Here I wrap up my discussion of Kamil Gregor's pareidolia explanation of the resurrection evidence.I first ask whether Gregor is fairly representing the claims of Christian scholars like Michael Licona and Craig Evans concerning Greco-Roman history. Unfortunately, his use of their claims is not all that far off, despite the fact that they would no doubt want to disclaim the extent to which he takes them. But the allegedly comforting "limits" on sheer invention, including invention of whole incidents, which they place on their ideas of Greco-Roman historical conventions, are far from apparent in their own work, and they appear to be more of a sop to calm down conservative audiences than a principled stance. On the other hand, I have argued that it is all wrong anyway to say that it was part and parcel of ancient history to make stuff up, so not only is Gregor wrong about that, so are Licona and Evans.Then I turn to the more interesting question for this mini-series: Does Gregor's invocation of alleged ancient norms which permitted sheer invention salvage his explanation of the Gospel stories we have? Nope. He's still dragged down by his initial claim, discussed last week, that the disciples thought they only saw Jesus appearing from heaven, not on earth.And then there's the whole "fake points don't make points" issue. It's an odd thing: Why are some skeptics squeamish about saying that the Gospel authors lied?Here's Gregor's appearance on Mythvision:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FWyZRnI4e8

Skeptics are fond of saying that they have an explanation of the evidence that does just a job as good as, the theory that Jesus rose again (or at least very close) but that has a higher prior probability than the resurrection.Here I argue that Kamil Gregor's pareidolia theory doesn't even come *close* to being as good an explanation of the resurrection evidence, even just considering the stories in the Gospels as made-up stories. In fact, his pareidolia theory, together with his claims about what the disciples actually believed, is a *liability* to his attempt to explain the Gospel stories naturalistically. Watch to find out why.Here is Gregor's discussion on Mythvision:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FWyZRnI4e8

I continue illustrating the fact that skeptics develop theories that they claim explain the evidence just as well as the resurrection, even though this can be easily seen to be untrue. They then run the priors, claiming that these explanations have a much higher prior probability than the resurrection, so it's a win-win for the skeptical side--equal or nearly equal explanatory power and higher prior.Here I'll discuss the oddity that in Gregor's theory, the disciples already believe that Jesus has already risen and ascended with *zero* experiences of any kind. Moreover, Gregor has to ignore (even when he briefly admits) major differences between the Old Testament stories he cites and what he thinks the disciples believed happened to Jesus, on the basis of those stories.Here is the discussion between Kamil Gregor and Derek of Mythvision that I will be referring to in the next few videos:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FWyZRnI4e8

Here I point directly to Arif Ahmed's "run back to the priors" move. He very nearly admits that his "explanation" of the resurrection evidence doesn't do a very good job explaining, but then he says that however low the prior probability of a naturalistic hypothesis, the prior probability of the resurrection should always be much, much lower. This means that he could always just conjoin the evidence with "the miracle didn't happen" and assume that the prior probability of that conjunction is much higher than the resurrection. But in that case, why bother pretending to come up with something to explain the evidence?

There are two different ways to try to address a strong case for some hypothesis H, and they are not sharply distinct from one another. One way is by just saying that "somehow" we have this and this and this evidence but H is not true. Another is to make a stab at actually explaining a set of evidence if H is not true. When there is a really strong case for H, what will happen is that that "stab" doesn't actually do a good job at explaining the evidence either--nowhere near as good a job as H itself. So the person denying H is forced into a "somehow" move in the end anyway, to make up for the deficiencies of his (already ad hoc) alternative explanation.Here I discuss this point in the abstract and illustrate it from an essay by Arif Ahmed that argues for a Humean approach to the resurrection evidence. Ahmed makes crucial use of, of all things, the swoon theory.

Skeptics tend to be far too quick to make two assumptions: 1) That it is easy to find a naturalistic alternative to any claimed miracle that does just as good a job as the miracle itself at explaining the evidence for it and 2) That the conjunction of "no miracle" with the evidence in question will always have a higher probability than the miracle itself. For a well-attested miracle like Jesus' resurrection, maintaining these two assumptions, (whether or not one uses probabilistic terminology) depends on two types of lazines: Not bothering to consider in detail how hard it would be to explain the evidence if the miracle didn't happen, and letting anti-supernaturalism do the heavy lifting.This is the book in which the essay by Arif Ahmed appears that I am discussing in these videos:https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119103899

We turn technical again today with a discussion of why it's enlightening and useful to investigate the case for a historical claim using a full partition. Which explains the specific evidence better? "The claim is true" or "The claim is false"? This allows one to see if there is a "cost" to adding auxiliary hypotheses to ~H ("the claim is false") in order to make an attempt to explain the alleged evidence. And how "bad" is that cost? This doesn't of course guarantee that the evidence should be regarded as strong, much less that the hypothesis will turn out to be probable, all things considered. But it prevents one from focusing only on subhypotheses of ~H that are specifically designed to explain evidence that, in fact, favors H, which can easily lead to losing sight of the cost of ad hocness.Nor does considering a partition Bayes factor involve ignoring the prior probability or improbability of H. In fact, considering a partition Bayes factor provides an easy and obvious way of considering how low of a prior probability could be overcome by the specific evidence that supposedly supports H. This backsolving approach is what Tim and I took in our article on the resurrection. Here is the recent exchange with Brian Blais which I mention in the video: https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2026/07/probability-and-non-partition.htmlHere is a preprint version on my published paper on a Bayesian analysis of ad hocness: https://lydiamcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/AdhocarticleforActaAnalytica.pdfHere is Tim's and my anthology article from some years ago on the resurrection:https://lydiamcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Resurrectionarticlesinglefile.pdf

This video was originally recorded with Women in Apologetics with the intention that it would be exclusive content for the fall apologetics conference. As announced briefly on Facebook, that session will not occur as planned. However, WIA was entirely willing to send me this video file, so I am now able to share it here on my channel. If you have questions about this change in WIA's conference, feel free to email or message me on Facebook.Unified personalities across the Gospels provide a powerful line of internal evidence for the historical truth of the Gospels. Contrary to the opinions of various critical scholars, even the personality and modes of thought and speech of Jesus are remarkably unified across separate stories in separate Gospels, including John. There is really only one Jesus portrayed there.

Should you really care whether the voice of the Father at Jesus' baptism said, "You are my beloved son" or "This is my beloved son"? That depends entirely on what other baggage is being brought along with the answer to the question. If Matthew is "making" something public here that really only could have been heard in the privacy of Jesus' own mind, and if John is "making" the dove visible to John the Baptist when really, only Jesus could see it, then yes, that matters. But why in the world should we think that there is any tension between the Gospels on these points? Once we start getting hold of the naturally paraphrastic nature of memory and drop the assumption that the Gospel authors are making factual changes when there is the slightest wording difference, we can see that this doesn't matter. But the reason it doesn't matter is that the critical scholars are just wrong in their interpretation of the Gospel of Mark, and we need to say that, too, loud and clear.Clarity. Always clarity.A copy of the essay by Darrell Bock that I quote in this video can be found in a book that you can check out electronically here:https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780853647522/page/86/mode/1up

I got this book of essays by eminent Gospels scholar Harold Attridge on interlibrary loan and then couldn't remember why. So I decided to make a video about part of it--Attridge's insanely complex theory about layers of source elaboration in John 7. If you ever wondered why I list "preference for complex over simple theories" as a bad habit of New Testament scholars, this essay is a case in point.