring this out is to understand what exactly an “Evidentialist” is before then querying what Scripture has to say about it.
What is Evidentialism?
In the words of famous Evidentialist philosopher, Dr. Kevin McCain;
“Evidentialism is the view that facts about what a person is justified (or rational, or reasonable) in believing supervene upon facts about the evidence he/she has. More specifically, Evidentialism says that the evidence that a person possesses at a given time determines the doxastic attitude(s) that are justit person has. More specifically, Evidentialism says that the evidence that a person possesses at a given time determines the doxastic attitude(s) that are justified for her to adopt toward any proposition at that time” (p.1-2 of his paper on my Blog).
A simpler way to put it, is how I teach my own first year University students in their Logic and Critical Thinking class, namely that one’s individual credence level is in accordance with the principle of proportional belief. This principle states, as David Hume once put it, that one ought to apportion their level of belief/credence to fit the degree of evidence one is privy to at the time for the truth of that belief (Play Klaas Kraay clip in show).
But what qualifies as evidence? World-renown philosopher and logician, Dr. Robert Audi, defines evidence as “a sign or indication of something that helps us determine what is true” (See his The Architecture of Reason: The Structure and Substance of Rationality paper on my Blog). He goes on to list the 4 main sources of evidence: i) Perceptions, ii) Memory, iii) Introspection and iv) Reason and although there is some debate among philosophers, I would also include testimony itself as a 5th main source of evidence which actually generates rather merely transmits knowledge (see the debate between Testimonial Reductionism and Testimonial Anti-Reductionism positions in the Epistemology of Testimony papers on my Blog and/or later in this write up).
In general, Atheists and religious skeptics, love to pay lip service to Evidentialism but they want to deny the Christian/religious adherent of the right to appeal to such. I remember many comments from skeptics online (including from David J. himself) when Dr. William Lane Craig seemingly stuck his foot in his mouth by he seemingly put the evidence aside and claimed;
“When I first heard the message of the gospel as a non-Christian high school student that my sins could be forgiven by God and that God loved me and that I could come to know him and experience eternal life with God, I thought to myself and I'm not kidding, I thought if there is just one chance in a million that this is true, then it's worth believing and so my attitude toward this is… far from raising the bar or the epistemic standard that Christianity must meet to be believed I lower it”. See YouTube video = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4wb3KoBc8A
Fundy lay skeptical sneering aside, Dr. Craig is hardly the silly roob that online Atheists and skeptics made him out to be when he said this, no Dr. Craig, like many brilliant philosophers and experts, simply holds to a Pragmatic Encroachment rather than Evidentialist theory in Epistemology. In his own words, he explains;
“In order to understand my answer one needs to distinguish between pragmatic justification and epistemic justification. Epistemic justification seeks truth-directed reasons for some belief. That is to say, it seeks reasons to think that the belief is true. By contrast pragmatic justification seeks for non-truth-directed reasons for some belief. This is usually done in terms of a pragmatic/practical cost/benefit analysis… Sometimes one can be pragmatically justified in holding a belief even though one is not epistemically justified in holding that belief.” = https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/raising-and-lowering-the-epistemic-bar
This is the same epistemic theory that stands behind the notion of Pascal’s Wager for Christianity. And there are other theories that claim that evidence is an insufficient factor when considering what one ought to believe vs. not (for example, see Moral Encroachment theory in the papers on my Blog). Funnily enough, it is more often than not, fundy lay Atheists and skeptics, who like to dabble in Pragmatic and/or Moral Encroachment theories much more so than Christians when confronted with the evidence for Christianity! David Johnson, in particular, has advocated for raising the epistemic bar at times based on the moral implications of God’s Judgement and Hell and/or based on various pragmatic considerations as a way to argue that almost no amount of evidence would be sufficient prove to him that the Christian God is real, it would have be proven beyond all reasonable doubt before he’d even consider considering whether it might be true or not based on the evidence!
So, ought we employ Evidentialism or is another epistemic theory, like Pragmatic and/or Moral Encroachment theory, to be preferred?
Just the Evidence Ma’am
Evidentialism, everyone admits, is the common sense position that has been held to since the dawn of civilization, by Christians and non-Christians, even the goddless David Hume advocated for it! Evidence is inherently truth-indicative and since belief entails that one thinks a given proposition is in fact true, one will want to base their belief only on things which indicate such are true instead of other factors which are aimed at truth or producing true beliefs.
