@Radical_EgoCom I appreciate your focus on philosophical argumentation and your logical fallacy points are spot on when it comes to establishing philosophical propositions. However, unlike formulating a mathematical theorem, historical examinations are more akin to court cases. To examine if George Washington were ever president of the United States, if an Apollo mission landed on the moon or if Jesus were Resurrected, we must do so via the preponderance of evidence.

You are right to cite the _ad populum_ fallacy if my claim were simply that a lot of people believed something. Likewise that it were a tautology if it were merely “it’s true because people believe it.” Instead, I’m speaking to how we establish _credible testimony_. As a principle in courts, and in life, we understand there is a difference between abstractly holding a belief and eyewitness testimony -- especially when the witness is under duress to deny the thing he or she instead affirms. The costliness of signals has a distilling effect, as we regularly see demonstrated when people change their story when placed in court under threat of perjury.

Thus, in a court, finding more witnesses and witnesses who have closer proximity to an event is a quite reasonable -- and often, the only -- way of establishing if something is likely to have happened. For your question, the thing worth establishing is either (a) “was Jesus resurrected?” or (b) “did He do miracles?” If either of those can be affirmed, that would lend credence to other things He said, thus dramatically increasing the likelihood of His divinity.

I would gladly discuss the available testimony if you’d like. For now, I am just laying out a framework for evaluation. (1/2)

@AAae @Radical_EgoCom Yes, and just to be clear I wasn't "subtooting” you by bringing up atheists. I welcome good-faith, genuine conversation and I really appreciate the spirit of your toots in that vein. If nothing else, we all understand each other better if we discuss things, I figure.

As to the historical point (and also your earlier one about games of "telephone"), from a historian's perspective the New Testament and early Christians writings are actually quite "close" to the source material. Historical texts often went many hundreds of years of transmission before we get a preserved copy. The Biblical texts have early (in historical terms) copies that we've found and a high level of corroboration between individual copies. So, there's a high degree of confidence that the text we have is accurate to the original.

That doesn't prove it is right (it could be a highly accurate copy of a false document), but at least means we're discussing accurate records of what early first/second hand folks said. That lets us get to the point of wrestling with why first century people said they saw someone they knew well killed and then repeatedly had meaningful interaction with him again, rather than getting stuck wondering if second or third or forth century folks merely said first century people thought that.