Month: March 2023

Here’s the link to this article by Merle Hertzler.

You may have been told that you will live forever, but that seems quite unlikely to me. For our brains will one day be gone. All our lives those brains have been the seat of our thoughts, emotions, and memories. So, when the brain is gone, then the lights must go out. Surely then it is all over.

But some will tell me that something else lives on even after the brain has disintegrated. They often call this the soul. And ultimately, they say, the soul is the seat of the mind. And so, even if the brain is gone, the mind can continue as a function of a soul that survives death.

If the soul is really in charge, why do you even need a brain? If thinking is done by the soul, what is left for the brain to do? Some propose that the brain is simply an interface to the body. It gathers information from the senses and feeds it to the soul. There the soul processes the incoming data, saves memories, and makes decisions. The soul then somehow directs the brain to drive the muscles of the body. The soul is in charge, and the brain handles the interface with the body.

But science has shown that it is truly the brain that is in charge. We think with our brains, not with immaterial souls.

Have you got soul?

Let’s look at some evidence that the brain is in charge, and that there is no separate, non-material soul.

First, there is the evidence of amnesia. When elderly people suffer a stroke, or when trauma occurs to the brain, patients often lose the ability to remember things that happen after that tragic event. The person loses an important mental function, the ability to remember new things. But it was not the soul that had been damaged. The brain was damaged. Somehow damage to the brain causes that person to lose the ability to efficiently store new memories. If memories are actually a function of the soul, why would damage to the brain affect the functioning of the soul? Since damage to the brain affects the ability to store memories, then it must be the brain that stores the memories.

You might argue that what happened is that the brain stops giving the soul new data. Thus, the soul has nothing to remember. But that is clearly not what is happening. The essence of the person is still communicating with us. That person sees us, recognizes us, and communicates. The mind’s senses are still working. The mind is still able to observe, but the person forgets what was observed. Why? The brain is damaged. And this damage hinders memory storage. So, it must be the brain that is remembering. When the brain is affected, the mind is affected.

Second, when conditions prevent a brain from developing properly, the personality does not reach maturity. If the soul is distinct from the brain, why wouldn’t the soul go on to maturity?

A third evidence that the brain is doing the thinking is the fact that, if the brain slows down and goes to sleep at night, the soul also sleeps. Suppose your soul is something different from the brain. Why does the soul go to sleep when the brain sleeps? Why can’t it just keep on being your soul, wide awake, even though the brain goes to sleep and has stopped giving the soul input from the world? It doesn’t work that way. When the brain is affected, the mind is affected.

The effect is even more pronounced under anesthesia. In such procedures, one loses virtually all contact with the world and does not sense even severe pain. After waking up, one is not even aware of the passage of time while he was unconscious. If the soul was distinct from the brain, one would think you could simply start counting as you go under and keep on counting into the thousands in your soul while contact with the world goes blank. It would be like losing the connection while on a Zoom call. The soul would still be awake. The person whose brain is sleeping would still be able to count or plan his next day, but the incoming senses of the world would temporarily be blank. This is not what happens.

Fourth, evidence shows that we inherit our basic personality through our genes. How is it that genes can affect our personality? Genes must surely be directing the brain’s physical development, which then influences the personality development. How could genes also change a separate, immaterial soul? That makes no sense. Personality must therefore be a function of the brain, not of a separate entity known as the soul. How else could genes have such a significant effect on the personality? 

Fifth, a patient with Alzheimer’s disease enters a period of altered mental capability due to brain disease. Is the soul of the Alzheimer’s victim also changed by his physical condition? That makes no sense. The disease affects the brain, not the soul. But if the soul is working normally, why are the thoughts so confused?

You may argue that the soul is still normal, but the connection of the brain to the soul is blurred. And yet we can still communicate with the essence of the Alzheimer’s victim, with the part you would call the soul. That spark of the inner person is still there. The communication still works. But we can see that the very essence of the inner person is changing. The part you would call the soul is deteriorating. Why? The brain is being altered. Since the mind is a function of the brain, it too becomes altered.

Are we to believe that death does for the Alzheimer’s victim what no medicine can do? Does death suddenly restore the mind to full functioning? How could that be? The disease gradually destroys the brain, and this deteriorate the mind. How then could the full destruction of the brain at death cause the mind to become restored?  

