Transcript

Hallelujah.

Christ is risen.

Indeed, he has risen.

And since it's Easter, I'm posing a question about Christ's resurrection I've never seen skeptics adequately answer.

But before I do that, I need to go over a key piece of evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Now, one natural explanation for the disciples' claim to have seen Jesus after his death are grief-induced hallucinations.

In these cases, a person misses a deceased loved one so much that they imagine the person has come back from the dead to visit them.

Maybe the disciples had similar hallucinations of the risen Jesus.

However, this explanation doesn't work for a variety of reasons, including the fact that St. Paul saw Jesus on the road to Damascus, but he was not a grieving disciple.

Studies on grief-induced hallucinations show that true hallucinations are not common, and the Hayes and Ludar 2016 study only found one case of grief-induced hallucination involving a non-family member of the deceased, which is the case with the disciples.

Moreover, most of these cases involved only feeling the presence of a deceased person.

Just 2% involved a tactile hallucination of touching the dead person, which would parallel the claims of having prolonged encounters with an embodied Jesus as described in Luke and John's gospels.

Grief-induced hallucinations also tend to persist for many years after death, but the claims that Jesus appeared to his disciples stop just a few weeks after his crucifixion.

Moreover, we'd expect the apostles to hallucinate seeing Jesus risen in heaven, not seeing him risen on Earth.

And Christ's empty tomb showed they were not merely hallucinating.

But one of the biggest problems with the hallucination theory is that the historical evidence shows groups of people claimed to have seen Jesus after his death, not just single individuals.

These include the 12 apostles and even 500 other people as recorded in First Corinthians 15.

But hallucinations are like dreams.

You can't share them because they're internal and subjective.

The best explanation for groups of people claiming to have interacted with the risen Jesus at the same time is that all of those persons in those groups really saw the risen Jesus and this convinced them that Christ rose from the dead.

However, if Christianity were the result of natural processes, as critics allege, then we'd expect those processes to repeat themselves occasionally throughout history.

We'd expect, for example, cases where a group of people claimed to have seen a dead loved one return from the grave.

So my question for skeptics of the resurrection is this: Can you show other examples of groups of people having a grief-induced hallucination similar to the one you claim that the apostles had?

In 2015, Gary Habermas and medical doctor Josef Bergaren surveyed thousands of cases in the medical literature and could not find a single case of a group grief hallucination comparable to the group appearances described in the New Testament.

One psychologist cited in their paper said the following: I have surveyed the professional literature, peer-reviewed journal articles and books written by psychologists, psychiatrists, and other relevant healthcare professionals during the past two decades and have yet to find a single documented case of a group hallucination, that is, an event for which more than one person purportedly shared in a visual or other sensory perception where there was clearly no external referent.

Even some critics of the resurrection admit that there are no other examples of group hallucinations like it's proposed to have happened to the apostles.

Chris Komarnitsky, in his book, Doubting Jesus' Resurrection, writes the following: If the group appearance traditions in First Corinthians 15:5-7 are the result of people simultaneously hallucinating Jesus, there is no comparable example anywhere in history that I am aware of.

Now, some critics will deny there were any appearances to the 12 or 500 believers or any groups of people.

They'll say that Paul lied about these group appearances, even though Paul's willingness to be martyred showed his sincerity, or that someone lied to Paul about these group appearances, even though St. Paul had the ability to check the veracity of these events because he met the apostles and he knew which of the 500 were still alive to be questioned.

Or they'll say the group appearances were something really ambiguous, like everyone seeing a light in the sky, and not interactions with a corporal Jesus over 40 days as described in the gospels, especially in Luke's gospel.

For a defense of the historical reliability of Luke in particular, see my dialogue with Godless Engineer linked in the description below.

In this episode, I'm not defending the historicity of these instances where groups of people claimed to have seen the risen Jesus.

Instead, I'm asking the question, are there any other group hallucinations of a deceased person coming back to life that are comparable to what skeptics claim to have happened to these groups of apostles and other witnesses of Jesus?

