The atheist critique here attempts to dismantle the “minimal facts” argument for the resurrection and to frame both the Christian worldview and classical theism as epistemologically deficient compared to speculative modern physics. Allow me to expose the philosophical confusions, category errors, and selective skepticism underlying this entire polemic, and to demonstrate that the intellectual foundations of classical Christianity remain not only intact, but unshaken by such superficial objections.
Let us begin with the assertion that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” This oft-repeated slogan is, in fact, itself an extraordinary assertion—one never actually demonstrated in philosophy of science, but only ever intoned as a rhetorical device. The standard for evidence, in any rational discipline, must be proportionate to the nature of the claim and the type of reality under consideration. When the subject is an event unique in history—such as the resurrection—the evidence must be adequate, not “extraordinary” in some undefined, self-serving sense. In fact, to demand “extraordinary” evidence for the unique is to betray a category error: by definition, no evidence for a singular event can be “ordinary.” Nor is this how we reason in other fields. The Big Bang, for example, is also a unique, unrepeatable, and wholly extraordinary event, but cosmologists do not demand “extraordinary” evidence in the sense the critic wants; they demand what is rationally sufficient given the phenomena and the available data.
The critique moves on to the “minimal facts” approach, claiming that it is methodologically flawed, subject to selection bias, and, ultimately, unable to bridge the gap between “the disciples believed Jesus rose” and “Jesus actually rose.” Let us be clear: the “minimal facts” method is simply a tactical concession to skeptical standards, demonstrating that even if we use only those facts most widely accepted in critical New Testament scholarship—including the non-Christian and the non-theist—the best explanation of these facts remains the bodily resurrection. If one wishes to dismiss the method as “apologetics,” the burden remains: what better alternative account actually explains the data without itself resorting to ad hoc speculation? It is not enough to intone “psychology” or “legendary accretion” as if such terms themselves did explanatory work. The radical transformation of the disciples, the emergence of Christian faith in the very city where Jesus was executed, the conversion of hostile witnesses such as Paul, and the virtual absence of an early veneration of Jesus’ tomb (which would have immediately short-circuited resurrection claims had the body remained) all demand a coherent account. To simply appeal to “human psychology” or “hallucination” is to collapse into a far more speculative hypothesis—especially when such explanations cannot account for group experiences, empty tomb traditions, and the birth of a resurrection-centered movement in a fiercely monotheistic and skeptical Jewish environment.
The further complaint that “resurrection violates the Standard Model of Particle Physics” reveals a basic misunderstanding of both classical theism and the metaphysical structure of miracles. The Christian claim is not that Jesus rose from the dead by natural causes, but that the Author of nature—who creates ex nihilo and is not bound by secondary causes—has acted in history. The Standard Model itself does not, and cannot, exclude the possibility of supernatural agency any more than the axioms of geometry can exclude the possibility of a painter painting on a canvas. If the Creator exists (and classical theism, especially in its Thomist form, offers the only rationally consistent account of why there is something rather than nothing, why there is order, causality, intelligibility, and finite being at all), then miracles are possible, and their recognition is not “science-defying” but “science-transcending”—an intervention by the Ground of all being, not an internal anomaly within a closed system.
The objection that “the investigation was never conducted and is impossible now” collapses on basic historical epistemology. All ancient history operates on the basis of testimony, textual analysis, and inference from physical and circumstantial evidence. No one today “verifies” the crossing of the Rubicon, yet only the most radical skeptic would say we know nothing of Caesar. Indeed, the documentary evidence for the resurrection, by any reasonable standard, is more abundant, closer to the events, and less subject to legendary embellishment than for most other events in ancient history.
The charge that “the argument is circular” because it presupposes a Christian worldview is patently false. The “minimal facts” approach, again, explicitly brackets confessional commitment and appeals to the standards of secular, critical scholarship. The conclusion—that the resurrection is the best explanation—is reached precisely because alternative naturalistic hypotheses do not account for the facts. To claim circularity is to misunderstand both the argument and the method.
The assertion that “the earliest followers were pre-scientific, uneducated, superstitious ideologues” is, aside from being patronizing and historically dubious, a textbook example of presentism and ad hominem. It is, ironically, a hallmark of dogmatic rationalism to assume that one’s own age is immune to delusion while earlier centuries were mired in gullibility. The apostles and early witnesses, far from being credulous, were in fact deeply resistant to the notion of resurrection (see the reactions of Thomas, the women, and even the apostles themselves to the first reports). The rise of faith in the bodily resurrection was not a product of “wish fulfillment,” but, by all the evidence, an unexpected and thoroughly disruptive event that forced itself upon them.
Turning to the critique of Habermas’ statistics: it is legitimate to call for methodological rigor, but it is simply false to say that there is no significant scholarly consensus on the core facts of Jesus’ death by crucifixion, the origin of the resurrection belief, and the transformation of the disciples. While there may be disagreement about interpretation, the data are robust. The attempt to discredit the entire field by pointing out that many authors are clergy is also hollow: should we dismiss every work on Buddhism written by a Buddhist monk, or every study of quantum physics written by a physicist affiliated with a research institute? What matters is the argument, not the biography.
Moving from historical to metaphysical terrain, your extended citation on the origins of the universe does not, in fact, rescue the atheist from the abyss of the “something from nothing” problem. The speculative cosmologies—whether Penrose’s conformal cyclic cosmology, the multiverse hypothesis, or “quantum vacuum fluctuations”—do not, and cannot, answer the classical metaphysical question of why there is something rather than nothing, or what grounds the actuality of any possible universe. To say that “the quantum vacuum is seething with particles” is, as David Albert rightly observes, not “nothing” but “something.” A quantum field is a metaphysically thick reality, not the absolute non-being classical theism has always intended by “nothing.” To ask why there is a quantum field, or why there is any physical substrate at all, is to leave physics behind and enter the domain of metaphysics. At that point, only a necessary being—Pure Act, Ipsum Esse Subsistens, as Aquinas defined God—can provide a coherent and non-circular account. The cyclical universe, many-worlds interpretation, or any physicalist “eternal substrate” does nothing but push the explanatory burden one step back, never answering why any actuality exists at all.
Finally, the atheistic rejection of miracles and of the resurrection on a priori grounds is simply an expression of metaphysical naturalism—an unargued presupposition, not a demonstrated conclusion. If one has reason to believe in God, then miracles are not only possible, but certain in at least the case of creation itself. The resurrection stands or falls on the best explanation of the historical data. The Christian does not fear open inquiry or rigorous standards; rather, it is the reductionist, the metaphysical naturalist, who clings dogmatically to a closed universe, unable or unwilling to ask the deeper question—why does anything exist, why does order obtain, and why is there a universe at all?
The Thomistic tradition is not an exercise in fideistic dogma, but the apex of reason seeking its ultimate ground. If you dismiss the arguments for God, do so not by caricature or by shifting the standards of evidence so that only your own worldview can win by default, but by offering a rival metaphysic that can actually explain existence itself, and the emergence of rational beings who—like you—are so mysteriously haunted by the question of truth, order, and finality. Until then, the classical theist, and the Catholic in particular, remains serenely confident that faith and reason, far from being enemies, together disclose the deepest structure of reality.