Sixth, if the soul is separate from the brain, exactly how does a soul interface with the brain? As far as we can tell, brain function consists of movements of electrons and chemicals. How could our soul communicate with this brain? Does the soul somehow start moving electrons around in our brains so that the brain knows to move a certain muscle or to command the mouth to say a certain word? How can the stuff of the soul push matter? Wouldn’t a soul push right through an electron, just like spirits supposedly pass through walls?

And if souls actually push molecules or electrons around, why can’t they push the molecules that are outside of the brain? If your soul can push molecules in your brain, why can’t it push molecules in my brain?

None of this can be observed in nature. Nowhere do we find evidence for souls deflecting molecules. So, how can a non-physical soul affect the movements of the body? It can’t. I conclude the mind is simply a function of the brain.

Seventh, as discussed earlier in my Dare to Question series, we have evolved from other animals. Do apes have souls? Do reptiles, fish and germs have souls? If not, exactly when was a soul inserted for the first time? Was the first being to have a soul raised by someone without a soul? It is easy to see how mind functions could develop incrementally through many generations as we evolved. It is difficult to see how an evolved creature would somehow suddenly get a separate, immaterial soul for the first time. And if apes don’t have souls, how do their brains partially duplicate some of the functions we require a soul to do?

For all these reasons, I conclude that it is the brain, not an immaterial soul, that stores memories and does the thinking. For more on mind-brain dependence see The Case Against Immortality  by Keith Augustine, Mind-Brain Dependence by Steven J. Conifer, and section III.6 of Sense and Goodness without God by Richard Carrier.

Consciousness

Yes, I know, you look inside, and you see your conscious mind is in there telling the body what to do. Your consciousness is in charge, or so it seems to you. And you equate that consciousness with a soul that is separate from the body. So how can you be perceiving this soul inside you to be directing the show, when actually it is brain molecules that are doing the heavy lifting? Good question.

Science has shown that the brain decides to do things before the person is aware that he made the decision. One experiment that verified this involved subjects who were told to decide to bend their wrist while watching a slowly spinning disk. They were told to tell the experimenters exactly where the disk was when they decided to bend their wrist. The experimenters used this information to determine when the subject was aware that he was making the decision. The subjects were also hooked up to sensors that could detect brain activity that occurred when the subjects decided to act.

It turns out that the brainwaves started before the subjects were aware that they were deciding. If you asked the subjects, they would tell you that they made the decision consciously at the moment that they were aware of it. But the instruments they were wired to indicate otherwise. The brain cells had begun to fire and started the process of commanding the hand to move before the person was consciously aware of the decision. [1]

Could it be that our brain cells are running the show, and that what we call the conscious mind comes along later and fills in the story after the fact? This kind of after-the-fact consciousness has been demonstrated in another experiment. Here is how it worked. A red dot was projected onto a screen. Then the red dot was turned off and, a split second later, a green dot was projected near the spot where the red dot had been. When people saw this, they reported that they saw the red dot start to move to the side, then change suddenly to a green dot as it moved along, and then continue to the new location as a green dot. Obviously, this is not what they saw. There was no moving dot that changed colors. The dot had never been in the middle. But the conscious mind told the story that the dot had traveled, and that the dot’s color had changed from red to green at the middle. The conscious mind was convinced that it had observed this happen. It was mistaken. [2]

And so, in that experiment, we find that minds rewrote history, just like the historians in the novel 1984 rewrote history to reflect what Big Brother wanted. A similar thing must have happened in the minds of the subjects. Their minds had known that objects don’t usually just disappear and immediately show up in a new location. They knew that, in such instances, the object probably moved from point A to point B. And if it changed colors, it had to change somewhere. The mind makes up the story that it observed the dot changing color when it was in the middle of its movement. The subject’s minds rewrote their memories and did it so well that they were confident the revised story was true.

Their conscious memory of seeing the dot change color as it moved was a sheer fabrication. The subjects “remember” it, but it never happened.

You have probably observed the mind rewriting memories. A significant event may happen to somebody, and immediately he tells us what happened. Ten minutes later you hear him tell the same story again, but it is a little different this time. An hour later, the story has been modified further. We hear the same story the next day and the next week. Each time we hear it, it is a little different. And often we can observe a trend in the rewrite. What the person thinks he should have said becomes a memory of what he did say.

True, sometimes the person modifying the story may be deliberately deceptive. But often the person is not trying to lie to us. He is an honest person, and yet his mind is changing the story.

