Yes, there is evidence for Easter. There's also "evidence" that Bigfoot eludes capture by switching dimensions

This is my reply to an article by S. Joshua Swamidass, entitled

 

Is There Evidence for Easter? A Scientist’s List.

April 15, 2017

Science is full of trust-like faith. We believe grand, counterintuitive things because we trust the accounts of trustworthy sources.

But unlike religious faith, the "scientific" things are empirically demonstrable.  That doesn't mean that every theory purporting to be "scientific" is empirically demonstrable.  Dark Mater/Dark Energy are foolish concepts and "discovered" for no other reason than the explain why the universe doesn't appear to have resulted from a "big bang".

Mass is energy.

That is true.  Energy and Matter are just different ways of expressing the same thing. There is no such thing as energy in the absence of matter, or matter in the absence of energy.

Time slows with gravity and acceleration. The earth…

 Eistein's theory of relativity is less empirically demonstrable than the existence of trees, and otherwise is hardly relevant to the issue of Jesus' resurrection.

Science is full of trust-like faith. We believe grand, counterintuitive things because we trust the accounts of trustworthy sources.

And many times people are idiots for setting forth as "scientific" certain theories utterly lacking in empirical demonstration, such as dark matter/dark energy.  I don't "trust as true" anything that is not empirically demonstrable.  Now rack your brain trying to think of "truths" that aren't empirically demonstrable, but which are "obviously" true anyway.  YOu should start by saying "you can't even prove your own existence!", so those watching the discussion can recognize the stupid trifling sophistry you are willing to engage in just so you don't have to admit that Jesus' resurrection is lacking in evidence.

Mass is energy. Time slows with gravity and acceleration. The earth moves around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour. Two black holes merged 1.3 billion years ago, sending gravitational waves through space that arrived last year at LIGO. In principle, this is all reproducible, but just in principle. If we personally verified and reproduced every experiment ourselves, science would grind to a complete halt. Yes, we emphasize evidence. But we usually trust the scientific consensus.

But only tentatively.  I don't see a reason to doubt the speed of earth's revolving around the sun...but at the same time, I wouldn't bet my life that this scientific statement is necessarily the truth.

And again, all of the issues you raise are matters that were capable of at least some degree of empirical observation that didn't require assessing witness credibility.  They are thus not analogous to Jesus' resurrection, which you don't demonstrate unless you find in favor of the credibility of the alleged witnesses.  Figuring out how fast the earth revolves around the sun doesn't require the investigator to engage in the nearly frivolous enterprise of trying to establish the identity and credibility of alleged authors from 2,000 years ago.

Yes, we are skeptical and regularly challenge accepted theories. But we usually trust other scientists’ reports of what they have seen.

And we are stupid to do so unless we see an empirical basis for those modified theories, a basis that doesn't require us to make a judgment call about the scientist's credibility or lack thereof.  The scientific consensus that Jupiter exists does not depend on any one scientist's credibility, and it is too absurd to believe the consensus is the result of conspiracy.  So my trust in the scientific consensus that Jupiter exists, has more empirical warrant than does somebody else's "trust" that "Matthew" was telling the truth in saying Jesus rose from the dead (Matthew 28).

I am a scientist. Still, on Easter, I celebrate that Jesus rose from the dead about 2,000 years ago.

And there are also scientists who graduated from Brigham Young University...who despite their academic credentials, still put full faith and trust in the accuracy and historicity of one of the biggest confirmed religious frauds known to man, the Book of Mormon. So I fail to see how "I'm a smart guy over in this area" is supposed to have relevance to "I also put trust in certain religious claims".  Otherwise, atheism should be considered true, because many are scientists are academics themselves.  My advice is to avoid trying to connect "I'm a smarter-than-average person" with "therefore the religious views I've chosen to put faith are, are more than likely true".

This event, in first-century Palestine, is the cornerstone of everything.

No, there is a possibility that Christians discount but which remains a possibility nonetheles:  that Jesus was the true Son of God, but fame went to his head, he ended up displeasing God, and so while much of his teaching is from 'God', he did not rise from the dead.  That couldn't be the case if Jesus himself is God, second person of the Trinity, of course, but plenty of ancient Christians believed that Jesus was just a normal human being whom God specially selected to BECOME the Messiah.  That's called adoptionism, and the idea that Jesus didn't become God's son until his baptism is attested to by the phrase "this day have I begotten thee" which is an early and widespread textual variant for Luke 3:22.  Metzger doesn't do a very good job trying to characterize that variant as secondary, but admits it is the Western reading prevalent in the first 3 centuries:

The Western reading, “This day I have begotten thee,” which was widely current during the first three centuries, appears to be secondary, derived from Ps 2.7. The use of the third person (“This is…in whom …”) in a few witnesses is an obvious assimilation to the Matthean form of the saying (Mt 3.17). (Textual Commentary, 4th rev. ed. 2002, p. 112-113)

here's a blog that discusses the introductory issues.  Swamadiss continues:

In the same way that trust-like faith in science is connected to evidence, so is the faith I have in the Resurrection.

But not empirically demonstrable evidence.  To trust that somebody did something 2,000 years ago requires a finding that the source, one or more persons who wrote about it, are trustworthy.   We don't need to "trust" scientists in that sense when we adopt their views on most things today, unless of course we water down "scientific" so that it can even refer to claims for which there is no evidence whatsoever...like Dark Matter.

What is the evidence from which grew my trust? A brief and incomplete outline is included here.[1] This evidence is not an answer, but it raises the question. All we need is curiosity.

1. Without the physical Resurrection, two thousand years of history are left begging for explanation, like a movie missing a key scene.

The best explanation is that the resurrection of Jesus was mere legendary embellishment over time.  If two facets of Christian scholarly consensus are true (i.e., Mark is the earliest gospel, and he didn't intend to write anything after 16:8), then the earliest form of the gospel did not contain resurrection appearance narratives.  No, you cannot speculate that maybe Mark "chose to exclude" these while yet believing such stories were true.  In light of how strongly these support Mark's goal of showing Jesus to be the divine son of God, and in light of your own admission that Jesus' resurrection is the most important of all Christian events, it is highly unlikely that Mark believed the resurrection appearance narrative stories to be true but yet "chose to exclude" them.  You lose your religion where you lose the historicity.  Historicity turns on how probable one's explanatory theory is.

No other event in all recorded history has reached so far across national, ethnic, religious, linguistic, cultural, political, and geographic borders.

You have no reason to appeal to the popularity of the resurrection belief in the last 2,000 years, except because you are trying to argue from popularity to truth.  That's called the ad populum fallacy.

The message spread with unreasonable success across the world.

So did the popularity of heretics like Marcion.No doubt because most people back then simply trusted what a religious leader said, without caring to, or being able to, seriously check on the veracity of his claims.  The fact that the physical resurrection of Jesus is the form of Christianity that became most popular, does not testify to it's truth, otherwise, the fact that the false religion of Marcion and other forms of Christian Gnosticism grew by leaps and bounds to the point of being perceived by Irenaeus and other early fathers as a legitimate dangerous threat to the church, should be considered when assessing how true they were...which is, of course, stupid.

During just the first few centuries, it spread without political or military power,

Any religious group that caters to the needs of the poor and illiterate, would likely spread without political or military power. 

prevailing against the ruthless efforts of dedicated, organized and violent opposition.

The political opposition to pre-4th century Christianity would also have been against all its forms, such as Marcionism.  It isn't like it was only the bodily resurrected/Trinity/JesusIsGodAndWasARealFleshAndBloodMan version of Christianity that was perceived to be a threat. That is, your logic suggests that Marcionism, by growing in popularity despite political opposition, was surely the truth.

How did a small band of disempowered Jews in an occupied and insignificant territory of ancient Rome accomplish this unequaled act?

They didn't, their gullible followers decided to make more of it than it really was.  For example, Benny Hinn is not responsible for his own popularity and success, its actually the dumb fucks who find him to be greater than he really is, who are responsible for his popularity.

[2] What happened so many years ago that reframed all human history?

