We can be certain of NO resurrection - A Response

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Or, in the alternative:

1. Jesus existed and was executed by Rome for claiming to be a Jewish messiah (and thus anti-Roman "rebel leader").
2. The followers of this man who claimed to be the arrival of the Messiah, the leader of the Jewish freedom movement, could not accept that God would send the Messiah only to let him die, so they claim he's coming back soon. This story gets embellished as retold and repeated.
3. The very first things written about him were 15 years later, at a minimum (Pauline epistles).
4. The gospels weren't written for twenty years (or more) after his death.
5. There was plenty of time within the first year after his death, let alone the 14-19 years after that, to come up with a few stories about the Messiah being actually more than a failed "mere human", in which time the ministry of Jesus stories became slowly embellished by the small group of disciples (and Paul) as they spread the word, and by the time they were written down (probably by others), a semi-coherent whole had coagulated (helped by later editing, and the excising of the less-coherent versions, by the early orthodox church bishops) that expressed a version of the teachings of those "eyewitnesses" that in only the barest details matched what had actually happened, two decades before.
6. Later Christians would not only accept the coagulated version as a factual narrative of what actually happened, but would use those gospels-that-survived-the-Council-of-Nicea versions' similarities to one another to "prove" that eyewitnesses (who just couldn't be later believers writing down the coagulated story as they recall it being retold and reshaped and retold by aged disciples who actually were eyewitnesses, once upon a time, before they started embellishing the "he is returning 'soon' to lead the Jews to freedom" story until he became God Incarnate!) wrote down the story accurately.
7. The versions kept being retold-and-coagulated into cohesive but highly-altered forms so much that, by the time we pass the Jewish Revolt and get to books like the gospel of John and Revelation, the tone has changed significantly (compared to the Synoptics) but not so significantly that the average Christian even notices the striking difference between Mark and John, clearly showing an evolving story/fable.

IOW, it does not follow that one's opinion of the gospels must be "I think these guys may have been telling the truth" for any of the reasons that are commonly stated, and the whole thing about the empty grave is static that assumes a great deal that can neither be assumed logically, nor can other plausible alternatives be excluded. It's wishful thinking and suppositionalism at its finest.