Here's what happened when I asked Doug from Pine Creek in our debate on the resurrection about this question.

Can you cite any examples of groups of people having a grief-induced hallucination-

I already said no.

Okay, good.

Um-

But I probably could in the future if you give me time.

Can you Okay.

Can you cite any studies of grief hallucination among non-family members where we're primarily talking about people that are not spouses or children?

Right now, no.

Can you cite an example or a study talking about one person's grief hallucination causing another person to-

No.

g- h- hallucinate the same person coming, not, you know, seeing the person?

No.

Okay.

Other critics have put forward alleged examples of true group hallucinations, but you'll see that they are disanalogous to the resurrection accounts, and so they don't provide a natural explanation for the apostles' group report of seeing the risen Jesus.

For example, in Dale Allison's book, The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemic, History, he writes, It is most often said in response that the first believers could not have hallucinated because too many people were involved, and especially because one may ask whether simultaneous identical hallucinations are psychologically feasible.This, however, is inadequate rebuttal.

The plurality of witnesses does not quench doubt.

If counting heads were all that mattered, there would be no question that short, large-headed, bug-eyed aliens have kidnapped thousands of sleeping Americans.

The stories are legion.

But surely, despite all the testimony, there is room to debate what has been going on here.

Atheist Keith Parsons makes a similar argument in his debate with William Lane Craig.

The people who experience these hallucinations almost always say, Yes, it seems so real.

Consider Whitley Strieber, the one who wrote Communion, about who, uh, he was supposedly abducted by space aliens.

Supposedly, he was asleep in his farm in Vermont and the gray aliens came through the walls, abducted him, took him aboard their spaceship, and did terrible things to him.

Okay.

Whitley Strieber says it was real.

I saw him on the Johnny Carson Show.

Johnny Carson said, Do you think you might have dreamed this?

He said, No, it seemed absolutely real.

However, nearly all alien abduction stories can be explained as culturally conditioned private hallucinations involving only one person, or they're outright hoaxes.

People who report these encounters often receive positive attention and they've only become more widespread after science fiction tales about aliens became popular in the 1950s and television shows began to report on alleged abduction stories.

And as I said, they almost always happen to individuals at night who awake from sleep.

What probably happens is that the person experience sleep paralysis, a condition where your mind has woken, but you're unable to move your body.

People in this condition often see things that aren't real, as can be seen in past depictions of sleep paralysis as a demon or old hag sitting on someone's chest.

And the New Testament authors knew the difference between seeing something when awake and dreaming, as is evident in Matthew's use of dream descriptions in his gospel, and Acts 16:9, where Luke describes how, quote, A vision appeared to Paul in the night of a Macedonian man, which means a dream.

But this language is not used to describe resurrection appearances.

And most importantly, nearly all abduction stories involve one person hallucinating, which isn't uncommon.

The handful of cases where multiple people say they were abducted by aliens at the same time are also probably hoaxes or come from hypnotic suggestion.

In 1973, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker claimed aliens abducted them while they were fishing on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi, but as noted in the anthology The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony, Parker passed out when it happened and only remembered bits and pieces later.

Hickson admits they were drinking, so they may have fallen asleep or passed out and then awoke in a kind of sleep paralysis state.

In 1975, five people claimed to see Travis Walton abducted by aliens that appeared in a beam of light among trees in Eastern Arizona.

But even those who believe in alien abductions reject this case as a hoax perpetrated by Walton to provide an excuse for why his work crew failed to meet the deadline for a contract they had to thin trees in a federal forest.

Walton also failed a lie detector test in 2008 on the television show The Moment of Truth when he was asked if he was really abducted.

Finally, in 1961, Betty and Barney Hill claimed to have been abducted by aliens while driving in rural New Hampshire.

In fact, Travis Walton watched the TV movie based on the Hills' abduction story two weeks before he claimed to be abducted.

But most experts believe Betty and Barney Hill suffered from sleep deprivation and misinterpreted an aircraft warning beacon as a UFO.