Dionysius Exiguus of Scythia Minor is responsible for Anno Domini.

2. With dates established by radiometric analysis, prophecies from centuries before Jesus’ birth predict his life, death, and resurrection.

Wrong, NOTHING in the OT predicted anything about Jesus.   Would you like to give it a try?  What, maybe Daniel 9 contains an "amazingly accurate prediction" of Jesus?   Jesus is the best explanation for the "Suffering Servant" in Isaiah 53?  Good luck.

One thing you won't be doing is pretending that you can demonstrate that the OT predicted Jesus' resurrection...despite your own belief that the resurrection was the highlight of Jesus' messianic purpose.

[3] The great scientist Blaise Pascal identifies this as the “tangible proof” for people who want evidence that God exists. These prophecies include specific details that Jesus and His followers could not control. For example, before the Romans invented crucifixion, Psalms 22:16 described the piercing of Jesus’ hands and feet.

1 For the choir director; upon Aijeleth Hashshahar. A Psalm of David. My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.

 2 O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer; And by night, but I have no rest.

 3 Yet You are holy, O You who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel.

 4 In You our fathers trusted; They trusted and You delivered them.

 5 To You they cried out and were delivered; In You they trusted and were not disappointed.

 6 But I am a worm and not a man, A reproach of men and despised by the people.

 7 All who see me sneer at me; They separate with the lip, they wag the head, saying,

 8 "Commit yourself to the LORD; let Him deliver him; Let Him rescue him, because He delights in him."

 9 Yet You are He who brought me forth from the womb; You made me trust when upon my mother's breasts.

 10 Upon You I was cast from birth; You have been my God from my mother's womb.

 11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near; For there is none to help.

 12 Many bulls have surrounded me; Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me.

 13 They open wide their mouth at me, As a ravening and a roaring lion.

 14 I am poured out like water, And all my bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; It is melted within me.

 15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd, And my tongue cleaves to my jaws; And You lay me in the dust of death.

 16 For dogs have surrounded me; A band of evildoers has encompassed me; They pierced my hands and my feet.

 17 I can count all my bones. They look, they stare at me;

 18 They divide my garments among them, And for my clothing they cast lots.

 19 But You, O LORD, be not far off; O You my help, hasten to my assistance.

 20 Deliver my soul from the sword, My only life from the power of the dog.

 21 Save me from the lion's mouth; From the horns of the wild oxen You answer me.

 22 I will tell of Your name to my brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will praise You.

 23 You who fear the LORD, praise Him; All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him, And stand in awe of Him, all you descendants of Israel.

 24 For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from him; But when he cried to Him for help, He heard.

 25 From You comes my praise in the great assembly; I shall pay my vows before those who fear Him.

 26 The afflicted will eat and be satisfied; Those who seek Him will praise the LORD. Let your heart live forever!

 27 All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, And all the families of the nations will worship before You.

 28 For the kingdom is the LORD'S And He rules over the nations.

 29 All the prosperous of the earth will eat and worship, All those who go down to the dust will bow before Him, Even he who cannot keep his soul alive.

 30 Posterity will serve Him; It will be told of the Lord to the coming generation.

 31 They will come and will declare His righteousness To a people who will be born, that He has performed it.

 (Ps. 22:1-30 NAU)

 An examination of the original context of Psalm 22 indicates is says things totally inconsistent with a "Christian' view of Jesus:

the speaker complains that God doesn't answer his cries (v. 2) despite the fact that theologically, the Father and Son have exactly the same will

the speaker metaphorically characterizes himself as "a worm and not a man" (v. 6), when in fact theologically Jesus is the ultimate Man, and as such, not only do we never find him talking shit about himself like this in the gospels, it is doubtful, on theological grounds, that Jesus would speak this way about himself. Would God, second person of the Trinity, describe himself as a worm?

the speaker says of God "you have been my God from my mother's womb", and in context, the author was the sinner David, who thus meant it in the sense of himself being a sinner who worships God.

The speakers prays for God to deliver him from the "sword", and again states his is troubled by dogs (v. 20).  Conservative Christians, with their bullshit high Christology, do not believe Jesus would ever seriously ask the Father to be spared from death the way David was requesting in this Psalm.

The speaker prays to be delivered from the metaphorical lion's mouth (v. 21), and of course, to be bitten by a lion is to be pierced. And since the "lion" that does the piercing is metaphorical in this context, so is the piercing effect mentioned in the immediately previous context of v. 16.   Again, the sense of "piece" that is meant in context, is clear...and it's manifestly not the "drove nails into his hands and feet" stuff.

Even Christian scholarly works admit that the Christian sense stems solely from the Lxx, the original Hebrew did not support it, so there is the additional problem of why the Greek is imparting more Christian meaning to the text than was originally present:

In Psalm 22:16 (21:17 LXX) we read: “they pierced my hands and feet.” It is true that the reading of the (possibly corrupt) MT would not have suggested this correspondence (“as a lion my hands and feet”), but elsewhere in the passion story references to Psalm 22 employ the Greek version. If the passion narrative depended heavily on the creative role of the OT, we would have expected “passion prophecy” to have rendered this connection explicit.

Green, J. B., McKnight, S., & Marshall, I. H. (1992). Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Page 603). Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.

Finally, the sense of "pieced my hands" isn't meant literally by the Psalmist, for it is no less metaphorical than the the human enemies he characterizes as lions, bulls and dogs. So now we have the problem of the Christian interpretation taking what was originally mere metaphor, and insisting it was literal...all because they need to have their OT "predict" Jesus with "amazing accuracy".  Sorry, I sleep well at night, not worrying in the least whether Christianity has the least substance to it.

Isaiah 53 is a particularly important prophecy that lays out the story of Jesus and the meaning of the Resurrection (Isaiah 52:13-53:12). Is this evidence of an Intelligence outside our time confirming Jesus’ authority?

 No, the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 is spoken of by the 7th century b.c. Isaiah in past tense terms, and only Christians inist that using the past tense to predict the future is "reasonable".  Furthermore,

the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 "opened not his mouth".  Well, did Jesus open his mouth during his time of affliction and oppression? Yes, read John 18:33 ff.  Finally, even Christian commentators admit this exactly how to interpret Isaiah 53 has produced a storm of scholarly controversy ever since Christians began using it, and it doesn't make good sense to use a biblical matter embroiled in scholarly controversy to "prove" something, indeed, the commentary sets out to show fulfillment of the passage by servants/sufferers who lived hundreds of years before Jesus, a thing a Christian commentary would never do if Jesus were the "obvious" fulfillment of the passage:

The bibliography on this topic is enormous, indicating the great interest in the subject and the lack of agreement on it. The interpretation of these passages and the discussion of identification (who is the sufferer?) have continued at least from the first century (Acts 8:34) until now...This commentary will show that “the sufferer passages” are distinct from “the servant passages” sufferer and the servant are not the same person and that the in the Vision. Israel and the Persian emperor (Cyrus or Darius) are called “the anointed” or “the servant of Yahweh” (See Excursus: Identifying the “Servant of Yahweh”). But the sufferer in 50:4–9 and the dead sufferer in chap. 53 is more likely to be a leader in Jerusalem (perhaps Zerubbabel) who has been executed before the arrival of authorities sent by Darius.

Watts, J. D. W. (2002). Vol. 25: Word Biblical Commentary : Isaiah 34-66. Word Biblical Commentary (Page 227). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

Swamidass continues:

3. Jesus was a real person in history who died. Several manuscripts from multiple sources, including Jewish historians, describe a man named Jesus who lived and was executed.

You gain nothing by noting that Jesus was real.

[4] Specific details reported about His execution confirm.“Blood and water” spilled from a spear wound in His side. He really died and was not merely unconscious.[5]

Never mind that conservative Christian scholars like Craig Evans, by denying that Jesus ever actually mouthed many statements attributed to him in the gospel of John, therefore views the gospel of John as not necessarily setting forth actual history, but theological interpretation.  

