Derek: 00:10

About ten years ago, my wife got a master's degree in Christian Apologetics. At the time, we really enjoyed the courses. We enjoyed the people that we met. You know, in retrospect, I was really into apologetics, and in retrospect, it's, some of the things are kind of, turning me off at this point in time as I see the Apologetics Community and, kind of some of the arrogance and, and nitpickiness that goes on in that. Nevertheless, we enjoyed our time, at Biola University.

Derek: 00:46

And even though my wife was going to get her master's degree, I was able to tag along. And the professors were really gracious and and let me sit in on the classes, and I even ask questions and things. So it's really the best of both worlds for me because, as as my wife was learning apologetics, we'd get to have great conversations. And on top of that, I was getting to learn from from really great professors without having to do the work. It was fantastic.

Derek: 01:14

It was it was really awesome. But one of the courses that my wife had was dealing with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And when I when I saw that, I was like, alright. I I really enjoy apologetics, but come on. Like, apologetics about the resurrection.

Derek: 01:35

Like, what in the world can we really know about the resurrection? Like, you either believe it or you don't. You know, talk looking at the Bible, the credibility of the Bible, the credibility of the people who wrote it, that kind of stuff kind of helps your belief about whether or not the resurrection happened. But, you know, what what can we really know about the resurrection? And so I thought it was kind of there are a lot of times that Christian apologists try to push things too far.

Derek: 02:04

I think, you know, they want an answer to everything. They kind of embrace, rationalism to a certain extent. And so I was I was really, really skeptical when we came into that course. But I ended up enjoying the course a lot. One of the the main, people that they used I I don't remember if he actually came in to speak in person or not, but Gary Habermas was just so humble and and wonderful in his, presentation of the material.

Derek: 02:33

And then, of course, they, used people like William Lane Craig. So I I enjoyed it, You know? They talked about using the minimal facts approach, which I thought was fantastic. Because, you know, a lot of times Christians will go and expect, atheists to believe foundational claims or to believe these these conclusions that are based on premises and foundational claims that, of course, the atheist isn't gonna agree to right off the bat. So the minimal facts approach to the resurrection was great because what it does is it uses the minimum amount of facts attested to by the majority of scholars, you know, the the consensus.

Derek: 03:14

And so they say, okay. Atheists, you know, we're gonna we believe the Bible. We believe all this stuff. I don't expect you to do that. If I don't expect you to believe the Bible.

Derek: 03:22

I'm not gonna throw that in there. Here's what I expect you to believe. I expect you to believe what the vast majority of scholars say. And those are three basic claims. And, you know, you might be able to add one or two more, depending on on, how much of a consensus you want for the facts.

Derek: 03:40

But here are the basic facts, the, the minimal facts. Number one, Jesus existed. Sure. There's, you know, the Jesus seminar and people who would say that Jesus never existed. I mean, just consensus scholarship says that's kind of that's kind of crazy.

Derek: 03:59

Maybe it's true. Right? But it's it's kind of a a crazy belief because there's just there's plenty of evidence that Jesus actually existed. Number two, Jesus was crucified. Okay.

Derek: 04:12

He was he was put on a cross by Rome. Number three, the disciples claimed to see the risen Jesus, and that's an important caveat there. They claimed to see the risen Jesus. This point does not say that the disciples actually did. It just says that we know that the disciples said they saw him.

Derek: 04:34

Alright? And then a fourth one that you can throw in, but it's it's not quite as minimal of a fact, like, you'll have some people who maybe disagree a little bit more with it, would be that an initial enemy of Christianity, Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul, converted to Christianity from an antagonistic position, you know, from being an enemy of Christianity. And and he did this because he claimed, again, important word, claimed to have an encounter with Jesus. So now the minimal facts don't really tell us anything on their face. Right?

