Defending the Hallucination Theory - Part 25: The Unbelief of the Disciples

 WHERE WE ARE

The core of the argument constituting Peter Kreeft's Objection #6 in his Handbook of Christian Apologetics (hereafter: HCA) is as follows:

 C. In hallucinations, we never experience someone saying or doing something that is surprising and unexpected for that person to say or do.

 2B. IF the Hallucination Theory were true, THEN some of Jesus' followers experienced hallucinations of the risen Jesus in which Jesus said and did things that it was surprising and unexpected for Jesus to say or do.

Therefore:

A. The Hallucination Theory is FALSE.

In Part 23 of this series, I showed that Kreeft FAILED to provide a good reason to believe that premise (2B) is true and that there is a good reason to believe (2B) is FALSE, so we may reasonably conclude that premise (2B) is FALSE. 

In Part 24 of this series, I showed that Kreeft also FAILED to provide us with a good reason to believe that premise (C) is true and that we have good reason to believe that (C) is FALSE, so we may reasonably conclude that premise (C) is FALSE.

Because BOTH key premises in the core argument of Objection #6 are FALSE, it is clear that this core argument is UNSOUND, and that means that Kreeft's Objection #6 FAILS to refute the Hallucination Theory:

OBJECTION #7: THE UNBELIEF OF THE DISCIPLES

Here is how Peter Kreeft presents his Objection #7 against the Hallucination Theory:

7. Not only did the disciples not expect this, they didn't even believe it at first—neither Peter, nor the women, nor Thomas, nor the eleven. They thought he was a ghost; he had to eat something to prove he was not  (Lk 24:36-43).    (HCA, p.187)

Yet again,  Kreeft leaves the conclusion of his argument UNSTATED, so I will state it for him:

1. The disciples did not expect this.

2. The disciples didn't even believe it at first.

3. They thought he was a ghost. (see Luke 24:36-43)

4. He had to eat something to prove he was not. (see Luke 24:36-43)

Therefore:

A. The Hallucination Theory is FALSE.

It is immediately OBVIOUS that the conclusion DOES NOT FOLLOW from the premises.  There is, for example, no mention of the "Hallucination Theory" in any of the stated premises, so no conclusion about the Hallucination Theory is implied by these premises.  That means that once again Kreeft has left at least one key premise UNSTATED.

There are also referring expressions in every stated premise, so each premise requires some clarification:

1A. The disciples did not expect that Jesus would physically rise from the dead. 

2A. The disciples did not believe at first that Jesus had physically risen from the dead.

3A. The disciples thought Jesus was a ghost when they had experiences of alleged appearances of the risen Jesus. (see Luke 24:36-43)

4A. The disciples became convinced that Jesus was not a ghost when they had experiences of an alleged appearance of Jesus in which Jesus ate something to prove to the disciples that he was not a ghost. (see Luke 24:36-43)

Therefore:

 A. The Hallucination Theory is FALSE.

Not only did Kreeft FAIL to state the conclusion of this argument and also FAIL to state at least one key premise of the argument (that connects his stated premises to the Hallucination Theory), but it is UNCLEAR how Kreeft thinks his premises are RELEVANT to the conclusion.  In some of Kreeft's UNCLEAR arguments, one can easily guess at the content of his UNSTATED premises, but in this case, there is no obvious logical connection between his stated premises and the conclusion that he is trying to prove. This is an extremely sloppy and UNCLEAR argument.

Because this argument is so UNCLEAR, and because this argument is obviously missing a key premise or premises, and because Kreeft draws most of his arguments from Josh McDowell's apologetics books, I'm going to turn to McDowell's objections against the Hallucination Theory for clues about what Kreeft had in mind in his Objection #7.

After reviewing McDowell's objections against the Hallucination Theory in his book The Resurrection Factor (hereafter: TRF), it is clear that Objection #7 was borrowed from one of McDowell's objections against the Hallucination Theory.  Here is McDowell's version of this objection:

A fifth principle is that hallucinations require of people an anticipating spirit or hopeful expectancy which causes their wishes to become father of their thoughts and hallucinations.  As we look at the disciples, the last thing they expected was a resurrection. They thought Christ had been crucified, buried. ...That was the end of it.

The late theologian, Paul Little, made an accute observation about the anticipatory attitued of the alleged "hallucinators":   "...In fact, when the Lord finally appeared to the disciples, they were frightened and thought they were seeing a ghost." (TRF, 1981, p.85-86)

We see from McDowell that the stuff about the disciples thinking Jesus was a ghost is being given as a REASON in support of the claim that "the last thing they [the disciples] expected was a resurrection".   More importantly, we see that the connection between the doubt of the disciples and the Hallucination Theory is the alleged "principle" that "hallucinations require of people an anticipating spirit or hopeful expectancy".  Kreeft neglected to include this crucial assumption when he sloppily re-stated McDowell's objection, making Kreeft's Objection #7 extremely UNCLEAR.

But since we have located the probable source of Objection #7 in the objections presented by McDowell against the Hallucination Theory, we can now clarify Kreeft's Objection #7 so that it actually makes some sense:

3A. The disciples thought Jesus was a ghost when they had experiences of alleged appearances of the risen Jesus. (see Luke 24:36-43)

4A. The disciples became convinced that Jesus was not a ghost when they had experiences of an alleged appearance of Jesus in which Jesus ate something to prove to the disciples that he was not a ghost. (see Luke 24:36-43)

Thus:

 2A. The disciples did not believe at first that Jesus had physically risen from the dead.

Thus:

1A. The disciples did not expect that Jesus would physically rise from the dead. 

B. IF the Hallucination Theory were true, THEN the disciples must have expected that Jesus would physically rise from the dead. 

Therefore:

 A. The Hallucination Theory is FALSE.

The missing key premise (B) is presumably based upon the principle about hallucinations that McDowell put forward but that Kreeft neglected to mention:

C. A person P will hallucinate that X occurs (or has occurred) ONLY IF:   person P anticipates or hopefully expects that X will occur.

Thanks to McDowell's clearer presentation of this objection, we can now analyze the logical structure of Kreeft's argument that constitutes his Objection #7: 

Now that we have CLARIFIED Kreeft's argument constituting his Objection #7 against the Hallucination Theory, we are in a position to rationally evaluate this argument.  In the next part of this series, I will begin to critically evaluate this argument.