My preferred use of a minimal facts approach is: The existence of apologists proves that god does not. If god existed apologists would be neither necessary nor contingent.

Oh the apologists are making progress, I was tired of the no facts approach.

The supernatural always makes me think of Bertrand Russell's essay "On Denoting" (which first appeared in _Mind_ in 1905, but is now available on the 'net). On the way to his main point, Russell points out that just because you have a grammatically correct noun phrase does not imply that that noun phrase actually refers to anything in the real world. An example he uses is the phrase "the present king of France" (for those of you who do not keep up with current events, France hasn't had a king or emperor since around 1871). Russell argues that since this phrase refers to (or denotes) nothing, it is meaningless. I would say that the same applies to the phrase "the supernatural": it refers to nothing, so is meaningless.

Before you can posit the supernatural as an explanation for something, you must first prove the existence of a supernatural something. Until magic is proven real, you can't blame empty tombs on magic. It doesn't matter how well-supported the idea that the tomb was empty is. You can only blame the empty tomb on things you can prove exist.

Homeopathic apologetics. The more diluted the facts the more true the conclusion.

That was an awesome video Matt! I actually hadn't heard of the minimal facts approach though I have encountered it under different names.

So the minimal facts approach is a concession that the overwhelming set of facts don't support religion.

The trouble with the "minimal facts", even more than that the conclusions don't follow, is that the facts... Aren't. They're not facts. Even the simple "somebody died" + "empty tomb". We don't know somebody died. We have no empty tomb. (Not that some random tomb attributed to Jesus that hasn't got a body in it would be evidence for anything if it existed)

You keep saying "75% of skeptical scholars" but that isn't what Havermas claimed. He said "75% of scholars, including skeptics." which is a very different statement.

Minimal facts on a work of maximum fiction does not equate to truth.

I love how three of the five points were literally just "someone believes". Yeah? You think that is a compelling argument because I know more then three people who believe the Earth is flat and gravity sham foisted upon us by NASA.

And here I thought that all apologetics contained minimal facts. Heyoo!

One of the biggest problems I see with this method is that the proponents don't apply it to religious and supernatural propositions OUTSIDE their own religious beliefs. Special pleading, just like Matt said. No Christian agreeing with this method's conclusions if someone used it to support alleged miracles claimed by ISLAM or HINDUISM or even He Age quantum WOO as true, rather than the Christian resurrection claims. Like I often say, apologetics always commits special pleading by granting weight to propositions in their own religions over any similar claims made by other supernaturalists even if all else is equal, like historical facts, eyewitness testimony, lack of empirical evidence, etc.. Apologetics, IMO, is NEVER about truth, truth of religious belief is assumed in faith, its about quieting doubts and dissonance of believers and about giving them pseudorational justification for holding those beliefs.

I like your wedding band, Matt. I just now noticed it. My husband and I have similar matching wedding bands. Black.... like our souls... hehe.

Apologetics: Because only the human imagination can defend a book derived from the human imagination.

The apologists and so-called religious folks (largely) are your neighbours, co-workers, relatives, and they vote. That is why anyone with a brain should be involved in their government to prevent them from not legislating their religious delusions! Thank you, Matt, for truth and separation of church and state in the USA. Cheers, DAVEDJ ~

Such a direct, clear flow of information. I don't see why it's still tough to understand the basic concepts of what he's sharing; and why it's absolutely necessary to ignore it and instill mythicism as a poison.

