On Creationism

Cold-Case Christianity is a book by J Warner Wallace. Wallace is (was?) a detective, and he uses the techniques he learned as a cop to look at the resurrection of Jesus, among other things (a PDF of the book can be found on-line). The first 35 pages of the book are about thinking like a detective. How to look at clues, how to be logical, and how to avoid presuppositions. On page 40, we get to Jesus: An Ancient Death-Scene Investigation Now it’s time to apply this form of reasoning to a death scene that has been the topic of discussion for over two thousand years. What happened to Jesus of Nazareth? How can we explain His empty tomb? Did His disciples steal His body? Was He only injured on the cross and later recovered? Did He actually die and resurrect from the dead? We can approach these questions as detectives, using abductive reasoning. And right from the first paragraph, we see the author has presupposed something! He is assuming an empty tomb. In fairness, he goes on to...

New Testament scholar Gary Habermas has produced what he calls his " Minimal Facts " theory. the idea is that there are certain claims about the Easter story that pretty much all scholars agree on, and he claims that Christianity can be proved from them. Lists seem to vary with from five to twelve supposed facts. Most of them are not controversial - to me at least - such as Jesus was crucified. However, there is one... The Empty Tomb The situation for the Empty Tomb "fact" is rather more dubious. From here : This is a fact that is not supported by the overwhelming majority of New Testament scholars as the other four facts are, however it is still considered to be historically reliable by 75% of New Testament scholars (Habermas and Licona 2004, 70). While this is not an overwhelming percentage, it is still a rather high percentage. There are good reasons for why three out of four scholars advocate for this fact. The evidence for why the tomb was empty on the th...