Skeptics Don’t Have to Disprove the Resurrection
Not the way Christians mean, and maybe not at all
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A common refrain from Christian apologists is that, if skeptics want to show that Christianity is false, all we have to do is prove that Jesus did not return to life after his crucifixion.
On some level, this makes sense. Jesus’s resurrection is generally understood to be the central claim of Christianity. Take that away, and Christianity falls apart, at least on paper.
One immediate issue here is that, in a way, Jesus’s resurrection isn’t the only central claim. As a key example, if it could be logically proven that the god of the Bible did not exist, then by extension that would be pretty damming (pun intended) evidence that Jesus was not the son of God, that no God was there to raise Jesus, etc.
But beyond this, I see two major reasons for why disproof of Jesus’s resurrection is not strictly necessary in order for the skeptical argument to prevail.
- Non-supernatural explanations for Christianity’s rise are good enough
Rather than prove that the Resurrection didn’t happen, instead we can look at explanations for how the story of the Resurrection came about under only natural circumstances — and whether they could have happened, thus putting reasonable doubt on the Resurrection.
An explanation that can withstand scrutiny should theoretically be preferred, due to the principle of Occam’s Razor — this is popularly seen as “the simple solution being the best,” but more aptly described as not wanting to “multiply entities beyond necessity.” A god or anything else supernatural, therefore, would be rejected as unnecessary entities. For my point here, I might phrase it as “if it can be explained without God, then it should be.”
Paul Ens of the YouTube channel Paulogia does this effectively with his historical hypothesis, which he titles the “Minimal Witnesses” explanation. This narrative consists of twelve step-by-step claims that intend to account for all of the available historical data, and to explain how Christianity began without needing to include a supernatural event. The twelve claims aren’t necessarily facts per se, but they are supported by a combination of widely-accepted facts regarding first-century culture and human psychology.
The challenge for believers, when presented this this theory or any other, is whether historical data exists that 1) is not accounted for by the theory, AND 2) absolutely requires a supernatural event to explain.
2. The Resurrection debate is irrelevant to real people leaving the faith.
This is arguably the more crucial point, for all practical purposes.
Surveys and articles abound over the phenomenon of people leaving the church in record numbers, while “The Anatomy of Deconversion” by Biola professor John Marriott (which I have reviewed) represents the most in-depth look I can find regarding why people abandon the faith. Tellingly, neither any article nor a single one of Marriott’s case studies mentions the Resurrection debate as a cause of deconversion.
People aren’t leaving over evidence for or against the Resurrection. They deconvert because:
- They were ostracized or abused by their church communities
- They found Christianity to be incompatible with scientific findings
- They had no personal experience or contact with anything they understood as God
- They found flaws or contradictions in the biblical text
- They found unacceptable moral atrocities committed or commanded by God in that biblical text
- They couldn’t reconcile the Problem of Evil with their understanding of God
…or any number of reasons not related to Jesus’s resurrection.
So when it comes to actually changing religious demographics, the Resurrection debate really turns out to be just a side-quest. This change, therefore, is driven by as many people as possible coming forward to press the point on any or all of the reasons listed above, and say “these beliefs do not. make. sense.”