Neither pragmatic nor moral considerations are inherently truth-indicators and in many cases there are counter-examples to such considerations which contradict the truth such as telling your wife she looks beautiful instead of horrid in their new dress for survival purposes or hiring an underqualified person as the “best candidate” for the job because of their race to morally virtue signal (affirmative action).
Great, now that that is cleared up, what is the Bible’s take on Evidentialism, does it support such a view? You bet ya it does!
Christian Evidentialism & the Biblical Resurrection of Jesus
Having read David Johnson’s comments, I think he would actually agree with me that the Bible does indeed support an Evidentialist perspective as there are countless verses in the NT saying that Jesus’ Resurrection served as evidential proof of Jesus and the Gospel Message. Paul himself, says that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then the Christian faith as a whole is worth nothing more than the manure that Biff Tannen drove into (actually that manure had some worth, it was worth about $300 damage to Biff’s car, so Christian faith would be worth less than that as it would be literally worthless in such circumstances). Thus, according to Paul, the Resurrection of Jesus served as evidence that their beliefs were true and if the Resurrection didn’t happen, then that would falsify their beliefs as being untrue.
But David, knows this full well and so he quickly dismisses most of the NT as being relevant by saying, “Paul is the one who repurposed the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus. But the Jewish followers of Jesus remained Jews”. OK, for the skeptic’s sake, let’s just focus in on Jesus and “the 12” specifically, can we demonstrate that they were Evidentialists with respect to Jesus’ Resurrection? Did they think that treating the Resurrection of Jesus as evidence for the Gospel was wrong in some way?
No, in fact, looking at the Bible, we can see there is an explicit concern for belief in the one true God and for Jews LIKE Jesus and His “12 disciples” to follow truth and to be truthful, so they care that what they believe is true; they are truth-oriented in principle so to speak. On what basis do Jesus and the 12 disciples believe the truth, well in terms of the 5 sources of evidence, it appears that they utilize all of them in one way or another to help them adjudicate what is true vs. what is false.
i) Perceptions- Jesus appeared to various people after His death and Resurrection in multi-modal sensory ways- visual, audible, tactile, to prove His claims were true. John 20:30-31 says; And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.
ii) Memory- There are ample proof of memorization of oral Jesus’ teachings and events surrounding His death and Resurrection preserved in the New Testament. All scholars agree that memory was used by the earliest followers of Jesus and used as evidence for the truth about Jesus and His Resurrection. The 1 Corinthians 15 creed is proof enough of this much!
iii) Introspection- The earliest Christians knew that the God of Israel, Yahweh, existed and that Jesus’ Gospel message was true through direct introspection of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit which dwelt in every single one of them and testified to the truth and guided them into all essential Spiritual truths about Jesus. See John 15:26 saying “But when the Helper/Holy Spirit comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.”
iv) Reason- The Bereans reasoned from the Scriptures logically to assess if what Paul taught about Jesus’ Gospel was true or not. Acts 17:11 says “Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” Jesus likewise reasoned from the OT Scriptures to make points during His ministry and teach people the truth about Him and the good news of the Kingdom of God.
v) Testimony- Once again, the Holy Spirit testified to early Christian’s Spirits, but also ordinary testimony was also used by the early followers of Christ. John 21:24 saying “This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.”.
Looks to me to be conclusive, both Jesus and the “12 disciples” utilized various sources of evidence to establish and then demonstrate publicly that their beliefs were true. Sounds to me like Jesus and His disciples were definitely Evidentialists!!!
BUT, David Johnson objects to this line of reasoning and cites the Doubting Thomas incident to prove his point;
“Wearing my theology hat, I still believe that is correct and that the evidential enterprise is fundamentally flawed. I believe that the search for hard evidence stands in defiance of the kind of faith Jesus wanted, if John is to be believed. He rebuked Thomas for wanting that kind of faith and then turned to the camera with a wink, saying blessed are those who believe without seeing (evidence) as opposed to you who required it… Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God”?
It’s true, Jesus did indeed say “blessed are those who don't see and yet believe" following the Doubting Thomas episode in the Gospel of John 20:29, but where is the rebuke? I don’t see Jesus’ shaming or scolding Thomas and telling him that he and his eyeballs are of the devil in the same way He did to Peter during His ministry that one time! There is no condemnation or admonishment given to Thomas saying that employing empirical visual evidence itself is somehow contrary to the Gospel message and/or against proper faith in anyway. After all, Jesus fulfilled Thomas’ evidential demands and appeared before him, I don’t think a sinless Jesus would have done that if providing such evidence was a sin or hindered Thomas being born again or left him spiritually deficient in someway.