Folks have probably observed a similar thing in you and me. Our minds gradually and unconsciously change the memories of the past so that they conform to what makes sense to us. Thus, we end up with memories of being conscious of something in the past, even though we never actually experienced it that way.

Notice that the memories of the person who saw a dot disappear and another dot appear are just like the memories of the person who truly saw a dot move. One memory reflects what was consciously observed. One is a fabrication. We cannot tell the difference.  Our minds are being misinformed about what we consciously experienced. We believe the lies that are being written to our memories.

Notice also that it is our memory of past events that is fundamental to our consciousness. Suppose that you had no ability to remember anything. You would be constantly aware of your current state at each moment, but you would be totally unaware of anything that had happened a microsecond earlier. It would be like listening to a music CD that was stuck on the same chord. Now that would not be real music. Music requires change, and so does consciousness. To really mean anything, our consciousness must consist of an awareness of the narrative that has brought us to the current state.

But as we have seen, this narrative is often freely being changed. We think we have conscious memories of how the story has unfolded, but somehow what we call our conscious memory is only the modified story that our minds create. What we call consciousness is just the story of how we got to where we are. The problem is, this story is somewhat illusory, since our minds are constantly revising that story, sometimes incorrectly.

So perhaps this explains how our minds can deceive ourselves into believing that there is a soul inside that is making the decision, even though experiments show that the decisions were made before we were aware of them. Perhaps our minds continuously create the story we call consciousness and write it in such a way that we think consciousness is making the decisions.

Where do your words come from?

Think about it. Where do your decisions come from? When you decide to speak, for instance, where do those words come from? You really don’t know, do you?

Think about all that is involved in creating spontaneous speech. Your brain contains information about thousands of thoughts that you could express. You have a vocabulary of thousands of words that you can use, and your mind knows the definition of each. And these words must be put together according to the syntax of your language. But you don’t remember sorting through your mental dictionary to look up the meanings of all relevant words to select the proper words to express the thought you chose. No, you just speak, and the right words present themselves to you. And you and your listeners both hear the sentence from your mouth at the same time. But where did the words come from?

If your soul is the speechwriter, why isn’t the soul aware of how the words came into your consciousness? Why isn’t your soul aware of looking up the meanings of all the words it could have used? Instead, behind the scenes, something must be working to look up available words and form those sentences for you. I contend this something is nothing more than the millions of neurons in your brain. They must be working behind the scenes to write your speech for you. You and I think that our conscious mind is speaking, but the conscious mind isn’t even aware of how the speech is being written.

Even when we slowly deliberate, weighing every word carefully before speaking, we cannot tell where those word options originated. The words just present themselves to us. Something looked through our mental dictionary and pulled those words up for us.

Many Christians seem to recognize that thoughts come to us fully formed. I have heard some ascribe different authors to the thoughts that stream through their minds. It is interesting to hear them describe the experience. They will tell me that Satan was saying something in their minds, and then they responded, and then God said something, and then the old nature argued, and then Jesus said something, and so on. It must be interesting being them! There are enough of people inside to have great conversation. But perhaps they are mistaken. Perhaps various thoughts originate, not from various competing spirit beings inside the mind, but from various competing coalitions of neurons in the brain.

Science indicates that there are millions of neurons working in our brains, and that this activity produces thoughts. It is a cacophony of voices, with many different ideas competing for dominance. But somehow the winning thoughts come to the top and present themselves as a string of conscious ideas. The real work, however, is done among all these competing neurons.

Often our language betrays the fact that things are going on outside of our direct conscious control. We say things like “I didn’t mean to do that,” “The words wouldn’t come,” “I couldn’t help myself,” or “I don’t know why I did that.” In such statements there is a subtle recognition that our consciousness is not really in charge.

The consciousness is along for the ride, observing the finished work that the neurons have put together. And the consciousness rewrites its memories in such a way that it seems to us that our consciousness is making the decisions.

For more on how our brains create consciousness see Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett and my essay, How Can Molecules Think?

I conclude that thinking is done by the brain, and these thoughts produce our consciousness. Consciousness does not come from an immaterial soul.

Life after death

We know that brain activity stops when we die. If our memories are in the brain, how could they remain after death? And how can the inherited personality survive if the very brain that produced it is destroyed? It seems that it too must be gone. If my memories and personality are gone, how can I still be said to exist?

Some will agree that the brain is doing the thinking here on earth, but there is a soul in there also. And the soul just so happens to want the same thing the brain wants and store the same memories the brain stores. So, though the brain is gone at death, the soul that works in parallel remains. How convenient. Seems implausible to me. So, I won’t waste time hoping that it is so.

