Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Is Christianity Falsifiable?

Atheists, frustrated at times by the intransigence of Christians in debate, wonder if there is any evidence sufficient to make Christians question their faith. I've witnessed them asking, after throwing the kitchen sink at a stubborn Christian, if there was something that could falsify Christianity? Yes, there is, and it's quite simple--find the body of Christ, undeniably. If the body of Jesus were found, myself and all other Christians would have to recant (or be treated as lunatics) and our apologetics would fall like a house of cards.

The Romans couldn't find that body and the Jews couldn't produce it. Both had vested interests in doing so, and more than adequate power to exert to find that body if it could have been found. Persecution and oppression never motivated anyone involved in what would have to have been a large conspiracy, if there was a body, to betray the cabal and come clean. I would think the likelihood that archeology would ever come upon that body, if it existed, all these years later is next to nothing. Even if a body was found tomorrow would there be some way to positively identify it?

No, if the resurrection of Christ was to be undermined, it would have had to have been undermined in its day, it seems to me. Of course, Christians don't anticipate that body being found, ever, because it doesn't exist, at least not as a corpse or skeletal remains. Jesus is no longer dead: he came back to life and then left for heaven--his body is in use (although elsewhere), alive and well, as we shall soon see upon his return. It's true that one could destroy Christianity by producing that corpse, but that one is much more likely to produce that body by praying a writ of habeas corpus to the heavenly Father, namely, "Maranatha!"