I have been asked to write a response to the article “Jesus - According to Orthodox Historic Biblical Christianity.” Of course, I have to wonder exactly what “Orthodox Historic Biblical Christianity” is. I mean, I can think of many Christians that say their beliefs are orthodox and based on history and the Bible, yet disagree on many important issues.

At least with labels like “fundamentalist” there are specific criteria that can be used to identify them, even though not all fundamentalists are from a given denomination, nor is any denomination entirely filled with fundamentalists. With the term “Orthodox Historic Biblical Christianity,” such is not the case.

I have no way of determining which – if any – group of Christians is “historic,” because there are no historical records of the supposed founder of Christianity. I also have no way to determine which beliefs are “biblical,” because the Bible is so inconsistent that it can be used to prove almost any position. Hence, I suspect that the title of the article I am responding to is something the author simply made up, based on the issues and assumptions within the article.

In the article, the author makes many arguments that all assume something that – if false – destroys his entire article; namely, the accuracy of the gospels. There are many other assumptions he makes that I disagree with, but if the gospels are not accurate, none of his other assumptions matter. The article would have failed on that basis alone. This is why my main focus will be to address the issue of whether or not the gospels describe real history.

Interestingly enough, the author starts with a list of assumptions he will make in his article. One such assumption is “the historicity of the New Testament” which the author claims, “is based on eyewitness testimony & hard evidence.” This is an assertion within an assumption. As though making an assumption without giving evidence for it isn’t bad enough, the author then makes an assertion about it without giving evidence for the assertion. This is a huge “no-no” when trying to form a rational argument.

Now, other parts of the New Testament may or may not be authentic, but the ones that are authentic cannot be true (and might even be delusional), if the gospels are not true. Hence, my article will be dealing specifically with whether or not the gospels are true. After all, things in the New Testament – outside the gospels – rarely describe much from the gospels and, if the gospels are false, would invalidate claims made about their contents, in the first place.

That being said, let me address a few other things the author says before getting to any actual arguments (what few he presents) for his case. After his list of assumptions, the author discusses what the contents of the New Testament – apparently, mostly within the gospels – show (assuming, of course, that they’re true). Immediately following that is a two-paragraph bit about presuppositions.

The funny thing is that the author has made many presuppositions, up to this point, in the paper. His second paragraph on presuppositions borderlines on being an ad hominem attack against anyone that doesn’t believe precisely what the author believes. Even funnier is the fact that the second paragraph is something that presupposes many things, itself.

Thus, I would like to pose my own question – countering the author’s question – that uses no such presuppositions: whose views should you rationally accept; those of people making incredible claims, those who accept such claims (whose minds may be clouded by their own presuppositions on the matter), or those who question incredible claims in the absence of incredible evidence?

Anyway, the next thing the author discusses is how to “prove” history. Here, he seems to confuse himself, because he is trying to find a way to “prove” history the same way we prove that 1+1=2. We can’t “prove” history the same way we prove other things; it is an entirely different science. It would be like trying to prove that I ate lunch at a particular restaurant, yesterday, via an equation. It simply can’t be done.

I can, however, show you my receipt and have you talk to the employees of the restaurant. Now, it’s possible that I forged the receipt and got the restaurant employees to lie for me, but such a scenario would require assuming more than the scenario involving me actually eating at that restaurant on the day indicated on the receipt. Proving history – as the author points out later – is much like proving a court case; we find the most likely scenario, considering the evidence.

One of the methods the author describes for proving history is the “hypothetico-deductive model.” The author says, of the historian, that “He reconstructs a picture of the past. … Then he deduces certain conditions from it that will confirm or disprove his hypothesis. He then checks to see which conditions exist” by looking at the evidence.

Interestingly enough, such a method disproves the gospels. If we start with the hypothesis that the gospels are true, we should start by looking for confirmation of the existence of people and/or places within the gospels. According to the gospels, Jesus was from Nazareth. Yet, when we look for “Nazareth” in history, there is no mention of it until the early 4th century. Now, this does not mean that Nazareth didn’t exist prior to that, it just gives us the latest possible date for its establishment.