Derek: 05:09

But what we have to do with those is we have to figure out how do you best explain these facts. You can you can throw out Occam's razor here, which, you know, is maybe falling out of favor a little bit. But by and large, it says, the best adequate explanation that's simple. I'm sorry. The the best and simplest adequate explanation.

Derek: 05:31

Right? So Occam's razor sometimes people say, well, Occam's razor says the simplest explanation is best. No. That's not true. The simplest adequate explanation is best.

Derek: 05:42

Right? You can come up with really simple answers that don't really explain things. And and we're gonna kind of give you some examples here when we talk about the resurrection of Jesus. So there are all kinds of explanations that abound in regard to the the resurrection of Jesus. How do we explain these minimal facts?

Derek: 06:00

Now you have the twin theory. You know, did, this idea that, well, Jesus really had an identical twin, and the twin was, you know, the twin was not killed, and Jesus was actually killed. The twin wasn't killed. And, after Jesus died on the cross, the twin came back and and pretended to be Jesus, or everybody thought that he he was Jesus. Alright.

Derek: 06:27

Possible. I I guess. Right? It would explain some of the different things. It would explain the disciples claiming to see the risen Jesus.

Derek: 06:37

Right? So they they did. They did actually see him, And it would explain how, Jesus was was crucified. Sure. Like, he was crucified, but it was his brother that actually came back.

Derek: 06:50

But, of course, you know, there are lots of questions that you'd you'd have here. Like, well, did the disciples not know that Jesus had an identical brother before this? And could his identical brother after they had lived with him for three years, could his an identical brother really convince them that he was Jesus? Like, that's kind of insane. So it explains, you know, do people have identical twins?

Derek: 07:13

Yeah. It's a really simple explanation, on its face. Hey. Jesus had an identical twin. But when you try to play that out, it's it's insane.

Derek: 07:21

It just doesn't make sense. Some other people would would, cite what they call the swoon theory. This idea that Jesus didn't really die on the cross. And so, yeah, Jesus existed. Jesus was crucified.

Derek: 07:35

Right? He was put onto a cross. And then, of course, the disciples claimed to see Jesus afterwards. He, that but that's because he didn't really die. Right?

Derek: 07:45

He he was on the cross, but he didn't die. Now there are a couple issues with this. Right? Did did a nearly murdered Jesus really convince disciples that he had resurrected? I mean, he had so many lashes and spear in his side, and he was hanging on a cross.

Derek: 08:05

You know, did Jesus, what, pop up three days later? I'm like, hey, guys. Guess what? I'm resurrected in this new body. You're gonna get one too.

Derek: 08:12

Are you excited about this? No. Of course. He would he would have been just bedridden for a long, long time having been so close to death with all those those wounds. When when he came back, the disciples weren't gonna say, oh, well, he must have resurrected.

Derek: 08:27

Like, this is amazing. They would be like, oh, man. He he escaped death. Right? They would have thought that he never died.

Derek: 08:36

And on top of this, you know, did the Romans really not succeed in killing Jesus? I mean, they're professional executioners, and their lives hang on the line in regard to, to actually accomplishing that execution. Did they not put a dead Jesus in the tomb? Like, what what was that all about? So there's just so much that, that doesn't make sense about the spoon theory.

Derek: 09:01

Of course, there's, there are other theories out there, like the hallucination theory. The disciples. Right? Jesus existed. Jesus died.

Derek: 09:10

But Jesus didn't really resurrect. The disciples claimed to see that him, the resurrected Jesus, but they were really all hallucinating. Does that really explain the the circumstances here? Right? Have you ever heard of mass hallucinations, where people have the exact same hallucination across days and weeks and months, or or, at different places?

Derek: 09:36

I mean, that's that's not really something that that happens. And what about Saul? Like, somebody who's an enemy of Jesus having this hallucination. And on top of this, what about the body? Okay.

Derek: 09:47

So this is this is one. The other two, the twin theory, the twin theory, Jesus didn't actually die, so he's not in the tomb. But the hallucination theory does, you know, they could just produce a body. They just go to the tomb and say, no. Jesus is right here.

