Why favor natural explanations over supernatural ones for the resurrection?

[AgnosticBoy]

I often hear skeptics of the resurrection assert that any natural explanation is more probable than a supernatural explanation. Some even go as far as coming up with theories or details that are not even mentioned in the story, like Jesus's body being stolen or that Jesus had a look alike. Perhaps the disciples also assisted in stealing the body. I question this standard or assertion.

What is the justification for favoring the natural explanations? Is it simply that scientists have only accounted for natural or physical phenomenon? In my view, evidence is evidence. If evidence points to a supernatural explanation, one that simply posits a violation of the laws of nature, then that should be the more probable explanation. It doesn't matter if that evidence goes against pre-existing knowledge.

[Tcg]

Maybe if people weren't cowards we'd have figured out how to turn back death already.

I suspect there are a few hurdles other than cowardice that stand in the way of human immortality.

[Goose]

The linked article suggests that the decision to declare death was simply premature.

That’s your interpretation of the article. Not a surprising interpretation considering confirmation bias may be at play here. I will note, simply, that the article doesn’t say the decision to declare death was premature or that is was a mistake or that the patient wasn’t really dead. The patient met the criteria to be dead, thus he was declared dead by qualified medical professionals. He then spontaneously returned to life. Those are the facts.

As for the portion of the article you selected.

At the end of the article are these comments (underline mine):

"In this scenario, the patient is brought to the OR where life support is discontinued and, immediately after a declaration of death, the organ harvesting is begun. Given our demonstrated imperfect ability to absolutely determine irreversibility or a specific “time of death,” the above practice indeed seems problematic. We are not the first to draw an uneasy connection between cases of Lazarus syndrome and organ harvesting practices (17).

In context, this is referring to the problematic practice of harvesting organs immediately following a declaration of death given the reality of this case of Lazarus Syndrome and others like it.

In conclusion, we present a case of spontaneous recovery after failed intraoperative CPR (Lazarus syndrome). We suggest that it may be worthwhile to give a brief trial of disconnecting ventilation when the patient is otherwise unresponsive to resuscitation efforts. We concur with previous authors who recommend continued monitoring for 10 minutes after cessation of CPR. And lastly, although a very low end-tidal CO2 has been suggested as an indicator of poor outcome during CPR, and thus as an indicator of when to terminate resuscitation, this may not always be so."

The medical community recognizes the Lazarus Syndrome as a reality which does occur. Thus they recommend continued monitoring after the cessation of CPR.

If the medical community recognizes the Lazarus Syndrome as real why shouldn't we? My suspicion is because of, for some of us, 1) confirmation bias prevents it and 2) the worry that someone like me might try to argue:

Lazarus Syndrome -> Resurrection of Jesus

I can’t help with the confirmation bias, but I can help with worry over the implication to Jesus’ resurrection because I wouldn’t argue that.

I would argue:

Lazarus Syndrome -> dead people do not always stay dead

That’s it. It’s meant to dislodge the belief that dead people always stay dead.

A Wikipedia article has this comment:

"Occurrences of the syndrome are extremely rare, and the causes are not well understood. One hypothesis for the phenomenon is that a chief factor (though not the only one) is the buildup of pressure in the chest as a result of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The relaxation of pressure after resuscitation efforts have ended is thought to allow the heart to expand, triggering the heart's electrical impulses and restarting the heartbeat.[2] Other possible factors are hyperkalemia or high doses of epinephrine."

It appears that "Lazarus Syndrome", although rare, is not a case where it can be concluded, positively, that a person actually was "dead" but came back to life a few minutes later.

Why is that? Because the medical community has tried to explain it? And of course, you’re arguing in a circle here. He must not have been actually dead because he was later found alive.

If something like this happened several hours (or a day) later it would be a lot more credible.

Okay let’s say for instance we had a case where it happened several hours (or a day) later. Given the premise dead people always stay dead (or something like it) there’s nothing that would prevent you from similarly arguing he/she wasn’t actually dead, or that it was a mistake, or a hoax, etc.

[JoeyKnothead]

On Lazarus Syndrome...

...
Many people think that death occurs as soon as the heart stops beating and breathing ceases.

But in fact, death is a process in which all your organs necessary for life progressively fail. You aren’t actually considered dead until the function of all your organs, including your brain, irreversibly stop.

