The nub of this argument is that the apostles would not have willingly spent their lives promoting and risking and often suffering death for an untruth.
The problem with this as an argument is that other causes, which most of us would consider untrue or evil, such as Nazism and Marxism, have elicited similar dedication from their proponents.
The intensity with which something is believed does not always correlate to its truth.
But the apostles’ “great cause” had died on the cross. The manuscipts (attested to my good bibliographical evidence) describes how they acted like frightened rabbits, one of them so scared he denied his own Master three times. That’s the whole point of the Resurrection of Christ. Christianity puts itself on the objective chopping block, as it were. The ethics of other religions can stand alone as a philosophical approach to a way of life. Buddha taugaht the Golden Rule long before Christ lived, but Buddha is still in his grave. Is Christ? There’s the rub. If Christ was not risen, then people like me are idiots, misled fools, what Paul called, “..of all men the most miserable.” Christian ethics becomes a joke if its formulator was a madman traveling around, forgiving peoples’ sins, allowing men to worship him, claming things only a god (or amadman claiming deity) would say.
No, IF the Bible manuscripts are substantially accurate (and that’s an entirely different set of arguments), then honest thinkers will have reason to consider the claims of Chist. This type of argument convinced General Lew Wallace (author of Ben-Hur) and law Professor Simon Greenleaf, who went on to write a book about how his law students challenged his agnosticsm. His wound up being titled The Testimony of the Evangelists as Examined by the Rules of Evidence (or some title to that effect—I can’t remember exactly). Saul of Tarsus hated Christians vehemently, but wound up being the foremost Christian missionary of all time (his name was changed to Paul).
Yet many other skeptics, even if they hear all of this, demur and continue in their skeptical mindset. The evidence is sufficient for those willing to believe, but not so overwhelming that it will overcome the natural stubbonness of the human heart. I think John 6:44,65 (and the context) about says it.
Except maybe for a few skinheads, the Nazis pretty much disappeared after the death of Hitler.
Difference is the Nazis and Marxists spent years being indoctrinated and display a rabid devotion from early on.
While the disciples spent years with Christ they were as cowardly as rabbits one day, and a few days later they had a total transformation in their lives. That transformation led them to boldly preach Christ risen.