Can We Know Jesus Rose from the Dead? | Phil Bair

August 18, 20261h 14m

Be the first to rate

Can we really know that Jesus rose from the dead—or are Christians limited to saying the resurrection is merely the best explanation of the evidence? ⁨ @philbair joins us to discuss his new book, The Knowable Resurrection: The Epistemic Case for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Phil argues that the resurrection can be defended with a specific kind of rational certainty through a trilogy of epistemic arguments—an approach that differs from both traditional historical cumulative cases and the Minimal Facts approach.

In this episode, we unpack what it actually means to know something, why the disciples being convinced that Jesus rose matters only if they were in a position to know whether He rose from the dead, and whether skeptical appeals to some undiscovered alternative explanation should carry any real weight. We also discuss skeptical methodology, naturalistic assumptions about miracles, whether Phil's argument requires libertarian free will, whether his approach ultimately reduces to probability, and whether the same methodology could be used to defend competing religious claims.

Join the FTM team: https://www.freethinkingministries.com/donate

Buy the book: https://a.co/d/02yT1lIV

Stay tuned for Phil's appearance on the @atheistchristianbookclub2386 on August 27th: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7RCOeJuva2WDPZF1btr9Mg

➡️ CHAPTERS ⬅️

00:00 Introduction

04:00 What Makes The Knowable Resurrection Different?

11:00 Can We KNOW the Resurrection Happened?

26:50 "We Just Haven't Found the Real Explanation Yet"

35:22 Does Phil Engage Skeptical Scholarship?

46:04 Does the Argument Require Libertarian Free Will?

50:35 Is This Really Different from a Probability Argument?

1:01:30 Does This Argument Prove Too Much? LDS & Other Faiths