The religious side of the Easter story has a number of elements—the crucifixion, the resurrection, women at the tomb as an argument in favor of the truth of the story, the Shroud of Turin (the burial cloth of Jesus), and Paul’s claim that 500 people saw Jesus after his resurrection. I’ve written about these topic in the posts below.

• 10 Reasons the Crucifixion Story Makes No Sense: The crucifixion story? Not that big a deal. Here are 10 reasons why it makes no sense.
• Contradictions in the Resurrection Account: How many days did Jesus teach after his resurrection? Was it 40 days as Acts says or less than one as Luke says? Matthew writes about an earthquake that opened graves and sent reanimated corpses walking around Jerusalem. Why didn’t the other gospels write about this remarkable event? These and many more contradictions make us wonder if the gospel account is history or merely legend.
• Scholarly Consensus for the Resurrection?: Gary Habermas is well known for his case for the resurrection of Jesus. He says that most critical scholars agree with him, but his argument collapses with investigation.
• Responding to the Minimal Facts Argument for the Resurrection: With his Minimal Facts argument, Gary Habermas hopes to make a short and sweet case for the resurrection. I’m not impressed.
• 8 Lessons Learned from the Minimal Facts Argument: We’ve explored the five claims in Habermas’s Minimal Facts argument for the resurrection. Now let’s try to extract the lessons learned.
• So How Does an ATHEIST Explain the Resurrection Story?: We’ve debunked claims in favor of the resurrection, but now it’s the atheists’ turn to explain the facts.
• Women at the Tomb Are Weak Evidence for the Resurrection: Apologists love to bring up the women at the tomb. Women weren’t reliable witnesses in Jewish culture at the time, so why would the gospel authors place them there … unless the story were true? But the story unravels with a little scrutiny.
• Shroud of Turin: Easter Miracle or Hoax?: What are we to make of the Shroud of Turin? Is it a miracle or a fake?
• 500 Eyewitnesses to the Risen Christ? 9 Reasons Why It’s Not Likely: The apostle Paul claims that 500 people saw Jesus alive after his crucifixion. This claim is popular among apologists who imagine this as strong evidence that the crucifixion is historical. This argument crumbles under scrutiny.

This was only the first of many occasions
in which I came to find that the holding of religious belief
proved an obstacle to the impartial evaluation of evidence.
— Michael Goulder

Image credit: Hartwig HKD, flickr, CC