I can imagine Richard Dawkins sitting in the back row at the Areopagus, stern-faced and shaking head, and leading a small chorus of sceptics.

Richard Dawkins is continuing his mission to evangelise people out of Christianity (and religion altogether) and to secure his message of a world without hope. 

Today in a video message, he asks, ‘Do you want to be comforted by a falsehood?’

It’s a good question and an important one. Does anyone want to find consolation in a fabrication? Does anyone want to pour all their hopes into a dead end? For Professor Dawkins death is of course the dead end, with nothing beyond and no light to give hope to either the dead or those who are left behind. 

“When your brain decays there is absolutely no reason to suppose your consciousness will continue, so the grounds of plausibility, the balance of plausibility is heavily in favour or there been no survival after death and that is something and that is something we need to live with. It’s not all that horrifying a prospect when you think about it because we think as Mark Twain said, ‘I’ve been dead for billions of years before I was born and never suffered the smallest inconvenience.” 

I suspect that Dawkins’ answer will arouse applause and retweets from fans and devotees, and with a satisfied Amen. Leaving aside for a moment the question of whether he’s right or not, his answer isn’t particularly consoling. Dawkins says that he finds solace in the finality of being no more, but I suspect most people including a lot of atheists are not so convinced. Our intellectual commitments (whether theistic or atheistic) come under a sudden assault when death approaches and when a loved one is lowered into the grave. There is a longing for death not to win. There is palpable hope that life may continue and love to beat any final breath. 

Why divorce cognitive processes from heart filled yearnings? Of course, the two can be in conflict and they can also partner together as a harmonious duet, as we find in Christian theism.

Dawkins (and fellow atheists) believes that once our final breath expires and we are buried, the totality of what we were begins to rot and we cease to be. All that is left is the box in the ground holding our biological material and the memories that people have of you. Again, some readers may find that a satisfying end of the story, but most of us don’t. Whether we find it satisfying or not isn’t evidence of what is ultimately true.

The thing about the Christian view of resurrection is not one of lacking commitment to the intellectual process but appreciating that there is more going on. It is not wrong to appeal to deep heart filled longings, for those emotional impulses are part of who we are as human beings. We are more than those heart desires, not less.

I believe, along with Oxford and Cambridge Dons, scientists, poets, plumbers and children, that the Christian explanation of resurrection is both intellectually satisfying and emotionally, psychologically, spiritually liberating and consoling.

Something happened that day just outside Jerusalem that changed the world. Women and men saw something that didn’t compute. The evidence defied their prior assumptions and challenged their emotional state. They saw and heard and touched Jesus raised from the dead. 

Before we line up the Biblical accounts with ancient mythology, we mustn’t assume that resurrection was a commonly held view in the ancient world, for that is not the case. Many ancient religions believed in some kind of life after death, although not all (including many Athenians in the First Century AD).  The Christian notion of resurrection is altogether different 

As Dr Chrisopher Watkin summarises in his new volume, Biblical Critical Theory, 

“The nature of the resurrection is very different to the ancient notion of rising gods known as apotheosis. The bodily nature of resurrection sets the Christian claim apart from other superficially similar narrative patterns in the ancient world. The Romans, for example, were familiar with the idea that a mortal person could undergo an apotheosis to become a god, but apotheoses were spiritual, not bodily, and the deified mortal would not be expected to tread the streets of Jerusalem for forty days before ascending to heaven. Apotheosis was also a privilege reserved for the rich and mighty, not for the common artisan and certainly not for the crucified criminal. Christ’s resurrection was also different from the myths of dying and rising agricultural gods in other pagan religions. N. T. Wright, author of the 740-page The Resurrection of the Son of God insists that “even supposing Jesus’s very Jewish followers knew any traditions like those pagan ones—nobody in those religions ever supposed it actually happened to individual humans.”

Richard Dawkins talks about plausibility, as does the Apostle Paul at the Areopagus. He insists, let’s examine the evidence. At that centre of Athenian learning and thought, Paul argues for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He began, 

“He  [God] has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

Proof? I can hear Dawkins of Athens reproving! What proof? Dead people stay dead. Their brains, blood, muscles and organs decay and become a manure in a box. 

Of course, Paul, like Jesus and like Christians everywhere, knew that dead people don’t rise. That’s the point and the resurrection testifies to our wrong assumptions about God and life and death. 

