Ankerberg Show

Guest (Male): Welcome to the John Ankerberg Show Classics Edition. For decades, we've been privileged to host esteemed scholars discussing a wide range of topics, from apologetics and science to biblical prophecy and beyond. Join us as we revisit these timeless conversations and make them accessible to you wherever you are.

Guest (Male): Today, we invite you to hear a debate between one of the world's foremost philosophical atheists, Dr. Anthony Flew, former professor of Oxford University, and Christian philosopher and historian Dr. Gary Habermas, current chairman of the department of philosophy at Liberty University, on the topic: Did Jesus rise from the dead?

Gary Habermas: So if you've got good arguments for God's existence, if we have evidence for God writing scripture, if we have evidence for him acting in time, if Jesus does miracles, then he rises from the dead. And if today we see cases of double-blind experiments where we can't answer, a medical journal publishes answers to prayer where 21 out of 26 categories the person is statistically better, we see some healing examples which we had time to go into, near-death experiences, and then we talk about the evidence for the resurrection, I think the Christian's point is the resurrection is not isolated. It's part of a bigger picture, what we would want to call a theistic worldview.

Guest (Male): Christianity stands or falls on Christ's resurrection. If Christ has risen from the dead, then Christianity is true. If he did not, then Christianity is false. Even the apostle Paul wrote, "If Christ has not been raised, then your faith is groundless, your preaching is useless, and you are still in your sins." We invite you to join us for this important debate on the John Ankerberg Show.

John Ankerberg: Welcome, we're talking about the question: Did Jesus rise from the dead? A very crucial question, and we've got two world-class philosophers with us. They are Dr. Anthony Flew, considered to be by many to be the world's foremost contemporary philosophical atheist, a man who has authored more than 23 books, including *Hume's Philosophy of Belief*, *God and Philosophy*, *Introduction to Western Philosophy*, *The Presumption of Atheism* and other philosophical essays on God, freedom, and immortality.

My second guest is Dr. Gary Habermas, renowned Christian philosopher and historian, who is considered by many to be the foremost expert on the evidence for Jesus' resurrection. Gary has authored 21 books, including *The Historical Jesus*, *Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ*, *In Defense of Miracles*, and *Why Believe God Exists?* Gentlemen, we are so glad that you are here.

What we want to talk about in this section is a question that comes up time and time again, and that is, "Hey, my mom, my sisters, my family members, my friends, they might want to believe in the resurrection, but we don't see resurrections happening every day." All the funerals I've ever gone to, Dr. Habermas, I have yet to see any of those guys come back out of the grave. So my experience, all of my experience says dead men stay dead, and you want to take me from ground zero here of saying dead men stay dead all the way up to a miracle, not just a little tiny miracle, but the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and I've got no experience, no background on that. Help me out.

Gary Habermas: Well, that's good. I think you've just explained well the issue that philosophers call antecedent probability. I would guess that it's probably the single biggest issue on the miracles, not resurrection but miracles issue. I think there's two ways a theist could go after this. One is to say your view of the world is wrong. It's not that we're here and the resurrection is Mount Everest. This world here needs to be adjusted.

This isn't a debate on some of these other things, but if this were an extended debate and I would say, "Well, what's our world look like?" I would want to talk about data for God's existence. I would want to talk about near-death experiences because if God exists, the playing field rises up quite a bit. Or some would say like this, my colleague here, Dr. Flew, said in our '85 debate, he said if we have some reasons to think that God exists, the resurrection becomes enormously more likely. And I think those words "enormously more likely" are his words.

So God would change that picture if there are miracles at present. I'm thinking about the double-blind study that was done with 400 cardiac patients at San Francisco Hospital a few years ago in which they had a double-blind experiment. Half the people were prayed for, half the people were not prayed for, and they monitored these patients in 26 categories. The ones that were prayed for were statistically better—not just better, but statistically better—in 21 out of 26 categories.

This was published by *Moody Monthly*? No, it was published by the *Southern Journal of Medicine*. The peer reviewers of the *Southern Journal of Medicine* thought that this was medically significant, that the people who were prayed for were better in 21 out of 26 categories. As I said, near-death experiences, if life after death is true—and I think near-death experiences are great argument—the playing field comes up. So one way you can do it is object to the playing field and say there's other things going on here too.

