Evidence: The Gathering

[Randy Carson]

That's the rub.  The possibilities for an empty tomb are: theft (with benign or malignant intent for honest or fraudulent reasons), waking up from what wasn't really death; failure to actually inter the body (again for benign or malignant reasons); the witnesses lied; dogs, people, or other animals ate the body; or rising from the dead like Lazarus is said to have done; or even more improbably waking to eternal life.  The first five are reasonably probable.  The later two impossibly improbable.  It is not for those arguing that it might of been one of the first five to show that it was a particular one of the five, but he who argues for the impossible to show that the first five are really and truly impossible.  Otherwise the empty tomb is proof of nothing like resurrection.  It is circumstantial evidence of nothing in particular, just possibilities, much like the light that doesn't come on.

Jenny-

I'm aware of all of these theories; however, they simply do not account for ALL of the facts...not even the Five Minimal Facts.

For example, how would dogs eating the body of Jesus account for Paul's conversion? As an enemy of the early Church, Paul would have been quick to accept that theory more readily than the resurrection theory.

But he became a Christian. Why?