Ah, but someone might ask if God couldn’t just make a copy of all that we experienced in our brain. When we die, God restores everything from the backup, just like we would do on a computer. Our mind would literally be backed up in the cloud.

If there is a backup of my mental database that will be used to drive a new body someday, how do we know it won’t happen to two bodies, or even a thousand? Will there be thousands of copies of me out there running off the same backup database of me? It is difficult to see how we can refer to any of those backups as “me”. They are copies, not me. The same thing can be said about the first copy made from a backup database of my memories. It’s not really me. Would it be fair to punish or reward a copy of me for what I have done here on earth?

Is it possible a God is making a backup copy of me that can live forever? Perhaps, but I can make hundreds of similar wild guesses as to what might happen someday. For instance, is there a possibility that aliens will land on Jupiter, transform it into a paradise for humans, and then offer free shuttle service back and forth to earth? Perhaps. But I don’t spend long hoping for that to happen. Nor do I spend long hoping that some backup copy of me lives forever.

So it appears that neither a soul nor a copy of the brain’s database survives death.

But what about bodily resurrection? Perhaps the brain lies dormant until God puts it back together and resurrects the body. But how could that happen? What about the bodies of people that died a thousand years ago? Their bodies have disintegrated, and the constituent atoms are spread throughout the world. Some of those particles could be in your brain now. Some atoms may have been part of many people’s brains throughout history. To which brain will they go in the resurrection?

If, on the other hand, I am reconstructed from a new set of molecules, is not such a reconstructed me just one of many possible copies of me that could be made? We are left with a copy, or even multiple copies, not a continued existence of my mind. A copy of me is not the same thing as me.

So, it appears that our minds will not survive death. Your mind is a function of your brain, and your brain will someday die. If you and I are going to find the good life, we will need to make the most of what we have here. Let us make this life count.

Where does this leave God if he exists? If he is not preparing a place for us, what is he doing for us in this life? Let’s explore that next.

Yes, what (on earth) is God doing?

Addendum: Q&A

WHAT ABOUT NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES?

In an online debate of this page, Mountainmanmike suggested that near-death experiences are evidence for souls. He contended that souls can somehow travel from the body and sense events happening remote from the body.

Near-death experiences are reported by less than 20% of people that were near death. If souls really do these things near death, why do not most people observe this?

There are many things that can cause such experiences. Oxygen deprivation, for instance, will restrict side vision, and make it appear like one is in a dark tunnel. Hence, the reports of traveling through a tunnel.

Did the reported experiences truly happen while physical consciousness was gone? We have no proof of that. There can be a rush of thoughts as one fades in and out of consciousness. So, the reported vague consciousness during the experience can simply be memories as one went in and out of consciousness.

What about the fact that people sometimes have knowledge of things that were happening in the room? Such knowledge can come while partially conscious, from later hearing about the events from others, or by simply making educated guesses about what happened.

WHAT ABOUT PEOPLE WHO SENSE THINGS FAR AWAY?

Mountainmanmike also argued that twins can sense the death of a twin far away.

Although there are many such claims, none can be repeated in controlled studies. Yes, a twin may die, and the other twin may report having a strange feeling at that moment, but how does that prove that the soul of the dead twin travelled to be with the other twin? We are going strictly off the memory of the events. And memories change with time. We selectively remember things that match what we want. We ignore all those times when we felt uneasy, and there was no tragedy elsewhere, or when tragedy happened, and nobody reports this experience.

Such claims of remote sensing were never verified in controlled studies, where we would need to show that the knowledge supposedly transmitted was such that it was unlikely to have happened by chance.

And even if twins are shown to consistently know when a distant twin dies, how would that prove that a soul left a body? How would you know that is not just some yet unknown sense such as a bat’s radar that can sense things from a distance?

WHY DO WE NEED CONTROLLED STUDIES?

Anecdotal evidence is extremely unreliable. For years people were pitching snake oil and all kinds of claims based on anecdotal evidence. But people see what they want to see. So, if they invest in snake oil, for instance, they will often think they see fantastic things happen with snake oil. And they will tell stories of the success of snake oil. That is why scientists got away from trusting such anecdotal evidence and look instead for the results of controlled studies.

