This debate is among of the best I’ve heard on deep matters of metaphysics, though it strayed a fair bit from the topic question at times. Muchos kudos to the Veritas Forum for bringing together two presenters who were articulate, brilliant, cordial, & downright erudite, for good hearty intellectual jousting.
Since I’m an unregenerate cynic, thought, I’ll start with the low point of the event. Probably the worst argument of the talk was this one from Dr. Alexander:
Of course, he fails to make premise #2 explicit in his argument, presumably because if he had done so he would have seen this argument as unsound and not bothered to utter it aloud. Perhaps there is some way to salvage this argument by recasting as inductive, but I cannot see how right at the moment.
p.s. I’ve developed a bit of a crush on Jenna Levin. Why didn’t we have any girls like that in my old physics department?
This debate could have been better than it was if only the speakers had been given more of an opportunity for direct cross-examination. As it was, they only went head-to-head on a few issues, most notably that of the validity of meme theory as a viable paradigm for the social sciences to research. McGrath manages to sound fairly erudite when talking on such matters, as when he quite cleverly quipped that memetics is not awaiting its Watson and Crick, but rather its Michelson and Morley. Of course, a thoroughgoing scientist would have to leave both possibilities wide open, but McGrath seems to disregard the former altogether when he peremptorily rejected memetic theory (along with religious unbelief more generally) without first examining its rational foundations.
Dennett (alas) doesn’t fully elucidate the key point at issue here, which is that while some genes and memes may be merely parasitic others are far more symbiotic with their hosts. Just as we humans cannot live without our inborn intestinal fauna, so also we could not thrive as ultra-social civilizational beings without any number of meme-complexes, such as language, ethics, and law. However, just as many protozoa are not particularly helpful to human hosts, so also there are ideas which, while spectacularly successful as self-replicators, are not particularly helpful to human minds and bodies (e.g. capital punishment for apostasy, blasphemy, carving deities, etcetera). Such parasitic ideas as these survive not by conferring survival benefits directly upon their host, but rather by creating strong incentives for memetic replication along with threats of reprisal against those who fail to adopt them.
McGrath utterly fails to appreciate the distinction between adaptive (symbiotic) memes and maladaptive (parasitic) memes, and thus cannot see how it might be that some memes spread because they are true and useful to their hosts, whereas others will spread merely because they well-designed to do so. The lesson here is that a little humility goes a long way in allowing one to see the full import of a novel and difficult idea. Perhaps more importantly, one ought not create straw-man simplifications of one’s opponent’s views and then crow proudly about burning them down.
Overall, though, this was a good exchange between two deep thinkers who manage to keep cordial even as they are lobbing rhetorical barbs. Not a bad listen.
Overall rating: 3.5 stars
This radio segment isn’t nearly quite so insightful as one might expect from the names involved. Alas, the conversation was lightly moderated and rarely focused, and Richard Carrier did not manage to ask all of the pointed questions which he had prepared for the broadcast. As a result, the two apologists covered more-or-less the same ground that they always do, and rarely took the opportunity to dig deeper. Worse yet, they derailed the conversation a few times to discuss such sideline issues, such as what precisely Herodotus wrote about Zalmoxis. Alas!
All things considered, you may safely skip this broadcast, unless you are completely new to Christian apologetics and hope to hear an overview of the minimal facts model advocated by Habermas and his young apprentice.
[2006-10-27]
From there, Craig goes on to argue that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation for these four facts.
Ehrman attempts to refute this argument by showing that any of these facts might easily have had a perfectly natural explanation. The third point, for example, might be explained by enthusiastic religious visions or by the possibility that grief stricken followers may have mistaken someone else for their beloved rabbi, cruelly taken from them. Interestingly, both of these hypotheses enjoy some support in the Christian Scriptures, the former in the writings of Paul (who claimed to have personal visions of Jesus and who counseled his parishioners in the proper methods of receiving divine revelation while in communal meetings) and the latter in a handful of gospel pericopes in which Jesus' forlorn disciples do not recognize him at first but later come to believe they had seen him.
For the empty tomb, Ehrman comes up with an off-the-cuff scenario which is too good to pass up:
This seems perfectly plausible to me, although we do not have any evidence one way or the other. Once an empty tomb is actually found, it is only a matter of time until the resurrection rumors and claims of personal revelation start flying around the community of those who once followed Jesus and considered him to be the Messiah promised of God.Jesus gets buried by Joseph of Arimathea. Two of Jesus' family members are upset that an unknown Jewish leader has buried the body. In the dead of night, these two family members raid the tomb, taking the body off to bury it for themselves. But Roman soldiers on the lookout see them carrying the shrouded corpse through the streets, they confront them, and they kill them on the spot. They throw all three bodies into a common burial plot, where within three days these bodies are decomposed beyond recognition.