Declaring someone dead immediately after CPR stops leaves the door open for Lazarus syndrome to occur. Doctors can avoid this by:

waiting at least 10 minutes after CPR stops before declaring someone dead
keeping a heart monitor attached to the person to confirm loss of a heart rhythm for 10 minutes or more
disconnecting the device used for ventilation for 10 seconds to relieve air trapping when it’s suspected

Most importantly, medical personnel need to confirm the loss of function of multiple organs before declaring death. This includes:

lack of audible heart sounds
absence of a palpable pulse
fixed and dilated pupils that don’t respond to light
lack of response to pain

In the previously referenced case here, they make no mention of any other tests to confirm the patient had died (see definition above).

Granted, it's pretty important to have a heartbeat if ya wanna live, but a stopped heart doesn't mean we die right then and there. Doctors even remove hearts, and plop em into other folks, albeit with the help of machines.

The referenced case simply shows that a stopped heart is not the be all and end all of death - that other tests / proceeses must come into play before a proper diagnosis of death can be had.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to Goose in post #33]

Not a surprising interpretation considering confirmation bias may be at play here.

I could make the same statement concerning your interpretation of course. You presented the case to support the idea that "dead is not always dead" and took the physician's declaration of death as absolutely correct without question, which would support your interpretation and argument. I'm suggesting that their decision may have been premature, based simply on the fact that the person did regain circulation in a relatively short time period after CPR was stopped. Given that there is generally not a literal "instant" of death (eg. Joeyknothead's post 33), I would think it is more likely that the declaration of death was premature rather than that it was correct and the person "came back to life."

In context, this is referring to the problematic practice of harvesting organs immediately following a declaration of death given the reality of this case of Lazarus Syndrome and others like it.

Yes ... but the first part of the sentence ("Given our demonstrated imperfect ability to absolutely determine irreversibility or a specific “time of death,...") is also relevant.

If the medical community recognizes the Lazarus Syndrome as real why shouldn't we?

We should ... I never suggested that Lazarus Syndrome isn't real. But I don't buy the argument that in the 38 published cases of this the people were positively "dead" before circulation restarted. That is the point, and the following paper summarizing these 38 cases doesn't describe how many, if any, were actually declared dead during the process:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2121643/

I would argue:

Lazarus Syndrome -> dead people do not always stay dead

That’s it. It’s meant to dislodge the belief that dead people always stay dead.

And I could argue that Larazus Syndrome does not prove the people involved were actually dead ... only that their circulation was restored after CPR for time periods up to 10 minutes typically, with two cases at 20 minutes.

Why is that? Because the medical community has tried to explain it? And of course, you’re arguing in a circle here. He must not have been actually dead because he was later found alive.

It is not a circular argument. It is a legitimate conclusion to draw given the definition of "dead."

Okay let’s say for instance we had a case where it happened several hours (or a day) later. Given the premise dead people always stay dead (or something like it) there’s nothing that would prevent you from similarly arguing he/she wasn’t actually dead, or that it was a mistake, or a hoax, etc.

Yes there is. The published 38 cases of Lazarus Syndrome show a typical time period between cessation of CPR and restored circulation of under 10 minutes, with two examples of 20 minutes (although the article states that these times are often just estimates). So if this kind of thing were observed after several hours, or a day, it would be well outside of any of the documented cases to date and lend more support to your side of the debate (ie. dead isn't always dead). I think you need a better example than Lazarus Syndrome though, as that is specific to recovery of spontaneous circulation after CPR. I've heard of stories where kids fall into cold lakes and stay submerged for tens of minutes and survive, like this one:

https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/26/scie ... vival.html

She was never declared "dead" by the medical professionals, but probably could have given the circumstances.

[Difflugia]

If it happened to be the case that a sizable majority of human beings living today (many of whom seem to be, in all other respects, reasonably sober/rational individuals) honestly believed that two-thirds of all cars were manufactured by leprechauns, then I believe it would be prudent, at the very least, to refrain from dismissing the belief out of hand without first considering what evidence there might be in support of such an extraordinary claim.

We have. We are. You're equivocating on what it means to "dismiss" something "out of hand." First, it was dismissing it because the evidence against it is overwhelmingly lopsided (a story about a resurrection versus evidence nobody comes back from the dead), now you're claiming it's without "first considering what evidence there might be." We've considered the evidence and found it wanting. You haven't given us any new evidence, but are merely asserting that we're not treating the evidence credulously enough.

