The Historical Evidence for Jesus’ Resurrection That Even Skeptics Believe: Gary Habermas (Transcript)

How many skeptics have moved over from here? I mean on a grading scale from like A to F, you know, we’ll have the believers be the A’s and the skeptics be the D’s and F’s. What’s happened to move the D’s to C’s and C pluses and B minuses? You know, what’s going on?

Raymond Brown, shortly before his death, probably the most prominent New Testament scholar in America, said that the majority of contemporary theologians in all the state universities and everywhere else, the majority of theologians are conservative today. Again, what’s going on?

What I’m going to do is share some data with you. Let me introduce my METHODOLOGY here at the outset.

When I was at Michigan State, I did my dissertation on the Resurrection. Now, I was 24 when I started doing this, and I was really wet behind the ears, as they say. And I just kind of walked in where angels grew to tread. And I had my committee here, and there was a Jewish agnostic member of the history department on my committee, a philosopher on my committee, the chair of this particular program was on my committee, and a Greek Orthodox priest with two doctor’s degrees, and an agnostic that the dean assigns to your committee from a totally different area, in his words, to make sure four friends aren’t giving another friend a PhD.

So I had a mixed committee of people who were open to the Resurrection, and who wasn’t? Those who weren’t. And when the committee was over, they approved the topic. And then as I was walking away, the chair from the religion department said to me, ‘We don’t care if you do this topic, I mean we’re a classically liberal campus, so you can do anything you can evidence, but don’t try telling us the Resurrection happened because the Bible says so. Don’t try that.’

I hope you couldn’t see me, but I sort of felt like, like that. And then I said to him, as I said, wet behind the ears, I said to him, ‘How long does this thing have to be again?’ And he said, at least 200 pages. He said, maybe we’ll take 180, but we can’t, we can’t bend on that.

Well, it turned out to be 350 pages long. And I developed a method to get around his objection: Don’t tell us it happened because the Bible said so. And I’ve since come to call this the minimal facts method. By the way, my website is Gary Habermas.com. You can find lectures on this, on the method, and all over. Nothing’s for sale there. Anything you can use, you’re welcome to it.

And what I did was try to work in an area that says this. This little New Testament: If this book is inspired word of God, like a lot of Christians claim, well then Jesus was raised from the dead. If this book is not inspired, but it’s reliable, Jesus had been raised from the dead. But what if the skeptics are right, and it’s neither? It’s neither inspired nor reliable. And it’s a book of ancient literature, on the level with Homer or Plato.

I love Tom Wright, who makes the comment, ‘If you had lived a couple hundred years before Christ, Homer would have been your Old Testament, and Plato would have been your New Testament.’

Alright, so let’s say this is another book from that genre of Homer and Plato, and it’s not inspired. It’s not even reliable. My argument is: Jesus is still raised from the dead. We have enough data, in an unreliable book, if it is, to argue that Jesus was raised from the dead. Well, okay, great, go for it, but how do you pull that off?

Okay, what I’m going to do, in this lecture, is talk about the data that moved the F’s and the D pluses over to C plus and B minus. I’m going to talk about what has happened in the last 30 years, to make people, just to pick one thing, how we’ve gotten from the empty tomb was a joke, to the empty tomb is highly reliable.

What makes a historian like Michael Grant say that by normal historical methods, the tomb was empty? By normal historical methods, not employing any religious chicanery. What makes people say that the appearances of Jesus, that they’re a joke, or He appeared in some non-bodily way, to He appeared in a bodily way? What gets most scholars over here today?

There are even a number of skeptics, I mean, all-out skeptics, who don’t, they’re probably atheists, they don’t believe in God, they don’t believe in resurrections, but they believe the earliest Christian community taught bodily resurrection of Jesus. You couldn’t even get that out of people in the 70s.

Alright, so what I’m going to do, is I’m going to introduce a couple passages, tell you why skeptics are happy with these passages, and go from there and use some of the data. Now one of the most misunderstood things about contemporary scholarship, what did my professor mean when he said, that’s great, do your dissertation, but don’t tell us it happened because the Bible said it happened.

But if I were talking to him, or if he were to publish something on the resurrection, he would use the New Testament. Okay, with my grad students, there are very few things that are more difficult to get across than this difference. They think Christians, they think non-Christians think, the Bible’s a prejudice book, don’t use a period. And that’s not what skeptics think. If you don’t use the text, they will use the text. Why? They have different presuppositions, but they will only use passages that are well received on critical grounds for critical reasons. Their historical, the same way we do history, New Testament scholars will employ those reasons and apply them to the text. And they’ll say, the book as a whole is this or that, but these passages are reliable.

Why? Well, one reason is, in this book right here, New Testament, in this book, there are 13 books that bear Paul’s name. No matter how far you are to the left, skeptics will allow six to seven of those books as authentic writings.

What’s an authentic writing mean? Well, it doesn’t mean it’s inspired. But what it does mean is, we really think Paul wrote those six or seven, not the other six or seven. Paul really wrote those. And who was Paul? The skeptics, today Paul is the skeptic’s darling. And they think, here’s what Paul’s got going for him. He’s one of the only authors in the New Testament who we know who he is. He’s a convert. Something had to go on in his life to change him, because he wasn’t always like this. He’s a scholar.

How do you know he’s a scholar? You know, there’s different ways to know he’s a scholar. You can say, well, he studied under Gamaliel, and he went to sort of grad school, and under Gamaliel, the number one teacher, and he was the one chosen to root out Christianity. So he had to be an up-and-coming young scholar, sort of a scholar-athlete, right? I mean, somebody who really knows the stuff, but can go out and do it. So go round up all these Christians.

But they also know that simply from reading his works. Anthony Flew, when he was an atheist, used to say, read Romans, and you’ll know that Paul is a first-rate philosophical mind. And then he’d say, ‘read the Sermon on the Mount, and you know that Jesus is a first-rate ethicist.’ So just read their writings, and you know he’s a scholar. Just read how he puts arguments together.

So which of these books do they accept by Paul? Well, almost unanimously, they will always accept the same books. It’s not like some accept one half and somebody else accepts the other half. They will always accept Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and of course Philemon, but that’s a one-chapter, non-theological book, not terribly helpful.

But the other ones, Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians. Bart Ehrman, probably the best-known skeptic in America, he calls himself an agnostic leaning toward atheism, and the foremost skeptical New Testament scholar in this country, says ‘These are the authentic Pauline epistles. No one’s going to give you problems if you use this material.’

Now does that mean everything Paul wrote was true? No. Does that mean Paul was inspired? No. What does it mean? It means he was in the right place at the right time. We know who he was. He’s a scholar. He was changed by this message. So that’s, there are some dynamics there that are worthwhile. He’s just somebody who knew what was going on at that time, and very importantly, as you’ll see in this lecture, he knew the other people who knew what was going on. He knew the other eyewitnesses. So that’s what authoritative means. Not always right, but scholarly and in a position to be right. And we know who he is.