John Ankerberg: Let me give you an illustration, Tony. There was a farmer that grew up on the farm all of his life. The only animals he had ever seen were chickens, cows, and horses. Then one day he went to the zoo and lo and behold he walked around the corner and he saw a giraffe. He looked at it, and he looked at it again, and he told his wife, "There ain't no such animal." It was outside of his experience. Now aren't you kind of like the farmer who is saying, "I've got no resurrections in my experience here," but you're avoiding the very evidence that stands in front of your eyes?

Anthony Flew: I don't think this will do because the idea of a miracle is parasitic on the idea of a law of nature. To show that something is happening all the time and there's no reason to think it's impossible is not to produce anything that's going to change people's religious or other beliefs. The whole point of arguing that this resurrection occurred is to say that it was impossible and could only have been brought about by a supernatural power.

As we all know, giraffes are possible and very worthy creatures. So finding that giraffes exist and there was never any good reason to think they were impossible is not going to prove anything exciting. I think this is the crucial point: that the idea of a miracle depends absolutely on the idea of natural law and physical impossibility. It's only because there are laws of nature, there are things that are impossible for human beings, that it becomes exciting to say, "Here, something impossible has been done. It's not possible for human beings, it's only possible for a supernatural power."

John Ankerberg: All right, if I hear you right, let's say that I had the privilege—it was a sad privilege, but I was asked to do a funeral. I had known this lady, and so about a month ago I flew down to Florida and did the funeral. About three weeks later I came back to that area and I was speaking, and the family was there again. So I use the illustration and I said, "What would happen if the daughter, who was a lawyer, came to me and said, 'You know,'—now this is after four weeks after her mother had been buried—she said, 'I saw mom and had lunch with her yesterday'?"

Now, I think what you're saying is none of us would immediately say—even if she's a lawyer and even if she was a credible testimony—we would say, "Now that you've told me that, I need to put your mother's phone number back in my phone book." We do not assume that dead people come back from the dead. So let's stick it to Gary over here. How do we get to the point of coming to accept the fact that there could have been a resurrection in past history, namely Jesus Christ?

Gary Habermas: Well, like I said, there's two ways at least. One is just overpowering evidence for the resurrection, but the other way to go after it is to say this world admits other exceptions. Now near-death experiences, to give you an example, would not be a miracle. However, if near-death experiences evidence an afterlife, Jesus' resurrection would still be unique, but if people are living after death, now that makes you take a whole new look at the resurrection.

So my Walmart illustration: let's say I bumped into somebody here. Now we know what it's like to go to the store and as you push your cart down the aisle, you say hi to this friend and two aisles over another friend, and two aisles over three friends are talking together and you join the group. What if I saw somebody at Walmart and we chatted and maybe I shook hands, and when a few aisles over somebody else was talking to this person and few aisles over five people were talking to this person and I got into the conversation?

But along the way, there were other signs. Let's say the person was tracking mud on their shoes. Let's say I reached over and touched the person and shook hands, patted them on the shoulder. Let's say I paused for a photograph. Now what if this—what's missing—what if we saw that person last time at their own funeral three days or a week earlier? I'd say to myself, "That's not the person we buried." I mean I've seen the medical examiner's report, I know this person's dead.

What are my options? It's a twin brother. And whatever these are called naturalistic theories. But let's say the person says, "No, you know I was injured in a serious car accident, well here's the scar. It's not a twin brother, it's me." "Well, maybe you're not here." "Well, pinch me, pinch me." And I'm saying after a while, the mud on the feet, the pat on the shoulder, there's going to come a point at which you say, "Boy, I don't know what to do here, but I have a medical report, I was at your funeral, I saw the car accident, there's the scar on your head, you've been my best buddy for three years."

And now as you ask the other people, "Did you see him over there? Did all of you see him? Did you see him singly?" It might have been a hallucination. "Did you see him in groups?" Now, did anybody else touch him? I'm saying the second way to go after this is to say there can be so much data that it overrides what we think the natural scheme of nature is. And I'll add this about the laws of nature. Laws of nature aren't some Humean or some Newtonian principle. Laws of nature are statistical descriptions of what usually occurs when nature is left to herself, to quote Lewis. Since they are statistical descriptions and not rock walls, cement walls, statistics can be overridden. And therefore, I've got to be open that the guy at Walmart was the same guy at the funeral. I at least have to be open to that.

Anthony Flew: Well, I don't think it's a thing to go on about here, but I radically disagree with this idea that laws of nature are merely statistical. I want to go back to the point that a miracle is an overriding of a law of nature, of doing something that is known to be in practice impossible for human beings. And I think there can be evidence for this, but the evidence depends on your having justified prior beliefs, not merely about the existence of a supernatural power, but a fair amount of supplementary belief about the nature of and the intentions of that supernatural power.