Derek: 10:02

Stop your religion. Right? Easy. But they didn't do that. There are other crazy I mean, there are, like, all kinds of theories out there.

Derek: 10:12

And some of them bring in aliens and stuff, which is is, I mean, just nuts. At least some of these other ones that we've we've mentioned, they try to have naturalistic explanations. They just don't really explain explain all of the evidence, of what happened. They're not the best adequate explanations. So the Christian argument then is that what truly seems to explain the evidence best is that Jesus is who he said he was.

Derek: 10:39

Right? He existed. He was crucified, and professional executioners did their job. He was buried, and the disciples did see him because, hey, he's connected to the divine. He is divine, and he was resurrected.

Derek: 10:55

Right? It's an extreme conclusion for some, of course, because people dismiss, the possibility of the supernatural outright. Right? It's a it's just a conclusion that's off the table because, you're just unwilling to to even consider the possibility of supernatural explanations. No amount of evidence could ever commit, convince these individuals otherwise.

Derek: 11:25

Of course, if you're familiar with, the the resurrection of Jesus and and the discussion that revolves around it, you're probably thinking, yeah, but you you skipped maybe the best theory that exists. And that's true, and that's because that's the theory that I really want to hone in on today because it relates to our discussion of propaganda and our identification of conspiracy theories. So the theory that probably gets the most attention, I think because it maybe is the most reasonable, is that the disciples stole the body. Now it definitely seems the most plausible that there was a conspiracy by these disciples, you know, that there were 12. After Judas was replaced, there were 12 again.

Derek: 12:07

And, and there were a lot more disciples. We know that Jesus was with lots of women disciples and lots of other disciples too. So these disciples, however large that group was, had invested so much time, money, energy, commitment into Jesus and his ministry, and they're seeking to save face and save their skin. Right? Because, the pressure is bearing down on them now.

Derek: 12:33

Well, J Warner Wallace, in his book, Cold Case Christianity, digs into this idea that the disciples stole the body. I like Wallace because he was a cold case detective. He was on Dateline a bunch of times, and, he he really understands how to look at information and to make a case, especially cases that are cold. Right? That that have, a lot of evidence has disappeared.

Derek: 12:57

The memories of witnesses maybe have changed or gotten foggy. He deals with this kind of stuff. So Wallace has seen his fair share of conspirators in his time and has had experience of what that conspiracy looks like over time. And one of the things that he said, which I hung on to for a long time, was that conspiracies are really difficult to maintain. The more people involved in a conspiracy, the more improbable it is to maintain it.

Derek: 13:24

That's hard enough for one person to maintain a lie. It's much harder for multiple people to maintain a lie without contradicting each other on vital details over time. The more times you tell a story, the the better the chances that you're gonna miss some details or get some things wrong. Beyond the difficulty of one person maintaining a lie or even multiple people maintaining that same lie, which is exponentially more difficult, it's also difficult to maintain a conspiracy with more people because there's a temptation to turn on each other when the pressure gets too high. Conspiracies of two are difficult enough to maintain, let alone conspiracies of 12 plus hundreds more that we know claim to have seen Jesus resurrected within his generation.

Derek: 14:08

So Wallace's case, his book Cold Case Christianity, was really a big clincher for me, and that helped me to kind of piece all of this stuff together. But as I started studying for this season on propaganda, I realized that I was looking at a ton of conspiracies, which had a significant amount of complexity and a large number of conspirators. So that was really rough for me to kind of face. Right? Because I I had held on.

Derek: 14:37

It's not that that this made me stop believing in the resurrection. It just really started me questioning things. Like, was was this, historical case, this cold case, really something that I could hang my hat on with some confidence? Was it was it a piece of evidence that I should use with other people, a line of argumentation or reasoning? So was my confidence in the case for the resurrection of Jesus on shake your ground than I thought?