But what is Jesus saying here, in what way are those who haven’t seen and yet believe “blessed”? What does Paul mean that faith comes from hearing the Word of God?
Well, firstly, we know that Jesus and the Apostles constantly provided empirical proofs via miracles for during Jesus’ ministry and then again after Jesus’ Resurrection. Jesus appeared to all the other Apostles, to the women, to the 500, to Paul- he gave empirical evidence to all these people so that they would believe in the Gospel message. Do you honestly think that Jesus means to say that I am spiritually superior to Peter, Paul and John or the others simply because I didn’t see Jesus’ risen body physically, does that lack of visual confirmation with my own eyeballs really have any bearing on my spiritual status? Is this meant to imply that any and all demands for sufficient evidence of any kind is antithetical to proper faith via hearing the Word of God?
No, of course not. The point Jesus is making is perfectly clear here. The early disciples had already received and heard the Word of God, literally in the flesh for 3 years and they were privy to the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost which testified to their spirits about the truth of the Gospel message. It is the Holy Spirit’s testimonial evidence authenticating the Word of God/Gospel message when heard (or today read), known to all true Christians via direct introspection (both sources of evidence), which serves as the required sufficient evidence for the proper faith in Jesus. Sometimes, we are so sinful and hard of heart, that our lack of receptiveness to the Spirit’s testimony means we need some more objective forms of evidence to help open our spirits to the Holy Spirit and push us over the edge toward faith.
So, Jesus is merely saying blessed are those who don’t need that extra objective help, blessed are those whose hearts are already sufficiently soft and receptive to the Holy Spirit that upon hearing the Word of God and the Gospel, they believe in the evidence of the Holy Spirit’s testimony alone and get to work to serve the Kingdom right away.
David's case: Evidential
Positive claim:
Evidentialism is not a biblical prescription for making converts.
Evidentialism denies the power of the simple presentation of the gospel to save.
Evidentialism is ultimately self-defeating and is most effective for bolstering the faith of believers who need something more than faith.
Gary Habermas has completed his life’s work in book form. Despite his long and influential career as a Christian apologist, he will be known for his four-volume work on the resurrection. I am proud of him for his hard labor of love and also a little sad because I truly feel it is completely misguided.
You see, Gary is an evidential apologist. He specializes in providing hard evidence for the truth claims of Christianity: the resurrection in particular. That is all the more unfortunate since there simply is no such hard evidence, nor can there be. If the gospels are to be believed, the evidential door was bolted shut the moment Jesus left the scene.
Jesus rebuked Thomas for needing to see hard evidence. But because it was needed, he gave Thomas the hard evidence he required. John has him say that blessed are those who believe without seeing. That is because he knew there would be no more seeing. In this context, to see is to view hard evidence of his resurrection. John knew that faith would be the only looking glass available to future believers.
But along comes the evidentialist who insists that John spoke too soon and we do have evidence. One wonders what could spark this sudden interest in apologists to pedal evidence over faith? Also, is that really what is going on? I will leave it to the reader to decide. I will try to lay out my case for why evidentialism is misguided, but also explain what I think is at the heart of the movement. Here we go:
When faith is not enough
The biggest problem with the evidential movement (besides the fact that there is no evidence) is that faith is not enough. They have been lured away from their profession of faith by the siren song of evidence. It is not just their atheist interlocutors demanding evidence. It is other Christians.
I believe the problem runs much deeper than that and Gary is a prime example. By his own testimony, he had reached a crisis of faith that left him cold. He focused on the problem of resurrection and determined, like Paul, that if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then the faith was untrue and Christians were to be most pitied.
Understand that at this point, Habermas was not only a Christian, but a graduate student. At that point, he already knew more about Christianity than the vast majority of people who would ever live. It simply wasn’t enough. His ability to take it on faith was insufficient to propel him further in his religious vocation. Without convincing evidence that the resurrection was true, he was done as a Christian.
I think a lot of believers reach the end of their race prematurely because their are thirsty after running for so long and so hard. They don’t need platitudes and well-meaning encouragement. They need water. In this metaphor, water is evidence. And they are bone dry. I believe that Gary was at that point. And just before expiring from dehydration, he saw a mirage in the distance and went for it with all he had.
Unfortunately, Jesus wasn’t a big fan of evidence, at least not when it mattered the most. When one group demanded evidence, he called them a wicked and adulterous generation for their troubles. On another occasion, he wasn’t able to do many miracles due to their lack of faith. This is one of the most damning passages in the gospels. Since when does god need you to believe he can do miracles before he can actually do miracles? It suggests that the magic of Jesus was mostly based on the power of persuasion rather than actual demonstrations of power.
