List of reasons to believe God exists?

[henryp]

We don't just want there to be morality, accountability and intrinsic value, we know these things exist.  If you come to the table denying all these things because they are not physical, well first prove five senses measures reality, I am 100% sure you cannot. Because even if material things exist without spiritual nature, it would not be defined by five senses and the way they exist would be beyond it. It's not touching that defines essence, neither vision, etc, something else defines it.

But we see ourselves exist, and that is our best bet of what reality is, and it's spiritual. We also have a perpetual identity and it's not simply our want of that to be the case, but is the case that it is something we perceive to be.

I think reducing my belief in the physical to the 5 senses is selling us short.  Because it's our 5 senses in conjunction with our brains computational power.  What's so fascinating about our 5 senses, is that it's a bunch of lies.  We know the sky's not blue.  That sounds, tastes, and smells don't exist outside of individual brains.   We know the 5 senses are just a loose interpretation of the world.  But we've reverse engineered it, so that now we are able to understand what our 5 senses are perceiving.  And by doing so, we are able to not only understand the nature of our world, but verify it through testing.

I think perpetual identity is silly.  We can turn a human's consciousness off and on.  We can physically alter who a person is.  Our understanding of the brain is cleaning house on all these 'spiritual' things in the same way we dumped the notion the sky is actually blue.  I'm sure there are anthropologists/psychologists/sociologists/neuroscientists who have evolutionary/biological explanations of why you 'know' the non-physical stuff.  It appears there's already a set of existing explanations based on the physical that I refer to, and if there's not, it's imminent.  So when you say there's more than just the physical, you aren't just believing the something more, you're denying physical evidence that points otherwise.

---

Wallym, just as it is not a reason to believe in something because you wish it to be true, the same is true of dismissing something because you believe it's too good to be true or think it's what everyone wants any ways.

It happens that the best thing possible is true, that is God exists. There is plenty of proofs for it regardless of whether we desire it or hate it.

I don't believe it because not only do I see no reason to believe it, but I think there's evidence that shows it to be false or at least evidence at this point that points to it likely being false.  We're learning so much about the brain, that there just isn't enough room to squeeze in a God anymore.

I've read plenty of your proofs.  And sometimes we get into it a little.   Unfortunately, there's that clown car that follows you around, and every time you post, the same 50 people pour out of it drawing your attention in a number of directions.  You're a very popular fellow!  

I usually don't have a problem with most of your conclusions.  My disagreement tends to be with your premises.  Most proofs usually begin with an intuitive sounding statement.  "Hey, we all agree Hitler is evil, right?"  And then you go on for a while.  But I don't concede Hitler is evil.  It's an outlandish thing to disagree with intuitively, but intuition is often just sloppy thinking in my opinion.  

What you're doing by saying "Hitler is evil, right?"  Is trojan horsing a bunch of your beliefs in a more palatable form.  I don't think humans have value.  I don't believe in morality.  I don't think existence is bettered or worsened in any way by humans being murdered.  In fact, I don't think there is even a measurement of the state of existence.  It just is.  

But by presenting "Hitler is evil, right?" everybody has to agree on all the things that go into Hitler being evil.  I'm familiar with the strategy, because as a christian apologist in my younger years, I did the same thing.

[SteveII]

If I'm making a list of why believe in God:

1) God could explain why we exist.
2) ...
3) ...
4) ...

What's #2 and on?  Are there any other tangible things where God seems like a needed or likely explanation? 

Or does it all come down to the guess that maybe billions of years ago, God created stuff seems like a good enough guess that you're all in on God, and while you're at it, why not all the soul/heaven/angels stuff too? 

Doesn't it seem flimsy?  If that domino falls, and some nerd explains the origins of the universe, would that be the end of it?  Is there anything left?

People come to the place where they are willing to believe in God/supernatural for all kinds of reasons. Most are wired with something. Some are raised that way, some have events happen in their life (bad and good things), some encounter people who's testimony is compelling, and some read and find the person/message of Christ compelling. A further category of existential reasons would include purpose, meaning, value, morality etc.

[henryp]

People come to the place where they are willing to believe in God/supernatural for all kinds of reasons. Most are wired with something. Some are raised that way, some have events happen in their life (bad and good things), some encounter people who's testimony is compelling, and some read and find the person/message of Christ compelling. A further category of existential reasons would include purpose, meaning, value, morality etc.

