Most Common Objection Against the Resurrection of Jesus

The Most Common Skeptical Objection to the Resurrection

For someone who's just interested in the sort of objections that come up. In your opinion, what is the most common argument you see against the resurrection and how do you respond to that common argument?

Well, I'd say the most common argument would be hallucinations. You know, that probably, the other disciple is just hallucinated or, you know, sometimes they call them visions. If it's a sophisticated skeptic, they'll call it altered state of consciousness and ASC.

It's all the same thing though. So the way I respond to it is I point out a few things. Number one is that, well, first of all, I would, you know, talk about what a hallucination is. It is a false sensory perception.

You are perceiving something with the natural senses that isn't really there. So visual hallucination, you think you're seeing something that's not there. An auditory hallucination, you think you're hearing something that's not there.

There are six main ways to hallucinate. Smell, taste, feel, like when you're set, you first got your mobile phone and you had it on vibrate and you thought you got a text message, but you didn't. That's a tactile hallucination.

Or when you dream you're falling off a building or a cliff and you wake up, that is called a kinesthetic hallucination. You have a sense of motion. So almost all hallucinations are in a single mode. So you might have a visual hallucination, but you don't hear something at the same time.

The only people who experience hallucinations in multiple modes are those who are high on drugs and schizophrenics, okay? This is what it's been shown. Now, with that in mind, I would say a couple of things, three things.

Why the Hallucination Hypothesis Fails: Individual, Group, and Paul

Number one, when we look at the reports, the earliest reports, like in 1 Corinthians 15, he appeared to all of the apostles. He appeared to the 12. So you're talking about 100%. Whereas the literature informs us in the professional mental health literature, studies have been done over a century, suggest that only 7 of those in the highest category to receive hallucinations, adults bereaving the loss of a loved one, only 7 of them have a visual hallucination.

And yet you've got 100 of the disciples, he appeared, appeared, it's visual, to the 12. He appeared to all of the apostles. Second, you've got group appearances. Since hallucinations are false sensory perceptions in the mind of an individual, they are not collective, they're not contagious.

They're like dreams. So I couldn't wake up my wife in the middle of the night and say, honey, I'm having a dream. I'm in Maui, go back to sleep, join me in my dream and let's have a free vacation. You can't do that.

She might dream she's in Maui, but we're not having the same dream. We're not communicating with one another in the same exact ways. So you've got three group appearances, even within this early oral tradition in Paul.

He appeared to the 12, he appeared to more than 500. He appeared to all of the apostles. So you got the percentage of percipients is too high. You've got group appearances, and then you've got Paul. Paul was not grieving Jesus' death.

Jesus, in Paul's view, was a false prophet and a failed Messiah. So Jesus would have been the last person in the universe that Paul would have wanted to see or expected to see. I could go on and give more reasons, but those are three right there reasons why we should reject hallucination hypothesis.