Naturalistic Alternatives to the Resurrection Hypothesis

So, in the previous post we established the following facts: 
1. Jesus was crucified.
2. Jesus was buried.
3. Jesus' tomb was found empty.
4. Jesus' disciples and other followers had experiences they believed to be encounters with the risen Jesus. 5. Jesus' sceptical half-brother, James, converted after a similar experience.
6. The Church persecutor, Paul, converted after a similar experience.
7. Jesus claimed to be the Messiah.
8. Jesus claimed to be divine.
9. Jesus predicted His own death and resurrection. 

Aside from these facts, we also have to explain the meteoric rise and success of Christianity when its central claims and teachings ran against the prevailing socio-cultural milieu of the 1st century. Now, we shall refer to the claim that Jesus was resurrected from the dead simply as 'the resurrection hypothesis'. The question is, is the resurrection hypothesis the best explanation of these facts, or is some other naturalistic alternative the best explanation? 

When assessing various hypotheses and trying to decide which (if any) are the best explanation, we are relying on the following criteria: 
1. The hypothesis must imply further statements describing present, observable data. 
2. The hypothesis must have greater explanatory scope than its rivals. 
3. The hypothesis must have greater explanatory power than its rivals. 
4. The hypothesis must be more plausible than its rivals. 
5. The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than its rivals. 
6. The hypothesis must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than its rivals. 
7. The hypothesis must so exceed its rivals in fulfilling the prior conditions that there is little chance of a rival hypothesis soon exceeding it. 

We are already familiar with the resurrection hypothesis, but what are the naturalistic alternatives? The naturalistic alternatives to the resurrection hypothesis are as follows: 
1. The Doppelganger Hypothesis: Jesus had a lookalike and so either Jesus was a conman or else a lookalike capitalised on Jesus' death to dupe the disciples. 
2. The Cognitive Dissonance Hypothesis: the disciples invented the resurrection appearances to reconcile cognitive dissonance following Jesus' death. 
3. The Hallucination Hypothesis: the disciples hallucinated the risen Jesus. 
4. The Revival Hypothesis: Jesus wasn't really dead when He was taken from the cross and regained consciousness in the tomb. 
5. The Wrong Tomb Hypothesis: Jesus' followers went to the wrong tomb. 
6. The Stolen Body Hypothesis: the disciples or some other group stole Jesus' body. 
7. The Fraud/Conspiracy Hypothesis: the whole thing is made up. 

Pretty much every hypothesis satisfies condition one, so we shall skip that and move straight ahead to explanatory scope. Simply put, the more data points a hypothesis explains, the more explanatory scope it has. Explanatory power refers to how well the hypothesis explains those data points. Specifically, it refers to how probable the evidence is were the hypothesis to be true. 

Plausibility is a tad more complex; it refers to the degree the hypothesis is implied by accepted truths and the degree to which its negation is implied by accepted truths. A hypothesis is more plausible if it is implied by a greater variety of accepted truths and to a stronger degree and its probable negation is implied by a lesser variety of accepted truths and to a less stronger degree. 

The quality of being ad hoc simply refers to how many new suppositions about the past are required for the hypothesis to work. The fewer new suppositions about the past not already implied to some extent by existing beliefs, the better. Whereas the degree to which a hypothesis is disconfirmed by accepted beliefs is pretty straightforward. 

When conjoined with accepted truths, the hypothesis must imply fewer statements which are believed to be false. The final criterion is pretty self-explanatory. So, let us first review the naturalistic alternatives starting with the Doppelganger Hypothesis. There are two separate versions of this hypothesis, one where Jesus is a fraud and one where His lookalike is the conman. 

Regarding explanatory scope, the only area that might trip it up is the fact that the empty tomb needs explaining. Of course, we could suitably tailor our hypothesis to account for this fact. If Jesus were a fraud, then we could suppose He got rid of His lookalike's body, whereas if the lookalike was the conman, we could suppose he got rid of Jesus' body. 

However, what of explanatory power? This is where this hypothesis quickly crumbles. Why would the disciples conclude that they had seen the resurrected Jesus? Remember that resurrection entailed a glorious transformation into an immortal new form and was believed to be reserved for the end of time. Why would they take an ordinary human being to be a resurrected being? 

