Touchstone's Implausible Reconstructions Of Early Christianity

In his thread at Debunking Christianity on Francis Xavier, Touchstone has made a lot of dubious assertions, often without any attempt at documentation. He doesn't seem to know much about early Christianity, the arguments used by Christian scholars to substantiate their conclusions, or the argumentation of non-Christian scholars who accept some of the facts that Touchstone disputes.

I responded to some arguments similar to Touchstone's two years ago, in response to Bill Curry of Debunking Christianity. See, for example, here and here.

Touchstone writes:

"I don't think the desire is overt in embellishing or inventing, generally, in either case. For the admirers of Xavier, there's the desires to glorify. So, too, with Jesus, but even that I think is overridden by the crisis of disconfirmation that was Jesus' death. Here was acute, devastating cognitive dissonance. Given a credulous worldview pre-disposed to magical thinking in both cases, legend happens. A follower of Jesus reports several days after Jesus' death that she had a vision of Jesus in a dream. Relayed to another follower, that becmes just a vision. Passed on once again, it morphs from 'vision' to 'appearance'. At this point, passed along in passionate retelling to others sympathetic to the legend, credulous in their worldview, Jesus has now 'appeared', isn't that miraculous???...If you are part of the growing sub-sect that is harboring the fantasies of resurrection, and you hear James was brought in and stoned by the Romans, why of *course* it would be because he was preaching the resurrection! It might have been, so you think, therefore it was."

Do people normally believe whatever they want to believe in the manner Touchstone is suggesting? Does a person who wants to make more money believe that his paycheck for $500 is actually a paycheck for $5000? No, and, if he did, his desire would soon come into contact with the contrary desires of the bank, his employer, etc. If his family shared his desire for a larger paycheck, would that desire be sufficient to result in hallucinations every time one of them looks at the ink on the check? Would they all agree that the paycheck is for $5000 rather than, say, $7000 or $10000? Since ancient Roman historians often reported events that they would have desired to be true, such as a Roman victory in a war or something virtuous done by a Roman leader, do modern historians discussing Roman history normally engage in the sort of unverifiable reconstruction of events that Touchstone has engaged in above, involving people believing something just because they desire it to be true?

N.T. Wright, after studying religious movements in Israel around the time of Jesus' death, commented:

"So far as we know, all the followers of these first-century messianic movements were fanatically committed to the cause. They, if anybody, might be expected to suffer from this blessed twentieth century disease called 'cognitive dissonance' when their expectations failed to materialize. But in no case, right across the century before Jesus and the century after him, do we hear of any Jewish group saying that their executed leader had been raised from the dead and he really was the Messiah after all." (cited in Paul Copan and Ronald Tacelli, edd., Jesus' Resurrection: Fact Or Figment? [Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2000], p. 183)

Psychological studies and other data have shown that hallucinations and other relevant psychological disorders tend to occur under conditions different from those of the resurrection witnesses. See, for example, here, here, here, and here. For example, the apostle Paul wasn't a "follower of Jesus" and "sympathetic to the legend" when he thought he saw the risen Christ.

And if Touchstone wants us to believe that the early Christians had "a credulous worldview pre-disposed to magical thinking" to such an extent as his theory suggests, then he ought to interact with the sort of data discussed here and here.

On some of the issues relevant to early Christianity, we don't just have the testimony of Christian sources, but also corroboration from non-Christian sources. See, for example, here and here. Like the pre-Christian Paul, these sources weren't "followers of Jesus" and "sympathetic to the legend".

He writes:

"That is, if I asked you to substantiate the Biblical claims that the disciples a) were witness to the resurrection/reappearance of Jesus and b) went to martyr's deaths in defense of a), I think you'd have great difficulty, save for relying on the self-attestation of the followers of Jesus."

Historians and courts of law, for example, frequently accept the testimony of people engaging in "self-attestation". Do we dismiss all reports of Roman history coming from Roman sources, similar to Touchstone's dismissive approach above?

For more on the problematic nature of Touchstone's objection, see here.

He writes:

"I can't find grounds for the conviction that the disciples were party to the resurrection/reappearances of Jesus at all, let alone later martyrs in witness to that claim."

Touchstone is disagreeing with the vast majority of scholars, then, both Christian and non-Christian. Based on evidence such as 1 Corinthians 15, the vast majority of scholars believe that the early Christians, including disciples of Jesus, believed they saw the risen Christ. See, for example, Gary Habermas' research on scholarly trends discussed here and here. If Touchstone is saying that he sees no grounds for the conclusion that Jesus' disciples thought they saw the risen Jesus, as his comments and the context of what he was responding to suggest, then how does he explain 1 Corinthians 15 and the other evidence that leads both Christian and non-Christian scholarship to disagree with him?

He writes:

"We don't have the reliable autobiographical or contemporary accounts in Jesus' case, like we do with Xavier. If we did, I believe it parallel Xavier's in many respects: fairly plausible biography that has fantastic legends grafted on later."

Touchstone gives us no reason to doubt the Christian claims about Jesus comparable to the evidence he cited against the claims about Francis Xavier. Instead, he just tells us that he thinks the two cases would be seen to be comparable if we had more data relevant to Jesus. But without such data, why are we supposed to agree with Touchstone's conclusion?

He writes:

"For example, if I recall correctly, Josephus has narrative on the stoning of James. This account is controversial in its own right, but the account as it is recounts the *stoning* of James, the result of charges brought by the sanhedrin by breaking the law."

Maybe if Touchstone were more familiar with the evidence, he wouldn't have to say "if I recall correctly". Given his recent association with Debunking Christianity, which has had the likes of Acharya S and Evan on its staff, and given the presence of doubts about Jesus' existence on that blog (another position the vast majority of scholars reject), is Touchstone suggesting that both passages in Josephus might be fraudulent? If so, that's a conclusion rejected by the large majority of scholars. If Touchstone doesn't think that such arguments of those who deny Jesus' existence are credible, then why does he keep making comments to the effect of "if we assume Jesus' existence" or "this account is controversial in its own right"? If Touchstone doesn't deny Jesus' existence himself, he at least seems to be willing to assign that position more credibility than it deserves.