Hi, I'm a Christian. Help Me Disprove My Religion!

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Counter-evidence of what, exactly? 

All I did was break apart the reasons the "hard evidence" you suggested was not, in fact, hard evidence, but instead relied on a number of fairly obvious assumptions to qualify as even weak evidence. I happen to think it does  qualify as weak evidence, but that's just my take on it.

Firstly, it's not I who said there is "hard evidence" it is NT scholars like Erhman and Hurtado. And I've previously provided links to where both of them have said explicitly that there is hard evidence.

Yes, I watched the Ehrman-vs-InfidelGuy video you linked to. Ehrman speaks of Paul's writings as indicating that Paul's "throwaway" comments about James the brother of Jesus indicates to him that Paul knew the friends and family of Jesus. That may well be the case, but it is nevertheless an inference. Again, and I want to make this plain since you seem to be arguing as though I think Jesus didn't exist: I am convinced by the totality of the circumstantial evidence that Jesus was a real person. The place where he says it's "hard" evidence seemed not to be a statement of fact, but exasperation at InfidelGuy's aggressive and repeated claim that Jesus never existed, an emotional retort rather than a statement of historical fact, if you will, which is why Ehrman launched into discussions of things like the existence of Julius Caesar and the Holocaust.

Secondly, what qualifies you to say the evidence is "weak"?

Because I can read, and my brain works?

If you must make an inference about a piece of evidence, rather than it producing an inescapable conclusion, then it is weak evidence. We must infer that Paul's comments indicate he knew James, et al., and we must infer that Tacitus got his information from an official source, rather than just passing on Christian convicts' comments secondhand, it we're to say it proves anything than what the soon-to-be-martyrs thought. Same goes with Josephus. Neither of them directly proves anything unless we have positive evidence of the official Roman records of the crucifixion, which we do not, and there are several elements that render an "official records" concept dubious, which we have discussed.

Let me give a personal example. I can prove to my satisfaction that my friend Trevor died when he was 17 in 2000. I know his DOB, I know his date of death, I know his family, and I attended his funeral. However he was cremated and he has no plot.

What physical evidence do you suppose there is of his existence besides anecdotal evidence like mine?

As has been pointed out to you by others, if I found a letter saying you had a friend named Trevor who died at age 17 in 2000, I would tentatively accept that as genuine because I had no reason to argue with it, and I would believe in Trevor's existence only to the degree that I had evidence for it. It's a low claim, so not much proof is required, nor is much belief required. It comes down to a "why not?"

But if that letter said that Trevor was a miracle worker sent by God, killed in Birmingham after a public trial for treason against the Crown, and that angry mobs had demanded his death, I would probably look for additional proofs of this much higher level of claim. If I then saw no news articles about a trial of that sort in Birmingham, and found that despite it being "public", only you and your circle of friends ever seem to have written about it... I'd probably be pretty skeptical of your claims about Trevor. Might I believe you had a friend named Trevor? Sure, why not. Miracle worker and executed in public for treason? Mmmm, no. Evidence is weak, and unconfirmed.

"In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence." - David Hume