The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ Historically Occurred

Introduction to RebuttalsIn this rebuttal round, I will simply take my opponent's arguments point-by-point to show how they are unsatisfactory as evidence that Jesus was bodily resurrected. Further, I will show how my opponent's arguments only make sense in light of his confirmation bias with similar events and ways the arguments can be used.A) Rebuttal against Argument 1: God Intervenes with MiraclesI specified to my opponent that this debate was unrelated to theism in the rules. Jesus may have been raised from the dead, but God may not exist. Or perhaps God does exist, but Jesus did rise from the dead. They are not necessarily linked. The event has to established before an explanation can be proposed.On that basis, this argument is irrelevant.Further, my opponent's source was fortunately at my school's library. It contains, at best, dubious sources like televangelist Pat Robertson. I researched one in particular, Mahesh Chavda. (1) One of Chavda's online videos contains a claim that a boy named Nick from a town in Michigan was in a car accident and put into a coma but recovered thanks to prayer. Police and newspaper records showed that no accident in the named city on the date provided. And it was a town of 12,000. Even small fender benders were mentioned. This was faked.Overall, this argument is irrelevant and uses completely false information. Dangerously so. It supports dangerous faith healers. I do wonder if my opponent would also accept the "evidence" from the Christian Science cult leaders showing over 50,000 healings, hundreds of which "medical documentation." (2) Why would my opponent accept traditional Christian miracles but not the Christian Science cult leaders' stories if not confirmation bias? (Christian Science beliefs denies other Christian are true believers. They are classified as a cult and have been the cause of the death of many children) (3)B) Rebuttal Against Argument 2: The Empty TombMy opponent bases his argument for the empty tomb on extremely flimsy evidence. The so-called "Nazareth Inscription" is an interesting piece. First, it was not excavated in Nazareth, nor does the text name the area. Second, the date is also debated and most likely dates to before Jesus lived. (4) Further, the text addresses grave robbery (Line 20-22) and the desecration of graves and theft of tomb items (Lines 5-15), but it does not mention theft for religious reasons as my opponent said. Instead, it was the burial that was for possible religious reasons (Lines 1-5). (5) It mentions no particular incident, and there are many other decrees about grave robbery throughout the Roman world with similar language. (6) Are we to believe that all of these instances are in response to resurrections? That's simply absurd.My opponent took a text about grave robbery and desecration of graves and made it into a text about the resurrection. Other laws with similar wording exist, and my opponent isn't trying to link them with a resurrection... so why do so here except for confirmation bias?C) Rebuttal Against Argument 3: The Eyewitness Testimony of the GospelsMy opponent has chosen here to rely on a man who did his research without any prior education on these subjects. To take a detective and make him a credible historian is inane. I doubt a New Testament historian doing CSI work would be counted as credible in court. So why the other way around?Further, my opponent did not actually provide arguments. He instead appealed to an authority, and a poor one at that. Let me be clear that the Gospels were not written by eye-witnesses. The titles attributed to the Gospels were later additions to the works and not from the original authors. In the traditional attributions, Luke and Mark aren't eyewitnesses in the first place. The book of Matthew is essentially just a composite of Mark and Q as both me and my opponent agree. Why would an "eyewitness" simply copy other works for his own? Why not actually write your own material? Why speak of yourself in the third person (Matthew 9:9)? Why not claim yourself as a disciple of Jesus to give yourself credibility? Outside of later tradition, nothing can attribute Matthew to being the author of the first Gospel, and there is evidence against it.This leaves us with John. But there's a problem: John was illiterate and uneducated according to the Biblical tradition (Acts 4:13). Difficult to write one of the greatest and most complex Greek works of all time when you are illiterate and speak Aramaic.Overall then, it's clear that the Gospels were not eyewitnesses. D) Rebuttal Against Argument 4: Jesus was ResurrectedMy opponent claimed that "In my second argument, I have shown that there was indeed a Jesus whose body disappeared." No. He did no such thing. He instead showed an inscription of unknown origin and dating that condemns grave robbers to death. But again, there are other laws of these sorts throughout the Roman Empire. Does this mean all these were spurred on by resurrections?My opponent also took a shot at the "hallucination" theory. This is close to what I was arguing, but it is simply not the same. It assumes the physical resurrection of Jesus as the view of Paul. As we already saw, that's not what Paul believed. Instead, as we saw in round 2 as well, the believers "experienced" Jesus spiritually in visions and internal spiritual understanding based off the Greek word Horao. Mass experience is well recorded as "mass hysteria." We see it often in Pentecostal environments and other places. People take to fits of dancing, biting, religious experiences, and even physical symptoms when they believe they are sick! (7)I also doubt my opponent, a Protestant, thinks the Virgin Mary appeared in Egypt multiple times over 2-3 years in the 1960's. Yet multiple times, sometimes to crowds of thousands, people believed they saw the Virgin Mary appear to them (8). So why call the mass spiritual experience and sighting of the Virgin Mary or those suffering from mass hysteria false and the Biblical ones true if not for confirmation bias?ConclusionMy opponent's role in this debate was to provide evidence that Jesus rose from the dead that met the burden of proof.He failed in that regard.We were provided with dubious and irrelevant anecdotes of "miracles," a law against grave robbery, the opinion of a detective-turned-apologist, and an assumption that Jesus' body disappeared based on an ambiguous grave robbery law that never mentions Jesus and may not have even been from the time frame after Jesus lived.Would this convince you of the resurrection of a modern day human? No? Then it cannot be convincing of an individual from 2,000 years ago.I hope it is clear that the supposed evidence for the resurrection of Jesus presented here is scant, fallacious, and unconvincing. It only makes sense in light of my opponent's confirmation bias and assumptions.Sources(1) Craig S Keener, "Miracles," (v.2) pg. 1062, 1134(2) http://johnsonfund.org...(3) http://www.masskids.org...(4) https://books.google.com...(5) ibid.(6) ibid.(7) http://research.gold.ac.uk...(8) http://www.zeitun-eg.org...