Why Christianity is awesome

First of all lets get one thing straight-I am not a big fan of the Gathering Place. I find rampantly militant Fundamentalist Christianity offputting and frankly-somewhat disturbing-probably has something to do with the fact that I am a practicing Roman Catholic. But this battle isn't being fought over the Gathering Place. This battle is about the Christian faith (not religion) and its unique claim to the truth. 1) Many people and religions have claimed their founder was a divinely inspired prophet or even a god. But very few have made the claim that their founder rose from the dead. Fewer still can back up that claim. Halie Saliese, the Messiah of the Rastafarians is dead-that is an undisputed fact. Mohammed is buried in his tomb in Medina. Buddha attained Nirvana, but he's still dead (reincarnation does not count as resurrection). Jesus Christ was crucified by the Romans and buried in a stone tomb. Three days later his body was missing. His followers claimed He had risen from the dead. The Jewish authorities maintained that someone had stolen the body. Put the body was never found! Christianity could have been brought to a rather abrupt end if someone came forward with the body of Jesus. No one did. The best the Jewish priests could do was to bribe the guards at the tomb to say that someone stole the body. And in two thousand years, no archaeologist has uncovered the bones of Jesus. The closest anyone can claim is an ossuary with scratches on it that could be the (very common Jewish) name Yeshua bar Joseph. Therefore the claim that Jesus Christ rose from the dead holds itself up to scrutiny. Relics like the Shroud of Turin lend credence. 2)People have died, are dying and will continue to die for believing in the resurrection of Christ. From prison, the Apostle Paul stated that the Christian faith was worthless without the truth of the resurrection. As far as founders of religions go a Jewish carpenter turned itinerant preacher who got Himself crucified by the Romans after only three years of spreading His Message is not very impressive. Yet from the beginning, people were willing to die for Him. This makes absolutely no sense if Jesus had not risen from the dead. The Apostles were thrown in jail and flogged only 50 days after Jesus' death and yet they rejoiced that they "could suffer for His name." Surely if anyone would know the circumstances of Christ's death and his Resurrection it would be his twelve closest friends. If it had been faked, they would know, they probably would have perpetrated the fraud. Yet all but one wound up suffering deaths of varying brutality for refusing to deny their Lord. It is a miracle that Christianity survived three hundred of systematic albeit off and on persecution at the hands of the most powerful force in the known world at the time: the Roman Empire. The witness of these martyrs was so great that their own tormentors were converted many times and the plans of their persecutors backfired as the martyrdoms led to more Christians rather than less. "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church" Iraneus said and even today martyrs in Iran, China, India and Africa bear testament to the veracity of Christ's resurrection. 3)Furthermore, Christianity-in particular the Catholic Church-has survived for 2,000 years against every single storm imaginable. Christianity stared defiant in the face of Nero, Diocletian, Atilla the Hun, Robespierre, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin and Obama and have not blinked-and have won. That is a claim that Muslims, Rastafarians, Wiccans, Buddhists, Hindus, Raelians and Zorastrians can not and never will be able to mak