[Most of your arguments are ones that I've answered already in my own writings, which I paste or paraphrase in blue below.]

BH: The report in Mt 28 is devastating.

KK: First, let me say, you can't have it both ways. Throughout your responses to me you use scripture for rebuttal while at the same time questioning its veracity. Is it only accurate in texts that you use?

I can have it both ways. It is a standard principle of exegesis that elements of the scripture are more credible if they are at cross-purposes to the evangelical intent of the authors.

Second, you are aware that the Mt. 28 report was made by the enemies of Jesus. They didn't actually believe that the disciples stole Jesus' body. Even if they did they didn't have any evidence to support that theory. Why else would the religious leaders pay a bribe to the soldiers and be willing to appease the governor to keep the guards out of trouble?

You argue for the truth of the Bible by assuming the truth of the Bible. All we can reliably infer from the account in Mat 28 is that there must have been a body-theft story in wide circulation that the evangelist thought was important to somehow rebut.

Assuming that the disciples actually did steal the body then you'd have to account for how they did this. The tomb was sealed and was blocked by a large stone. Furthermore, there were the soldiers to deal with.

Lastly, why?? Why take the dead body of Jesus? It had already been given a proper burial.

Two possible reasons are obvious: to fake a resurrection, or to move the body to a more permanent grave.

BH: All we know is that some of the people who had committed their lives to following Jesus ended up as believers in him despite his well-anticipated execution.

KK: Most skeptics would agree with me that the disciples had some experience.

As I said: "some disciples began having epiphanies, perhaps involving the occasional dream, ecstatic vision, encounter with a stranger, case of mistaken identity, or outright hallucination (or fabrication). The disciples in their desperation and zeal initially interpreted these experiences as manifestations of a triumphant and vindicated (but not necessarily reanimated) Jesus, who had apparently predicted that he would in some sense return or at least that his ministry would require but survive his death."

KK: Now, some skeptics try to answer this fact by saying that the disciples were "dreaming", or "hallucinating".

My answer is above. Your rebuttal to it is inadequate.

First, the enemies of the Christians simply needed to show the dead body of Jesus one time to his disillusioned disciples to stop that nonsense once and for all.

I already answered this point: the enemies of Jesus wouldn't have known where the body was. That you repeat arguments already answered suggests that you're not very interested in honest debate.

Second, Acts 1 reports that Jesus appeared to them over a period of 40 days. During those appearances Jesus specifically tried to convince his followers that he was real/physical ( Luke 24:36-43, Jn. 20:27).

You again argue for the truth of the Bible by assuming the truth of the Bible.

Lastly, while it is obviously possible for people to dream and hallucinate, is it possible that they would do this collectively and simultaneously?

My explanation doesn't require simultaneous or collective hallucinations. You think it does only because you assume the truth of the gospel reports of collective perceptions of the physically-reanimated Jesus.

Hallucinations are not contagious.

Religious ecstasy is. It's easy to imagine that a group of devout followers could whip themselves into an ecstatic frenzy in which they simultaneously perceive that Jesus' spirit is affecting them in a way that vindicates Jesus' ministry.

During Jesus' appearances multiply people witnessed him at the same time over a period of forty days. All of this militates against the Hallucination Theory

BH: The disciples might have just believed that Yahweh had "raised" Jesus' body to heaven so as to not "abandon [it] to the grave" and to "decay" [Ps 16:10, cited in Acts 13:35-37].

KK: This theory denies the clear reading of all the gospels. The disciples just didn't believe that God had raised Jesus to life and then took his body to heaven. They testify that he was raised to life and that they were witnesses to that fact.

You again argue for the truth of the gospel accounts by invoking the truth of the gospel accounts. Again, the gospel accounts contain zero first-hand eyewitness accounts of a physically resurrected Jesus.

BH: An empty tomb belief would greatly have helped the early epiphanic experiences be misinterpreted, exaggerated, and embellished over the subsequent half century into the reanimated corpse stories that appear only in the two oldest gospels (Luke and John).

KK: Mt. 28:8-10 records the reanimated corpse story, and even if we don't credit Mark 16:9-20 as reliable, verse 7-8 records that the women were anticipating his appearance.

Mt 28:9 mentions Jesus' feet in a formulaic description of him being worshipped, but that hardly makes it a "reanimated corpse" story. There's simply no mention of a reanimated corpse in original Mark.

