I am tired of seeing people putting Professor Avalos in a bad position because of the resurrection debate last week. People, Christians in general, have been bashing him because he had no direct proof disproving the resurrection of Jesus. He was put in a difficult situation even before he started to speak. I mean, how does one disprove a supernatural occurrence, resurrection in this case, to be wrong?

You can’t. Subjects of this matter cannot yet be studied by empirical science. No matter what evidence is set forth to disprove a miracle, an act of God, whatever, the typical response from a religious person is that a God’s work cannot be measured by scientific means. End of story.

Instead, stories of these miracles are passed across the world and through time. No one can prove when and where these tales are created. No one can disprove a person’s account of a miracle, so it is soon taken in as fact. These accounts are passed from generation to generation, each time getting on a grander scale, and maybe even placed in a book that has been in print for 2,000 years.

So I ask Christians to put themselves in Dr. Avalos’ shoes and prove this to me: What makes the miracles of the Bible true, but the occurrences included in any other book of testament (the Koran, the Vedas, or even the Egyptian Book of the Dead, each with just as much history as the Bible) wrong?

Josh Shendelman

Senior

Biology