Well, look at these other hypotheses. Perhaps, for example, family members of Jesus stole the body. Isn't that more probable?" I don't think so. Notice there's no motive in that case for stealing the body; the family members of Jesus didn't believe in him during his lifetime. Nobody else other than Joseph and his servants and the women disciples even knew where the body had been interred. The time was insufficient for such a conspiracy to be hatched and launched between Friday night and Sunday morning. Also the grave clothes in the tomb disprove the hypothesis of tomb robbery; nobody would undress the body before taking it away.
Here, Craig assumes facts quite apart from those which he established earlier as part of a widespread scholarly consensus, such as the grave clothes in the tomb. Earlier in this same debate, Craig maintained that "the presence of inconsistencies in a later, less reliable source does nothing to undermine the credibility of an earlier, more credible source" but fails to note that the earlier more credible source in this case is that of Mark, which makes no mention whatsoever of grave clothes lying in the tomb! He also seems
Possibly the most unique part of this debate was an admirable but quixotic attempt at Bayesian maths by Dr. Craig. He gets the basic idea right, but mischaracterizes how the formulae ought should apply to his own position as well as that of his opponent. I'm boring myself just recounting this part, so I'll move on.
I'd give each debater 4.5 stars on substance, with -0.5 for snarkiness and circumstantial ad hom. Overall, this was a four-star debate.
This debate has been republished as part of a book, for those few who prefer the written word to the mellifluous tones of Wright and the brougish wit of Crossan. In both the debate and the book, Wright lays out his affirmative case for the resurrection of Jesus:
Perhaps the most original aspect of the book—I’m honestly not sure now, my head was so full of it—is its compilation of six Christian mutations within first-century Jewish resurrection belief. My case here is that we can track with considerable precision and over a wide range of early evidence a phenomenon so striking and remarkable that it demands a serious and well-grounded historical explanation. Early Christian belief in resurrection is clearly not something derived from any form of paganism; it is a mutation from within Judaism, or rather six mutations.
First, belief in resurrection has moved from being a peripheral item of belief, as it is in Judaism, to the center.
Second, the meaning of resurrection has been sharpened up. Jewish sources leave it vague as to what form the new body will take, but the early Christian sources, again and again, indicate that the body will be transformed into a new type of immortal physicality.
Third, there is no spectrum of belief in early Christianity on what happens after death, as there is in both Judaism and paganism; there were many different opinions out there. But from Paul through to Tertullian, there is development and reflection about what precisely resurrection would mean, and how to argue it before a skeptical audience. But they all, except the Gnostics and the semi-Gnostics, believe in resurrection. No Christians known to us retain signs of the other main beliefs of the period.
Fourth, resurrection as an event has split into two. Those first-century Jews who expected the resurrection saw it as a single event, the raising to new bodily life of all at the very end. But it is central to Paul and, after him, to all other early Christian writers that the resurrection is now a two-stage event—or better, a single event taking place in two moments, as Paul puts it: Christ the first fruits, and then at his coming those who belong to Him.
Fifth, resurrection functions in a newly metaphorical way. Resurrection, the word or the concept, could be used in Judaism, as in Ezekiel 37, as a metaphor for the return from exile. That has disappeared in early Christianity. Instead, we find the term resurrection, still possessing its literal, bodily meaning, also functioning metaphorically, as in Romans 6 or Colossians 2 and 3 with reference to baptism and holiness.
Sixth, nobody expected the Messiah to be raised from the dead, for the simple reason that nobody in Judaism at the time expected a Messiah who would die, especially one who would die shamefully and violently. But not only did the early Christians believe that the Messiah had been raised from the dead, they made the resurrection a key element in their demonstration that he was the Messiah, developing several brand-new exegetical arguments to make the point, particularly from the Psalms and Isaiah, as in Romans 1, Romans 15, Acts 2, and so forth.
Wright goes on to argue that the best explanation for these six mutations (which together served to evolve the doctrines of first-century Judaism into those of second-century Christianity) is that a man must have been literally and physically raised from a tomb. Wright does attempt to explain why these mutations would not be as easily explained by a deeply mistaken but profoundly sincere belief among Jesus' followers that he had been resurrected. Such a mistaken but sincerely held belief would easily explain all of these subsequent theological and literary shifts, and in more or less the exact same way. The only difference between the two hypotheses would lie at the root of the new dogmas, rather than the subsequent evolutions thereof.
Crossan tends to consider the question of bodily versus spiritual resurrection as really a bit of a distraction, and seems more than a bit hesitant to address Wright's arguments for or against the literality of the relevant passages. I found this a bit puzzling, as he was more than happy to delve into these matters in great depth in his books. Perhaps he is just too good-natured to turn an affable dialogue into a contentious debate. The Irish generally hate to offend English sensibilities, after all.
Overall I’d give this debate a 3.5, mostly because these fellows involved are clearly learned, good-natured, and easy on the ears. Had there been more valid arguments and substantive debate over the soundness thereof, it really could have been quite an event.