Derek: 15:05

Now I'm gonna answer that not at all. And I wanna take the rest of this episode to unpack why I have confidence in the the case for the resurrection, while at the same time using this to help us see how larger conspiracies function and persist. There's some significant differences between the conspiracy, of the supposed conspiracy of the resurrection of Jesus and some of these big conspiracies that we're going that we've looked at this season. So beyond the number of conspirators needing to be low for a successful conspiracy, Wallace also identifies the idea that people will not die for known lies. So there are plenty of people today who are willing to be martyred for ideas that are untrue.

Derek: 15:48

People died for unjust causes in Nazi Germany. Right? The the Third Reich. People died for a variety of religions, and they still die for a variety of religions. Most most of which can't possibly be true if we assume the law of non contradiction.

Derek: 16:03

Right? If if Islam is true, people die for Islam, great. They die for a truth. But then the people who are dying for Christianity are dying for a lie, and vice versa. And if none of the religions are true, lots of people are dying for lies.

Derek: 16:17

But the thing is that these people who become martyrs only die for untruths because they think they're true. Now whether it's trumped up nationalism that that's ingrained into somebody from childhood or false religions, people will die for ideologies, but only those ideologies that they believe in, that they believe are true. And one has to ask why the disciples would maintain a conspiracy if they didn't think that it were true. If Jesus wasn't really alive and it came time for the disciples to be tortured or executed, what in the world would have caused them to maintain their supposed faith if they knew what they were claiming was a lie? Even if you're gonna assume, oh, it was really lucrative for those disciples to, you know, to to hold to the resurrection of Jesus.

Derek: 17:04

Okay. Maybe they made a bunch of money in their, early early, apostleship. Alright? Let's just say that they did. When it came time to recant or be executed, what would what would motivate them to maintain that lie at that point if they knew that it was a lie?

Derek: 17:24

Why would they proclaim the gospel of Jesus and get themselves into trouble for a lie, get stoned, go to prison? Why wouldn't they recant when the pressure was turned up? And that leads to the the third point, which is that there has to be some positive reward for maintaining a conspiracy. So maybe the disciples made up the resurrection because, you know, like many modern day preachers, they wanted to fleece the flock. But we know that the very early church was relatively poor.

Derek: 17:50

The disciples teachings were very hard in regard to giving up a cush lifestyle and a sense of safety. We talked about this in, in our episode where I read, Mayhew's article, embezzlement, about embezzlement and the the, as the sin of corporate sin of contemporary Christianity. Right? We talked about how the early church tons and tons of quotes. The early church is telling people to give things up, fasting for days so that they can afford to to give to people in need.

Derek: 18:21

Right? And and on top of this, you know, you've got the the teachings of the apostles, which were countercultural and damaging to social status. Like, what in the world would have incentivized the disciples to lie about the resurrection of Jesus? It didn't gain them anything. And in fact, it it harmed them.

Derek: 18:40

It shortened their lives. It made their lives less comfortable, all that kind of stuff. And if they saw Jesus die on a cross and never saw or thought they saw the resurrected Jesus, what in the world would motivate them to maintain that lie? And maybe they were all deluded. Sure.

Derek: 18:57

Maybe they were mass hallucinations, which has never happened in history and and hasn't happened since nor will happen. Right? Mass hallucinations with hundreds of people across vast spaces and, and time. Right? But I don't think you can think that they were lying conspirators.

Derek: 19:20

There wasn't a a purposeful conspiracy, I don't think. The evidence just doesn't allow for that. Okay. So let's take what we've learned here, talking about the resurrection of Jesus, and looking at the season, and apply it to conspiracies that we've discussed. So let's first look at some cons conspiracies as they limit persons, limit pressure, or limit perception.

Derek: 19:46

So first, conspiracies which limit the number of persons. Now the category of abuse is obviously the best place to look in regard to small scale conspiracies. We discussed the case of Ravi Zacharias and how he, as an individual, could get away with his sexual abuse for so long. He could do this in large part because he didn't allow anyone else into his sensitive information, like his phone. There was no accountability.

