It can be proven that Jesus rose from the dead

Thanks to you, too, Proglib.Con agrees that Christianity could not have survived as long as his disciples thought he was dead. While the resurrection would surely do the trick, Con offered a few alternative explanations, so let's see how they compare. Jesus had a twin Pro admits this is fanciful, and there are some other problems. First the twin theory is ad hoc. It's cooked up, and there's no evidence for it. Second, if Jesus had a twin, then his apostles would've known about it. And if they didn't know about it ahead of time, surely James, the brother of Jesus, would've known. And surely James would be able to tell Jesus from Jesus' twin. Third, it's inexplicable how a twin could've convinced the disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead and appeared to them over a short period of time. According to Paul, his appearance experience was unusual in the fact that it happened last and much later than anybody else's, which raises the question of what happened to the supposed twin. Did he fall off the face of the earth? Wouldn't his mother have known? Hallucination The hallucination hypothesis does not explain why Jesus' disciples believed Jesus had risen from the dead. As I explained earlier, the last thing you'd think if you saw a dead loved on in front of you is that they had risen from the dead. You'd sooner believe they either had not died to begin with, that you were hallucinating, or that you were seeing a ghost. According to the Biblical record, they initially thought they were seeing a ghost. But something obviously convinced them that it was much more than that. According to the record, he ate in front of them, and they physically touched him, and that's what convinced them he was really alive. People frequently experience grief hallucinations. My grandmother did after my grandfather died. But these types of experiences never lead people to believe their loved one has risen from the dead. It takes much more than that. Jesus didn't die Con thinks it would be necessary to verify his vital signs to ensure that he dead, but it wouldn't. Death on a cross is death by axphxiation. The whole reason the legs are broken is so they won't be able to push themselves up in order to breath, thereby ensuring a quicker death. If Jesus was not dead, it would've been plainly obvious to anybody that he was struggling to breathe. If he went limp and quit trying to push himself up, he would've been dead within minutes at the most. A second problem is that if Jesus was in such bad shape that he appeared dead, there's no way he could've convinced his disciples that he had risen to immortality. He would've been in seriously bad condition, and they'd sooner fetch a doctor. And if that is the manner of his appearance, then what became of him? Are we to believe his disciples abandoned him in that condition and that nobody ever heard from him again? Cognitive dissonance Con raises the possibility that the disciples wanted it to be true so badly that they "made it a matter of (almost) historical fact." This doesn't explain what caused the disciples to think Jesus had risen from the dead. It's also inconsistent with the behavior of other followers of messiahs who, when their "messiah" died, became disillusioned, decided the brother was the messiah instead, or found some other messiah to follow. It also ignores the evidence I presented earlier than the disciples initially were disillusioned.None of these theories are as powerful as the resurrection in explaining why Jesus' movement survived his death because they are ad hoc, they diverge from the evidence, they raise more questions than they answer, and they are insufficient to explain what they are invoked to explain.Con's only problem with the resurrection is that it's a miracle. If not for that, he'd agree that it's a much better explanation than his. He hasn't offered any argument against miracles, though. If a miracle explains the evidence when nothing else does, we should go with the miracle.