Christians will often challenge non-believers to account for the ressurrection of Jesus, as believed by his disciples, using only natural explanations. That is easy enough to do. If you think otherwise, just ask me. Nevertheless, the problem with this approach is that Christians still insist that only a supernatural explanation is more likely or more believable. Namely, that Jesus was actually god-incarnate, rose from the dead, and appeared to his followers afterwards.

The Conversational Atheist, in a nicely written piece (“Who Would Die for a Lie?”), suggests that, given the Christian’s insistence on accepting a supernatural explanation as more likely than a natural one, this presents the Christian with an even greater challenge than the one they throw at us: What reason is there to believe one supernatural explanation over another? Natural explanations have clear limits: they are limited by our experience of the natural world and our knowledge about the laws and rules by which the natural world operates. Supernatural explanations have no such limitations. Essentially, a supernatural explanation could be literallly anything. Unlike in our natural world, in a supernatural world (or more accurately, a natural world in which the supernatural occaisonally acts) anything can happen. Trees can grow into acorns. 500 dead bodies can climb out of their graves and walk through town.

The Christian, therefore, has the greater challenge of explaining why one particular supernatural explanation (ie, Jesus was God-incarnate) is better than any other. As the Conversational Atheist explains, the gospels themselves accept the existence of demons that can possess people. Perhaps Jesus was not God-incarnate but was possessed by Satan, who not only has control over demons but could also make people believe that Jesus rose from the dead. After all, just think for a moment about how many different things Christians attribute to Satan. If Satan can make people believe in Evolution, then he can make people believe that Jesus rose from the dead as a neat trick.

To quote from the article:

A Christian cannot simultaneously claim to live in a world of demon possession and exorcisms; a world where angels proclaim messages to shepherds and disciples — and a world where naturalistic explanations are the only available ones to explain the behavior of people.

Thus, to conclude this post, the challenge is not explaining the origins of Christianity without using supernatural explanations. The challenge is, once you accept the validity of such explanations, deciding which ones to accept and why. The Christian cannot simply insist that the only supernatural explanations allowed are those that already conform to his or her particular beliefs.