Yeah, that stuff is fine.  But as I said in the op, I stick this in the 'wishlist category.'  Things I would like to be true about the world.  I'd like there to be meaning, purpose, value, morality, afterlife, my parents to be right, a more 'meaningful' explanation for events, the compelling ideas to be correct as well.  

But I think to conclude those things are real, first you need to establish there's God.  

If I say "I'd like to exist forever.  For that to be true, I need a place to go.  Maybe some sort of alternate dimension.  Maybe a God sees over that.  Therefore, God exists." doesn't really make sense as an argument.

The reasons for establishing there's a God in the first place, is what I'm curious about.
--

A side note, I read a fiction book a few years back, and the main character discovers that there is an afterlife, but it's horrible.  And it struck me, that there are no 'when you die, things are awful' pitches around.  We've got nothingness.  We've got, if you're good you go to heaven or are reincarnated as a fuzzy bunny or whatever.  But there is no "Yeah, it's going to suck forever.  You should definitely be terrified of death."  I think that says something about what I mean when I describe things as a wishlist.  The unknowable stuff always seems to be perks.  It's never, "If you believe in Baal, you only get raped once every 5 hours instead of once ever 2 hours." (well, I suppose less getting raped is a perk, but I think you can get my point)

[Simon Moon]

It's not a wish list, personally this world itself is very strange and leads to belief.

For example; having consciousness. Then having planets with orbits, then having the laws of nature. It is too fishy that it indicates that there must be a designer behind it all.

Well, it didn't take long for there to be one big argument from ignorance fallacy.

Sorry, but just because you don't have explanations for the things you mention, does not mean that there are other people that do.

And even if explanations are not yet known, does not mean your unsupported assertions become the best answer by default.

This is exactly what Jehanne  meant in post #2 by saying that theists have no good reasons. Thanks for demonstrating that fact.

[Catholic_Lady]

It seems to me people believe in God through a combination of explaining the physical world and explaining a desired non-physical world.

You want people to have intrinsic value.  Objective morals.  An afterlife.  A soul.  There's a laundry list of things like that where you can assert those may exist if there's a God.  But they are not tangible things.  I don't think there's any reason to believe them other than wanting to believe them.  

Meaning, there's nothing tangible to make you think humans go to 'heaven' when they die.  You can't pick up a fork, and measure it, and say "See, there's probably a heaven, and human soul will continue to exist in some form for all eternity!"

With this stuff, I would say these are consequences of God's existence, rather than things you use to prove God.   More dismissively, I'd call it a wish list.  Here's a bunch of things we'd like to be true.  Only way for that to be possible is for there to be a God.  I would not consider the things to be an argument for God, rather they are possible but unverifiable (while living) consequences in the event there is a God.  Is that fair to say?
---
So with that in mind, that all of the previously mentioned things ride on God existing; Arguments for God existing rely on explaining the physical world.

The big one is that existence exists, and it seems like there's probably some explanation for that.  From what I've gathered, the argument is intuitively, it seems like something needs to have set the ball rolling a few billion years ago.  Why not some type of God like thing?

If I'm making a list of why believe in God:

1) God could explain why we exist.
2) ...
3) ...
4) ...

What's #2 and on?  Are there any other tangible things where God seems like a needed or likely explanation? 

Or does it all come down to the guess that maybe billions of years ago, God created stuff seems like a good enough guess that you're all in on God, and while you're at it, why not all the soul/heaven/angels stuff too? 

Doesn't it seem flimsy?  If that domino falls, and some nerd explains the origins of the universe, would that be the end of it?  Is there anything left?

First I wanna say I appreciate you asking this question without a condescending tone and, I suspect, out of genuine curiosity rather than as ammunition to make fun. 

For myself, let me first start off by saying you got #1 right, but I want to further explain what my thought process is on that:

We know the Big Bang caused the birth of the universe when a small singularity expanded into the cosmos as we know them today. But what was the origin of this "small singularity" to begin with? Possibly another sort of explosion... Maybe there are multiple universes out there and it came from them somehow? It is a fair possibility. But if we go back far enough the question still stands: what caused the very first physical thing to exist? It couldn't possibly have materialized itself from nothingness. We know the laws of the natural, physical world calls for physical things to have been the cause of something else... they don't make themselves. So has this physical thing simply always existed and at some point, for some reason, began to form into something else, and then something else, and eventually we have this universe we live in? Well, just as we know the laws of the natural, physical world are contrary to things materializing themselves from nothing, we also know they are contrary to physical things having always existed. Just as physical things are always the cause of something else, they also have a beginning and an end. The 2 kind of go together. 