This would be doubly so if, in addition to the majority living today, a sizeable portion of (now deceased) human beings held to this same extraordinary claim throughout a significant portion of recorded history.

That's the very reason that it's already receiving more consideration than it deserves. Not being convinced by bad evidence, regardless of how many people were in the past, isn't the same as not considering that bad evidence.

The improbable conversions of both enemies and skeptics of Jesus within a 5 year period of his execution would be one piece of evidence.

You'll need to support this. I'm not going to guess at what you mean.

The disciples willfully choosing to imperil themselves (at the hands of both the Romans and Jewish authorities) by continuing to evangelize in the very same city/region Jesus was put to death for purported crimes of blasphemy and sedition (within weeks of his crucifixion) is another.

We have stories to this effect, but you haven't substantiated that we should trust them at all, let alone to the point of overcoming evidence that nobody comes back from the dead. Leaving aside dubious sources, this common apologetic argument is no more than the assertion that nobody would do something criminal while under the threat of punishment.

One noteworthy piece of evidence lies in the fact that an early oral tradition of the resurrection account can be dated back to within 5-10 years after Jesus' death, which lends support to the notion that early accounts of the resurrection were most likely not the product of legendary or mythological development.

What "oral tradition" is that and who dates it to "within 5-10 years?"

Finally, as a piece of indirect evidence, we might consider the truly astounding fact that the mighty Roman Empire, which executed Jesus (an itinerate Jewish prophet from a cultural backwater called Galilee) in the manner of a common slave, and which went on to raise the Jewish Holy City to the ground in the revolt of 70AD, would (in the span of a few hundred years) come to venerate this same Jewish prophet as a God...and not only this, but would begin casting down millennia worth of pagan religious tradition in reverence to this obscure Jewish man once tried and slain as an enemy of the State.

It's not indirect evidence, it's a non sequitur. Unless you're arguing that all popular religions are true, the theological appeal of a story has no bearing on its historicity.

Be that as it may, I feel it is worth addressing your criticism of so called "stories" as a viable piece of evidence.

I'm sure you do.

While hard empirical evidence may be your personal preference, it would be an error to assume that written and verbal attestation is not an admissible piece of evidence in support of a given claim (particularly those of the historical variety). On the contrary, many accepted historical claims rest solely upon the evidential support provided by written/verbal testimony (e.g. The existence of the hanging gardens of Babylon, the contents and infrastructure of the Library of Alexandria circa the third century BC, the fact that Hannibal used African War Elephants to cross the Alps, etc).

We have no strong evidence against any of those, either. Remember, we have similar historical attestation to Atlantis and Hy Brisil, but historians don't seriously accept those claims specifically because they're implausible. Historians tend to accept historical claims if the claimant seems otherwise trustworthy and there's no contrary evidence. The resurrection claim fails on at least the latter criterion. I'd argue that it also fails the former, but in the sense of a "narrow judicial ruling," that's moot.

Granted, attestation is not always the most powerful form of evidence, and there are times when empirical evidence is to be preferred. Never the less, we are not within our rational rights to dismiss it outright or to ignore the pivotal role testimonial evidence plays in the reconstruction of historical events.

We haven't. We've evaluated the evidence and found it wanting. Again, you're saying that because we usually trust historical accounts if there's no reason not to, we should trust them despite overwhelming evidence against them.

It is by no means clear that we completely lack evidence for the resurrection. Aside from the testimony of literal millions claiming to have personally encountered the risen Jesus, the apologetic literature is replete with claims of evidence and argument in favor of the resurrection. As near as I can tell, you've not dealt with these apart from noting that bodily resurrection is not a common occurrence.

There are two reasons. First, I haven't dealt with any apologetic arguments that you haven't actually presented, just as you haven't dealt with skeptical literature replete with explanations of the deep flaws inherent in Christian apologetics. Second, I'm not aware of any combination of apologetic arguments that successfully overcomes the implausibility of a resurrection and until you present one, the implausibility is enough.

There is no absence of logical merit in stating what is objectively true, viz. bodily resurrection is not, a priori, impossible.

There is, however, an absence of logical merit in pushing the observation any farther than "anything is possible." Sentient ham sandwiches from the eighth dimension possessed of fiery death rays are also not, a priori, impossible. When your argument is "nothing is impossible," the sample space includes all made up things, not just your favorite.

