I have to confess a certain fascination with these Christian apologists. I’m afraid that Bass is rather low-hanging fruit. I suspect these kinds of encounters are very popular with Brierley’s audience. Brierley seems like a nice guy though perhaps a bit too quick to try to rescue a floundering apologist. (Someone definitely needs to explain to Bass the concept of Special Pleading.) I thought the weakest part of Ehrman’s argument was his discussion of the laws of physics. After all these are formulations of observed regularities in nature. It’s almost certain nature hasn’t revealed all her secrets to us yet. His strongest argument was what has come to be called the “Outsider Test of Faith”. If you encounter similar claims from other belief systems do you come to the same conclusions? I don’t think Bass ever really understood Ehrman’s point about the Mormons or the Virgin Mary.
I thought the weakest part of Ehrman’s argument was his discussion of the laws of physics. After all these are formulations of observed regularities in nature. It’s almost certain nature hasn’t revealed all her secrets to us yet.
After he was pressed, I thought he did a better (still not perfect job) of defending it.
His example of 10 people telling me they saw something that defies the known laws of physics I thought was better than his past efforts to make the same point. Are the theories of physics open to empirical disverification: yes. Will the word of 10 random people about what they observed be adequate to diversify a well known and thoroughly tested law of physics: no.
With that said, I think the particular example he chose to illustrate the point was unfortunate: I don’t think the second law of thermodynamics actually says you can’t separate the creme from the coffee no matter how much you stir. I suspect something like a centrifuge could separate them with ease, and I’m not certain that–given time–gravity alone might not do the trick.
But even if the example was mistaken, I think his entirely reasonable and correct point showed through. Witnesses shouldn’t be trusted implicitly if they claim something that contradicts what is well established; which was a much better response than his older standby that “miracles are, by definition, the least likely event that could have happened, and therefore an historian–whose job is to discover what most likely happened–can never conclude that a miracle happened.” Though I see the point he wanted to make, I think that argument was too clever by half, and WLC schooled him on Bayes theorem and the difference between prior and posterior probabilities.
I thought his weakest moment was when he kept insisting that there was nothing anomalous about Christianity, before turning around and exasperatedly saying, “well of course it’s an anomaly” or something like that.
Well I don’t disagree but I think in such an informal debate it’s just a weak polemical point. Better to keep emphasizing that the evidence for the Resurrection doesn’t come within light years of supporting the claim. I liked Ehrman’s example of Asclepius although he left it to the audience to provide the punch line. Given ancient ways of thinking a post-mortem dream of Jesus would have qualified as a Resurrection appearance just as much as a waking vision of Jesus. The ancients had no concept of the subconscious or the personal unconscious. They had different words for visions and dreams but in both cases for them they accessed a reality external to the observer.
Judith I think there are other scholars who could hold their own with Ehrman. Not sure how interested Brierley’s audience would be but I would love to see Ehrman and Goodacre argue over whether or not John knew the synoptics.
Hi all. Came here to see if anyone chatting about this debate!
I listened yesterday and was shocked by how weak Bass was, but also by how rude!! The rudeness, mocking/sarcasm, impatience, interruptions, and trying to re-explain and misrepresent what Bart was saying into a strawman was awful to listen to. Sure Bart was a little impatient with Bass at times, but definitely nowhere near Bass’s rudeness and saracasm.
Am surprised Premier the UK christian broadcaster picked such a weak opponent for Bart. For their Easter showpiece re the resurrection?? I need to listen to the start again.. was the premise meant to be to stick to looking at the historical facts and how valid they might be? Bass soon went on to other topics that could (1) help convince rather than historically prove to people that (2) Jesus is generally divine/the saviour not just resurrected (eg visions of Jesus to people today, effect of Jesus in history, sheer number of people following Jesus today etc etc). Bart started off trying to get Bass to stick to arguing regarding the historical facts that we have, and showing the Bass himself was introducing topics that are nothing to do with historical facts… but eventually debated him on these topics which are really apologetics… and Bass was weak (and rude!) in these arguments too.
