➘ Source Article

◉ A plain English walkthrough of the symbolic logic above.

• Groups experience dissonance when their expectations fail.
  If a community strongly believes something and then sees events unfold that contradict those expectations, the clash creates mental discomfort. This discomfort is called cognitive dissonance.
• Cognitive dissonance pushes people to reinterpret reality.
  When that inner tension arises, people usually don’t abandon their belief outright. Instead, they feel psychological pressure to explain the contradiction away by reframing it.
• The disciples’ core expectation was that Jesus would be a triumphant Messiah.
  They followed him because they thought he would usher in God’s kingdom with visible victory.
• The crucifixion destroyed that expectation.
  Jesus’ shameful public execution directly contradicted their hope of messianic triumph.
• This contradiction created dissonance among his followers.
  They could not easily reconcile their belief in Jesus with the humiliating way he died.
• To resolve the dissonance, they reinterpreted his death.
  Rather than admitting they were wrong, they began to say his death was not a failure but part of God’s plan—an essential step in salvation.
• Visions and grief experiences confirmed the reinterpretation.
  In the aftermath of his death, followers had vivid grief-related experiences—visions, hallucinations, or strong perceptions of his presence. These personal experiences reinforced the idea that Jesus had been vindicated by God.
• Communal reinforcement amplified this reinterpretation.
  As these stories were shared within the group, the community’s solidarity deepened. Repetition and mutual reinforcement turned reinterpretation into tradition.
• Thus the Gospels emerged as postdictions.
  The written accounts were not neutral histories but the crystallization of these reinterpretations, visions, and communal reinforcements. They represent stories reshaped under pressure, not objective eyewitness reporting.
• This undermines the apologetic claim of “no motive to lie.”
  The disciples did not need to lie deliberately. Psychological forces and group dynamics naturally transformed defeat into victory.
• The conclusion is that postdiction explains the Gospels better than literal resurrection.
  It is more plausible that the resurrection accounts arose from human cognitive and social processes than from an actual supernatural event.

◉ Flowing Narrative Summary

The disciples of Jesus entered his ministry with a strong expectation: that he would fulfill the role of Messiah and inaugurate a decisive victory for God’s people. When he was executed in shame, this expectation was shattered, producing a deep inner tension. Human beings rarely abandon cherished convictions outright when faced with such disconfirmation. Instead, they feel the psychological strain of cognitive dissonance and seek to reinterpret reality in ways that preserve their commitments. For the earliest followers, the crucifixion could not remain a mark of failure; it had to be reimagined as the very heart of God’s plan.

This reinterpretation was not sustained by logic alone. In the grief-filled aftermath, some disciples reported vivid experiences of Jesus’ presence—visions, dreams, or perceptions common to bereavement. These experiences served as powerful confirmations that their reframing of his death was correct. As these stories circulated, the tightly knit community reinforced and amplified them. What began as a response to dissonance soon crystallized into tradition, repeated in worship, teaching, and eventually written down as Gospel narrative.

In this light, the resurrection accounts appear less as deliberate fabrications and more as emotionally charged postdictions, stories reshaped by the interplay of grief, loyalty, psychological necessity, and communal reinforcement. The apologetic claim that the apostles “had no motive to lie” misses the point: they did not need to lie at all. Their narratives emerged organically out of the human drive to find meaning in loss, coherence in contradiction, and hope in despair. When weighed against the hypothesis of literal historical resurrection, this explanation better accounts for the features of the Gospels and aligns with what we know about human cognition and social dynamics.