¶1North America, I'm coming for you. We're doing a small tour, just six shows at some really cool venues. We're going to talk about philosophy, we're going to talk about God, about consciousness. We're going to talk about whatever you want to talk about because there will be an extensive Q&A at every show. The dates are on screen, the ticket link is in the description.
¶2Be there. >> And father. Hello, sir. >> I'm not a Catholic, so you I can't take that up. Um yeah, firstly, thanks for everything.
¶3I I point a lot of my congregations to listen to you. Uh you I think you're and even my atheist friends, you're quite the gateway drug for theology, which is brilliant. >> [laughter] >> Um thank you. >> That's got the seal of approval, the clerical seal of approval. >> I think for me looking especially the historicity of Christ.
¶4>> Yes. >> And a lot of the things that we can sort of, you know, hang our hat on and go, right, okay, well, we know he existed. We can look at the crucifixion and go, okay, we we have quite a lot of evidence to that. We can look at the idea of an empty tomb. Jewish texts show that.
¶5Arguably, you know, Tacitus and Josephus sort of hint towards it. And then we see this radical proliferation of the early disciples. And then as you say, he he becomes the most influential person in history, drastically changing so much. Even Tom Holland, I don't know how he's but ultimately set up the Western civilization in so many ways. And I suppose if if we're not to come to the conclusion then or personally, you've not come to the conclusion that it's a resurrection of sorts or something more supernatural, then perhaps in your mind, what is the best explanation for that?
¶6>> Do you mean of the resurrection or of the success of Christianity? >> Well, as you said to Jordan Peterson, if you put a camcorder there and you expect someone to come out. >> No. >> If he didn't come out, then how have we had this sort of boom? >> It's a great question, right?
¶7So, the question is why would people believe that he came back to life after he died? There are a few things to point out. Firstly, we don't know the extent to which people did really believe this. I mean, the people who actually met Jesus. Of course, the only sources that we have for post-resurrection appearances are the four gospels and I suppose Paul, right?
¶8And Paul only experienced the risen Christ in a flash of light on the road to Damascus. It's the kind of visionary experience you could expect to have today. The disciples seemed to meet Jesus, but they did so uh with increasing frequency the later the gospel goes, and with more sort of seemingly mythological elements the later the gospels go to. Mark's gospel, although if you read it, it will have post-resurrection appearances, the earliest manuscripts of Mark's gospel, so Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, don't have what they call the long ending. It just ends with the with the women at the tomb.
¶9That's where the the gospel ends. Matthew and Luke introduce resurrection appearances, you know. At the end of Mark, the angel says, "Go away to Galilee, and you'll find them there." And in one of these gospels it's narrated that the 12 meet him in in Galilee. In one of the gospels it's moved to Jerusalem. In Matthew's gospel it says that his 11 then disciples saw him, but that some doubted.
¶10Matthew includes the detail that the people who knew him best, who knew Jesus, and had been with him for years, and saw him personally stood in front of them physically resurrected, doubted. That seems a really conspicuous feature to me. It seems like Matthew wouldn't make that up. He's including it because it was known. And the fact that there was doubt there makes me question the nature of the kind of resurrected thing that they were experiencing.
¶11John's gospel you have even more stories. You get doubting Thomas, for example, which I think is is exclusively theologically motivated and only shows up in John's gospel. Think about the road to Emmaus in Luke's gospel. Another post-resurrection appearance, where two of Jesus' former disciples are walking along the road, and a man comes up to them, and they don't know and they don't know who he is. And Jesus and it's Jesus, spoiler alert, and they start sort of and Jesus starts like explaining the law to them as they're walking along, and it's and it's all great.
¶12And it's only when they sit down and Jesus breaks the bread that suddenly they recognize him. I just don't interpret this as a literal story. And I don't mean to say this is made up. I mean to say I don't think this is intended as a historical event. I think this is this is in the genre of mythology, which isn't a dirty word.
¶13Mythology is great. It's very useful. But, I don't think this is intending to be a literal account of something which actually happened to two disciples. Of course, what they then say is, "Were our hearts not burning all along?" I think the theological message is that, you know, Jesus was there with you even if you don't realize it, kind of thing. I just think that the the reports that we have are extremely dubious.
