That's very clever. Way to put your own creative spin on cosplaying!

I'm going to the next one as Sailor Moon.
I'm kidding, of course. I'm going to be Lt. Uhura.

Okay, seriously...I've never been to one, but I think it would be fun. I would probably cosplay as a Naruto character, like Kakashi or Jiraiya. Or perhaps a Supernatural character, like Crowley.

Ah, there's lots of possibilities.

So, did you have fun? Did you cosplay?

It wasn't very loving of God to drown all the animals who didn't make it onto the floating shoebox with Noah & Company just because he wanted to "off" a bunch of unruly humans.
All he had to do was crank up his patented Ananias and Sapphira Death Beam (Acts 5:1-11.) and take all the miscreants out like a Heavenly sniper. For that matter, he could also have cranked up the intensity on the ASDB and fried them completely. No muss, no fuss, and no bloated carcasses littering the landscape for Noah and Company to have to clean up. ("Damn, Shem. Look at the size of those elephants. It's going to take us a month to dig a big enough hole for them. And they're really starting to smell, too!")

"Wow! No ****, Jesus?"

"Hades, yeah, Dudes! Thank Zeus that Herakles happened by when he did. He heard me calling for help, so he moved the big rock out of the way so I could get out!"

Wow.

I already told you that I agree with your assertion that little can be absolutely proven. However, we generally accept that something is a fact if the evidence is strong enough. And I have repeatedly demonstrated to you that the evidence you have presented is not very strong. Again, if I was trying to sell you on worshiping Ra, and used some of the same type of arguments and "facts" that you are using, you wouldn't accept them. Why? because you would have no sacred cow to defend in that debate, so you would examine my evidence with common sense and logic.

And...you're mistaken. I will accept facts, if you decide to provide some facts that stand up to logical scrutiny.

So?
I can tell you that:
In 2008 Barack Obama and John McCain both vied for the Presidency. Some days it was sunny, some days it rained. After the election, large, bi-pedal pink Bunny Men from the planet Karrot landed on the moon, and NASA is covering it up.

And, you can go to Google and confirm that Barack Obama and John McCain vied for the Presidency in 2008, and that some days it was sunny, while some days it rained. If you then find only sketchy evidence about the Bunny Men, would you shrug your shoulders and conclude, "Well, everything else he told me was true, I'll just take his word for it about the bunny Men."?

Well, once again you are using "facts" from the story to prove the story.

But, beyond that, have you ever read anything about Philo? He incorporated a whole bunch of Hellenistic philosophy into his theology. It seems pretty obvious to me that he wasn't real concerned about ruffling the Rabbis' feathers.
And, given the fact that Pliny the Elder, Seneca the Elder, and Seneca the Younger were all Romans, I doubt that they were too concerned about it, either.

Sorry, Sir, but this information is highly suspect right out of the gate.
Why?
Because Celsus' writings have not been preserved anywhere except through excerpts preserved in the writings of the early CHRISTIAN writer Origen, who was debating Celsus, much as we are now. Origen was obviously very biased here. Not only was he defending his faith, but he was attempting to defeat his debate opponent.
Should we just accept the fact that he quoted Celsus with complete accuracy?

As a note of comparison, Eusebius once said this:

"We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity."

– Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 8, chapter 2.

Thanks for quoting that one. You're again making my point for me as far as how far you have to go in order to come up with ANYTHING to support your argument.

The above passage comes to us from a NINTH-Century monk named George Syncellus, who is here quoting a Second-Third Century CHRISTIAN writer named Julius Africanus, who was paraphrasing Thallus, and inserting his own biased interpretation of the cause of the darkness into the passage.

To again illustrate the point, if I round up a quote from a Nine-Century Muslim writer affirming that Allah is the true god, and that he sent the Archangel Gabriel to Mohammed, and Gabriel passed Allah's words onto Mohammed, would you accept that as a historical reality?

Perhaps I am being dense here, but I fail to grasp how your statement disproved my assertion that these writings were biased declarations of faith.
In the first place, I'd like to know how you KNOW that the writers didn't consider the possibility that their writings might be combined at some point. I can't recall any passages that say that.

But, that's a side-point, anyway. The bottom line is that the epistles found in the Bible were written by believers, for believers. (And, as I said in my OP, the author of the Gospel of john made it clear that he/she was writing religious propaganda.) Whether or not the writers envisioned their writings being collated together at some future time is completely irrelevant to my point.

To illustrate: If you write a children's book that contains expressions of your faith, that is not evidence that what you are writing is true. It is a declaration of faith. If you send a birthday card to your mother, and include something in there along the lines of, "Thanks be to God for granting you another year of life, Mother," that doesn't prove that God actually did that. It's a declaration of your faith.