Even if we assume that the disciples were somehow too ignorant to know, an ex-Pharisee like Paul would absolutely have known the difference. So, this hypothesis, whilst it could ostensibly explain all the facts, it doesn't really explain them very well because there are obvious holes. It is also not very plausible. For the simple reason that there is zero evidence of such a lookalike.

For this hypothesis to work, we need to suppose that another man looked so much like Jesus that His own disciples couldn't tell it wasn't Him. But if such a person existed, why is there no mention of him? And how is it that either Jesus or the lookalike then somehow completely disappeared from the historical record? If Jesus or someone who looked exactly like Him were running around, someone would have noticed. 

This hypothesis is also particularly ad hoc in that it requires us to accept the existence of a doppelganger in the absence of any evidence of such an individual. It is also therefore greatly disconfirmed due to the fact that there is no such evidence of such a doppelganger. So, despite a somewhat promising start, this hypothesis falls apart like a house of cards made on sand. 

Let us therefore move onto the Cognitive Dissonance hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, the disciples were so distraught following Jesus' death that, to reconcile that reality with their Messianic hopes, they invented the resurrection appearances to deal with the cognitive dissonance they were suffering. 

As far as explanatory scope goes, this fails right off the bat, because it doesn't explain the empty tomb, or the conversions of James and Paul. It also suffers in terms of poor explanatory power because, once again, why would they claim Jesus was resurrected? It would have been easier to say either that Jesus returned to ordinary life, or even that His body has been assumed or translated into heaven. 

Whilst somewhat more plausible than the doppelganger hypothesis, it's still not very plausible because there's just no reason to suppose James and Paul would suffer the same kind of cognitive dissonance, nor would they just take the disciples at their word (especially if Jesus' body still lay in the grave!) 

It is disconfirmed by the fact that cognitive dissonance is a well understood phenomenon and would only have affected believers in Jesus. About the only area it does well in is that it is not terribly ad hoc. So, with all things considered, this hypothesis is likewise a dismal failure. 

The hallucination hypothesis has been somewhat popular amongst scholars sceptical of the claims of Christianity. However, it suffers in terms of explanatory scope since it fails to explain the empty tomb. It also doesn't have very good explanatory power since hallucinations are private and internal and thus unique to individuals. 

We could reasonably suppose a few people hallucinating the risen Jesus, but all of the disciples plus however many other followers? Not to mention James and Paul as well. Moreover, hallucinations follow the expectations of the hallucinator, so why would they hallucinate a resurrected Jesus instead of say an ordinary human Jesus? 

This hypothesis is therefore not very plausible since the phenomenon of hallucinations are particularly well understood and the accounts of the risen Jesus in the New Testament do not match accounts of hallucination. Even in cases of so-called "mass hallucinations" (which are basically just illusions rather than hallucinations) accounts of what was seen vary by individual. 

Whilst not very ad hoc except in the fact we have to believe hundreds of people experience identical visions of a resurrected Jesus, it is disconfirmed by the fact that this is just not how hallucinations work at all. I could buy some of the core disciples having a vision of Jesus and then maybe they think He has been taken up into heaven, but not people hostile or indifferent to Christianity. 

The revival hypothesis maintains that Jesus was taken down from the cross before He was actually dead and regained consciousness in the tomb and then paid His disciples, et al., a visit. This is another hypothesis that does well in terms of explanatory scope but fails in explanatory power and other criteria. 

As far as explanatory power is concerned, it doesn't explain the resurrection appearances or the conversions of James and Paul very well since Jesus would have been bloodied and bruised from all the scourging and other tortures, not to mention wounds and health issues from being crucified for several hours. 

So, why would anyone think He was a resurrected being? Why would they assume He had risen from the dead at all? However, the main thing to note is that the chances of Jesus' surviving being flogged, tortured, and then crucified are slim to none. Bearing in mind, also, that the Roman soldiers officiating the execution would have been severely punished if Jesus had really gotten away. 

