Thought to be the place of the resurrection of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem Israel
The title of this piece is tongue-in-cheek, a play on the “minimal facts” evidence for the resurrection made famous by Gary Habermas. I don’t really have a killer piece of evidence that uses fewer facts (or no facts) that trumps all other arguments. But, maybe I got your attention!
As often is the case, my inspiration comes from what someone said or wrote. In the podcast interview linked below, Mason Jones describes how he he decided to read through the Gospel accounts as an atheist who knew next to nothing about Christianity. He quickly caught on that the resurrection is the centerpiece of Christianity, so he focused his attention on that.
He researched the evidence for the resurrection. He googled arguments for the resurrection and arguments against the resurrection. Though he was an atheist at that time, he was willing to give the evidence that exists a chance. (Whether there was any, he didn’t know.)
As he considered the arguments and counterarguments, he found that the arguments against the resurrection didn’t address very well the arguments for the resurrection. They didn’t take them seriously.
Then he realized that the arguments against the resurrection only work if you start with the presupposition that the resurrection didn’t happen. Because it is impossible. Because people don’t come back to life. Ever.
If you take that presupposition out of the equation, thought Jones, the evidence favors the conclusion that the resurrection occurred, and the arguments against the resurrection loose their luster. If you want to hear the rest of Mason Jones’s thought journey from atheism to theism to Christianity in his own words, you can listen here.
Meanwhile, I want to spend a little time considering the presuppositions people make about the resurrection.
“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” Albert Einstein
I am intrigued by the stories of peoples’ journeys, especially of their thought journeys. Some are more intriguing than others. The story of Pat Flynn fits squarely into the more intriguing category. (See the Side B Stories Podcast – Episode 78 – Science, Philosophy, and Reality – Pat Flynn’s Story)
Patrick Flynn has an educational background in philosophy. He embraced naturalism at an early age, but he encountered philosophical problems with naturalism when he read people like HL Menken and Frederick Nietzsche. These problems led him to seek answers that might provide a more coherent view of reality.
I am not going to try to summarize his whole story. You can listen to him describe his thought journey at the link in the first paragraph. I just want to focus on one aspect of his journey from atheism to theism.
Flynn’s journey took him from atheism to theism through the medium of philosophy. This process was intellectual for him, and not experiential. He became convinced of theism, first, before he even told his spouse, because he knew she was not particularly fond of religion.
He didn’t dive into Christianity after he became convinced of theism. He explored Eastern religions, first, perhaps because he had a good friend who was Indian. When the Eastern religions didn’t solve the philosophical problems posed by naturalism, he reluctantly began to explore Christianity.
One of the big issues Flynn had with atheism was the lack of explanation for the fact the universe is intelligible. Digging further, Patrick Flynn found that the fundamental, core commitments of science fit much better with theism than with atheism.
Which came first? The chicken or the egg? This is a school child’s question, but sometimes the most profound questions about life and reality as we know it can be boiled down (to keep with the theme) to simple questions and simple propositions.
Spoiler alert: I am not going to take a position on the chicken/egg controversy. That was just a teaser. The questions I want to address are far more fundamental (though actually related).
The assumptions we make, even the greatest geniuses among us, are pretty simple at their core. And we can’t prove them. We have to take them on “faith”, yet we construct our view of the world and how it works on the basis of those assumptions.
Many people develop those assumptions from an early age without much critical examination. Though our basic assumptions are the filter through which we view everything, and we use those filters constantly to make critical examinations of the world around us, we rarely examine or critique those filters, themselves.
Because our assumptions are the basis on which we reason, do science, and live our lives, we tend to be reluctant to subject them to rigorous examination. Two of the most fundamental filters by which people see the world are diametrically opposed to each other: 1) the assumption that a divine being exists through which the universe was created, and 2) the assumption to no such divine being exists, and all that exists is physical matter and energy.
(A third view is that the divine “entity” is one with matter and energy, but this view can be lumped in with the view that all that exists is matter and energy since this third view equates the divine with matter and energy. Only the first view assumes that divine reality exists separate and apart from matter and and energy and caused it to come into being.
