My last question in the convert me to atheism challenge. Often I hear you have zero evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, well one of strongest pieces of evidences we use in 2016 is the testimony of an eye witness account. Furthermore, in 1 Corinthians 15 over 500 people saw the risen Saviour so as C.S Lewis said was Jesus a liar, lunatic or Lord?
heck out the stories of Simon the zealot, James son of Alphaeus, Luke, Barnabas, Thomas, Bartholomew, Jude, Peter, Mark, Andrew, Mattias, James (Jesus’ brother), Philip and Stephen. Real people, who were real eyewitnesses of the resurrection!
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It would take only one liar to say 500 people were eyewitnesses, and yes, large groups of people can be deluded
How many witnesses were there for the Hindu God Ganesh's milk miracles? Rather a lot, I believe. One Hindu priest reported that 5000 followers had visited his temple in one day alone. This phenomena occurred in 1995 and has reoccurred several times since in many different countries – so there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands of sincere, devout Hindus who claim to have seen this miracle – many (most?) of these witnesses are still alive and still prepared to give their testimony… So is Hinduism the true religion, since eyewitness accounts are 'one of the strongest pieces of evidence'?
I'm a bit late to answer, but I'll give it a shot anyway.
So, you say that there are 500 eye-witness accounts of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that this should then add to the validity of the Bible and the resurrection itself.
What this fails to consider is that all of these witnesses are only claimed to be there. I have no way of knowing if any of these (unnamed) 500 witnesses even exist. I could just as easily go out into the Alaskan wilderness and claim to have seen Bigfoot along with 40 others, but just because I say that there were 40 others with me, that doesn't mean that my original claim (that I saw Bigfoot) is true. One unsubstantiated claim is not evidence for another unsubstantiated claim.
In addition, none of these 500 people went on to document this event outside of the Bible, not at all substantiating that most (if any) of these people even existed.
However, if you want to argue that the Bible contains one or even several accounts of this event, then my only thing I need to say is: "Objection, your honor: Hearsay!" In court, a person may not testify on account of others because the person might misremember or intentionally change another's testimony. Any account in the Bible by any alleged eye-witness is Hearsay, and thus, cannot be taken as admissible evidence.
Furthermore, saying that: "The Bible says that over 500 people saw the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I that should be good evidence that the Bible is correct about the resurrection of Jesus Christ." you're using a claim inside the Bible as evidence for another claim in the Bible. That's circular reasoning.
As for this "put to death for their beliefs" thing, that's a non-sequitur. Just because someone is willing to die for what they believe, or just because someone else is willing to kill someone for what they believe, that doesn't that that person's beliefs are true. By this reasoning, Islam is true because the 9/11 hijackers were willing to die and kill others for their beliefs.
And finally, there's this: (0:48–0:54)
But that's just it. Even if these people DID exist and even if they DID believe that they saw someone be resurrected and even if they DID believe it enough that they were willing to die for it, that doesn't mean that ACTUALLY saw someone be resurrected. Maybe they weren't crazy, maybe they were just WRONG (again, assuming that they actually existed at all).
You don't know what an eyewitness is and you don't know how evidence works. These basic concepts need to be understood before a reasonable discussion can go ahead. The writings of the Bible aren't evidence for its extraordinary claims. If you want to believe them on faith then that is fine, but you won't change a questioning mind with what you have presented.
There are a could of basic problems. One is that people are not known to come back from the dead. What else is not known to have ever happened? Just name something. How about a talking elephant, an elephant that can carry on actual conversations? If 500 people swear that they carried on conversations with a talking elephant, does that mean it should be accepted as fact? Now let's put in another problem connected with the first problem. The second problem is that there is just a handful of people who claim that there were 500 people who have allegedly stated that they spoke with a talking elephant. So it becomes a hearsay account, a hearsay account of people who claim they witnessed something that has never happened before. So it comes down to this question: would you believe a book's account that stated there was a talking elephant, an account allegedly based on 500 witnesses?