What if Jesus had failed?

[Sword of Christ]

The Bible is evidence only that someone was creative enough to invent fictional prophecies and fantasy events such as resurrection, the empty tomb, and the holy spirit.

You have to assume that God doesn't exist and/or never revealed himself to humanity to start with, so this would be circular reasoning. Which would work something a bit like this.



You could say using the Bible as the evidence of Jesus/God is circular reasoning but not if you're basing your belief in God/Christ on something beyond and outside of scripture.

You have absolutely nothing at all, correct. And, since you are the ones making the positive claim, you're failing miserably at demonstrating its validity.

Naturalism is a positive claim as well if you're making it. And if you're not making a claim for or against the belief in the existence of God you will have nothing to argue/debate about so you would automatically forfeit yourself from the discussion.

Wishful thinking is evidence only of the human mind's occasional inability to dissociate fantasy from reality.

It would only be wishful thinking if you didn't really genuinely believe it to begin with. It's only a fantasy if it is not true, but I'm saying it is true. There is a chance I'm wrong and there is a chance you're wrong. Whoever is wrong is living in the fantasy.

But, since you cannot demonstrate that your God is anything but a violent fantasy, the chances that we're mistaken seem remarkably slim.

If you mean demonstrate scientifically to an atheist it's possible but they wouldn't accept scientific evidence being used to support the existence of God. I've tried it before but things got a little heated to say the least. It's surprising how passionate atheists get over what they claim isn't a belief, though I think it is.

Christianity is distinct from other religions only in its details and some of its methods, but it is just as obviously nonsensical as every other religion.

It's nonsensical if you assume atheism is sensical to begin. But all religions, the higher grade ones anyway, share elements in common I would agree with that and I don't think it's a problem. It's a shared legacy of the Holy Spirit working it's way down through the ages. Christianity is the religion that I would claim has the most substantiation as it's not purely just Jesus talking about things only he saw/experienced. It's like Mohammed claimed to fly around on a winged horse, no-one else saw him do that so why should we believe him? Joesph Smith found Golden Plates that only he could translate with magic stones in a hat, he could have been making that up. If a community of 1st century Jews started to claim that they collectively witnessed the risen Christ, then unless it was some kind of mass hallucination or conspiracy something very likely did happen. You can still argue against it but it's not as easy to dismiss as the other examples given.