WHERE WE ARE
Kreeft's argument for Objection #10 against the Hallucination Theory FAILED miserably because it was both INVALID and UNSOUND.
However, I have attempted to revise and improve Kreeft's clearly defective argument by keeping his principle about hallucinations, premise (2), and constructing historical premises that are initially more plausible than the historical premises that Kreeft put forward.
Here is the core argument of the revised and improved version of the 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.
In Part 34 I showed that the argument given in support of the key premise (D) was a complete and utter FAILURE, because it is based on two historical premises that are both DUBIOUS, and because it is based on Kreeft's principle about hallucinations, namely premise (2), and that principle is FALSE. Therefore, because the argument for premise (D) is a complete FAILURE, premise (D) remains DUBIOUS.
It is now time to examine the other key premise in the core argument for Objection #10.
IS PREMISE (F) TRUE?
As with my evaluation of premise (D), I will assume that the VAGUE phrase "Jesus' disciples" in premise (F) refers to the eleven disciples who were the inner circle of Jesus' followers, and not to the followers of Jesus in general.
Premise (F) is intended to be a CONCEPTUAL claim, a claim based on the meaning or content of "the Hallucination Theory". Premise (F) is based on an assumption that is plausible: seeming interactions with other people in DREAMS or HALLUCINATIONS are interactions with figments of our imagination. At least, that is true most of the time.
However, there are exceptions to this rule. Hallucinations often involve a mixture of sensory perceptions of actual people and things and characteristics (e.g. color, shape, size) on the one hand and people or things or characteristics that are products of one's imagination on the other hand.
For example, if a person is driving a car down a freeway after having taken a large dose of LSD, and that person sees a giant green fire-breathing dragon blocking the freeway up ahead, then the experience of this person is a COMBINATION of a sensory experience of an actual freeway and an imaginary experience of a dragon. The dragon is a figment of this person's imagination; the dragon is a HALLUCINATION. But the freeway is an actual thing that this person experiences by means of seeing an actual freeway with his or her eyes.
When a person experiences a HALLUCINATION, it can be the case that part of what they experience is an actual thing or person or characteristic, and that part of what they experience is a figment of their imagination. Thus, it is possible that some of the eleven disciples of Jesus experienced a HALLUCINATION of the risen Jesus, and that the disciple(s) had an extended conversation with a person who they believed to be Jesus, but this person was NOT a figment of their imagination. The person that they had an extended conversation with might have been an actual person who was not Jesus. Perhaps the HALLUCINATION altered the disciple(s) perception of this person, making the person look and sound like Jesus, when they in fact did NOT look or sound like Jesus. In this case, the person with whom the disciple(s) had the extended conversation would NOT have been a figment of the imagination of the disciple(s).
Alternatively, some of the eleven disciples could have had an extended conversation with an actual person who in fact looked and sounded like Jesus, and the disciple(s) at a later time in reflecting back on this conversation became convinced that they had been talking with the risen Jesus, when in fact the person with whom the disciple(s) had the extended conversation was NOT Jesus, but merely a person who looked and sounded like Jesus. In that case, this conversation may have taken place without anyone having DREAMED or HALLUCINATED about the conversation.
But in this case, where a person was (on reflection) mistakenly identified as the risen Jesus, and where the extended conversation happened without anyone DREAMING or HALLUCINATING, how could the Hallucination Theory be TRUE?
The Hallucination Theory could be TRUE, even if some of the disciples had an extended conversation with an actual person who looked and sounded like Jesus, apart from having a DREAM or HALLUCINATION about this conversation, because this experience (or these experiences) might have been insufficient to bring about belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus, OR this experience (or these experiences) might have taken place AFTER some of the eleven disciples had already become firmly convinced that Jesus had physically risen from the dead on the basis of HALLUCINATIONS of the risen Jesus.
In other words, so long as one or more HALLUCINATIONS or DREAMS of the risen Jesus were the primary CAUSE of the formation of the conviction of the eleven disciples (or of some sub-set of them) that Jesus had physically risen from the dead, then the Hallucination Theory would be TRUE, even though OTHER alleged experiences of the risen Jesus had by the eleven disciples were NOT caused by HALLUCINATIONS or DREAMS.
Thus, there are at least two different ways that the Hallucination Theory could be TRUE, even if the eleven disciples (or some subset of them) had an extended conversation that seemed to them (upon reflection) to have been a conversation with the risen Jesus, when the person they had been talking with was NOT actually Jesus, but also was NOT a figment of their imagination. Therefore, premise (F) is FALSE.
EVALUATION OF THE REVISED AND IMPROVED ARGUMENT FOR OBJECTION #10
Although I retained one important premise of Kreeft's that seemed to have some promise as the basis for Objection #10, namely: premise (2), and although I constructed historical premises that had significantly greater initial plausibility than Kreeft's obviously IRRELEVANT historical premise (1) and Kreeft's obviously FALSE historical premise (3), the historical premises in the revised and improved argument for Objection #10 ended up both being DUBIOUS (both (C) and (B) are DUBIOUS). Furthermore, I have shown that Kreeft's principle about hallucinations in premise (2) is FALSE.
Since the key historical premise (D) in the core argument was based on premises (B), (C), and (2), the key historical premise (D) is itself DUBIOUS.
Finally, the other key premise in the core argument for Objection #10 is premise (F), and I have shown that this premise is FALSE.
The revised and improved version of the argument for Objection #10 is clearly UNSOUND, because one of the key premises is DUBIOUS and the other key premise is FALSE. So, not only was Kreeft's original argument a complete and utter FAILURE, but this revised and improved version of his argument for Objection #10 is UNSOUND and thus FAILS as well. Therefore, Objection #10 against the Hallucination Theory FAILS, just like every single one of the previous nine objections FAILED.
Given that every single one of Kreeft's first ten objections against the Hallucination Theory has clearly FAILED, it is UNLIKELY that any of the remaining four objections will turn out to be a conclusive or strong objection against the Hallucination Theory.
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