Matt Dillahunty Matt. Here are you errors. 1. You say that the minimal facts argument is an appeal to the supernatural at 4:25. Not so. What the argument shows is that there is no sensible argument in opposition to the Christian claims concerning the resurrection. Think of mathematics and the process of elimination, leaving us with one possibility. To be concrete, what sensible explanation, other than the Christian explanation, can be offered for the empty tomb? The deductions (e.g., through hypothetical syllogisms - a valid argument form) gained after establishment of the minimal facts show the only sensible explanation is the Christian explanation. 2. You apparently confuse facts with arguments from 4:38 forward. Deductions occur with facts (which form the premises), to be sure. Facts are not deductions, however, and facts themselves are not premises. Premises involve predication with facts. However, the facts derived from the process of elimination (a legitimate logic strategy) are used in the deductions, through the formulated premises - a reality you avoid in your explanation. Moreover, the minimal facts themselves don’t form arguments or premises. That work is done after gaining the minimal facts, which is so obvious, I’m surprised you’re missing it. 3. Note that the minimal facts argument does not, in itself, prove God’s existence. Aquinas/Aristotle do that through the argument from motion (as the most manifest way); every atheist straw mans Aquinas (if he/shre reads Aquinas) to avoid his conclusions, and more than that every atheist doesn’t read all of what Aquinas says on the topic (see p.100 of the God Delusion to get started in understanding this reality) 4. At 6:00 you wrongly set up a tension between the minimal facts argument (deduction from facts) and the scientific method (INDUCTION); induction is not deduction; in fact, as you should know, induction does not lead to absolutely true conclusions, like deduction does. Yikes … you really messed up here, Matt. I get the sense, Matt, that you have never taken even a basic logic course (if you did, perhaps you could share your final grade in the course with us?) 5. You then, at 8:12, compare conspiracy theory development, to construction of the “narrative” of the minimal facts argument. But we know that conspiracy theory does not make use of legitimate logic strategy, which I explained in point 2 above. ** I’ll stop there for now, since there are SO MANY ERRORS in the first 10 minutes of your video, Matt. Respond to them, and I’ll offer you more illumination. Pax et Bonum

Minimal facts is a standard investigative technique used by all law enforcement. Superfluous or questionable information in a case is generally culled early as the defence can use it to advantage. " Just The Facts Mam "

I was just going to share this on my FaceBook page. Then I started listening, I got hooked. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate your incite.

Matt...you wore that green shirt a week ago...thought u had a theme going on! I love listening to your reasoning and appreciate what you do. Thanks

This is perfect as I'm about to debate a theist on the authenticity of the New Testament Gospel and her go to is the minimal facts approach by Gary Habermas

If anyone wants a comprehensive (and utterly devastating) written takedown of the minimal facts argument, I highly recommend this article by a PhD student in ancient history: adversusapologetica.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/knocking-out-the-pillars-of-the-minimal-facts-apologetic/

This reminds me of when I was in church and some horrible event happened. The preacher would get up in front of the congregation and say "let's not allow this tragedy to shake our faith" or "now is not the time to question god". I sort of believed it when I was a kid, but when I started leaving religion behind, I started realizing how full of crap those statements were. Especially when people would tell me that I should accept the idea that some questions just can't be answered, or the only answer is "just because". You couldn't question anything. You had to be a mindless minion for god.

The world's foremost expert on the resurrection!? Similarly, although I don't want to show off, I am in fact the world's foremost expert on the existance of the tooth fairy. In fact, I have an all encompassing knowledge of every replicable observation of an existant tooth fairy that has ever been made!

Allow me to introduce the fact that’s also accepted by most people including secular scholars: out of the ~100,000,000,000 people who have ever existed, a very generous maximum of 1 has ever resurrected from the dead after being dead for over 48 hours, and every single person who died before and after this one claimed instance of resurrection did not and will absolutely not resurrect from the dead after being so for over 48 hours. This seems to me to be as minimal of a fact as the others yet also, weirdly enough, seems to actually COUNTER the conclusion that one and only one person ever resurrected from the dead rather than accepting that none have because we all recognize that it’s just not a thing that happens!

Of that list of '5 facts to memorize', only one can really stand at the outset ~ that of an 'empty tomb' existing somewhere in Jerusalem or it's environs. It would be very surprising if one did not!

You must be a decendant of Socrates and Aristotle because Sir you are slaying the opposition. Love your work. We need more critical thinkers not mindless followers. Thank you for all you do

Another problem with 75% of skeptical scholars, those same scholars might also agree on other things, things which might invalidate their conclusions.

