I fully understand your (good!) advice not to come across as a propagandist, but surely historical arguments are prone to be repeated if they are true. (As in, one cannot concuct original evidence…)

By all means write to folks like Dickson to help prepare yourself, but when you then talk to those who aren’t convinced don’t just parrot his arguments or you will indeed meet with dismissal. Bring your own perspective, or you’ll come across as a propagandist and discussing Jesus with you will not be a welcome prospect.

A lecturer at Macquarie University and PhD in history, John Dickson, writes books, makes doccos, and gives lectures on this subject. I might write to him and ask about his experiences & advice.

Hayesy, dead right about “proof”. Good man.

I do realise it’s difficult to publicise your evidence, but it renders all other arguments moot if it’s accepted so it’s got to be worth it.

You need to start with historians, not the general public and certainly not people who are just there to take the opposite side of a debate. Go to universities, colleges; go to the staff, those who know what constitutes historical evidence better than any of us, and who apply the utmost scrutiny to other matters. Present what you’ve got in that context, on their turf and by their rules, and you won’t meet indifference and you can call them out on presuppositions. Either you’ll get a fair hearing, or you will come out knowing precisely why what you’ve got is not history. What you do with that hypothetical knowledge will be up to you.

One big reason the young-earth creationist movement (which I know you’re not in) lacks respect is that it takes a bottom-up approach, hoping that majority support by lay people will override what they see as an academic anti-religious cabal. It tries the top-down thing too, but it just hasn’t got the support of the biologists at the top. That’s who they need in order to get real biology cred.

Likewise, if you want something to be acknowledged as history, bring historians round. Not just quotes of them like McDowell uses, get endorsement they’re willing to repeat. Then bring THEM to the public. It’s as simple as that, I think.

advising someone to play the odds and worship just in case
Not at all what I meant. That would be stupid, as if you could somehow fool God?!

Where it is helpful is in making people see the magnitude of the question. In waking people out of their indifference.

By the by, this week I decided ‘proof’ is a bad word. Proof is only offered by one discipline: mathematics. All other disciplines offer only probabilities.

Have you any suggestions for publicising the proof?
I’d love to do just what you suggest – but the issues faced are:
a) indifference
b) willful ignorance – people don’t want to believe
c) privelidged presuppositions – I went to a debate this week in which the atheist said, and I quote, “You can show me all the history you want, I won’t be convinced – science tells us that people do not rise from the dead.”
The head of the philosophy faculty at an emminent university, apparently unaware that he has not only gone beyond the limits of science, but also presupposed the conclusion.
People irrationally privelidge their presuppositions over their perceptions.
d) simple practicalities of communicating a message. As you’ve seen, it can be done very badly.

Hayesy, Michelle, if there’s evidence for Jesus and the resurrection, why bother with Pascal’s Wager? Why ask what if at all?

I’ll elaborate. If the resurrection is certain and there’s proof to demonstrate this fact to all comers (if you only know where to look…and apparently you do), then advising someone to play the odds and worship just in case is an unnecessary, relatively weak argument. Better to just publicise the proof, let it speak for itself, get it acknowledged by the community at large and settle this business once and for all.

So why don’t you? Why do only a tiny proportion of Christians in the world (e.g. Josh McDowell and William Lane Craig) bother to try? In your own certainty, why are you still using probability-based appeals like “what if you’re wrong”?

But, with those in mind, it looked like a good book.

He’s released a new version named Is the New Testament Reliable?

http://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Reliable-Paul-Barnett/dp/0830827684

He was the Anglican Bishop of North Sydney from 1990 to 2001 but also has a PhD on the interaction between the New Testament and Jewish history of the first century. So it does lean in Christianity’s favour but it’s not like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about historically.

I wasn’t just referring to you by “highly recommended”. There was the guy in the bookstore, and a plethora of good reviews by Christians I found online after I got the book. I did get the impression you were recommending him more than it seems you were; perhaps I skimmed over the sentence in bold.

Meanwhile, I do need to keep looking at this stuff. And it sounds like you’re in a good place with what you demand from the books. I’ll let you know if I find someone you’d like.