I commend you on your objectiveness and wisdom enough to not be fooled by blind ideals. It's a great trait.
Think not that someone just told me and I chose to believe it. I myself would only believe based on fact. And people defending the Bible with the Bible seemed as a self-reinforced delusion to me.
However, the Bible has been found time and time again to be archeologically accurate. (See below)
As for mankind writing the scripture, the scripture itself tells us that God works through the men who wrote the Bible, going as far as telling them letter by letter what to write. Again, this seems as a reinforced delusion, however, throughout the Old Testament people began to unlock "codes" of the scripture. The codes were founding using an "ELS" system. In short, it you a number (5 for example) and you pick a position in the Hebrew text, and it would take that letter and record it, then move ahead 5 letters and record the letter, move ahead 5 letters, etc... And they began to find complete words and phrases (Note: this was done using the original Hebrew text, which was not translated or modified) The number of codes they found make it mathematically impossible that they are there on accident. And what's even more interesting, is that that many codes are prophetic. Some of the codes found are:
"America in Iraq"
"Scud B"
"Intelligent Weapon"
"Hitler"
and tons of others. Oftentimes they don't know what to search for until something happens, so they find the codes after the fact.
note: Before you scoff at this and say "they added the codes after the fact" consider this: The codes are being taken from the original, unmodified, Hebrew text. And if they tried to add something, it would throw off all of the other codes. And God clearly states that attempting to predict the future is wicked. If you want to test your own studies on these codes, I suggest you get copies of the Original Hebrew texts and line them up with the code finding program (which searches the Hebrew text stored in the software) and test it yourself. Here are some links:
http://www.biblecodedigest.com/
http://www.grantjeffrey.com/torah.htm
(That's just 1 finding)
The scribes at the time, who were responsible for moving the text of scripture on to new scrolls (to preserve the Word), would check and recheck their work. And if they found one letter wrong, they would burn the entire scroll and start over.
If you have any question about the legitimacy of the Bible, please ask. And I mean specifics. (IE "The Bible says this, where is it?" )
Also, in reference to Jesus, over 500 eyewitnesses saw him after his resurrection. The idea that they all hallucinated or dreamed the events before and after his Resurrection are highly unlikely. As their stories all line up. And the probability of 2 people dreaming or hallucinating the same event, at the same time, in the same place is, again, mathematically impossible. Let alone 500 for that matter.
My faith is founded on both archeological evidence and mathematical impossibility that the scripture is false.
Archeological Examples:
(There was a city mentioned in the Bible that was never found, so people scoffed at the legitimacy of the Bible. Later, during an archeological dig, they uncovered the city and found the seal of the King. It had both the name of the city and the name of the King, all of which lined up exactly with the Bible)
(An event in city was described as the walls "falling flat" according to scripture. When archeologists uncovered the city, they found that the walls had literally fallen flat(not over). They fell flat down as if the Earth opened up and swallowed them. Had the attackers plowed into the wall (which is not what scripture teaches) the walls would have fallen over, not flat)
Again, let me know if you have any specific questions.
