Deisim makes more sense then Christianity

First of all, Pro concedes my observation that the literal teachings of the Bible do not define Christianity, which automatically knocks out most of his affirmative case (arguments 1-3). The only argument left standing is 4th one, which seems to be a reiteration of the problem of evil -- that if God was really personal and omnibenevolent (like Christianity says he is), then he would intervene to stop tragedies like a 5 year old dying from cancer. However, what Pro is forgetting is that God is also omniscient -- he has infinitely greater knowledge of reality than we do. With our incredibly narrow perspectives, we might see X happen and believe it to be an 'evil' that should have been prevented, but God would be able to see the "bigger picture", in which X results in a greater good; this is especially true considering that as mortals, we have no insight whatsoever into what occurs during the afterlife (which would necessarily be part of the "bigger picture"). For us to claim that an omniscient God's actions are not omnibenevolent based on our woefully limited knowledge of reality is even more absurd than a highschool drop-out dismissing the academic research of a world-renowned scientist on the basis that he personally disagrees with the results. Pro's argument does not demonstrate that the Christian account of God is false. == Negating Deism == It is true that God *could* have merely fine-tuned the universe during its creation in a way to ensure that life would have evolved on its own later on, but that makes very little sense -- why bother creating intelligent life just to leave it to its own devices and never interact with it? The characteristic which fundamentally distinguishes humans from everything else in existence is their capacity to explore and understand the universe, and more pertinently, their capacity to search for and understand God. Given that, it is thoroughly implausible for God to have created such beings for a purpose which does not involve some level of interaction with them. Furthermore, I would like to introduce a second line of evidence in favor of a personal God -- billions of theists around the world have reported having "transcendental spiritual experiences" (i.e. direct interactions with the divine). Such instances of contact with God have been well-established throughout human history and continue to remain so in the present [1]. The sheer number of such reports makes it highly likely that many of them are legitimate, thus leading us to conclude that God does involve himself in human affairs. == Affirming Christianity == Firstly, in order to address Pro's response to my justification of original sin, I refer him to the second paragraph of "Affirming Christianity" from last round, in which I explained my framework for this section. Aside from that, Pro only really contests the third premise, arguing that the contradictions between the Gospels invalidate them as reliable historical sources. However, as was mentioned in Source 5 from last round, discrepancies between independent accounts of the same event were quite common in historical documents from the Classical Era, so that alone is not sufficient reason to discard the historical accuracy of the Gospel accounts. In fact, the presence of contradictions actually lends historical credibility to the Gospels by debunking the hypothesis (put forth by some skeptics) that the writers of the Gospels collaborated to manufacture the story of the resurrection -- such a collaborative effort would likely have been internally consistent. Aside from that, Pro says something about an empty tomb, but I never actually made any argument regarding one. More importantly, Pro neglects to respond to my argument that a miracle like the resurrection would have been *necessary* for Christianity to survive Jesus's death. Thus, we conclude that Jesus most likely *was* resurrected, and by extension, via my framework, Christianity is probably true. ~ [1] The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology ~ (Kindle Locations 13933-13940)