Carey ignores these realities when he suggests that the life or crucifixion of Jesus Christ is somehow more knowable than the resurrection. This is a word game to massage the egos of unbelievers, whose sticking point isn t that Jesus of Nazareth lived or died, but that he rose again from the dead as the Glorified Son of God and Master of Life. We wouldn t consider a person who denied that the Battle of Gettysburg took place, because it can t be proved in a laboratory, a sophisticate. We would consider him a dolt. If nothing can be proved, then the most important thing about any claim of fact, whether it is the resurrection of Jesus Christ or the landing of men on the moon, is how it makes me feel.
M aterialists aren t hard-eyed realists.
This dependence on emotion is sometimes called childlike, but it is only childish. It is a hard business of facts and realities upon which we bet our lives, much the same way that we bet our lives every time we drive our cars onto a bridge. We probably didn t meet the builders or see the bridge being built, but we trust the judgment of those that did and subsequently approved the bridge for use. And we prove the bridge when we drive across it. A good bridge can t be built in a laboratory, since even what is learned there must still be translated from theory into practice.