Did Jesus Really Rise From The Dead?
There’s more evidence for the resurrection of Jesus than you’ve been led to believe.
This letter is part of my series on Jesus. Read the full series here.
I grew up Catholic.
My parents weren’t particularly devout, but they put me in Catholic school because they believed it would give me solid values. I like to think they were right, andI’m grateful they cared enough to make that choice.
But the way Christianity was taught to me wasn’t compatible with the way my mind works. And I think it’s not compatible with the way a lot of minds work today.
The tradition was simple: here’s the word, believe it. That approach probably worked for most of Christian history. But as the scientific method became the default standard for how we evaluate claims about the world, “believe it because we said so” stopped being enough. Not for me. Not for a lot of people in my generation.
I was never taught the rationale. I was never told why we believe Jesus existed. I was never shown that there’s actual testimony from real people, or that we can triangulate on historical events even when we can’t fully prove them. Those tools weren’t in the curriculum.
What that produced - in me and many others - was a feeling of being forced toward deep metaphysical beliefs rather than led to them. Add to that the abuse scandals, the institutional failures, the difficulty of reconciling an all-loving God with eternal damnation. The connection broke. I became an atheist.
The problem with where I landed
Atheism is a negative claim. It says there is no God. But it doesn’t replace what’s removed.
It doesn’t replace an absolute sense of good and evil. It doesn’t replace meaning that feels eternal rather than instrumental. It doesn’t replace the stable ground people stood on for thousands of years. There are philosophical traditions that attempt to do that, but atheism itself does not.
Lest I sound like a doomer: I’m not claiming the world is getting worse, or that you can’t feel fulfilled without religion. Plenty of people do. What I’m saying is that even if you treat religion as just civilizational software - the operating system of meaning, morality, and orientation - it was doing real work. And we haven’t built anything that fills the void it left.
You see the cracks. The meaning crisis. The purpose crisis. The collapse of trust in institutions. The rise of conspiracy thinking to fill explanatory vacuums. The loneliness epidemic. We are wealthier and more connected and more informed than any humans in history, and we are, by many measures, less okay.
I’m not saying religion is the only answer to that. I’m saying it was an answer, and we removed it without replacing it.
What I’m actually doing
This is the part where you might expect me to tell you I’ve found Jesus.
I haven’t. I’m not there.
What I am is curious. I’m Christ-curious - to use a phrase that’s becoming a thing. And I’m trying to do something specific with this exploration.
I’m trying to apply first-principles reasoning to Christianity. The same way I try to apply it to politics, geopolitics, and culture. Not “trust the tradition.” Not “trust the scholars.” Trust the reasoning, see where it leads.
I don’t expect rationality to lead me, or anyone else all the way to divine revelation. But I suspect it can help a leap of faith feel more like a step.
Plus, it’s fun.
In the next section I’ll share some of the mental models and critical thinking tools I’m applying here. They’re useful for thinking about uncertainty in any arena of life - including politics, current events, history.
And these days, with so much uncertainty, they are more important than ever.
From here, you’ll learn:
How to identify the hidden incentives of witnesses to determine what is actually true.
Why the most powerful proof of a claim is often found in what the enemies agree on.
How to prove when someone is telling the truth or crafting a myth.
The exact method to stop thinking in paralyzing binaries — and what to do instead.
