The implication was that the unverifiable stories do not constitute data.What "data"? All you have to go by are unverifiable stories.
This raises a problem of definition, and I think communication on the topic will not get very far if we do not define what we mean, but also give examples.
What do people mean by these (and please offer other) terms? How do you apply them to Christian documents?
I will begin the discussion analyzing the term 'data'.
da·ta
ˈdadə,ˈd�də/Submit
noun
facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis.
Now according to this definition, the above complaint is obviously confused. He has acknowledged that we have, at the very least, stories. A less slanted and more professional term would be 'reports' or 'testimonies'.
thus we have testimonies. Does that mean they are necessarily true? Of course not. But they stand as facts nonetheless. If a person claimed he came to work on a unicorn, then the following would be a fact: a person came into work and subsequently claimed he got there by unicorn.
That the claim was made constitutes data.
Here is the data for the question of the resurrection:
There is a period in history before which no one talked of a resurrected Nazarene.
There is a period after which people did; the transition can be dated with impressive precision (at least as far as goes dating for that age).
We have claims made which give names witnessing certain events: Paul and the gospels.
That is data. It is incontrovertible. To say it does not constitute data is to say that we don't have such a thing as 1 Cor. 15, or the gospel of Mark. Those who wish to interject 'just cause people claimed it doesn't make it true' are simply making themselves look silly. No one, at this point, is asking about the historicity of the claims, but only whether the claims were made.
Do I have this wrong? Is there no data?