As for the evidence supporting such a claim, I have provided some, no doubt Christian apologist who specialize in this particular topic could provide more if you're inclined to explore the literature.

I've explored the literature.

Given the gravity of the particular claim in question, as well as the truly astounding measure of anecdotal testimony (both past and present) regarding its veracity, I would humbly suggest that it is at least worth looking into with objectivity and a prudent measure of open-mindedness.

You've once again made a mistake common to many apologists in leaving out a logical step. The "truly astounding measure of anecdotal testimony" supports that people believed it, but not that it's true. In that light, I would humbly suggest that you examine your own objectivity and prudence.

For the list of generally attested historical facts, Dr. Gary Habermas provides a list of 6 in his work on the subject which is worth consideration.

It's generally considered polite to provide the name of the "work" you're referring to and either a link or, if it's not readily available online, a quotation. In this case especially so, because Habermas has written or contributed to numerous books in which he uses a "minimal facts" argument, but with a varying number of "minimal facts." The books I own include lists with:

• Five facts (The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus with Mike Licona)
• Either five or seven facts (Man, Myth, Messiah with Rice Broocks, which contains "five minimal facts" plus "two other minimal facts," whatever that means)
• Eight facts (The Secret of the Talpiot Tomb)
• Ten facts (Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ)
• Twelve facts (Did Jesus Rise From the Dead and Did the Resurrection Happen, both with Antony Flew)

What list would you like me to address? The "six" might be a typo, but considering the fluidity of Habemas' argument, it's more likely that it's just in something of his that I didn't buy.

As for the core resurrection narrative being retconned over time, this is improbable given that 1 Corinthians 15 provides us with a complete resurrection account which predates the first written gospel (Mark) by roughly 10-15 years.

1 Corinthians 15 describes resurrected flesh as a different kind of body that is incorruptible and celestial, but John's description is a scarred body that walks upon the Earth and needs to (or at least can) eat fish. That's a progression from mystical to carnal within our own sources. How does that imply that an evolution of theological continuity is improbable?

The scholarly consensus, as I understand it, is that an oral tradition regarding the bodily resurrection of Jesus was in circulation within just a few years of his execution.

Then you should have no problem finding at least a mention of this consensus in something academic (or at least "academic adjacent" if by a popular apologist).

[Tcg]

If something like this happened several hours (or a day) later it would be a lot more credible.

Okay let’s say for instance we had a case where it happened several hours (or a day) later. Given the premise dead people always stay dead (or something like it) there’s nothing that would prevent you from similarly arguing he/she wasn’t actually dead, or that it was a mistake, or a hoax, etc.

Well, all you have to do is present a documented case were this happened. Instead what we have is examples of people who were reported to be dead and "came back to life" after 10 or perhaps 20 minutes on the long side. This is supposed to support the resurrection of Jesus who reportedly was in the grave for 2 1/2 days or so?

The name Lazarus syndrome is quite optimistic. Lazarus was reportedly dead long enough to begin to stink. That certainly takes longer than 10 - 20 minutes. Where are the examples similar to someone having a spear thrust through their side while they hung on a cross? Someone being dead long enough to smell or having experienced severe life ending trauma and being dead for a few days is not even close to the same experience as a heart stopping for a few minutes. They're not at all in the same category.


Tcg

[Difflugia]

Whether that's true or not, I don't know of any "evidence for other events from ancient history" that would trump modern scientific data.

40Ar/39Ar Dating into the Historical Realm: Calibration Against Pliny the Younger

If we trusted the Gospels as much as we trusted Pliny and we were somehow calibrating our lack of resurrections, you might have a point.

What scientific data do you have against the supernatural claim God raised Jesus from the dead?

A complete lack of verifiable resurrections (subject to the definition you're going to provide for us).

This is just the beginning of a grand slippery slope from "let's give historical documents the benefit of the doubt" to "there is a god that brings people back to life."

I guess it’s a good thing I’m not making that argument then.

I'm going to leave this here for later.

Whether we posit that resurrections are natural or supernatural, none have been witnessed, despite tens of millions of opportunities to do so.

You’re Begging the Question here. And your counter here is irrelevant to my point.

What question do you think I'm begging? We don't have any modern examples of resurrections (subject to your future definition), but we do have made-up stories. A story about a resurrection is much, much more likely to be made up than inspired by a real resurrection. That's not circular and it's exactly relevant to your point.