So I’m going to use just two texts today in this sense, in this watered-down definition of authoritative, watered down in the sense that it’s not inspired, but Paul’s the author, 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and I’m going to use another text that’s the end of Galatians 1, beginning of Galatians 2. There are no chapter dividings in the original text. So these are just two texts. End of Galatians 1, beginning of Galatians 2, and 1 Corinthians 15, just the first 20 verses.

Now Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, begins like this. He tells the Corinthians. He says, ‘When I came to Corinth, I preached the gospel message to you…. And basically, now I’m paraphrasing him, but he basically says, what you do with this message determines where you spend eternity. That’s the first two verses.

I preached the gospel. Where are you? Well, how did you respond to my message? Did you say yea or nay?

And then in the 3^rd verse, he said, this is the message that I preached when I came to Corinth. He said, ‘I gave you what I was given.’ It’s extremely important in the recent discussions. I gave you what I was given. Paul was basically saying, I’m doing what any good professor does. I’m passing material on to you that I was taught as reliable material. Is it reliable? Well, we’ll have to see.

But Paul thought it was reliable. And Paul said, I gave you what I was given. Okay? And what is it?

Well, then he talks like this. Verse 3, ‘I gave you what I was given, how that Jesus Christ died first according to the scriptures, was buried, and rose again the third day according to the scriptures, and appeared.’

And then Paul gives a list of appearances. Three to individuals. He adds himself to the end of the list. So there’s Peter, who starts the list. James, the brother of Jesus. And Paul says, last of all me. And three groups. A group called the Twelve. A group of 500. And it says 500 of the brothers. There’s a lot of discussion about this. But Paul could mean 500 men. Just like the feeding of the 5,000 is 5,000 men. There could have been 10,000 people there. So when Jesus appears to 500 brothers, if he means to only count them, there could have been 1,000 people there.

And the last group, a group called to all the apostles. Three groups, three individuals. Paul says He appeared. But that phrase, ‘I gave you what I was given, as of first importance.’ This is the center of our faith. I gave this to you as of first importance. That’s an extremely crucial phrase. Because if there’s a unanimous conclusion in the New Testament today, and 1 Corinthians 15 may be the most discussed passage in the New Testament. It could be.

Here’s a conclusion that virtually every scholar who writes, I don’t care how far to the right, I don’t care how far to the left, I don’t care where they teach, what their credentials, virtually everyone will agree with this phrase. We can tell that this passage, 1 Corinthians 15:3 and following, is an early creedal tradition. Now there are synonyms for creed: Tradition, confession. It’s an early creedal report. There are dozens of them in the New Testament. And this is one of the most important things that’s emerged in the last 40 years.

That in the New Testament, there is — there are a number of these early reports, and what they reflect is the earliest preaching of the apostolic community. Bart Ehrman, again, best-known skeptic in America, a specialist, Bart Ehrman says, ‘We can trace this material to one year after the cross.’

Now if you do history, and again I had to satisfy some members of the history department at Michigan State too, if you’re going to do history, there are certain criteria for historical accuracy. Paul claims to have gotten this from somebody else, and it really, really helps if he, by any chance, got this material from eyewitnesses. That’d be huge, because almost nothing in the ancient world is. And if he got it at a very early date.

Well, how’s one year after the cross? Is that early enough for you? You go, yeah, you’re going to have to, you’re going to have to prove that one. Wasn’t that book written in 55 AD? Yeah, 1st Corinthians written about 55.

Okay, I’m, you know, I’m all ears. Make your case. I’m going to sit back and listen. How do you get back from 55 AD to 31 AD? All right, let me stop right there. I’m going to do two things for the rest of the lecture. First of all, I’m going to argue the typical argument that Christian apologists use. Then, then I’m going to, I’ll tell you at what point I’m doing this. I’m going to flip-flop to the minimal facts argument that’s changed generation of scholars.

Here’s the old way folks would argue. Many New Testament scholars still argue like this, and you could still pull this off. It’s still, as you see in a moment, there are reasons that it’s a good argument. So if you ask the average scholar, I’m going to start doing a timeline for the rest of my lecture.

Let’s call this GROUND ZERO. Okay, this is the death of Jesus. We’re going to be working that way. That’s creation. That’s 2012. This ground zero. What year is it? Usually 30 AD, pretty popular. Second most popular date, 33. And, but we’ll just call it ground zero, because we want to move before, I’m sorry, after this point, see how far, how we can get back to this.

All right, now if you ask the average person, you say, Paul writes First Corinthians about here, 25 years away.

HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT’S RELIABLE MATERIAL IN FIRST CORINTHIANS 15? Here’s the old method. This is not the minimal facts argument. The old method, which I think also works, you have to be careful, but it works.

Here’s the way a lot of Christians would argue. Well, let’s go to Mark, and I’ll use critical dates, okay. I’ll use critically ascertained dates. So, they’ll say, you want to know what happened back there? Let’s check Mark out at just 70 AD, so we’re plus 40, right, plus 40. Matthew, 80 AD, or plus 50. Luke, 85 AD, or plus 55. And everybody puts John at about 95, or plus 65.

And the argument is, you know, in spite of what you might hear, these are reliably early texts in terms of distance. They have major sources from plus 40, plus 50, plus 55, and plus 60 to 65 at 90 to 95 AD, and this is great in the ancient world.

You go, really? I don’t do ancient history, I don’t know, but is that really good? Because you hear a lot of skeptics say, well, that’s way too late afterwards.

Okay, let’s do some comparisons. I was in a debate recently, and it was an odd debate. Two of us had the primary debate. The debate went on for two days, and then we each were allowed to bring two guys in to, in effect, have our back, two additional people. So, the next day of the debate, six people were dialoguing, and one of the backup guys for the atheist fellow was a physicist. And the guy said, he said, Christians are going to want to tell you, this guy’s an atheist, he says, ‘Christians are going to want to tell you that 40 to 60 years later is plenty close. I want to tell you it’s not. That’s really, really late.’

So I got up there, and there were two platforms, because each of us dialogued with the other one, and so I said to this guy, I said, ‘Do we know a lot about Alexander the Great?’

He said, ‘Yeah, we know a lot about Alexander the Great.’

‘Really? Yeah, I mean, he’s about 33 when he dies, he’s the youngest, maybe the most brilliant military general anybody’s ever seen up to that point. His armies conquer, they move east, they take everything from Macedonia over past India. Yeah, his group, the phalanx, it was the most devastating army ever, wipes out a lot of the armies of the Middle East that came up against it. Yeah, we know a fair amount about him.’ I said, when do those things — when do those reports date relative to Alexander’s life?

He said, I don’t know, I’m a physicist.