However, much with the doppelganger hypothesis, Jesus disappears from the historical record afterwards. So, what happened to Him? Moreover, this hypothesis severely underestimates the brutality of crucifixion and Roman torture. This hypothesis is just therefore not very plausible. 

It is disconfirmed by what we know about the reality of crucifixion and Roman torture. It is also somewhat ad hoc since we have to suppose that a number of disparate things all coincided: Jesus somehow survived without the Roman soldiers noticing, He somehow duped the disciples and others that He was a resurrected, and then just disappeared without a trace? 

The wrong tomb hypothesis is fairly simple: the women followers of Jesus and then the disciples visited the wrong tomb. The first major problem with this, of course, is that it does nothing to explain the resurrection appearances or the conversions of James and Paul. However, even in terms of explanatory power it is particularly weak.

Why would they jump to the conclusion that Jesus was resurrected? Assuming they were gullible enough, wouldn't they have more easily assumed that Jesus' body was taken up into heaven? Wouldn't they have assumed that the body was simply missing or stolen? However, more realistically, they would have realised they visited the wrong tomb.

Moreover, why did the authorities not produce Jesus' body? In terms of plausibility, this hypothesis is not very plausible at all because even if we assumed that Jesus' followers and disciples were really gullible, there's just no way the authorities would not have produced Jesus' body had it still lain in the tomb. 

We next come to the stolen body hypothesis, which involves either the disciples or some other group stealing Jesus' body. In terms of explanatory scope, it does not explain the resurrection appearances or the conversion of James and Paul. In terms of explanatory power, it doesn't make sense why the disciples claimed Jesus was resurrected rather than returned to ordinary life or taken up into heaven. 

It is at least somewhat plausible, albeit not that much since it entails the disciples making up accounts they never deviated from (which just never happens in conspiracies like this). If we suppose that body snatching thieves were the culprits, this is even less likely since there is no evidence of such groups operating in 1st century AD Judea (thus also making this hypothesis somewhat ad hoc). 

As far as the fraud/conspiracy hypothesis is concerned, whilst the most popular against online sceptics, it is perhaps the weakest of them all because it fails virtually every criterion except explanatory scope. In terms of explanatory power, it fails because there is no divergence in the accounts, no record of anybody ever recanting their beliefs.

Why would James and Paul just go along with it? Why resurrection instead of something more palatable? It's plausible in the sense that, sure, people make things up all the time, but is very implausible in the sense that conspiracies involving many people almost always fail. The more people involved in a lie, the greater the chances of being discovered.

People make mistakes, change their story, get cold feet, and so on. These are people who went to their graves rather than recant their claim that they had seen the risen Jesus. It's extremely ad hoc because the conditions for such a conspiracy to work undetected are very exact. It's disconfirmed by the fact that conspiracies get found out.

Take the Watergate scandal. Those involved didn't even last a week before it all fell apart. You're telling me that twelve 1st century peasants kept a lie going for 40 years? Nonsense. So, as we can see, none of the naturalistic alternatives to the resurrection hypothesis manage to amount to much if anything at all. Of course, this does not mean that the resurrection hypothesis wins by default. 

We will take a look at the resurrection hypothesis separately, but for now it is worth noting that, if we are to posit a naturalistic alternative to the resurrection hypothesis, then we are going to have to resort to combining hypotheses. The problem with this, of course, is that two conjoined statements are never more probable than either statement on its own. 

The probability of two events occurring together is always less than or equal to the probability of either event occurring by itself. To suggest otherwise is to commit the conjunction fallacy. This is illustrated in the famous Linda Problem. You are asked to imagine a woman named Linda and are introduced to different background facts about Linda. 

Linda is: 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy and, as a student, was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. Now, which statement is more probable? 1) Linda is a bank teller, or; 2) Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement?

Even if we assume that the probability of her being a feminist is high and the probability of her being a bank teller is low, the conjoined probability will never be greater than either option. For instance, suppose the probability of her being a bank teller is 0.05 and the probability of her being a feminist is 0.95. The probability of both is the probability of one multiplied by the probability of the other. But 0.05 x 0.95 is 0.0475, which is lower than the probability of her being a bank teller.