Deism

You pose the question: ""If God really did care and interact with humanity, why would he not lead them towards righteousness?"" Then you answer it with freewill. I do not see how God wanting people to have freewill would cause him not to "lead them towards righteousness." A god could encourage us to be righteous and inform us of himself and his ways while leaving us with freewill. I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say about beliefs being distorted. If a god were to create us and not communicate clearly to us (or to leave us alone), our beliefs would get distorted very easily and quickly as they have done and are doing. If a god were to keep communicating with us, most of us would believe in him exactly as intended. There wouldn't be massive amounts of different religions, subreligions, and word-views. One would be either an idiot, a fool, or a rebel to not believe in this god as intended. Obviously God doesn't do this. This tells me that he either doesn't associate with our world, or he doesn't care much about relationships with humans as stated in Genesis. "anyone willing [to use reason] will be able to come to understand what is truly just and moral." I don't have the same faith in human reason. These things simply aren't obvious to our finite minds. There are many of intellectual people who come to many very different conclusions on morality, and everything else. Your claim that Jesus existed, claimed to be the son of God, and was crucified is not one that stands by itself. This is just an assertion without a good source or sources to back it up. You show that if there was such a man, he was probably Jesus of the Bible, but you show no reason to believe that there was ever such a man. I'd like to point out the either-or fallacy you used when you said that there are three possible scenarios. There are always more possibilities. The apostles have agreed that Jesus was resurrected, but in one document. You have shown no other document that says this. I could write a document that says that three different people agree that there is civilization on Mars. In hundreds of years, historians may read that document, and believe that there was civilization on Mars, but it will be no more true. If these men existed and claimed the resurrection happened, they could have been lunatics. This would explain why they stuck to their claims. Lunatics can influence each-other and the same ideas could be propagated among them. A less likely option is that they were part of an institution that desired to use this to control people, and they had very strong loyalism caused by propaganda or obscure moral objectives. If the death and resurrection of Jesus was faked, the torture and death of these men could easily have been also. Even if Jesus came, was killed, and was resurrected as in the Bible, God could have still left. I admit that this would make it highly improbable that he did, but it's still possible. Effective healing can't be attributed to miracles because there is no consistency in the situations. If people we use a computer to type a paragraph then we would expect to have a paragraph. If we were to then have a novel, that would be a miracle. These "miracles" lack a testable standard to tell us if it really is a miracle or not. There are an infinite number of variables in any medical situation. For more on this argument, see the source from Dr. Kam Yuen below. Well trained people make mistakes all the time, the belief by multiple well-trained persons is still just a personal, fallible belief. There was a time when all well trained people believed that the world was flat. People can be "raised from the dead" using defibrillators, cpr, and other techniques. It is a scientifically possible phenomenon and doesn't necessarily indicate supernatural intervention. Dr. Kam: