Hypothesis one: We’re not talking about a literal resurrection. Perhaps it is just an inspiring myth that served to justify the propagation of Jesus’ exalted ethical teachings. A literal resurrection contradicts the known laws of nature. Maybe scientists can celebrate the idea of Jesus’s spirit living on, while his body remained in the grave.
Hypothesis two: We really believe in the bodily resurrection of the first century Jew known as Jesus of Nazareth. My Christian colleagues at MIT – and millions of other scientists worldwide – somehow think that a literal miracle like the resurrection of Jesus is possible. And we are following a long tradition. The founders of the scientific revolution and many of the greatest scientists of the intervening centuries were serious Christian believers.
Hypothesis 3: I was brainwashed as a child. ... But no, I did not grow up in a home where I was taught to believe in the resurrection. I came to faith in Jesus when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge University and was baptized in the chapel of Kings College on my 20th birthday.Hypothesis two wins:
To explain how a scientist can be a Christian is actually quite simple. Science cannot and does not disprove the resurrection. Natural science describes the normal reproducible working of the world of nature. Indeed, the key meaning of “nature”, as Boyle emphasized, is “the normal course of events.” Miracles like the resurrection are inherently abnormal. ...
Today’s widespread materialist view that events contrary to the laws of science just can’t happen is a metaphysical doctrine, not a scientific fact. What’s more, the doctrine that the laws of nature are “inviolable” is not necessary for science to function. Science offers natural explanations of natural events. It has no power or need to assert that only natural events happen.
So if science is not able to adjudicate whether Jesus’ resurrection happened or not, are we completely unable to assess the plausibility of the claim? No. Contrary to increasingly popular opinion, science is not our only means for accessing truth. In the case of Jesus’ resurrection, we must consider the historical evidence, and the historical evidence for the resurrection is as good as for almost any event of ancient history.Read the rest..
It is refreshing that a scientists understands the principle of "limit questions." Limit questions are those that are outside the realm of a particular field of knowledge. For example, suppose you attend a concert by my hometown's orchestra, the Nashville Symphony. At the end, as you are leaving, you overhear a man in front of you say, "Speaking as a cardiologist, it is my medical opinion that this was the finest performance of Saint-Saux's Symphony Number Three in C Minor ever presented anywhere."
Immediately you can see that such a statement is simply nonsense. It may well have been the best-ever performance of the symphony, but true or false, it is not a medical question and so his opinion "as a cardiologist" has no authority at all. The quality of a concert is a limit question for physicians. it is outside their realm of knowledge and expertise.
This is exactly the mistake that many scientists, such as Stephen Hawking, make. When they denounce Christians for affirming the resurrection, they claim that science has proved it was impossible. But as Prof. Hutchison explains, miracles are inherently limit questions for science.
Scientific integrity requires that scientists and non-scientists alike recognize that there are limits to scientific knowledge. Failing this is the main error of the so-called New Atheist movement, whose advocates insist that,
- only science reveals the Real,
- only science can discover truth
- scientific knowledge is exhaustive and inherently unlimited.
... prior commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations ... . Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.This is not evidence of an inquiring mind. The intellectual atheists' veil was further pulled back by Thomas Nagel, professor of philosophy and law at New York University:
I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about human life, including everything about the human mind… This is a somewhat ridiculous situation… [I]t is just as irrational to be influenced in one’s beliefs by the hope that God does not exist as by the hope that God does exist. (The Last Word, pp. 130-131, quoted by fellow philosopher Edward Feser.)However, affirming the resurrection of Jesus is not wishful thinking, it is the most reasonable conclusion based on the non-supernatural facts and circumstances surrounding the issue. Note well, please: that the resurrection of Jesus did occur is the ending point of examination of the facts, not the beginning point.
The resurrection of Jesus is foremost an historical question, not primarily a scientific one or even, really, a religious one. And so there will be limits of what science can declare about it just as there are limits on what science can declare about any other historical event. For example, it cannot be "scientifically proven" that Gen. George Washington led his army across the Delaware river on Christmas night, 1776, to attack Hessian forces at Trenton, N.J. That is an historical question, not scientific one.
And so the resurrection of Jesus: There are five historical facts about the resurrection that do not depend on divine revelation or supernatural events. They are historical facts as established as any others of ancient history, and in fact better established than most. And they are agreed to be historical by non-Christian historians as well. They are:
1. The sudden and immediate founding of the Church following the death of the man called Jesus of Nazareth. That the church began with the power and beliefs that it did has never been explained on any basis that leaves Jesus, like John Brown, “a molderin’ in his grave,” especially since absent Jesus's resurrection, there is nothing left but ordinary Judaism.
2. Jesus’s tomb was discovered empty on the Sunday after he died on the cross.
3. The first person to claim that Jesus rose from the dead was a woman.
4. Many other people also said they saw Jesus risen from the dead, especially Paul and James the brother of Jesus, called James the Just.
5. The apostles who proclaimed Jesus’s resurrection were killed for doing so, except John, who died in exile. None recanted even when it would have saved their lives.
Note that none of these facts rely on supernatural authority. They are historical facts documented as well or better than accounts of other ancient figures or events. Longer explanation here.
Update: Speaking of physics:
We have asked three scientists to discuss some of the latest research and scholarship regarding the place of life, including human life, in the universe. Sara Seager describes the search for Earth-like planets orbiting distant stars and explains what led her to join the hunt. Marcelo Gleiser shows why the findings of physics should help ease our sense of cosmic angst. And Luke A. Barnes explains what it means to say that the universe appears “fine-tuned” for life.
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