For info I’m an ex-Christian, agnostic leaning to atheist so can appreciate from both sides these arguments. Was also so shocked how rude a Christian would be to a non-Christian in debate! Considering complaining to Justin the host… who also occasionally tried to help a floundering Bass. Why do Premier keep offering up sacrificial lambs to Bart? The only other debate that was in this league of awfulness that I have viewed for a while with Bart was Peter Williams. Also Premier. As Stephen says, I am sure there are others who could put up a better showing.
There are certainly convicted Christians who could give Bart a run for his money in a debate–and who could do it without being insufferable.
I know nothing about J Bass, so I have no idea if there were indications he wasn’t cut out for a live debate.
To me, as much as I hated it, I also sort of related to the smugness. It seems to me a not entirely unnatural response when you are convinced–deep in your bones–not only that you are correct about a really important thing, not only that your have objectively sound reasons to hold what you hold, but that God (who desires all to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth) has provided at least adequate evidence so that anyone of good will can recognize those reasons for what they are and come to see that you are, in fact, correct; yet the person you are debating stops your every line of argument cold.
I cringe to remember that when I was a Christian there were occasions that I grew impatient, condescending, and rude when people challenged–in hindsight, correctly challenged–arguments I thought should be sound. That my reasons–even some of my facts–were fundamentally unsound, that a reasonable person might after consideration, reasonably reject them outright, was, at the time, unthinkable: I *knew* my faith was true, I *knew* my faith was reasonable. Protecting that sometimes meant projecting my own willful ignorance on others.
Does anybody but me find it odd that apologists spend so much time trying to “prove” that the Resurrection was a historical event? Of course that’s their concession to modernity. They want to be taken seriously intellectually. But I find it hard to believe they really think that simply assenting to the Resurrection as a historic event has some kind of salvific power. Surely there still has to be some sort of spiritual transformation involved on some level. It does raise the strange possibility that someone could assent to the Resurrection but not commit to the faith! Unless it’s a strategy they think they need to use to draw folks in. The cynic in me says it just a way to allow believers to not feel stupid for their beliefs. In these debates no one ever challenges them about their motivations.
No patience for it, myself.
I guess I wait for a new idea. Several years ago I read Eastern Orthodox popular theologian David Bentley Hart’s The Experience of God which two people I know had admired as the “best” book on the existence of God they had ever read. Well the first hundred pages or so was a looooong sneer** at the New Atheists. (Ok David how come it took you so long to tell they’re such minor inconsequential figures? Brush’em aside already!) But then we were presented with…the argument from contingency! I guess if you’ve never heard of all those old old arguments they might seem impressive. But I was reading that stuff way back at Zebulon Pike Barber College. I was so disappointed. I guess I wade through a lot of slop on the off chance that somebody will come up with something new. But they never do.
**Nobody sneers better than Hart. My perverse dream is a debate between Hart and James White.
Taking the topic in a totally different direction: If he is right, that apocalyptic Jews, like the earliest Christians, can’t conceive of a living disembodied soul, then we get something interesting.
In Q we have Jesus distinguishing the death of the body from the death of the soul. Lk 12:4-5: “do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. . . . fear him who, after he has killed [presumably the body, as that is what he was just talking about], has power to cast [what if not a soul?] into hell”; it’s clearer still in Matthew’s version: Mt 10:28 “do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell”
So, if BDE is right on this point, “these are apocalyptic Jews . . . they don’t believe the soul lives on after death. Jews believe the body and soul are one thing . . . the soul doesn’t exist outside the body”, that would seem to imply that this Q saying must be 1) historically worthless, Jesus, an apocalyptic Jew couldn’t have said this 2) and further, not particularly primitive, it must have come from someone who did not share the apocalyptic Jewish worldview, someone who is, if not chronologically, at least philosophically a considerable distance from Jesus and his movement.
So if Bart is right, then Q–even if early–should still be regarded as historically unreliable; and if Q is relatively early, that means that Christianity shed at least some aspects of its Jewish apocalypticism early on.
So the idea, in sum, is that Luke’s version is likely closer to the original, and it is talking about the body not soul being destroyed in gehenna because apocalyptic Jews thought that a body destroyed in gehenna could not be resurrected, and at any rate it doesn’t matter because Q is probably not particularly early.
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