I said, okay. Here’s Alexander’s death, about 330 BC. By the way, he was a private tutor, he was privately tutored by Aristotle. So, about 330 BC. And there’s a number of people who wrote things about his life that were contemporary with him. Whoa, now that’s good. But we don’t have any of them. They may show up someday, but we don’t have any of them. Our earliest source for Alexander on this timeline, our earliest source for Alexander.

Now, I told Art I wouldn’t go off the platform here. I have to go off that exit door. Earliest source for Alexander, plus 300. Oh yeah, yeah, we knew a lot about Alexander 300 years later. Well, they had earlier sources, that’s what the argument is. Well, so did the gospel writers.

Hmm. Best sources for Alexander, Plutarch and Arian. They wrote four and a quarter to 450 after Alexander died. Well, that’s not, alright, pick a different example. He’s an odd one, so we don’t have good historical sources.

Alright, how about Tiberius Caesar? He was on the throne in Rome when Jesus died. Tiberius lives, he dies just a few years after Jesus does. I think 37 AD. So he’s on the throne, certain early writers link Jesus to Pilate and Tiberius. Alright, and we have about the same number of major sources for Tiberius that we do for Jesus. Okay? Good comparison.

Let’s compare the Gospels to Tiberius real fast. What’s the earliest source for Tiberius? Contemporary. And we have it. Ooh. You think to yourself, I’m not going to say anything, but the New Testament’s not looking so good here because we don’t have a contemporary argument, a contemporary source.

There is an early source for Tiberius, a general, a Roman general, but it’s the least usable of the four sources. It’s the least valuable of the four sources. The next best source for Tiberius, next best source, I mean next source, period. It’s the best one. Next source, out there. Tacitus at plus 80, 15 years later than John.

Next best source, Suetonius, Roman historian, plus 85. And then the fourth source for Tiberius, Dio Cassius, plus 180. Yeah, but skeptics say, yeah, but you can’t compare Gospels, prejudiced religious writings, to Greco-Roman histories. Really? That’s something else that’s changed in recent scholarship.

About 1990, a prominent classical scholar at the University of London wrote a book comparing the Gospels to Greco-Roman biographies, or bio as it’s sometimes pronounced. And he argued, the Gospels have all the earmarks of Greco-Roman biographies, and they should be considered biographies.

Maybe you can think in your own fields about how a major work has changed thought, and that has held the day since 1990. And today, most New Testament scholars, critical New Testament scholars, believe that the gospels are Greco-Roman biographies. So they are the same genre.

Well, then you go, yeah, but they’ve got miracles in them. So do all the Greco-Roman historians. Oh, you’re kidding. No, they do.

Virtually every Greco-Roman writer. Now, Thucydides is an exception. He says he doesn’t believe in that stuff, and he doesn’t do it. But I mean, Herodotus, the so-called father of history. Tacitus, although he has fewer than Suetonius. Suetonius says a lot. Pretty normal. You go, wow, then they’re all a whatever. Okay, really? They’re all junk because they report miracles, right?

We were talking back there before this started, and let me refer to you a two-volume work that’s just come out a year ago. It’s called Miracles. It’s by Craig Keener, PhD from Duke, New Testament, minor in classics. So he’s a Greco-Roman scholar, and he’s done a two-volume work, 1,200 pages, part one and part two, on contemporary miracle claims. He’s got pre- and post-cat scans, pre- and post-MRIs, pre- and post-X-rays, and so many of these things. When you read them, you’re going to say, how come I’ve never heard this? I don’t know. But you can’t put these things down. These two books are just incredible. He’s got hundreds of cases from all over the world. He’s got so many of them; there is a table of contents reads like this: Cases in Asia, cases in Central America, cases in South America, cases in Western Europe, cases in North America. That’s how they’re arranged.

And then under each section, he’s got little things like those with cooperation, those with heavy evidence. And his main argument in two volumes is this: Don’t call the New Testament naive because it records miracles. And don’t call Greco-Roman writers, which is his second area, don’t call Greco-Roman writers naive because they record miracles. Everybody in the world knows about these things, except the Western university community, and they’re coming around. That’s his claim.

So that does not make these guys naive. Because if you’re going to call John naive, you call Herodotus naive. If you call Mark naive, you call Tacitus naive. And maybe they’re the right ones and we’re the wrong ones. Just maybe.

Okay, I’m going to drop this second argument that says the New Testament is in the right place, right time, fulfills the criteria for historiography. Now from this point on, I’m going to be doing my minimal facts argument. I’m going to be citing only data, probably 95% of what I say from now on will be accepted across the critical spectrum, from conservative scholars to atheist scholars who study these disciplines. They’re all going to agree with almost everything I’m saying here.

What makes Bart Ehrman say that we can get Paul’s report from just plus 25? What makes Bart Ehrman say that we’ve got plenty of material from one to two years after the cross? How in the world can a guy who is, quote, an agnostic leaning toward atheism, how can he say we can get this material back to plus one or plus two?

So Paul is writing here, 1 Corinthians 15. There’s no difference on the date. Some people might say 53, some people might say 57, but it’s not determined by whether you’re conservative or liberal or whatever. About 55, that’s a nice round 25 years. But Paul says, first two verses, when I came to you Corinthians, this is the message I gave you. In other words, when he came to them he said it, and now he’s writing it down.

When did he come to Corinth? Some people think that this is the most ascertainable date in the entire New Testament. 51 AD. 51 to 52. How do we know that? Well, because the New Testament mentions a city leader who was in control of Corinth when Paul came to Corinth, and inscription has been found in stone with this guy’s name on it, and how convenient. These city leaders, city-states, remember, in Greece, they were chosen for one-year terms, and it’s known that he ruled the city from 51 to 52 AD. And when Paul came, he was in control.

Alright, so Paul says, I’m writing to you here what I said to you here at plus 21. And he says in verse 3, again, I gave you what I was given as a first importance. We’re talking about the heart of Christianity right now, he says, and I’m telling you what I was told.

Okay, interesting. Here’s the question: WHEN AND FROM WHOM DID HE RECEIVE THIS MATERIAL? Do we have a clue? When and from whom did he receive this material? Alright, we can talk about the arguments if you want to. I’m not sure how long I’m here afterwards until I get carted off to do something else, but if you want to talk about reasons, we can talk about them, but let me give you the scholarly, the critical conclusion.

Bart Ehrman’s going to agree to this. People who don’t even think Jesus lived, which are, like, not on the… Bart Ehrman just wrote a whole book against them, saying, you guys don’t have credentials, you’re out of your field, stay in your own field. That’s a skeptic writing to the skeptics. It’s kind of a fun read. I have to, you have to tell you about their arguments, but virtually everybody, virtually everybody, Richard Baughman, Cambridge University, says this is a consensus position among scholarship. They believe Paul received this material about 35 AD.