4. The early accounts of the Resurrection and prophecies predicting it were reliably transmitted through history.

Which is irrelevant to the Christian scholarly consensus that mark was the earliest gospel, and that Mark didn't write anything after verse 8, necessarily implying that the earliest gospel author either did not know about, or did not trust in the reliability of, any resurrection appearance narrative.  

As of 2014, more than 66,000 early manuscripts are known, orders of magnitude more than other ancient texts. Many are carbon dated to before Jesus’ time on earth and the first few centuries after. We see accounts nearly unaltered in the earliest manuscripts.[6] A pattern of consistency emerges. There are variations in the manuscripts, but nothing invalidates the reliability of the Resurrection accounts.

Except Mark's screaming silence.  Apparently, the original gospel story was merely that the women found out from some anonymous man or angel that Jesus rose from the dead...and that's all. the original gospel story did not contain resurrection appearance narratives. And if Mark is the earliest of the gospels, then the later gospels having such narratives points toward typically expected legendary development, by which stories increase in detail and drama over time with each retelling.  No wonder some dumb ass Christians have "suddenly discovered" that the Christian scholar consensus is wrong, and that Matthew, with his resurrection narrative, was the earliest of the gospels.

5. Accounts of the Resurrection include inconvenient and unflattering details,

forgers can make up embarrassing details for the purpose of increasing the drama of the narrative or the lesson learned at the end, therefore the "criteria of embarrassment" is of limited utility at best.

that make most sense as attempts to reliably record what had happened, free from embellishment.

That Matthew and Luke embellish, modify and change Mark, is accepted by even "inerrantist" Christian scholars, who also admit they changed his text because they thought Mark's wording would support unorthodox theology:

Mark 6:5 This statement about Jesus’ inability to do something is one of the most striking instances of Mark’s boldness and candor. It is omitted by Luke 4:16–30 and toned down by Matt 13:58. The statement should not trouble contemporary Christians. God and his Son could do anything, but they have chosen to limit themselves in accordance to human response.

Brooks, J. A. (2001, c1991). Vol. 23: Mark (electronic e.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 100). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 But if Mark's statement should not trouble contemporary Christians (i.e., Mark's wording is not reasonably susceptible to supporting low Christology), then what motiviated Luke to omit it and Matthew to "tone it down"?

 Mark 4:38 Not a few have compared the sleeping of Jesus and Jonah. It is, however, a mere coincidence and in no way implies that the story is modeled upon that of Jonah or a passage in Psalms, such as 89:9; 106:9; or 107:23–25. Jesus’ sleeping does suggest confidence in God (cf. Ps 3:5; 4:8; Prov 3:24). Furthermore Jesus’ sleeping is one of many indications in Mark of his humanity. The disciples’ question strongly rebukes Jesus and is another example of Mark’s candor, which Matt 8:25 and Luke 8:24 tone down.

Brooks, J. A, supra

 If Matthew and Luke believed, like today's inerrantists, that Mark's choice of wording is not reasonably interpreted in a way supporting low Christology, then how could Matthew and Luke have been motivated to tone it down?  If it's not a problem or a potential problem, it doesn't need a solution, does it?  And how can you believe the gospel authors espoused "biblical inerancy" (i.e., that Matthew and Luke viewed Mark's text as without error and inspired by God exactly the way Mark wrote it), when modern-day inerrantist Christian scholars are admitting that Matthew and Luke changed or "toned down" Mark's wording?  If YOU had been using Mark's text to help you construct your own gospel, would YOU have changed his wording the way Matthew and Luke did?  Or would your being an "inerrantist" prevent you from making any changes to the divinely chosen wording in the source material?

Mark 5:31 The disciples’ sarcastic reply is an example of Markan candor that is omitted by Matthew (cf. 9:20–22) and toned down in Luke (8:45).

Brooks, J. A., supra

 Swamidass continues:

They do not fit expectations of a fabricated account.

They aren't quite as bad as the 2nd century pseudepigrapha (gee, I wonder where the 2nd century Christians ever got the idea that utterly fictional narratives about Jesus stood a fair chance of being believed by Christians, if in fact 1st century Christians cared only for historically accurate source material?  And that Matthew, Luke and John are fabricating in their resurrection accounts was already shown by the Christian scholarly consensus which says Mark author of the earliest gospel, did not write anything about the resurrection appearances.  Since it is not likely Mark would "chose to exclude" the evidentiary details of the most important aspect about Jesus (his resurrection), Mark's silence isn't because he is "choosing to exclude" such a story, he is silent about Jesus actually appearing to anybody because Mark did not know of, or did not trust in the reliability of, any so-called resurrection appearance story.  No trifle of "maybe this or maybe that" can take this historical justification for skepticism and make it unreasonable.

For example, women are the first witnesses of the Resurrection.

Many Christian scholars think Paul's story of the resurrection witnesses in 1st Corinthians 15 draws on a very early creed, and Paul mentions no women.  

In a culture that did not admit the testimony of a woman as valid evidence in court,

That is bullshit, the law required a woman to give testimony in some cases, Deut. 25:9, and regardless, the NT books do not appear to be written to convince unbelievers, but to convince those already in the faith (i.e., those who have already decided to break away from worldly ways of doing things and adopt new ways...and in 1st century Judaism/Christianity, there were women whose testimony was considered of supreme importance: the prophetesses or daughters of Philip (Acts 21:8).  Even before Christianity, Judaism often honored the word of a woman (Ezekiel 13:23). Priscillia took part in instructing the zealous but ignorant Apollo in correcting his Christian preaching (Acts 18:25).

In short, the gospels were primarily written for those who already adopted the Christian faith, and therefore, were written for those who did not agree with secular view that the testimony of women was worthless.

this detail is surprising. Likewise, all the disciples, the leaders of the early Church, flee as cowards when Jesus is taken.

Which is consistent for followers who aren't convinced their leader can do serious miracles, but not consistent if we assume, as Christians must, that the disciples believed Jesus' miracles were genuinely supernatural.  If they were, those miracles would have given them every reason to be "amazingly transformed" no less than their alleged seeing Jesus risen from the dead would have.  More gospel baloney that has features more consistent with fiction than fact.

6. After Jesus’ violent death, His followers were frightened and scattered.

A literary device to make their subsequent transformation all the more bold and dramatic.

Then, something happened that grew a strong, bold, and confident belief that resisted sustained, murderous opposition.

Baloney!  There is not enough information about exactly how the original apostles died, to justify your  conclusion that they sustained their faith against murderous opposition.  And Mormonism sustained murderous opposition, even opposing the American Military in the 19th century, but does their succeeding against the odds impress YOU?  Then why should Christianity's success against the odds impress anybody else?  For the unfortunate few who seem to think James Patrick Holding's "impossible faith" bullshit answers this criticism, it doesn't.  Richard Carrier, who actually has a Ph.d in history and thus knows what he is talking about, has trounced Holding's thesis, which is probably some of the reason why Holding now hides his rejoinders behind paywalls:

Holding has configured his website so that the place I normally access it from, will not allow me to see anything but unreasdable raw html, but the google cache still provides the evidence that Holding doesn't want his reply to carrier to be known unless you pay for it:

• Reply to Robert Price
• Reply to Richard Carrier [Donation Required]

 See the bottom of that page.

Swamidass continues:

Unlike other movements with executed leaders, once they came back together they did not replace Jesus with one of his family members. Their resistance was entirely non-violent and devoid of political power. Yet they were all suddenly willing to die for what they saw.

Fuck you, the available historical evidence does not permit dogmatism on how willing the original disciples were to become martyrs. What are you doing, parotting Josh McDowell.

What changed them?

Indeed, what change was responsible for Peter becoming a Judaizer after Jesus allegedly rose from the dead?

 14 But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, "If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews? (Gal. 2:14 NAU)

 Swamidass continues:

Why was there not evidence at the time to undermine their belief?

 That's about as stupid as asking "Why was there not evidence at the time to undermine the belief of the Mormons in the 1800's?"  There obviously was, but they found continuing in Mormonism and the practical benefits of it to somehow be a stronger motive than in whether it was actually true.

What convinced them that Jesus was inconceivably greater than his family?

