In answer to the video "The Significance of Jesus' Resurrection"
The willingness of an individual to suffer and die for a particular cause or belief doesn't prove its truthfulness, neither its validity. For example, the willingness of the leadership of the early Mormon church to undergo persecution and even death doesn't prove the veracity of the Mormon faith system. Likewise, the New Testament description of some of the disciples undergoing suffering or death does not prove that what they preached or believed was true either.
In fact this argument goes against the Christian missionaries that like using it, if one considers the Gospels' accounts of Jesus' closest followers all deserting him when true crisis arose. The same is the case with Moses whose followers refused following his orders to go to battle and invade the promised land.
The argument of steadfastness in the face of death as a testimony of a prophet's truthfulness in fact only applies to Muhammad, whose small band of followers time after time overwhelmingly stood up to fight in God's cause whenever commanded to do so and regardless of their opponent's disproportionate level of power.
Neither does the criterion of embarrasement work in favor of Christians. For example people invented the Romulus story, and Romulus murdered his own brother. People invented Attis, and he is said to have castrated himself, besides the numerous mythologies of mutilated/dying/resurrected gods and sons of gods contemporaries or close to Jesus' time. Nothing suggests that the Gospels' authors were in anyway embarrassed by their writings when they penned them. There were storytelling, theological and cultural reasons for the authors to associate these things to their heroes, besides possible additions by later scribes. The same goes for all the evil deeds ascribed to the most illustrious biblical personalities, as a means by which the scribes settled their intertribal prejudices, justified their own sins. If the most prominent personalities are capable of the worst sins, then the regular people shouldnt be blamed for their transgressions.
These inventions were more or less skilfully, appropriately inserted in the original. For example it might be embarrassing in hindsight to depict Jesus as undergoing a sin cleansing ritual but John's author skilfully inserts that the baptiser thought so highly of Jesus that he didnt want to baptize him at first. What Christians don't understand is that the criterion of embarrassment is used by historians to interpret objective facts and evidence, whether one or the other version of a real, actual story is more likely. Historians do not use it so as to create facts as Christians do.
This kind of argument only results in circular reasoning, as the facts interpreted arent independantly attested. For example it would be circular to state that because superman is sensitive to magic, or joker's fear toxins (that made him inadvertently kill a pregnant Lois Lane), or vampires and green kryptonite (the pink one turns him to a homosexual) then it means that he really was affected by all these embarrasing things, or that he even existed.
In the words of Celsus, one of the foremost thinkers of his age whose critique of the Christians was so damaging that Christians destroyed every copy of his work they could find
"Clearly the Christians have used ... myths ... in fabricating the story of Jesus' birth ... It is clear to me that the writings of the Christians are a lie and that your fables are not well-enough constructed to conceal this monstrous fiction."
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