Occam’s razor
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It turns out that when she ran to the car, she describes the kind of car he got into. And she says he got into a car that she was familiar with. It was a 1972 yellow, a mustard yellow Volkswagen, Karmann, GHIA. And how many of you know what a Volkswagen Karmann, GHIA even looks like? What states do you live in? What state do you live in? What state?
Idaho.
And actually there’s a Karmann, GHIA in Idaho. Wow, that’s pretty good because most of those things were rust out in cold weather. You have more of them in California and probably Florida, for example, than you would anywhere else, right? But so, you do a little DMV search and you find out there’s like two operational 1972 Karmann, GHIAs in anywhere in you’re part of the state. Don’t know what color they are. When you do a search warrant at his house, he’s got one of them. He’s got one that’s mustard color. That is by the way, what a 1972 Volkswagen Karmann, GHIA looks like. This is a compelling case because the odds of him having all of these things present are so slim. This is a one in 30. This is a one in three. What are the odds that this guy’s a one in 30 and a one in three? See the problem.
Now it could very well be still possible that he’s innocent. Remember the difference between possible and reasonable? It’s possible he’s innocent. It’s possible he’s just the most unlucky guy on the planet. The day he beats his girlfriend and threatens to kill her, somebody else comes and does it. Dang, I hate when that happens, right? I mean think about it. And it’s not even you, come on really. So, the defense is going to come in here and say I can explain this some other way and I can explain this some other way and I can explain this some other their way. And this is a coincidence too and I can explain that some other way. And I give you eight alternative explanations or it turns out that our guy is the one reasonable explanation that unifies all the evidence. All of this stuff makes sense if he’s our guy and I don’t need eight different explanations, I just need one.
That’s an Occam’s razor issue, right? He’s the most reasonable inference. This is how we build cases folks. This is the nature of indirect evidence. I need you guys to get this, so that you’ll stop saying stuff like, “oh, that’s just a circumstantial case”. There is no such thing as just a circumstantial case. As a matter of fact, judges instruct jurors all the time that this is what circumstantial evidence is and you are not to treat a circumstantial case or circumstantial evidence as any less valuable than direct evidence. You’re to give it the exact same value in your deliberation, that’s a jury instruction. So, stop saying just circumstance. Do you realize that I would sometimes rather have a circumstantial case than a direct case? You know why? Because witnesses will lie to you. Sometimes they want to trick you. Circumstantial evidence can never lie to you.
You can stupidly mis-infer, you could read it wrong, but it’s not trying to deceive you, you’re just being stupid. Witnesses will try to deceive you. So, then while if that’s the case, what do we do with Christianity? Isn’t it built on the back of eyewitness testimony? You have the gospel authors and they’re going to make a claim about the historic past, right? They’re making a claim, an eyewitness claim about something that happened in history. Why should you believe it? Well I always say this, I don’t trust any witnesses until I test them. You have to test witnesses. I don’t care if they’re telling me something that’s good for my case. I’m still going to test them because if I don’t test them, trust me, the defense attorney will test them at trial. So, better for me to test them early. And I test them in four areas.
I got these four areas because our jury instructions have 14 questions that we would allow you as a juror to think of about when you’re evaluating whether a witness is reliable. The 14 questions break down into these large categories and to make it even easier I’ll give it to you in single words. Here they are, is that witness, was he really there? Can we verify him or corroborate him in some way? Has he been honest and accurate over time? And finally, does he have a bias that would cause him to lie to me? If he passed the tests in these four areas, we’re to consider him reliable. Does that make sense? So, the question we’re going to ask today is do the Gospels pass the test in these four areas? This is how we determine if any eyewitness is reliable, including historic eyewitnesses. So, here we go.
First category, were they really present? Here’s my dad, 1974. He’s got a guy here who confessed to a murder of a 10 year old girl. This girl was killed on Thanksgiving day in 1972. So, it’s now what? 16 months later. And he is walking this suspect, Ronald Kozak, over to the courtroom where he is going to be tried for murder. My dad never thought this guy was the killer. I just talked to my dad last week about this photo, I told him, “do you realize I use this photo in all my presentations right?” He’s an atheist. Okay. He’s like, “oh you use that photo. I hate that photo”. I said, “that’s why I use it.” So, great. He hates it because he’s got this greasy hair slicked down, no one’s wearing a mustache anymore really. If you’re not wearing a goatee that’s like a set, right?
Who wears a mustache without a goatee? I’ve got you off the hook there. Anyway, the point is, is there anybody here with a mustache without a goatee? Oh good, see made my point. All right here. Then he said, these two detectives are the ones who really bought this guy. And we’ve known these gals, I know these people like family, but they really believed that Ronald Kozak was our killer. He confessed over a thousand pages to what he did to this poor girl and then how he killed her. It was not pretty, none of it was true. This guy was not even there. He’s some kind of a nut job who enjoyed confessing to it, enjoyed the relationship he had with these two detectives but he is not our killer. If you aren’t, by the way, we got him out with blood evidence on the Eve of the trial.
