Travis Walton versus The Resurrection.

[John V]

Are you saying that people do not confess to crimes that they did not commit under torture?

No, but that doesn't follow from my point.

Or, that people never go to their graves having embraced a lie, holding fast to those lies into death?

No, but they're much less likely to go to the grave with the lie if someone tried to torture them out of it.

Whose to say about what Mr. Walton would or would not say if he was persecuted?  Or, tortured?

Who knows? That brings up another difference - Walton's testimony, even if true, has no bearing on my life.

Besides, even assuming that Paul, a Roman citizen, was martyred for his faith (and, no one knows for sure what happened after he ended-up in Rome), he had every incentive to continue to profess what he said he believed, for the Romans were more likely to execute a liar than a zealot.

Even if that's true (I'd need to see support to believe it; execution for lying seems pretty extreme), the Roman imprisonment/execution were at the end of a line of suffering for Paul. I'd think most people, if they had just made it up, would have given up after the first beating.

And, so, you are going to base a whole worldview on the likely execution of an epileptic from the first century at the hands of a police state?

No, but it's a factor in his favor, and something that Walton lacks.