Looking at earlier documents, we find no mention of Nazareth. The Old Testament, the Talmud, the writings of Paul, Josephus, and historians of the time all seem to lack any mentioning of a place called “Nazareth.”

In fact, Josephus gives a list of 45 cities and villages in Galilee, yet he doesn’t have “Nazareth” on his list. Since he lived – for a part of his life – about a mile from where Nazareth now stands, yet failed to mention it in his list of places in Galilee, we must conclude that it didn’t exist at the time. Thus, we can place the establishment of Nazareth sometime between the 2nd and 4th century… a bit too late for Jesus.

We can apply this method to other places, as well as people and events, to discover more factual errors in the gospels (Luke makes the most mistakes). Eventually, we must conclude that if the gospel writers got so many things wrong that we can’t be sure what – if anything – they got right.

The next part of the author’s article discusses the “model of inference to the best explanation. According to this approach, we begin with the evidence available to us from the data and then infer what would, if true, provide the best explanation of that evidence.” However, the author seems to have a bit of a problem.

Suppose I pulled out the Vedas and said, “According to this, it is Indra ‘who leads the waters.’ Since I saw a river flowing, this morning, the best explanation is that Indra was leading it.” Would the author believe me? Of course not!

In the same way, we cannot assume the accuracy of the gospels and then reach conclusions about its contents. We must first establish the accuracy of the gospels. However, as I showed earlier, there are a few problems that call the gospels’ accuracy into question. Furthermore, these problems must lead us to the conclusion that the “best explanation” is that the gospels are made up.

Next on the author’s agenda is a list of things that are factors for testing historical hypotheses. They are “The hypothesis, together with other true statements, must imply further statements describing present, observable data. The hypothesis must have greater explanatory scope … greater explanatory power … be more plausible … less ad hoc … disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs [and] … must so exceed its rivals in fulfilling conditions (2)-(6) that there is little chance of a rival hypothesis, after further investigation, exceeding it in meeting these conditions.”

The problem is that this – like the other methods described by the author – works against the gospels. If we start with the hypothesis that the gospels are true, we must assume things that go against “present, observable data,” are less plausible, and are more ad hoc than what would be involved in a hypothesis involving the gospels being made up.

On a final note for this section, the author says, “The goal of historical knowledge is to obtain probability, not mathematical certainty. An item can be regarded, as a piece of historical knowledge when it is related to the evidence in such a way that any reasonable person ought to accept it.” Unfortunately, the gospels are so improbable and contain so many factual errors that no reasonable person should accept them.

In the next section, the author discusses the issue of the supposed virgin birth of Jesus. As his evidence, he discusses parthenogenesis and quotes someone as having said “No critic of the Virgin Birth today would dare speak of the ‘biological impossibility’ of such an event. We dismiss this particular criticism without further discussion.”

Well, if the author and his source are going to be that closed minded about it, perhaps they don’t care to hear about the fact that parthenogenesis – in humans – always results in a female offspring. Thus, it is a “biological impossibility” for Jesus to have been born of a virgin… unless, of course, his story was like Yentl’s.

After this segment is the author’s clear ad hominem attack against those who disbelieve the virgin conception of Jesus. In this, he says that those who disbelieve have an “anti-supernatural bias.” One must wonder about any “supernatural bias” there might be and what effect it has on the subject who believes in the supposed virgin conception. One must also wonder if the author is saying that those who accept a different form of supernaturalism than the author also have an “anti-supernatural bias” (which sounds absurd).

Within the same paragraph, the author claims, “If one believes in a supernatural omnipotent creator God who created the vast universe, then the supernatural creation of a few miniscule Y-chromosomes, and their impregnation without the agency of a man would not be hard for such a God. If there is a God who created the universe, if He flung the galaxies out from His fingertips (metaphorically speaking), if He painted the sky with a scintillating Milky Way then surely for Him to take a tiny seed and place it in the womb of a woman is nothing at all. The Virgin Conception is no big problem at all for God.”