(Most scholars believe that Mark got some of his information from Matthew thus making Mt. an earlier work.).

False. As far as I know, all secular reference texts say that Mark is prior to Matthew.

Further, 1 Corinthians 15 written around A.D. 55 records an early Christian creed that had been around obviously prior to Paul that reads, [..] Even you would have to agree that this is certainly not enough time for legend to evolve.

"Legend" is your word, not mine. My words are: misinterpretation, exaggeration, and embellishment. If you're not going to argue against my actual position, then our discussion is finished..

there is a definite category difference between the aforementioned deaths and the deaths of such men as James and Stephen (It's reasonable to believe that both these men were eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus,

No, all we know is that they were firm believers in something.  The mere fact of their martyrdom does not tell us what they specifically were martyred for. In particular, there is zero evidence that they died for a specific belief in a physical resurrection, as opposed to a spiritual manifestation and vindication.

for the early creed in 1 Cor. 15 says that Jesus appeared "to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time" [or did they hallucinate that?].

Over his alleged forty days of resurrection appearances, the gospels record not a single sighting of Jesus by anyone other than his disciples. This statement can in fact be expanded to the entire New Testament, since Paul's listing [1 Cor 15] of an appearance to "more than 500 of the brothers at the same time" is suspect:

• This most spectacular appearance is not mentioned in any gospel (nor, of course, in Josephus).
• Paul was not an eyewitness to the event.
• None of the 500 are named, not even any apostles who would presumably have been present.
• The audience of Paul's claim consists of people who already believe in Jesus' resurrection.
• The audience of Paul's claim is several week's journey away -- and more than a decade removed -- from the alleged event.

You continue: 

Again, many are willing to die for what they really believe, but who is willing to die for what they know to be a lie? If Jesus hadn't been raised then Peter, John, Thomas, Matthew and the others knew it.

You below quoted my argument but blatantly declined to answer it, so I'll just repeat: "there is no evidence that recanting their alleged belief in physical resurrection could have saved them. They probably just died for their very sincere belief in some Easter-related experiences that they interpreted as evidence of a triumphant and vindicated Jesus."

BH: We have no first-hand accounts of a physically resurrected Jesus, from Peter or Paul or anyone else. This fact alone is devastating. A competent deity would have arranged for scripture to say something like "I, Fred, saw Jesus beheaded last week but had lunch with him this week and touched his sore neck." Instead, we have second-hand vague and contradictory accounts written decades later.

KK: Most of history is not recorded by "first-hand" accounts, yet we have no problem accepting its veracity! 

"Most of history" does not claim to be the inerrant revelation of a divine savior, the non-acceptance of whom leads to eternal torment. You here do not even attempt to defend the revelatory competence of your god(s) against my criticism.

Shouldn't we judge all works of antiquity by the same measure?

We do. Those measures are: background plausibility, external objective confirmation, internal consistency, spatiotemporal proximity to the reported events, evidence of contemporary skeptical cross-examination, absence of plausible alternative explanations, etc. All of these factors tend to argue against the veracity of the gospel's supernatural claims.

BH: Also, if the tomb had been emptied by human agency, it's not necessarily the case that Peter or most of the disciples would have known it.

KK: Acts 2:32 "God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact." By the way, Peter was saying this in front of his enemies, an unlikely thing to do unless it was true.

Even if we take Acts as an accurate record of a speech given by Peter decades earlier, these words could easily just mean that Jesus' body is gone and that his spirit has manifested itself to his believers.

Furthermore, we have the early Christian creed, as well as, Paul's testimonies of his encounter with the resurrected Jesus (1 Cor. 15:3-8, 1 Cor.9:1) 1 Cor 15:4-8

Precisely. Paul lumps all these alleged resurrection appearances in with a clearly spiritual manifestation to Paul himself, thus doing nothing to indicate that the resurrection manifestations were of a tangible reanimated corpse.

BH: Peter and James are the only alleged resurrection witnesses who the New Testament names (John 21:18,19, Acts 12:2) as martyrs, but there is no evidence that recanting their alleged belief in physical resurrection could have saved them. They probably just died for their very sincere belief in some Easter-related experiences that they interpreted as evidence of a triumphant and vindicated Jesus.

KK: I agree that the NT does not record any other martyrs who were eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus. The obvious answer is that they died after the NT was written.

