Did the Disciples Die for a Lie?
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About this video
The usual version of this argument is: the disciples died for their claim, so it must be true. That's too strong, and skeptics are right to push back on it. People die for false beliefs all the time — sincerely.
Here's the narrower version that holds. Sincerity and truth are different things, and the martyrdom evidence establishes sincerity, not truth. Whatever happened, these men were not running a con they knew to be a con. Sean McDowell's The Fate of the Apostles is the careful study here, and it's careful in both directions: he argues the deaths of Peter, Paul, James the brother of Jesus, and James the son of Zebedee are historically well-supported, while noting the evidence for several of the others doesn't meet that standard. Even Bart Ehrman, who does not believe in the resurrection, grants that the followers of Jesus came to genuinely believe they had seen him alive.
So the deliberate-hoax theory is the weakest one on the table, and it's the one you hear most often. That doesn't hand you the resurrection. It just means any competing explanation has to actually explain what these men were convinced they saw.
Full episode: https://youtu.be/SG5W2DtZZ9M
Transcript (show)
Now, that does not by itself prove the resurrection happened. Plenty of people die for false things they think are true. But it does prove one thing beyond argument. The disciples were not lying. They actually believed they had seen the risen Jesus.
That means any natural explanation of Christianity has to explain what caused them to believe it. Five facts accepted in large part by scholars who are not Christians. Any theory of what happened has to explain all five.
Transcript from the video's captions on YouTube.
