July 24, 2006

This Post is Old!

The post you are reading is years old and may not represent my current views. I started blogging around the time I first began to study philosophy, age 17. In my view, the point of philosophy is to expose our beliefs to rational scrutiny so we can revise them and get better beliefs that are more likely to be true. That's what I've been up to all these years, and this blog has been part of that process. For my latest thoughts, please see the front page.

William Lane Craig on the Historicity of the Resurrection

Over the course of this summer, I've been forming an argument for belief in the Bible. Part 2 of my argument was critically depndent on the claim that "if we accept ... [the] postulate ... that a very powerful being is trying to get our attention, then the most coherent ... [explanation] ... is that ... Jesus did in fact rise from the dead." This is, of course, a fairly modest claim, as it explicitly presupposes a pretty substantial chunk of theology (there is a God, he actually cares what we think/do, he wants us to know about him, etc.). However, some would still dispute it. Some time ago, after reading this post on The Prosblogion, I downloaded the transcript of the debate between William Lane Craig and Bart D. Ehrman on the historicity of the resurrection, and I've just now got around to reading it. Not all of the debate is that good or that interesting (I got irritated with Ehrman repeatedly, and I didn't think Craig always addressed my irritations in his responses - also, while it started out very friendly, the participants became noticeably irritated with each other later on and both got into some repetitive rhetorical attacks). However, Craig's first speech gives an excellent and concise outline of the type of argument needed to establish this claim (though, disappointingly, Craig is not as straightfoward about the presuppositions required for the argument to work as I would have liked). In short, if you found my argument unsatisfactory (or even if you were utterly convinced by my argument), I highly recommend that you read at least Craig's first speech in the debate, though I cannot unequivocally endorse everything he says throughout.

Posted by Kenny at July 24, 2006 10:23 PM
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