Does a God exist?

[Veritas_Vincit]

I don't have any reason to think they are lying, so I believe they happened, therefore I believe there is evidence for the existence of God. 

There is abundant evidence that these were times replete with kooks and quacks of all varieties, from sincere lunatics to ingenious frauds, even innocent men mistaken for divine, and there was no end to the fools and loons who would follow and praise them.

http://infidels.org/library/modern/richa...kooks.html

You have plenty of reason to doubt that the miracles in the NT happened, you just choose not to exercise those reasons with regard to the NT. You doubt that Joseph Smith talked to an angel. You doubt that Mohammed did likewise. You choose not to exercise those doubts with respect to the NT. That makes you guilty of special pleading and your conclusions are therefore not reliable. You treat the truth claims of the NT differently than you do other truth claims. That's simply being biased.

Precisely!

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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.

First, every belief you hold, you 'chose' to believe it. Second, the phrase "choose to believe" in no way impacts the truth of the NT. It could be true, it could be false, and it could even be that the facts are true but my belief is false because I believed for the wrong reason. So, no, it does not demonstrate anything. If you want to attack my belief, you'll have to give reasons why my belief is false. 

The NT contains multiple attestations of miracles and it is clear that the early church (before any books of the NT were even written) believed them to have happened as well (that would be 2 separate bodies of evidence even before you break the NT into 27 separate documents). I don't have any reason to think they are lying, so I believe they happened, therefore I believe there is evidence for the existence of God. 

Why do you 'chose to believe' that the 1) the early church held false beliefs and later 2) the 8 authors of the NT claimed to have knowledge that they did not have? You just admitted it has nothing to do with whether miracles happened or not (because then your argument would be circular).

Jörmungandr already nailed it with Special Pleading.

I would just reiterate about the burden of proof. If you make claim X you have the burden of proof to demonstrate that X is true. I don't have to prove that X is false, because until you demonstrate that it is true, I don't have enough evidence to accept that it is true to begin with.

The claim X is false Is not equal to the claim X is not true. I don't have to say X is false, I say I do not have enough evidence to support the claim that X is true, therefore I do not believe it.

I do not choose to believe that the early Church held false beliefs. I am simply not convinced that they ever held true beliefs. I find the evidence insufficient to support belief.

I am not saying that the 8 authors of the NT did not have the knowledge they claimed, I am simply that there is insufficient evidence to think that everything they said was true - least of all the accounts of miracles.

A miracle is the suspension of the laws of nature - no case of a miracle has ever been proven. It is an extraordinary claim to say that a miracle occurred, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. NT evidence is extraordinarily bad evidence. Therefore I do not believe that there is a God, or that Jesus performed miracles, or that the Bible is any kind of moral authority. I don't say I can prove its all false - I don't need to, because it doesn't meet the burden of proof to establish its truth in the first place. It's that simple.