Hallucination In Christianity

Introduction Since the crucifixion of Jesus, opponents of Christianity have directly criticized the religion’s foundation, attempting to belie the historicity of Christ’s physical resurrection. Aiming to nullify Christianity and confute the prospect of supernatural intervention or divine involvement, skeptics and opponents of Christianity continually disseminate naturalistic alternatives, or conspiracy theories, to contradict the resurrection account. One popular notion reasons against the validity of witness accounts, postulating post-crucifixion appearances of Jesus were merely hallucinations, temporarily experienced by some of Jesus’ early disciples. This paper will examine this hallucination hypothesis, showing inconsistencies within the
Advocates, such as Dr. Keith M. Parsons (Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Houston, Clear Lake), contend the groups suffered a “mass” (or “collective”) hallucination, asserting that hallucinations are not always isolated, and “mass hallucinations are extremely well documented.” This argument is problematic in multiple respects. First, Parsons fails to provide empirical data and/or results from clinical experimentation, to validate his claim. Contrarily, Dr. Gary A. Sibcy (an expert in the field of clinical psychology)
An event cannot be both objective (a sensible experience, independent of individual thought, and perceptible by all observers ) and subjective (an experience conditioned by personal mental characteristics, lacking in reality or substance ) at the same time, and in the same respect. Dr. Gary R. Collins (clinical psychologist and distinguished author) affirms this, stating,
Hallucinations are individual occurrences. By their very nature only one person can see a given hallucination at a time. They certainly are not something which can be seen by a group of people….Since an hallucination exists only in this subjective, personal sense, it is obvious that others cannot witness it.
To suggest an entire group of people could suffer from simultaneous sensory malfunctions, producing a collective hallucination in which all participants agree on the subject of the hallucination, and the hallucination’s actions and speech, runs contrary to scientific evidence and the current medical understanding of hallucination phenomena. Therefore, the hallucination hypothesis proves explanatorily impotent, unable to account for group encounters with Jesus, after his resurrection.
The Hypothesis