Your point, as far as I can discern, is that because the gods can do anything, a story about a god resurrecting somebody is somehow more likely to be true than invented. The evidence that we have, however, is that gods don't resurrect people, even if they are real and they can.

You can tell me over and over how many millions and billions of people have died and stayed dead but it wouldn’t matter one iota to the claim God raised Jesus from the dead.

You're confusing cause and effect. No people have been verified as coming back from the dead. With the story itself as the only evidence, the odds are at least tens of millions to one that the story's made up.

You, on the other hand, are attempting to lay the groundwork for the special pleading that acts of gods defy statistical analysis.

Not that they defy statistical analysis but that they defy the natural. If you think the premise that God raised Jesus from the dead is a case of a Special Pleading fallacy it makes me think you don’t know what a Special Pleading fallacy is.

The special pleading is that the supernatural is more likely to defy statistical analysis than the natural. If I tell you a story about gods creating giant mounds of ice cream or turning a mean person into a bug, those are likely made up because we have no other verified examples of those things happening. If I tell you a story about receiving a jury duty summons in the mail last month, then it's much more likely to be true because that happens all the time. It still might be made up (people make up stories about plausible things, too), but it's at least plausible without other evidence. Supernatural mountains of ice cream, transmutations, and resurrections aren't.

I’m pointing out a presupposition you hold. Your response seems to be to shift the goal posts to a standard that cannot be met even in principle and further allows you an escape by a kind of infinite regress of demands for verification – we have no verification of the verified verifications...

Your contrary assertion is that because we can't expect evidence in principle, we get to assume that we have it. That's not me shifting goalposts, but you claiming that because the football's invisible, you got a touchdown.

The man met all the criteria to be declared dead by two well qualified medical professionals (a surgeon and an anesthesiologist). He subsequently and spontaneously returned to life. There’s no mention or subsequent evidence of an incorrect declaration of death. The case occurred in a modern medical facility with modern medical equipment. The case is documented in a peer reviewed medical journal. If that isn’t sufficient to falsify the premise "no dead person has ever been verified to become alive again" then I don’t know what is.

If that's your criterion, then I'm not going to dispute it, but we're no longer having the same conversation as the OP. If you actually think that qualifies as a resurrection, then we can discuss the circumstances under which people are described as dead, return to life, and how those details compare to Jesus. We can then decide what reasons we have for assigning either a natural or supernatural cause to them.

I don't, however, think that you actually believe that to be a resurrection and instead think that you're just trying to score rhetorical points.

I gave you one. Like I predicted you’re circularly assuming, without evidence, he was mistakenly declared dead because dead people stay dead. You’re attempting to inoculate yourself from falsification. Anyone who was declared dead but came back to life wasn’t really dead because dead people stay dead. They were mistakenly declared dead.

Yeah. That's what I copped to. That's why I asked you to define "dead" and "resurrected."

My introducing the case example was only to falsify the premise "no dead person has ever been verified to become alive again." It was not introduced as evidence for Jesus’ resurrection.

So, this is just about rhetorical points, then?

The discussion I want to have is around which is the best explanation for the resurrection. No need for special definitions. The standard ones will do fine. Death and Resurrection.

Then your definition isn't good enough. "Permanent cessation of all vital functions" doesn't describe what happened on either the operating table or cross. On the operating table, the measured vital functions apparently stopped for ten minutes. Those of Jesus stopped for at least several hours and possibly several days, but if definitional loopholes are part of your argument, you'll have to come up with something tighter than that.

Again, though, this is no longer the argument from the OP.

The argument is not that the followers sincere belief in the resurrection in the face of persecution falsifies a made up resurrection, although it makes it problematic to maintain that premise. The argument is that a made up resurrection does not explain it. Or at least if it does, it doesn’t explain it with the same force as the resurrection since people aren’t generally willing to endure persecution and the threat of death to maintain something they know to be made up. You’re counter here misses that point entirely. Joseph Smith is irrelevant to that point. We may very well have good evidence for Mormonism. Even if we had better evidence for Mormonism it’s irrelevant.

How is Joseph Smith irrelevant to this point? Joseph Smith is this point. I assert that he made up Mormonism and was persecuted and ultimately martyred for his testimony after having the opportunity to flee. I'm not sure on what grounds you're dismissing the relevance of Smith's martyrdom, but you can read an official Mormon history of the events leading up to Smith's death in the LDS publication Church History in the Fulness of Times.