I could offer other examples, but I trust you get the point.

First of all, let me state again: In the other thread, the gentleman stated that there was ample extra-biblical PROOF of Jesus' resurrection. I commented that I would love to see that. You offered a list of extra-biblical references to Jesus for our consideration. I have here demonstrated how few of these references actually refer to the RESURRECTION, as well as how vital the resurrection is to Christianity. I then used logic and common sense to try to get you (And anyone else who might be reading this.) to see how flimsy this evidence is. It certainly doesn't come anywhere near being PROOF.
Now, I actually agree with you that it is very difficult to PROVE anything, and that was my main point. The gentleman on the other thread made an assertion that is patently false. You just admitted it yourself in the above post. When I see an apologist make an assertion like that, I try to correct the record for the benefit of any readers who might be like I once was; struggling with the internal conflict between the things they were taught (Brainwashed) into believing from youth, and their sense of logic.
For, not everyone has had the time, or the inclination, to study this information as much as you and I have. So, when someone who hasn't studied like we have hears or reads someone stating that there is ample extra-biblical proof of Jesus' resurrection, he/she may not be informed enough to know that that is NOT true, and this could cause the person to be misled. As I once was.

As for your comment about Jesus being crucified by the Romans for spreading blasphemy...I'm sorry, but that is incorrect. Assuming for the sake of argument that Jesus actually existed, and was actually crucified by the Romans, the Romans wouldn't have crucified him for blasphemy. Do you think the Romans gave a damn whether or not Jesus was committing some form of apostasy from the JEWISH faith?
If the Romans did, in fact, crucify him, it was because they considered him an insurrectionist; another messiah figure among many that they had had to deal with since taking over the area.
Taking the story at face-value, this can be inferred both by the fact that he was depicted as being crucified, rather than being beheaded, and that Pilate supposedly had the sign put up above his head reading, "King of the Jews." (Rather than "Blasphemer.")

As for your point about most people at the time being illiterate, yes, I said that in my earlier comment. Thank you for confirming that fact. However, it is a rather serendipitous irony that, despite that fact, there were a number of historians in that region near the time in question whose writings have been preserved down to this day. It's nothing short of astonishing that Jesus could have done all the things he is said to have done, including rising from the dead, without being referred to by Philo, Pliny the Elder, Seneca the Elder, and Seneca the Younger, to name a few. This despite the fact that the Gospels tell us things like this:

Luke 4:36-37King James Version (KJV)

36 And they were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying, What a word is this! for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out.37 And the fame of him went out into every place of the country round about.

As Lazarus said on the other thread, one has to keep the blinders on in order to ignore the logical conclusion when faced with this information. I am quite certain that if I tried to convince you that Ra was the true God, and engaged in spin and special pleading in order to attempt to refute your criticisms, you would be all over me, calling me on it. And, well you should.

While we may not be able to PROVE whether or not any of the stories about Jesus are true, we can certainly examine the evidence available with a logical, common sense approach. (Occam's Razor, anyone?)

Tradition. Beliefs. Hearsay.
All you have confirmed with the above statement is that Christians have existed for millennia, and that they believe in the resurrection.
The Ignatius quote is a declaration of faith, not a historical report. (Ignatius was not an eye-witness to the resurrection, after all.)

I will grant you that, with that post, you did provide something that is "Extra-Biblical," but it sure isn't PROOF of the RESURRECTION.

One other thing...allow me to point out something else: I know full well that you can post scads of quotes from other early Christians like Ignatius, and the Church Fathers, about the resurrection. (Because I've read them.) But, there really is no point in quoting ANY early Christians' statements about the resurrection here. While these references would obviously be extra-biblical, they are hardly reliable evidence of the resurrection, as they are declarations of faith. I mean, think about it:
I could quote lots of Jehovah's Witnesses' testimony that God's Kingdom was established in 1914, or Scientologists' testimony about Thetan assumption, or Mormons' testimony that God restored the Church through Joseph Smith; but would you accept any of that testimony as being historically factual?
Or, would you consider all of it to be declarations of faith?

Once again, you are using "facts" from one part of the story to defend another part of the same story.

But, okay...I'll bite. This line of argument, while sounding compelling at first glance, actually isn't. After all, the creators of these stories weren't creating stories for orthodox Jews. They were creating stories for Christians. As a new religious movement, they needed all the members they could get until they had expanded their movement. So, they could ill-afford to discriminate too much and repulse potentially half of their new converts by acting all misogynistic, like Yahweh. (Rimshot.)
(In fact, the aforementioned Celsus even criticized the Christians for misleading impressionable women into joining their movement.)

