It’s irrational to believe that people rise from the dead. Even if it is possible, shouldn’t it always be judged improbable since it has happened so few times…even according to Christians?

This is the strongest form of the objection, and it has a serious pedigree in Hume. Yes, a resurrection is antecedently improbable — and that is exactly why the argument has to be about evidence rather than about odds alone.

1. A low prior does not close the case. Probability combines what you expected beforehand with how well the evidence fits. Historians and scientists routinely accept highly unexpected events when the data are strong. The objection assumes a low prior is decisive; Bayesian reasoning says it is one factor among two.

2. The objection assumes naturalism. To say resurrections never happen is to assume a closed system with no God who acts. But that is the question under dispute, not a neutral starting point. If God exists, a resurrection is not a violation of the system but an act of the one who made it.

3. Rarity is not impossibility. The Christian agrees resurrections are not common; he denies they are impossible. To rule one out in advance you would need to show that God would never act this way, not merely that he seldom has. Nothing in the objection establishes that.

4. The data are widely conceded. Gary Habermas and Michael Licona built their case on facts accepted by the large majority of critical scholars, including skeptics: Jesus died by crucifixion, the tomb was found empty, and shortly afterward his followers had experiences they took to be appearances of him. Those facts are not distinctively Christian property; they are the common ground of the field.

5. The rival explanations strain. Legend needs time, and the creed Paul quotes is early. Hallucination explains individual experience poorly and group appearances worse, and it does not explain Paul, a hostile outsider. Conspiracy cannot explain willing martyrs, and a swoon cannot explain a beaten man being worshipped as conqueror of death.

6. The earliest testimony is a formula. Paul hands on what he “also received”: “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day” (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). This is compressed, memorized, Semitic-sounding tradition, and historians date it to within a few years of the crucifixion — too early for myth to form.

7. Christianity is falsifiable. Paul stakes everything on a public event: “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14), and “your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). A religion that says “check the tomb” is not the kind of thing the objection describes.

8. The objection proves too much. Uniform experience is also broken by the origin of the universe, the origin of life, and the existence of consciousness — one-time events no one observed. If rarity plus uniqueness were disqualifying, half of what we believe about nature would fail the test. The principle is applied only where it is convenient.

9. The claim fits a promised pattern. The resurrection is not offered as a random anomaly but as the vindication of a long-standing promise, which is why Paul says it happened “in accordance with the Scriptures.” Romans 1:4 calls Jesus “declared to be the Son of God in power... by his resurrection from the dead.” Context is part of what makes an explanation good.

10. Improbability is not the same as irrationality. Believing an improbable event on weak evidence would be irrational. Believing it because the evidence is strong, and because the alternative explanations fail, is ordinary historical reasoning. That is the actual claim being made, and it can be examined.

The honest question is not “is a resurrection likely?” but “what best explains the empty tomb, the appearances, and the transformation of frightened men into martyrs?” A low prior raises the bar for evidence; it does not excuse anyone from looking at it.

Sources: Gary Habermas; Michael Licona; William Lane Craig; David Hume; The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus.

Related challenges:
• Did Jesus really claim to be God, or did His followers just say that about Him? Might not Dan Brown have been on to something?
• It should be called Paulianity – for centuries Christians have presented the ideas of Paul as the teachings of Jesus, and that’s a mistake. It was all Paul’s INTERPRETATION. Check the data.
• Jesus is a borrowed myth dressed up like a Jew. He never existed, period. There is zero SUFFICIENT evidence that Jesus ever existed? Zero. It’s all a terrible hoax for the church to control the masses.