¶14I just I just don't I'm I don't trust the fact that there were actually disciples who had traveled with Jesus who became convinced that they'd seen him physically resurrected after he died. Cuz people often say, for example, "Why would the disciples be put to death for their beliefs?" How do you know they were put to death? Tradition. That's it. There's no textual basis.
¶15Only two of the disciples' deaths are recorded in the Gospels, including Judas's suicide. All the rest is completely, I would say, probably apocryphal. For example, how was Peter put to death? Do you know? You might know that Peter dies by being crucified.
¶16And he's crucified upside down. Right? Except the earliest source that we have for this is a Gnostic Gospel, which in other other contexts Christians laugh out of the room. They say, "Oh, those Gnostic Gospels are completely ahistorical. Don't listen to them." But, that is where we get the idea that Peter was crucified upside down from.
¶17And Christians are okay with hanging on to that. I don't know. I just I I doubt the source material. And I do think that the likelihood that there's some mythological embellishment, I think the like I think the likelihood, honestly, that Have you read the Immortality Key? This is the This is the thesis that the Eucharist began as a psychedelic ritual and that the wine had psychedelic I think that that >> You are absolutely obsessed with drugs.
¶18>> [laughter] >> I I genuinely think I'm not trying to be funny here. I genuinely think that a thesis like that is more plausible than that Jesus rose from the dead. It's possible that the body was stolen. Now, you might say, "Well, the body can't have been stolen, because there were guards at the tomb." Who tells us there were guards at the tomb? Matthew's gospel and only Matthew's gospel.
¶19And what does it say? It says, "Now some people were spreading the rumor that Jesus' body had been stolen." So they decided to they decided to pay the Jews to spread the lie that the body had been stolen. And Matthew puts the guards at the tomb. So the fact that Matthew Now Matthew says that the Jews paid people I got that the wrong way around. The Jews paid people to spread the rumor that the body had been stolen, which is a rumor which persists to this day, Matthew says.
¶20And Matthew is the one who narrates that there are uh soldiers at the tomb. Implying that people were already saying someone stole the body. Yeah. And that Matthew seems to have invented the guards in order to essentially argue against this polemic. Um there's so much more to say on this.
¶21I'm not saying the body was stolen. I'm just saying that the the way that Christians typically approach this is they say, "Well, either they were lying or they were mistaken or Jesus rose from the dead." Right? I'm saying firstly there are more options, which is that our sources are wrong and mythologically embellished. The second thing to say is what Christians do is say, "Well, they can't have The body can't have been stolen because firstly who would be stealing it and secondly there were guards. And they can't have been lying cuz who would go to death for the things that they believe." So the only remaining option is that he rose from the dead.
¶22I could just as easily go the other way around and say, "Well, here are our options. Well, it can't have been that a man rose from the dead cuz that's not possible. It can't have been that they were lying cuz they don't die for their beliefs. So the only remaining option is that the body was stolen." That might make sense, but I don't I I don't I'm not saying the body was stolen. I just don't understand why it is that the default position you have to fall back to when all the others failed is that he rose from the dead when those haven't been thoroughly enough debunked, I think, and also are just more plausible to me.
¶23Um but I don't know. I don't know what happened on Easter morning. Something extraordinary happened. Um, but I I think my main critique is doubting the source material and thinking it quite dubious that the later the gospel, the more resurrection appearances there are and the more fanciful and theologically embellished they become. I find that extremely suspicious.
¶24Um, but I don't know what happened. And I I want to add, I know we're over time here. I promise I'll finish. Uh, that if you want to it's probably the best attested miracle in terms of the historical evidence. Right.
¶25But if you were you were talking about the success. We didn't talk about Tom Holland and cultural Christianity, which I think is broadly nonsense for reasons I've talked about in other shows and will hopefully put out online. Um, but if you want to class the success of a religious movement and it's how crucial it is to the development of the Western world as any way pertaining to its truth, then you have to explain the success of Islam in the Middle East and now also in Europe. And try to do that without it counting as an argument for the truth of Islam, you know, which I'm sure you would be able to do. Precocious you are.
¶26Do you get what I'm saying? I wish we had more time to to go back and forth because I'm sure you have things to say about that, but hopefully that's a a rough answer to your question, even if it's dissatisfying. You know what I think.