More importantly, the particular aspects of the alien encounter were recovered under hypnosis three years later and they bear a striking similarity to an episode from the sci-fi series The Outer Limits which aired two weeks before their hypnosis session.

For more on these fascinating cases, check out the links below to Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World podcast.

Another example of mass hallucination that is offered are Bigfoot sightings.

In an interview with the Christian author Stephen Meyer, Joe Rogan dismissed ancient reports of Jesus' resurrection by saying there are also reports of Bigfoot sightings.

For more on why Bigfoot sightings are misidentifications, not mass hallucinations, see my previous episode, Was the Resurrection a Collective Delusion?

Linked in the description below.

In that episode, I cover the analogies to Bigfoot sightings, Elvis sightings, the Mobile Leprechaun story of 2006, and studies involving people allegedly misremembering airplane crash footage that never existed.

So none of those cases are analogous to the disciples claiming to have seen the risen Jesus.

And we also have to distinguish mass hallucination or group hallucinations of something like Jesus appearing alive after death from something called mass hysteria.

The latter happens when a phenomenon transmits collective illusions of threats, whether real or imaginary, through a population and society as a result of rumors and fear.

It also includes cases of seemingly infectious bizarre behavior, like medieval dancing outbreaks or the 1962 Tanzania laughing epidemic.

But none of these cases involve a group of people all seeing the same impossible thing, like a dead man who came back to life.

Now, there is one example that critics offer that comes very close, an example where a group of people claim to have seen someone returning from the afterlife, and that would be Marian apparitions.

Atheists often bring up these examples when debating Protestant Christians on the resurrection.

For example, the atheistic Biblical scholar Hector Avalos says Marian apparitions, quote, Form the closest parallel to the Jesus apparition stories.

Marian apparitions have been reportedly witnessed simultaneously by millions of people, but most evangelical apologists do not see that as proof that Mary is alive.

Or consider this exchange between Bart Ehrman and Protestant author Justin Bass.

Now, Mary appears regularly to people.

It's completely well-documented.

Thousands of people claim this happens.

Um, and, um, I'm going to assume that since you're not Catholic, you don't think these appearances happen.

I'm open to the evidence and I do think some of the stories-

Okay, so what do you think of the evidence?

of, of Mary is compelling.

I think some of the stories is compelling.

You think she does appear to people?

But I think what the issue with-

No, no, no.

Do you think she appears to people?

No, I don't.

I, I don't know.

You just said the evidence was compelling.

Well, I said it's, it's, it's, you know, it's something to look into.

Uh, I'm saying it's enough to look into.

Why don't you look into it?

This would be very important-

Well, I have, I have, I have looked into it.

Okay, so-

But, but let me answer.

I, I think it lacks the unexpectedness, so, so it makes-

Oh.

And it, and it, and it normally happens in Catholic contexts.

No, no.

This is completely wrong.

I appreciate Justin's point that the disciples were not expecting Jesus to rise from the dead, but Catholics don't consider Marian apparitions to be as unexpected.

However, that doesn't explain all apparition cases.

For example, last year, Travis Dumsday released an academic study of the Marian apparition in Zeitoun, Egypt in 1968, where possibly millions of people, including non-Christians like Muslims, saw what appeared to be the Virgin Mary appearing above a Coptic Orthodox Church in the city.

Dumsday's argument is extremely compelling and Gavin Ortlund has said this about Zeitoun.

I will say as a layperson, it really looks like something supernatural is going on at Zeitoun.

There are also secular individuals and secular groups that are saying, There is no naturalistic explanation for this.

We don't know how to explain this.

And the fact is, it's really hard to see where is this light coming from, you know?

For portions of time, they cut off all the power to that part of the city.

And so, you know, uh, so far as I can tell, again, as a non-expert whose opinion isn't worth too much, you know, on a question like this, um, it, it really looks like something supernatural is happening or at least we should be really open to that until w- we find a better explanation.

Another example that skeptics raise is the miracle of the sun that occurred at Fatima, which thousands of people claimed to see and was described in newspaper accounts at the time.