And when we got him out of the trial, we were 16 months behind the case. This case is still open, never solved. If you’re 16 months behind the killer, that’s a tough one to solve. But the point is, if you aren’t present, you can’t be the killer. You also can’t be a witness though. And that’s the question we have to ask of The Gospel authors. Were they really there? The people who wrote The Gospels or were they not? Here’s the actual life of Jesus or the ministry of Jesus that we’re going to have to at some point authenticate with eyewitness testimony. But here’s the courtroom where we’re going to decide if this is all bull or not. This is the courtroom, this is the council where the early church had to make a decision about which books get into the Bible and which books don’t. Which gospels can we trust? Which can we not? Is the council [inaudible 00:06:57], but it’s 330 years after the event.
If The Gospels are written late in history, then they can’t be trusted because they can’t be eyewitness accounts. The witnesses have been dead for 300 years. And by the way, there’s lots of folks who would suggest this is true, including Bart Ehrman, who’s written a number of books on this issue. Biblical scholar, leads the Bible department at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, a student of Bruce Metzger, probably one of the foremost Bible scholars of the 20th century. Bart Ehrman has written these books and he is not a Christian. He doesn’t believe Jesus is God. He doesn’t believe the Bible is reliable. And he’s writing these books to kind of convince us of his position. If he’s right, if people like this are right and The Gospels are written late in history, then trust me, we should step out of this whole summit thing because none of this Christianity stuff is true. It’s not even recorded accurately.
On the other hand, if The Gospels are written over here, we can at least pass the first test. It does not mean they’re true because it could just be an early lie but it’s harder to tell a lie early in the region. If you’re going to lie about this, it’s easier to lie late or outside of the region. So, I’m here to tell you today that I think this is where these are. I think they’re written very early in history. I’ll make my case circumstantially. Ready? Book of Acts, is the book in your Bible that describes the first century after the Ascension of Jesus, right? That’s the book of Acts. Who wrote the book of Acts? Luke. Did Luke in the book of Acts ever describe the destruction of the temple? We know when it occurred in history, 70 AD. This temple is destroyed in Jerusalem. Jesus predicted it in Matthew 23. If I’m Luke and I’m trying to convince you this stuff is true, I’m thinking I’m going to put it in there because it makes Jesus sound like an accurate predictor.
Why isn’t it in the Bible? It’s not in there. Luke left it out. Why would he leave it out? You mean to tell me, you’re writing about the Christians in Jerusalem and all over the area of Palestine. And when Jerusalem is taken siege prior and then eventually destroyed and the walls are knocked down and the temple is sacked, you’re not even going to give it one word in the book of Acts? Why not? Not only that, Paul is still alive in the book of Acts. We know when he’s murdered around 64 to 67 yet Peter is still alive at the end of the book of Acts. Even more important, James, the brother of Jesus, we know he’s killed in 61.
Why is he still alive at the end of the book? Luke has no problem describing martyrdoms. He describes the martyrdom of Steven, that’s a minor player in the book of Acts. He describes the martyrdom of James, the brother of John, a minor player in the book of Acts. James, the brother of Jesus, Paul and Peter are the three most important people in the book of Acts, yet he doesn’t describe how any of them died. Why would he do that? All of this stuff could be missing for a reason. It might simply be missing because none of it’s happened yet. And if none of it’s happened yet, now we know at least a rough date in which to the book of Acts. I’m putting it here just modestly one year prior to the first missing event. That means the book of Acts is as early as 60.
That helps a lot guys. Let me show you how it helps. We know that Luke wrote two books, the book of Acts and this is not a trick question, the other one is The Gospel of?
Luke.
Luke. Very good. He wrote Luke first. I’m saying as early as 53, why? Well the first chapter of Acts, he says in my former book, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach verse two, until he was taken to heaven. Som he says I’ve got a former book, but how much former? How much earlier? Well there’s good evidence in scripture to tell me how much earlier. I’ve got Paul. When you’re writing to Timothy in first Timothy, Paul says, “take care of the people who run the church. They deserve some money”. He says “the scripture says, do not muzzle the ox while as trading out the grain and the worker deserves his way”. He’s describing this stuff as scripture guys, as early as 63. Well what is he describing? Well that’s a verse right out of Deuteronomy, that’s old Testament. No big deal, but what’s this? That line is out of the New Testament, it’s out of the Gospel of Luke. He’s quoting Luke, chapter 10.
He’s calling it scripture as early as 63. That means it has to be written earlier, has to be circulated earlier, has to be accepted by everybody as scripture.So, when he quotes it to Timothy, Timothy goes, oh yeah, okay I get you. And Timothy knows it has the same weight as Deuteronomy, but it’s worse than this because I said 53, not 63. In first Corinthians, Paul’s going to actually describe the Lord’s Supper. He’s describing it to a group that was screwing up the Lord’s Supper. Okay. He’s describing it to a group that’s getting drunk at Lord Supper. And he’s telling them guys knock that off, we shows you how to do the Lord’s Supper. Go back to what we taught you earlier. And he quotes this verse where Jesus comes in and says, “eat this bread and drink this cup in remembrance of me.” See it.
Well all four Gospel authors write about the Lord Supper. John does not say that Jesus said, “do it in remembrance of me”. Matthew doesn’t say that that Jesus, either does Luke. I mean does Mark, it’s Luke who says that. Luke, he’s quoting Luke again. He’s quoting Luke’s Gospel from chapter 22, but now he’s quoting it 10 years earlier and he’s telling this church group go back to what I taught you even earlier. So, how much earlier is Luke’s Gospel available to him? Do you see the problem? Luke’s Gospel is available early. We know that by making the case through these elements, we can confirm it by making the case inside a scripture, make sense?
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