Good question, since it was precisely his own brothers and immediate family who found his claims during his earthly ministry to be unworthy of credit:

1 After these things Jesus was walking in Galilee, for He was unwilling to walk in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill Him.
 2 Now the feast of the Jews, the Feast of Booths, was near.
 3 Therefore His brothers said to Him, "Leave here and go into Judea, so that Your disciples also may see Your works which You are doing.
 4 "For no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known publicly. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world."
 5 For not even His brothers were believing in Him. (Jn. 7:1-5 NAU)

  20 And He came home, and the crowd gathered again, to such an extent that they could not even eat a meal.
 21 When His own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of Him; for they were saying, "He has lost His senses."
 22 The scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, "He is possessed by Beelzebul," and "He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons."
 23 And He called them to Himself and began speaking to them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan?
 24 "If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
 25 "If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.
 26 "If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but he is finished!
 27 "But no one can enter the strong man's house and plunder his property unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house.
 28 "Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter;
 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin "--
 30 because they were saying, "He has an unclean spirit."
 31 Then His mother and His brothers arrived, and standing outside they sent word to Him and called Him.
 32 A crowd was sitting around Him, and they said to Him, "Behold, Your mother and Your brothers are outside looking for You."
 33 Answering them, He said, "Who are My mother and My brothers?"
 34 Looking about at those who were sitting around Him, He said, "Behold My mother and My brothers!
 35 "For whoever does the will of God, he is My brother and sister and mother." (Mk. 3:20-35 NAU)

 I've been asking "apologists" for years how they explain how to reconcile their belief that all of Jesus' miracles were genuinely supernatural, with the gospel facts they are forced to admit are true, namely, that Jesus' immediate family were so unimpressed with his claims/works that they didn't believe him. If his miracles were real, their unbelief impeaches their credibility, should they surface later as believers.  If they refused to believe because Jesus' miracles were false, kiss your religion goodbye.  Hence, apologists don't have a lot of wiggle room as long as they admit the above-cited two passages about Jesus' own family refusing to believe his claims, are historically true.

7. More than just a fact about our past, the Resurrection creates a connection to God that is perceived by people from all times, cultures, socioeconomic statuses, personalities, and metal capacities, across the last 2,000 years of history. Its reach includes some of the most famous scientists: Blaise Pascal, Johann Kepler, Robert Boyle, Gregor Mendel, Asa Gray, Michael Faraday, James Maxwell, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, and Francis Collins. Is this unmatched reach and influence a sign of a living God working His purpose in history?

Ad populum fallacy.  You cannot argue or imply a truth by referring to the fact that it is popular, or accepted by a bunch of smart important people in history.

Some of the evidence here is established by scientific methods. For example, radiocarbon dating demonstrates that Isaiah 53’s prediction that Jesus “see the light of life” after dying was written at least 100 years before His birth.

Irrelevant, Isaiah 53 contains details entirely inconsistent with the Jesus of the gospels, so it doesn't matter if we grant that Isaiah made this "prediction" in 700 b.c. or in 100 b.c.

However, the question of Jesus gently beckons us out from science’s limits, into a reality where love, beauty, goodness, and relationships are real. In the question of the empty tomb, science itself reaches its hard limit. It points to something beyond itself.

Not if you infer all that is reasonable to infer from the Christian scholarly consensus that Mark was the earliest of the 4 gospels and that 16:8 is the last of Mark's own writing.

1. The Resurrection is God’s direct, supernatural action in a specific physical event in history. The obvious finality of physical death (both in modern science and to the ancient world) serves to highlight the role of God in this moment. We never consider God’s action in science, so we cannot even ask the question without opening our minds to things beyond science.[9]

And thus opening our minds to things beyond empirical demonstration.  Now google "William Lane Craig" and then come back here and tell me that I believe in numbers even though I can't demonstrate them empirically.

2. The entire Christian faith hinges on the physical Resurrection of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:14,17),

Jesus himself never taught any such thing, so Paul was likely engaging in the sin of going beyond the word of the Lord here.

but no “Resurrection mechanism” for science to study is proposed.

We also don't propose any "gateway to another dimension" to explain the Bermuda Triangle.

As a mechanism-free singular event that defies all natural laws, we are well outside science’s ability adjudicate facts and understand evidence.

Precisely why we should view any science-contradicting testimony as total bullshit. 

3. The question of the Resurrection is more like an opportunity to fall in love than a scientific inquiry.

yeah, with the resurrection story representing that stupid mule she met at the bar, who makes all those mid-might promises to her when she's in the mood, but who later fails to deliver.

There is evidence, but the Resurrection cannot be studied dispassionately.

Precisely the reason why we should be suspicious that it is not capable of dispassionate resolution.

[10] If Jesus really rose from the dead, it reorders everything.

And if the Easter Bunny is real, this is going to embarrass a lot of mature adults.

Just like falling in love, in changes our view of the world.

The final verdict, for me, is that the Resurrection makes sense through the lens of history.

The final verdict for me is that you appear to have learned your entire resurrection spiel from Josh McDowell, the one Christian apologist most notorious for avoiding debate and peer-review like the plague.

I find the Creator of all that science studies comes to us in this way.

If it keeps you from doing crime, more power to you.  What's false become beneficial to society if what's false keeps you in line. Religion is the opiate of the masses.  Sleep tight.

The evidence is compelling, but not definitive.

"but not definitive"?  How does it feel now that you've said something to make most of your other conservative Christian friends view you are ignorant, weak, or deluded by Satan?

Faith in Jesus is reasonable and is certainly not without evidence.

So?  Rejection of the resurrection of Jesus is certainly reasonable and not without evidence.  Your article has done nothing to tip the balance of historical probabilities in favor of the Christian view.

So, we are left with an invitation. Will we too believe? Will we be curious? Will we respond with trust?

And get caught up in all the ceaseless theological arguments that constantly divide Christians against each other?  FUCK YOU.   I cannot be a Christian because I'm the kind of guy who actually takes my beliefs seriously. 

Cold Case Christianity: Yes, the resurrection is a late legend

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

The Truth About Easter: Is the Resurrection A Late Legend?

Posted: 01 Apr 2018 06:33 AM PDT

At the age of thirty-five, I was a skeptical detective at a large municipal police agency in Los Angeles County. I was also a committed atheist. I accepted several historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth – that he lived in the first century, preached sermons, was crucified by the Romans, and was buried in a tomb that was eventually found to be empty – but I didn’t believe that any of these facts meant the Resurrection of Jesus was true. I knew there were several ways to explain these basic facts without having to resort to a supernatural explanation. For that reason, I thought the Resurrection of Jesus as a mythological fairy-tale.

Sorry to see you degenerate into an attention-whore who has a pathological obsession with using Jesus to promote himself and his marketing gimmicks learned not from the bible but from capitalist billionaires interested in learning how to manipulate others into buying crap.  But if it motivates you to help relieve the suffering of others...

I suspected the gospel accounts related to Jesus had simply been corrupted over time;

You should have believed that the gospel originals corrupted what Jesus said and did.

the story of the Resurrection was little more than a late legend. In fact, I surmised the Resurrection passages were absent in early versions of the story; added later by those who wanted to recast Jesus of Nazareth as Christ, the Son of God.

Then that was your problem right there.  The fiction of the resurrection story doesn't necessarily imply it will be absent from the original.  The gospels are not historically valid biographies corrupted over time.  They are historically dishonest fictions that were corrupted over time.

But once I decided to employ my detective skills to examine the claims of the gospel authors, my view of the Resurrection (and the claims of Easter) began to change.

You never examined the credibility of any of the gospel authors, that's for sure, what with most Christian scholars saying the authors of those documents are anonymous, or it being unknown the degree to which the popularly ascribed author actually contributed to them.  Something's got to be wrong with your brain for you to change your entire life on the basis of 4 anonymous fictions from 2,000 years ago.

I found there were several good, evidential reasons to reject the idea that the Resurrection was a late legendary addition to the Jesus story:
The claims were early.

So were Mormonism's founding fictional claims.