If we accept claims of remote sensing without having a controlled study to verify it, we are relying only on anecdotal evidence. Should we also go back to the days where all sorts of flimflam cures were promoted on nothing more than anecdotes? Should we abandon modern medicine based on controlled studies, and instead trust anecdotes? I prefer scientific evidence and controlled studies.

Links on Near-Death Experience Studies

WHEN A SCIENTIST DESCRIBES AN EXPERIMENT, ISN’T THAT JUST ANECDOTAL?

Mountainmanmike continued with a long list of pseudoscience mixed with descriptions of science. Since all stories can be called anecdotes, is all evidence anecdotal?

He is confusing telling an account of the experimental procedure and uncontrolled anecdotal evidence. When scientists speak of anecdotal evidence, they are speaking of a claim with no scientific methodology to prevent bias from influencing the result. Real scientists use studies that are designed to discover the truth, regardless of any pre-existing bias that they may have. And when they do such experiments, they describe what they did. Such descriptions of experiments are quite different from anecdotal evidence.

Scientific observation is based on getting information that is not the result of the scientist’s bias. For instance, when testing new medicines, the medicine is tested in a controlled double-blind trial. Such studies, when properly done, minimize the effects of bias on the results. So, the studies give valuable information.

When Mountainmanmike reports that a twin had an odd feeling when a distant twin died, what controls were used to keep bias out of the claim?

There is a difference between a properly done statistical study and anecdotal evidence that has no scientific controls. The table listed at Learn How Anecdotal Evidence Can Trick You is a good description of the difference.

WHAT ABOUT DREAMS?

On this thread, Yaaten wrote, “The soul sleeps at night because the brain is asleep?…Don’t you dream when you’re asleep?” 

Yes, of course, I dream while asleep. We can go through stages of consciousness, especially when fading in and out of sleep. But clearly the conscious mind is not in the same state during sleep as it is while awake.

How can you explain that? If you are counting sheep when going to sleep, you will always stop counting when you go to sleep. If your soul or mind is the conscious part of you, and is distinct from the brain, why doesn’t it continue to be the conscious part in a fully alert state while your brain sleeps? Why can’t your independent soul just keep on counting, fully conscious, while the brain dozes?

If the soul is in charge, and the brain is just my connection to the world, why would the soul start dreaming when the connection gets cut off? But if instead, the brain is the seat of the mind, and it goes through various stages of sleep, it is certainly understandable that the brain could then act differently and cause the mind to dream.

NOTES

1. Dennett, Daniel C., Consciousness Explained (Boston: Back Bay Books, 1991) pp. 162-163

2. Dennett, Daniel C., Consciousness Explained (Boston: Back Bay Books, 1991) p 114

Copyright Merle Hertzler 2002, 2005, 2006, 2022. All rights reserved.

Here’s the link to this article by Merle Hertzler.

We turn now to the central issue of Christianity. Did Jesus rise from the dead?

First, can we agree that this is an extraordinary claim? People that were dead for several days don’t rise again. If your claim is extraordinary, I would like extraordinary evidence, please.

You may think I have just set the bar too high. After all, Peter didn’t have a smart phone or even a printing press. He could not take a movie clip or print a book. Give the guy some slack!

But I am not asking anything different then you would ask when faced with extraordinary claims.

For instance, consider the many tales about the legendary lumberjack, Paul Bunyan. People said that he could chop down a full forest with one swing of his ax, and that he personally dug out Lake Michigan. People have reported that he made the Grand Canyon when he drug his ax along as he walked. Do you believe these stories? I am sure you don’t. Why not? Have you personally reviewed the sources to see if they are credible? I doubt if you have. But you do know that the claim that he made the Grand Canyon by dragging his ax is not credible. It’s not worth taking the time to investigate. He didn’t do it.

When faced with such incredible claims, we would want very strong evidence before we believed it. We would want the evidence to be so overwhelmingly convincing that we would find no choice but to suspend our natural skepticism and accept the claim about Paul Bunyan’s ax.

One would think the same skepticism would apply when faced with the claim of a resurrection.

As I have explained earlier I don’t find the gospels to be reliable history. So if your evidence consists of what the Gospels say, you might not get far in convincing me.

The most likely explanation

Nevertheless, it would be important for us to ask what explanations for the phenomenon of early Christianity are more likely than an actual resurrection. So here I will lay out what I see as the most credible explanation.

PAUL’S VIEW

Yes, I know you usually begin at the Gospels, but I find them to be written late and untrustworthy. So, I will turn to the most prolific writer of the early church, Paul, to see what the early Christians actually thought.