You go, what? Plus five? Yeah, plus five. How in the world would they know that? Let’s do the math. Here’s the cross. We’re calling it, for a nice round number, we’re calling it 30 AD.

When did Paul have his Damascus Road experience? Or, for skeptics, when did Paul think Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus? It was either plus two or plus three. Plus two or plus three.

Paul says, Galatians chapter 1, an authoritative book, according to the definition I gave you earlier of authoritative. Galatians chapter 1, Paul says, Galatians 1:16, I met Jesus. And then he said, ‘I didn’t go running up to Jerusalem to meet those who were apostles before me, I went out into Arabia by myself for three years.’ Now, some people think he was preaching and all kinds of other stuff, but we really don’t know. He said, I went off for three years, and then I went up to Jerusalem.

Alright, again, let’s do the math. Here’s the cross. When does Paul come to the Lord? Plus two. You say, well, I think it’s plus three. Great, plus three.

Three years later, he goes up to Jerusalem. Three plus three, six. 30 A.D. Oh, I think he was converted 32 A.D. Okay, great. Two plus three, 35.

And in Galatians chapter 1, Paul says, I went up to Jerusalem after three years, so we’re plus five or plus six after the cross. And Paul says, I spent 15 days with Peter, the head apostle. He said, I saw no other apostles except James, the brother of Jesus. I spent 15 days with Peter and James, the brother of Jesus.

Now, what were they discussing during that time? Well, the theme of the short book called Galatians is the nature of the gospel. It’s, um, I guess maybe we could say this is a theme of Galatians. Here’s the gospel. Get it right. Don’t change it. If you change it, you’re anathema. Preach the right thing. Don’t try to get there some other way. It’s by grace through faith. All right, you got it? Don’t mess up the gospel. That’s the bottom line.

So when he goes to Jerusalem at plus five or plus six, if they weren’t talking about the gospel centrally, it at least had to come up. Now, you know, as a guy who studied the resurrection all my life, and I tell people the resurrection rescued me from 10 years of skepticism. I told my mother from back in those days that I was this close to becoming a Buddhist. I really was. And in fact, some days I think I was. Like we were talking about in the car, you know, what side of the fence am I on? I don’t know. You know, you’re in grad school and you’re going through this stuff and a lot of things are going on.

And the resurrection kind of rescued me from this. I could see that this argument wins today, seriously.

All right, so what’s going on here? I know what I would ask Peter and James first. This would be my first question to them if I’m the Apostle Paul: I’ll tell you what I saw on the way to Damascus if you tell me what you saw a few days after the crucifixion.

How did he look? Come on, guys. Give it to me. What did you guys see? I’ll tell you what I saw. And then I might say this if I’m Paul. Depending on how bold Paul is. And you know, Paul was pretty bold from his epistles. I might have said this:

‘Hey, guys, the three of us have something in common here. I’m not trying to dog you guys. But you know, we all have a point in our life. We weren’t exactly exemplary followers of the Lord. I was on my way to kill or imprison men, women, and children who named the name of Christ. I’m not proud of that. James, you grew up in the house with the Messiah. And you were an unbeliever. Somebody told me you used to think your brother was insane.’ That’s what Mark 3 says. That his family thought he was beside himself. And James might have hung his head and say, ‘I don’t know any better. Peter, you have an exalted position as the head apostle.’

‘I’m not trying to dog you. But you denied your Lord three times.’

Now, if I’m writing a book here, I’m going to put an informational footnote. I’m going to say, a pastoral note. I’m going to say, look what God does with people who’ve made a lot of mistakes. And He uses them later. Just a little side note.

But if I’m Paul, I’m going to say, guys, tell me, James, dude, you thought he was crazy. What did you think when you saw your crucified and risen brother? And Jesus says to you, bro, it’s me. What was the first thought that came into your head?

Peter, you must have thought it was wasted. You blew it. You’re going back fishing. What did you think when He appeared to you? And guys, let me tell you what it was like for me in the Lord of Damascus. I mean, what were those 15 days like? There’s a little Greek word—well, actually, it’s a long Greek word, but it’s in Galatians, chapter 1, verse 18. The Greek word is historēsai. The Greek—the root word is histor, h-i-s-t-o-r, if you transliterate it. Now, don’t jump off the deep end and say, ah, that’s our word history. Well, it is the Greek word from which we get our word history, but it doesn’t mean it meant history in the first century.

But what does histor or historēsai.mean? The English translations usually slaughter it. I know two or three word studies on this done by non-evangelicals. It’s a very interesting word. It means to interview so as to acquire truth. Probably the closest word we have today to depict this historēsai, we see it every night, depending on where you live in the country. I used to live in Montana for three years, and it was 10 o’clock at night. For most of the country, it’s probably 11 o’clock at night. It comes on your television, eyewitness news. The word historēsai means check it out. It was used in papyri at an early date for people who didn’t take a person’s words, a geographer. It was used once of a geographer.

What’s up this river? Well, I’m not going to ask you what’s up that river. You might live a mile up, but I’m going to check it out myself. So I go up the river. Then I write my diary. That’s historēsai. That’s eyewitness news. And here’s Geraldo Rivera out. And Geraldo’s always standing in the middle of the hurricane, so you can see that he’s really suffering to bring you the news. That’s historēsai.

And Paul says, I went back here at plus five or six because I wanted to investigate.

Then, as we go from the end of Galatians 1 to Galatians 2, no chapter break, he says, ‘14 years later, I went back.’

All right, 14 years later, I went back. Critics, Bart Ehrman, Helmut Koester at Harvard, they put this event at about 48 AD. We’re still only plus 80. He went back.

And Galatians 2.2 is one of the most incredible verses in the New Testament. I love the way the King James translates it here, but most translations say just about the same thing. Paul says in Galatians 2.2, I went back up after 14 years to see the other apostles and to set before them the gospel I was preaching, to see if I was running or had run in vain.

What? Yeah, I went back up to Jerusalem to make sure we were all on the same page. To make sure we were all presenting the same gospel. Neat.

So, we do want to make sure that you guys were preaching the same thing. Galatians 2.2, I went back up there. I shared with them the gospel I was preaching.

And then just a few verses later, Galatians 2:6, these five words in English, ‘they added nothing to me.’ They added nothing to me.

Then just three verses later, they, this is where we get the phrase, ‘They laid hands on Barnabas and me. And they gave us the right hand of fellowship. And they said, y’all go to the Gentiles and take this message. We’re going to stay here and give the message to the Jews.’

But the point is, the message was the same. They added nothing to me. You take it to them. We’ll give it here. And that’s what we decided to do.

Paul says it this way in 1 Corinthians 15:11. Reflecting on what, this is them telling Paul that he was okay. Here’s Paul telling them that they’re okay.

1 Corinthians 15:11, he just gives a list of the appearances. And then he says this, ‘whether it is I or they,’ who are they? They are the other apostles, he says so in the context.

