From atheism to Christianity? How so?

[Esquilax]

How do you explain the martyrdom of the disciples? They all gave up their lines, endured intense persecution, and died horrific deaths for what they all knew was a lie? Doesn't really make sense. I don't see any reason to believe their testimony in the New Testament isn't authentic.

Unless those martyrdoms were yet more embellishments. How do you know that actually happened?

Or, hell, people die for mistaken beliefs all the time. Their conviction doesn't make the beliefs true.

What you're seeing there is a circus and has nothing to do with biblical faith.

That same no true christian fallacy could be leveled at you by numerous christians in disagreement with your position, I'm sure. That's why I don't take it to be an argument until one of you can show your position reflects reality.

How is He lying? God isn't obligated to produce results so that men come to certain conclusions; it is His perrogative to answer prayers in any way He chooses for any reason. Those who know Him will come to the right conclusions, so it is only those who ignore His revelation who will not correctly interpret the results.

You're saying that prayer works, but that in a situation that would lead people to objectively conclude that prayer works, god made it so that it looked as though prayer did not work. That is deliberately shaping things to misrepresent something factual, which is a lie.

That's simply not true and if you read my testimony and my replies you'll see that it's not all just something I feel but something I have directed witnessed in the real world. Whether you feel you can explain it all away or not is a different discussion.

Well, what is it you witnessed in the real world? Because that's an objective phenomenon with a set of steps that can be taken to experience it, which means I could be led to it too.

I wonder what your excuse will be when it doesn't work on me?

Almost everyone believes in God; whether they believe in the same God is immaterial to the fact that most of them have some kind of supernatural experience which points them towards God. I didn't mean the material facts of my beliefs are comfirmed, but my belief that there is a God and the supernatural experiences which point to Him are confirmed.

You don't actually know what corroboration means, do you?

So, if I'm with a group of people and we see a car accident, and I see the wreck of a red car, but someone else sees the wreck of a blue one, and another sees the wreck of a space station, and none of us can agree on any single element, how can we really be sure we saw something at all?

Nothing in this confirms that there's a god; it's confirmation that lots of people will engage with wishful thinking about their place in the universe, their fear of death and impermanence, and their discomfort over not knowing something big like how we got here.

If God exists then His existence is the most basic axiom and without it how could you understand reality? It seems to be self-evident to the majority of the population, and whether we have disagreements about who God is is immaterial to the fact that He is nearly universally perceived.

And yet none of you billions of people have ever bridged that first big if in that statement. I think that speaks volumes about how self evidence god actually is.