Aren't naturalistic explanations for the resurrection stories more probable than the resurrection itself, since they appeal only to elements common to our experience, whereas the resurrection must appeal to God?

This is the most methodologically serious objection in the whole discussion, and it should be granted up front: all else being equal, a naturalistic explanation does start with a higher prior probability. The question is whether all else is equal here.

1. Analogy is a rule of thumb, not a law. Historians reasonably prefer known causes, but a rule of thumb does not decide particular cases; evidence does. If the specific facts point to an unusual cause, the historian is permitted to infer it. Otherwise history could only ever confirm what it already expected.

2. Priors are not verdicts. A low prior can be overwhelmed by explanatory power and by the failure of every rival. The 1908 Tunguska event was not explained by anything in the observers' experience, and the evidence still settled it. The question is comparative: which hypothesis accounts for the most data with the fewest difficulties.

3. We already accept things outside our experience. The origin of the universe, the existence of consciousness, and the applicability of mathematics to physics all lack everyday analogues, and no one rejects them on that ground. If unfamiliarity disqualified a hypothesis, it would disqualify most of modern science along with the resurrection.

4. There is a core of facts almost everyone grants. Gary Habermas and others argue from a minimal core: Jesus died by crucifixion, his followers reported appearances of him alive, and skeptics such as James and Paul became believers. These are accepted by the large majority of critical scholars, including many who are not Christians. The argument does not begin from the gospels' authority. Paul says Christ was “declared to be the Son of God in power... by his resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:4), which is a claim about a public event, not a private impression.

5. The creed is too early for legend. Paul cites a formulation in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 that he received, naming Peter, the Twelve, James, and more than five hundred others, most still alive when he wrote. That is a report with a date, circulated within a few years of the events, and it invites verification rather than demanding belief.

6. The women witnesses count for something. All four gospels agree the tomb was found by women (Mark 16:1-8). In a culture where a woman's testimony carried little legal weight, that is an odd detail to invent, and it is the kind of embarrassment historians treat as a mark of honesty rather than fabrication.

7. The rivals each fail a specific fact. Hallucination struggles with group, varied, and hostile witnesses. Legend struggles with the creed's date. The swoon theory requires a gravely wounded man to appear triumphant days later. The theft theory requires the disciples to die for what they knew was a lie. Each alternative has to cover the same data, and each leaves something unexplained.

8. The objection's method rules out its own conclusion. If only what is common to our experience may be inferred, then the origin of the universe is excluded, and so is the reliability of reason itself, since no one has observed the laws of logic. A method that eliminates every unique event is not history; it is metaphysical naturalism wearing a historian's coat, and it decides the case before the evidence is read.

9. The objection assumes a closed universe. That God never acts is the very thing in dispute, and it cannot be used as a premise without begging the question. If God exists, a resurrection is not antecedently absurd; it is the kind of act a good God might perform to vindicate the innocent and defeat death. The apostles preached it as public fact: “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses” (Acts 2:32).

10. This remains a probabilistic judgment. Historians divide, and the argument does not compel assent the way a geometry proof does. Paul himself says that if Christ has not been raised, the faith is futile and the preaching is in vain (1 Corinthians 15:14). That is not how a movement talks about a metaphor, and it is a falsifiable claim rather than a mood.

So the issue is not whether a resurrection is unusual, since it obviously is, but whether it is the best explanation of a specific set of public facts. That is a historical question, and it deserves an argument rather than a prior.

Sources: William Lane Craig; Gary Habermas; Michael Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus; C.S. Lewis, Miracles; David Hume (critic).

Related challenges:
• Did Jesus really claim to be God, or did His followers just say that about Him? Might not Dan Brown have been on to something?
• It should be called Paulianity – for centuries Christians have presented the ideas of Paul as the teachings of Jesus, and that’s a mistake. It was all Paul’s INTERPRETATION. Check the data.
• Jesus is a borrowed myth dressed up like a Jew. He never existed, period. There is zero SUFFICIENT evidence that Jesus ever existed? Zero. It’s all a terrible hoax for the church to control the masses.