The resurrection of Jesus, the central event of the Christian faith, is a historical fact. To say otherwise one would need to ignore the preponderence of evidence and the usual standards for evaluating ancient history.
"Can a Scientist Believe in the Resurrection?" http://www.jamesgregory.org/tom_wright.php
What separates N.T. Wright from his opponents is that while Wright provides facts and evidence, Marcus Borg appeals to personal feelings, presuppositions, strawmen, and anecdotes.
So I guess you've answered the title of your topic there with a rather loud affirmative.
Anyway. So, the lecture, as one might expect, starts off with a bit of background cushioning. There are issues there, but not really important.
The first meat seems to come with the talk of analogies, namely, that no matter how many examples of resurrection not happening we have, that's not enough to rule out some other specific purported instance.
And of course this is correct. What Wright fails to mention is that, although they don't
rule out such a thing, they do weigh heavily against it. For example, we know that it is possible for people to die and be buried. So if I told you that someone had died, you may well believe me. I could be lying through my teeth, but normal people would nonetheless probably trust me if I were a good liar.
If I told them that someone had been resurrected, chances are - unless they're a credulous fool - they'd tell me to pull the other one. Already we see that more evidence is required for something that we've never had any other confirmed instances of.
Skipping along a bit, there's some more with the hypothetical conversation of an early Christian with his peers. This sort of ignores the fact that A) just because it is probably pretty unlikely for any one group of nutters to get their beliefs heard doesn't mean some people can't get theirs out and B) that Jesus already had quite a big fan-base, if we're assuming that he existed. (I mean, it could just have been Paul having a hallucination on the road to Damascus.) 12 disciples, plus people who'd supposedly been healed, or have heard of healings - well, that's a pretty good start. Get some visions going down, a good martyrdom, doesn't sound quite so implausible.
On the discrepancies in the accounts of Easter Morning, well, they
certainly aren't indications that "something remarkable happened." Nor, of course, do they rule anything out, but they make for a shakier case and, when you're dealing with a
resurrectionas watertight a case as you can get is pretty handy.
Wright makes a good case for the Gospels being early accounts of the resurrection, but that doesn't establish them as being close to the supposed event. In light of his argument, they are presumably early in the course of ressurection-thinking, but that could have come much later.
Again, if Paul got things started (whether in reference to a real Jesus, or having hallucinated about someone made up) then resurrection accounts starting shortly thereafter could still exhibit these features.
The problem is that things being "remarkable" or "curious" isn't enough. The argument for something so extraordinary need to be doubly extraordinary, and they're not.
EDIT: A reply to my post, rather than going off your own topic, would also be appreciated.