I note that many people try to mix and match these fundamental assumptions. The view that the divine is “one with” and undifferentiated from the matter and energy that makes up the universe is such an attempt, and it runs into problems as a result.)
The assumptions could not be more simply stated: either God exists, or God does not exist. We vigorously defend whichever of these two assumptions we have embraced. We cannot definitely prove either of these assumptions, but we are often loathe to subject them to critical examination.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t “test” them. In some ways, our daily lives are a continual test of those basic assumptions – consciously or unconsciously. As we live our lives, our assumptions are repeatedly put to the test as we apply the filters derived from our assumptions.
I think all people have encountered some disconnection between reality and their basic assumptions. I think we have all struggled with feeling like the world doesn’t make perfect sense – it doesn’t add up according to our assumptions. I submit that is the inevitable state of a finite being who doesn’t know what she she doesn’t know (and, perhaps, never will).
Human beings are nothing, however, if not resilient. We are good at ploughing forward with vague feelings of unease that our basic assumptions are not adding up. We may not always be conscious of this unease. Some people simply shrug their shoulders and resign themselves to it.
“Eat, drink, and be merry” (for tomorrow we die), is the attitude people often hold onto who have reached a state of mental and emotional confusion and resolved it with indifference. Life has a way of confronting that indifference, however, when loved ones die, injustice hits close to home, and the age old question, “Why?!” pushes to the surface like rocks in a New England yard after a hard rain.
I submit that our faith is revealed in the way in which we hold to those assumptions, believing that they will be vindicated, despite the incongruities between those assumptions and the reality that continually confronts us. We put our trust in those assumptions and plow forward, moving the rocks to the edges of our intellectual territory.
Frankly, what else is a finite being to do?
A friend of mine, when I posed the question about the chicken or the egg, said the answer is easy: the egg came first. I don’t know whether he was being facetious or serious, but his confidence illustrates the point that we have faith/trust in our basic assumptions. He can’t prove the egg came first, but he was confident in his assumption.
In the following presentation, Sy Garte unpacks the basic chicken and egg question about the origin of life. Sy Garte is a scientist, a biochemist, who is retired from a career in science. He is published in scientific journals, and he is very familiar with the challenge of unpacking those basic assumptions.
His father was also a scientist. He grew up in an atheistic household that was hostile to the idea of God. He assumed that no God exists, and the world consists only of matter and energy into his 40’s.
At that point, he changed his mind on his basic assumptions. It was science that led him to question his basic assumptions and, eventually, to examine them rigorously. He came away from that rigorous examination with a new set of basic assumptions that, he says, make much more sense of science and reality.
I write today on the subject of our basic assumptions, and how they affect the way in which we approach the world. I hope you will take the time to watch the following presentation, which demonstrates how those basic assumptions affect our thinking. The presentation is only about 27 minutes long with Q & A at the end.
He presents the chicken and the egg question in two syllogisms. The first one is the assumption he grew up with and which formed the basis of his views for over 40 years:
As noted above, he was led to reexamine his basic assumptions through science. First, it was physics that posed a challenge to his basic assumption that no God exists. Much later, his beloved biochemistry led him further down the path. The second syllogism is the one he know assumes:
I have often thought of the importance of perspective for finite beings such as humans. Our individual and collective perspectives are unique and fixed in time and space to a very small connection with the universe. We are parochial with our perspective, and we tend to be adverse to other perspectives breaking in on our little corners of the universe. But, the universe is vast, and we should not be so fearful or defensive as to shield ourselves from other perspectives.
The best scientific data and analysis that we have today leads to the conclusion that the universe we live in began a finite time ago. That understanding, however, was far from evident just 100 years ago. In fact, most scientists, then, believed the universe always existed (the Steady State Theory).
Evidence that suggested to the contrary, that the universe is expanding (and therefore had a beginning “point”), was not received enthusiastically. Even the people whose discoveries led to that conclusion resisted it. Einstein famously added a cosmological constant to his equations on general relativity to avoid that conclusion.
Such was the commitment in the scientific community to the “Steady State” theory: the theory that the universe always existed infinitely in the past.