‘Whether it is I or they, this is what we preach and this is what you believe.’ Paul’s saying, hey, you don’t like me? Great, go talk to Peter. Don’t like Peter? Go talk to James. Because you’re going to get the same message no matter who you talk to. Whether it’s I or they, so we teach and so you believe.

Next few verses, that’s what Paul says three times: ‘If we’re wrong about this, we’re liars. If we’re wrong about this, we’re preaching in vain.’

The ‘we’re’ is he and the other apostles. Why? Because they were preaching the same message. It’s uniform.

All right, one more thing and I’m done. So far I’ve been focusing on this point right here at five to six years after the cross. But I’m going to assert that we can get back all the way to the cross. We can close this gap.

Why does Bart Ehrman, what I started with, why does Bart Ehrman say we can get this message back to one to two years after the cross? Why does he concede that? Why do skeptics, you know, why has the table certainly, totally changed on this?

Because of this creedal argument. And in the New Testament there’s, there are, they can tell that this was early preaching. This is the, this is what the earliest apostles creed coming out of the gate. All right, this is when Paul heard the message. historēsai, Galatians 1:18. This is when he did the firsthand research.

Now, if Peter and James gave it to Paul, they had it before he had it. Now, when I say an early creed, one of the reasons they know it’s an early creed is because in the Greek it reads stylistically. First Corinthians 15:3 and following reads like this in the Greek. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Two stanzas with data, and not a rhyming sequence like American, like English, but a way that’s easily memorizable.

Why? Because most New Testament scholars today believe that the vast majority of Jesus’ audiences, contrary to other things you may have heard, the vast majority of Jesus’ audiences were illiterate, up to 90%.

What do you do when you teach somebody who’s illiterate, but you want them to teach somebody else? What do you do? You tell stories that they’ll remember. Ah, parables. And you give them short, pithy statements that they will memorize. Turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile, do unto others, that they will memorize.

And when you codify things into a da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, especially if there’s an Aramaic original, which is the language Jesus speaks, now we know you’re really going back in the church because somebody had to put this together.

All right, Paul hears it. They had it before Paul. Someone had to codify, had to get it from the events, to the da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and we’re right on top of it. In fact, some of the leading scholars today, have said the following.

Larry Hurtado, just recently retired, head of the Religion Department, Edinburgh University. Hurtado says, Coming out of the gates in 30 AD, Hurtado says, two doctrines had to be present, or there would be no Christianity.’

What are those two doctrines? Deity of Christ, and a resurrection. Of course, if there’s a resurrection, there’s a death. So, deity, death, resurrection. That’s the gospel.

Whenever you hear the gospel defined in the New Testament, right into Paul, or in the Book of Acts, that’s the minimal gospel presentation. Deity, death, resurrection, and then the question of, do you have faith? And that’s what Paul’s saying in 1 Corinthians 15:1 and 2. What did you do with that message? Did you believe? First two verses, 1 Corinthians 15, 1 and 2.

So, deity, death, resurrection, belief.

And Hurtado says, coming out of the gate, you’ve got that. From Edinburgh. Okay.

Richard Bauckham, Cambridge, same thing. I gave this lecture one time at Cambridge, same lecture, and Richard Bauckham, who’s a very prominent scholar, slipped in and was sitting in the back row while I was speaking. And I went ahead and gave my regular lecture, which took his name in vain several times, and said, Richard Bauckham says you can date it there. He sat in the back. I asked him later, do you have any comments? He said, no, that’s what I teach. That is present from 30 to 31 AD.

Okay, third guy, James D.G. Dunn. As influential as any historical Jesus scholar today. Dunn says, the latest this da-da-da-da-da-da form could have been memorized, the latest it would have been put from event into form is six months after the cross. That’s James D.G. Dunn.

Here’s the cross. Six months later, this is in da-da-da-da-da-da form. And like I said, the very latest is Bart Ehrman. I started the lecture with it. Bart Ehrman saying we can get this back to, he has other arguments. Bart Ehrman does.

Now, to bring this full circle, make a comment or two and I’ll be done. What about my professor who said, yeah, go ahead and do the resurrection, but don’t say it happened because the New Testament said it happened.

And I said, critical scholars use, they use the New Testament, but they use it critically. They don’t assume it’s inspired or even reliable. They use it critically.

How would Bart Ehrman, for Bart, how would Bart, qua Bart, get that conclusion of one to two years later? Well, one of the things he does in this book, Did Jesus Exist?

He asks, HOW MANY INDEPENDENT ARGUMENTS DO WE HAVE FOR THE CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS?

Now, the Jesus Seminar, a very critical, very, ‘liberal group’, says if you have two sources for something, that makes the proclamation a lot greater chance of being historical, because two heads are better than one. Two sources are great.

Bart Ehrman asked the question, How Many Sources Do We Have For The Crucifixion? He gives a list. He cites, to his skeptical mind, the way he does this, he gives 11 sources, 11 independent sources for the crucifixion of Jesus. 11.

Now, on ancient historical grounds, why isn’t 11 exemplary when, as Paul Meier says, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University, Meier says many things in the ancient world depend on one witness, and two make an event unimpeachable. Two. Bart Ehrman says we have 11 different sources, historical sources for the crucifixion of Jesus.

So here’s what you get, bottom line. This phrase will have virtually no disputants in the contemporary world. Jesus’ earliest followers had experiences that they thought were appearances of the risen Jesus. Virtually nobody disputes that. Bart Ehrman says, no, I don’t dispute that. It’s determined historically. We know it’s true. Why would I say I dispute it? It’s just true.

So here’s what you do. You have that sentence. The earliest followers of Jesus had experiences that they believe were appearances of the risen Jesus. And what do you do if you’re a skeptic? You come up with alternatives. Well, maybe they were lying. Well, maybe they saw hallucinations.

But the same data, which I’ve been given here, the same data which scholars share, say those other theories don’t work. And so now you’re left with an appearance. And therefore, a lot of skeptics, the place we began, a lot of people today who are happy and are often quoted by the skeptical community, will say, I’m a skeptic, as Dale Allison does. He was the one I was citing earlier. Dale Allison, who says, I’m a skeptic. He calls himself a cryptic deist. And then he says, but I’m sure the risen Jesus appeared to His disciples after His death. I can give you others.

But is that the definition? Ed Sanders, E.P. Sanders, Duke University, recently retired from Duke, historian. He gives a list of well-accepted historical events. And he calls himself a liberal. And then he says this in his list of accepted historical facts. He says, ‘The following is an historical fact. The earliest disciples saw the risen Jesus. I don’t know how exactly they saw him, but they saw him.’ That’s his list. And that’s part of his list. That’s one of his facts. It is irreducible minimum list. The earliest disciples saw the risen Jesus.

