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ORIGINAL: frankman
I guess this proves salvation in Christ can only be obtained by faith. To somewhat rephrase your question I`ll reverse it. What physical evidence do you have that Jesus` bones are still in a grave somewhere today? There are books out there that confirm to us that a spiritual Rabbi by the name of Jesus Christ was on earth 2000 years ago in the land of Palestine. This is not only confirmed by the Bible writings, but also by secular historians like Josephus who wrote about a man from Galilee who claimed to be the Christ. History also confirms to us that this Christ who claimed He was crucified but arose from from the dead three days later has had a great following of people called "Christians" that exist even today. If you need physical evidence of this I`m sure you`ll find some Christ followers even in your own city. Also throughout history Christians have not been the most loved people in the world. So all the unbelievers then and now would have to do to end this sect and it`s beliefs is to produce the body of Jesus.

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Now I know this is somewhat not logical to do today because we do not know the DNA of Jesus. Yet looking back at history, as much as the Romans and the Jewish religious leaders detested Jesus and His followers way back then, don`t you think they would have build a monument over Jesus` body to prove to all forever His body is still in the grave. We would have books written today denying the historical evidence of the resurrection of Jesus that would have made our Bible`s extinct. Yet they can not do this. WHY? When Jesus arose from the grave He did not go directly to heaven. He wondered around Palistine for some 40 days before assenting into heaven. Many people who saw Him die later also saw Him alive during those 40 days. This fact of this physical evidence has made it impossible for anybody then and now to logically come up with any physical evidence that Jesus is still in the grave today.

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So if Jesus is still alive today, should we take the warning to us in Phil.2:10+11 seriously? "that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Just a passing thought!

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History does not confirm that Jesus rose from the dead, merely that people believe he did. If you're going to claim that the existence of Christians is proof of Jesus' divinity, you must believe that the existence of Shinto means that every rock, tree, and animal has an everlasting and sentient soul. You must believe that the Dalai Lama is the re-incarnation of the previous, etc. etc. etc... Argumentum ad Populum is not a valid argument.
Just because people believe something does not make it true. Do a Google/Wiki search of "Cargo Cults" for an example of what I mean.

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Paul's epistles are some of the earliest books of the NT. He never said that Jesus resurrected in bodily form. (He used egeiro "to awaken" vs. anastasis, which was used for resurrection). The accounts of Paul seem to indicate a spiritual resurrection, as opposed to a physical one. Only in the later books is Jesus said to have resurrected physically. By that time, Christianity had started to spread. Physical evidence for or against Jesus' resurrection would have decayed.
This isn't to mention that the following is also said about Jesus' death. Matthew 27:50 "And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. 51And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. 52The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, 53and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many."
There is as much evidence to substantiate the claim that dead saints walked into Jerusalem as there is to substantiate that Jesus did the same. There is no evidence for any of this outside of the Bible.

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There is no evidence for Poseidon. I will not pray to him to calm the seas.
There is no evidence that Buddha was divine. I will not follow his path.
There is no evidence that Jesus is alive today. I will not follow him.

Give me evidence, and I may change my mind. Give me dogma and I will surely not.

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ORIGINAL: Real_Solitude

From my understanding, the leaders did not see Jesus as anything special. He was viewed as a heretic, and so was killed. It was standard practice for the Romans to bury the victims of crucification in mass graves. If the treatments of Jesus as recorded in the Bible are accurate (Using nails instead of bindings of the cross, whippings, taunting, stone-throwing civilians, etc...), are they going to afford him a luxury not afforded to any other victim? No, they're going to throw his body into a mass grave and forget about him, not hand his body over to his family. There's not exactly a good way to pull a man with "no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him," out of a mass grave and claim it was Christ. Even if they did, would the Christians have simply given up preaching and gone home? For all we know they did produce the body, it wouldn't have helped dampen Christianity.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
It’s not simply of course, “Argumentum ad Populum”. Christianity initially depended specifically on the reality of a risen Christ, and a number of followers of Christ’s died claiming they had encountered Him – which means either they were deluded, or they died knowing full well that what they claimed was a lie.

