This exchange gets very very good about the time Tim and BDK get into an exchange on what evidence would be sufficient to support belief in a resurrection.
It goes, though, to an important part of my enterprise in discussing historical evidence surrounding the foundation of Christianity. Any particular piece of evidence in the question of theism versus atheism, or of Christianity vs. non-Christianity is just that, one piece of the evidence. This includes, by the way, the problem of evil. I would be surprised, maybe even shocked, if historical evidence alone overturned BDK's overall commitment to a naturalistic philosophy. People change basic philosophies only when lots of things fall apart and typically, it's lots of kinds of things. The interesting claim here for me is that patient study of the whole issue will reveal is that there is something profoundly odd and surprising from a naturalistic standpoint in the whole history surrounding the founding of Christianity. You can admit that and say, "OK, but naturalism seems to me so well grounded otherwise, that I'm got to continue to believe that naturalism is true and that the whole story happened naturalistically, even if it's tough to imagine just how that could have been."
Lewis wrote about an atheist colleague being surprised at the strength of the historical case for Christianity.
“Then I read Chesterton’s Everlasting Man and for the first time saw the whole outline of Christian history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense. Somehow I contrived not to be too badly shaken. You will remember I already thought Chesterton the most sensible man alive “apart from his Christianity.” Now, I veritably believe, I thought-I didn’t of course say; words that would have revealed the nonsense-that Christianity itself was very sensible “apart from its Christianity.” But I hardly remember, for I had not long finished The Everlasting Man when something far more alarming happened to me. Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. “Rum thing,” he went on. “All that stuff of Frazer’s about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it really happened once. “… Was there no escape?”
by C. S. Lewis Surprised by Joy (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1942), pp. 223-224
VR: That atheist remained an atheist. But he thought the strength of the case for Christianity was stronger than he thought it would be. If you establish that with the argument, who knows where it goes from there.