lol, although I know you did not post this as a joke, and it was not "all in good fun", I do have to admit I laughed.

the 1st half was a joke

the 2nd half wasn't

Ok,

There are a couple posts about there being no evidence. This is clearly false. There is good historical evidence, you can find this best summed up in one of Boyd's books. Now if you want you can attempt to convince me that this evidence should not be seen as sufficient. You can either post a case that the historical evidence posted in such book's as Boyd's is wrong (but I don't think anyone here has the historical expertise to do this) or you can post an argument about why we should not trust any historical evidence.

To those posting basically the argument of evil, I have shown (at least I believe that I have) that the bible explains why this world does not look like an episode of the gummie bears. The world is exactly the way that I would expect it to be if the bible is true, like a war zone.

I think that the theology that I have presented in my term here has been pretty concrete. I have made plenty of claims.

ok...

Define "worth mentioning", then please explain why the evidence for the historical Jesus falls into that category.

The bible is a historical document (mostly in regards to the NT). I don't see how you can compare this to these other works of fiction.

And have I ever said "God does not follow our logic?" In fact I adamantly stay away from that.

It's laughable to use the word 'evidence' vis-a-vis the belief that a first-century mystic caused the Big Bang and will eventually destroy the universe.

i agree.

but deism isnt just a rejection of christianity in particular.

Another strawman. Nobody expects it to be an "episode of gummie bears." I'm only asking for god to hold up his end of the bargain. If you design a race of sentient beings to require massive amounts of clean water, you better damn well be the one to provide that to them, instead of trying to blame it on the imperfections that you created them with.

What would you think of me if I bred dogs for a living, but when any of them barked or misbehaved, I wouldn't give them food or water for a month. And then once they survived long enough to give birth to the next generation and died from hunger and starvation, I did the same to the newborn puppies. Because after all, those puppies aren't innocent, they were born with the same inherent sinful nature as it's parents.

And when the puppies barked and yelped at me and jumped up on my legs to try to tell me they needed nourishment, I tell them "No, puppy. You can't expect this world to be an episode of gummie bears." And then I slowly let them die of thirst over the next week, even though I had 500 24 packs of Dasani in my house.

Would you characterize me as loving? Would you characterize my actions as loving? Has your belief in god really made you this despicable?

What about the actions of the disciples? Seems pretty strong reasoning to me.

If Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennent, Sam Harris, and a dozen other "militant" atheists saw something that they were forced to all attribute to the supernatural and subsequently changed their lives accordingly (especially to an extent that their lives where virtually destroyed), I would see that as a fairly good reason to believe that what they saw was true.

Not quite.

For me it is a combination of a many things. The strong historical evidence for Jesus, the fact that the bible accurately describes what I perceive to be reality, the events surrounding the early church, and some other stuff.

Why not just list a few? Some of the main reasons perhaps.

if god wants people to worship him why would he create intelligent beings that don't believe he exists?

this is such a non sequitur

there is strong historical evidence that Eli Whitney existed.

therefore the universe was created by a cotton gin

Ok, with you so far.

Again, agreed.

I think that this is a fairly poor representation of why people claim that the NT is reliable. There is significantly more than this. Things like independent attestation, and lack of motive, etc.

I don't believe that this is a consensus of NT scholars.

You say that it is hard to gather "independent" evidence that the miracles claimed happened. How are you defining "independent" here? It seems as if you are claiming "independent" to be people who don't believe they happened? If not, then what of the various accounts that you find in the NT and the writings of the earliest church fathers?

I don't know anyone that says that the reality of miracles is the reason to trust the NT writers. If they did, you would be correct. Our reason to believe they are trust worthy is purely on historical grounds. Of course you cannot rule out the possibility of miracles a priori like many NT skeptics.

I could agree with this.

I still disagree.

I agree with this. I don't find any sort of "feeling" to be reliable and would never be convinced of stories of various "feelings".

Outside of personal revelation, as in it actually happened to me, I would agree.

You are going to have to do a better job of either discrediting the historicity of the NT or convince me that no historical evidence should be sufficient.

Unfortunately, I am still a theist. But this was definitely the most direct attempt so far in this thread and was exactly what I was looking for in the OP.

I could write a book about it, stain it, claim it was an old historical document, and maybe it would be true?

Maybe I should have clarified more. It is not the historical evidence that Jesus existed, but the historical evidence that Jesus was who he said he was.

Sure, when one holds a worldview that rules this out a priori, it is laughable. But I wouldn't say that said person could actually said to be seeking truth.

do you have anything more than a few eye witness accounts?

Maybe because if they're any good you just won't reply to them?

greg boyd is an apologist trained in theology at christian universities. he has no higher secular eduation. he is not a credentialed historian or anthropologist. citing him for "historical expertise" is a joke.

if you are going to resort to referencing apologist literature as your argument for the historicity of the NT instead of thinking for yourself surely you can do better.

lol, sure buddy. And why is "secular" education better?

i dont even need to wait for your answer jib. i know the evidence for christianity. you have the gospels, and a few writings that reference the gospels and the early church.

even if we had 100x this amount of evidence, we still wouldn't have good reason to believe jesus was the son of god. or that he performed miracles.

there are miracle stories abounding this very day about various individuals with 100's of times more personal eye witness testimony than jesus had. there are contemporary writings on these individuals, and again, there are 100's of times the volume of personal testimoy to validate these miracles.

if you find the story of jesus so compelling, why dont you find the stories of Sai Baba even more compelling? they're the same miracles, with more eye witnesses.

admit it, you latch on to christianity because that is the most readily accessible belief system in your country.

Wait, don't people who believe in God have to prove his/her/whatever's existence? Why do the Atheists have to prove a thing?

Everyone is an atheist. We just go all the way with it, and you guys stop at 1.

i would think it's a little hard to be objective about what really constitutes historical evidence for miracles if you are being trained to be a christian preacher at divinity schools.