Evidence for a god. Do you have any ?

[Pat Mustard]

I am happy to discuss each point with you in as much detail as you like. However, I am not going to have dueling Amazon book links. Pick one and give me the basics.

I'll start on the one you did actually expand on. The reason there must be a first cause is that a infinite amount of past causes/effects is not logically possible. There is no such possibility as an actual infinite number of anything in the real world. If there were an infinite number of past events, we could never have gotten to the events of today because there would still need to be an infinite amount of events that need to pass before we can get to today. 

No scientist has ever had a theory where things come into being ex nihilo.

There is no *logical* contradiction to an infinite regress. There is also no *logical* contradiction to an actual infinity in the real world. Both of those are positions taken because of an adherence to Aristotelian philosophy that has been superseded by Cantorian logic.

Now, we can address the *scientific* question of whether there are actual inifnities. Butit remains that there is no *logical* issue with such.

As for creation ex nihilo, even religion doesn't have that: it assumes a pre-existing deity. And that deity has no beginning, There is no *logical* difference is the position that the universe has always existed in some form (the modern variant is to have a multiverse). Now, I will agree that this has not been scientifically demonstrated, but we are talking about *logical* possibilities here. And an infinite time into the past in a multiverse is certainly a logical possibility.

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That was easy. My goal was do drive you to a ridiculous position--but you ran there on your own as fast as you could. 99.99% of our knowledge of the world's history before 20th century is a result of reading what people wrote.  

Second, you just admitted that writings are evidence (even as you mischaracterized their status).  So, the NT is evidence of Jesus and his claims. Glad we got that out of the way. 

Reading what people wrote *skeptically*. There are large masses of BS in historical writings. If you read Herodotus, there are clear falsehoods and contradictions. But there is also some real history. A good historian *never* takes the written word as definitive. The bias of the author, the sensitivities of the time and location, the rhetorical goals for writing in the first place have to ALL be taken into account. This means that even in 'serious' history, much of the writing has to be dismissed. When miracles and portents are seen, they are *uniformly* dismissed as superstition unless there is independent collaboration.

So, for example, that nobody else reported darkness and people coming out of graves when Jesus died suggests that aspect of the story was exaggerated.

Remember that those across the empire would not have had direct knowledge of the events in Jerusalem. Most believers only believed because of hearsay evidence. The travel times were long and travel was dangerous. Paul himself never saw Jesus (except in a delusion). Given that he clearly made up much of the story, that those he told believed him isn't any evidence of the actual events.

Why would they have no direct knowledge of the events in Jerusalem? It's even easier than that--we know why from the researcher Luke:

And again, the fact that this remarkable story was not collaborated by independent sources *when it would be expected to be* just shows it to be an exaggeration and unreliable.

On your last point, it's even worse for christian apologists than that. The early Roman state church and the medieval churches went out of their way to excise any independent sources in existence for the time perod when their supposed Jesus was allegedly active. Including a number of writers who wrote extensively on the area and knew what they were talking about.

This is strong evidence that the whole edifece of christian belief is based on a lie. Why destroy independent evidence if it wasn't?