I am not proving your point as it were, because the accounts of the resurrection aren't as dubious as alien abductions. Please read up on the early accounts and you will see this. Case in point, the title of Pontius Pilate which mainstream Archaeology held to be Procurator and the gospels held to be Prefect. Later, a decree by this governor was found in Israel which gave his title as prefect. There are many such other points I could raise regarding Roman Officials, the Sanhedrin etc. but this one will do for now. The accounts stand up on ancillary points, so have a higher probability on its primary point.
Non sequitur. Pilate's exact status has nothing to do with the historicity of the resurrection.
This differs from Alien abductions which tend to be night time events with poor witness tallies and high chances of other physiological events being at play as I had originally stated. Not at all reliable.
And the disciples were extremely distraught after the crucifixion, so by this logic we should dismiss their testimonies.
Let's look at the facts here.
1.) There are many instances of people swearing up and down that they saw and even interacted with a deceased loved one.
2.) Bartholomew wrote nothing down. Thomas wrote nothing down. And etc. No one wrote anything down. Even if we go with the completely false assumption that Matthew and John were eyewitness accounts (in which case, I suppose, Thomas had a gospel of his own), you have two disciples claiming on behalf of themselves and all the others that they personally saw the risen Jesus. How do you know Matthew and John didn't have a grief-derived experience which they shared as being very real with the other disciples to the point that they believed it, and that when they wrote it down thirty years later in a different language they embellished the story?
3.) The risen Jesus was constantly appearing and disappearing. He was often unrecognizable. How do you know it wasn't just one disciple seeing the gardener and then, in his state of grief, believing it was Jesus? I am not proposing mass delusion, just the delusion of one or two individuals which was believed by the others. And even then... I do not even believe this is what happened, but it is a plausible explanation if you force me to accept the false premise that the gospels are eyewitness accounts.
On your second point, I agree. My wording was terrible, for which I apologise. I should have made it more clear. I refer to the above regarding the quality of those accounts.
No, your wording was perfect. That's the point. The claims are so similar that you can make only a few alterations and you won't be able to tell one story from another.
On your third point, I disagree. Scientifically speaking, for another species to visit earth would require advanced space travel with faster than light capabilities,
Why is faster-than-light travel a requirement?
a willingness to do so and a leap of logic that those creatures would in any way resemble earth life or even be capable of being seen as alive by us.
I agree that they might not recognize us as living entities, or vice versa, but it is not impossible that humanoids might exist on other planets. By all accounts, the resurrection story is impossible.
The assumptions and chances of any near stars harbouring life as well as the at this stage, theoretical impossibility of faster than light travel coupled with xeno-biologic considerations as to your abduction accounts, makes this highly implausible indeed.
I do not know why you think that nearby stars harboring life at this stage of the universe is unlikely.
I agree that faster-than-light travel is impossible, but I don't see your point. I realize that they must travel vast distances, but there is no reason that they cannot send unfertilized sex cells (presuming, of course, they procreate that way) or whatever their equivalent may be, and then have an automated system running the ship for millions of years of travel. Once they achieve maximum velocity, nearly everything can be shut down to conserve energy. Then, when they are close enough to earth, the machines create the aliens and instruct them on what the mission is.
The xeno-biological considerations do not make anything impossible.
On the other hand, the chance of men being "scientifically dead" and becoming alive again is far more plausible. This has happened quite frequently where medicine has declared someone dead only for them to actually still be alive. I am a doctor, so I know this to be the case and have read case studies. I don't think this is the case with Jesus of course, but for the sake of argument "men rising from the dead" has happened in many a morgue and operating theatre.
Straw man. I specifically mentioned how Jesus walked through walls, disappeared at his whim, and ascended into the sky. I never said it would be more likely that alien abduction accounts are true in comparison to a half-dead Jesus crawling out of the tomb.
Also, your further argument is assuming a "science" basis. Please tell me on what methodology you base the assertion that it is more probable for aliens to visit us than the Resurrection accounts, for on the Historical-Critical method, this is not the case. You are assuming your own point here, not very scientific of you.
Huh? Our methods of determining history assume that the laws of science do not change over time. Therefore the assumption of a "science" basis is well founded in the discipline of history.
