The Resurrection ... did it REALLY happen?

Sometime around Holy Week and Easter this question inevitably comes up: "Did Jesus really rise from the dead?" Obviously, today the idea seems rather ludicrous... I mean really!? Any of you seen anyone come back from the dead lately?

I've heard some educated answers ranging from the "memory of Christ remaining so vital after his death that Jesus' followers experienced him as truly living," to books written in an attempt to 'prove' Jesus' bodily resurrection. I have a problem with both of those approaches.

The Resurrection event is made more palatable to contemporary scientific minds if we label it a metaphor, a spiritual, memory, or some other intangible experience. And yet, when we go back to Scripture the various authors go to great lengths to give us their evidence for Jesus actually, bodily, dying and returning to life. We have accounts of Jesus touching people, eating and drinking, conversing, walking, and showing off his scars. In addition the disciples never encounter Jesus' dead body anywhere. All these narratives are offered to us as demonstrations of Christ's final miracle, his Resurrection. And according to these accounts, the Resurrection wasn't about seeing ghosts or hallucinations or a metaphoric, metaphysical experience. For the authors, Jesus Resurrection was a returning to bodily life.

Now it may be true that these are falsified accounts. Perhaps the authors are lying to us. Maybe this is a conspiracy, a hoax, or a con. Those are all valid critiques - ones that many have believed over the centuries. If the character of the Biblical witnesses cannot be trusted, then we can dismiss their accounts and move on.

If, however, their character is not in question, if we trust them to actually tell us as best they can what they have seen and heard themselves and from others, then we have a different problem. If we don't believe what they tell us, then we are assuming they are well-meaning dolts. Perhaps they are unintelligent, but that would appear highly unlikely. The writings they have given us are considered classic world literature. Classic world literature doesn't come from the unintelligent.

So we're left with the problem: we have either unscrupulous, crafty, rascals who are purposefully deceiving us or we have intelligent witnesses authentically describing an event that actually happened. 

Logic reaches a stalemate here. (Which is why it's futile to try to prove the Resurrection beyond any intellectual doubt.) Neither conspiracy nor idiocy appear reasonably acceptable. So we're left with an intellectual leap of faith. So what shall we believe?