William Lane Craig in the preface to his Reasonable Faith rejects the thesis
"that a historical case for Jesus' radical self-understanding and resurrection depends upon showing that the Gospels are generally reliable historical documents". At first, I was inclined to agree. I thought it could be possible that a document could be generally unreliable, but have nuggets which could attest to a historical truth. But then I thought in the case of establishing the existence of a God who wants to reveal himself and is all-powerful, an exception could be made to the general rule. Would it not be the case that if a God wanted to reveal himself and had unlimited powers, he would find that a document that attested to a miracle, attesting to his existence, would be ineffective in propagating the belief in his own existence, if it was found to be unreliable? Well, perhaps not really. After all, the particular document in question, namely, the New Testament, has succeeded in making approximately a third of the human race Christians. But then that might be because the NT is reliable. Of course, I don't think so, because I'm an atheist, but I have yet to argue that it is unreliable and to take this for granted now would be to beg the question.
A question is whether God would want to create mere belief in his existence or actual knowledge of his existence. This would presumably depend on the reasons he has for revealing himself. According to Christianity, God or Jesus (one and the same according to the doctrine of the Trinity?) wants a relationship with each one of us. It seems to me that a not very satisfactory relationship can be held with one who is merely believed in as opposed to known about. If your existence to your wife or husband was so tenuous that for all they know, there is a good chance that your existence is an illusion then how could such a relationship be fulfilling? Since God is not human, some may argue that a relationship with God is a different kettle of fish altogether. Such a relationship could actually be fulfilling to the believer, but would it be fulfilling to God? How would you feel if your partner, for instance, had only limited evidence of your existence? All circumstances could point to the thesis that you were dead, however, your partner could have faith that you were alive. Would you not want to confirm the truth of this faith, i.e. provide some corroboration of your living status? Then again, perhaps God is not as a human is.
Suppose that a document provides sufficient evidence for a miracle, apparently testifying to God's existence. Whether the miracle would actually be good evidence for God's existence is, I think, debatable but this creates a belief in Christianity in about a third of the human race and God may be satisfied with that belief. What about the two thirds who do not believe? Christianity says that they would have rejected God because of sin, which consists of, I would presume, a morally wrong activity. It could be perhaps argued that a person who fails to see the evidence for the miracle is technically morally wrong, on the other hand, there may be legitimate reasons why a person would fail to see that the document in question evidences the miracle. Such a person may fail to understand the connections between the evidence and the miracle. They may be suspicious of the agenda of the person who claims the existence of God, thinking perhaps that the person wants to rob them of their autonomy and this may prevent them from seeing the evidential connections. According to Christianity, it is sinful to desire to be the captain of one's own ship; one is supposed to hand the wheel over to God. Why? Because God designed us to be worshippers of himself and to function better when we are under his control. This seems to be a sad reflection on God and would cast doubt on his omni-benevolence. Although we may not be robots and can choose whether to submit to God's control, we are still machines that only work best with a specific operator in charge. We were created it seems to pander to God's ego.
Moreover, if God did not exist, then who would be the captain of our ships? Arguably, each person would be the captain of their own ship. Thus, if there was some doubt as to God's existence, it is hard to see that a person would be wrong to desire their own autonomy and thus be suspicious of any person arguing that this should be given up and passed over to God who although existing has his existence being doubted for legitimate reasons, rather than out of pride or arrogance. It is still difficult to see why this 'arrogance' would be wrong or 'sinful'. If a person does not know of God's existence because of a failure of understanding, blocked by a legitimate desire for autonomy or that at least would be legitimate, if God did not exist, then why should such a position be wrong/'sinful' or arrogant/excessively proud? After all, if the person disbelieved in God's existence, that same person would have no reason to believe they were designed to function best under God's control. Even if they did believe that God did exist and that they were designed to be under God's control, they may still feel that autonomy for an individual is valuable in itself and it is better to be autonomous and function less well than they could, rather than function at their best as essentially a slave for God.
The most charitable case we could make is that God wants us to be good but as we have argued above, disbelief in God may not necessarily be bad. In that case God may wish to make the case for his existence stronger. Perhaps he could do this by ensuring that the document which attests to his relevatory miracle is in fact reliable. But this might not necessarily be effective. It could bring a few more believers to the table, namely those for whom the unreliability of the document in question was a barrier to belief. Rather, however, God might be better off creating more convincing miracles so that each person directly perceived their own miracle. The reliability of the NT could be better for God, but there are circumstances, which are even better for God that he could initiate.
