The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ Historically Occurred

A Brief Note Before I begin with rebuttals, I'd like to address the matter of conduct: Con stated, “my opponent's arguments can only make sense in light of his confirmation bias...” “is in[s]ane”.They made the assumption that I am a Protestant. Everyone has biases. The intellectual individuals do as best they can to separate their biases from their decisions. So, to argue that, just because someone disagrees with your opinion, that must make them unable to form rational decisions because of their emotional appeal to an issue is severely disingenuous. Also, to make sweeping assumptions about someone and to then label them is a very poor form of conduct. I do not consider myself a Protestant. If I was pressed to it, I would say that I'm a deist, and am arguing for the position that Jesus was resurrected merely because of the evidence, even though it goes against my personal ideology. Spiritual Nature of the Resurrection In the beginning of Acts, it is claimed that the disciples witness Jesus going up into heaven, taking the physical body with him. Some 20 years after this event, Paul witnesses some type of vision of Jesus. Whether Paul witnessed a physical Jesus or had some type of spiritual vision is entirely irrelevant. According to the account of the gospels, the physical body of Jesus left the earth. Actually, it would be incorrect theology for Paul to have claimed that he actually saw the resurrected body of Jesus. Empty Tomb If Paul doesn't mention something that isn't in the Gospels, that doesn't mean those beliefs weren't held by early Christians. This is an argument from ignorance. Q Q is debated to even exist. For the purposes of this debate, I conceded the theory that it exists to be plausible. However, we don't even have the original manuscripts of any of the gospels, so for Con to claim that we have any knowledge of what may have been contained in Q, let alone all of it, is impossible. So, to make the claim, “Q didn't mention the resurrection” is entirely an argument from ignorance. The Vision of Gabriel I don't understand how this argument helps out my opponent. Sure, many Jews at this time were apocalyptic, expecting the Messiah. There are plenty of texts with this type of material. However, rather than detract from the probability that Jesus was resurrected, this actually helps establish it. This tablet was written after the events of Jesus, so this is another piece of archaeology that corroborates that a Jewish prophet was killed and believed to have been risen, showing evidence of an empty tomb. God Intervenes With Miracles My opponent argues that arguing for God is unnecessary in this debate. However, if I'm arguing that Jesus was resurrected, it also necessitates providing a mechanism for the resurrection will strengthen my argument. If I give an argument that the God that Jesus claimed would resurrect him, also resurrects other people, then yes, this argument is definitely relevant. My opponent claimed that the book was contained in his library, and that he was then able to research its claims. I believe my opponent was entirely disingenuous when stating that claim. They provide a reference that is found over a thousand pages into the book, so unless they read that much in the limits of a couple days, they were instead were just searching for the weakest described miracle of that book. Not only that, the “miracle” he describes is not even listed in the book, as far as I can tell. (I own a digital version of the text, so I cannot use your page number, but using the keyword search, I cannot find this story in the book. I apologize if I'm incorrect.) What my opponent did, was find some evangelist briefly mentioned in the book, and then took a miracle from that evangelist and discredited it. And I agree with my opponent's conclusion, I wouldn't consider that event as a miracle. People come out of comas without God at all. The book, the actual book, lists miracle claims from people all around the world. The author admits that not all of the stories are actual miracles with God intervening. Some stories can be explained naturally, and some people may be lying about the proclaimed miracle. However, there are also miracle claims in the book, around the world, that are very convincing, that do have actual evidence and materials to account for. If my opponent had actually done research, they would have realized this. Rather, they chose to find the weakest argument of something not even in the book to miss the entire point of my argument. My opponent even gives yet another argument that supports my position, not their own. They give evidence that the cult of Christian Science members claim miracle events. That's wonderful! I never claimed someone had to have the perfect and correct theology and beliefs about God in order for a miracle to occur. They are still praying to the same God. My opponent obviously concedes that miracles occur. The Empty Tomb I definitely grant that the Nazareth Inscription causes debates among scholars. Sure, its possible this was written before Jesus and may not have been referring to him. What I claimed was that this inscription fits the historical narrative of the empty tomb- something that virtually all teaching scholars in universities agree upon- atheist or Christian. If my opponent disagrees with the historical agreement that Jesus died under Pilate and his body went missing from the tomb, they are fully in their right to be skeptical of that event. But this is a fact not disputed, and I gave a simple evidence to corroborate this historical fact. So yes, it is possible that the Nazareth Inscription doesn't refer to Jesus, but that's very unlikely, and being skeptical of that position is not easy to defend in the least. Eyewitness Testimony of the Gospels I did not argue that a detective made a good historian. This is mis-representing my argument. A detective is highly skilled at having to look at different testimonies, and then piece those together to make a reasonable abduction of what actually happened. I am not skilled in psychiatry. So, if I use an expert in that field to help me to come to a psychiatric diagnoses, then yes, it is a fallacy of authority to merely argue that whatever the psychiatrist says is true. But, if I rely on their skill to believe that their conclusion is probable and reliable, that is not a fallacy. If this detective looked at the four gospels and made an abductive conclusion about their reliability due to his skills and background, then it is justified to accept his conclusion as probably reliable. Papias, a church father from the 2nd century, stated that the tradition was that the apostle Matthew wrote Matthew, the apostle John wrote John, and the Mark was the student of Peter (so no, Mark wasn't an eyewitness, but he wrote the account of an eyewitness). No sure, you can be skeptical and argue that Papias is a generation removed, and his claims could be false. However, your conclusion, that it's clear the gospels were not written by eyewitnesses, is demonstrably false. It is not clear. We have tradition stating that at least two were eyewitnesses. Even though the questions can be asked, “why would matthew speak in third person, use other material, etc,” these are questions that can be easily answered, and don't in themselves disprove the tradition. In history, if we have documents or traditions claiming that an event happened, you have evidence that the event happened. Mere questions about it don't “clearly disprove it.” You can raise doubt about it, but the reasonable position is to accept an historical event when there is enough actual evidence in support of it. Jesus was Resurrected My opponent confuses mass hysteria with mass hallucination. Mass hysteria is a real and documented symptom of the human condition. Mass hallucination is not, and I challenge my opponent to find me one medical journal that documents this. It may take a while, because there aren't any. Different people at different times claimed that they interacted with a physical person. They were so certain of this event that they separated themselves from each other, journeyed into the world, and then were tortured and martyred for that belief. The point of this debate is to explain how Christianity originated. Christianity dominates 1/3 of humanity. We both need to explain how this even started. My opponent is claiming that one group of people at one time had mass hysteria (not hallucination, that's completely separate), and then somehow convinced most of the ancient world that the claims were true. My opponent must have a very negative view towards the intelligence of ancient humanity if they were simply convinced by hallucinated individuals of a silly religion.