The usual introductions

[Dumac Dwarfking]

It was a number of things that slowly built up over time;

Inference/evidence of design, historical evidence for Jesus's existence and resurrection, my own experiences at the time and the testimonies of the Christians I had met.

It was enough for me to get started. It wasn't enough for it to be useful or simply believing it because it sounded great. There had to be evidence and like you've said, I believe in sight of that evidence. Since then I've continued to look at the evidence.

That's just a brief overview

What evidence?

With regards to whether Jesus, or at least his stories were true, there is no evidence to support the case other than accounts in bible. In order for the accounts in the bible to qualify as being credible sources of evidence they would need to be contemporary accounts that took place close to the time of the events, they would need to be independent of one another (so not from the same author, or from a single bias group), there would need to be lotsof them, and they would need to be consistent with one another. The books pertaining to the resurrection of Christ in the bible adhere to none of these criteria. Without evidence, I have no reason to believe that he existed.

As for the big bang, that theory is predicated on the fact that the universe is always expanding, as evidenced by the cosmological red shift. In an expanding universe, the distance between two points it constantly increasing, thus affecting light travelling through that distance by stretching the wavelength. In the optical part of the electromagnetic spectrum, red light has a longer wavelength than blue light, so cosmologists refer to this process as redshifting. It is testable and observable. I'm sure you'll find plenty of people here who know far more than myself on the subject, and would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

As for evolution, here is a link that you may read at your own leisure - http://wiki.answers.com/Q/what_facts_support_evolution