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Sunday, June 25, 2006

Gary Habermas On The Resurrection And Other Topics

For those who aren't aware of it, Gary Habermas has a web site. There's a lot of good material there, including a recent article on the state of resurrection scholarship and some audio and video files.

One of the audio files is from a November 12, 2005 radio interview in which he discusses the resurrection with a believer and an unbeliever. He gives some updates on his survey of resurrection scholarship. At one point, he mentions 2200 sources that he's surveyed. I think the number was around 1400 when he published his book with Michael Licona in 2004, so apparently he's added another several hundred sources since then. He quotes a clinical psychologist who teaches in a doctoral program on psychology, one who recently did a review of the relevant literature on hallucinations, telling him that there's "not a single scientific case of a mass hallucination". Habermas goes on to discuss the difference between a mass hallucination and a mass illusion. People might collectively mistake an object in the air for an alien spacecraft, but that would be a mistaken impression about a real object, not a hallucination. And people might have individual hallucinations around the same time, but they can't share the same hallucination. Habermas also discusses some other topics during the interview. I recommend listening to it.

There's a lot of other good material at the site as well. There's some good material on near-death experiences, for example.

1 comment:

  1. Steve and others, I interview Dr. Habermas back on April 27 (seems like last week) on the topic of the resurrection. The MP3 of that interview is online here. I thought we had a very good conversation since he is easy going and loves the subject.

    I'm no longer doing the program, but there are other interviews here. I do hope to get back into doing this though. Perhaps without the cost involved (i stopped because I had two heafty phone bills). :)

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