How soon does a disciple of Benny Hinn start telling about what he saw Hinn do onstage?  Is this testimony "early", or do such people usually wait several decades before telling?

Paul famously saw the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus,

Acts 9, 22 and 26 are the NT's most explicit stories of Paul experiencing the resurrected Jesus, and none of them justify saying Paul was an "eyewitness", since, as the story goes, the men he traveled with could not see whatever it was Paul was seeing (9:7, or they saw a light, but not Jesus, 22:9).  It is YOUR problem if you wish to characterize as an "eyewitness" a person who claims to have "seen" things that cannot be seen by normal physical eyesight.

then wrote about it in his letter to the believers in Corinth. This letter was penned very early in history (in the mid AD 50’s), barely twenty years after the Resurrection. Paul repeated the earliest known Christian creed – or oral record – which included the Resurrection as a key component (1 Corinthians 15:3-8)

And the 'gospel' he received revolved solely around Jesus death, burial and resurrection, contrary to the allegedly risen Christ's own understanding in which the gospel consists of having future Gentile followers obey ALL that Jesus taught during his earthly ministry (Matthew 28:20).  Paul infamously is nearly totally apathetic on and silent toward the things Jesus said and did before the crucifixion.

and told his readers that there were hundreds of Resurrection eyewitnesses (still alive) who could be interviewed (verse 6).

And you don't have the first clue upon what basis Paul claims such a thing, when in fact the biblical possibilities include magical means like telepathy (Acts 16:9), telepathy from God (Galatians 1:1, 11), or trips to heaven that, 14 years after the fact leave Paul still ignorant of whether he was outside his own body during the experience (2nd Cor. 12:1-4).  FUCK YOU AND YOUR CREDIBILITY-LACKING "WITNESSES". 

The claims were taught. The earliest claims about Jesus were passed from the eyewitnesses to their personal students.

So if most Christian scholars are correct in saying Mark wrote nothing after 16:8, then the earliest claims about Jesus said nothing about him appearing to anybody after he died, which Mark surely would have included had he known such stories and believed them true, given that the resurrection is the defining attribute of the entire religion.  Sorry Wallace, there's a good reason why Jesus' resurrection appearances are not part of the earliest gospel's original story.  But since you don't plan on acknowledging reality, continue flying around the world and appearing for 2 minutes on various tv and radio shows. Attention whores rarely give up that which facilitates their being the center of attention.

The apostle John, for example, taught what he observed and knew to be true about Jesus to his students, Ignatius and Polycarp.

You apparently know nothing of the critical problems present in the alleged 'writings' by these authors.

They then became leaders in the Church following the death of John, writing their own letters to local congregations. These letters describe Jesus in precisely the same way he was described by the eyewitnesses: born of a virgin,

Despite how important and useful the virgin birth of Jesus would be to help the apostle substantiate their claims about Jesus being the divine Son of God, the only NT authors that ever mention it are Matthew and Luke.  Let's just say all is not well in fundyville.

able to perform miracles

John 7:5, Mark 3:21, Jesus' own family members saw nothing more significant in Jesus' earthly ministry and miracles, except that he was unworthy of belief and likely had gone insane.  So were the brothers and mother of Jesus just brick stupid for denying obvious reality?  or were they possessed of ordinary intelligence, and there's more evidential problems with your miracle-working Jesus than you care to admit?

and having risen from the grave.

 He didn't appear to disinterested witnesses, despite his alleged ability to conduct all evangelism of all unbelievers by personally appearing to them individually. No, Jesus doesn't employ that miracle power because he has no such thing.  Don't say "God's mysterious ways" unless you are ready to accept that excuse as valid when employed by heretics to get their asses out of a theological jam. 

The claims were repeated.

Something that clearly never happens in clearly false religions like Mormonism.

In the earliest accounts of the disciples’ activity after the Resurrection, they are reported to have repeatedly cited this event as their primary piece of evidence to prove that Jesus was God.

No, the earliest account of the gospel of Mark's, and he likely wouldn't remain silent about Jesus actually appearing to witnesses had he believed any such thing were true.  The earliest gospel therefore doesn't constitute the earliest account of the disciples' activity after the resurrection, because the earliest form of the story did not have any "disciples activity after the resurrection" component to it just yet.  Legends take time to build.

From the earliest days of the Christian movement (as recorded in the Book of Acts), eyewitnesses consistently made the claim that Jesus rose from the dead.

The problem being that despite the allegedly 500 others who saw this resurrected Jesus, the NT authors didn't think readers could use the instruction and edification to be found in written accounts of all the other apostles and how they lived and taught.  Indeed Acts says virtually nothing about the Jerusalem apostles and focuses only on Paul's specific form of teaching starting in ch. 9.  It is highly unlikely that if the other apostles had anywhere near the miracle-working power or success that Paul allegedly did, the NT authors would judge such additional accounts irrelevant to Christian encouragement and learning.  Sorry, but they are silent about the majority of the alleged resurrection "witnesses" because most of the original apostles experienced failure and apostasy.  That's the more probable explanation even if you can resort to God's mysterious reasons for excluding such from the bible.  The winners in a historical debate are those whose theories are more plausible, not those who dream up mere possibilities.

In order for the Resurrection of Jesus to be a late legend, the story would have to be both late and a legend.

Mark says nothing useful about it, it IS a late legend.

It is neither. It’s a lot harder to lie about something when people are still alive to expose the deception.

 Tell that to Benny Hinn and Joseph Smith.

The accounts of the Resurrection were written while people who would have known better could still fact-check them.

Even though you are presumably aware of the Christian scholarly consensus that exactly who wrote the gospels and the degree to which "apostles" contributed therein, is a big fat unknown.

Despite this truth, the earliest New Testament documents include the Resurrection story,

The consensus of Christian scholars is that Mark is the earliest of the gospels, and there is also consensus among them that Mark did not write anything after 16:8.  Sorry, but the earliest NT documents do not include the resurrection.   I think this is the part where you insist that the unbeliever has an obligation to become as educated in biblical matters as these Christian scholars before he can be justified to adopt this majority view.  Well fuck you.

and the record of the early Church fathers demonstrates that the account was not altered over time.

That's bullshit in the eyes of many modern Christian "inerrantist" scholars who agree that Matthew and Luke often "softened" or otherwise changed Mark to get rid of problems created by his specific choice of wording.  It's not a large leap from their comfort in changing the inerrant word of God, to changing historical facts to suit literary needs, such as conservative resurrection scholar Licona and others say with respect to Matthew's zombie resurrection story in Matthew 27:52.

Whatever you may think of the Resurrection of Jesus, it is not a late legend.

Have fun trying to pretend that Mark wrote about it, but the ending was lost before the time of our earliest extant manuscripts. 

In fact, for millions of Christians around the world, the Easter account of Jesus’ Resurrection is still the most reasonable inference from the evidence.

Gee, really?

Cold Case Christianity: Yes, the disciples lied about the resurrection of Jesus

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

The Truth About Easter: Did The Disciples Lie About the Resurrection?

Posted: 31 Mar 2018 07:30 AM PDT

Homicide detectives are perhaps the least trusting people in the country.

That's because they know perfectly well that the only correct explanations for data are purely naturalistic.  If a criminal suspect's alibi is that he was in two different places at the same time, you don't ask the jury to consider the possibility of the supernatural, you tell the jury that because miracles don't happen, the suspect is obviously guilty.

My own experience investigating murders has taught me to consider everyone a liar – until, at least, I have good reason to believe otherwise. I know that sounds pessimistic, but I learned a long time ago that mysteries don’t get solved if you believe everything you’re told. Maybe that’s why I rejected the claims of Christianity for so many years. I was an atheist until the age of thirty-five and like many other non-believers, I thought the claims related to the Resurrection of Jesus were most likely lies on the part of the alleged eyewitnesses.

You had the right attitude.  Can you imagine how horrific the downfall of America's justice system would be if the Courts started allowing defense attorneys to argue to the jury that they are allowed to seriously consider miracles as a way of explaining the Defendant's actions? 