Besides being entirely ad hoc, there are two other problems. For those that accept a different deity (or deities), it is not a question of whether or not deities can impregnate a woman, it’s a question of whether or not they did. For those who do not believe in any deities, it is a question of whether or not deities exist, in the first place.

The author continues, “Taking this anti-supernatural physicalism to its logical conclusion, implies that if miracles do not occur then creation could not have taken place. A person who cannot (or will not) believe in the Virgin Conception thus has an inconsistent view of God. This person believes that God can create an entire and vast universe but is INCAPABLE of creating a few chromosomes to be immaculately conceived without the biological agency of a man.”

Here, Singh becomes entirely incoherent in his claims. If I don’t believe in any gods, I can’t possibly think that any gods created this universe. Hence, it is consistent to further say that miracles -– including virgin conceptions -– do not occur. If, however, I believed in a god (or many gods) other than the author’s, it is not inconsistent to say that a particular god didn’t conceive a child, regardless of whether or not I think that god is capable of it. The only inconsistent thing here is between reality and what the author thinks other people believe.

The absurdity of the author’s claims can be seen in the following question, modeled after the author’s apparent logic. Certainly a god that created an entire universe must be capable of throwing lightning bolts, causing rain, pushing lava out of volcanoes, and creating earthquakes… so why doesn’t the author believe that his god does these things?

As a further ad hominem attack, the author continues, “The real problem behind the rejection of the Virgin Conception is one’s presuppositions and worldview. People who reject the Virgin Conception of Christ assume the following presuppositions in their worldview known as PHYSICALISM:

1. The universe is a self contained, closed system.

2. Everything happens according to natural laws, which are absolute and unbreakable.

3. No miracles or supernatural intervention are possible. Therefore they conclude that the Virgin Conception of Christ is impossible and never occurred, since miracles CANNOT happen.”

Again, Singh’s claims are incoherent. The virgin conception of Jesus is a Christian belief. Those from other religions can believe in miracles (e.g., the ones from their religion), while rejecting Christian miracles. After all, I’m sure the author rejects the supposed miracles from other religions; why should they accept his?

Furthermore, “physicalism” is NOT a “worldview.” Even if it were, he gets the first tenet wrong. For a system to be “closed,” it must be closed off from something. Since the universe would include everything there is, it can’t be closed off from something else and, hence, can’t be a closed system.

Lastly, the other two things the author mentions are consistent with what we know of the universe. Believing the contrary makes science impossible, since the basis of science is the belief that the laws of the universe apply to every part of it all the time. If the author wishes to claim that there are examples of a natural law being broken, perhaps he can give us one. Until then, we must assume that such things do not happen.

Next, the author attacks Hume and his similar “uniform experience against the miraculous,” claiming –- essentially -– that if a miracle occurred only once, then the odds of a specific person witnessing it are small and “irrelevant to their probability.” He then discusses the mere possibility of his god’s existence, quantum indeterminacy, and finishes off with an ad hoc bit about how, if his god is holding the universe together, obviously such a being can do things to the universe.

This position, however, has more holes in it than a screen door. If Indra has ever led so much as a drop of water, the odds of the author ever experiencing it are incredibly small. If it is even remotely possible that Indra ever led any water, the author has a huge problem on his hands. Will the author now drop everything and become a Hindu? Of course not!

In the same way, if I have never experienced a miracle and don’t know of any verifiable stories of miracles at any point in all of human history, I am not going to suddenly join every religion – not that it would make much sense to do so, in the first place – simply because one of them MIGHT be true.

Lastly, quantum indeterminacy deals with the fact that we cannot precisely measure both the position and momentum of a particle, at the same time. To equate this with the idea that “anything is possible” displays a wealth of ignorance on the subject, on the part of the author.

