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

You state that you agree that people do not rise naturalistically. I never argued that Jesus' resurrection had to be natural in order for it to occur. Rather, I argue that we know inductively that the dead do not rise, and that is true even concerning a supernatural resurrection, because we don't see anyone rising from the dead supernaturally either, do we? Re: James being skeptical of Jesus, you ask what could have changed his mind. I submit that there are several possible answers: perhaps this bit of Mark is a rumor in the early church born of slander against James. Perhaps James liked the idea of leading his brother's cult after his death, and so took to leading it in order to gain power. Perhaps James had a grief hallucination and was more open to accepting his brother's religion after watching him cruelly and unjustly punished. "[S]aying that people today join cults for weird reasons, so that is what happened in this case is a logical fallacy." No, it's inductive reasoning. Christianity must be assumed a typical cult until proven otherwise because most cults are typical ones. You say Jesus' resurrection had too many witnesses? The evidence that we have is too scanty to support such a conclusion. Paul does recite a creed in 1 Corinthians 15 in which he states that Jesus appeared to over 500 people at once, but there are numerous doubts about this passage. Kris Komarnitsky suggests that Paul had picked up a fringe legend from the Christian community and was using it to support his argument for the resurrection. He cites some evidence for this: he points out that such a sighting would be so incredible that the gospels would not have failed to report it if it were true[1]. Robert Price suggests that this passage is an interpolation [2](although his case is not widely supported amongst NT scholars). I would suggest that even if Paul was telling the truth, we know that group hallucinations can and do happen, and so this isn't really a big obstacle for naturalistic theories [3]. As for your citation of Luke, we have plenty of reason to believe that Luke is inventing a legend, given the fact that such stories are absent from Paul and Mark, and the fact that legends can arise very rapidly [4], whereas Luke was probably not written until the latter half of the first century (at the earliest). "If the tomb wasn't empty, then the opponents of the 'cult' would have certainly examined the resurrection claim (since it is physical) and simply produced the body." False. First of all, the church allegedly did not begin preaching until 40 days after the resurrection, and the authorities may not have found out about the preaching until even later than that. How do you know Jesus' body would have been preserved to the point of recognition? How do you know that the presentation of Jesus' corpse would have been recorded by Christians, or that they would have recanted their faith, instead of dismissing such a thing as a test of their faith? The cults of John Frum are composed of South Pacific villagers whose ancestors (somehow) got the idea that an American soldier John Frum would one day return from America and bring all the great riches to their people that the Americans enjoyed. Maj. Samuel Patten set out to convince the islanders that the American forces had nothing to do with John Frum; the American forces were never intending to bring the natives endless supplies of cargo as Frum had allegedly promised. The natives didn't believe the major, and the movement continues to this day.[5] "[S]imply stating that there is not enough evidence is not an argument." But it is an argument: 1.If there is not sufficient evidence to support the empty tomb story, then we should not believe it. 2.There is not sufficient evidence to support the empty tomb story. 3.Therefore, we should not believe it. "How much evidence do you need?" A lot. We know that tombs and graves don't turn up empty very often at all, so you need some strong evidence to support the conclusion that the tomb was empty. But you do not have it. "[W]here is the historical evidence that [the tomb] wasn't empty?" Some evidence exists in the fact that Paul never mentions the empty tomb, even though it would have been a key piece of evidence for his argument that resurrection was possible because Jesus had been raised (1 Cor. 15). If women had discovered it, Paul may have felt that he could not use it. However, if Peter or some other male witness had checked the tomb (as Luke 24:12 reports), he could have used this testimony, yet he does not. Now, onto your reasons for believing the empty tomb story: 1 and 2. See John Frum example. 3 and 5. I agree that early Christians believed in a bodily resurrection, that they believed Jesus was resurrected bodily, and that such a belief logically entails that Jesus physically left wherever the Romans and/or Jews last placed his body. However, just because the Christians held a belief which logically entailed an empty tomb does not mean that they had any evidence of an empty tomb. How do you know that they knew where Jesus was buried? Or that they would not have rationalized contrary evidence like the John Frum cult. 4. The fact that women allegedly found the tomb is of no use to your case. The testimony of women may have been part of a literary theme in Mark in which he reverses the expectations of the reader. The first shall be last and the last shall be first (Mark 10:31). Those who were last, the women, have the honor of being first to see the risen Jesus. 6. How exactly are polemics against Tertullian and Justin Martyr evidence of anything? They were writing over 100 years after Jesus' death. It's historically worthless. As for the polemic in Matthew, at least some Jews would have accepted the claim of the empty tomb (for the sake of argument) and simply challenged the notion that an empty tomb meant a resurrection. I've done the same thing! Re: Paul's conversion, its perfectly OK to discuss plausible factors that may have led to it. Sure theres no direct evidence of them, but we know that every factor I mentioned occurs, and any one of them, or perhaps a combination of two or three, would easily renders Paul's conversion experience probable. We would expect such factors to be at work in conversion experiences that involve those who are originally hostile to the cult, because such an experience is the only way such a person would join the cult. Besides, the epileptic Paul hypothesis explains quite a few facts which aren't explained by a single hypothesis otherwise. My hypothesis (that Christians were typical cult members) explains why Christians saw Jesus after death (they were individuals with tendencies towards hallucination), it can explain why James changed his mind (the cult, being a group of devout sheep, looked attractive to James because of the power he could attain), why Jesus did not do something to convince the entire world (he was an ordinary cult leader, not a God) which would certainly be the kind of thing a loving God would want to do, given Christian beliefs. When conjoined with the epileptic Paul hypothesis, it is consistent with Paul's conversion and explains even more facts. My hypothesis is not falsified by the possibility that early Christians knew of some disconfirming evidence, since they would have simply explained it away like most cults do today. You said that I needed four theories to account for the all the data, whereas you only needed one. That is false. Some of the "data" like the empty tomb for example, is not reliable enough for us to be sure it is true. Further, your hypothesis assumes that a miracle-working God exists who would want to raise Jesus from the dead. Each of those is questionable. For example, I argue that even if God existed he would not be inclined to raise Jesus, because Jesus was a failed doomsday prophet[6].