Either way, it’s not as if the resurrection of Christ could have been simply a spiritual position like pantheism or reincarnation.

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Well, no – there is a clearly drawn parallel between the egeiro and anastasis:

1 Corinthians 15:1 - 12
Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised (egeiro) from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection (anastasis) of the dead?

And the word anastasis is clearly used by Paul in reference to the resurrection of Jesus:

Romans 6:5
For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection (anastasis),

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There is plenty of evidence; but people often are only willing to consider a particular kind of evidence, and that may not be available – that however does not mean there is no evidence.

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ORIGINAL: frankman
Do you really believe anybody would be brain-washed enough to die for a known lie? History states that 11 of the 12 apostles, all except John the Apostle, died as martyrs because they believed and preached what they saw, and that was the bodily resurrection of Christ. It`s hardly likely that one would die for a lie. Even Paul believed and taught the bodily death, burial and the bodily resurrection of Christ in 1 Cor. Chapter 15.

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Jesus was not buried in a mass grave as some would like to believe. The exact grave site may be debatable, but I can give you a general location within a good stone throw. Luke 23:53 tells us He was placed "in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid." John 19:41 tells us that both the place of His crucifixion and burial happened in a garden. "At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid." This may be Gordon`s Calvary, a place I`ve visited myself a few years ago. It is outside the city gates of old East Jerusalem. This is important because Heb.13:12 states "And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through His own blood." Others say His grave may have been at the present site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. You can visit both sites, and guess what, you`ll find empty graves. Which site is authentic, I`m not sure. What we`re sure about is that Jesus was placed in a grave outside the gates of Jerusalem, in a garden, in an unfinished tomb hewn out of rock.

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Your example of the Dalai Lama`s reincarnation is a great example of how other religions vary from Christianity. Tibetan Buddhism stems from Buddha. Buddha died at age 80 and is buried in Kushinagar. If you want proof of this you`ll find his bones buried between two trees somewhere out there. Nobody has ever claimed he arose from the grave like Jesus did. The foolishness of being reincarnated yes, but not resurrected. Only Christians believe and know their founder was resurrected in bodily form and is alive today

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As for the holy people who were raised to life in Matt.27:52, they are an example for all of us. Paul states clearly in 1 Cor.15:22 "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive." Your physical death here on earth is not the end of the real you. You`ll find these holy people in heaven today, but you`ll have to go there first to prove this one right.

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vs. TRUTH! Remember, neither one of us can go back in time, so all our facts are based on what we read about history. We then have to make a choice to either believe by faith what we`re reading or to reject it as error. You also have to remember for every ball game played, there`s always going to be somebody out there who won`t like the final score. As a result they will try to change the final score by re-writing history. From where I come from we have a guy who just lost his seat in government and is being charged with bigotry because he is denying the historical facts of the Hitler holocaust. This highly intelligent politician is trying to change the facts of history because he doesn`t like the final score of W.W.2.

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So it is with the story of God and the Bible. Everything in the Bible may be backed-up with historical, prophetic, scientific, archaeolical, providential and personal facts. Yet you`ll always find people like Brown, Dennett, Paine, Dawkins, Harris, Stenger, Sagen and Clemens etc. who don`t like the final score of the Bible, so they`ll try their best to alter history. Yet they will fail. If we`re still around 100 years from now nobody will be reading Brown, Dennett, Paine, Dawkins, Harris, Stenger, Sagen or Clemens books, however people will still be reading, believing and basing their faith on the historical facts of the Bible and what the Bible teaches us about God. TIME itself becomes evidence, as the Word of God will last forever.

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ORIGINAL: Real_Solitude

People believe in the Bible based on faith. I'm fine with this. But when people tout the Bible as fact without substantiating their claim, this bothers me.

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frankman: If you`re looking for absolute prove you won`t find it because the only discipline that we can prove with complete certainty concerning tangible things is mathematics. 3+6=9. Now that`s absolutely true. Was Winston Churchhill ever Prime Minister of England? You could give me Web sites to read on Churchill being the P.M. of England, but unless I agree to have faith in the validity of what you`re giving me to read, there is no way you can convince me or absolutely prove to me that a man like Churchill ever even existed. So it is with Christianity. It is based on faith. Once faith is there, the prove will come.