HOW DO WE GET THAT? Because we have the data that can track it back to the beginning.

Okay. Art, should I take some questions here or comments? And if you have to leave, folks, don’t think anything about getting up and leaving. You know, I’m used to university classes too. And I’m used to people walking out at all time while I’m speaking. So, questions or comments? Derogatory remarks? Yes.

MALE AUDIENCE: Yeah, so it seems like one of the other things that’s going on in your argument is that you have these — that you have like the 15 days where they met and talked, and you have independent eyewitnesses coming together, and their stories corroborate each other. And that, therefore, to some degree, lending truth, or lending some kind of truth value to what they claim they saw, that they saw the risen Christ. There’s been recent technical results that show, his name is Eric Olson, and he’s a philosopher, that shows that coherence of independent testimony is not necessarily truth conducive, given that the credibility of the testifiers is questionable. And when you have testifiers like, for example, Paul, James, Peter, it seems like their own credibility could be questioned.

GARY HABERMAS: Because?

MALE AUDIENCE: Well, because Paul was a murderer. And there, so my question is, what is your first century source that Peter, James, and John were reliable, so that the corroboration of their independent testimony we can think is conducive to the truth of what they’re reporting?

GARY HABERMAS: So how do we know that the witnesses themselves are reliable? Okay, first of all, I’ll even add to your objection. There have been a number of psychological studies on the nature of eyewitness reports and memory. How does, in fact, Richard Bauckham, in his book called Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, the Cambridge guy I was referring to, he has a whole chapter on eyewitness credibility and eyewitnesses as a good, in the ancient world, as a good indication, or not, of events. And he goes through these psychological studies and asks the same sort of question.

Okay, now I would say one answer to that is, somebody like a Bart Ehrman, I think, if he were up here, having just gone through this book that Jesus exists, I think Bart would say, now look, I’m not a Christian, so I’m not trying to argue for Christianity, because that’s how he starts his book out. I’m not Christian, so I’m not trying to argue for this. But I think he’d say, that’s why we use Paul, and that’s why we use those half-dozen books, because all we know is he’s a good scholar in the right place at the right time, and he knows the other guys.

Bart has a whole chapter on, well, it’s a half a chapter. He does two things in this one chapter, and this is one of them. He does a chapter, again, half a chapter, on Paul’s meeting right here in Galatians chapter one. And he stops and he says, you know, it’s rather incredible that Paul got 15 days with Peter. And then he says, I’d like 15 days with Peter. You know, that’s good, that’s good. And then he says, Bart Ehrman, the skeptic, says, how much closer to eyewitness testimony can we get than this? He says, this is the best testimony we have. So I think Bart would say, these guys were in the right place, right time. Paul’s himself a scholar, so he’s the one that’s going to check this out.

Now, we have a trial attorney over here who maybe can say this, but I would say this. I’d say, eyewitnesses don’t prove something’s true. But in general, it’s the basis of the scientific method, and in general, we think it’s among the very best types of evidence. So I’d answer your question by saying, it’s not foolproof. But if somebody has a problem and says, well, that’s great, but your one guy’s a murderer and the one guy’s a whatever, then they should come up with an alternative thesis that explains this better, like you do in a court of law, or you do in a history class, or you do in a philosophy class, in epistemology, let’s say.

And you have to go through this, and you’d have to make a case for something better happening, and I’m going to say the alternatives aren’t going to work very well. And that’s why. You have to ask, why did the EP Saunders of Duke, Bart Ehrman in North Carolina, why have the skeptics moved from, no, you can’t use that evidence, that’s really, really bad, to, wow, this stuff for the resurrection is looking incredibly good. Now, why would somebody who doesn’t believe those things move over toward it? Something’s convincing them that this data, it’s not impregnable. No data are. Everything’s probabilistic. It’s fallible data. We have to do the best we have of what we have.

And if you can get back to early eyewitnesses, the two E’s, I sometimes call them, by the way, empty tomb, if you want to talk about E’s, there’s a third one. I told you when I went to graduate school in the 70s, nobody believed the empty tomb, unless you were an evangelical. In the literature today, there are 23, at least I’ve come up with 23, 23 arguments for the empty tomb, 23 arguments for the tomb being empty.

So now you have early eyewitnesses with an empty tomb. And the data have to answer, have to be addressed all that. So I just say, best place, best time, most authoritative people we have. Paul was certainly a scholar. And so what’s your better shot at the data?

MALE AUDIENCE: My question, again, is what, now you’re going to get back to explanation arguments?

GARY HABERMAS: Yeah, like abduction.

MALE AUDIENCE: You can switch it back to me, but I’ll switch it back to you.

GARY HABERMAS: Sure.

MALE AUDIENCE: Again, what is your first century source that gives us some degree of confidence that the eyewitness testifiers were credible? I seem to have evidence that they were not.

GARY HABERMAS: Like what? How does somebody being a murderer mean you can’t witness to something?

MALE AUDIENCE: Well, we need to know the veracity of their testimony.

GARY HABERMAS: Sure. But to use your example, how does Bill is a murderer, so Bill can’t testify in the court of law?

MALE AUDIENCE: No, no, it at least adds a question to whether or not they have the kind of character that we can rely on their testimony as being conducive.

GARY HABERMAS: So that makes them a bad character.

MALE AUDIENCE: It puts it in question. So I need to read something.

GARY HABERMAS: But what’s on the other side? As I said, there’s got to be a reason why skeptics are taking his six books and thinking they meet the criteria. Scholars, stepping into the right guys, thinks clearly, can put a philosophical argument together. And he’s been converted by this, so you have to ask him, why has he changed from being a murderer to being a very ethical, law-abiding, religious teacher? What’s happened to him? And Paul says, ‘OK, it was the resurrection of Jesus. That’s what turned me around.’

You’d have to answer that on its own grounds. Just by virtue of the people he knew, the time and place he wrote, his scholarly credentials, how he wrote, the nature of his arguments, that’s probably why Paul’s the critic’s darling. That’s probably why they use him. They think he stands those tests, the very thing you’re asking.

MALE AUDIENCE: OK. And so you think that that makes his testimony reliable?

GARY HABERMAS: Among other things, including his conversion, because that tells you, I used to do this. That was horrible. I don’t do that right now. I’m over on this side of the fence, and here’s why I am. So he would even agree with you about who he used to be. He says that plenty of times in those six to seven books. So I think he can answer those questions.

Again, if it were that easy to deal with it, these guys would, scholarship today would not have moved over. If it’s that easy to say these guys are not credible witnesses. That’s why Bart Ehrman has a half a chapter on this meeting saying he wished he were there. And this is a great way to hear early evidence of what’s going on. Plus, we have a lot of other reports that get us back to the cross.

MALE AUDIENCE: He’s asking, what’s the first century evidence of his credibility? I’m missing it.

