Not long ago I was watching a documentary about the U.S. Navy SEALs and the intense training they must endure to be inducted into this elite fighting force. At the beginning of their extensive “weeding-out” process the cadets must survive “Hell Week.” The trainees must pass a series of grueling tests—they must be drilled in the cold ocean for hours at a time, they must work as a team carrying heavy logs and a two-hundred-pound Zodiac raft, they must go without food, warmth, and keep mentally strong on only a few hours of sleep. On average, only 25% of SEAL candidates pass through Hell Week, making it the toughest training in the U.S. Military.
The incredible stress and
extreme exhaustion of this training has caused many of the cadets to experience
hallucinations. One man thought he “saw” a train barreling toward him out of
the ocean, another believed that he and his team were about to paddle their raft
into a solid wall, while another was convinced that an octopus came out of the
water and waved at him.[1]
When these false perceptions of reality were pointed out to other cadets, no
one else saw them, even though they were all experiencing the same physical
and mental pressure.
I mention this story
because it relates to a common objection given by skeptics attempting to
explain away the resurrection of Jesus by naturalistic theories. Commonly
called, “the hallucination theory” proponents of this view argue that that what
Jesus’ disciples really experienced on that first Easter Sunday were vivid hallucinations
of the risen Christ. In other words, the disciples wanted to believe the claims
that Jesus would really rise from the dead and so their sub-conscious willed
grand and glorious visions of a resurrected Jesus complete with an empty tomb,
angelic appearances and personal experiences touching His nail-scarred body.
It doesn’t take long for
anyone with a lick of common sense to realize that the skeptics are hallucinating
if they think this alternate explanation really has a leg to stand on.
First, we should note that
hallucinations are not experienced by groups only by individuals. They are not
collective experiences. Remember the Navy SEALS? Several of them experienced
false perceptions of reality, but none of them were the same. Hallucinations
are like dreams in this way. Imagine that you wake up in the middle of the
night and you say to your spouse, “Honey, I just had a dream that we were in Hawaii.
Come back to sleep and join me in my dream and we’ll enjoy a free vacation
together.” We all know this is impossible, because you can’t share dreams. In
the same way, mass hallucinations are out of the realm of possibility.
Clinical psychologist Gary
Collins explains, “Hallucinations are individual occurrences. By their very
nature only one person can see a given hallucination at a time. They certainly
are not something that can be experienced by a group of people. Since a
hallucination exists only in the subjective, personal sense, it is obvious that
others cannot witness it.”[2]
Second, the hallucination theory
doesn’t work because Jesus appeared on twelve separate occasions, to over 500
eyewitnesses during a forty day period (1 Cor. 15:3-8). According to the Gospel
accounts four times the risen Christ was touched and four times people ate with
Him. It strains all believability that hundreds of people could experience the
same hallucination for that amount of time.
Keep in mind that Jesus
not only appeared to His disciples but to His skeptical brother James (1 Cor. 15:7),
as well as to Saul of Tarsus (later to become the apostle Paul), a
self-professed enemy of the Christian faith (Acts 9). How likely is it that
these two would also have individual hallucinations of a resurrected Jesus to
whom they had no previous commitment?
Third, the hallucination
theory cannot explain the empty tomb and the missing body. If the disciples
really were seeing imaginary things then the Roman or Jewish authorities could
have taken them to tomb and showed them that it was still sealed up. Moreover,
they could have paraded Jesus corpse around the streets of Jerusalem and
emphatically put an end to the preaching of the Gospel. That would have ended
Christianity forever. If the resurrection was a hallucination, then why did the
guards report the body missing? (Matt. 28:11-15).
This theory simply does
not have any explanatory power, nor does it fit the facts. When all of these
factors are taken into account, the hallucination theory crumbles under the
weight of evidence. Thus, the Christian can remain confident that Christ has
risen in power and glory!
-DM
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