+Matt Dillahunty I think you missed out a couple of points: - They never seem to say that it's the majority of skeptics supporting their case. It's "the majority of scolars, incl skeptics". The majority may still very likely consist of a large number of non-sketpics. - They do come up with a small set of 'minimal facts', but they often bring up other data (not included in the 'accepted ideas') when they start to counter the other alternative explanations. (f.e.: the perhaps not best alternative of the 'stolen body' can in no way be directly dismissed on the basis of the 12 given facts. The counterarguments require other facts to be smuggled in) - Hinging on the fact that no facts can adress a 'supernatural claim'... The statistics of 'majority'-claims is very tricky and blind to a big problem itself. It may very well be the case that a majority accepts/rejects every individual piece of evidence, but still have a majority dismissing the entire set of claims. F.e. if there are 3 natural explanations for an event, each only supported by 33%; then it is true that every theory is rejected by a majority of 66%! But that does not mean that 66% dismisses a natural explanation. It just means there is disagreement on the quality of the evidence and there is no concensus.

Matt is our new Hitch. Minus the pomp and attitude. He's brought my understanding and debate technique up to a working level. This is so important and we should all be able to discuss this on at least a matt level.

Then there's Genesis 22:19, the ending verse of the story: "So Abraham returned unto his young men, and they rose up and went together to Beersheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba." Abraham returns...without Isaac. This is arguably an indication that the original version of the story has Abraham actually sacrificing Isaac, and that the part where Isaac is spared and a ram sacrificed in his place was added later.

yes, the bible (any bible really) is certainly one place where we've found minimal facts.

First off they have no facts to begin with. I am still waiting for the clear cut evidence of a Jesus of Nazareth existing.

Minimal facts approach - the homeopathy of apologetics.

So it's like equivalating. "Everyone is wrong but here are some minimal facts"

So Matt knows a little bit of statistics. I understand that many people don't know a thing about the that particular branch of mathematics, but I'm confident I could explain it.

"He's dead, Jim!"

Hi Matt!A long time ago the Oxford dictionary used to have as one of the definitions of the word "procrustean" as the adherence to an idea or position or theory by only accepting that which agrees with ones position and intentionally omitting any contrary evidence. In other words, any evidence that did not fit the "procrustean bed" of the adherent was cut off, just as Procrustes did to his victims. This perfectly describes, in my opinion, the minimal facts approach. It is dishonest and you point this out well. Unfortunately, an online definition search only produces a more watered down "one size fits all" version of the definition. High quality dictionaries, however, I think still have the definition I described listed.Great video! I just wanted to share this wonderful word "procrustean" with you that I think perfectly describes the "minimal facts approach".

31:00 I am very amused each time a believer mentions the shroud of Turin as "evidence"... of how badly the women did their cleansing of the body, how wrong it was wrapped in the linen, and careless anointed the body with 33 kg of spiced oils and covered with a soaked shawl. ..

There is a great elephant in the room problem with the minimal historical facts argument. It is a logical problem regarding how the evaluation of historical claims is done with the accepted methods of the field. Any historian that evaluates the proposed historical fact claims using the accepted methods of the field and comes to the conclusion they are indeed all historical facts, must have A. a sufficient natural explanation that allows them to do so or B. failed as a historian in applying the methods and is wrong about the claims being historical facts. This is due to the fact that any historian evaluating the proclaimed facts using the accepted historical methods would have to take in consideration not just the claimed facts as individual but all together. If a contradiction arises between them that has no sufficient natural explanation, then this has consequences. It means that the historian cannot consider the claimed facts to all be historical facts at the same time. Instead the contradicting claims negatively affect each other’s probability. This will lead to at least enough of them losing in probability that they are no longer considered historical facts. It is even possible that they would all lose so much probability that none of them can be considered historical facts. Note that even if you remove methodological naturalism as a default from the accepted methods, the extremely low probability of non-naturalistic explanations has pretty much the same effect. Any claimed facts that need supernatural explanations would have their probability lowered by that need. So if there is a consensus among historians that the proclaimed historical facts as a whole are indeed historical, then the historians in question A. should have a sufficient natural explanation or B. did a terrible job as historians and are wrong about the claims being historical facts. Anyone like Habermass who claims there is no sufficient natural explanation and that a supernatural one is needed is in fact claiming that all those historians failed and are wrong about the claims being historical facts, this ironically includes himself.