Gary, like a lot of Christians, came to the end of what faith could do for them. So before completely jumping ship, they decided to try and find something that could pass for evidence, exactly the thing Jesus warned against.
Demand and supply
Apologists were also facing another front in the war against faith. They had to deal with a new kind of atheist who wasn’t afraid to call out the naked emperor in the room. The internet served to amplify those calls and also amplify the fact that there were not any answers for those calls.
Christian apologists had gotten away with bad arguments featuring question-begging, philosophy gamesmanship, sophistry, and presuppositionalism for ages. Atheists were more polite and fewer in number. The naked emperor could prance around freely and seldom be called out. Today, none of those rhetorical tricks are allowed to stand and the call to prove it has never been louder. Apologetics had to adopt or die.
Apologists started fighting back with something they called evidence, not just faith. The problem is that the new evidence was just a redress of the same old tricks with extra glitter. The “evidence” was as easily dismissed as everything that came before it. Here is a look at some of what people like Gary have presented as evidence to meet the growing demand:
Empty tomb
There is no empty tomb. Just ask any believer where this tomb is located and they will give you a blank stare. It is a thing taken on faith and not based on anything concrete. There is not, nor has there ever been an empty tomb to examine except in bible stories. But the situation is more damning than that.
No biblical narrative ever provides an account of anyone using an empty tomb as a way of proving that Jesus rose. Remember, the gospels were much later than the writings of Paul. Not once does Paul try to convince anyone that Jesus rose because of the empty tomb. He used made up eyewitnesses as evidence, but never an empty tomb.
Jesus never took his followers on a tour of the empty tomb. That might have been a powerful tool. But Jesus never mentions the tomb (or a shroud). When Peter preached the first sermon of the Christian age, he never tried to persuade on the basis of an empty tomb. It just wasn’t a thing.
Perhaps they knew that just pointing out an empty tomb would have proved nothing. There are plenty of empty tombs. What one has to prove is that there was a dead person in the tomb who became not so dead and left it empty after being occupied. This simply cannot be proven.
The first person who supposedly saw the empty tomb was a woman (not mentioned by Paul) who demanded to know where they had moved the body. Even seeing the empty tomb did not convince her that Jesus had risen. I can’t imagine why it should convince anyone today.
Witnesses
In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul gives a list of witnesses of the resurrected Jesus. However, the writers of the gospels sharply disagreed with the list. It is important to note that Paul gave the list as an ordered and exhaustive list. He starts with the first, then the next, and the next, etc. Then, he gets to a “finally”.
There are many places to question the list. But we could stop at the first witness. It is wrong if the gospels are to be believed. The women were all over the gospels and nowhere to be found on Paul’s list. One cannot excuse this major oversight.
But the most fantastical of the witnesses were a mysterious group of 500 who saw Jesus at once. This development was completely missed by the gospel writers. No such appearance is even hinted at. I stand firmly on the ground that Paul made it up just as preachers do today. There was no 500. We simply have no reason to trust any account of witnesses.
We don’t have any account from Peter. We have a writing from Luke the fabulist. Paul and the gospel writers disagree. The witnesses are nothing more than plot devices and con artist rhetoric. Inventing witnesses is easy. I did many miraculous deeds and saved many during the event of 9/11. 5,000 people witnessed it. Many of them are alive today. Now, do you believe? You would immediately start asking questions like, who were these people? What were the names? Name even one of them? Did anyone write about it? You know, all the questions that no Christian asks of Paul’s 500. We have no witnesses, only stories of witnesses.
Martyrdom
You have heard it said that no one dies for something they know to be a lie. But this is not evidence of anything. We have no real evidence that any of the disciples were killed for what they claimed to be true, and only church tradition for a couple of them. There is no tradition that any had a chance to recant. There is reasonable criteria for what counts as martyrdom that Christians don’t tend to demand.
The bigger issue with the martyrdom argument (besides the lack of evidence for it) is the argument depends on an accurate reading of human nature and what people wouldn’t do. What we know about people is that they can convince themselves of the truth of anything if properly motivated. So it could be that some were convinced of their own story.
In sales, you must first sell yourself on the product. If you tell the story enough times, you start to actually believe your own BS. Once you have sold yourself on it, you can make bank selling it to others. At that point, the pitch is truly authentic. And authenticity sells. When you believe it, you can make others believe it. That doesn’t make any of it true.
