Does a God exist?

[Veritas_Vincit]

Ok... What makes you think any of that actually happened?

I choose to believe that the authors of the NT were truthful in what they wrote and that the core content was not changed at a later date--both evidenced by the existence of a growing church as little as 15-20 years after Jesus' death. I would expect to see minor contradictions and minor transcribing errors. I believe the life and death of Jesus is one of the most attested to events in ancient history. 

I also believe the denial of the above consists mainly of a belief that miracles do not happen. This is a circular argument because you are asking for evidence that God exists and then say, well, you can't use miracles because...God does not exist.

Finally we've got right down to it! Steve, you are absolutely free to believe that, but I take this to be you conceding the argument.

"I choose to believe..." Demonstrates that you don't hold your beliefs because they are true, you assert they are true because you want them to be true, you like that story of events. It shows that you are not following the evidence where it leads, you are leading the evidence to the conclusion you want.

You may choose to believe that the authors were truthful, but that doesn't prove a thing.

The growth of the Christian church is no different from the growth of Mormonism, Scientology, or dozens of other religions, and it proves nothing about the truth of their claims, only the popularity of the movement.

Now - you say denial of this only comes from disbelief in Miracles and that this is a circular argument. You have the burden of proof backward. Miracles have to be demonstrated to have occurred before it is rational to believe that they can happen. This has never been done, so it doesn't matter if I think miracles are impossible - until they are demonstrated, it is irrational to believe that they have ever happened.

You can point to the Bible and say "look, these people say miracles happened." So what? This is here say. It's the worst kind of evidence, copies of copies of translations of copies of testamony that would be utterly incredible if given by someone living today. We have better evidence of UFOs. The Biblical evidence for miracles is laughable. You believe in miracles because it says so in some old book? From 1950 years ago? Just because lots of other people do as well? Because you choose to believe they are truthful?

I'm not saying you can't have miracles because God doesn't exist, I'm saying its unreasonable and irrational to believe in miracles, or God, because NO CREDIBLE EVIDENCE exists. You can choose to believe what you like. You can choose to believe in Zeus or Apollo or the Flying Spaghetti Monster - but that doesn't mean any of those things are real.

So if you're happy to just affirm whatever version of reality makes you feel good, rather than trying to investigate and discover the truth about reality as it is, then go for it, but know that you are basing your world map on comfort over reality - in a nutshell, you are living in a fantasy.