Maybe it was a "special type" of physical thing that isn't bound by the laws of physics and could have materialized itself or always have existed? I suppose... though I find that highly unlikely because for a physical thing to be able to be like that would be contradictory to what we have actually observed about the physical world and its laws. In other words, there is proof against it lol. Which leads us to another proposition: Maybe the very first physical thing to ever have existed was actually put in place by a different type of force altogether - one that isn't physical. One that isn't bound by the laws of this natural, physical world, but that is actually beyond it/above it. Not being bound by these laws means this force could be eternal and could always have existed, it didn't need anything else to have caused its existance, it is non physical and not of this physical world. 

When I look at everything and explore other possibilities, this^ is what makes the most logical sense to me. And I honestly don't understand why this proposition is so unlikely in some people's eyes. Or why it is seen as so much more likely that any physical thing could either be eternal, or have materialized itself. What are the other options? We don't have proof of any of these propositions, or of any other anyone else can come up with. 

Of course, the notion of a supreme force out there only says something about Deism, not the Christian God specifically. But for the reason above, I would be a deist long before I would be an atheist. 

I feel there is more evidence (evidence, NOT proof), of the existance of the Christian God more than any other. So to get back to your list:

2. The life and death of Jesus. (There is plenty of evidence that Jesus existed as a Jewish man from the Middle East when the Romans were in rule, and that He was crucified by one of the Roman leaders of the time - Punctious Pilot.)

3. The rapid fire spread of early Christianity during a time when there was no easy transportation or communication technologies. I feel some extraordinary things must have happened for so many people to be so convinced so quickly.

4. Jesus' close friends who actually lived with him were SO convinced that He was the real deal and not some fraud, that they ALL voluntarily died horrible painful deaths for Him... when they could have just denounced Him and went on with their lives.  

5. Morality. With that, I will quote points 1-4 from KingPin back when he was still active here: 

1. Nearly universally across human cultures, arguably, there exists the same basic standards of morality. In addition, there exists in all cultures truly altruistic acts which lead to no genetic benefit.
   
2. The majority of people who explicitly deny the existence of objective morality still act as if objective morality exists.
   
3. There exists a nearly universal human intuition that certain things are objectively right or wrong.
   
4. The majority of philosophers recognize the existence of objective moral facts.
   

...To me, the notion of objective moral laws means there has to be a law giver. I know this doesn't particularly point to the Christian God, but at least it points to one who cares/is involved, which helps support why I believe in more than just Deism.    

6. There have been multiple things that have happened which I think cannot be explained by science. To me, the most convincing is the miracle of the sun in Fatima. 

7. Finally, and most convincing for me personally is that I myself was witness to one of these inexplicable things. I've made it clear before that I don't want to tell the story here because it is sacred to me and I don't want to open it up to ridicule. But something happened in my childhood house in 2006 (I was 20) that both myself and my mother were present for. And because of what it was and what was involved, I can tell you that it was directly related to Christianity.

...And that concludes my "list". The important thing to remember is that it wasn't any one of these things that convinces me. It's all of them together. When I put these all together, it makes logical sense to me that the Christian God is real. And while I know that none of this is "proof", all of these things compiled together serves as sufficient evidence for me to believe that it is more likely that He exists than to believe that He doesn't.

[The Grand Nudger]

Does a long list of crap become less crappy by being long?  I always wonder that when I hear "cumulative case" comments.

[henryp]

First I wanna say I appreciate you asking this question without a condescending tone and, I suspect, out of genuine curiosity rather than as ammunition to make fun. 

For myself, let me first start off by saying you got #1 right, but I want to further explain what my thought process is on that:

We know the Big Bang caused the birth of the universe when a small singularity expanded into the cosmos as we know them today. But what was the origin of this "small singularity" to begin with? Possibly another sort of explosion... Maybe there are multiple universes out there and it came from them somehow? It is a fair possibility. But if we go back far enough the question still stands: what caused the very first physical thing to exist? It couldn't possibly have materialized itself from nothingness. We know the laws of the natural, physical world calls for physical things to have been the cause of something else... they don't make themselves. So has this physical thing simply always existed and at some point, for some reason, began to form into something else, and then something else, and eventually we have this universe we live in? Well, just as we know the laws of the natural, physical world are contrary to things materializing themselves from nothing, we also know they are contrary to physical things having always existed. Just as physical things are always the cause of something else, they also have a beginning and an end. The 2 kind of go together. 

