Challenge 3: "New Explanations Have Refuted Jesus' Resurrection" An interview with Michael Licona, M.A., Ph.D cand.

The picture I get of Paul Jacobsen from his response to Licona's material is that of someone who has spent hours scratching his head in bewilderment. He responds to so little of it directly that I must conclude (especially in light of my TWeb debate with him) that he was in over his head on the subject matter.

• The claim that Licona's comments on Bayes' Theorem, re: the resurrection and Islamic ideas about the crucifixion, as "in direct contradiction" is abject nonsense. The former has to do with claims made by contemporaries and near-contemporaeies, that are uncontradicted by oppositional testimony; the latter, with claims made hundreds of years after the fact, against testimony by favorable (NT), equivocal (Josephus, Talmud) and hostile (Tacitus, Lucian) witnesses. Jacobsen is not able to deal with the complexities of such arguments, and so he can only deal with an emasculated version.
• Re the use of Gottschalk: "Conformity or agreement with other known historical or scientific facts is often the decisive test of evidence, whether of one or more witnesses." Yes, Licona would probably charge him - rightly - with "methodological naturalism" though I myself would add that the dichotomy between natural and supernatural is an artificial one. The answer to how we "prove" such things is simple: The way anything else is proven, by evidence. The canard that says "neither do we see resurrections today" and appeals to "initial probability" was defeated in Hume's own day by the "ice analogy" which compelled Hume to backtrack and soften his position.
• There is the standard appeal to conflicts in the Gospels which is answer by our series here that Jacobsen will never touch. There are also rehearings of arguments from prior chapters on the genre of the Gospels, which one senses Jacobsen added because his chapter looked too short. We will not play the same game, but simply note that answers have been given already.
• The depth of Jacobsen's insanity - there is really no other word - is shown in that he suggests that not even the crucifixion of Jesus is an "indisputable fact". Testimony by the likes of Tacitus is dismissed in that it is possible they didn't do any research on the subject (which does not fit the mode of Tacitus at all, but presumably Jacobsen would simply make the excuse that while Tacitus normally did research, he may not have done it that one time). It is at this point that paranoia, not intelligence, is Jacobsen's rule of thumb, and that it is clear he seeks any excuse possible to arrive at a conclusion he doesn't want to reach. He then appeals extensively to Carrier's material on Caesar's Rubicon crossing, which he does acknowledge we have addressed here though he seems unaware that we have replied to Carrier's second round, and he declines to engage the issue further - which suggests to me, again, that he is in over his head.
• Jacobsen's plea re the criterion of embarrassment, that "you can't know this without being able to read the author's mind," is simply further paranoia and excuse-making. Scholarship has a grip on the social setting of the NT; Jacobsen's appeal to the possibility of a "plot device" is painfully and clearly ad hoc, and an indication that he does not have evidence to present, but is rather stuck explaining it away based on what he wants to be true - and this is also shown in that he openly declares that given a choice between the swoon theory and the resurrection, he would go to the former.
• His understanding of atonement theory and the Trinity ("is it really less likely than that the Christian God sacrificed Himself to Himself and then resurrected Himself in order to change His own rules") is so primitive that it is appalling. The resort to implying that Licona may be a liar in recounting his anecdote of a friend, and his constant resort to the explanation of a "plot device," also speaks for itself in terms of Jacobsen's desperation.
• Jacobsen's exegesis of Matthew 5:38-42 is also appalling. See links here for each verse.
• Re the canards about Christian morals, I will address one that I know well: "Christians make up 75% of the U.S. population, but 90% of the U.S. prison population." This is simply false; I did an article for the Christian Research Journal that may be found here (PDF format). This, combined with my own experience as a prison employee, belies this nonsensical and simplistic claim. For one thing, many states simply do not have valid statistics, so there is no grounds for such a report in the first place. For another, those that do have stats show a range of professions for Christianity UP TO 90% in each state, but not in all states that report. Finally, Jacobsen is oblivious to the fact that prison inmates profess faiths for many reasons other than true belief: 1) It permits special visits. 2) It often allows certain privileges, including breaks from normal work schedules, or the ability to "stand out" in a crowd of people who dress and live the same every day. 3) The religious buildings have AIR CONDITIONING. 4) When filling out forms, most don't know they can leave the question of religion blank. 5) The religious buildings have AIR CONDITIONING. 6) The religious buildings have AIR CONDITIONING.

  Jacobsen's anecdotes about his personal life are also a poor filler to cover his lack of engagement with arguments about the resurrection: He whines of use of one source like Acts for a claim, and then ignores 80% of what Licona has to say.

• Jacobsen's canards about persecution are - but of course - too simplistic; see here and note that we have already answered Carrier's retorts in full.
• Jacobsen thinks "most Christians do not think it was a physical visitation" Paul had from Jesus. Whatever they may think, it is wrong. 1 Cor. 15 is Paul's indication that he saw a physically resurrected Jesus. The use of the word "vision" has Jacobsen confused; the word used means an appearance and does not invoke any semantic content of a subjective experience. On hallucination, see here.

That was it, and good night it was awful.