Besides, new movements usually are very much "counter-culture."

Finally, I will again point out that NT stories do not fall under the category of "Extra-Biblical."

Where is this empty tomb? Did you see it? You don't KNOW that there was an empty tomb, or a burial, or even a Jesus Christ. You also don't know if the empty tomb was empty because someone carted off the body while no one was looking. All of these "facts" that you are touting come from the NT, which was written as religious propaganda, not a historical record. The author of the Gospel of John admits this:

John 20:31

"31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name."

As for the notion that the Christians couldn't have circulated a fraudulent story about Joseph of Arimathea without being exposed as frauds...it's not even clear that Joseph of Arimathea even existed. Your assertion that he was a member of the Sanhedrin comes from the NT itself, so you are defending the legitimacy of one part of a story with "facts" from another part of the same story. (And the Gospels and Acts offer conflicting information about Joseph, to boot.)
Additionally, please bear in mind that even conservative scholars date the writing of the Gospels to many decades after the events they narrate. It would have been quite easy to "spin" these stories quite a bit given that most of "Joseph's" generation were dead, or quite old by then. They didn't have the kind of resources that we have now for fact-checking (Libraries everywhere, internet, etc.), and people have notoriously short memories.
Furthermore, it has been estimated by historians that only about 5-10% of the Empire was literate in the First Century, which would obviously pose quite an obstacle for the average person who wanted to confirm some of the elements of the Gospel stories.
And, most of the common people were too busy trying to eek out a living to invest too much time on it anyway.

Also, some of the educated people DID poke holes in these stories. Like Celsus, for instance, who disputed Jesus' supposed virgin birth, to name one thing.

As for your assertion that the burial narrative is trustworthy because we don't have "conflicting traditions" about it, all one has to do is read the Gospel accounts in order to see that there ARE conflicting traditions of Jesus' burial right there! For instance, when Jesus' followers found the empty tomb, were there two angels present, or one?
Was the angel/angels inside the tomb, or outside? I could go on, but you get the point.

Finally, as you will no doubt recall, the topic of this thread is Extra-Biblical PROOF of Jesus' resurrection. NT stories are obviously not "extra-Biblical."

Please note that in the first quote Josephus (Assuming the passage is even legit.) says that Jesus' followers "REPORTED that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive." He didn't personally confirm or deny the accuracy of their report. Like I said above, it's not really prudent to just accept hearsay reports of something so extraordinary.

As for the second quote, did you have anything to say about my comments about it? Please note that I already quoted that one in my OP.

Even if you insist on counting the first Josephus quote, we're still at TWO extra-biblical reference to the resurrection.
And, as I discussed above, such references do not constitute PROOF of the resurrection, which is what was claimed.

I totally agree with your logic here.
However, I will throw out something for you to ponder. You asked the question, "Why do so many nice guys feel that women should fall in love with them because they are NICE?"
I certainly don't expect women to automatically fall in love with me just because I'm told by them all the time what a "nice guy" I am, but I sure wouldn't complain if some of these same women would at least give me a shot. Particularly given how many women state that that is what they're looking for. (Here's a suggestion: If you haven't done so before, look through some of the profiles on this site and see how often you see that theme repeated.)
See my point? Women tell me all the time how nice I am, while stating that they just "can't find a nice guy anywhere." Yet, if I begin to flirt with them, they run away.
Granted, I'm NOT much to look at, but still...

So, yeah. Not expecting instant love for being nice, just asking for the opportunity to earn the love.

Indeed, Sir. And, it's my hope that eventually our species will evolve beyond ancient superstitions completely.

Absolutely, Lazarus. That's sound logic, right there.
As far as your comment about scissors, allow me to offer an interesting fact.
Despite our common image of Jesus as having long hair and a beard, in some of the earliest known depictions of him, he had short hair and no beard. Not surprising, though, since (According to Cassius.) Emperor Hadrian (76 to 138CE) was the first Roman Emperor to sport a beard.
It's also pretty amusing that in a mosaic depiction of Jesus from around 350CE, he bears a striking resemblance to Emperor Constantine! Imagine that.
(https://archaeology-travel.com/friday-find/hinton-st-mary-mosaic/)

Oh, and here's another interesting fact that adds weight to your argument: Even if the "firsthand painting" that CowboyGH posits did exist, and said "Jesus being crucified" right on it, it STILL wouldn't prove that THE Jesus existed. The name "Jesus" was a very popular name in the First Century CE. Archaeologists have discovered over seventy instances of that name in burial tombs from that time-period.
(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/27/religion.israel)
Furthermore, Josephus also mentions a couple of other guys named "Jesus."