Indeed, that evidence unfolded like a “big bang” that blew apart the previous scientific consensus. Thus, the “Big Bang Theory” theory of an expanding universe from a “point” of beginning was coined, perhaps, more for the effect it had on the scientific community than as a descriptor of the occurrence. (See Is the Big Bang finally Over?)
Though the evidence continues to substantiate the view that our universe is expanding (and therefore had a beginning a finite time ago), I have often been aware that science is provisional. Just when we think we know something, something else comes along to change the paradigm. The recent history of physics and cosmology is a case in point.
A primary reason that the Big Bang Theory landed so hard in the scientific community is because it challenged more than the accepted science. It challenged the prevalent worldview of the scientific community since the Enlightenment.
Since the days of Darwin (and even before Darwin), people in the scientific community had been advocating for separating science from religion. When Darwin proposed evolutionary theory (natural “selection” acting on random changes), the scientific community was more than ready to use that “key” to unlock what they viewed as the “shackles” of religion.
The Steady State Theory, that the universe always existed infinitely in the past, was the natural assumption of scientists based on a worldview with no God and no religion at the center of it. Life was good for the proponents of naturalistic materialism until the specter of a beginning to our universe (and the real possibility of a “Beginner”).
That many people have managed to keep that specter at bay despite the strong evidence that gets stronger as time goes on that our universe is expanding is a testament to the faith some people have in naturalistic materialism. Never since before the Enlightenment, however, has science been so harmonious with the Bible and belief in God.
Even so, I have often wondered: what if the paradigm shifts again? What if new evidence is discovered to upset the apple cart again? What if that new evidence begins to cut against the grain of the Big Bang Theory and reinvigorates the Static State Theory?
What if the new evidence shows what Einstein and most other cosmologists and physicists believed 100 years ago? That our universe is past eternal; that it is not expanding after all; or that the earth is expanding, but that the expansion is not proof of a “singularity” (beginning)?
Indeed, this is what many preeminent scientists have been trying to prove since the scientific world conceded the evidence of the apparent expansion and singularity of our universe.
Would Christians, like myself, and other theists simply cling to faith without evidence? Would we cling to our faith “in the teeth of the evidence”, as Richard Dawkins has charged?
I wasn’t sure before today. As I was listening to Return of the God Hypothesis by Stephen C. Meyer on Audible, an answer to my question began to materialize. I will attempt to summarize it.
I previously wrote on the subject of the James Webb Telescope and the headlines claiming that recent discoveries call the Big Bang into question. (Is the Big Bang finally Over?) The Big Bang theory is a theory based upon the fact that we have an expanding universe, and the fact that we have an expanding universe suggests that it is expanding from a point in time. The Big Bang theory that the universe is expanding from a point of beginning some finite time ago is alive and well, but the standard model(s) developed to explain how the expansion we see is being called into question by the James Webb discoveries.
I didn’t go into technical detail about why the evidence for an expanding universe remains solid, mostly because I am not physicist, or even a “science guy”. I am interested in science and try to keep up with certain areas of science because they interest me, but I am not educated or trained in the sciences.
Today, however I heard an explanation for why the James Webb discoveries do not undermine the basic Big Bang principal, that the universe is expanding, that was simple and clear and worth repeating (if for no other reason than for me to remember it).
In conversation with Joe Rogan on his podcast, Stephen Meyer explains why the James Webb Telescope discoveries do not undermine the basic premise of the Big Bang theory. To understand this, we need to understand how the James Webb Telescope is constructed to observe matters in space further away from us than we have observed before.
We also need to understand the evidence for an expanding universe because the James Webb Telescope incorporates design elements that take advantage of the phenomenon that gives us proof of expansion in the universe. That evidence was discovered in the 1920s, and it provided the first evidence that the universe is expanding, and not static as was thought up to that point.
I will quickly explain that first evidence for an expanding universe. Then I will explain how the James Webb Telescope’s design is based on this evidence (thanks to Stephen Meyer in his conversation with Joe Rogan), and then I will explain how the success of the James Webb Telescope actually proves the basic Big Bang principal – that the universe is expanding.
Navigating by Faith 