Hi @Faizal_Ali,
Thank you for your comments.
That is to say, the point he [Paul] is gong to great pains to emphasize, is that he did not arrive at his beliefs thru the sort of exhaustive interrogation of facts and eyewitnesses that you are implying. Rather, his conviction is based on the personal revelation he believes he received from Jesus himself.
That’s true, as regards Paul’s conviction that Jesus had risen from the dead. Paul believed he had seen the risen Jesus, so naturally, he felt no need to interrogate other witnesses in order to verify this fact. However, in Galatians 2, Paul continues his story:
“Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. I went in response to a revelation and, meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders, I presented to them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. I wanted to be sure I was not running and had not been running my race in vain… As for those who were held in high esteem—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism—they added nothing to my message. On the contrary, they recognized that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised. For God, who was at work in Peter as an apostle to the circumcised, was also at work in me as an apostle to the Gentiles. James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised.” (Galatians 2:1-2, 6-9)
Paul evidently spent some time with James, Peter [Cephas] and John, conferring with them about the content of the Christian message, and checking that he and they were on the same page. It would have been entirely natural for them to begin at the beginning, and compare their experiences of the risen Jesus.
I can appreciate the importance the Christian believer would attach to efforts to establish the resurrection as an historical fact. But history is just not up to the task of demonstrating that physically impossible things happened in the distant past, even under the most favourable circumstances. And in this case the circumstances are far from the most favourable.
I wasn’t attempting to argue that the Resurrection of Jesus is a historical fact. I’m all too familiar with the holes in the apologists’ arguments. However, I do think a reasonable person would concede that post-mortem apparitions of Jesus to groups probably occurred, whatever they might choose to make of those apparitions.
Even if we could know with 90% certainty that 500 people claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus at the same time, that 10% uncertainty is far higher than the odds that a resurrection actually occurred, so it remains far more probable that this event with 500 people never happened.
The prior probability of a resurrection from the dead is indeed vanishingly small: certainly less than 1 in 100 billion (the number of humans who have ever lived), but no lower than 1 in 100 quintillion (the maximum number of events that humans could have observed, during their history). However, the prior probability of a group apparition is not vanishingly small, as it involves no miracle.
@SlightlyOddGuy
If the person I trusted most in the world came to me and told me she had seen someone rise from the dead, I would not believe her. I would be concerned for her mental health. If I had good reason to believe there were 500 other people who claimed the same thing, I would not believe them, either.
What would you say if all 500 people closely (and independently) agreed in their reports of what the allegedly resurrected individual had said and done, in his/her appearances to them? (Please note that I am not arguing that that’s what happened, in the case of Jesus. I’m just asking, to see whether or not any evidence would convince you.)