As I indicated already, you give no answer to the part of my statement that I here italicize.

If you believe third century historian Eusubius, all the apostles (eyewitnesses) died a martyrs' death with the exception of John who was exiled to Patmos (Certainly no Club Med).

References, please? Nothing in Eusebius is taken seriously enough by standard historical reference texts to confidently assert the martyrdom of the other apostles, let alone all of them.

In addition, consider what Josephus says in Antiquities 20.200, "He convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned."
Now, this  is remarkable considering how James viewed his brother prior to the supposed resurrection. John 7:5 states plainly that James and his other brothers did not believe in him. Yet, later we see James not only identifying with Jesus, but actually being put to death for his belief in him, and this from a hostile witness!!

Nothing in Josephus supports the idea that James (or anyone else) was martyred for their belief in a specifically physical resurrection, as opposed to a belief that Jesus' ministry and martyrdom was vindicated by the apostles' subsequent spiritual experiences.

 I don't know about you, but I have a brother and nothing short of a resurrection from the dead could convince me that he was/is the Son of God. What could account for James' conversion and subsequent martyrdom? I suggest 1 Cor 15:7 "Then he appeared to James,"

Jesus' family are the best possible witnesses to testify about the validity of his ministry, and their verdict was unanimous during Jesus' lifetime that his ministry was not authentic. Only some time after the trauma of Jesus' execution did the presumably guilt-ridden James decide to step in front of the parade that Jesus had been leading. Aside from one mention in Acts 1:14, I know of no evidence that Jesus' mother or other siblings played any part in the Jesus movement. As far as we can tell from the historical record, the verdict during Jesus' lifetime of Jesus' parents and siblings and fellow Nazarenes and pre-ministry acquaintances is unanimous: his ministry and his magic act were not to be believed.

BH: The point of "discreet" or "stolen" is that the enemies of Jesus wouldn't have known where the body was.

KK: By the way, what evidence do you have to support such theories that Jesus' body was stolen, discreetly or otherwise?

(Does your not responding to my point mean that you won't ask me any more why Jesus' enemies did not exhibit his body?) The best evidence for theft is the Bible itself: Matthew 28. Surely you must concede that if Mat 28:11-15 were not included in the gospels, I would have much less basis for a claim of body theft.

And, if I may ask, do you come to the resurrection accounts in scripture with the presupposition that there is no God and miracles can't happen? If so, then I understand why you use such naturalistic theories.

No, I admit that supernatural explanations of the gospel evidence are possible, and give my probability estimates here. Now, do you admit that naturalistic explanations are possible?  Do you dare give a probability estimate for them?

BH: Also, we know from Acts that Jesus' followers did not publicly proclaim the resurrection for weeks and weeks. That's a lot of time for a body to be disposed of or to become unrecognizable.

KK: Utterly false. Acts 1 says, "After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God."

Bzzt. "These men" in 1:3 refers not to the public in general, but to "the apostles whom he had chosen" [1:2]. The appearances were suspiciously exclusive: "He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen" [Acts 10:40-41] "Why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?" [Jn 14:22].

Then Acts 2:1 mentions that at Pentecost (50 days after the Passover, the day that Jesus was crucified, and just 10-13 days after Jesus had ascended), Peter preaches about the resurrection (Acts 2:32) [..] So, within two weeks after Jesus had appeared to the people Peter and the others are proclaiming the resurrection.

Just as I said, the public preaching was weeks and weeks after Jesus' death, and your "utterly false" is itself utterly false.

By the way, he preaches in the very city where the supposed events took place. If I were going to make up a story I would publish my accounts far from the venue where they supposedly took place.

And if the apostles had followed your advice, maybe the biblical record wouldn't have come to include the embarrassing report of widespread belief among the Jews that the body had been stolen. Also, you yet again fail to get my point that most or all of the apostles would themselves have been dupes of the person(s) who emptied the tomb, so I need not claim that Peter "made up a story".

Days before his execution, Jesus upon his entry to Jerusalem and its temple had enthralled "multitudes" and "all the people" [Lk 19]. But after his execution, his followers had dwindled to no more than 120 (Acts 1:15). Thus from Josephus and from the Bible's own admission, we know that the Jesus movement was not initially significant enough for its opponents to care about producing Jesus' body.

BH: We know from Josephus that the Jesus movement was simply not significant during the first decades after Jesus' ministry.