Next, the author claims that belief in the virgin conception is not taken on “blind faith” and that there is a “sufficient basis” for believing it, based on “the omnipotent nature of God … [and] the resurrection of Jesus.” He also claims that disbelief is “an assault on the power of God, … [and] an attack on the reliability of scripture, the incarnation and dual nature of Jesus and His sinless substitutionary death as the Savior of mankind.”

The problem is that all of these things assume that the gospels (and, to some extent, other books in the Bible) are accurate. If such is not the case, then there is not a “sufficient basis” to believe the stories. Also, accepting the accuracy of the gospels is something that must be taken on “blind faith”… meaning accepting the details of their contents must also be done on “blind faith.”

At the end of 6 pages of assumptions, ad hominem attacks, and ad hoc explanations, the author finally reaches his first real argument. In it, he claims – in reference to the virgin conception -– that it either happened or it didn’t.

Fair enough. But, the author’s argument against the latter seems to lack any substance. He claims that – if it was made up – there has to be a motivation behind doing so, yet he doesn’t know of any such motivation. However, the author’s lack of imagination on the subject does not constitute evidence against it.

Now, making it up all at once doesn’t seem like something that one would try to pass off as true, but there is another possibility. Suppose Jesus was born 120 years before most people think he was (as Yeshu Ha-Notzri). I’m sure the author is familiar with what happens to messages in the “telephone game.” If this happened with Jesus’ story, it would certainly explain the incredible claims in the gospels (i.e., over time, the story got bigger with more incredible things happening each time it was told).

Perhaps “Q” wrote down a story that was passed down by word of mouth for several generations before him. Perhaps Mark copied his story from “Q” and added a few things of his own (creating a midrashic work and tossing in a few things from Mithraism). Perhaps Matthew, copying from Mark and “Q,” simply inserts the virgin conception (as he does other things, including correcting Mark’s mistakes in geography), so that it matches with the way he heard the story. The fact that he claims it was prophesied – when what was actually prophesied was a young girl giving birth in the near future (a mistake he picks up from a Greek translation of his quote) -– is especially revealing, in regards to Matthew’s background. Perhaps Luke (who makes more than his fair share of mistakes) included it simply because he was copying from Matthew.

Such a scenario certainly fits with the evidence. For example, in Mark, some were brought to Jesus and some were healed; in Matthew, some were brought and all were healed; and in Luke, all were brought and all were healed… the story just keeps getting better every time it’s told (as would be the case in the “telephone game” scenario)!

The author of the article further argues against the idea that the virgin conception didn’t happen by claiming that “Matthew, and Luke’s sources, would have been Jewish.” He then argues that no Jew would have come up with such a story.

The problem is that Luke was clearly not Jewish or even from the area he describes in his book. He makes so many errors in regards to Jewish law and geography that many scholars doubt that he or any supposed sources were eyewitnesses to the events he describes.

The author continues with his argument against the virgin conception not happening by pointing out that some people explain the story by pointing to “pagan parallels.” He tries to argue against this by calling it “wrong-headed” and claiming, “there were no actual pagan virgin conception stories.”

Had he done his homework -– instead of just repeating what Machen said –- he would have found that Perseus, Dionysius, Horus, Mithra, and Adonis were all conceived by virgins… and were all common stories, at the time. A little more homework reveals that the story of Mithra and the story of Jesus bear a striking similarity to one another.

In his next section, the author discusses the deity of Jesus. He gives a long list of Bible verses and concludes that Jesus must have been god. Of course, using the Bible to prove that Jesus is god is much like using the Vedas to prove that Indra leads water; you must first assume that the stories are true.

Next, the author discusses some of the challenges made to the possibility of Jesus being god (e.g., contradictions in such an idea). At one point he claims that “one may argue that Jesus posses divine and human attributes in a coherent arrangement.”

Well, if by “coherent arrangement,” he means “half man and half god” or that when attributes contradict one another, one prevails (making him less god and/or less human), I would agree that such would be a “coherent arrangement.” The problem is that most Christians think Jesus was fully man and fully god. Another problem is in proving that either was actually the case.

