DEBUNKING THE CONSPIRACY THEORY

[KevinM1]

Except that the apostles' deaths are mostly shrouded in mystery, AFAIK.

Oh, give it a rest. To be dead one has to be alive before. Not even that is proven.

Randy likes to pull what he calls facts out of brother anus. So the whole OP is the expected product of it's source.

Oh, I know that.  The thing is, I have no problem allowing that these people actually existed because it doesn't help his argument at all.  The biggest flaw with his approach is that he's essentially saying:

If all these other things are true, then it's likely this last thing is true.

Except, those other things aren't really related to that last thing (what do people's changed outlooks have to do with someone coming back to life?  if their outlooks even changed at all (where's the proof?)?), and they're also subjected to different standards of supporting evidence needed to make the claims plausible, let alone likely.  

A local cult leader who constantly ran afoul of the local authorities, got betrayed by one of his own, and was killed via crucifixion is a much more mundane claim than the guy was actually the son of god and was resurrected on the third day after his death.  And what sparse evidence points to the former does not automatically point to the latter, no matter how much Randy demands it.

So, yeah, I'm willing to accept, for argument's sake, that the apostles were real people because their existence is immaterial to the matter at hand.  We don't know how they died, or what threats they lived under while alive (if they were indeed alive), so the standard apologist wish casting and psychoanalysis of straw men still doesn't get him anywhere.