Paul says that Christ rose from the dead ( 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5). But the Christ of which he speaks seems to be a spirit. For instance, he writes, “I am crucified with Christ, “ nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20) Obviously he does not mean that the body of the Jesus who walked on earth now lives in him. Jesus would not fit. No, Paul must be referring to some spirit being who somehow indwells him.

Colossians goes on to say that all Christians have Christ in them (Col 1:27). So, if Christ Jesus is now a spirit that dwells in many people, he really cannot now have an earthly body. So what need was there for the earthly body to resurrect? Would it not be better to leave the stinking body behind, and ascend in spirit?

After all, that is how Christians think they will live on after death. The body decays, but the spirit moves on.

So, when I read Paul I want to ask him, “How was Jesus raised? With what body did he come?”

Fortunately for us, Paul asks and answers those very questions:

³⁵ But someone will say, “How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?” ³⁶ You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies; ³⁷ and that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of something else. ³⁸ But God gives it a body just as He wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own. ³⁹ All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of mankind, another flesh of animals, another flesh of birds, and another of fish. ⁴⁰ There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another. ⁴¹ There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. ⁴² So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; ⁴³ it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; ⁴⁴ it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.I Corinthians 15:35-44

What is his answer? Paul tells us the earthly body, the terrestrial body, is different from the celestial body. The terrestrial body perishes at death. The celestial body lives on. He compares it to sowing wheat. The grain that we planted never comes out of the ground. But somehow springing up from the inside of that seed comes another plant, with a different body.

Paul seems to be saying this is the way all resurrections work. So, he must also have been saying the same thing about Jesus. When he says that Jesus rose and was seen by witnesses (I Cor 15:3-8), he apparently is saying that the inner spirit of Jesus, the soul, ascended from the physical body, and moved on to glory. Then people supposedly saw visions of that risen spirit.

And that does not require an empty tomb, a missing body, or physical interactions with a human in a body.

Yes, I know, you have read all about a bodily resurrection in the Gospels, but remember, we are starting strictly with the early record. If we turn strictly to Paul, without forcing preconceived notions from reading the later Gospels, we are not seeing a bodily risen Jesus mentioned.

When Paul says Jesus “appeared to me,” is that convincing? According to Acts, that sight consisted only of seeing a bright light and hearing a voice. Is that enough to convince you of a bodily resurrection?

If somebody told you she saw a bright light and heard her deceased grandfather last night, would you take that as proof that the corpse of the grandfather was now alive? Or would you suspect that this person had been drinking too much?

So, if Paul tells us he saw a bright light and heard Jesus, does that make Paul a credible witness to the bodily resurrection? No.

What of the others that Paul mentions seeing Jesus? What did they see? Paul does not tell us. If we are going to read I Corinthians 15: 3-8 at face value, I think we need to conclude that Paul was claiming they saw the same type of thing he apparently was claiming: a vision.

Ah, but you have read all the stories of Peter and the other apostles interacting with a bodily risen Jesus. Yes, but those stories come from the Gospels, which come later. We will discuss those later. Here we are looking only at the earliest record, at Paul. It appears that he claimed nothing more than a vision of a spirit Jesus. One would expect that he thought the other apostles also saw nothing more than he did.

PETER’S VIEW

We have several books of the New Testament that claim to be written by the other apostles. We don’t know if any of these are genuine. Let’s assume for now that 1 Peter really was written by Peter as claimed. If he interacted with a risen Jesus, we would expect that story to flow spontaneously from his writing. It doesn’t. Here is what he says about the resurrection:

For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;1 Peter 3:18-19

We find no passion of a man who had recently witnessed a bodily resurrection. Rather, we see a theological statement about Jesus being raised by the Spirit and going to preach to spirits. That sounds much more like a spirit Jesus than a Jesus in a body. So, this book does not confirm a bodily resurrection. We are not finding that confirmation in any of the earliest writings.

We have looked at the earliest record, at books by Paul and reportedly by Peter. All are consistent with belief in a spirit resurrection.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE EARLY CHURCH?