I was confronted by this argument in my debate on the resurrection with Doug from Pine Creek.

As to mass hallucinations, uh, does Trent believe in the miracle of Fatima?

Yes.

Uh, so this is the claim that the Virgin Mary appeared to a group of witnesses at, in Fatima Portico, uh, claiming that they saw the sun, uh, moving in the sky, uh, appearing to dance.

I don't believe the sun or Earth changed their normal rotation, but I think it's very possible that God caused an optical effect to occur to make it a- to make it appear what normally you would not have naturally seen, that they saw that.

I also think that we have And what's interesting here is we actually have better evidence for Fatima than for even the resurrection 'cause we have contemporary newspaper reports describing the event l- like right the day after that it purportedly happened.

We have contemporary accounts.

The quote of the day here in this livestream is that we have better evidence for Fatima than the resurrection.

I can't believe Trent said that.

Uh-

In some respects, yeah.

Notice I said apparitions like Fatima have more evidence than the resurrection in some respects.

I still believe the best evidence for Christianity is Christ's resurrection from the dead and it's the one I typically appeal to in debates.

That's because Marian apparitions lack some of the evidence we have for the resurrection, such as a bodily resurrection before the end of the world being unexpected for Christ's disciples, and the disciples' willingness to suffer martyrdom to show their sincerity.

Also, we have evidence the postmortem appearances of Jesus involved more tactile encounters with the Lord than are often seen in Marian apparitions.

On the other hand, Marian apparitions do have more evidence than the resurrection in at least some respects.

For example, some critics say that the gospel's depictions of group appearances are just legends or that St. Paul's references to the group appearances are too vague to be counted, but no skeptic doubts that large numbers of people at places like Zeitoun or Fatima all thought that they saw the same miraculous event.

It cannot be doubted because we have contemporary reports and even photographs of these events, something we don't have for Christ's resurrection.

Atheist Richard Dawkins says of Fatima, It is not easy to explain how 70,000 people could share the same hallucination.

Last month, Gavin Ortlund commented on the evidential value of Marian apparitions and I agree with much of what he said in his video.

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And now back to the episode.

As I've already noted, I don't consider these apparitions to be the best evidence for the Christian faith.

However, I would say they have enough evidence to justify a supernatural cause as being the most likely explanation, and many non-Catholics agree with that assessment.

In a debate on Mario father Dwight Longnecker, Protestant apologist David Gustafson wrote, The evidence is quite strong that something supernatural was going on in Fatima.

Elliot Miller and Kenneth Samples wrote in their Protestant study of Mariology that, quote, Any honest effort to provide a satisfying explanation for the phenomenon known as Marian apparitions will prove to be a complex and difficult task.

I freely admit that I may not be able to account for everything connected to these unusual occurrences.

In his dissertation on the resurrection, Mike Licona writes, For myself, I am not prepared to adjudicate on the matter of Marian apparitions.

Because I am Protestant, I carry a theological bias against an appearance of Mary.

However, I am not predisposed to reject the reality of apparitions in general.

I also understand Gavin's criticism in his video on apparitions that we have to look at each one individually and not rush to the conclusion that such an apparition is ecclesially determinative or shows which Christian denomination has the fullness of God's revelation.

In the case of Zeitoun, this happened at a Coptic Orthodox Church and there was no message from the apparition.

So at most, we could see it as a confirmation of Christianity in general.

Gavin also says that we shouldn't be absolute in our interpretation of apparitions, and I agree with him.

For example, some Protestants say all Marian apparitions must be demonic because saintly apparitions are impossible.

They even say this was the case when Saul used a medium to conjure the dead prophet Samuel as recorded in First Samuel 28, but they can't all be demonic.

Deuteronomy 34 records Moses' death, but Moses appeared to the disciples with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration.

Gavin disagrees with the idea that they are all demonic, and he even says that most Protestant commentaries believe that First Samuel 28 was really describing Samuel talking to Saul, not a demonic impersonator.

However, some apparitions could be demonic in nature.

