By MICHAEL SLOVANOS
IN this interview, historian and philosopher Dr. Gary Habermas explains the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus. He also talks about NDE’s (Near Death Experiences) and the Shroud of Turin.
Billions of Christians worldwide profess to believe in the historical existence, death, and supernatural resurrection of Jesus, but is there a rational, intellectual basis for this belief?
“This man from Nazareth, a working-class Jew, made an exclusive claim to personal deity. The size of his popular religion and this one audacious claim refuse to be ignored, yet neither one amounts to evidence,” Dr Habermas explains on his web page.
The historian explains that he has dedicated his professional life to the examination of the relevant historical, philosophical, and theological issues surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus and his extensive list of publications and debates provides a thorough account of the current state of the issue.
“Christian believers as well as unbelievers may find within the contents of this site a strong argument for the philosophical possibility of miracles and the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, as well as the theological and practical implications of this event,” he says.
Dr Habermas says he knows of one article giving eight evidences for the resurrection according to critical methodology and another one giving about 10. He himself has 22 evidences for the resurrection, all critically derived rather than simply quoting Bible verses.
He also employs the minimal facts methodology, and basically uses six minimal facts, each of which must be evidenced from multiple and various sources. These minimal facts are supported by more than 100 pieces of data, which again are critically ascertained facts accepted by critics.
He says the critics do not disallow the facts of the resurrection and more than 90% of scholars now allow for its historicity.
Asked about the best naturalistic arguments against the resurrection narrative, Habermas says “not only are there are no good ones, there are no good theories that you could really take and ride to the bank, so to speak, if you’re a naturalist, to take care of the resurrection with this, but the critics have generally given up … expounding these theories.”
When skeptics inevitably raise the “other worldly” objection, saying there is no empirical evidence for a world outside of the one we know (“you’re asking me to believe in Narnia”), Habermas points to the issue of near death experiences (NDEs), which have been claimed by some 30 million people.
Habermas himself has documented 300 of these cases and cites another academic who has published 100 papers on NDEs in medical journals.
Another prominent academic defending the death and resurrection narrative is Dr John Lennox, who in a 10 minute extract from a longer address, breaks down the historical and biblical facts that support one of the most important moments in history.
Lennox is a Northern Irish mathematician, bioethicist, and lay theologian who has written many books on religion, ethics, the relationship between science and God and has also participated in public debates with atheists including Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.
In the video, Lennox makes some interesting comments about his encounters with Hitchens and Dawkins and the historical basis of their arguments, which comes mostly from the enlightenment philosopher David Hume.
He also talks of his encounter with Professor Antony Flew, the famous atheist English philosopher of the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, who came to believe in God and admitted to Lennox that he had “got Hume wrong”.