GARY HABERMAS: What do you mean, first century?

MALE AUDIENCE: I wanted some kind of.

GARY HABERMAS: Because Bart Ehrman himself says we have sort of.

MALE AUDIENCE: He’s contemporary.

GARY HABERMAS: Sorry?

MALE AUDIENCE: He’s contemporary.

GARY HABERMAS: Who’s contemporary? Bart Ehrman is a distinguished professor at University of North Carolina who is an agnostic leaning toward atheism. He’s a New Testament scholar, PhD from Princeton. And he used to be a Christian. He walked away from the faith. He tells everybody, he says, I’m not a Christian. I’m not trying to give you an argument for this. I’m just telling you they have a good foundation for what they’re saying. Christians do. But I’m not one. And he’s very, very well known. He’s probably got 10 books published at the Oxford University Press. He’s the main guy that skeptics. Used to be John Dominic Rawson, but now it’s Bart Ehrman. He’s the hot skeptic.

Yes, sir.

MALE AUDIENCE: Yeah. On the same subject, the arguments that I’ve heard that are most convincing to me would be that the accounts don’t exclude evidence like Paul has had this aspect to his life.

GARY HABERMAS: He used to be a loser.

MALE AUDIENCE: There’s a lot of things in the accounts that, if you’re trying to make up a story, you probably wouldn’t put in. And the second one, and I don’t know if there’s really historical evidence here, but I’ve heard it, is the martyrdom of the early believers, that they actually took this witness thing that they had and gave their life to, rather than refute it. So maybe you can comment on those.

GARY HABERMAS: Let me take the second one, martyrdom. Martyrdom does not prove a message. Martyrdom proves that the witnesses believe their message. It’s all martyrdom does. We think about other examples. You could be an atheist communist and die for your message to propagate communism. And many did, back after the Russian Revolution and so on. Buddhist priests who set themselves on fire to protest the war in Vietnam. You couldn’t deny the fact that they were utterly appalled at the war and thought people shouldn’t be killing each other, so they died for an ethical principle.

When the earliest disciples died for their message, it doesn’t prove their message. But you’re right. They put themselves in a position to say, I’ve satisfied myself that there’s enough data here. Now you say, well, do we have evidence for their martyrdom? I wouldn’t go around saying, I would not say that we know that all the early apostles died as martyrs, because some of the data for that gets pretty late.

But THE BIG FOUR, one thing I didn’t tell you was that when Paul went back to Jerusalem in about 48 AD, James was still there. Peter was still there. Paul, of course, was there. John was there. The four most influential Christians in the early church, you can’t pick anybody who was more influential. All four were there. We have first century sources for the martyrdom of Paul, James, Peter, and a second. Christians frequently say John wasn’t martyred. We have a second century source for the martyrdom of John.

So the big four there, three of the four, we have sources for the martyrdom. That only proves that they believed it. So you have to ask, on what basis?

MALE AUDIENCE: I want to make a comment on that, because I’m not crazy about the analogies you use to undercut that message. And here’s why.

GARY HABERMAS: What analogy?

MALE AUDIENCE: The believers, the communist believers…

GARY HABERMAS: The Buddhist priests.

MALE AUDIENCE: OK, so that was because that was a belief structure that they had committed themselves to. This was the observation of an event, the resurrection of Jesus. That’s a personal experience of an event. It’s not people that actually personally witnessed an event. And it’s different to die for a personally witnessed event than it would be for a belief structure.

GARY HABERMAS: No, I think you’re definitely right. In fact, I say regularly, when I give this little thing, I say regularly, the difference between the Buddhist priests and the communists who are dying for philosophical or ethical convictions, which people do. In fact, the two fields that people most readily die for are political and religious views.

But one is in the philosophical realm, but the other one is in the event. And as I go on to say, these four men, and others, but these four men were just about the only ones in the world. Today, when a Muslim missionary dies for their faith, when a Christian missionary dies for their faith, they’re dying for what they thought was Peter’s testimony. They’re dying for what they thought was Paul’s or Muhammad’s testimony. They’re dying for their testimony. Only these four guys were in a position to know whether their testimony was right or wrong. That’s the point you’re making?

MALE AUDIENCE: Yeah.

GARY HABERMAS: I think that is, they died for their conviction about an historical event, their conviction about it. Yes?

MALE AUDIENCE: Back to the comment about Paul being a murderer, there’s different kinds of murderer that you might say, in a court of law, he might not be held reliable if you were a murderer that shot somebody to rob a bank or something. But Paul’s murdering had to do with the early Christians. And because it was a matter of principle, it’d be no different than saying, we can’t trust a veteran who came back from the war who shot somebody. And so therefore, he’s a murderer.

And there’s a big difference in a court of law between a witness and an expert witness. We’re not saying these people were expert witnesses. We’re saying they’re witnesses. They’re just telling you what they saw. And there’s no reason to deny it unless they have something to gain by it. Or if they were unreliable because they were

GARY HABERMAS: Or mentally ill.

MALE AUDIENCE: Or they could lie in anything. But Paul certainly was not that.

GARY HABERMAS: That’s a great point. If it’s true that Paul is acting on state’s evidence, if he’s acting on what the authorities told him to do, his murderers would be on the level of somebody who threw the switch for the electric chair. Because that was a state-sanctioned, that’s what the Christians were. He was sent by authorities to mop up this. He was not unethical himself.

Craig, do you have any comment about this?

MALE AUDIENCE: No, I think the answer to your question is there are no other sources outside of the New Testament Gospels for Paul’s character. But of course, you had to assume the truth of those Gospels to even get to Paul being a murderer. There’s no other external source. These are the best sources. They are the earliest. Did they have any motive or not?

GARY HABERMAS: So you’re accepting the sources even to get that? Because it’s in the same sources. When people say to me, how come Christians were so prejudiced to only accept four Gospels when there were, different numbers are given, when there were 23 Gospels? What they’re not telling you is, in order to say there were 23 Gospels, you’re going up to the fourth century AD. And my comeback to that frequently is, it was not the Christians’ fault if they accepted every Gospel that was available in 100 AD, but there were only four.

In other words, they accepted everything. They tried to be inclusive. They knew there were differences between John and Mark, but they accepted them because they were the early sources. They accepted what we had. So at the time, there’s no other comeback. There’s no other data. We don’t know. I often ask people when I’m, it often happens in a context just like this, where somebody will say, well, why couldn’t this have been true? Or why couldn’t that have been true?

I’d say, I’ll tell you what. Give me, I’ll let you have a much lesser standard than Bart Ehrman used for the cross. Bart gives 11 sources for the crucifixion of Jesus. Give me two. Give me two first century sources that says Paul was unreliable. There aren’t any. And the comeback is, well, I’m just saying. OK, well, the just saying opposes the sources we have. If all the data we have are on this side, and the I’m just saying is on the other side, what’s that to put up against the two sources? We have sources versus no sources. We don’t have contrary first century sources that say other things: ‘Jesus was a loser. He didn’t die. He wasn’t raised. I’m telling you, I verified that myself. And this is written in 80 AD.’ There’s no contrary evidence.