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The biggest prove that you`ll experience as confirmation that Christianity is real is best described in Rom.5:1. "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." It`s that peace and the guidance of the indwelling Holy Spirit that will lead you to facts about Christianity that today you have no idea exist. Then too you will say "I was blind but now I see." I hope someday you will open your life to this transforming faith and experience firsthand the reality of the living Savior.

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The mystic is, in short, invulnerable, and must be left, whether we relish it or not, in undisturbed enjoyment of his creed. Faith, says Tolstoy, is that by which men live. And faith-state and mystic state are practically convertible terms.

But I now proceed to add that mystics have no right to claim that we ought to accept the deliverance of their peculiar experiences, if we are ourselves outsiders and feel no private call thereto. The utmost they can ever ask of us in this life is to admit that they establish a presumption. They form a consensus and have an unequivocal outcome; and it would be odd, mystics might say, if such a unanimous type of experience should prove to be altogether wrong. At bottom, however, this would only be an appeal to numbers, like the appeal of rationalism the other way; and the appeal to numbers has no logical force. If we acknowledge it, it is for 'suggestive,' not for logical reasons: we follow the majority because to do so suits our life.

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Christianity initially depended on people believing that there was a risen Christ, not on the truth of that claim. Again, see cargo cults on how easily people will believe things that seem contrary to nature. I'm sure you can find quite a few other examples. Secondly, there is little enough known about the life of the apostles, let alone their deaths. Only two of the apostles deaths are directly recorded in cannon scripture. These two were Judas, who either hung himself (Matt 27:5) or randomly exploded (Acts 1:18), and James, who was killed by Herod with a sword to vex the Church. (Acts 12: 1-2)
Judas obviously wasn't a martyr, and the Bible doesn't tell anything about James' death other than that Herod killed him. It doesn't say if he rejected Christ before the end, if he died in his sleep, anything. Certainly if the account is correct he died due to the church, but whether it was willful or not is speculation.

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Why could it not have been a spiritual resurrection? They could have witnessed him 'in spirtual form', as it were. Why would their testimony be weaker if they'd seen ghost-Jesus as opposed to flesh-Jesus?

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By which definition, pray, is there evidence for Christ's resurrection? Clearly we can't take such a extraordinary claim to be true based on a single source without corroborating evidence. What else confirms Christ's resurrection besides the Bible? Why should we believe its claims more than any other books?

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Jhud: There are multiple sources, eyewitnesses, historical records, the existence of the Church which began exactly at the time Christ rose from the dead when His resurrection was wholly verifiable, and there are the witnesses of the billions that followed who had personal experiences with Christ.

And beyond that there is the consistency with the whole of Biblical history and the effect of Christianity on lives, cultures, societies, and history since Christ’s resurrection.

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Original: Frankman

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
Nothing you have said here changes the clearly recorded fact that the early Christians believed in the literal bodily resurrection of Christ, that there were witnesses to that fact (up to 500), that people died affirming the reality of that event, and that literally nothing about church history makes sense apart from this.

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Why could it not have been a spiritual resurrection? They could have witnessed him 'in spirtual form', as it were. Why would their testimony be weaker if they'd seen ghost-Jesus as opposed to flesh-Jesus?

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There are multiple sources, eyewitnesses, historical records, the existence of the Church which began exactly at the time Christ rose from the dead when His resurrection was wholly verifiable, and there are the witnesses of the billions that followed who had personal experiences with Christ.

And beyond that there is the consistency with the whole of Biblical history and the effect of Christianity on lives, cultures, societies, and history since Christ’s resurrection.

In fact there literally could be no more evidence than there is.

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I think you hit the issue over its head here. Between the historical evidence and the religious experience is the fulcrum of the entire Christian enterprise. The problem is that the accuracy of the historical evidence is proclaimed, not only to record a unique occurrence, or the accuracy of an (many) eyewitnesses; it's that disbelief in everything believable becomes the criterion for accepting the suspension of the believable, which most people accept doesn't include God anywhere in the picture. Most people, myself included, see in the documents an admixture of myth, accurate historical reporting, and narrative. And the truth or falsity of the claims these documents make, similarly, doesn't bear upon metaphysical considerations of God (by and large, and in a very general sense).

