Defending the Hallucination Theory - Part 31: The Disciples Conversed with Jesus

 WHERE WE ARE

In Part 30 of this series, I analyzed Kreeft's "argument" for Objection #9 (The Disciples touched Jesus) against the Hallucination Theory and re-stated it as follows:

1A. Some of Jesus' disciples had experiences in which it seemed to them that they touched the risen Jesus.

(B) IF someone has an experience in which it seems to him or her that he or she physically touched another person, THEN that experience cannot be a DREAM or HALLUCINATION.

(C) IF the Hallucination Theory were true, THEN any experience had by a disciple of Jesus about the risen Jesus must be either a DREAM or a HALLUCINATION. 

Therefore:

 A. The Hallucination Theory is FALSE. 

I showed that premise (B) is FALSE, and that premise (C) is FALSE.  Thus, this argument is UNSOUND, and should be rejected.

Kreeft FAILED to provide a good reason to believe the historical premise (1A), so that premise remains DUBIOUS.  This argument is clearly UNSOUND, and so Kreeft's Objection #9 FAILS, just like every single one of the previous eight objections has FAILED:

It is now time to examine Kreeft's Objection #10 (The Disciples Conversed with Jesus).

OBJECTION #10: THE DISCIPLES CONVERSED WITH JESUS

Kreeft presents his Objection #10 against the Hallucination Theory in just three sentences:

10. They also spoke with him, and he spoke back. Figments of your imagination do not hold profound, extended conversations with you, unless you have the kind of mental disorder that isolates you. But this "hallucination" conversed with at least eleven people at once, for forty days (Acts 1:3).  (HCA, p.187)

Once again, Kreeft does not bother to state the conclusion of his argument, so I will state it for him:

1. Jesus' disciples spoke with him, and Jesus spoke back to his disciples.

 2. Figments of your imagination do not hold extended conversations with you, unless you have a serious mental disorder.

3. This "hallucination" conversed with at least eleven people at once, for forty days (Acts 1:3).

Therefore:

A. The Hallucination Theory is FALSE.

Premise (3) is clearly FALSE, and it involves the same FALLACY OF EQUIVOCATION that Kreeft engaged in with his Objection #4:

This one [i.e. hallucination] hung around for forty days (Acts 1:3).        (HCA, p.187)

NOWHERE in the NT is there a statement or claim that the risen Jesus "hung around for forty days" or that ANYONE had an experience of the risen Jesus that lasted for forty days.  Duh!  Kreeft clearly FAILED to actually READ the passage that he references as "evidence" for his idiotic claim:

3 After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.  (Acts 1:3, NRSV, )

Jesus "appearing to them during forty days" obviously means that there were a number of different experiences of alleged appearances of Jesus that took place at various times and places over the course of about forty days.  

A freaking fourth-grade student could understand this passage better than Kreeft.  There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to interpret this passage as implying that ANYONE had an experience of the risen Jesus that lasted for forty days.  Kreeft's historical claim in his Objection #4 is based on nothing more than wishful thinking combined with the inability to read and understand simple sentences in English.

The same mistaken reading of the same passage from Chapter 1 of Acts leads Kreeft to make a similarly idiotic historical claim in premise (3):

3. This "hallucination" conversed with at least eleven people at once, for forty days.

Also, verse 3 from Chapter 1 of Acts does NOT state nor imply that Jesus "conversed with at least eleven people at once".  There are other passages in Luke and in Acts that make this claim, but NOT this verse of Acts.  So, no part of this claim (3) is supported by Acts 1:3.

Clearly, premise (3) must either be revised or else rejected.  

Unlike in some of his other UNCLEAR objections, Kreeft has actually provided us with a premise that helps to explain why his alleged historical claim is RELEVANT to an evaluation of the Hallucination Theory:

 2. Figments of your imagination do not hold extended conversations with you, unless you have a serious mental disorder.

However, Kreeft FAILED to connect his historical claims with this principle, because neither of his historical claims refers to "extended conversations".  So, Kreeft's argument, as originally stated is INVALID.  

Premise (3) does seem to refer to a conversation that lasted "for forty days", but not only is premise (3) based on an IDIOTIC reading of Acts 1:3, but the whole idea of having a conversation that lasts for forty days is absurd.  