There are people now that sincerely believe they have encountered the risen Christ.

Irrelevant. Your explanation that it was made up doesn’t explain Paul’s conversion. You need an entirely ad hoc explanation to account for it.

Now you're just getting lazy. If there are modern encounters with the risen Christ, then they're not irrelevant to Paul's encounters. Unless you're arguing that there's something special about Paul's encounter that you haven't presented or that all encounters are because of the resurrection, then you haven't begun to make a case.

Unless a resurrection is necessary for a reported encounter with Christ, then simply offering Paul as an example is nearly valueless. There are mental illnesses from which people report conversations with objectively nonexistent entities. Once again, the statistical argument is against you.

Yeah, that’s what I meant and you apparently knew exactly who and what I meant.

Yes. I also knew that you were (and apparently still are) trying to stitch together multiple passages from different authors and often conflicting theological intentions in ways that are far from universally accepted, but presenting the synthesis as a "fact" that needs to be explained.

1. The genre the Gospels most closely align with, ancient biography, and the genre of letters (Pauline) implies they were an attempt to record history, not fiction.

This is an oversimplification and "ancient biography" doesn't imply "history, not fiction" in the modern sense.

The current view of the Gospel of Mark is as a series of biographical "pronouncement stories," recognized as a form of Greek chreiai, meant to tell stories about Jesus as a teacher and his relationship to Christianity. From Burton Mack's A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins, p. 174:

In 1975 a working group on the pronouncement stories was formed within the Society of Biblical Literature under the leadership of Robert Tannehill. The aim of the project was to collect examples of pronouncement stories from literatures of the Greco-Roman period outside of the New Testament with which stories in the gospels might be compared. Taylor’s designation was accepted and the integrity of the two-part structure (narrative setting plus pronouncement) was clearly seen from the beginning. In order to guide the collection of parallels, Tannehill submitted the New Testament stories to a careful analysis of the several ways in which a saying was related to its setting. He discovered six different relationships which he termed rhetorical, and proposed a typology. (1) Correction stories are those in which the speaker responds to someone’s actions or words by correcting them. (2) Commendation stories offer commendation by the speaker. (3) Objection stories are those in which criticism is raised by others and then countered by the speaker. (4) Quest stories tell about someone in quest of “something important to human well-being,” to which the speaker responds. (5) Inquiry stories place a question to the speaker instead of a criticism. (6) Description stories introduce a situation that the speaker aptly sizes up in some descriptive comment.

From p. 179:

Most of the stories collected by the pronouncement story group were recognized by Claremont scholars as chreiai, the term used for these stories in handbooks for teachers offering beginning instruction in rhetoric (progymnasmata, or first exercises).

The chreia or anecdote was very popular among the Greeks. They took delight in maxims, aphorisms, telling insights, witty and well-turned phrases, and clever rejoinders. The chreia was the form in which a memorable saying by some person was repeated. Most were occasional, coined in response to specific situations. Many were set with another well-known person playing the part of the straight man. Situations could easily

The Gospels are most like biographical forms that illustrated a teacher's rhetoric with anecdotal situations.

It doesn't explain why they believed what they did, but unless they were witnesses themselves to the resurrection, it doesn't matter; if they didn't see it, the resurrection is just part of the story that they believed. That they believed it is the same level of evidence that any religion has going for it.

Missing the point, again. That the story was completely made up doesn’t explain why the church fathers understood the story as history whereas God raised Jesus from the dead does explain it. You need another explanation for why the story was made up but the followers of the followers of Jesus understood it was not made up.

Explaining why your point isn't valid is not "missing" it. Jesus actually being raised doesn't explain why they believed it unless they saw it. They did, apparently, hear what they considered a believable version of the story, which is independent of whether or not it actually happened.

It’s implausible that Christians were his source given that 1) he doesn’t state Christians were his source and 2) the evidence from Tacitus himself implies he did not trust Christians. The bottom line, “the story is completely made up” doesn’t explain how Tacitus came to record some of the details as history.

That's an interesting argument, considering that Tacitus only refers to Jesus as "Christus," apparently as a name. If the tradition didn't originate with Christians, how did he make that connection? How did he verify who, when, or by whom "Christus" was crucified?

