Also, I’d really like to see this conclusive evidence that Easter was adopted from pagan religions. I want real evidence. Not things that look like evidence but are not.

Also, the bunnies and the eggs were mentioned in relation to Easter. Admittedly, those ideas are pretty foreign to me. We don’t naturally have bunnies in the Philippines and we’ve been able to celebrate Easter just fine. As to the eggs, they don’t actually have a central role in our celebration except to mimick what we’ve seen on TV as children like the easter egg hunts. But I’ve never participated in one and I’ve been celebrating Easter my whole life. So really, the egg and bunnies don’t represent Easter to Christianity in general.

"Was it coincidence that the "rebirth" of Israel is celebrated on the exact same days as the Vernal Equinox? On the same day that used to be dedicated to Semiramis/Ashira etc?"

- Even if we're going by your coincidence theory. I'm willing to go along with that. I'd still say, a pretty huge chance. We have 365 days in a year (366 during leap years) and according to some sources on here, we have more than a million gods. You're basically asking me what the chances are that Christianity's day for the resurrection happens to match that of another god. That's like asking me to explain why I just so happen to have the same birthday as Marie Curie and David Guetta. If coincidence is all you're basing this one, it's a very weak base.

Actually, he was resurrected on a Sunday. But I think that would be beside the point.

First we need to layout some basic facts about Jesus' life. For purposes of this topic, we shall assume the Jesus indeed existed. It would be senseless for me to start all of these and you’d simply hand wave this away. Second, we cannot dismiss early Christian writings or any ancient writings if we have to limit everything to Roman records although I will bring up a few.

Fact #1 – Jesus was put to death by crucifixion and was buried.

It would be senseless to talk about resurrecting from the dead if the person in question had not yet died. A skeptical scholar John Dominic Crossan in his book, “Jesus: A revolutionary biography” says, “That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be.”

We look to Tacitus mention of Jesus “… Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, …”.

Josephus, in the Antiquities of the Jews writes, “About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.”

Say what you want about this passage. Some would say it was absolutely written by Josephus. Some say it was a total forgery. Some say it was a partial forgery. Majority of scholars tend to the third where Christian interpolators added. It has been agreed the the phrases, “, if indeed one ought to call him a man”, “He was the Christ.”, and “He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him.” Are indeed interpolations as we have evidence to suggest that Josephus, a Jew, would not write these things down. The rest, however, appears to be genuine.

For more on this, check out:

https://historyforatheists.com/2017/05/did-jesus-exist-the-jesus-myth-th...

Fact #2 – His tomb was empty and was found empty by women

It’s easy to make a false claim many years after the fact. Simply claim that someone important found out. In early Christianity, your best bets would’ve been Peter or John or James or any of the apostles. But according to all the gospel accounts, it was women who found Jesus’ tomb empty. During this time, women’s testimonies would’ve been next to worthless. The Jewish Talmud even says as much, “The words of the Torah should be burned rather than entrusted to women.” (Sotah 3:4)

If a central doctrine of Christianity were so important and was made up (1 Cor. 15:14 says this very strongly), why would the gospel writers put them as the first witnesses and having to explain that these women were in fact telling the truth. Also, it would’ve been very easy for the Jewish authorities to disprove the resurrection by simply showing his body.

Let’s look at Matthew 28:11-15 where the gospel author writes that the Jewish leaders of his day believed that Jesus’ body was stolen from the tomb. St. Justin Martyr also says as much (Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter CVIII). Although he is a 2nd century author, it actually shows that even in the second century, the popular belief was that the Christians stole Jesus’ body from the tomb. Call it the case of the missing body but even into the second century, the Jews believed that the tomb was in fact empty.

The Christians claim Jesus rose from the dead. The Jews claimed the Christians stole his body. They both disagree on what happened. What they do agree on is that Jesus’ tomb was empty.

Fact #3 – His disciples preached that Jesus rose from the dead and were willing to die for it.

This is actually where the Jewish claim that his body was stolen would fail. If the Christians had in fact stolen Christ’s body, you wouldn’t expect any of the accomplices to die for this. They would retract or even confess that they did this just to save their skin. Coz really, nobody is willing to die for something they know is a lie. This isn’t to say that people will die for false things. People do, but if you look at these cases, these people actually believe what they claim to believe.

I’d actually use the argument from silence where we have absolutely no evidence that any of the early Christians were part of a conspiracy.
Fact #4 – Peter and the early disciples had experiences with Jesus after his death.

A NT scholar who doesn’t believe in the resurrection, Gerd Ludemann agrees to this. (What really happened to Jesus?). You can see Paul’s writings to check that this was in fact the case. (1 Cor. 15:3-7). He even mentions people who have also claimed as much. While some historians may reject the gospels as being authentic, there’s nearly universal consensus that Corinthians and Galatians are authentically written by Paul.

Gerd Ludemann proposes, however, that the disciples were hallucinating. The problem with this theory is that people normally don’t have hallucinations about the same thing. In Corinthians, Paul claims he was seen by 500 people at one time and even told the Corinthians that some of them were still alive at the time and could be asked about it.

// This part I’m going to inject my own theory but most people take for granted or outright ignore the idea that the NT canon came about organically. Like you’ve mentioned previously, a Gospel of Thomas never made it to the Bible. Many other documents didn’t. This actually came about much more organically than you might think. If a certain document wasn’t reliable, it didn’t gain a following. If it didn’t gain following, it was abandoned. And you can see this in the early Church fathers. They actually debated which books to accept and which ones not to accept. The only part of the NT, which had near universal acceptance, were the 4 gospels. This is why I find the NT books reliable.

Now back to the argument. Theories have been proposed (we’ve tackled a few already) on how to explain all these 4 basic facts about the end of Jesus’ life and the early church.

1. Hallucination theory doesn’t work (as mentioned above)
2. Swoon theory (the theory that Jesus didn’t die) – well, if you saw someone walk out of the grave because he survived his own crucifixion, your first reaction would be to get the guy to a doctor. Not make a religion. But that’s actually very unlikely – In 1986, The American Medical Association has published a paper on ancient records of the crucifixion, and basically said this was in fact, impossible.
3. Conspiracy theory – again mentioned above.
4. Theory #4 – Jesus actually did rise from the dead as his disciples claimed.

You can give other theories but no other theory will sufficiently explain all of these facts we know from history.

If you say, “we don’t even know if Jesus existed” read the parts about Josephus and Tacitus and why they can be relied upon. If you say part of Josephus was a forgery, it doesn’t explain this:

https://historyforatheists.com/2018/02/jesus-mythicism-2-james-the-broth...

You could choose on Easter Sunday whatever fancies one. But for me I will celebrate that this Jesus Christ enabled me to get to heaven through his death and resurrection I will always be grateful. You write off sin so easily your obviously not aware of how serious sin is. You show your ignorance on this point. The first time Jesus came here to earth he came humbly peacefully but now when he returns he will come in judgement, And rightfully so!!!!! It sounds silly to you because your not living for GOD you are disregarding the Christian message and lifestyle. The book of Romans says very clearly that peoples hearts will turn cold. That there would be a turning away. So tell me what are you going to do if this is all correct, And not like you call it as silly Will you have enough time to repent and change the way you think and live? I`m surprised that you as a nurse will be so ignorant and arrogant about this life .God is working every day where you work, Sometimes he answers prays and some times things don`t come out as we would like. but that doesn`t mean that God isn`t working in peoples lives .He is very real and very present.