Once upon a time Jesus was resurrected
Chris Mooney takes issue with Sean Carroll.
[I]s a claim like “Jesus died and was resurrected” really falsifiable by science in the same way that a claim like “The Earth is 10,000 years old” is falsifiable? I’d submit that at least as held by some sophisticated believers, it isn’t.
The fact that it isn’t falsifiable is actually a reason not to believe it rather than a reason to believe it. Freudian psychoanalysis isn’t falsifiable either, and that’s what makes its claims so dubious. But Mooney isn’t really talking about falsifiability, he’s challenging Carroll’s ‘The reason why science and religion are actually incompatible is that, in the real world, they reach incompatible conclusions. It’s worth noting that this incompatibility is perfectly evident to any fair-minded person who cares to look.’ He’s asking something more like ‘is it really the case that a claim like “Jesus died and was resurrected” is incompatible with empiricism?’ He then quotes John Haught talking a lot of wool about that there resurrection, then he says we’re allies so why worry about what Haught believes.
Because that’s what the discussion is about. The discussion isn’t about preventing Haught from believing what he believes – it’s about whether religion (the epistemology of religion, if you like) and science are genuinely compatible, so the question of why one would believe that Jesus died and was resurrected is right in the middle of it. It’s not possible to give evidence that demonstrates that Jesus was not resurrected – but that is not a reason to believe that Jesus was resurrected. The salient point here is that there is no good reason to believe that Jesus was resurrected. None. Zero. There are no records, no physical traces, no contemporary accounts, no eyewitness accounts, nothing. All there is is a story, composed decades after Jesus was executed. There is no more reason to believe the story is true than there is to believe that Athena really appeared to Odysseus. That’s what Carroll means by ‘perfectly evident.’ He doesn’t mean anyone can brandish a slide that demonstrates the non-resurrection of Jesus, he means there’s no good reason to think the story is anything other than a story. Carroll is talking about epistemology and Mooney is talking about all getting along, and those two subjects are also somewhat incompatible. Then again, one could simply be more interested in getting along with people who don’t automatically believe stories than with people who refuse to be skeptical of certain stories. We can’t have everything, after all.
“All there is is a story, composed decades after Jesus was executed.”
Actually, at least four different, mutually exclusive, stories. No account of the crucifiction/resurrection can be made that accomodates all four. E.g.: only one Gospel account reports Jesus carrying the cross, the other three state that it was carried for him.
Well there’s a first story – I was thinking of Mark. The later stories are thought to have taken the story from Mark, I think – unless I’m remembering incorrectly. Mark’s version is very abrupt and undetailed, and ends rather absurdly.
Nice post Ophelia. To play the role of J.J. Ramsay/devil’s advocate for a moment, I think that what you have written here is correct but that it needed to be said. Sometimes folks on our side seem to be saying, “Medical science proves that Jesus was not resurrected.” I wouldn’t support a claim like that. Medical science proves that such an event would be anomalous within the general workings of nature, but of course we didn’t need medical science to demonstrate this – the ancients were well aware of it. Even without modern medical science, such events seem “miraculous”; and even without modern medical science, we have reason to think that stories of such events have either been made up entirely or at least laden with mythology after the event. But again, it would be begging the question to claim that medical science proves such events never happen. The claim of the religious believer is precisely that events which are admitted to be anomalous do sometimes happen. And why not if there is a supernatural entity capable of overriding normal causality and producing them? We can’t simply insist dogmatically that no such entity exists; it’s the very thing on which there is disagreement.
What makes it unlikely that this particular event happened, apart from its inherently anomalous character, is the sort of thing you say. There are no physical traces, no corroborating evidence in secular histories from the time, and so on. At best, we have evidence that something spooky happened to Saul of Tarsus – he had some kind of vision of the risen Jesus. Perhaps some of the other early Christians did, too, but the gospels are all written too long afterwards to give us much of clue about what really happened. Paul does list some other such visions, including one to “the 500” (I quote from memory here).
But of course people have spooky experiences all the time, and we have good reason by now to presume that they are not veridical.
Actually, Ophelia, the gospel of Mark ends with the women leaving the tomb and saying nothing to anyone. It is thought, by most biblical scholars, that the Markan ending (16.9-19) was added later. (My Greek is not great, but this judgement is based on stylistic variants and vocabulary changes, as well as on v. 8, which says that the women said nothing to anyone.)
It is very hard to pinpoint priority in the resurrection narratives, though Mark probably comprised the backbone of the rest of the two other synoptic gospels, Matthew and Luke. Dominic Crossan thinks that the earliest resurrection account is in the non-canonical passion gospel of Peter (which he calls the Cross Gospel). So, not only is the resurrection not falsifiable, it is not really known where the story comes from. And, as Russell says, Paul seems to have assimilated all resurrection appearances to the type of (spooky) experience that he claims to have had on the road to Damascus.
Nicholas Beales bases his belief in the resurrection on Bayesian probabilities, given the hypothesis of a LUC (Loving Ultimate Creator) and the perfection of Jesus. Since so many other gods were believed to have died and rose again, this is implausible. What seems to have happened is that Christianity took this widespread myth, and then, as Greek thought predominated over near Eastern gnosticism, the myth came to be read historically. We may not be able to insist dogmatically that Jesus was not raised from the dead (which is the way the doctrine works), but the smart money is on the claim that he wasn’t.
Russell – quite – I wouldn’t support a claim like that either. All I would do is kick the slats out from under the idea that because it is not possible to prove that Jesus was not resurrected therefore there is no reason not to believe Jesus was resurrected. I think that idea (usually not spelled out) is what Chris Mooney is relying on for a lot of his handwringing on the subject.
Eric – oh yes, it comes back to me now. Sure enough, I was remembering incorrectly!