God is so quiet

[SteveII]

Steve, one does not need to present a counter theory in order to say that the theory being presented is bogus.  That's classic, flawed theistic thinking at it's finest.  "Oh yeah?  Well, how do you account for it?" is an irrelevant question.

You most certainly do have to have a counter theory--especially when you say things like the writers were writing things that were "bogus"? You have to have reasons to call people liars. Go ahead--what are they? 

Further, putting aside the authors' intent, the actual fact is that there's absolutely 0 corroborating evidence that Jesus was supernatural.

"Aside from the people who wrote dozens of individual documents (spanning decades) about it, we don't have any corroborating evidence". Good argument!! The fact is if there were 30 or 32 books/letters, you would say the same thing. There would never be enough because you exclude anyone who believed what they saw and then related it. You are begging the question because you assume that if a person believed it, they have little or no credibility. 

And BS about people's hearts being changed (so what?) and the spread of the church (again, so what?) is immaterial.  It merely speaks to what people may or not find compelling (which is subjective by definition).  Also - and, remember, you had a thread in which you were eviscerated several times over this - evidence for mundane events does not lend credibility to extraordinary claims.  That some people went to some place and did some mundane thing is categorically different than saying that one of the people was legitimately magical, and did things that fly in the face of physics and biology.  Things that there's no evidence of.

Not at all. Eyewitness testimony is ALL the evidence you can ever have of ANY historical event. To claim that it is not enough is special pleading. The typical response is to deny eyewitness testimony is evidence--and that is a crock of shit to go along with your bowl of special pleading. 

And, again, that so many people swallow this tripe wholesale != veracity regarding it.  Saying "I know a bunch of people who had similar experiences to me" means absolutely nothing except that you all live in the same (or similar enough) culture, one that ascribes certain things to supernatural forces for no legitimate reason outside of cultural inertia combined with wanting it to be true.  Congratulations, you're a Westerner.

Not so. I listened to a person that came to my church last month from Iran that said he and members of his family (at a massive cost to them) became Christians because Jesus appeared to them (at different times) in a dream and they separately sought out underground Christian groups. Cultural influence? I think not. Go ahead--why should I assume he is lying about his experiences?

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Lastly, the natural world lines up with my beliefs better than with yours. At the very least, the natural world provides no indication that my beliefs are wrong.

And what are my beliefs?

The typical atheist believes that God did not create the world ex nihilo and all that there is is a result of time and chance.