The only minimal fact I'm certain of is that people invented stories about a character named Jesus.

Didn't realise how little Dillahunty understands about what he's talking about until seeing this, and I didn't start with high hopes. It's an error a minute ride... at least.

The Minimal Facts approach is intended to create an easily digestible inference for the resurrection, which Christians have now focused their entire strategy on. If they can get you to believe that, in their eyes, all other inconsistencies, errors, fallacies etc are moot. Just believe in the resurrection, and the rest will take care of itself.

If you prove Jesus resurrected from the dead, what are you left with? That someone remarkably got better after being dead. Why would that make anyone believe in God or worship God? Why would it make you think that Vicarious Redemption is a perfect form of Justice? Why would you think human sacrifice is an effective means of absolving inherited crimes? Why would you think these crimes can be inheritid? It seems incoherent, a complete non sequitur- I don't get why Christians would even want a resurrection to be true.

This all points right back to the lowers standards of evidence that religious history scholars rely on in determining what "evidence" they will allow compared to evidentiary standards that critical scholars employ in arriving at veeeery different conclusions, even when looking at the exact same material. A simple look at the historicity of Jesus shows that only two items are widely accepted about a living Jesus. He was baptised and he was crucified. There is another level of less widely accepted events, but the empty tomb isn't included. It ALL comes down to standards of evidence and which standards are applied.

There is some intersting theories on the swoon like, the burial wraps they gave him are counter productive for the purpose of the rituals then wich is leave a body in the tomb a year or two till they are where they can be put into a box, yet most of the stuff preserves and is said to have healing properties, the fact that after the viniger is given to him he dies almost as if drugged and such :> I'm not sure I buy it, but some interesting arguments.

Matt, You and I need to get together, brother. I am from the same background as you are. EXACTLY. It is my hope that we can push past formal debates and "formal" logic and attack the problem at its roots. I have no problem throwing the atheist or the believer "under the bus" when they violate critical thinking...and thusly, use erroneous arguments. I'm in Orlando, FL and if you seriously want another flank of your attack...I'M your guy. I was Evangelical Christian...to Liberal Christian...to Atheist.

I like these videos. The Matt on the Atheist Experience is like the God of the Old Testament yelling & cursing people out & this Matt on this channel is nice like Jesus.

Believing is not seeing. Believing=wishing, guessing, expecting, foretelling/etc. Seeing anything is a fact even if you mislabeled what you saw. Such as a hunter seeing a moose instead of another hunter and then thinking the hunter is a moose, shoots him.

IIt seems like he is saying essentially evidence cant be used to justify the supernatural, which seems to mean that no evidence given can justify God. It's hard to say that ssomebody who claimed that they would rise from the dead, and then had all this happen would be unlikely for what he claimed. My wording may be terrible XD

Lee Strobel just didn't want to get divorced. So he allowed himself to get persuaded.

"They are walking in with an explanation they'd like to confirm." Matt, I'd like to treat you to lunch over that one.

Minimal facts: I'm motivated, I'm capable, I'm willing. Conclusion: I'm the richest man in the world. Oh oops. Something's missing here.

Soooooooo, does this mean that we shouldn't use this to prove that Spiderman and Harry Potter are real? We can all agree that some of the places mentioned in it are real, right. About 100% of the skeptics agree that New York exists and in the comics there is mention of millions of eye witnesses who still live to this day who have seen spiderman save people.

Can we add the fact that the other facts are from an anonymous source? Seems important and is pretty uncontroversial from my understanding.

I'm not sure how effective this video was. Matt seemed to lose his way, IMHO. If a follow-up video were to be made, I would suggest some examples to flesh this out a bit. For example, what would be the minimal facts when comparing Tom Sawyer with Huckleberry Finn? Does the 'fact' that they both know Becky Thatcher mean she was a historical figure?