In standard Christian apologist fashion, the author then discusses the trilemma. This argument has been beaten to death so many times since C.S. Lewis invented it that one must wonder why anyone still uses it. The argument assumes that the gospels accurately depict what happened. If such is not the case, it doesn’t matter what they say Jesus said.

The author then finishes off that section by saying that skeptics “rule out the deity of Jesus because of their unwarranted preconceived worldview not from the evidence of history” and that Jesus’ “subjective claims were validated by the empirically verified objective eyewitness space-time event of the resurrection in real history.”

However, stringing together a bunch of semi-technical words doesn’t prove his case. Who “empirically verified” the resurrection? How? What “objective eyewitness” was there to the event? It is the Christian, not the skeptic that must ignore history to support preconceived ideas on this issue.

In a spectacular grand finale, the author tries to prove that Jesus was resurrected. However, he starts out by saying that skeptics deny the resurrection “because causal powers of nature are insufficient to return a corpse to life” and then says that Christians “posit that GOD the Father raised Jesus from the dead!” Well, I deny the resurrection because I have no evidence for it, not because of how natural laws work. The author’s ad hoc bit doesn’t change that.

He then claims, “The crucifixion of Jesus is an established historical fact, which no historian who would dispute” and that “Christ's resurrection can be proved with at least as much certainty as any universally believed and well-documented event in ancient history.”

Did I say grand finale? Well, it starts with a few fizzles. Anyway, I don’t know where he gets these ideas, but they are most certainly false. There are plenty of historians that would dispute whether the crucifixion ever happened, and -– as I have pointed out repeatedly -– if the gospels are not accurate, they can’t be used to prove anything, much less the resurrection.

The author then claims that the only things he needs to prove his case, without assumptions, is “The existence of the New Testament texts” and “The existence (but not necessarily the truth) of the Christian religion…” He then poses the question “Which theory about what really happened in Jerusalem on that first Easter Sunday can account for the data?”

Well, that depends on exactly what “data” he is referring to. If he intends to use nothing but the New Testament to prove his case, he is making two errors. First, he is assuming that the text is true; second, he is trying to use the text to prove what it says. This is, of course, circular and can’t work. Also, the first assumption is one he said he wouldn’t make.

After a long spiel that amounts to nothing more than a quote mined argument from incredulity, the author lists “12 Undeniable Known Bedrock Authentic Historical Facts Concerning The Resurrection Events And That All Critics Agree On.” Well, I’m a critic, and I don’t agree with his list. I’m sure a lot of other critics don’t agree either. I don’t know where he gets the idea that they all do.

After his list, he says, “Another consideration not listed above is the failure of the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem to disprove the resurrection.” I don’t know if he actually looked at the list before copying and pasting it, but this was on the list; it was #4.

There is also a perfectly rational explanation for why the 1^st century Jewish leaders never addressed the issue of whether or not Jesus’ tomb was empty. It’s because there were no Christians claiming it was. The idea of an empty tomb wasn’t popular until at least the end of the 1^st century (possibly later). Of course, by then, no one -– not even the Christians -– knew where it was, so there was no real reason to ask for a negative proof, at the time.

Continuing to harp on the “empty tomb” hypothesis, the author says that it was either “Occupied (He did not rise from the dead) or empty (He did rise from the dead).” Well, here’s another idea, which he doesn’t address… it was non-existent. The author goes through a long spiel countering problems with an “occupied tomb” hypothesis and concludes that it must have been empty, but he is assuming -– again -– that the gospels’ depiction of any tomb is even accurate.

After this, the author declares victory, gives a bunch of Bible quotes about why we should believe and then ends his article with an ad hominem attack on any non-believers. Thus, after 20 pages, the author’s arguments boil down to ad hominem attacks, circular reasoning, assumptions, and ad hoc explanations of his assumptions.

If he cannot prove that the gospels are accurate, the author of the article I am responding to cannot use them to support his arguments. He also can’t use the gospels to show the accuracy of the gospels (that would be circular reasoning). He needs something more than his assumptions to prove his case and has done a particularly bad job in his attempt to prove his case.