Round 2

Well, JB has come up with a response even more stupid than I was expecting here. I cant believe that im wasting my time responding to such stupidity but here we go.

At this juncture, I could rehearse various standards in resurrection apologetics.
All of which have been debunked time and time again

Early testimony to the empty tomb, perhaps.
Easily explained by Richard Dawkins here: "Presumably what happened to Jesus was what happens to all of us when we die. We decompose." Now when you think about it Jubus body was not in the tomb because it was eaten by worms.

group of remotely rational individuals will especially not surrender their lives in such a manner without an especially passionate belief in the validity of their cause
So would a group of people believe something as stupid as a guy discovering golden plates in a wood when they had been proven to be a fake by a guy who had fraud metaphorically written all over him. I remember some mormons telling me that there were eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen Joseph smith with the golden plates and died for this belief of theirs. Oh hang on, your not a mormon. Does the fact that xianity started seem any more odd than something as stupid as mormonism?

the origin of the disciples' belief seems inexplicable
Nobody believed that golden plates were hidden in a wood before mormonism so it must be true...it think not. Where id the mormon belief of the golden plates come from? We must also remember that this was a time before TV, nintendo wiis and yhe internet and so people got bored and made up stories of reserected friends for fun.

This all being the case, it remains for Mike to propose a detailed and historically plausible alternative explanation for the rise of early Christianity that encompasses all available data in a satisfactory manner.
No, because of russels teapot you have to show why xianity starting is different to other religions and offer a sensible explantion of how a man eaten by worms came back to life.

"Science" is thus powerless, by its very nature, to provide "an overriding reason to believe the resurrection of Jesus to be genuinely impossible".
You cannot say that the BBC website is not credible and yet that says: Almost all rationalists are atheists or agnostics. There has been a long link between rationalism and scientific method.

Dawkins, with all due respect to the man for... well, whatever his positive contributions to the world might happen to be
He discovered memes, conveted many people to science, has written best selling books, converted douglas adams to reason,is going to be on dr who...the list is endless

The simple reply to this is that the premise is simply false. "Most pagan gods" were not claimed to have experienced anything comparable to a historical resurrection from physical death to living physical existence.
Oh dear - youve been brain washed by your xian friends

provided he does so with something more credible than Zeitgeist
Well what about robert price - he thinks they ripped of the reserection from pagan myths. now robert price is proberly the top scholar on this subject in the world. As indiana jones is to a good action movie, einstein is to science and mr bean is to comedy Robert Price is to biblical scholarship.

I hope that perhaps one day, you might happen to dispense with your irrational objections to Christianity and finally submit to the truth.
You wont convert me to xianity in a million years. I hope that one day you'll see the light and start reading science books instead of the bible.

Why the first xians didn't believe in the resurrection of Jebus

Considering how important the resurrection of jebus is to xians it gets mentioned once in the whole bible. That being the end of mark's gospel. But it gets worse for them. The end of mark's gospel is considered to be a fake. So basically nowhere in the bible did it say that jebus rose from the dead. No only is there no evidence for the resurrection but their bible doesn't even teach about it.