An explanation should explain all the facts. Like a hypothesis tries to do, and like a theory does. I would think if apologists use a minimal facts approach, it is really that they are trying a "not all the facts" approach.

Let it be said, Matt rocks.

I have never encountered a single theistic apologetic approach that leads you to truth. And Habermas....that guy is just a joke. He is a lot of hot air. There's nothing behind the curtain.

"They don't really give you any historical facts..." lol. Because, err, umm........

It's like how Sye and Slick think they're presenting evidence for the Christian gods existence by erecting strawmen to punch and just repeating 'I know you are, but what am I?'

Confirmation bias is the first step in the approach.

I'm not sure it's apt to compare the Minimum Facts approach with the scientific method. The scientific method does, indeed, deal with "facts" (in the sense of observed phenomena that everybody agrees actually occurred). The Minimum Facts approach, on the other hand, is dealing with allegations and hearsay at best. Which is to say that I don't think the Minimum Facts approach "cherry picks the facts". It's not reasonable for a scientist to ignore observed phenomena that disagree with his theory, but that's not the same as ignoring am allegation that many (or most) people acknowledge probably never happened. Having said that, I agree 100% that the whole Minimum Facts approach is bollocks insofar as it resorts to supernatural explanations. But I do think there is something to the approach insofar as it focuses on the generally accepted "facts" and seeks to come up with an explanation for them rather than trying to explain things that are not reliable in the first place.

Very well explained, very clear. Thanks, Matt.

It probably won't come as much as a surprise that Habermas is a big believer in the Shroud of Turin.

If they managed to find 75% sceptical scholars who believed in point number 10 I can only imagine they did so by finding 3 very uniformed scholars. I am not even sure they could find 75 % christian scholars who would agree with that point if the pole was not rigged. Point number 10 is just historically untrue.

It's not rare this man embraces again Christianity. Why? Because the discourse of the conscience is superficial; superficial and messy things get resolved deep in the hearth, not only talking and talking about mind's ideas.

Hi Matt, I'm an enthusiastic viewer from Britain that has enjoyed many of the debates and tussles I've seen you get into over the past few years. I was just wondering if you've ever debated or considered debating from the theistic position? I'd be curious to see you exploring what you think are the best arguments for belief in god in a robust exchange as an exercise. What do you think?

They are not “appealing to the supernatural.” They are showing how the supernatural is the best explanation for the facts at hand. That’s very different then “appealing to the supernatural.”

Nevertheless, the title "Minimal Facts" is a correct predictor of the global validity of the dialectic.

We should rename the "Minimal Facts Approach" to "The Cherry Picking Approach".

I thought that the point of "minimum facts" was that the Bible and Christian history have an overwhelming number of "facts" which are uncompelling or disputed, but that can still support the Christian faith. Instead of getting tied up in establishing every single fact, just pick the ones that have the best chance of being accepted by everybody. I'm not aware of any facts other than "people don't come back from the dead" and "God doesn't exist" that are incompatible with the explanation that God raised Jesus from the dead.

With regard to this theory about 'the empty tomb', Christian apologists are making a huge assumption based on the gospel reports. As I understand it Romans would crucify enemies of the empire, or thieves etc, and leave these people on the cross for weeks and weeks until they rotted. It would act as a deterrent for others, ... "Look at your savior now"!!. I think that is far more likely than having Jesus taken down after a few hours and placed in a tomb, complete with a huge rolling stone at the enttrance, which was later rolled away. ( why couldn't Jesus have just walked right thru the stone). It's all hogwash.

