WHERE WE ARE
Here is Peter Kreeft's argument constituting his Objection #10 against the Hallucination Theory:
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).
A. The Hallucination Theory is FALSE.
As with most of Kreeft's arguments, this is a steaming pile of dog shit. Premises (1) and (3) assert historical claims, and premise (2) asserts a principle that is relevant to hallucinations (because hallucinations involve "figments of your imagination").
Premise (1) clearly BEGS THE QUESTION as stated by Kreeft, but it could be reworded to avoid that problem.
However, because premise (1) says nothing about Jesus' disciples experiencing alleged "extended conversations" with the risen Jesus, this premise is IRRELEVANT to the argument; it has no logical connection with the principle stated in premise (2). Thus, premise (1) should simply be ignored.
Premise (3), on the other hand, is relevant in that it claims that eleven people (i.e. disciples of Jesus) experienced a conversation with a person they believed to be the risen Jesus and that this conversation lasted "for forty days". But the evidence Kreeft gives for this claim (Acts 1:3) FAILS to support the claim, and the claim is obviously FALSE since the idea of a conversation that lasts "for forty days" is ABSURD.
Thus, both of the historical premises of this argument are worthless. As it stands, Kreeft's argument for Objection #10 is both INVALID and UNSOUND. The conclusion DOES NOT FOLLOW from the premises, and one historical premise is IRRELEVANT and the other historical premise is FALSE. Once again, Kreeft FAILS to provide a conclusive or strong objection against the Hallucination Theory.
However, the principle stated in premise (2) could be used as the basis for a reduction-to-absurdity argument against the Hallucination Theory, along the lines of other objections that Kreeft has previously raised. So, I attempted to construct a historical claim that is not as OBVIOUSLY false or irrelevant as Kreeft's premises (1) and (3), and to create a significantly modified version of Kreeft's argument for Objection #10 that has at least a modest degree of initial plausibility:
2. Figments of your imagination do not hold extended conversations with you, unless you have a serious mental disorder.
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.
C. None of Jesus' disciples had a serious mental disorder.
Thus:
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.
Therefore: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.
A. The Hallucination Theory is FALSE.
Now it is time to evaluate this attempt to repair Kreeft's pathetic attempt at an argument for Objection #10.
THE CORE ARGUMENT FOR OBJECTION #10 (THE DISCIPLES CONVERSED WITH JESUS)
Here is the core argument of the significantly revised version of Kreeft's 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.
Therefore: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.
A. The Hallucination Theory is FALSE.
The logic of this core argument is VALID, so the primary questions at issue are these:
- Is premise (D) true?
- Is premise (F) true?
2. Figments of your imagination do not hold extended conversations with you, unless you have a serious mental disorder.
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.
C. None of Jesus' disciples had a serious mental disorder.
Thus:
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.
The phrase "Jesus' disciples" is UNCLEAR. Does this refer to just "the eleven" disciples who remained out of "the twelve" disciples who Jesus allegedly selected to be the inner circle of his followers? or does this refer to anyone who was a follower of Jesus in the weeks and months immediately after Jesus was crucified?
If "Jesus' disciples" refers to anyone who was a follower of Jesus in the weeks and months immediately after Jesus was crucified, then premise (C) is probably FALSE. It is likely that at least a few of Jesus' early followers had a serious mental disorder. So, if we use this broader interpretation of "Jesus' disciples", then this argument is probably UNSOUND.
So, let's give premise (C) a fighting chance of being true by narrowing the scope of "Jesus' disciples" to "the eleven" disciples who were "the twelve" chosen by Jesus minus Judas Iscariot, who allegedly betrayed Jesus.
Nevertheless, premise (C) remains DUBIOUS, because we know almost nothing about the words and actions and lives of most of "the eleven" disciples, especially after Jesus was crucified. So, premise (C) is DUBIOUS, at best, even if we limit the scope of "Jesus' disciples" to "the eleven".
What about the historical claim asserted by premise (B)? The phrase "extended conversation" is somewhat VAGUE. Would a five-minute conversation count as an "extended conversation"? How about a ten-minute conversation? or a thirty-minute conversation? Would a conversation have to last for at least an hour to be considered an "extended conversation"? Kreeft does not define or clarify what this phrase means.
I would guess that a conversation would need to last for at least thirty minutes to be considered an "extended conversation". But I would be willing to consider a five-minute conversation to be an "extended conversation" if some Christian apologist insisted on this point, in order to try to make Kreeft's argument work. Note, however, that the shorter the duration chosen as the demarcation for an "extended conversation" the less plausible Kreeft's premise (2) will be, and the longer the duration chosen, the less plausible premise (B) will be.
Also, there were no watches and no accurate clocks in 1st century Palestine, so people did not measure durations of time in minutes and seconds. In fact, the concept of "minutes and seconds" came along about 1,000 years later:
Al-Biruni first subdivided the hour sexagesimally into minutes, seconds, thirds and fourths in 1000 CE while discussing Jewish months.
There are no passages in the NT that describe alleged conversations between Jesus' eleven disciples and the risen Jesus in terms of how many minutes they conversed with each other. So, we have to use whatever clues we can find in stories about alleged experiences of the risen Jesus to make EDUCATED GUESSES about how long these experiences and seeming conversations with the risen Jesus lasted.
The first thing to note on this question is that the passage that Kreeft points to provides no support for premise (B), just like it provided no support for Kreeft's historical claim in premise (3). The claim in Acts 1:3 implies that there were various experiences by "the eleven" disciples of alleged appearances of the risen Jesus that took place over about a forty-day period of time. But this verse says NOTHING about the disciples seeming to have "extended conversations" with Jesus.
In fact, it does not even imply that ANY conversations between "the eleven" and the risen Jesus took place. Rather, it states that in some cases the risen Jesus was "speaking about the kingdom of God" to the disciples. Jesus speaking to the disciples is NOT the same thing as Jesus having a conversation with the disciples. Thus, the evidence provided by Kreeft FAILS to support premise (B).
There are other NT passages that one should consider, though, before dismissing premise (B) as DUBIOUS. There are seven gospel passages and one passage in Acts where "the eleven" disciples (or a subset of them) have an alleged experience of the risen Jesus:
1. Matthew 28:16-20
2. Mark 16:14-18
3. Luke 24:36-49
4. John 20:19-23
5. John 20:24-29
6. John 21:4-13
7. John 21:15-19
8. Acts 1:4-9
So, we can review each of these eight passages to determine whether any of these passages indicates that "the eleven" had an experience of the risen Jesus involving what seemed to be an extended conversation with Jesus. If not, then premise (B) should be rejected as being DUBIOUS because of lacking any historical basis.
In the next part of this series, I will review these relevant NT passages and evaluate premise (D).
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