Maybe it was a "special type" of physical thing that isn't bound by the laws of physics and could have materialized itself or always have existed? I suppose... though I find that highly unlikely because for a physical thing to be able to be like that would be contradictory to what we have actually observed about the physical world and its laws. In other words, there is proof against it lol.  Which leads us to another proposition: Maybe the very first physical thing to ever have existed was actually put in place by a different type of force altogether - one that isn't physical. One that isn't bound by the laws of this natural, physical world, but that is actually beyond it/above it. Not being bound by these laws means this force could be eternal and could always have existed, it didn't need anything else to have caused its existance, it is non physical and not of this physical world. 

When I look at everything and explore other possibilities, this^ is what makes the most logical sense to me. And I honestly don't understand why this proposition is so unlikely in some people's eyes. Or why it is seen as so much more likely that any physical thing could either be eternal, or have materialized itself. What are the other options? We don't have proof of any of these propositions, or of any other anyone else can come up with. 

Of course, the notion of a supreme force out there only says something about Deism, not the Christian God specifically. But for the reason above, I would be a deist long before I would be an atheist. 

I feel there is more evidence (evidence, NOT proof), of the existance of the Christian God more than any other. So to get back to your list:

2. The life and death of Jesus. (There is plenty of evidence that Jesus existed as a Jewish man from the Middle East when the Romans were in rule, and that He was crucified by one of the Roman leaders of the time - Punctious Pilot.)

3. The rapid fire spread of early Christianity during a time when there was no easy transportation or communication technologies. I feel some extraordinary things must have happened for so many people to be so convinced so quickly.

4. Jesus' close friends who actually lived with him were SO convinced that He was the real deal and not some fraud, that they ALL voluntarily died horrible painful deaths for Him... when they could have just denounced Him and went on with their lives.  

5. Morality. With that, I will quote points 1-4 from KingPin back when he was still active here: 

1. Nearly universally across human cultures, arguably, there exists the same basic standards of morality. In addition, there exists in all cultures truly altruistic acts which lead to no genetic benefit.
   
2. The majority of people who explicitly deny the existence of objective morality still act as if objective morality exists.
   
3. There exists a nearly universal human intuition that certain things are objectively right or wrong.
   
4. The majority of philosophers recognize the existence of objective moral facts.
   

...To me, the notion of objective moral laws means there has to be a law giver. I know this doesn't particularly point to the Christian God, but at least it points to one who cares/is involved, which helps support why I believe in more than just Deism.    

6. There have been multiple things that have happened which I think cannot be explained by science. To me, the most convincing is the miracle of the sun in Fatima. 

7. Finally, and most convincing for me personally is that I myself was witness to one of these inexplicable things. I've made it clear before that I don't want to tell the story here because it is sacred to me and I don't want to open it up to ridicule. But something happened in my childhood house in 2006 (I was 20) that both myself and my mother were present for. And because of what it was and what was involved, I can tell you that it was directly related to Christianity.

...And that concludes my "list". The important thing to remember is that it wasn't any one of these things that convinces me. It's all of them together. When I put these all together, it makes logical sense to me that the Christian God is real. And while I know that none of this is "proof", all of these things compiled together serves as sufficient evidence for me to believe that it is more likely that He exists than to believe that He doesn't.

I'll start with #4, as it relates to #1.

5) They seem to have a pretty good handle on mapping behavior to physical markers.  Oh, this guys frontal lobe is damaged, they have poor impulse control.  This guy has a chemical out of whack, there's a good chance he'll commit suicide.  This guy took too many blows to the head, now he's more likely to murder some people.  If we are at the mercy of our physical attributes, how can anything be 'moral.'  We can literally change who a person is by giving them a pill or banging them on the head.  If we are at the mercy of our biology, calling our behavior immoral would be like calling being over 6' tall immoral or being gay immoral.

As for the historical patterns you mention, isn't it just practical.  People who behave practically survive.  So you pass that stuff along.  And you do that for a few a while, and evolution is digging it, and rewarding genetic makeups that sync up with the behavior, and social evolution is building off what the evolutionary impulses are putting out there.  And the end result, even with tens of 1,000's of years of philosophy and society all herding people in one direction:  You get people who think murder is objectively wrong burning people alive for being witches.  

