The Resurrection Debate Between Alex O'Connor And Trent Horn

You can watch it here. Trent made some good points against Alex's position during the debate, but I want to supplement what he said with some of my own responses to Alex. And I want to respond to Trent to some extent. I've responded to Alex on resurrection issues in the past, and some of what he said in his discussion with Trent covers the same ground. I'll link to some of my previous responses to Alex, since what he said in this recent discussion doesn't advance his side of the argument in any significant way. I also want to add some further comments to what I said in response to him in the past.

Does walking without sight mean walking without evidence?

John 20:29, 2 Corinthians 5:7, and Hebrews 11:1 are often abused for anti-apologetic purposes. It happened again during a recent discussion between Alex O'Connor and Rhett McLaughlin. There are a lot of other problems with their discussion, but I want to focus on the misuse of the three Biblical passages I just mentioned. I want to address that misuse among skeptics in general, not just Alex and Rhett.

Did the resurrection accounts develop in a suspicious way?

In the debate I discussed in my last post, Alex O'Connor raised a common objection to the resurrection accounts in the gospels. Supposedly, the earliest gospel, Mark, has the simplest material on Jesus' resurrection, and each gospel after that gets increasingly advanced in the claims it makes on the subject. See Alex's comments here. He especially discusses an increase in the number of resurrection appearances in each gospel - in the order of Mark, Matthew, Luke, John - though he doesn't limit his development argument to that issue.

There are a lot of problems with that sort of objection. As Jonathan McLatchie mentioned in the debate, the material on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 predates all of the gospels, yet is more advanced in some ways. I want to add some other points.

Did Paul experience a guilt hallucination on the road to Damascus?

Jonathan McLatchie and Alex O'Connor (CosmicSkeptic) recently debated the topic "Theism or Naturalism, which provides a better account of reality?". I want to comment on a couple of issues related to Jesus' resurrection that came up in the debate. I'll address one of those issues here and the other in a later post.