Christian:
I do claim the rational way to substantiate supernatural intervention is by the process of eliminating natural explanations. You can read about this approach in the link “Rational Methodology for Identifying Supernatural Intervention” found at my webpage https://sites.google.com/site/s2hinrichs/home.
Also, I do claim that based on this rational approach there is some supernatural evidence for Jesus as the Messiah. You can read about this evidence in the link “Daniel’s Messiah in the Critics Den” also found at my webpage. Granted the strength of this evidence does not meet the high “compelling standard”, but still the strength is significant. I have studied and read through many sacred religious text and this evidence in terms of a single item is the strongest I have found in any sacred religious text.
Gary:
Ok, here is one possible, natural explanation for the early Christian resurrection belief. I would like you to tell us if you think it can be “eliminated” as impossible:
–Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb.
–Saturday evening, after sundown, someone secretly moved the body of Jesus to an unknown location for reasons unknown.
–Sunday morning, women come to the tomb and find it empty.
–They run and tell the disciples, some of whom come and inspect the empty tomb.
–The disciples at first believe that someone has taken the body.
–Simon Peter is very distraught after the death of Jesus. He had promised to defend Jesus, but in the end, he denied knowing him. Peter has eaten little and had little sleep. Due to his lack of sleep, his lack of nutrition, and his deep depression, Peter experiences a hallucination in which Jesus appears to him; forgives him for his disloyalty; but then asks Peter to dedicate the remainder of his life to preaching the Gospel, even if it costs him his life. Peter remembers this experience as a real event. (Medical experts tell us that persons who experience hallucinations remember them as real events.)
–Peter is dramatically changed.
–Peter convinces his fellow disciples that he has seen the resurrected Jesus.
–Other disciples begin “seeing” Jesus, most of these “appearances” or illusions and false sightings. Possibly a couple of the other disciples had their own hallucinations. These appearances are recorded in the Early Creed.
–the Resurrection belief is born.
Several decades latter, four anonymous authors write four Greco-Roman biographies about Jesus which later come to be called “the Gospels”. True to the literary genre, the detailed appearances stories in these Gospels are literary embellishments of the bare bones accounts in the Early Creed. Jesus never did talk, walk, or eat broiled fish in any of the original (alleged) appearances.
Escaping Christian Fundamentalism 
Here’s another possible natural explanation:
Jesus was only “mostly dead”. He awoke from his coma sometime before Sunday morning. Someone visiting another tomb heard him yelling, and helped him move the stone so he could get out. The women found the empty tomb as written, and Jesus later managed to find where the disciples were. He stayed with the disciples for 40 days, then succumbed to infection from his injuries. Since the disciples had already proclaimed that a miracle had happened, they told everybody that he had “ascended” instead of just saying “died”. The story was embellished from there.
And another possible explanation:
Jesus switched places with someone else, and was not actually crucified. He stayed with his disciples for a little while shortly after the death of the other guy, and then fled the area to avoid capture. The “empty tomb and ascension” story was completely invented as a cover up to the awkward truth, and so that the other followers would not desert the cult. (Jesus fled to Shingo, Japan, settled down and had a family, grew old, and died there. You can visit the “Grave of Jesus” that they have there. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-little-known-legend-of-jesus-in-japan-165354242/)
Neither of these has any supernatural elements either. Is it possible to rule either of them out? How many other possible natural explanations are there that would also have to be ruled out before you could even begin to assume that something “supernatural” had occurred?
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Excellent.
We will have to wait and see if any Christians respond to your comment but my guess is that for both my scenario and your two scenarios, Christians will claim that a miracle by Yahweh is MUCH more probable than that:
1. Someone would move a dead body in first century Judea.
2. Someone could survive a Roman crucifixion.
3. The Jews and Romans could be fooled into executing someone who may have looked like Jesus, letting Jesus escape.
But if you are not a Christian, the answer is obvious: OF COURSE all three of these possible explanations are MUCH, MUCH more probable than the explanation that a three-day-brain dead first century corpse was reanimated by an invisible being named Yahweh, then in some fashion exited his sealed tomb to eat a broiled fish lunch with his former fishing buddies, and later flew off into outer space!!!!
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LOVE your first scenario. Makes MUCH more sense than the gospel version. 😀
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BTW. I was responding to Ubi … my comment ended up in a weird place.
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I think that both of Ubi’s stories are great. They would both make for great mystery novels. But I personally love the concept that Jesus escaped all the way to Japan where he raised a family.
Just think of all the interesting details one could make up about his journey from Palestine, across the entire continent of Asia, to Japan. Maybe he met a group of five hundred people along the way, all of whom were going the opposite direction TO Palestine. So maybe Paul was right after all: Five hundred people, all at one place and at the same time, DID see Jesus after his crucifixion.
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