Derek: 20:11

He shut people out, which limited the persons involved in the conspiracy, and he ensured that his victims tended to be susceptible to control and had limited resources or recourse due to their positions. Well, he also tried to limit his accountability, like I said with his phone, and, therefore, the pressure that he faced. He, also tried to limit perception in his manipulation of his victim's beliefs. His persistence and conspiracy came primarily through his limiting of the persons involved. So, sure, he he also limited perception and pressure, right, through various means.

Derek: 20:49

But, primarily, Zacharias was in this conspiracy alone. He was the only one, as far as I'm aware, that really knew the extent of the things that he was doing. He didn't let anybody else in on that. And through that, he insulated himself from, from observation and critique, and, therefore, was able to get away with his conspiracy for some time. Second, besides limiting the number of persons, we also looked at conspiracies which limited the amount of pressure.

Derek: 21:19

If the amount of pressure placed on someone can outdo the reward that they'll get for maintaining a conspiracy, then the conspiracy will likely break. But when we look at conspiracies of things like nations, like, the persistent imperial oppression of Haiti by Europe and The United States, or if we look at the baby formula conspiracy, the church commission, COINTELPRO, any of these other huge conspiracies, what do we see in regard to pressure? How are they able to avoid detection? Or, how are they able to maintain their conspiracies? Right?

Derek: 21:53

Because, they they don't limit the persons. There are lots of people involved in these governmental conspiracies. Well, by and large, consequences were nonexistent. Right? There was no pressure.

Derek: 22:04

And if if there were consequences in any of these instances, they were extremely minimal and only fell on one or two scapegoats. If you're the director of the CIA, what's going to happen to you if you torture and even kill people? Well, I'll tell you what. We know exactly what happens because we've seen it with our own eyes in the last decade. Just go and watch the movie, the torture report, and and read the the congressional, notes and stuff.

Derek: 22:30

Nothing happens. Nothing. There were literally no consequences for our nation's torture and murder of people detained without trial at black sites. There were no consequences for the government looking the other way while they let the black community die from crack that funded a murderous organization in the Contras. Governments can maintain relatively large conspiracies with lots of people because, and this is more true the higher up you go, there's relatively little pressure.

Derek: 22:59

They know that there there's not oversight and there aren't consequences. No pressure. So finally, we can see how some of these conspiracies, didn't necessarily limit persons or pressure, but they limited perception or belief. But I'll stick with perception here, because it just works with the alliteration. Persons.

Derek: 23:20

Pressure. Perception. Okay. Perception. While our Haiti episode and something like, you know, if you look into the Banana Republic and Smedley Butler's Wars Racket, those touch on how belief can birth and foster conspiracies and the perpetuation of those conspiracies because it creates nationalistic beliefs, these deeply ingrained ideals and values, which one acts upon and conspires.

Derek: 23:48

I think the best example we have from this season is our episode on Eugenics. We've said over and over this season that people use propaganda not just to maliciously lie to other people, usually, but because they believe in the cause for which they're propagandizing. One is much more willing to bear up under pressure if they believe that their cause is worthy, and one has less problems involving more conspirators if everyone has a strong, unified belief in something. When you look at the case of Carrie Buck, how a representation in medical community conspired and how the government backed that up with an eight to one decision, the only way that happens is through perception, through a common belief and ideology. And that perception isn't only how that conspiracy is birthed.

Derek: 24:33

It's also how it has become hidden to us today. Why is Buck v. Bell and America's eugenic history largely unknown today? Because we have had fostered in us certain ideas of what it means to be a liberty loving America with a rich history. And we have been raised to have a particular view of science, medicine, and modernity.