KK: Interesting. If the Jesus movement was not significant then why did Josephus write about it at all? He usually wrote about politics or military events. The fact that he wrote anything about a Jewish carpenter and his following is significant in itself.

Actually, he wrote nothing about a carpenter or the carpenter's following. All we have is a mention of Jesus as the brother of James. Josephus discussed just about anybody who attracted followers, including John the Baptist, but no credible mention of the Jesus movement survives in Josephus. Josephus devotes more space each to John the Baptist and James, and while reporting much minutiae over the entire period during which Jesus lived, does not mention:

• the Christmas Star that disturbed Herod and "all Jerusalem" [Mt 2:3],
• Herod's massacre [Mt 2:16],
• Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem [Mt 21:8-11];
• the Good Friday earthquake [Mt 27:51],
• the Good Friday resurrectees that "appeared to many people" in Jerusalem [Mt 27:53], or
• the Good Friday 3-hour darkness "over all the land" [Mk 15:33, Lk 23:44, Mt 27:45].

You continue:

In addition, the Christians must have been significant enough that Nero was able to cast blame upon them for the fire in Rome during A.D. 64.

1. This was thirty years after Jesus' death. 2. This wasn't in Jerusalem, where you allege there would have been general knowledge of Jesus' miracles. 3. For the Christians to be blamed by Nero, they need only be -- in fact almost had to be -- merely a fringe cult.

BH: Despite your "/s", you seem to assume that every disciple was in on the secret. If the body was moved by a follower, why would he discourage and deflate the increased zeal that the empty tomb was creating among the rest of Jesus' followers?

I note that you made no response to the above.

BH: the empty tomb and physical resurrection are never mentioned in Paul's epistles, which are the earliest Christian writings.

KK: Respectfully, have you read the NT?

Of course. Respectfully, do you have any familiarity whatsoever with the standard points of disagreement between Christian apologists and their opponents?  If you did, you would know that in this email I'm answering your naive defenses of Christianity primarily by pasting or paraphrasing from my own standard arguments against Christianity.

1 Corinthians 15 (One of Paul's writings) in its entirety speak about the physical resurrection of Jesus and future resurrection of the body.

False. 1 Cor 15 is about spiritual resurrection, and is full of distinctions between the spiritual and the physical:

[it] is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a lifegiving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. [..] There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. [..] So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; [..] flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. [..] the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

You continue:

Other scriptures are Acts 2:31, 4:2,33 17:18, Romans 1:4, Phil. 3:10-11.

Acts 2:31 is consistent with bodily theft and presumed assumption into heaven, and is not necessarily about a reanimated corpse.

Acts 4:2, 33; 17:18; Rom 1:4; Phil 3:30-11: these uses of the word "resurrection" say nothing about reanimated corpses, and are consistent with the sort of spiritual resurrection discussed in 1 Cor 15 and suspected about John the Baptist.

It should be noted that the resurrection was an elementary pillar in Christianity and was not something that needed to be repeated throughout the epistles.

A feeble excuse for the embarrassing fact that the key piece of Christianity's evidence did not get written down for decades, and only then as hearsay.

By the way, the Empty Tomb story was not "an embellishment created decades later". As you rightly pointed out Matthew 28 records that even the enemies of Christ conceded the empty tomb.

I never said the empty tomb story was created decades later, and I defy you to quote me to the contrary.

Brian, let me close this rebuttal by saying that my objective here is not to win an argument.

That's fortunate, because you're in no danger of doing so. :-)

I obviously believe in the historicity of Jesus and the claims made about him in the NT. [..] I'm like the guy who truly believes your house is on fire. I could be wrong, but I don't think that I am. And because I truly believe it I would be perpetrating a horrible evil by remaining silent. So, I yell, "Brian your house is on fire!! Please come out!"

I agree that the myth of Christianity is best propagated not by rational argument, but by waving the stick of unjust eternal punishment and the carrot of vacuous eternal bliss.

In case you were wondering, I'm 34 and live in Fullerton, Ca. with my wife and two children (Kyle 6 and Kendra 3). I've been teaching elementary physical education for 9 years and pastor a small church as well.

All I'm really wondering about you is why you bother making arguments that already have standard answers in the atheist literature. By contrast, I can't locate answers in apologetic literature to most of my arguments, and so I've posted my challenge in order to smoke them out -- or just plain smoke them. :-)