The Case For Christ

that others cannot witness it."
"That," said Habermas, "is a big problem for the hallucination
theory, since there are repeated accounts of Jesus appearing to
multiple people who reported the same thing.
And there are several other arguments why hallucinations can't
explain away his appearances," he continued. "The disciples were
fearful, doubtful, and in despair after the Crucifixion, whereas
people who hallucinate need a fertile mind of expectancy or
anticipation. Peter was hardheaded, for goodness' sake; James was
a skeptic-certainly not good candidates for hallucinations.
Also, hallucinations are comparably rare. They're usually
caused by drugs or bodily deprivation. Chances are, you don't
know anybody who's ever had a hallucination not caused by one of
those two things. Yet we're supposed to believe that over a
course of many weeks, people from all sorts of backgrounds, all
kinds of temperaments, in various places, all experienced
hallucinations? That strains the hypothesis quite a bit, doesn't
it?
Besides, if we establish the gospel accounts as being reliable,
how do you account for the disciples eating with Jesus and
touching him? How does he walk along with two of them on the road
to Emmaus? And what about the empty tomb? If people only thought
they saw Jesus, his body would still be in his grave."
OK, I thought, if it wasn't a hallucination, maybe it was
something more subtle.
"Could this have been an example of group think, in which people
talk each other into seeing something that doesn't exist?" I
asked. "As Michael Martin observed, 'A person full of religious
zeal may see what he or she wants to see, not what is really
there.""O
Habermas laughed. "You know, one of the atheists I debated,
Antony Flew, told me he doesn't like it when other atheists use
that last argument, because it cuts both ways. As Flew said,
'Christians believe because they want to, but atheists don't
believe because they don't want to!'
Actually, there are several reasons why the disciples couldn't
have talked each other into this. As the center of their faith,
there was too much at stake; they went to their deaths defending
it. Wouldn't some of them rethink the group think at a later date
and recant or just quietly fall away? And what about James, who
didn't believe in Jesus, and Paul, who was a persecutor of