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Dear Friends,

We are continuing our journey through Part 4 of The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, by Gary Habermas and Mike Licona. Part 4 addresses additional objections to the Christian resurrection story.

Last time, I addressed three more naturalistic arguments against the Resurrection. I say “more” because we already looked at numerous naturalistic arguments in Part 3 of this book (1). But they dug up a few more, so, here we go (God help me)! Today, I hope to discuss the fourth objection addressed by the authors.

More naturalistic arguments against the Resurrection

• “If atheism is true, then Jesus did not rise”
• “The Resurrection doesn’t prove God’s existence”
• “Jesus never died, so there was no resurrection”
• “Reports of Jesus’ appearances differ little from the reports of the angel’s appearance to Joseph Smith”
• “Reports of the Resurrection are no more believable than today’s reports of Elvis and alien sightings”
• “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”

“Reports of Jesus’ appearances differ little from the reports of the angel’s appearance to Joseph Smith”

The idea here is that if I reject the reports of Moroni’s appearances, I should also reject reports of Jesus’s appearances. Supposedly, the weight of the evidence is similar between the two sets of accounts.

So, are they similar?

I’ll approach this question using the following basic outline:

• A primer for the uninitiated (Part 1)
• Challenges to the standard LDS narrative (Part 2)
• My own theory: demons + huckster  = cult (Part 3)

Along the way, I’ll point out some important contrasts between the LDS narrative and the narrative of early Christianity.

You can probably guess what my answer to the similarity question is going to be, but let’s at least try to consider the evidence, shall we?

A primer for the uninitiated

Latter-Day Saints, as they call themselves, believe that the angel Moroni revealed the golden plates to Joseph Smith in 1823, and he laid hold on them on September 22, 1827. The Book of Mormon was supposedly translated by Smith from writings found on the plates. It was published in 1830.

Eleven men allowed their names to be attached to 2 written eyewitness testimonies regarding the plates. These two testimonies are included at the beginning of the Book of Mormon to this day.

The first eyewitness testimony, which was signed by 3 of the eleven, states that an angel displayed the plates. Keep these 3 guys in mind for later.

The Book of Mormon mostly contains accounts of ancient Jews (and their descendants) who escaped to America around the time of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem.

It’s the credibility, not the infallibility

There’s sort of a judo move where LDS apologists will say something like, “We never said Joseph Smith was infallible.”

In response to that, I emphasize that I’m not attacking his infallibility; we can all agree he was fallible, I get that. I bring the challenges that I do because I think they bear on his credibility. If he’s not a credible person (or if the source of his revelations is not credible), then neither are his “revelations”. The religion then collapses, from the perspective of a truth-seeker.

Rest assured that all of my challenges have already been answered by LDS apologists, and I won’t cover much of their material in this mini-series on the LDS church. You’ll have to look into this for yourself and decide whether said answers are satisfactory.

In the next post, we’ll look at 3 challenges to the standard LDS narrative. I hope you will join me!

God bless, and thanks for reading.

Links:

(1) The opening salvo