*Sigh* There are Just Too Many Ways to Be Christian

Christians cannot agree with themselves. So why should I take any of them seriously? Believers have no method to settle their own disputes because faith has no method. Can you at least try to understand this? Here is an example. Evangelical Christians will bristle when they read what a liberal wrote about the resurrection, which I'll quote below. But this is the same type of reasoning skeptics see when we read of your own defenses of the resurrection.

There are some Christian scholars, though, who maintain that the historical method can indeed be used to determine whether Jesus was resurrected from the dead (e.g. N.T. Wright, Mike Licona). There are others who suggest that we can determine the likelihood of Jesus’ resurrection probabilistically via Bayes’ theorem (e.g. Richard Swinburne). I have even seen one guy, Frank Tipler, attempt to utilize quantum physics in order to assert that Jesus was resurrected from the dead.

Another perspective on this issue, which is what I myself agree with, is that the resurrection of Jesus is a historiographically inaccessible event, due to the fact that the very nature of the resurrection is inherently contradictory towards physical reality, thus making the historical- and scientific-methods inadequate and ineffective in determining whether it really occurred. This type of perspective is held by various contemporary theologians...[Jesus's] resurrection is an act accomplished by the finger of God and is an apocalyptic event which transcends what the historical method can access, meaning that it cannot be confirmed as history and thus has to be seen in other terms. This view is not due to an imperialist epistemological view of history, but is the result of viewing Christ’s resurrection for what it really is – an apocalyptic happening that breaks through into the linearity of history and is itself a history-making event. Link

Evangelicals are right to argue that if the resurrection cannot be known using the historical method then they ought to give up their faith. Come on now, get real, really, I agree with the evangelicals on this score. What kind of event is an "apocalyptic" one that cannot be accessed by the historical method? That method is the only one available for knowing what happened in the past. The resurrection of Jesus might have occurred, but there are a lot of events that have happened in the past that reasonable people should not accept. The reason is simple. Jesus might have flown into the sky, just as Mohammed might have done so (on a horse). But without sufficient evidence we should not believe either of them did. Aliens might have abducted some guy too. But again, without sufficient evidence to accept his testimony--since none of us were there when the alleged event took place--we should not think it happened. When it comes to the resurrection of Jesus, he might have been raised from the dead but since we were not there we need sufficient evidence, historical evidence, to accept, at best, the second, third, and fourth hand testimony of the early church.

Still, liberals are absolutely correct to admit the historical method cannot lead reasonable people to conclude Jesus was raised from the dead. So I agree with the liberals too. The historian's tools are inadequate for the task of detecting the miraculous claim of the resurrection.

This is why I say that when believers criticize each other I think they are right! All I need to do is listen in and agree. They do the work for me. It's easy. We don't really even need to debunk Christianity. They are doing it to themselves, all of the time. To see this when it comes to atonement theories read this.

So what's really going on here? What we see is that Christians will do or say anything in order to maintain their culturally inherited faith. When faith is the basis for what a person concludes, anything can be believed. Evangelicals either ignore or are ignorant of what the historical method is all about, and liberals ignore or are ignorant of what we should conclude using that method. Faith causes believers to ignore facts. Faith causes believers to be ignorant about the historical method. The historical method is inadequate for detecting miracles like the resurrection of Jesus, so the reasonable conclusion is to doubt it. That method is the only one reasonable people have for knowing what happened in the past. And that method cannot detect miracles.

In both cases faith has shown itself to be inadequate. It leads liberals and evangelicals to believe against the evidence. That's because faith has no method.

To see why the resurrection miracle should not be believed even if it happened simply read this one post.