Jesus' Resurrection And Historical Probabilities

I've been having a discussion about Jesus' resurrection with a non-Christian, and the discussion seems to be coming to a close. The skeptic I've been responding to doesn't seem to know much about the issues, and he uses some arguments that more knowledgeable skeptics wouldn't use. But we should be prepared to address both types of argumentation.

Here are some examples of the claims he's made:

So I [as a first-century Christian] hear that someone said that they saw Jesus, and then I think that maybe I saw Jesus, even though I didn’t recognize him at the time, and….we’re off and running....

How "probable" is it that human being rose from the dead? How many times has this happened in the human history? That’s why there is such a big difference between the "confident" conclusions of historians with regards to "ancient history" versus "confidence" about supernatural events. I think that we need much, much more than "probable" here....

It's not just that the story of Jesus is the first time we've heard of God coming to Earth in human form, performing countless supernatural acts and rising from the dead. This is, in fact, the only time we've heard of such events. Your snowflake and earthquake comparisons fail, because we've seen many snowflakes and earthquakes since the first ones. World War II was a "unique historic event", but there's nothing new about war. This isn't about historical precedent, it's about arguably the most amazing, fantastical claim in the history of the species....

You would have no problem agreeing that there is a very high probability that my great-grandfather is dead. No evidence is needed, because human males very, very, very rarely live 125 years. But what if I said that my great-grandfather was alive and well and living it up in the Playboy Mansion with Hugh Hefner? Now what evidence would you require before you accepted my claim? I'm guess that you'd want a little more than my words on a piece of paper. If fact, this time, you'd demand extensive evidence for my claim, because it's very unlikely that there is a man alive today who born in 1885. Human males don't live to be 125 years old or, for that matter, rise from the dead. But wait, I say,just because this is the first time you've heard of a 125 year old man partying with Hef,that's no reason to reject my claims or demand far more evidence than when I said that my great-grandfather was dead. Why, I have a letter that I received from him the other day, so that makes it 'probable' that I'm telling the truth....

We can agree that 99.99999999 % of all the people that have ever lived have either died or will die. If you're going to claim that there is an exception to this rule (not to mention, exceptions about rules concerning bread, wine-making and walking on water), you're going to have to do better than "I think the case is very good" or "I think the case is probable"....

Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention that my great-grandfather is alive because he sold his soul to Satan. So, his survival is a supernatural thing, too. It's just like the resurrection. And there aren't any other witnesses, because he's invisible. Remember, you opened the door to the supernatural. Anything is possible. Probabilities are irrelevant. Prove that my great-grandfather isn't invisible....

I have hundreds of witnesses who swear that they’ve been probed by aliens. They often agree on the details, despite the fact that they were not all taken captive at the same, many have suffered grievously for their insistences that they’ve been probed. And yet they don’t recant. Further, they have far more concrete evidence than we have for Jesus’s resurrection. We have alien autopsy photos, secret government documents, and Area 51. Guess little green men are real, too. And Bigfoot....

I can't think of another founder of a religion and/or significant religious figure of the last couple of thousand years who did not leave at least one written sentence attributed to his or her own hand. Now that's extraordinary evidence, but it's going in the wrong direction.

You can read my responses, as well as the responses of some other Christians, here. It's a lengthy thread, so you may want to skip some parts of it and only read the portions that interest you.