Then I examined these claims using the tools of a detective.

In my years working robberies and homicides, I had the opportunity to investigate (and break) several conspiracy efforts. As a result, I now know what it takes to accomplish a conspiracy.

Actually, you don't know shit about what it would take to succeed in a first-century conspiracy to lie about Jesus.  They don't teach genre-identification at Homicide School.

Successful conspiracies typically involve the following five conditions:

A small number of conspirators – The smaller the number of conspirators, the more likely the conspiracy will be a success.

Generously forgetting the serious problems there are with apostolic authorship of two of the gospels, the resurrection accounts in the NT which come down to us today in first-hand form are Matthew, John and Paul.  That's all.  Since nobody has a clue on what basis Paul could allege that 500 people saw Jesus alive all at once, that's 500 people who were never on your list in the first place.  A small number of conspirators indeed remain.

Lies are difficult to maintain,

Tell that the Benny Hinn, whose live on-stage healings in front of thousands of people testify how easily religious fervor can suspend a person's critical faculties and cause them to automatically interpret anything they see as supporting the religion they've previously chosen to follow.

and the fewer the number of people who have to continue the lie, the better.

We have abundant evidence to support the contention that false religions can start up and become very popular when in fact the cult-leader's claims are total bullshit.  Look at Mormonism.  It's obviously a false form of Christianity, but it still managed to get millions to agree to the bullshit testimonies of the 3 men and 8 men. We know they never saw any gold plates, yet millions of people swear that such testimony was honest.

Mormonism teaches us that a person's desire for the religion to be true, can make them unspeakably forgiving toward the religion's evidentiary shortcomings.  For some reason, most people care more about how the message can change their lives for the better...than in whether the message is actually true.

A short time span – It’s hard enough to tell a lie once; even more difficult to repeat the lie consistently over a long period of time. For this reason, the shorter the conspiracy, the better. The ideal conspiracy would involve only two conspirators, and one of the conspirators would kill the other right after the crime. That’s a conspiracy that would be awfully hard to break.

Read Acts 21:17-24...Paul visits Jerusalem, but James complains to him that the thousands of Jews who have converted, believe in a rumor that says Paul teaches other Jews outside the mainland to abandon Mosaic customs, and James seems to think the situation is desperate because of this rumor (i.e., the fact that a rumor was false in the first century, did nothing to prevent thousands of people from accepting it as true anyway):

 17 After we arrived in Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly.
 18 And the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present.
 19 After he had greeted them, he began to relate one by one the things which God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.
 20 And when they heard it they began glorifying God; and they said to him, "You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Law;
 21 and they have been told about you, that you are teaching all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children nor to walk according to the customs.
 22 "What, then, is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come.
 23 "Therefore do this that we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow;
 24 take them and purify yourself along with them, and pay their expenses so that they may shave their heads; and all will know that there is nothing to the things which they have been told about you, but that you yourself also walk orderly, keeping the Law. (Acts 21:17-24 NAU)

Wallace continues:

Thorough and immediate communication – This is key. One (or more) of the conspirators will eventually be questioned by authorities.

If the authorities give a shit enough about the allegedly false religious claim to bother investigating it.  You only think Christianity bothered unbelievers so much in the first century because you still put stock in that romantic fiction called "Acts".  I only quote it because I know you accept it, not because I myself put any stock in it.  The truth is that if Christianity really was the pacifist crap that Jesus taught, it is not likely that the Romans or synagogue officials would give a fuck about what the apostles were preaching, except in extreme cases.  I'm quite aware of Benny Hinn's alleged history of doing miracles before thousands of eyewitnesses, but I don't lose any sleep at night in my positive certainty that all those witnesses are deluded fools.  Some original Christians may have been arrested due to rumors reaching the ears of the authorities, but it is unlikely that the mere preaching of Christ as risen would create half the fervor that Acts and other NT books pretend it did.

Other co-conspirators had better know everything (and every minute detail) offered in this interaction with questioners. Conspirators need to be able to tell each other what they’ve said to authorities, friends and family members.

Not in the case of the NT, whose 4 gospels were authored by various different persons who obviously didn't have perfect knowledge of the way Jesus-traditions were handed down outside their respective localities...or didn't care.  The tendency of some NT story characters to be open to the incredibly bizarre (2nd Cor. 12:1-4) also throws cold water on your efforts to show how conspiracy cannot explain the rise of the resurrection faith in the first-century church.  When they said they saw Jesus, it was always either 1) only his followers who "saw" him, or 2) they "saw" him in ways that forbid characterizing them as "eye"witnesses.

Conspiracies are greatly helped where the false religion at issue is built upon a garbled conglomeration of vision stories.

Significant Relational Connections – When all the coconspirators are connected in deep and meaningful relationships, it’s much harder to convince one of them to “give up” the other. When all the conspirators are family members, for example, this task is nearly impossible. The greater the relational bond between all the conspirators, the greater the possibility of success.

You seem to forget how meaningful it is that the family of Jesus, including James his brother and their mother, were not impressed by anything Jesus did during his earthly ministry, but either refused to believe him, or drew the conclusion that his claims constituted good evidence that Jesus had become authentically insane, John 7:5, Mark 3:21.  If Jesus' miracles during his earthly ministry were false, kiss your religion goodbye. If the miracles Jesus did during his earthly ministry were real, then the persistent disbelief in them by Jesus' own own family fatally impeaches their credibility for anything else they say, including later changing of the mind and starting to view Jesus as authentically divine.

Little or No Pressure – Few suspects confess to the truth until they recognize the jeopardy of failing to do so. Unless pressured to confess, conspirators will continue lying. Pressure does not have to be physical in nature. When suspects fear incarceration or condemnation from their peers, they often respond in an effort to save face or save their own skin. This is multiplied as the number of coconspirators increases. The greater the pressure on co-conspirators, the more likely the conspiracy is to fail.

I don't see any reason to think the original post-resurrection preaching of the apostles would have created any more "pressure" on them than is felt by Benny Hinn when he goes around preaching his lies and gaining converts despite how easy it is to debunk his miracle claims.  If the book of Acts says the apostolic preaching was resisted actively by secular authorities, I find that to be about as believable as stories about today's secular authorities doing the same to religious fanatics today. As long as they aren't doing anything violent or upsetting the social calm, secular authorities typically don't give a shit.

That’s why I now reject the claim that the disciples of Jesus lied about the Resurrection. The number of conspirators required to successfully accomplish the “Christian conspiracy” would have been staggering.

How many conspirators were involved in substantiated Mormon prophet Joe Smith's claim to have possessed real golden plates?  So many that the number was staggering?

The book of Acts tells us that there were as many as 120 eyewitnesses in the upper room following Jesus’s ascension (Acts 1:15),

It also doesn't name James the brother of the Lord among them nor among the 12 named apostles.  Apparently, this brother of Jesus did NOT just suddenly starting believing Jesus rose from the dead merely because a bunch of followers started saying he did.  Worse, we don't know how it was that James became a leader in the Jerusalem faction of the church, but if we credit certain statements of early church fathers, James was voted into his office, by the others.  Having a brother of Jesus be the leader of the Jerusalem faction has more to do with politics and planning and less to do with what exactly James might have personally believed.

and Paul told the believers in Corinth that hundreds of people claimed to see the risen Christ (1 Corinthians).

And you don't have the first fucking clue whether Paul is speaking from first-hand knowledge or merely repeating hearsay, yet you pretend that this unverifiable bit of mystery is as concrete as the FBI testifying to the existence of cars.

It’s unreasonable to believe the disciples conspired to lie about the Resurrection for the following reasons:

There would have been too many disciples involved in the conspiracy.

False, Acts 21:20 says there were "tens of thousands" of Jews who converted to Christ...and v. 21-24 indicate that they believed as true a rumor that Paul abandoned the customs of Moses when teaching outside Jerusalem.  Apparently, lies could indeed deceive thousands in the first century.

The apostles would have been required to protect their conspiratorial lies for too long (over six decades).

