What you guys have is not evidence in any meaningful sense, it's hearsay, anecdote, and more or less self-serving interpretations of various emotional states. You start from the position of conviction, look for things that confirm it, and reject things that don't. You don't know what evidence is, and you don't know how to think critically. That's no slight, most people don't, it's a learned skill like any other, so not being able to do it is no different from not being able to play the piano.
I was a believer once too. I grew up in a deeply religious household and the older I got and the more I learned the less sense it all made. I couldn't get satisfactory answers to my questions from the people who claimed to know, none of the advice I was given worked, and in particular, reading the Bible thoroughly and carefully (that was some of the advice I got) in early adulthood was a profoundly disturbing experience. I had no idea god was such a capricious, murderous SOB. That's something we haven't touched on here, god as mass murderer, and I don't want to open that can of worms because this conversation appears to be coming to a logical closing point and I'd just as soon let go of it.
I'm still looking for answers to the questions I was raising with family and friends and assorted pastors and priests 30 years ago. I haven't found any, in fact all I've found is nonsense, some of it pretty clever, but nonsense just the same. So I continue to withhold belief.
