From atheism to Christianity? How so?

[Esquilax]

When scientists form theories, they don't know if their theories are correct. I have seen a quote by a scientist which says that the greatest mettle for a scientist is patience because 99 percent of theory turns out to be wrong. They may spend many years working entirely in the dark before they get any results. They are testing the waters, so to speak. It's the same thing with prayer. You don't know if God is there, and the one thing you've heard that works is prayer; better to try it than to leave it untried. What you know about prayer is that it is said to be how we communicate with God. So, if you have even the slightest inkling to find out whether there is a God, the best way to do that would be to pray. You could not pray entirely sincerely, no, and you might not see any reply initially, but what the scripture guarantees is this; if you want to know if Jesus is real, and you ask for that information, that door will open for you. That is the promise: knock, and it will be opened for you. When you see it you will recognize it for what it is, but if you don't want to walk through it that is your choice.

And as others have mentioned, many of us come from backgrounds where we were christian, so clearly prayer isn't as effective as you seem to think.

I appreciate it. I am open to correction but it is my understanding that the concensus even among atheist bible scholars is that Jesus did exist. Even Richard Dawkins admitted that Jesus existed. The vast majority of what Jesus said was utterly unique. A good example of something Jesus taught on which was already well known is the golden rule, but you'll find the roots of that in the Old Testament.

I'm also of the opinion that there was a historical Jesus, I just find it strange that for someone that could make miracles happen, there's so little contemporary confirmation of his existence. So much of Jesus' story is echoed in other, earlier religions and mythologies (Horus, Mithra, etc etc) and consequently, many of his teachings can be found elsewhere too. You're wrong about the golden rule, for example: it pops up in ancient Babylon, China, India and so forth, well before the bible came about.

Well, if you study the history of western civilization it is married to Christianity, and that is what has shaped the world for the last 2000 years. 1/3 of the worlds population claims to be Christian so that would be a majority in the sense that it is greater than any other group.

Except that you're vastly overstating the importance of your religion on the world stage, or even in western culture, helped in no small part by the vagueness with which you're doing it. And I also notice you aren't splitting your religious group down into its component parts (catholics, protestants etc) to get your number; remember, according to each of those groups, the others aren't true christians. Do they really all unite together like that, except through numerical convenience?

Regardless, we're skipping over the important fact that what you're really doing here is a simple argument from popularity: it wouldn't matter even if you're right, because the level of influence something has, and the number of followers it accrues, says nothing about whether or not it's true. The most you can really say out of this is that many people have been tricked; you haven't come a step closer to proving that the reason they all follow christianity is because there's a real god making that happen.

Can you demonstrate that?

I'm not sure why anyone believes that a study about prayer would prove something when God is the one who controls the results.

God can't lie, can he? So if he's controlling the results, wouldn't that mean that he's bound to produce truthful results for the experiment, or else he'd be lying through his actions? So you're now in a situation where either god was telling the truth, and hence prayer is ineffective, or that god was lying, which is something sinful that he apparently can't do. Which is it?

I'm not invoking Pascals Wager because I think that has to do with becoming a Christian, doesn't it? I just said pray, not convert. Taking a minute to pray has no consequences at all.

Pascal's Wager is, in short: "Just be a christian: there's no cost involved, and you're saving yourself from potentially infinite risk." You got real close.