At the very least, we know not all of them are genuine even if they involve something without a natural explanation.

In 2009, the Bishop of Cleveland rejected the claims of apparitions and revelations at Holy Love Ministries saying that because of their theological content, they were not supernatural in origin and that the site where they happened cannot call itself Catholic.

Priests can't celebrate sacraments there, and the faithful may not gather at the site.

I'm not saying this alleged apparition was demonic.

The report even said it wasn't supernatural in origin.

At the very least, it was not supernatural in being a genuine revelation from God.

I'm just saying the church recognizes some of these claims of apparitions can't be proven, and they even have theological evidence against them, so demonic influence is plausible in some alleged Marian apparitions.

And in other cases, the church is just agnostic on whether the event was supernatural, but it does recognize the good spiritual fruit that is present from the event as happened with the 2024 declaration out of Medjugorje.

A demonic or supernaturally evil cause would also explain alleged encounters with angels or supernatural beings claiming to represent God found in other religions.

This includes the claim of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, and his two companions who say they saw an angel with golden plates.

Another example that Dale Allison gives from that same time period in 1842 would be a religious group called The Shakers.

Allison writes, Attached to The Shakers' sacred roll and book are the names of eight people who testified that, quote, 'We saw the holy angel standing upon the housetop holding the roll and book,' which scarcely settles the issue.

These cases raise what I call the problem of competing miracle claims.

If you believe in your religion because of a miracle, then why don't you believe in a competing religion that is also backed by a miracle?

A religious person has two options to resolve this problem.

First, they could accept these competing claims are genuine miracles, but deny that they are theologically incompatible with their worldview.

They aren't competing, they're complementary.

For example, God might providentially save someone in India from a flood in a way that seems miraculous or at least that looks like a god is involved and it's not a freak occurrence.

The person who is saved might pray to a Hindu deity for help and mistakenly think that this false Hindu god saved him.

Now, God knows this will happen if He intervenes, but He may still choose to intervene anyways because God loves this person.

Likewise, God might empower a Protestant minister to miraculously heal someone in Jesus' name, but this miracle is not a validation of Protestant theology.

It's just a validation of the saving power of Jesus Christ.

So, that's the first option.

The second option would be to deny that the competing miracle is really a miracle.

You might offer a natural explanation like legends, fraud, sincere hallucination, or a supernatural explanation, a non-divine cause like demonic activity when confronted with competing miracles in Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, and other non-Christian religions.

For example, see my previous videos showing that the Quran is not a miracle and alleged miracles of Muhammad like splitting the moon in two are ahistorical legends.

When it comes to Mormonism, The Shakers, and similar groups whose allegedly miraculous message contradicts what God has already revealed, a Christian would just deny that whatever is involved here is a miracle.

In my episodes on Mormonism, I show how there are plausible natural explanations for these cases, but they could also be the product of supernatural demonic activity designed to lead people away from the one true triune God.

In fact, Second Corinthians 11:14 says that the devil can disguise himself as an angel of light, and Galatians 1:8 warns about angels preaching false gospels.

Although this response leads to what might be called the arbitrariness objection.

How do you know the miracles of your own religion are from God, whereas the alleged miracles of other religions are not miracles at all but demonic supernatural activity?

Are you just arbitrarily deciding that miracles you don't believe in are really demonic even if they have just as good evidence as the true miracles you do accept?

No, because we can use objective standards to weigh the evidence for individual cases.

Jesus Himself was accused of using demonic powers to drive out demons, to which He pointed out that it doesn't make sense for Satan to work against Satan.

Plus, we have good reason to believe the resurrection is a miracle and not a demonic counterfeit because creatures, including demons, can't perform genuine miracles.

Only God can do that.

For example, as the author of life, only God can raise the dead as Saint Thomas Aquinas points out in The Summa Theologiae.

And if we know God raised Christ from the dead, then we are justified in rejecting so-called miraculous private revelations, be they of Joseph Smith or Ellen G. White, the founder of Seventh-Day Adventism, or even a self-proclaimed Catholic visionary.