It's evidence of a level of organized persecution of Christians in the early second century and that by that time Christians already believed that a Christ-figure was crucified by Pilate. It's valuable for certain arguments, but not this one.

How on earth you think either of those two explanations you gave “completely outweigh and overshadow” the explanation that God raised Jesus from the dead, which explains a far wider set of evidence, is quite beyond me.

Because your inference from the "far wider set of evidence" conflicts with the observation that dead people don't come back to life.

Irrelevant for the aforementioned reasons. 1) the laws of nature don’t disprove the supernatural, 2) the supernatural is not subject to the natural, 3) I’ve already shown that premise false with a documented case example and, last but not least, 3) it begs the question.

1. Claiming that the supernatural isn't subject to statistical analysis is special pleading.
2. Statistical analysis of an event type is independent of whether the cause of the event is natural or supernatural.
3. You keep asserting this, but you never actually support how you understand my arguments to be question-begging.

Begging the question again. Either you don’t realize these kinds of statements beg the question or you just don’t care.

Then explain it to me.

Irrelevant. The claim isn’t that God is routinely raising people from the dead.

It is if you're trying to establish the likelihood that a story about a resurrection is made up or not. If we have more made-up stories about resurrections than we have verified resurrections, then we need a proportionate level of additional evidence to consider the story of the resurrection to be historical.

Therefore the safest bet is the peer reviewed medical journal Anesthesia & Analgesia made up the story of a guy coming back to life from being dead.

It's a good thing you weren't making a slippery slope argument.

[AgnosticBoy]

I appreciate everyone's contributions. As an honest agnostic, I've read through much of the posts here and have taken note of some of the strong points that both sides have to offer. I've used this to formulate my own view because I don't view either side as having a foolproof position.

My overall position is to be open for ANY type of good logic and evidence, instead of having any expectations that it should follow this or that. This is where many so called skeptics fall short. Evidence is evidence. It doesn't have to fit neatly into some organized narrative or fit in with current science.

So to answer my own OP through the lens of my standard or perspective, and factoring some of the good points made by others here, I can say that the natural explanations are not automatically more probable than supernatural explanations. The common reasoning here seems to be that science has not validated anything supernatural, but that may speak towards the frequency of events (the supernatural may be a rare occurrence) and not the validity of events (supernatural or otherwise). In other words, having scientific evidence that dead people don't come back to life is not enough to say that it can't happen. Also, eventhough there's not scientific evidence of people coming back from the dead but there is evidence or an open door that suggests that we can exist beyond our physical bodies. That evidence mostly comes from consciousness, and our lack of understanding it. Are we in a position to say that consciousness or the human mind can not be placed or uploaded to computers? Of course not!

[JoeyKnothead]

...
So to answer my own OP through the lens of my standard or perspective, and factoring some of the good points made by others here, I can say that the natural explanations are not automatically more probable than supernatural explanations.

Where at, in Narnia?

Dead is dead. Any other condition that ain't dead, ain't dead. Dead is the very word we used to refer to dead.

The common reasoning here seems to be that science has not validated anything supernatural, but that may speak towards the frequency of events (the supernatural may be a rare occurrence) and not the validity of events (supernatural or otherwise).

The frequency of confirmable supernatural accounts is 0. That is a number that represents 'none', 'nada', 'zilch' and other synonyms of it.

But yeah, let's don't dismiss this supernatural nonsense based on that number.

In other words, having scientific evidence that dead people don't come back to life is not enough to say that it can't happen.

It's possible cows are jumping over the moon as we speak. Should we all cower inside until the Great Cow Downpour of 2021 has come to pass?

Could humans even float in a flood of cows?

Also, even though there's not scientific evidence of people coming back from the dead but there is evidence or an open door that suggests that we can exist beyond our physical bodies. That evidence mostly comes from consciousness, and our lack of understanding it. Are we in a position to say that consciousness or the human mind can not be placed or uploaded to computers? Of course not!

Consciousness and dead folks coming back to life are two separate issues here. All data suggests that once someone is dead, you can plug em up into every computer know to man, and they're still gonna be dead.

Potentially transferring consciousness to computers would require a live mind, not a dead one.

Dead is dead. Why is this such a difficult concept for folks to grasp?

[JoeyKnothead]

New evidence of a supernatural occurrence has been found in Glasgow, Scotland...

Mirror.co.uk