Derek: 24:56

We all help to cultivate the atmosphere which nurtures such conspiracies and propaganda that we've seen throughout the season. Of course, we could talk about a lot of other conspiracies here. Racist conspiracies go well under the idea of perception too. I mean, how do murderers of blacks never get called or caught back in the fifties and sixties? When everyone knows who did it in the community, when you have a whole town full of conspirators, How does nobody say anything?

Derek: 25:22

How does nobody get caught? How how is there no pressure? How are there no consequences? You know, I'm sure pressure is one thing that shuts some people up. Right?

Derek: 25:31

Pressure of the the conspiratorial community. But there's so much pressure in large part because the racist belief of the community is so strong. It's perception that runs the racist conspiracies there. The strength of a belief can sometimes largely determine the success of a conspiracy, even in the face of having many persons being conspirators and having some significant pressure placed upon you. So if we are going to take what we've learned here and apply it to a more recent conspiracy theory, like, I mean, let's say, the COVID vaccine, that that, you know, especially people on the right are are saying that, you know, there's some big conspiracy behind the vaccine.

Derek: 26:13

Here's how I'd think about it. So if there's going to be a COVID conspiracy, there would have to be a lot of institutions involved. Right? Governmental, scientific, medical, etcetera. I mean, a lot of people we're talking about here.

Derek: 26:27

And across these institutions, you'd be likely to run into people with a variety of ideological views. Right? And people who aren't high up on the ladder, and there would be people who are privy to some of this information that would face some serious pressure if they were caught. Now in terms of number of persons, the amount of pressure and the unified perception of those involved, I mean, I'd say that I don't think a purposeful vaccine conspiracy is all that plausible. But then I I kind of second guess myself because, you know, on the other hand, this is where the marrying of the corporate world with the government gets really problematic for me.

Derek: 27:04

In theory, a vaccine should pass through a number of hands of varying institutions, creating checks and balances. But when Pfizer is a huge lobbyist for Congress and the people running the FDA and the CDC were appointed by those connected to Congress and therefore lobbyists, the water starts to get really, really murky. All of a sudden, a variety of institutions aren't really varied and all have a common interest of advancing together. They have the same perception, the same ideological view. There's the appearance of diversity, of checks and balances, but reality is diverging more and more from this mythic past of checks and balances if they ever existed in the first place.

Derek: 27:51

So I know that doesn't really satisfy anybody. It doesn't really answer our question about how to tell if any given conspiracy is true or not. And that's because even after doing a whole season of study on conspiracies, I still struggle. I mean, I I struggle with the plausibility of some of these things. Just seeing all the conspiracies I've seen and and the huge complexity of them, I just don't know.

Derek: 28:17

I don't know how to tell if something's true for sure. It's often extremely murky. However, I think this discussion here should at least provide you with some really important tools to, to evaluate conspiracies. Right? Because you have three breaking points for conspiracies, persons, pressure, and perception.

Derek: 28:38

And if you can evaluate all of those in each of the conspiracies, and you can remember Occam's razor, then I think it's gonna help you a lot with with coming to rations conclusions. But, hopefully, that murkiness also helps to keep you humble in your conclusions. When we look at the resurrection of Jesus, there are many persons, much pressure, and, a weak initial perception. Sure. The disciples had all followed Jesus at one point and all had the same ideology and belief, and they eventually ended up going to their desk for him.

Derek: 29:12

Right? I'll grant you that. But after Jesus was crucified and they they knew that he was dead, their perception was that all they had lived for in the past three years was in vain. It was lost. They were not at all believers, as evidenced the best in Thomas's famous insistence on doubt, or, you know, the disciples are all huddled up and scared.

Derek: 29:35

Jesus, who we know existed and we know was crucified, had everything going against his teachings after he was crucified. Something had to cause so many disciples to believe the unbelievable and to bear up under so much pressure for no reward but death. This season, we looked at a lot of conspiracies that ended up being true, but it's important to remember that sometimes they aren't. It's important to distinguish this truth because what you believe can change your life.