We can reject any of these teachings that contradict what God already revealed.

When it comes to miracles among Christian denominations, however, this is where it gets interesting .

God could perform a miracle through a non-Catholic Christian to demonstrate the truth of the Gospel.

This would parallel the following event in Luke's Gospel.

It says, John answered, 'Master, we saw a man casting out demons in your name and we forbade him because he does not follow with us.' But Jesus said to him, 'Do not forbid him, for he that is not against you is for you.' So miracles in Protestant communities may just be a vindication of the general truth of Christianity.

However, there seem to be many more cases in Catholicism of miracles whose message is not just a vindication of the Gospel, but a vindication of distinctly Catholic doctrines, like the real presence of the Eucharist being seen in hosts that miraculously turn into human flesh, or relics that heal people, or Marian apparitions saying that they are the immaculate conception, like the apparition at Lourdes, among many other Catholic miracle claims.

One of the criticisms the Protestant reformers had to address was that God seemed to vindicate Catholicism with miracles, but had not done the same for Protestants.

For a measured use of miracles to show Catholicism is true, I recommend Tyler McNabb and Joseph Blauto's article, Mary in Fatima: A Modest, See-inductive Argument for Catholicism, that I'll link to below, and which you can also learn about in McNabb's recent appearance on Capturing Christianity with Cameron Bertuzzi that I'll also link below.

And if you're Eastern Orthodox and think the miracle of the Holy Fire proves Orthodoxy is the one true church, check out Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World episode on that, linked below.

So, let's pull all of this together.

Skeptics often try to explain groups of people seeing the risen Jesus as cases of group hallucinations, yet they cannot offer similar examples of groups of people having a grief-induced hallucination.

In fact, the closest example that they do offer are groups of people seeing the Virgin Mary after the end of her earthly life, which isn't a problem for Catholic defenders of the resurrection.

However, the large number of distinctly Catholic miracles throughout history, including Marian apparitions that some Protestants say are supernatural in nature, should be unsettling to a group of people that I call pleasant Protestants.

Now, who are they?

Well, they are not the unpleasant Protestants who think the Catholic Church teaches a false Gospel and so Catholicism damns people to hell.

If you have that unpleasant view, then it's quite natural to assume all Catholic miracles are demonic deceptions that entice people to join a false religion so they will be damned for all eternity.

But what if you're a more pleasant Protestant who just thinks that Catholicism is a Christian denomination capable of leading people to salvation, Catholicism just has theological errors like any other denomination you don't belong to, and that's the only reason you aren't Catholic?

If you think that, then it would be odd for you to appeal to the devil being the source of alleged Catholic miracles.

Because if that were true, why would the devil be tricking people into joining, from your perspective, a Christian denomination that preaches the Gospel and so is capable of saving people from hell?

It's sort of like how we say, borrowing from C.S.

Lewis, Jesus cannot be just a nice man.

Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord.

But Christ's testimony, his holiness, and his miracles, like his resurrection from the dead, show he must be Lord.

Likewise, the Catholic Church, with its teachings on the Eucharist being the one Christ we adore, the witness of the saints, and the overwhelming amount of Catholic miracles throughout history, show the Catholic Church can't merely be a nice church.

Catholicism is either deceptive, demonic, or divine.

And I would encourage Protestants to think really, really hard about which conclusion you want to draw.

Because the fate of your eternal soul depends on being obedient not just to Christ, but to the church that he established, what Saint Paul called the pillar and foundation of truth.

We covered a lot of ground in today's episode, and if you'd like more information on the truth of Catholic doctrine, check out catholic.com and my book, The Case for Catholicism.

And if you'd like excellent defenses of Christ's resurrection from the dead, check out Gary Habermas and Mike Licona's book, The Case for the Resurrection, Justin Bass' book, The Bedrock of Christianity: The Unalterable Facts about Jesus' Death and Resurrection, and Andrew Loke's Investigating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ: A New Transdisciplinary Approach.

Thank you so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.