Just to say, "Oh, there must have been a sort of personal force at the beginning that set off this"—what is really wanted and is available surely in this particular case that we're arguing about is the whole tradition of Mosaic theism. It's not just God as a superpower, omnipotent power, it is the God of the whole tradition of Mosaic theism, i.e., the God of the Old Testament. And it's the belief in that, that I think is going to make belief in these miracles rational belief.

Gary Habermas: I agree, but in the last segment we were talking about Jesus claiming plugging into the God of that tradition, saying, "I'm the Son of God, I'm the Son of Man." Then he rises from the dead with all this evidence. It's precisely plugging into that tradition which is the strongest argument for Jesus being who he claimed to be. So if he's raised, you've got somebody who claims to be the Son of God, and God doesn't raise heretics from the dead.

John Ankerberg: All right, we're debating the topic "Did Jesus rise from the dead?" and when we return we're going to talk some more about this and we're going to talk about other evidence that might push you over the edge in terms of belief that Jesus rose from the dead. Stick with us.

John Ankerberg: Welcome. We're talking with Dr. Gary Habermas and Dr. Anthony Flew. Gary, what other evidence would you bring into this picture in terms of those that are naturalists that say there's got to be a naturalistic explanation? Tony doesn't seem to know how to explain this stuff, the historical evidence for Jesus' resurrection that you've presented so far, but his concern is, "Hey, just in the ordinary experience of things, it couldn't happen." Now what would you say to that?

Gary Habermas: One is just overpowering evidence for the resurrection, but the other way to go after it is to say this world admits other exceptions. Now near-death experiences, to give you an example, would not be a miracle. However, if near-death experiences evidence an afterlife, Jesus' resurrection would still be unique, but if people are living after death, now that makes you take a whole new look at the resurrection.

My interest in near-death experiences is not the tens of thousands as Gallup is right, almost eight million Americans that have had near-death experiences. My interest is not the tunnels and the lights, because that could be temporal lobe, it could be lack of oxygen. To me, since 1972, I've collected almost 100 cases of near-death experiences where something evidential happens two blocks or in some cases two miles away.

If I can just give one example, this is a real recent one, but the medical doctor, a cardiologist, Michael Sabom, said in his 1982 book, *Recollections of Death: A Medical Perspective*, he said, "When I wrote that book, we only had near-death experiences. Now we have post-death experiences." In his most recent book called *Light and Death*, he gives the case of a southern mother in her 30s who had a brain aneurysm. They had to fly her out to Arizona for a special technique, and it seems like only one doctor in the world does this.

It took 30 doctors and technicians in the room, and what happens is he opened up her skull, went down—and if the aneurysm is right there you repair it—but if it goes down deep they put into effect what they call operation standstill. And this is crazy because they basically kill their patient. This lady went out to Arizona, he cut open her skull, went down and found this thing was way too deep, so they had to kill her. What they did was cool her body temperature down to 59 degrees, get all the blood out of her head, they stopped her heart, they stopped her brain. These were stopped for hours.

And he's doing his work, and to make a long story short, he got the vessel, he repaired it and she is doing fine today. But what the interesting thing is when he and her testimony, when she heard the saw turn on, she said she was out of her body and as it were looking over his shoulder at the top of her head. Now she's getting near to this point where they're going to kill her, and she gives six points of corroboration. One of the things she says is, "I had this idea of a drill looking like a pizza cutter or something, but she said it looked like a pen with a little tiny—where'd you get that?" And she said, "You had a socket wrench next to you."

The medical doctor said, "What do you mean socket wrench?" and he's wanting her to give evidence. She said, "There's a two-metal—a box that sat open with all these interchangeable parts." He said, "Draw me a picture of the drill." She drew it. "Draw me a picture of the socket set." She drew it. And then she tells things that went on in the room. They couldn't find her artery, they had to go to the other side. She identified which doctor made the decision, which doctor couldn't find the artery. It's in her medical report.

But during the experience and then they kill her, she's dead for three hours and she has all these points of memory. And I could go on and give others, but in one other case, real briefly, a girl who was drowned. She was underwater for 19 minutes. She reported what her parents were doing at home that night. What her mom did for dinner, where dad was sitting, a G.I. Joe that her brother played with, a doll that her sister played with. She talked about a popular song that came on the radio and she gave this—she was no brain activity, comatose.

