You are going beyond the point here. No one disagrees certain mindsets are primed to frame anything they don’t understand as magic. What we are saying is that if aliens tried to trick ancient humans into thinking magic occurred, they’d succeed. That’s what Clarke’s Law entails in this context. I am not asserting anything else but that.

Perhaps I haven’t understood the point after all: I didn’t read #4 as attributing the resurrection of Jesus to fraud at all, any more than the air forces were trying to trick the local people. I don’t think any inexplicable technology justifies/imposes a belief in magic, no more than any inexplicable phenomenon ever does. That’s what I think Clarke’s Third Law says. I think experience shows that those people who already believe in “magic” or already don’t want to believe in a dully materialist world may be convinced. These people already can’t distinguish science/technology from magic because they already think magically some of the time.

True in hypothetical space is too smart for me.

Joseph Smith was a liar but, as Ripley advised The Boy Who Followed Ripley, never confess, and Smith didn’t. Smith died like he was telling the truth. Still, the Ronson book can be found used, so maybe…

By the way, the list above forgot time travelers with a defibrillator.

I always wonder in these discussions how specifically the kludged together beliefs are being held by the individual. On a broad, population-wise level, the answer is pretty clear: Religions serve both broad human and specifically elite interests (so they’re both, from a sociological perspective, functional and conflict-oriented), they have utility, and so to keep them plausible against countervailing evidence there need to be ad hoc explanations made. Yet they also need to have some degree of certitude. As much as a more reasonable and prosocial Christian may not be particularly motivated to think the Judgment is right around the corner, the doomsayer and the street preacher need that terror appeal. It’s thus useful across the religion both for there to be a vague timeline (to avoid falsification) and for there to be concrete and near-term timeline (to induce action).

But on an individual level, people are thinking differently. Some people are just regurgitating scripture or some explanatory framework they heard from someone else. Some people are trying to figure out an answer, and of those, some are confident their hack makes sense and some aren’t. Some almost certainly know that the explanation sucks and this is a kludge, but are either grifters or think the ideology is too useful. There’s definitely the psychology of authoritarian apologia, where Dear Leader must be right, so everything else can be redefined to make sure they are. And some people are actually willing to just say “God’s plan is complicated, I don’t have to get everything and I can’t”.

(Meanwhile note that real world demonstrations of this exist in every attempt made to use hidden technology to trick people into thinking real magic, faith healing, talking to the dead, and so on, are occurring. The number of people tricked is astounding. There is a reason Penn & Teller frame their show in terms of repeatedly warning people that what they are doing isn’t real magic. And yet people who don’t even know the tech exists or how it works are the most easily fooled.)

Maybe you are misunderstanding the point. The Cargo Cults are a real phenomenon (and no one was trying to trick them); the line you are talking about is regards hypothetical phenomena. I am not saying it’s plausible aliens actually arranged the resurrection of Jesus—I am quite importantly saying it is not. Yet aliens are still more plausible than angels, because of (among other things) the fact that Clarke’s Third Law is demonstrably true in the required hypothetical space.

It is a fact that any technology suitably advanced will be to someone indistinguishable from magic, as we have ample demonstration from real science and science fiction. In this case that simply means, “Could aliens millions of years more advanced than we are now trick first century humans into thinking gods and angels and resurrections and whatnot were real using technology.” Factually, they could. If you do not comprehend how, see: the entire history of demonstrations of this in fiction, which is an empirical exploration of that very hypothetical space (I recommend “Who Watches the Watchers” and “Devil’s Due”).

As for lizard people, follow the link. There are people who really believe it. Those same people also probably believe they hide themselves as Jews. Both are true. That all conspiracy theories, no matter how sincerely believed, tend to end in “the Jews,” see Jon Ronson’s excellent investigation in Them. And yes, he even embedded himself with the lizard people theorists. Whole chapter on it.

Also, does anyone literally believe in “lizard people?” Isn’t that code for the inhumanity of Jews? Everyone talking about lizard people is just a scifi cosplay anti-Semite?

Just to keep going with it, Michael Heiser (as much as I generally like him) used that Corinthians quote to explain why the messianic prophecies are so vague and only make sense after it all came together. Which is kind of telling.

Thanks for writing this up, I’ve had a bunch of thoughts I hadn’t seen mirrored yet about how ad hoc and slapped together Christian just so stories (sorry, meant to type “theology”) are, but naturalistic explanations of the world don’t have access to entities whose specific role it is to make Christianity look fake or at least lie make people hate it and want to suppress the truth about it. It also gives God an excuse to be unclear, since you can’t have the spiritual war enemies getting ahold of the intel.

The whole reason why they’re rebelling against the objectively good and perfect system that God created for them to participate in is also just taken for granted.

I’ve also thought it was funny that the claim was that someone was resurrected into glory and immortality, but you don’t get to talk to him and see for yourself because he went up.