Benny Hinn's miracle claims have been deceiving people for far less than 6 decades, and in modern culture where checking on his claims would be somewhat easier than it would have been in the 1st century.

The apostles had little or no effective way to communicate with one another in a quick or thorough manner, given the limited communication technology of the first century and the geographic distance between the disciples.

Hence explaining the theological inconsistencies and contradictions the NT gave to the world.

While there were pairs of family members in the group of apostolic eyewitnesses, most had no familial relationship to each other at all.

James and Mary are sufficiently close to Jesus, being his immediately biological family members, to justify crediting as truthful their skepticism toward Jesus for the entire 3-4 years that he allegedly worked genuinely supernatural miracles during his earthly ministry.  Don't forget about the famine of 44 a.d. which would have motivated many to join any cause regardless of lack of merit in its claims, like welfare mothers who join the Mormon church today.

The apostles were aggressively pressured and persecuted as they were scattered from Italy to India.

Sure is funny how apostle John allegedly escaped all such travail and lived to a ripe old age.   Sorry, but Acts is mostly fiction, and extra biblical traditions about what the apostles experienced in their preaching is a tangled mixture of legends and truth-stretching.

Don’t get me wrong, successful conspiracies occur every day. But if you think you know of one, it’s because it wasn’t successful.

You are stupid, "success" isn't decided by whether the conspiracy is found out by others, but whether the conspiracy continues to fool millions.  Sure, we both know that Mormonism is a false form of Christianity, but what fool would say Mormonism wasn't "successful"?

If you had salivating delusional followers who continually donated their money to you in spite of how easy it is to prove you to be a fraud, would you really give a shit about a few people in the world who claim to have "exposed" you witih "facts"?  Jerald and Sandra Tanner have been doing an excellent job for nearly 50 years of exposing Mormonism for the lie that it is, yet Mormonism continues to grow and grow and grow.

Apparently, people are not truth-robots.  They will continue hanging onto a religious claim even if they are aware there is heavy and virtually unanswerable opposition to it. Its still reasonable to say that the apostles were successful for much the same reason Benny Hinn and Mormonism were.  People want to join a cause that has something positive to say and more so if the cause feeds them, and if it be religious, they are very uncaring toward outsiders who claim to have evidence against the movement.  So you do not support the resurrection preaching as true by noting that opposition from outsiders didn't slow it down.

Cold Case Christianity: Wallace's completely bullshit case for God

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Cumulative Evidence and the Case for God’s Existence (Free Bible Insert)

Posted: 28 Mar 2018 01:17 AM PDT

My cold cases are typically built on circumstantial evidence.

Probably because you have to admit you have no "direct" evidence for you case.  What you don't tell the reader is that cases that are entirely or mostly "circumstantial" dramatically increase the potential for misunderstanding of convicting of an innocent person.  If your god really cared about rescuing me from my hell-bound ways as much as you insist he does, he would more than likely have made his truths more clear than the stupid fortune-cookie bullshit in the bible that has caused Christianity be the ceaselessly splintered religion its always been for 2,000 years.

Cumulative circumstantial cases are incredibly powerful when considered in their totality;

And a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.  Here's the image that comes to my mind when i think of Wallace's chain of cumulative arguments:

the more diverse the forms of evidence (and the more abundant their existence), the more reasonable the conclusion. As jurors consider these large collections of evidence implicating a particular suspect, they must ask themselves a simple question: “Could this guy just be incredibly unlucky, or is he the cause of all this evidence because he is truly guilty?”

And the number of false convictions that has been on the rise in America for the last 50 years testifies that the more circumstantial the case, the more likely it will mislead the independent observer.  Wallace, if you were on trial for murder and you were innocent, and the prosecutor's case was entirely circumstantial, how much faith would you have in the ability of circumstantial cases to reveal truth?  FUCK YOU.

The more the evidence repeatedly points to the defendant, the less likely it is merely a matter of coincidence.

Agreed.

The cumulative case for God’s existence is similarly powerful. There are a number of circumstantial lines of evidence pointing to the existence of God, and the diverse, collective nature of this evidence is most reasonably explained by the existence of a Creator.

And when you allege that this creator is "immaterial" or "non-physical", you are positing things equally as unlikely as "dark matter" and other ridiculous unscientific speculations.  There is no evidence whatsoever that there is even any such thing as a "non-physical" thing that has existence independent of a mind.

This month, we’re featuring a free downloadable Bible insert summarizing a brief cumulative case for God’s existence, built on just five lines of circumstantial evidence:

Do you also plan to issue coupons?  Use sexy women to increase reader response to your god-commercials?  Is there a reason why you promote your god using modern secular marketing techniques that the Holy Spirit apparantly didn't need for hundreds of years?  Or do Christians sometimes get so zealous in their stupidity that they can no longer distinguish convenience from god's will? 

(1) The Temporal Nature of the Cosmos (Cosmological)
(a) The Universe began to exist

No, the standard Big Bang ('BB') model has become so ad hoc that it has evolved  and now takes several alternative forms, all of which do not allow the conclusion that the universe is temporal.  There is plenty of scientific opposition to the big bang, and Wallace's biggest problem is that he cannot explain this opposition as arising from unbelievers who are denying scientific reality merely to avoid having to admit the universe was created.  The Institute for Creation Research, where top academic Christians do all they can to falsify the theory of evolution, also say the Big Bang theory is total bullshit:
 
Maybe Wallace will do as fundamentalists typically do, and also accuse this decidedly conservative Christian think tank of being apostates for denying things Wallace thinks point toward God's existence?

Or will Wallace be objective enough to admit that the BB theory that he thinks is so obvious, actually isn't quite as compelling as he would wish?

Finally, Wallace must worry about how Genesis 1 would have been understood by its originally intended readers/hearers, since this is a basic rule of interpretation or hermeneutics.  it's pretty silly to think the pre-literate Hebrew living in the days of Moses would infer from anything in Genesis that the creation involved an enormous explosion and millions of years of cooling.  They would have understood Genesis to be describing god intelligently creating similar to the way a potter makes pots.  No explosions.  So the more Wallace wants the big bang to be true, the more he supports a theory that is contradicted by the very bible he is trying to justify.

(b) Anything that begins to exist must have a cause

yes, but only in the "re-configuring previously existing atoms" sense. The tree you have in your yard obviously didn't exist 100 years ago, but it didn't come into existence "from nothing", it came from a seed, nourished by other stuff already existing in the nearby dirt.

If THAT is the sense of "begins to exist" that you mean, there is no problem.  Unfortunately, if you meant it that way, then you didn't mean it in the "created from nothing" sense, and in that case, your argument ceases to provide support for the "created from nothing" sense that is meant in Genesis 1:1.

But if you meant "begins to exist" to mean "created from nothing", you hang on to the biblical sense you are apparently arguing for, but then you leave the realm of the scientific:  there is no evidence, whatsoever, that anything has ever popped into existence "from nothing", so the "create from nothing" sense that you meant above, is a sense that cannot be supported by any scientific evidence.  There are at least seven different competing theories of quantum mechanics, and only one of them, the Copenhagen School, alleges that quantum particles can appear from nothing and then go back out of existence again.  So the only possible evidence you could cite, is excessively controversial and cannot be confirmed anyway, and is denied by the majority of physicists.  Such a mater is hardly sufficient to corroborate your claim that things can possibly come into existence from nothing.

And since the first law of thermodynamics says energy and matter can neither be created nor destroyed, there is no reason to think that "matter" itself ever once didn't exist.  Matter spends an awful lot of time being reconfigured into new shapes, but there is no evidence that matter itself ever came into existence.  For this reason alone, it is rational to believe the universe and its matter have simply always existed.  You never get anything new by means of previously non-existing atoms.  You only get something new by taking the atoms that already exist and configuring them into new shapes.  When you burn a log to ash in the fireplace, no matter has disappeared into non-existence, it has simply taken on a changed form.  Since there is no such thing as the absolute annihilation of matter (that's why nuclear explosions are either fusion or fission, they aren't removing anything from the universe), it makes more sense to deny your premise and assert that the universe didn't come into existence, but has simply always existed into the infinite past.