After talking constantly for ten hours, most people would lose their voices, and more than a few would lose their minds. What about sleeping?  In order to have a continual conversation, one could not fall asleep for even one hour.  If one went to sleep for seven or eight hours after conversing all day long, then when one woke up the next morning, any conversation that morning would be a NEW CONVERSATION, not the SAME CONVERSATION that one engaged in the previous day.  

At most, someone who tried very hard would probably not be able to engage in a conversation for more than 72 hours (i.e.  3 days):

The world record for going without sleep is 11 days:

So, people engaging in a conversation that lasts for forty days is something that makes sense only in Kreeft's Kool-Aid drenched brain.

What makes much more sense is that some followers of Jesus had experiences that seemed to them to be experiences of the risen Jesus, and that those experiences occurred at various times and places over a period of a month or two (i.e. about forty days), and that in some of those experiences it seemed as if the follower(s) of Jesus had a conversation with the risen Jesus.  

But Acts 1:3 does not indicate the duration of ANY of these alleged experiences of seeming to converse with the risen Jesus.  Presumably, different experiences had different durations.  Some may have lasted a few seconds, others may have lasted a few minutes, possibly (though not likely) some may have lasted for an hour or more.  The verse Acts 1:3, however, does not indicate the duration of ANY such experience of an alleged conversation with the risen Jesus.  So, for all we know, NONE of those experiences (if there were any such experiences) lasted for more than a minute or two. 

There is no logical connection between the historical claim in premise (1) and the principle that Kreeft asserts in premise (2).  Because premise (1) does not indicate that any "extended conversations" with the risen Jesus were alleged experienced by any of his disciples, premise (1) is IRRELEVANT, and should simply be IGNORED.  

The apparent logical connection between premise (3) and the principle in premise (2) depends on Kreeft's IDIOTIC reading of Acts 1:3.  Clearly, there was no conversation that lasted "for forty days".  So, if we revise (3) to make a more sensible historical claim, it might well no longer logically connect with the principle in premise (2).  

In order to revise Kreeft's argument so that it is logically VALID, we have to either revise Kreeft's historical claim in premise (3) so that it connects with the principle in premise (2), or else we have to figure out an UNSTATED historical assumption that Kreeft was making, an assumption that does logically connect with premise (2).

The most direct approach here, it seems to me, is to construct a historical claim that connects directly to the principle that Kreeft asserts in premise (2):

B. Over a period of about one or two months, Jesus' disciples had various experiences that seemed to be experiences of the risen Jesus, and in some of those experiences it seemed to the disciples that they (sometimes individually and sometimes as a group) had extended conversations with the risen Jesus.

2. Figments of your imagination do not hold extended conversations with you, unless you have a serious mental disorder.

Before we can draw any logically valid inferences about the experiences mentioned in (B), we have to add one more historical claim:

C. None of Jesus' disciples had a serious mental disorder. 

With the addition of this historical claim, we can now logically draw the following inference:

D. Over a period of about one or two months, Jesus' disciples had various experiences that seemed to be of the risen Jesus, and in at least some of those experiences, the person who they thought was the risen Jesus was NOT a figment of their imagination. 

Premise (D), however, does NOT logically imply Kreeft's desired conclusion:

A. The Hallucination Theory is FALSE.

We can, however, use the historical claim in premise (D) as the basis for the sort of reduction-to-absurdity argument that Kreeft has often used in his objections against the Hallucination Theory.  

Here, then, is what I take to be the core argument for Objection #10:

D. Over a period of about one or two months, Jesus' disciples had various experiences that seemed to be of the risen Jesus, and in at least some of those experiences, the person who they thought was the risen Jesus was NOT a figment of their imagination. 

F. IF the Hallucination Theory were true, THEN in all of the experiences of Jesus' disciples that seemed to be of the risen Jesus and that took place over a period of about one or two months, it was the case that the person who they thought was the risen Jesus was just a figment of their imagination.

Therefore:

A. The Hallucination Theory is FALSE.

Now we can show the logical structure of this revised and reconstructed version of Kreeft's argument for Objection #10: 

In the next post in this series, I will evaluate this argument for Objection #10.