But your argument essentially relies upon "taking the word of" people experiencing what they consider to be non-experiential, and so claims of accuracy, of intertextual consistency, or Christianity's "affect," don't bear upon the claim that Christ rose from the dead.

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"Recorded Fact" is pretty boisterous of you. It is a fact that it was recorded, certainly. But to claim that it is a fact that fact was recorded is unfounded unless you have documentation of which I am not aware. Apart from the Bible, I have seen no source that records any of these 500 eye-witness testimonies. A secondary source is required to verify this. Or should we just take, on faith, everything every old book says is true?
Why does Church history have to make sense? Most religions travel on faith, not fact. Even if you believe Christianity to be 100% factual, you still have to cede this because you don't believe in every other religion. Obviously fiction had to creep in somewhere. Again, as cargo cults have shown, myth can grow at an astounding rate, and be believed by even those who were still alive at the time.

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I am fully aware of this fact. I was, however, referring specifically to Paul because his are, from what I've read, the earliest written works. The closer to the events the writing, the less time that myth has to creep in, for memory to blur, etc...

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Please provide names, sources, etc... to this profound extrabiblical evidence. Like I said, I will not believe without evidence. If you have evidence, and it is compelling, I will believe.
If first-hand accounts are considered reliable without secondary sources to back them up, then many religions have just gained a lot of credibility. If we're going to count personal experience as a valid form of knowledge, then every other religion on Earth has just gained a ton of credibility. Certainly you can't deny the Billions of Muslims their experiences, or the hundred of millions of Hindu theirs.

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If you're going to talk about history and the Bible being flush, I'd be grateful if you linked me to all of the peer-reviewed articles about how geology reveals a worldwide flood. I'd like you to link to the historical evidence that the Hebrew people migrated to, were enslaved in, and then escaped from Egypt.

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If we're going to include cultural effect then I suppose Shinto is true in Japan, Buddhism in China, etc...
Heck, four of the days of our week are named after Norse gods, surely they have some credibility.
This is another form of arugmentum ad populum. There are more Christians, so there is more Christian influence. Heck, a lot of that's derived from Judaism, so should we reject Christ because the Jewish people refuse to acknowledge him?

I quite disagree that there could be no more evidence than there is. A secondary resource recording the dead walking into Jerusalem would be a good start. The impossible three hour eclipse having been noted elsewhere would certainly be persuasive. A second-hand mention of the 500 witnesses would be cool.
The Bible isn't the only piece of literature from that time period to survive, but it's the only one that mentions these things happening.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

I have never understood the ‘apart from the Bible’ dismissal. The New Testament is the collection of eyewitness accounts and early records of those who experienced a resurrected Christ – the fact that they are collected together doesn’t make them less reliable, but more so – and there is a clear connection between those documents, the founding of the church, and the universality of the experience that followed for the next 2000 years.

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Paul affirmed the testimony of the apostles, and the resurrection of Christ, and the witnesses thereof. In fact, he shared as a traveling companion one of the writers of the Gospels, Luke. So there is no disparity there, only confirmation.

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I didn’t say ‘extra-biblical evidence, because the fact that such accounts are gathered in the Bible is irrelevant; the accounts exist, they a from multiple witness and confirmed in the time they were written, and confirmed by the penalty many of those witnesses suffered for their testimony, which was frequently death.

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Your unwillingness to except them is a reflection of your own desires, not the sufficiency of the evidence.

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ORIGINAL: MusicianDad

I agree that it would be cool if there were more evidence. It seems to me though, that Christianity, unlike atheism, is totally up front about embracing faith. Atheism is the belief in the unknowable, on the other hand. Atheism says that there is no God. Since atheists havn't been everywhere, havn't seen everything, and don't know everything, it's not even good logic. I don't believe in E.T.'s, but I don't claim to know they don't exist.

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As was said early, there is some evidence. Some just don't find it compelling. In any case, it takes faith to be a Christian. It takes more to be an atheist.