I don’t believe the accounts are contradictory enough to render the incident fabricated.
It greatly reduces the reliability of the claims from a single source.
But note you ignored the wide spread zombie uprising not being reported outside of the Bible. Remember your job is to convince the non-believer in this thread, not defend your own religious beliefs.
But as you brought it up as an example, who did the women see? One angel, two angels, two men, or one young man? And where outsize of the zombie uprising did 100’s of people see this because I can’t find that in the various versions.
And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. Matthew 28:2
And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. Mark 16:5
And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments. Luke 24:4
And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. John 20:12
Actually, his job (and our job) is to discuss whether it would be possible to wow atheists with miracles.
We’re all failing. 
Why is that my job? I’m not trying to convince anyone. People are asking questions, and I’m doing my best to answer.
It feels like an AMA to tell you the truth, and though it is an interesting topic for me, it’s frustrating because I don’t even have full internet access at this computer to do searches.
You guys are aware there’s a thread on this already?
LOL, so true.
I think people who already believe in the metaphysical operate in a paradigm in which miracles are not so unreasonable and may even be expected.
Whereas materialists operate in a paradigm in which any alleged miracle has to have some type of natural explanation.
Therefore, it would be nearly impossible for a “miracle” to change an atheist’s worldview. The only exception I could see is if that “miracle” were pertaining to something deeply personal to that particular atheist.
Because this is great debates and you are begging the question and poorly at that, outside of Matthew’s zombies I don’t see where the bible even claims that large quantity of people witnessed the Resurrection.
Conveniently there is no contemporary reports outside the Bible so the whole line of argument is really begging the question.
And to be fair ~150 or ~500 people are mentioned as seeing it in other books.
The number of names together were about an hundred and twenty. Acts 1:15
He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. 1 Corinthians 15:6
The point is to convince a non-believer that a book is inerrant and true and describes miracles requires a certain level of proof. For a lot of people the lack of consistency and the lack of external verification of the claims is problematic.
Almost any religions holy books are full of stories and claims like this and I see no reason why I should choose the Abrahamic desert god over the stories of Thor or Odin.
You will be more blessed if you have faith without proof. See the story of Doubting Thomas.
So if I have blind faith in the IPU, I will be more blessed…or does that axiom only work for a specific deity?
As far as the OP is concerned, I have three very simple requests:
- Show me how this “miracle” could have only been accomplished by supernatural means.
- Tell me why it took god-level power to accomplish this “miracle”.
- Tell me why only the god you believe in has to be the one deity responsible for this “miracle”.
edited to add: Finding a hole is not evidence for the existence of steam shovels.
I’m an atheist, and I think you’re a bit mistaken about the paradigm that materialists are operating in.
Materialists operate in the paradigm where we believe in things that are real. Materialism isn’t fancy, but it works - rocks are solid and are always solid; water is wet and it’s always wet; our televisions work based on understandable principles and when they don’t work, it’s also due to understandable reasons. The materialistic world ain’t simple, but it works, with a level of reliability that blows every single theological model completely out of the water. In fact we’ve gotten used to the idea that things that work do work, and that they work for actual reasons.
Compared to science, religion is ephemeral - it only wishes it had the stability of a wisp of smoke or a soap bubble. Prayers are unreliable. Divine intervention is unreliable. Grand claims are made about what the god will do and the reality never lives up to the hype. It’s so ephemeral it’s very hard to take it seriously.
Which leads us to miracles. If a materialist blows off a miracle, it’s not because it’s not personal to them. It’s because it’s a weaksauce miracle, that fails to convince us that there’s not a more realistic explanation (possibly involving dishonest theists). The St. Januarius blood thing mentioned in the OP is an example of such a pathetic ‘miracle’.
But (allegedly) miracles weren’t always weaksause. Parting the red sea, for instance. Show me that. Part the Atlantic Ocean all Charlton Heston style, with a dry channel across the entire ocean with giant walls of water on either side held up by nothing, that will get my attention.
Which doesn’t mean I’ll immediately leap to the conclusion that Catholicism is correct, mind you. There is nothing about a parted sea that says Catholicism, specifically, is correct; in fact the correlation with christianity in general isn’t strong enough for me to assume they did it either. It could be some amazing new technology, or perhaps an alien, or a rogue wizard. There are so many possible explanations! All of them easily as possible as the Catholic god.
So it would be help that along with a non-crappy miracle, the specific god in question claimed credit, preferably in a way that doesn’t seem totally fake and pathetic. A booming voice in the clouds, for example. Heavenly choruses singing his praise. Giant angels coming down wielding flaming swords and chopping up skyscrapers with them.
I don’t think I’m asking too much here - the bible has precedent for all of it and more. Heck, it promises that we actually will see one heck of a show…one of these decades.
If something like that goes down, atheists will come around pretty quick.
Those passages are ambiguous.
The first one seems to refer to a group that Peter was addressing but does not say that 150 men saw Jesus: the timeframe appears to be post-ascension.
The second one claims that at least 500 people saw him but that some or many of them were indifferent bystanders.
Oddly, the ascension, which was arguably a very important event, is weakly attested in the gospels. Matthew ends with Jesus speaking to the remaining Disciples, with no mention of it, Mark and Luke devote a single sentence to it, and John refutes it completely, saying that Jesus went on to do lots of other stuff that could fill more books than the earth could hold. This discrepancy is more than slightly problematic.
But, in the end, technically no one witnessed the resurrection. It happened, as it were, off-camera. He was entombed, then they saw him walking around. Sounds like classic sleight of hand – even Erich Weiss could have pulled off a stunt like that.
Have you not read the Gospel According to St. Douglas, Book I, Chapter 3, starting at paragraph 67?
Before the Earth passed away it was going to be treated to the very ultimate in sound reproduction, the greatest public address system ever built …
People of Earth, your attention please … This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.
It was not a pleasant Thursday morning in Guilford, or anywhere else on Earth. But no miracle or deity was involved (though a deity is briefly mentioned in Book I, Chapter 6 and described in excruciating detail in Book II, Chapter 29).
Everyone came around.
That’s quite an arrogant statement. You are straight up asserting that non-materialists believe in things that are objectively fake.
Says who? Prayer has always been 100% reliable for me, because the purpose of prayer is not to ask a genie for a wish, but to move the pray-ers will into sync with the divine will. How do you know divine intervention is unreliable? You don’t even believe in divine intervention. What is divine intervention supposed to accomplish that it has failed to do? Naturally, people make all sorts of claims in the name of ‘God’ that end up being false. That’s why you have to use reason and common sense to weigh such claims.
I don’t believe you. You would attribute it to natural causes.
Something like this has happened, multiple times. Most people are like you and didn’t care or explained it away.
Those angels would be assholes.
No they wouldn’t.
But if memory serves me, it was retconned away later in the Holy Writ? 
I’m just confused by this insane obsession with the Bible. Why are the minute details of the Gospel accounts so important? Why do you all seem to think that the fact that one Gospel mentions one angel and one Gospel mentions two angels is enough to prove that Jesus never even rose from the dead?
The Catholic Church was celebrating mass and spreading Jesus’ message for decades before any accounts of Jesus’s life were even written down, and centuries before they were codified into Scripture.
Jesus never told anyone to write anything down. He told his disciples to go into the world and pass on the things that they were taught.
Quoting the Bible, then claiming that the words don’t matter when the quotes go south? This just isn’t working, dude.
When did I quote the Bible?
I’m not saying the words don’t matter, I just think you’re tending to nitpick at details that have nothing to do with the overarching facts and themes of the events in question.