I'll admit to having an unhealthy obsession of debunking the Bible debunkers, which keeps me away from my unhealthy obsession with beating the games in my backlog (So many good bundles are hard to pass up, I can't help myself *sob*).

So far I've linked one person who is quick to insult people who use poor arguments and/or use poor research, but he's usually pretty good at keeping that out of his articles. Sometimes people suffer from a severe case of the Dunning–Kruger effect and the only way to get through to them is to shame them, but usually people in this culture are more likely to return the insult than to pause to consider when they need to change, so it's generally better to avoid trying to do that. Many people think the Bible teaches that it is inerrant, but usually the Bible has been shown reliable through other means first. Other Christians disagree with that interpretation. However, there can still be an historical resurrection even if it turns out that the Bible has an error in a secondary detail. There was one person who used the vastness of the universe as evidence against God. I linked someone who argued that the size is necessary for the formation of stars and solar systems, which is necessary for the formation of life. This of course does not prove the existence of God, but it does give a reason that God could have for creating a universe of this size if God did exist, so that counters the claim that the vastness of the universe is evidence against God. Anonymous authors with unknown credentials writing articles that anyone can edit make Wikipedia one of the first places I would recommend avoiding if you’re interested in serious scholarship. Do you mean Erich von Däniken? Searching for "Butler, von Däniken" doesn't come up with much. You advised me to read some books about the initial formation of Christianity by non-Christian scholars. I will try looking more into these, but it doesn't answer my question. Jesus never traveled in his adult life outside of Judea, he never held political office, he did not fight in any major battles, and he died the death of a criminal by crucifixion. He was very much a dead nobody who was not worth mentioning as for as the Romans were concerned. Why would someone who was concerned with the political and economic situation of the Roman Empire bother to investigate a bunch of hearsay? He would dismiss it just like most people dismiss the claims of Benny Hinn without investigating him. The vast majority of things that we think are true have been taught to us by someone else who we consider to be an authority. *shrug* I think the Kalam and Aquinas's Five Ways show that the classical God of theism is a logically necessary being that can't not exist. This has nothing to do with what I can or can't imagine. There are good reasons to think that the Gospels are eyewitness, such as the depth of knowledge about the land that is consistently accurate, which means that we have generally reliable testimonies from people who participated in the events narrated. However, even if we only use those facts that the vast majority of both Christian and non-Christians scholars agree on and apply historical methodology used by professional historians to the various hypotheses, the resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation for those facts.

A resurrection is next to impossible, so I still find it very difficult to believe, but I also find it very difficult to believe that Christianity would have survived its first decade if Jesus had not risen from the dead. So regardless of whether you believe that Jesus rose or not, you believe something that is next to impossible happened. Again, the resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation when evaluated against other hypotheses. Huh? My own personal experience and the countless testimonies of others who lives were radically changed for the better after converting to Christianity. For instance, there was a Jewish girl who was taken to a concentration, where the rest of her family was killed. She survived, but the most of the rest of her life was consumed by bitterness to the point that it was making her sick. After she converted to Christianity, her health was restored and she was eventually able to visit her old concentration camp with one of her former guards, and forgive him. Interesting, but I think it still works with the analogy that sheep without a shepherd are prone to wander. Creation itself testifies of a creator and we all are given an innate sense of right and wrong, which indicates a lawgiver that we will be held accountable to. All people know about God, but they suppress the truth. People aren’t condemned for not hearing about Jesus, but because they have rejected the rule of God. I’m not guilty by default, but because I fail to live up to what I know to be right and wrong. Every Christians fails to life up to what is taught in Christianity, but that does not mean there are no real Christians or that I am any more or less of a Christian than the people who fail more or less than I do. So I didn’t excuse their actions or say they were no real Christians, but I question whether the motivation for their actions comes from a correct understanding of the Bible because you’re not going to find the command to kill your heathen neighbor in the Sermon on the Mount. Christians still have all sorts of influences and motivating factors other than the Bible, so it is wrong to say that everything a Christians does is because of what it teaches. Even good deeds can be done for the wrong reasons.

Furthermore, the things like the Crusades and the Inquisition are often blown of proportion to what actually happened. For instance, only around 5000 people were executed over the 300 years of the Spanish Inquisition. That’s still not a good number, but then you need to look the politics involved and reasons why they were killed, and the fact church courts were more lenient than secular courts. It like almost every time I see catholic priests mentioned in a secular forum, I get the impression that people think they are a bunch of pedophiles. I’m not excusing it, but it’s ridiculous to focus on that and ignore all of the charity work that priests have done over the centuries. And again, you’re not going to find the Bible encouraging pedophilia anywhere, so their actions were in spite of what the Bible teaches.