It is reasonable to believe that the Resurrection of Jesus is a historical event

Ironically, my opponent's entire position rests primarily on strawmen. While he would accuse me of misrepresenting his argument, I have clearly understood them - it seems that if any, the culprit for misunderstanding is my opponent himself. For example, in his opening paragraph he accuses me of targeting claims about Jesus' divinity and not his resurrection. My response should be obvious -- of course I know that, but I never implied that the resolution of this debate is about Jesus' divinity (though I do note that it if the resolution is true, it would easily lead to such a conclusion). Since the main point of contention is the disciple's sincerity, I will again dedicate a section on it: ==================== Disciple's sincerity ==================== My opponent has claimed that all I've is claim "people will believe in the craziest things", and that thus I have evaded the issue at hand by attempting to substitute a "historical argument". My opponent can't be more wrong. First, the accusation that my argument isn't a historical one is quite silly. In many regards it is, given that a crucial part of history is INTERPRETATION/ANALYSIS. If history was simply just recording facts and repeating them to the masses, then such a job would be much easier than it truly is. Rather, historians often spend their time arguing about how certain events were started (usually by drawing a casual chain preceding such events). What my counterexamples demonstrate is that there is nothing out of the ordinary in people believing ardently in claims that can be false, since obviously if my opponent were to accept such a reasoning then he would find himself in a logically contradictory position (there are fanatics for both Muslims and Christians, but this doesn't make both sides correct). What this tells us is that there is nothing of important from noting the disciple's sincerity, UNLESS my opponent can supply adequate evidence to show us otherwise. He hasn't - he's still stuck in the muck of "they believed in Jesus with so much faith." "My opponent has offered no historical evidence to account for their sincerity of their belief in the resurrection." ----> What? This is the premise that I assumed for your benefit. "I think my opponent is starting to grasp at straws. First my opponent tries to disprove the empty tomb, but offers no historical evidence to disprove the empty tomb. Now my opponent tries to attack a point that he already conceded." ----> I'm conflicted...do you actually read my rounds? Nowhere did I ever claim to disprove the tomb, nor have I attacked a point I conceded. Agreeing that the disciples were sincere but attacking the relevancy of this point is NOT a fallacy. Simply put, my opponent offers absolutely nothing except the pure fact that the disciples believed. This itself is weak evidence in the face of my counterexamples -- if we were to follow his reasoning, then we would be damned with logical contradictions. He can claim certain conditionals (like saying the disciples met Jesus in person), but until he explains why such conditions are qualitatively important (i.e. so what if they saw Jesus), he has no case. ==================== Vulnerability of oral traditions & Eyewitness testimonies ==================== While I won't bother exploring historical evidence for any changes in this particular oral tradition (though there were competing versions of Jesus' ascension), I can simply use the same line as reasoning as I did with the sincerity of the disciples. Given that we know many oral traditions have been tainted due to human error and time (look at your common old wives tales, or stories about mythical creatures), it is reasonable to assume this is the case for the disciple's stories UNLESS conflicting evidence is provided...which you haven't done. Now, onto the point of me supposedly unfairly assuming a naturalistic world view. I am in NO way guilty of this. This is such a simple blunder I'm not sure how you committed it: If you claim that there was an event in which someone resurrected, then by the current laws of science this is either supernatural or INCREDIBLY improbable (the definitions debacle can be left aside). There is no assumption of a certain world view: it's clear that redirections is not a common fact of human biology, so any historical event claiming to include a genuine example must have ample evidence. You claim that I am raising the bar too high, but this is a red herring. It's stemming from parismony that the bigger your claims are (i.e. the more it assumes, or in other words the more ontologically complicated theories) the more evidence it will need. ==================== Conclusion ==================== Unfortunately, my opponent's round is littered with errors, misunderstandings, and the like. My arguments here were quite simple -- given many examples affirming X to be a natural occurrence, my opponent would have to demonstrate why the story of the resurrection of Jesus is any different (obviously in terms of evidence). My opponent has supplied none and except reverberated the point that the apostles believed.