But what about the great explosion of resurrection-believers we hear about in Acts? Again, Acts is late, and is doubtful as history. If we turn to secular history for verification, we find no signs of a massive following of a resurrected Jesus in the first century. If the great explosion of resurrection-believers really happened, as Acts records, how is it that all these secular writers were unaware that this was happening? Earl Doherty wrote:

The Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo, who lived until about 50 CE and wrote of unusual sects like the Therapeutae and the Essenes, has nothing to say about Jesus or Christians. Justus of Tiberias, a Jewish historian who wrote in Galilee in the 80s (his works are now lost), is reported later to have made no mention whatever of Jesus. Pliny the Elder (died 79 CE) collected data on all manner of natural and astronomical phenomena, even those which were legendary and which he himself did not necessarily regard as factual, but he records no prodigies associated with the beliefs of Christians, such as an earthquake or darkening of the skies at a crucifixion, or any star of Bethlehem. The first Roman satirist to scorn a sect which believed in a crucified Judean founder who had been a god was not Martial at the end of the first century, nor Juvenal in the first half of the second century, but Lucian in the 160s. Reports of Epictetus, the great Stoic philosopher of the early second century who preached universal brotherhood to the poor and humble masses, record no knowledge on his part of a Jewish precursor. Nor does Seneca, the empire’s leading ethicist during the reign of Nero, make reference to such a figure. Other historians of the time, like Plutarch and Quintilian, are equally silent.Source: The Jesus Puzzle

There simply is no need to explain the surge of people preaching a bodily resurrection in Judea in the first century. If it happened, where is the evidence? Only the later book of Acts details it, and there are reasons to be skeptical about that book.

I contend that the early church was only proclaiming a spirit resurrection and was making no stir about a bodily resurrection.

MARK

All this changes around 70 AD with the writing of Mark. As we saw earlier, Mark believed Daniel’s promise about the Son of Man coming shortly after the Abomination of Desolation applied to his day. Thus, he was looking for Jesus shortly after the fall of Jerusalem.

Mark tells the story of Jesus on earth and the crucifixion scene. Where did he get his information? We don’t know. But we have no record of anybody saying much of anything about the earthly story of Jesus until he writes.

The original book ends at Mark 16:5-8 with 3 ladies visiting the tomb:

⁵ And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe; and they were amazed. ⁶ But he said to them, “Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen; He is not here; see, here is the place where they laid Him. ⁷ But go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you.’” ⁸ And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had gripped them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.Mark 16: 5-8

That may seem like an odd place to stop, but it fit Mark purposes well. He is telling his audience that Jesus will see them soon in Galilee. That is consistent with his interpretation of Daniel as found in Mark 13.

If the earlier Christians were only speaking of a spirit resurrection, as I contend, how can Mark explain to his audience that it really was a bodily resurrection? If it was bodily, why did nobody notice? Why was nobody talking about it? Mark apparently came up with a neat trick. He declares that an unknown man told some women that the body of Jesus was not there. The women told nobody. So why was nobody talking about it? Mark had a ready explanation. Nobody knew about it but these women, and they were too scared to tell anybody.

The theme of it all being a secret is consistent throughout Mark. Repeatedly Mark had Jesus tell people not to tell others what was happening. (e.g., Mark 3:12, 5:43, etc.) Could it be that Mark was just throwing this in to explain why nobody else had heard these things?

At any rate, we don’t see the original Mark as much evidence for the resurrection.

MATTHEW

With these things in mind, we come to Matthew’s story of the resurrection. Matthew apparently thinks he needs a better witness than the stranger the women found at the tomb in Mark.

² And behold, a severe earthquake had occurred, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone, and sat upon it. ³ And his appearance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. ⁴ The guards shook from fear of him and became like dead men.Matt 28:2-4

Mark had said the women saw a man. This angel described in Matthew is not a man. This is not even an angel that looks like a man. No, this is an angel that looks like an angel. Had Mark been referring to this angel, how could he call this a man? But Mark had written only about a man. The accounts contradict.

Mark says the women ran with fear and told nobody, but Matthew says they ran to tell the disciples. Both cannot be correct.

Remember Mark had said the disciples would later see Jesus in Galilee. But he tells no story of them seeing him there. When we consider that Mark was claiming Jesus would triumphantly appear in power in Galilee a few years after he wrote, this could well be what he was talking about. His reported stranger at the tomb (a gardener?) could have been saying that when people find themselves scattered in the mountains of Galilee after the fall of Jerusalem, Jesus will arrive there to lead them to victory.

But Matthew, a decade or two after Mark, seeing that this did not happen, comes up with the explanation that the disciples actually saw Jesus in Galilee years before, right after the resurrection. A creative change to the story, but what is it based on? Seeing Matthew’s propensity to insert things into the story, such as many dead people rising and appearing to many, some of us don’t trust him.