On the "God is NOT a loving god" thread, a gentleman made this statement: "There is enough extra biblical proof to verify that Jesus Christ did live, die and resurrected in the early 1st century."
I responded that I'd really like to see the extra-biblical proof that Jesus was RESURRECTED. I capitalized the word "resurrected" because I wanted to emphasize that part of his assertion, for the resurrection really is key to this discussion. After all, even IF Jesus was a real, historical person, who was a religious leader, and was executed by Pontius Pilate, if he wasn't resurrected, then he was just another ancient religious guru, and Christianity and its promises mean nothing. Even the author of 1 Corinthians acknowledged this, in Chapter 15, Verses 13-19:

"13 But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:
14 And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.15 Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.16 For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:17 And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.18 Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable."

So, let me emphasize again...I wasn't asking for extra-biblical references about Jesus. I was asking for extra-biblical PROOF of Jesus' RESURRECTION.

CowboyGH offered a list of extra-biblical references to Jesus for our consideration. It is these references that I would like to briefly discuss.

First, here are the references:
1.Tacitus
2.Pliny the Younger
3.Josephus
4.Babylonian Talmud
5.Lucian

Now, I could list some of the many issues surrounding these references;issues that lead many scholars to either reject them as being outright forgeries, or at least of no use for establishing the existence of Jesus. But, I don't even need to take the time to do that. After all, the key issue here is, again, the RESURRECTION. Do any of these references offer PROOF of the resurrection? Let's see:

1.Tacitus-Refers to "Christus" suffering "the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus," but does NOT mention the resurrection. (Full quote available here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Christ)

2.Pliny the Younger-Pliny's letter to Emperor Trajan, and Trajan's reply, deals with CHRISTIANS, not Jesus, and provide NO mention of any resurrection. (http://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/pliny.html)

3.Josephus-Josephus DOES mention the resurrection. Here's the full quote:
"Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."
Scholars refer to this passage as the Testamonium Flavianum. I'll come back to this one in a moment. But first let's look at the other references.

4.Babylonian Talmud-The references found here are pretty vague. It's not even clear that all of them are referring to THE Jesus. At any rate, there are NO references to Jesus' resurrection, anyway.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_the_Talmud)

5.Lucian-Lucian was by no means an expert on the beliefs of the Christians. He offers only hearsay evidence about their beliefs, and mostly discusses a man named Proteus. Still, he does refer to Jesus' crucifixion. However, he does NOT refer to Jesus' resurrection.(http://lucianofsamosata.info/TheDeathOfPeregrine.html)

So, out of all those references, only Josephus refers to Jesus being resurrected. That makes ONE extra-biblical REFERENCE to Jesus' resurrection. Does that constitute proof?
Hardly.
In the first place, there are many good reasons for concluding that the TF is an interpolation. I won't go into all of them here (If you're interested, Google it for more info.), but I will mention one that I find particularly compelling: None of the earliest Church Fathers ever quotes the TF, despite quoting from Josephus frequently. Origen, for instance, spilled tons of ink defending his faith, and quoted from Josephus quite extensively, yet he never quoted the TF. How could he have failed to make use of that tailor-made quote, if it had been present in his copy of Josephus' writings? Furthermore, he stated that Josephus didn't believe in Jesus! Reading the TF sure gives one a different impression.
Interestingly enough, the first Church Father to quote the TF was none other than Eusebius, Constantine's official Church historian/propagandist, around 340 CE. Obviously, Eusebius had the motive and the means to not only interpolate the TF into all copies of Josephus from there on out, but he could also see to it that all the old copies he could get his hands on were destroyed. Granted, I'm speculating about WHO did it, but it's quite likely that it was done by someone.

However, let's just say for the sake of discussion that the TF is legit. That's ONE extra-biblical reference to Jesus' resurrection. Should we just automatically accept this as PROOF?
Why WOULD we? I'd venture to say that none of us has ever seen someone rise from the dead after three days. It is, at best, an EXCEEDINGLY rare occurrence. So, anyone who claims to have seen such a thing is making an extraordinary claim. And, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This isn't it.
Think about it; if I said that I had seen someone come back from the dead, would you just take my word for it? I hope not. How much less so should you just accept the word of some guy who didn't even CLAIM to be an eyewitness, and who has been dead himself for two-thousand years?
Besides, there have been countless examples of people being left for dead, or even buried, who weren't actually dead, and later revived. So, even if Josephus HAD witnessed Jesus "rising from the dead," would it not be more logical to assume that Jesus wasn't really dead in the first place?

Extra-Biblical PROOF of Jesus' RESURRECTION? Still waiting for that.

I'm with you, Simpy. I'd really like to see the first-hand paintings of Jesus on the cross.
Are you just trolling us with this one, Cowboy?