An individual arguably would best infer that the most likely explanation of the miracle in question is not that the Christian God exists, but that something else was responsible e.g. a demon with the motive of creating religious strife, for example, or maybe some mysterious physical phenomenon, although it is difficult to see what physical phenomen might occur that could cause a resurrection. However, it is also hard to see how nature could allow a disembodied all-good mind to exist, which can influence the way things are in whatever it willed. Since the miracle in question would not necessarily establish the existence of God, whether the NT was mostly reliable or not would make no difference.
Some Christians might claim, however, that the above is academic. In actuality, they would say, the reason why nonbelievers reject God is not because of legitimate reasons, but because of a wilful desire to ignore the evidences for God's existence, stemming from a desire for autonomy. It is still hard to see why a desire for autonomy should be wrong. For each of us nonbelievers, we feel as if we are sincere in our disbelief. Introspection fails to reveal any evidences of God's existence. However, the way the brain works is such that it sees only what it wants to see. Perhaps this could be argued to be wantonly 'sinful', but you would think that God would design our brains to work in a more objective way. If it is our own sin that is responsible for the brain's confirmation bias, why would it be so difficult to overcome this confirmation bias? The way our brains work raises a dilemma. Do we continue in the beliefs we hold or do we try and challenge them? Even if we try to criticize our own beliefs, we would then try to pick holes in our criticisms. We could challenge these holes with further criticisms but then we would pick holes in these further criticisms. And so it goes on. The end result apparently is that we continue to maintain the beliefs that we hold. We might then ask what is the point of trying to challenge our own beliefs? Still, some people do succeed in changing their minds. Perhaps this is evidence that it is still worth trying to approach questions objectively and being aware of our own biases. Failure to do this and therefore to perceive the reality of God could then be construed as a 'sin'.
However, there are those of us who as far as they can determine are trying their best to be objective but still conclude that God does not exist and it is difficult for them to see how they could improve their ability to see evidence of God's existence. For all they know, the reason they do not see reliable evidence for God's existence could be that it is simply not there. It would then seem a bit much to judge that they are wilfully arrogant. The Christian might say that their judgement is clouded by their desire to do what they want i.e. be free of God's rules of living and to be autonomous. However, if the desire for autonomy is no bad thing, having one's judgement clouded by it may be no bad thing. Or is this necessarily the case? After all, it is good to consider that men and women are equal, but the desire for equality between men and women can cloud our judgement as to whether there are any, say, psychological differences between the sexes and this may be a bad thing since it prevents us from seeing the politically incorrect truth of the matter, even though the desire for equality is a good thing.
However, a nonbeliever may then try to consider whether there are any circumstances in which seeking autonomy would be bad and may fail to find any, despite looking as hard as they can. It is hard to see how they could do better than this as there are no criteria for assessing whether you have tried hard enough. (The criterion that you have failed to infer that God exists would not be good enough, since this would beg the question. To assess whether God exists, we would need criteria, which are ultimately independent of whether God exists or not and do not prejudge the issue.) But in this case also, whether or not the gospels are reliable is largely irrelevant and hence, arguably, they do not need to be reliable. But an individual could infer that since the case for God's existence is not stronger than it could be that God probably does not exist and that the miracle in question must have some other explanation.
If God wishes to produce knowledge of his own existence, as opposed to mere belief, there is even greater reason for God to make a more powerful case for his existence. However, it is not clear that this could be done by simply ensuring that the NT is reliable. The case for God's nonexistence would be stronger because of the greater reason God would have for strengthening the case to everyone of his own existence and the fact that despite this, he does not bother.
My conclusion is that the question of whether the NT needs to be at least mostly reliable in order to establish the actuality of a miracle or not is loaded. If you say yes to the question, the implication is that you think the reliability of the NT is sufficient to establish the existence of God. If you say no to the question, the implication is that you think that just the evidences of the miracle are sufficient to establish the existence of God. However, I would reject both these implications, because it seems to me the possibility of an alternative explanation for the miracle could obtain. It would then be difficult to see why God does not create a stronger case for his existence. The lack of such a stronger case would suggest that such a being does not exist. It is not the general reliability of the NT that is needed to help establish God's existence but something else entirely, something that would be a lot more powerful than an ancient document attesting to some one-off miracle.
I have considered the case where the miracle is assumed to be evidenced by the NT. In practice, as an atheist, I do not think that any of the miracles described in the NT are well evidenced. Of course, I would think that, but to argue a case for such a viewpoint is outside the scope of this article. Since some people may have no concept of an essay having specific terms of reference, they may think I am simply dodging this question. So to counter this impression, I suppose a subsequent article I write will address whether the resurrection of Jesus is well-evidenced. Next year perhaps.
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