What I found interesting in Dawkins’s tweet is how he relies heavily on Bible reasoning in order to muster an argument against God and the notion of life beyond death.  Take, for example, this paragraph from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, 

“But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. ” (1 Corinthians 15:12-18)

The Apostle, and subsequently Christian theologians, scientists, and believers in general, all understand the implausibility of resurrection and understand that single event of history that dumbfounds the Sadducees and Epicureans of every age. 

It is worth noting that Paul’s words were written within 20 years of the events that surrounded Jesus’ death in Jerusalem. He even says to his readers, that many eyewitnesses are still alive so go and talk to them. His are not the words of someone covering up evidence and trying to commit fraud on the public. The resurrection is a public event that is open to investigation. 

For Dawkins, as brilliant a scientist as he is, he believes in a closed universe and so it’s unlikely that he’ll accept any compelling evidence that punctures his system. Even Jesus was aware of how our a priori commitments block us. He famously said, “‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Why? Because there is more going on in our minds and hearts than just intellectual questions and the pursuit of what happened.

Richard Dawkins may have made up his mind, but death will continue to haunt us. The grave is the one appointment we hope to avoid and yet will come. To take consolation in Christ is not fake or feeble, but reason finding hope. 

If you are interested, below is a short summary of the evidence outlined in the New Testament as well as a summary of some of the more popular objections to the resurrection.

The facts:

1. Weeks out from his death on the cross Jesus predicted with startling accuracy what would happen.

 “Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life”. (Matt 16:21)

2. Jesus genuinely died and his death was verified by the executing authorities (Matt 27:50-54)

3. After Jesus’ death had been verified, Pilate released the body to Joseph of Arimathea who buried it in his own new tomb, carved out of rock in a garden near the place of the crucifixion (Matt 27:57-60).

4. The tomb was sealed and was guarded by Roman soldiers (Matt 27:62-66).

5. A number of women witnessed the burial and presumably the posting of the guard (Matt 27:61)

6. On the Sunday following the crucifixion the body was no longer in the tomb (Matt 28:1-7).

7. That same day, and over the next 40 days, Jesus met with his original disciples and others (later Saul). During this period the commission to be his witnesses, first to the Jews and then to the nations, was given by Jesus himself (Matt 28:1-20)

8. After 40 days Jesus was taken up into heaven, a cloud hiding him from sight (Acts 1:9-11)

Some arguments against the resurrection:

Theory	Chief exponents	Some suggested responses
Intentional fraud by the disciples	Jewish High Priests; H.S Reimarus (1787)	How could it be done despite the guard and the suspicion of the authorities? How could the lie be sustained for the rest of their lives and in the face of fierce persecution?
Swoon Theory	Paulus (1833) Huxley (1896) Thiering (1992)	His death was verified by experts when Pilate raised questions. If he did revive in the cool of the tomb, how did he roll away the stone, get past the guard, and walk all the way to Emmaus with those wounds?
The women went to the wrong tomb	Lake (1907)	The women were nearby as Jesus was buried. Joseph of Arimathea would certainly know which tomb was his. The guards and the seal would have made the tomb rather conspicuous. The authorities could have just gone to the right tomb and produced the body.
Jesus was never actually crucified (someone was)	The Koran	It is inconceivable that the Jewish authorities would have stood by whilst the Romans crucified the wrong man. Surely this argument would have been used by the Jews to combat the apostle’s preaching if it was true (and even if it wasn’t but was credible)
The resurrection is an allegory not a fact	Woolston (1728)	There is no evidence in the Gospels that this part of the narrative is allegorical as opposed to the rest.
Hallucination	Strauss (1835) Spong (1993)	The number and variety of people, times, and types of appearances tell against this theory. This attitude of the disciples was either fearful or aggressively opposed (Saul) at the time of the appearances. Fear and aggression are not the usual preconditions for a hallucination of an unprecedented event.
Spiritual resurrection and/ or divine vision evoking faith in the disciples	Keim (1883) Lampe (1966) Carnley (1987)	Jesus himself goes to great lengths to demonstrate he is not a ghost or a vision. The empty tomb is unnecessary and the arguments of Paul do not make sense if the resurrection does not involve the crucified body of Jesus. What happened to the body?