Moreover, the argument from human nature works against the Christian. The apostles had not only watched Jesus do the impossible, they were also routinely doing the impossible. So human nature suggests that they wouldn’t abandon Jesus like they did. Not one of them remembered they could raise the dead. Not one of them tried. Not one of them decided to hang around the burial site just to see if anything would happen. That defies human nature. For the Christian, the argument from human nature is a total bust.
Minimal and maximal facts
It doesn’t matter if you are a fan of the minimal facts approach or the maximal facts approach. Neither proves the resurrection actually took place. Gary tries to collate and used agreed upon facts as taken from scholars in relevant fields. This is problematic for too many reasons to go into in this writeup.
The biggest problem is the cherry-picking. What Gary forgets to mention is that these facts do not convince these scholars to convert to Christianity. The minimal facts are too minimal to have any persuasive effect. Gary picks the facts that agree with his thesis. But then throws the same scholars under the bus when they do not validate his conclusions. No agnostic or atheist scholar believes that Jesus rose from the dead. And dead is where the minimal facts approach remains.
The wrong proof for the wrong thing
If a Christian could obtain real evidence for just one biblical claim, what should it be? I argue that your one wish for proof is wasted on resurrection. That is because resurrection was a lot less important than you might think. Bible times were dark times of superstition and misinformation about how the world really works. That might explain why the Bible is lousy with stories of resurrections.
Doing a bit of Googling, the blind were healed three times in the Bible. Leprosy was healed but I found no count. It wasn’t many. Though there was one time when ten were healed all at once. But there were 9 or 10 (depending on how you count them) resurrections in the Bible. It was the most common of the miracles and it was done by far more people than any other miracle. On one occasion, resurrection happened quite by accident. It was never played up as the big miracle that proved anything, let alone, everything.
Yet today, Christians like Gary believe that resurrection is the one thing that has to be proven. They don’t even care about all resurrections. All other biblical resurrections can be myth and fantasy. They only care about the one resurrection that proves Christianity, as if Christianity comes down to the good fortune of one man rather than the teachings that came directly from that man. They believe that if they can prove the resurrection of Jesus, they can validate the teachings of Paul. It simply doesn’t work that way.
Jesus never presented the message that his resurrection would prove that he was the son of god. Supposedly, that was known even before Peter’s confession. All of that was before the resurrection. Jesus didn’t need the resurrection to prove that he had authority. He was already considered an authoritative teacher.
Consider the fact that even in the stories, he died before a multitude but post-resurrection, showed himself to a relative few. And most of those few were already believers. He didn’t use his resurrection to prove to the world that he was legit. Were that his goal, he would have shown up at the Sanhedrin. He would have been the one to give the sermon on Pentecost instead of just the sermon on the mount. Jesus wasn’t trying to prove anything with his resurrection. And indeed, nothing was proven by it.
Conclusion: The failure of evidence
I contend that the more Christians attempt to present evidence that isn’t there, the worse things get for them. When the emperor tries to prove the magnificence of his non-existent attire, the more blinding is his full, frontal insanity.
But let’s imagine that all this evidence was present in the first century. What was the result of it in the lives of the people with the most access to it? The disciples lived the dream. Yet they didn’t believe. Jesus returned to them and they still didn’t believe, until they did. Paul was a murderous prosecutor who specialized in Christianity. He would have had access to all the evidence. Not a single bit of it was convincing to him. This all happened in the land of the Jews. The vast majority of them were unconvinced. The historians of the day such as Josephus were not convinced. They did not become Christians after their exhaustive research.
If the freshest evidence that could ever exist failed to convince the people of the day who had the greatest access to it, why on earth should it convince anyone today?
If Jesus wanted his resurrection to convince people to follow him, there are endless possibilities with regard to actual evidence he could have left, including the evidence of him sticking around to this day. But that is the point when these same Christians say that Jesus didn’t want to leave evidence lest we somehow lose our free will to choose. They can hang on to one of those arguments, but not both. Either he left convincing evidence or he refused to leave convincing evidence. Choose one.
I, for one, remain in the category of the unconvinced after carefully researching and reviewing the “evidence”. It has been weighed in the balance of my rational mind and found wanting. If I could have evidence for only one thing, it would not be evidence for the one resurrection. It would be evidence that god exists and that sins can and have been forgiven. Alas, for such things, we are left with the same inadequate faith that led Gary and the rest on an even more futile search for evidence in the first place.
And that’s the view from the skeptic.
David Johnson