So, we find creative changes to the book of Mark, but no reason to believe any of those changes came from an actual witness. We are again left empty.

LUKE AND JOHN

Luke and John come along and add additional stories of resurrection appearances. The four gospels accounts however, are hopelessly incompatible.

This has all the appearance of people adding stories decades later, rather than telling what happened.

So, I find this as the most likely scenario: Paul and the early Christians spoke of a spirit resurrection. Years later the gospel writers came along and added increasingly dramatic tales of a physical resurrection.

Other possibilities

Of course, it could be that there really was a story of a bodily resurrection in apostolic times. Let’s look at a few ways such a story could have originated other than through a physical resurrection.

A LOST BODY

One possibility is that the Easter story could have developed after some women had mistakenly searched the wrong grave, or if the body had been removed for some reason. “They have taken away the Lord,” exclaimed Mary after seeing the empty grave, “and we do not know where they have laid Him.” (John 20:2) Of course! Mary had street-smarts that is oddly missing in modern times. The body is not where she expected it to be? Who took it? Where did they put it? It could well be that Mary was right, that somebody did indeed take the body.

Some have argued that the tomb of Joseph could well have been a temporary tomb to hide the body during the Sabbath, and that the body was moved early the next day. If so, this would explain why the women could not find the body.

The story of the missing body could have passed on to others, who could have wondered about it and talked about it frequently. The story could have grown with each telling, until 40 years later the legend had grown to the point where it involved a physical resurrection, leading to the story found in Mark.

RESUCITATION

A second possibility is that Jesus might not have actually died but had been mistakenly thought to be dead. He could have revived and left the grave. Josephus tells us of a man who survived crucifixion (see this offsite link). The Romans were not experts in diagnosing death, and they could have been mistaken. Jesus could have revived and walked off, only to later die in hiding in the wilderness. The stories of the missing Jesus could have circulated and grew, until they developed into a legend of the resurrection.

Now the possibility of an unconscious Jesus that revived may be unlikely. Few people are ever proclaimed dead and then are found to be still alive. But it has happened. If you hear of a man in a third world country who was thought to be dead, and was later found to be alive, which is more likely: that the man was mistakenly thought dead, or that the man actually resurrected? It seems to me that the mistaken diagnosis is far more likely. So, isn’t a mistaken diagnosis of Jesus’s death more likely than the possibility that he rose from the dead?

STOLEN BODY

A third possibility is that somebody could have stolen the body. No, it does not need to be an elaborate hoax in which all 11 remaining disciples were involved. We are told Joseph of Arimathea owned the tomb. He and a helper could have stolen the body and hid it to make it look like Jesus had risen. The disciples could have all been fooled. Only Joseph would have known, and he wasn’t about to tell.

So, we have listed four options here, all of which I think are more likely than a bodily resurrection.

1. A perceived spirit resurrection.
2. A lost body
3. A resuscitation.
4. A hoax.

I find Mark’s account was most likely not the result of an actual resurrection. The stories added by the other gospel writers appear to be nothing more than fiction.

So, did the resurrection occur? If the first five books ohttps://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/15182f the New Testament are seen for what they probably are, later fabrications, we have no real evidence for it. Since the evidence is shaky, and the story is implausible, are we not justified in doubting the story?

What if I am wrong?

What if I am wrong? I frequently am. Do you think that God will condemn me for using my intellect to arrive at this conclusion? I don’t think so.

Can you imagine that you and I will be confronted with a history exam at the pearly gates? Imagine that we are asked to tell what happened at that grave to gain admittance to heaven. Why would a question of history be so important? People differ about history. People differ about whether George Washington cut down the cherry tree; about whether the Trojan Horse story really happened; and about what exactly caused the collapse of the Maya civilization. And isn’t that okay? Can’t we still be friends, even though we may have different interpretations of the past record?

If somebody thinks all three persons of the Godhead remained in heaven, with the resurrection happening in spirit in the heavens, and his view turns out to be historically false, should that person be condemned forever for misunderstanding history?

And will the final exam ask how many persons are in the Godhead? If we answer four, one, or even zero persons, then what? Will people be cast from heaven if they have the wrong count? So perhaps it is okay for you and I to honestly look at history, and come to our own conclusions. I have done that, and I now do not believe in the story of the earthly resurrection.

Let’s move on. If there is no resurrected savior, is there any reason to believe that you and I will survive death? Let’s look at that question next.