Speaking of religions Carl Sagan rephrased the Principle of Laplaze saying "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827) had said in more generic manner that "The weight of the evidence should be proportioned to the strangeness of the facts."
Some Christians take Sagan's famous challenge by trying to show that there actually is extraordinary evidence about the resurrection of Christ. See, for example, the blog on the subject by Matt Slick, President and Founder of the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry (CARM).
Weak evidence
The God of Israel has decided otherwise and the evidence of resurrection of Christ is minimal, contradictory, weak and easy to dismiss. An empty tomb in Jerusalem some 2000 years ago, some confused women, uneducated Galilean fishermen... Encounters with Jesus after His death but stories told in the New Testament in such a manner that it is very difficult to put them together in logical way.
The claim that a human being comes back to life after being cruelly killed and buried for three days is truly extraordinary. It would have been easy to give extraordinary evidence for the case. For example, Jesus showing Himself publicly on the southern steps of the Temple of Jerusalem proving to everybody that He lives.
But do you notice, what mistake I made in the above paragraph - a fatal error that so many people keep doing?
Apostle Paul
The life of Saulus of Tarsos was revolutionized by his encounter with Jesus after His death on the way to Damascus. He explained resurrection concept to the young Christian congregation in the Greek city of Corinth.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.
1 Cor 15:44-49
The body of resurrection is not the body of Adam made of dust and having soul (nefesh in Hebrew) but it is a heavenly body with spirit.
Accordingly, resurrection of Christ is moved even further from our materialistic scientific world into the realm of religion and spirituality. Further away from extraordinary proofs and evidence that can convince anyone.
In fact, it is a miracle if anyone believes in the resurrection of Christ.
Impact crater
There is, however, something that brings the resurrection to the realm of material world, science and logic.
The comparison is obviously not perfect as resurrection is life and the impact of asteroids and meteorites on Earth is usually accompanied with widespread destruction.
What I am trying to point out with impact crater is that often we do not have much left of the large object that exploded when hitting planet Earth. But we do have impact crater as in the case of the famous Yucattan hit. We can study the signs that the impact of the asteroid left, the minerals, the temperatures, the size of the crater and so on.
There is a huge impact crater left from resurrection of Christ - in the lives of human beings, in the history of human race, in the fate of the Jewish people, on you and on me through something very strange and underestimated - faith alone.
For God of Israel has seen it good to arrange things for His only Son so that our relationship with Him is based on faith - not on knowledge and science.
And it works - there is quite a number of people who are willing to die for their faith that God has risen Jesus from the death.
Not back to earthly life but to eternal life.
They do not know it - they believe it.
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