(c) Therefore, the Universe must have a cause

your premises were demonstrably false, so your conclusion doesn't follow.

(d) This cause must be eternal (uncaused), non-spatial, immaterial, atemporal, and personal (having the ability to willfully cause the beginning of the universe)

This is what gives rise to the atheist argument from the incoherence of religious language.  In light of there being no scientific evidence for a god, your need to describe your god in terms that defy all attempts at confirmation (what the fuck does "non-spatial, immaterial" mean?), makes it more likely you need to do that because your god is not real by rather the result of a complex reality-defying fairy tale.It doesn't matter if non-physical gods exists, that is YOUR burden and you have failed it, so you have failed to intellectually obligate anybody to admit your position is more reasonable than atheism.  Start defining your god as a physical being, and many of these justified criticisms disappear.  Continue insisting your god lives in the 12th dimension, and continue being told that your imperfect inconsistent mind is the reason your idea of god has the same attributes.

(e) The cause fits the description we typically assign to God

(2) The Appearance of Design (Teleological)
(a) Human artifacts (like watches) are products of intelligent design
(b) Many aspects and elements of our universe resemble human artifacts
(c) Like effects typically have like causes
(d) Therefore, it is highly probable the appearance of design in the Universe is simply the reflection of an intelligent designer

 if the appearance of specified complexity implies intelligent design, then because the creator has to possess at least as much complexity as the thing created, "god" must also possess specified complexity, and therefore, God's own complexity argues for his being intelligently designed no less than does the 'amazing complexity' of the red blood cell.  I will give up atheism if you give up biblical monotheism.  Deal?

(d) Given the complexity and expansive nature of the Universe, this designer must be incredibly intelligent and powerful (God)

he also must be incredibly barbaric, since the existence of vegetarian animals and insects makes perfectly clear that God doesn't "need" to bring meat-eating or carnivorous life forms into existence, who by nature make other life forms miserable by hunting them.  And you cannot say some of the vegetarian animals in the Garden of Eden became carnivorous after Adam and Eve brought sin into the world, because sin would thus be a degrading effect on the animal's DNA, while the DNA responsible for the carnivorous attributes of certain animals is something you would normally ascribe to intelligent design.  If lions originally had molars, the introducing of sin into the world would not and could not cause those molars to evolve into meat-tearing fangs.  So you cannot use "sin" to justify distancing your god from the barbarity in the carnivore animals.  You are required by your own logic to say that God wanted by intentional design for those animals to tear each other apart. THAT is one reason we just laugh in your face when you insist your God is "loving".  Your own intelligent design argument cannot account for the existence of carnivorous animals, without binding you to the proposition that your god gets a thrill out of watching creatures suffer horrific pain and misery.  It's nice to know your God is a drunk college frat boy who endures carpel tunnel from clicking too much on liveleak.

(3) The Existence of Objective Moral Truth (Axiological)
(a) There is an objective (transcendent) moral law

You are crazy, that's a conclusion that you are mischaracterizing as a premise.  If you think there is some objective moral law that transcends the human mind, that's YOUR burden to show.  You don't.  You fail.

(b) Every law has a law giver

 Correct.

(c) Therefore, there is an objective (transcendent) moral law giver

That doesn't follow logically.  You have not demonstrated that any action is "good" solely for reasons that transcend the human mind.  Come up with a hypothetical act of a man and then demonstrate why its goodness or badness MUST derive from something deeper than human opinion.  You aren't gonna do it. There are good purely naturalistic reasons to explain why most civilized adults think pedophilia and murder are immoral, so you cannot even pretend that only God can explain why there is human consensus on certain moral acts.   If we can explain an insect's instinct to defend its young without having to say it was made in the image of god, we can also explain a human being's instinct to defend its young without having to say it was made in the image of God.  

(d) The best explanation for this objective (transcendent) law giver is God

The best explanation for as yes unproven "objective" morals is a being that cannot be defined except by special words that defy all attempts at empirical confirmation. Yet you talk about God's existence as if it was equally as obvious as the existence of trees. Nice going.

By the way "objective" means "true for reasons independent of the human mind". So if you declare any human act to be "objectively" immoral (i.e., murder, rape), then you rightfully shoulder the burden to provide the reason, which has no basis in the human mind, for why that act is objectively immoral.  You aren't going to do it.  If you think murder is objectively immoral, you need to show it so without appeal to what any human being thinks, or what any human being has ever said.  That's the consequences to you when you say the immorality of murder is for reasons that transcend human opinion.  Good luck.

(4) The Existence of Absolute Laws of Logic (Transcendent)
(a) The laws of logic exist

i. The laws of logic are conceptual laws

And "conceptual" only makes sense by presupposing the physicality of the mind.  Otherwise you are talking about concepts in an "immaterial mind", and there you are again, back in fairy tale town.

ii. The laws of logic are transcendent

no, the laws of logic operate the way they do solely because of the way we humans choose to define our words.  The only reason "married bachelor" is a logical contradiction is because we have defined "bachelor" as "not married".

Furthermore, you ignore the fact that there are axioms in reasoning.  Axioms are the absolute first steps in reasoning, so that asking why they function the way they do, is irrational.  If it is the VERY FIRST STEP in reasoning itself, then there will not be a "reason" why that first step or axiom operates the way it does.

Moreover, your argument is using logic to prove logic, which constitutes the fallacy of circular reasoning.  When you ask why A can never be non-A, you are attacking reasoning itself.  If you then use reasoning to explain the reasoning, you are again arguing in a circle or begging the question.  So it would appear that reasoning itself is not subject to reason.  There really is that very first absolute beginning to the reasoning process, you cannot just explain it into an infinite regress.  You know that book is on the table because you can see it.  You know your eyes aren't deceiving you because the book can also be confirmed to be there by touch, taste, smell, and hearing it fall onto the table.  The question "yeah, but how do you know that your 5 physical senses aren't deceiving you" must be answered "I don't".

I think this is where the people so desperate to prove god, therefore suddenly start positing the existence of ESP, the sixth sense, to get away from the above-cited conclusions that otherwise flow from common sense. What's next?  Bigfoot can switch dimensions and that's why we can never get a clear photo of him?

iii. The laws of logic pre-existed humans

Impossible, the laws of logic arise from the way humans define their words.  If we defined "bachlor" as married for less than one year", then "married bachelor" would no longer be a necessary contradiction.

(b) All conceptual laws reflect the mind of a law giver

Not if the law-giver is described in unfalsifiable and incoherent ways, such as "non-physical".   A magic fairy can explain why your car keys turned up missing, but the epistemological problems in the whole concept of "magic fairy" make it reasonable to discard that hypothesis and favor something that coheres with other demonstrated realities.

(c) The best and most reasonable explanation for the kind of mind necessary for the existence of the transcendent, objective, conceptual laws of logic is a transcendent, objective, eternal Being (God)

 If God's logic necessarily permeates the universe, sure is funny that his alleged morals don't.  And Christians who are 5-Point Calvinists don't believe your dogshit "god gave us freewill" excuse, so let God's likeminded ones get their act together before they insist that spiritually dead people should find the splintered house of Christianity to be the last bit compelling.

(5) The Unique Nature of Our World and Universe (Anthropic)
(a) Our universe appears uniquely designed so:

i. Life can exist

Life forms that cause horrific misery to others also exist, they are called carnivores.  So if we keep heading in the direction you wish to go, god's responsibility for "life" constitutes god's responsibility for creating carnivrores, i.e., God intended for certain animals to cause horrific misery to others, their carnivore nature wasn't merely from the degrading effect of "sin", as carnivores possess all those attributes of life you say are intentionally designed by an intelligent mind, no less than the vegetarian animals do.

ii. This same life can examine the universe

(b) This unique design cannot be the result of random chance or unguided probabilities

Why?

(c) There is, therefore, a God who designed the universe to support human life and reveal His existence as creator of the Cosmos

You haven't yet defined "god" in a coherent way, so until that day, there's good reason to view 'god' as the least probable of the possible explanations for life.