She came to three days later, looked up and told the doctor, "You're the one that resuscitated me." Told him this big long story and he checked the data from just three days earlier. Now I think these are some hard cases and there's dozens of others like them. If this is true and there's life after death, this isn't Jesus, but if there's life after death it allows us to understand a model for what we call resurrection.

Anthony Flew: This is supposed to show life after death, is it?

Gary Habermas: Well, I think it—okay, not extenuated life, not heaven and hell, but what I would argue is minimalistic life after death. By minimalistic life after death, I mean minutes, sometimes hours, minutes after cessation of heart or brain waves. Now to me, if a person's recording something, if it's in my medical report that I flatlined at 3:02 and I had no brainwave at 3:15 and I report something that happened a few minutes after that or an hour later and I can tell you what went on, say a police report and it's after the event. No, I don't think life after death in the traditional view of heaven and hell, but in the sense of having data for minutes after death. And I would think life after hours of death would be tough for a naturalist.

John Ankerberg: Tony, does that open up the door in terms of the possibility of more than naturalism?

Anthony Flew: Not really, I think, but this is another—it's one of my favorite subjects, actually. I've written a lot of the literature about the impossibility of the future life.

John Ankerberg: What would you say happened in terms of those cases then, naturalistically, when somebody reports something miles away when they have no heart or brain activity?

Anthony Flew: I mean, this is the sort of thing that's normally called out-of-the-body experiences, isn't it?

Gary Habermas: Except that in an OBE the person's not anywhere close to death. In an NDE they're close to death, and in the case of this lady from Alabama, I think, or Georgia, she's post-death by all accepted standards. 59 degrees blood, no blood in the head, no heart, no brain for hours. She shouldn't be reporting anything, should she?

Anthony Flew: No, but if she was really dead, she shouldn't be recovering in this way.

Gary Habermas: This is intriguing evidence for somebody who has no brain activity. She was on a lung machine. By the way, her doctor gave her a 10 percent chance of living and a one in 10,000 chance of living with all her faculties. Three days later, she comes to spontaneously and says, "You're the guy that resuscitated me. Where's the tall guy without the beard?" He said, "I'll get him for you." Now this guy's an agnostic and I've talked to the doctor myself. Guess what? He's no longer an agnostic. He's a theist. He's not a Christian, but he's a theist. So it's evidence for something.

Anthony Flew: Yes, I mean, this is the sort of thing that societies for psychical research or nowadays it's called parapsychology investigate. And it seems to me one begins to start talking about not psychokinesis, extra-sensory perception and so on in this way.

Gary Habermas: But you don't believe in ESP.

Anthony Flew: No.

Gary Habermas: So what does a naturalist do with reports from miles away when there's no brain and heart activity?

Anthony Flew: I don't know about this one. I know what to do with most ESP reports because basically people again and again try to establish evidence for this and the only way that will be demonstrated is a repeatable demonstration.

Gary Habermas: But of course, all these people have functioning brains and hearts. So again, a person with no brain and heart, this is quite extraordinary.

Anthony Flew: Oh no, this is a new one to me, yes. This is certainly a new one to me, yes.

John Ankerberg: All right, we have to wrap this up. Gary, in terms of all that we've been talking about, fit near-death experiences in. Where does it fit? What is the evidence showing you so far?

Gary Habermas: Well, what I'm saying is—something we haven't even talked about—but Christians want to talk about a theistic worldview. As Tony said, it's not just God out there; it's the God of the Old Testament. There's a whole tradition here. So if you've got good arguments for God's existence, we have evidence for God writing scripture, if we have evidence for him acting in time, if Jesus does miracles, then he rises from the dead.

And if today we see cases of double-blind experiments where we can't answer, a medical journal publishes answers to prayer where 21 out of 26 categories the person is statistically better, we see some healing examples which we had time to go into, near-death experiences, and then we talk about the evidence for the resurrection, I think the Christian's point is the resurrection is not isolated. It's part of a bigger picture, what we would want to call a theistic worldview. It's part of a bigger picture, and in that picture, the fact that God raised Jesus is extraordinary, it's one of a kind, it shows Jesus is who he said he was, but he's alive. God's working in other ways in the world too.

John Ankerberg: All right, please stay with us. You won't want to miss what's coming next. We're going to have questions from the audience, so hang in there. Now, stay tuned as we revisit these timeless discussions and join us in celebrating the wealth of knowledge that continues to encourage and educate. To learn more, please visit jashow.org. That’s jashow.org. Or subscribe to us on YouTube.