If I was God and I finally get around to having that 'great and terrible' judgement day I've been preparing for the last 2000 years or so....... 'Matt Dillahunty.....step forward to my throne...Matt...your doubts about my existence were FACTUALLY incorrect....because as you can see I do exist of course....however, you were absolutely RIGHT in principle to question my existence, after all, I showed you very little to give you any reassurance that my word known on Earth as the Bible was the correct thing to believe in, I gave you very little reason to believe I existed at all, so you did the one and only rationally justifiable thing you could do based on what I let you know, which was namely to reject the Bible and reject all the assertions of my existence, well done, you and all the other Atheists, Skeptics etc have passed my test with flying colors, into the Pearly Gates goest thou all and enjoy :)......now....those of you who believed in my existence and were Theists, Christians, Muslims etc....yes I exist as you can see, you got that right but what reason did I give any of you to believe I existed?.....did I ever show myself to you?....did I not give you a brain?....did I not give you reason, logic and rational thinking???....why do you think I gave them to you?....these were all the tools I gave to you to pass my test and you threw them all away, you fell for the faith red herring I threw in, you committed intellectual suicide and just believed anyway despite me not giving you any reason to....THAT was the test, to see if you would utilize the reason, rational and logical thinking powers I endowed you with and come to the correct conclusion that those powers would dictate you come to based on what little I let you know....and you failed.....depart from me I know thee not.....well not until thou start using the brain I gave thou, then thou can come into my Kingdom' Lol ;)

when are you or any high profile atheist speaker will come to NC, Matt? I'm the one and only atheist in this state! ;)

I've always listened to Robert Price about what the minimum facts are. the minimum fact is...... people wrote things down. he says that most of these stories seem to be based on other older writtings of fiction. He also reads from a lot of people who wrote before 1975. Do They use the minimum facts from archaeology, nope.

Most of these just come down to people not actually using the method they claim

If we're talking minimum facts about the resurrection, I would say there are only a few facts that any reasonable person can agree with. 1) Jesus was arrested and executed by the Jerusalem authorities, 2) Jesus' disciples *believed* that Jesus rose from the dead, and 3) Jesus' disciples managed to convince others who never met Jesus that Jesus rose from the dead. That's about it. Not a tremendous amount of data to work with.

Minimal facts = maximum fantasy = theism.

But the whole purpose and essence of religion is based on irrationality, feelings and faith. Having a rational approach to it and wanting to debunk it is like trying to eat a soup with a fork. I'm not saying you won't influence and affect people, but in general if someone is 30+ and believes, it's hardly going to change his mind.

Minimal facts apologetics? I just figured apologists were finally being honest for once.

Well said Matt.

See... I'm almost 100% positive that 100% of skeptical scholars know that the gospels were written 20+ years after the events that were described. And show no signs of eye witness accounts. I've been studying this for 23 years and I've never met a skeptical scholar who believes in the empty tomb narrative. Not one... so 75% is just flabberghasting to me...

"Evidenced" isn't a word. "Evidence" is a noun not a verb. Use the word "evidence " properly and all that apologetic bullshit becomes meaningless.

I was an atheist before I knew about Matt Dillahunty. Now, I know that he is God.

Great video. Very unique content compared to most atheism videos

Do we get a link or name for this podcast you mentioned, Matt?

Apologists shouldn't minimalize their facts because they have been telling the same bullshit stories for thousands of years and intelligent people are still buying it.

Nicely done!!

Just got done watching one of the funniest movies ever made. The Life of Brian, Monty Python. You can see it on youtube. I recommend it.

Kind of like Libertarianism: it feels right on the surface, seems to make good, old-fashioned sense, but if you start digging deeper, and looking at what it actually proposes from the viewpoint of poor, non-propertied people through history, its true insidiousness comes to the surface.

There is some really good points in here though....thank you!

The human body is very resilient. It's totally possible they thought a crucified died when (s)he didn't.

29:02 And then we have Clarke's Third Law.

Apologists like Habermas and Icona and Craig aren't stupid. Far from it. But they're very easily impressed by stupid arguments that support prior beliefs that are held on emotional and not intellectual grounds.

Have you read Bart Ehrman's new-ish book "How Jesus Became God"? In it Dr. Ehrman explains why he now considers the burial and empty tomb traditions are very unlikely to be historical.

Matt can you give me some examples on evidence that you accept?

One apologist disliked the video

This is the very definition of cherry-picking and confirmation bias. You could "prove" *anything,* if you could pick out 2-3 arbitrary features that happen to be common, out of hundreds.