MALE AUDIENCE: Wasn’t the canon, didn’t it, came in in the fourth century? But that’s what we consider the canon now. Anyway, but that’s because, I think, the early sources, the eyewitness sources, and the people that were living, the church fathers that were living at that time that continuously went and passed on the information were continually judging in terms of the eyewitness sources and the earlier.

GARY HABERMAS: You say fourth century, but there was no council that chose the books. That’s often said. They didn’t choose books. They recognized what people were saying up until that time. I’ll give you an example. We have a very early canon called the Muratorian Fragment. Dates about 165 or 170 AD. Now, unfortunately, the document’s broken off. So the last few books on the list are not there. The end of it’s been cut off. But the list that they give, it’s the same as our New Testament back until about second Peter. Only the very end is missing.

There’s another work from the same time called Tatian’s Fourfold Gospel. And it’s a comparison of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John from the second century. We have early writers, Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Papias from Fragments, who list the four authoritative gospels from the very beginning at the end of the first century. So we have the earliest sources saying these are the authoritative books that we have up on the list on. Yes?

MALE AUDIENCE: If Bart Ehrman puts forth the credibility for these 11 sources for the crucifixion, then why is he still digging for a papyrus?

GARY HABERMAS: Great question. OK, question is, if he has 11 sources, because he believes, he thinks the 11 sources are great. That’s why he believes Jesus was crucified. He says, Jesus died by crucifixion. It’s a historical fact. I don’t have to back away from that. That’s what ancient history says. And he says, also, the earliest followers of Jesus believe they saw appearances of the risen Jesus. I don’t have to back off from that. That’s what early history says. He says, I don’t back off from those at all.

But if he’s not going to be a Christian, he’s going to have to explain the data variously. He’s going to have to explain it otherwise. And so some of the evangelicals who have debated Bart — Mike Licona, Bill Craig, Craig Evans, Dan Wallace, and others, they go over, how can you explain that data better? That’s what some of these debates are about. Now, the ones with Dan Wallace are about the status of the New Testament manuscripts, the thing we just got talking about.

But I would have supposed that Bart Ehrman thinks he can get out of it some way. But as far as the outline of the argument, he admits the setup. He admits we can get back to one year after the cross for both crucifixion statements and resurrection statements, and resurrection. We can get it back to one to two — he says one to two years after the cross.

Yes, sir.

MALE AUDIENCE: Just on this point, it seems to me that the skeptics or atheists can still say they agree with all the scholarship and say, OK, Jesus is the guy who lived in that time. He’s a guy who was raised with the dead people. So what’s that got to do with me? I don’t know if he was the Son of God.

GARY HABERMAS: Right. Yeah, I liken it to — if I remember going on a blind date before I got married. When someone sets you up with a blind date, a friend might say to you, whichever way it goes, guy, gal, you say, hey, all your buddies are married. You’re the last one. You’re an old guy. I’m trying to set you up with somebody who’s going to change your life. This person is the one you’re looking for. And the person comes back, guy or gal, comes back and says, you’re right. This was extremely special. I mean, this person is neat. We’re going to keep up our friendship and so on.

But there’s something missing here. You mistake me for somebody who wants to get married. I don’t. And the reason I’m here in town is because of this local church here in Santa Barbara. We’re doing a seminar not on the resurrection. We’re doing it on religious doubt. OK, I’ve got three books on religious doubt. I’m just saying I’ve got a little bit of background. I’ve been working with a clinical psychologist for 20 years. And we’ve been testing. He’s been testing. And we’re getting ready to publish in a couple of secular journals with what we found out. The vast majority of doubters, the vast majority of doubters, 70% to 85% of doubters doubt not for factual reasons, but for emotional reasons. Something’s happened to them.

C.S. Lewis says, I became an atheist when my mother got sick. And I prayed and prayed and prayed for her to be saved. And she wasn’t saved physically. And she wasn’t. And I even thought after she died that God would raise her from the dead. He didn’t. So I was pretty ticked. And a few years later, I became an atheist. It’s events like that in people’s lives. In a recent survey, one of the largest people groups who are angry at God, this is a psychological study, were atheists. 19% of atheists are angry at God, which caused one of the researchers to say, yeah, how are you mad if somebody doesn’t exist?

And one of the researchers said this. The guy said, ‘Hey, I don’t believe unicorns exist. But I don’t spend all my life hating on them.’ And that was amazing. So in other words, my point is a lot of people go on blind dates who don’t want to get married. And just because I get asked frequently, if the evidence is this good, why are there skeptics? It’s the simplest question in the world. They don’t want to get married. They’re not candidates for this. And we are all prejudiced. We all look at data with jaundiced eyes. We all do. We often call it the color of our glasses. Bill looks at the world with rose-colored glasses. Yeah, we all do that.

The reason I came doesn’t mean I’m a purely rational person. And the atheist who rejects is not a purely rational person. We all have other things on our agenda. But not only do we have other things, they far outweigh our rational interests as a general rule. 70% to 85% of doubters are emotional doubters. So I think people who think that these are intellectual exercises and you solve these things in universities and then it’s all done, that’s not the way belief is formulated.

Yes.

MALE AUDIENCE: But I want to make a comment based on that. I think it’s an important one. This doesn’t hold just for the average population. I think this holds for the scientific community that we normally think are objective people that look at their data and draw the normal conclusions from it. And if you look at any objective scientific analysis of the origin of life from non-life, the preponderance of the data is so hugely against this not being a spontaneous, possibly even a spontaneous event. Yet, regardless of that, I would say a large majority of people that are involved in the research in that area in fact emotionally are committed to a naturalistic view.

GARY HABERMAS: Yeah, it’s Thomas Nagel, the atheist philosopher, who says I don’t take this view because, you know, I think it’s the best evidence, whatever. I take it because I can’t stand the other view and I don’t want to be over there. And by the way, he’s not the only one who makes comments like that. Richard Lewontin, same sort of comment. We all do that. We’re all prejudiced. We all have an angle. And it’s our job to see if the view can be explained away by our angle. Atheists should do that. Christians should do that. Can the data be explained away by the angle we have? Is that prejudice enough of a reason? Because we all have prejudice.

Good point. Okay. Well, I’ll stick around until he tells me I’ve got to go. Thanks, folks.

For Further Reading:

Mankind in Sin: Paul Washer Sermon (Transcript)

Resurrection Of The Body: Derek Prince (Full Transcript)

AI, Man & God: Prof. John Lennox (Full Transcript)

Where Did The Bible Come From and Why Should We Care: Tim Mackie (Transcript)

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