1) The first part of 4 is why I don't worry myself about 1.  I'm not well-versed in science.  But when I look stuff up, there is a bunch of I don't knows floating around.  Sounds like there's a bunch of "Dark matter" and "Dark energy" floating around.  It makes up 72% of the universe according to this article I'm looking at but don't understand.  And the words that keep popping up next to them are 'mystery' and 'puzzle'.  Our opinion of the nature of the universe in the past 100 years has been changing at an absurd rate.  It just seems likely, as it's happened with everything else like human behavior, that it's all going to be flipped on it's head when the right piece of unknown information is revealed.

What I'm getting at, is I don't think humans are anywhere near the point where we have to throw in the towel, and start considering Deity as a likely alternative.  We've seen the deity card played before, and historically, whether it's weather, seas, volcanoes, crops, sun, moon, disease, etc... it was always embarrassingly premature.  Based on this pattern, I think it's expected, once again there will be a non deity related answer.

6-7) First hand accounts are always interesting.  I have an uncle who saw a UFO, a step grandmother who saw a demon, and a mother-in-law who sees ghosts.  My favorite musician is Billy Corgan, who I also find fascinating as a person, and he just said he saw a person shapeshift.  I believe they saw something.  I expect there is an explanation.  But unfortunately, these things tend to happen in a way that makes them tough to analyze.

2-4) I like Jesus' story.  Be nice.  Seems like an idea people might get behind and die for.  I mean, people got behind the idea of cutting off their balls, and committing suicide so they could hop on a comet in the 1980's.  

One thing that was always nice about the Roman Catholic Church, is that intuitively, you'd say "If there's a God and he wants us to behave in a certain way, there'd be some way to communicate.  So it makes sense there's the 'correct' religion" which Catholicism lays claim to.  But the Catholic church had a few sketchy centuries in there.  It also makes you wonder, "If there's a God, and he wants us to behave in a certain way, is he going to put it in the hands of an organization that spends 1000 years just killing people willy nilly?"  The thing where the church was behind murdering so many people kind of undercut them as an obvious choice to be dictating God's word.

[Succubus]

...We know the Big Bang caused the birth of the universe...

This is as far as I read. And you can stop right there!
You were told just a couple of days ago we know no such thing. The BBT explains the expansion of the universe, not its origins. You're not getting away with shit again.

---

It seems to me people believe in God through a combination of explaining the physical world and explaining a desired non-physical world.

You want people to have intrinsic value.  Objective morals.  An afterlife.  A soul.  There's a laundry list of things like that where you can assert those may exist if there's a God.  But they are not tangible things.  I don't think there's any reason to believe them other than wanting to believe them.  

Meaning, there's nothing tangible to make you think humans go to 'heaven' when they die.  You can't pick up a fork, and measure it, and say "See, there's probably a heaven, and human soul will continue to exist in some form for all eternity!"

With this stuff, I would say these are consequences of God's existence, rather than things you use to prove God.   More dismissively, I'd call it a wish list.  Here's a bunch of things we'd like to be true.  Only way for that to be possible is for there to be a God.  I would not consider the things to be an argument for God, rather they are possible but unverifiable (while living) consequences in the event there is a God.  Is that fair to say?
---
So with that in mind, that all of the previously mentioned things ride on God existing; Arguments for God existing rely on explaining the physical world.

The big one is that existence exists, and it seems like there's probably some explanation for that.  From what I've gathered, the argument is intuitively, it seems like something needs to have set the ball rolling a few billion years ago.  Why not some type of God like thing?

If I'm making a list of why believe in God:

1) God could explain why we exist.
2) ...
3) ...
4) ...

What's #2 and on?  Are there any other tangible things where God seems like a needed or likely explanation? 

Or does it all come down to the guess that maybe billions of years ago, God created stuff seems like a good enough guess that you're all in on God, and while you're at it, why not all the soul/heaven/angels stuff too? 

Doesn't it seem flimsy?  If that domino falls, and some nerd explains the origins of the universe, would that be the end of it?  Is there anything left?

First I wanna say I appreciate you asking this question without a condescending tone and, I suspect, out of genuine curiosity rather than as ammunition to make fun. 

For myself, let me first start off by saying you got #1 right, but I want to further explain what my thought process is on that:

We know the Big Bang caused the birth of the universe when a small singularity expanded into the cosmos as we know them today. But what was the origin of this "small singularity" to begin with? Possibly another sort of explosion... Maybe there are multiple universes out there and it came from them somehow? It is a fair possibility. But if we go back far enough the question still stands: what caused the very first physical thing to exist? It couldn't possibly have materialized itself from nothingness. We know the laws of the natural, physical world calls for physical things to have been the cause of something else... they don't make themselves. So has this physical thing simply always existed and at some point, for some reason, began to form into something else, and then something else, and eventually we have this universe we live in? Well, just as we know the laws of the natural, physical world are contrary to things materializing themselves from nothing, we also know they are contrary to physical things having always existed. Just as physical things are always the cause of something else, they also have a beginning and an end. The 2 kind of go together. 

