Hallucinations 101 — Peter

Is God Dead?

Last week, we looked in detail at the scientific implausibility of group hallucinations. That is, since hallucinations are personal mental events, groups of people can’t hallucinate the same thing in the same place at the same time. The significance of this is that half of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus are to groups of people (cf 1 Cor 15:5-8).

But what about the appearances of the risen Jesus to individuals? After all, individuals certainly could have hallucinated Jesus, right? In fact, in Paul’s list (1 Cor 15:5-8), Jesus first appears to the individual Cephas, or Peter. Now, regarding Peter, on the surface, we do have some reason to believe that he may have suffered a hallucination.