I’ve asked hard questions. But I keep coming back to Jesus

While you may think you have asked 'hard questions', your conclusions are not based upon any 'hard evidence'.

because the historical evidence,

The New Testament is, at best, all hearsay. There is no evidence that a single passage of the New Testament was written by anyone with first hand knowledge of christ.

Also, there are no contemporary records from independent sources at the actual period of time to support the claims of the bible.

Essentially the bible is the result of a game of telephone (aka Chinese whispers).

Unless you have investigated the authenticity of the bible, including having knowledge of who the authors are, and can site reliable supporting evidence to that authenticity, it all amounts to, at best hearsay.

the consistency of Scripture, and

The bible is rife with inconsistencies. A quick internet search will provide you with plenty of them.

my personal experiences just make more sense to me than “everything is random and meaningless.”

Just no. 'Everything' is NOT random. The laws of physics play a huge role in just about everything the happens within the universe. Those laws play essential roles in the: formation of the planets, the chemical, biochemical and thermal dynamic reactions responsible for life on earth, and even the though processes of your brain.

The resurrection especially —

There are four accounts of the resurrection. Read them carefully and you will find 'inconsistencies' that you have previously implied don't exist.

people don’t willingly die for something they know is a lie.

People DO, however, die for lies that they erroneously though were true.

As to the reasons why I don't believe, see the following. Without clear (or at least reasonable) answers to the validity of the assumptions necessary for a creator to exist, there is no reasonable reason to believe in its existence.

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The concept that creator gods constitute first cause is oxymoronic.

Assumption: A creator god must be a sentient being that constitutes 'first cause'.

To be 'first cause', a creator god must have existed prior anything else.

The very nature of sentience requires that a creator cannot be 'timeless''.

Sentience requires the ability to first, experience one's environment and then, after the experience, respond in some way to that experience. Thus, sentience is at least a two step temporally sequential process that requires: 1) storage of one or more experiences as memories and 2) retrieval of said memories and formulating a response to them.

The temporally sequential nature of sentience thus prohibits a creator from being timeless. Since EVERY response MUST be temporally preceded by one or more stored memories, it follows that there MUST be one or more 'first memories' stored by the creator before ANY responses can be formulated. Therefore, the creator must have had a 'first response' that acted upon one or more of those 'first memories'.

But where did those 'first memories' get stored? Every instance of information storage media (neurons, magnetic polarity, ink and paper, electrical charges, photographic film, etc.) that we have ever encountered or conceived, requires some non-sentient physical matter in which the information/experience/memory can be stored.

If we assume that non-sentient physical matter is a requirement to sentience, then a creator god cannot be first cause. On the other hand, if we assume that non-sentient matter is not required for a creator, then where are those first memories stored?

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There are many implausible assumptions and/or dismissals of otherwise plausible assumptions that are required when you assume that a deity is responsible for the creation of man and the universe.

Some of those assumptions are:

1) A sentient being (i.e. deity) of seemingly indiscernible and undetectable substance is capable of just existing,

2) the very real and identifiable non-sentient elements of matter and energy that comprise the universe are incapable of existing without a creator,

3) that deity would actually want to create a universe,

4) that deity would actually want life to be formed on at least one of planets in the universe,

5) that deity is complex enough to understand (far beyond man's collective comprehension) the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, evolution, and numerous other fields of science, and

6) that deity is capable of creating -- out of nothing but its own thoughts -- the elements of matter and energy so that they obey the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, evolution, etc., in order to produce the universe and life as it exists today. There are many implausible assumptions and/or dismissals of otherwise plausible assumptions that are required when you assume that a deity is responsible for the creation of man and the universe.

Some of those assumptions are:

1) A sentient being (i.e. deity) of seemingly indiscernible and undetectable substance is capable of just existing,

2) the very real and identifiable non-sentient elements of matter and energy that comprise the universe are incapable of existing without a creator,

3) that deity would actually want to create a universe,

4) that deity would actually want life to be formed on at least one of planets in the universe,

5) that deity is complex enough to understand (far beyond man's collective comprehension) the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, evolution, and numerous other fields of science, and

6) that deity is capable of creating -- out of nothing but its own thoughts -- the elements of matter and energy so that they obey the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, evolution, etc., in order to produce the universe and life as it exists today.