Maybe it was a "special type" of physical thing that isn't bound by the laws of physics and could have materialized itself or always have existed? I suppose... though I find that highly unlikely because for a physical thing to be able to be like that would be contradictory to what we have actually observed about the physical world and its laws. In other words, there is proof against it lol.  Which leads us to another proposition: Maybe the very first physical thing to ever have existed was actually put in place by a different type of force altogether - one that isn't physical. One that isn't bound by the laws of this natural, physical world, but that is actually beyond it/above it. Not being bound by these laws means this force could be eternal and could always have existed, it didn't need anything else to have caused its existance, it is non physical and not of this physical world. 

When I look at everything and explore other possibilities, this^ is what makes the most logical sense to me. And I honestly don't understand why this proposition is so unlikely in some people's eyes. Or why it is seen as so much more likely that any physical thing could either be eternal, or have materialized itself. What are the other options? We don't have proof of any of these propositions, or of any other anyone else can come up with. 

Of course, the notion of a supreme force out there only says something about Deism, not the Christian God specifically. But for the reason above, I would be a deist long before I would be an atheist. 

I feel there is more evidence (evidence, NOT proof), of the existance of the Christian God more than any other. So to get back to your list:

2. The life and death of Jesus. (There is plenty of evidence that Jesus existed as a Jewish man from the Middle East when the Romans were in rule, and that He was crucified by one of the Roman leaders of the time - Punctious Pilot.)

3. The rapid fire spread of early Christianity during a time when there was no easy transportation or communication technologies. I feel some extraordinary things must have happened for so many people to be so convinced so quickly.

4. Jesus' close friends who actually lived with him were SO convinced that He was the real deal and not some fraud, that they ALL voluntarily died horrible painful deaths for Him... when they could have just denounced Him and went on with their lives.  

5. Morality. With that, I will quote points 1-4 from KingPin back when he was still active here: 

1. Nearly universally across human cultures, arguably, there exists the same basic standards of morality. In addition, there exists in all cultures truly altruistic acts which lead to no genetic benefit.
   
2. The majority of people who explicitly deny the existence of objective morality still act as if objective morality exists.
   
3. There exists a nearly universal human intuition that certain things are objectively right or wrong.
   
4. The majority of philosophers recognize the existence of objective moral facts.
   

...To me, the notion of objective moral laws means there has to be a law giver. I know this doesn't particularly point to the Christian God, but at least it points to one who cares/is involved, which helps support why I believe in more than just Deism.    

6. There have been multiple things that have happened which I think cannot be explained by science. To me, the most convincing is the miracle of the sun in Fatima. 

7. Finally, and most convincing for me personally is that I myself was witness to one of these inexplicable things. I've made it clear before that I don't want to tell the story here because it is sacred to me and I don't want to open it up to ridicule. But something happened in my childhood house in 2006 (I was 20) that both myself and my mother were present for. And because of what it was and what was involved, I can tell you that it was directly related to Christianity.

...And that concludes my "list". The important thing to remember is that it wasn't any one of these things that convinces me. It's all of them together. When I put these all together, it makes logical sense to me that the Christian God is real. And while I know that none of this is "proof", all of these things compiled together serves as sufficient evidence for me to believe that it is more likely that He exists than to believe that He doesn't.

Little Rik! Get your arse over here. This is how trolling is done properly. Teflon_Lady strikes again.

[The Grand Nudger]

We can literally change who a person is by giving them a pill or banging them on the head.  If we are at the mercy of our biology, calling our behavior immoral would be like calling being over 6' tall immoral or being gay immoral.

If magic book said god preferred his men to be 5'11 or shorter the religious -would- call being 6 foot immoral if their behavior regarding The Gay™ is any indication.

[Succubus]

I feel there is more evidence (evidence, NOT proof), of the existance of the Christian God more than any other. So to get back to your list:

This is a blatant, knowing, lie, and I've called you out on it before. You're Jesus man was unrecognised in the first century.

You did not make one post in this thread!

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2. The life and death of Jesus. (There is plenty of evidence that Jesus existed as a Jewish man from the Middle East when the Romans were in rule, and that He was crucified by one of the Roman leaders of the time - Punctious Pilot.)

Liar!