From atheism to Christianity? How so?

[Esquilax]

Could you please quote the iteration that you're talking about? As far as credibility goes, Moses wrote about things that happened at the beginning of time.

Come on. Come on, man: you should know how that claim is going to be received before you even made it. First of all, modern science has all but debunked the entirety of the creation story, so I'm not exactly going to be terribly amenable to the claims that the things Moses wrote about the beginning of time, given that we know it to be false, especially when many of the stories about Moses have been roundly falsified by anthropology too. I shouldn't have to explain this stuff; if you want us to take claims from the bible more seriously than we'd take demonstrable science, then you need to show us that the things depicted in the bible are true, and you're not going to do that by telling us how popular it is and then attempting to reinterpret all of history so that it was merely inspired by the bible.

Some of those events and some of that wisdom has filtered down throughout the ages into many different cultures. For instance, you can find flood myths in almost every culture and civilization in history. That a bit of wisdom known by man coincides with a particular teaching of the Lord doesn't really prove anything; it would have to be systemic, and it isn't. Basically everything Jesus said was unique, or came from the Old Testament. Have you ever studied His teachings?

I'm rapidly losing respect for you. You claim that everything Jesus taught was unique or OT inspired, in response you're given examples of things that predate the Old Testament or existed contemporaneously with it in areas of the world that had never heard of it, and your answer is to reiterate your initial claim, and display how little you looked into our claims before you decided they didn't matter; the Code of Hammurabi was a legal code (systemic) enacted by a king for the entire nation. You're just wrong here, and asserting your initial claim again isn't going to make you any more correct.

Well, I haven't found any evidence that this is true. That's what I am trying to nail down here, what is the evidence that it is borrowed? I've found a lot of people talking about it but there are no citations from ancient literature that back up any of the claims.

I literally said, in the part you quoted, that I don't think the Jesus story borrowed specifically from other sources; I'm saying that certain narrative elements of the Jesus story have parallels elsewhere, which to me, is an indication that the story was written by humans, rather than being something that actually happened. Have you heard of the monomyth? It's like that: there's a basic template that many classical narratives follow, and when it comes to gods, we can find even more similarities: the concept of a god dying and then rising later isn't an uncommon one, for example. Nor is the use of wine as symbolism, among many other things. To claim that Christ represents some unique and wonderful account is to merely ignore the many, many ways in which it is not.

I don't think it proves anything either way, is what I am saying. God doesn't allow Himself to be approached except by faith.

And if the study had been overwhelmingly in favor of prayer, would you be saying the same thing?

Its mission seems a mix of secular and seeker to me and not much adhering to the Christian viewpoint:

Ah, so they're not True Christians.

No, I am not saying that. I am saying that He may have prearranged for those He was going to answer yes and those He was going to answer no to be in that study and approximate the average before the study ever took place.

This seems to me to be one of those "no, but yes," answers. I asked you whether god denied selfless prayers for the safety of someone recovering from heart surgery in order to conceal his presence from scientific study, and you answered yes. I can't begin to count the ways in which this is dishonest, but I'll start with the most obvious: according to you, if I pray and nothing happens, that's still not evidence that prayers are ineffective. And if lots of people do it and it doesn't work, it's also not evidence that prayer is ineffective. So what's the failure state, here? How can you possibly, honestly say that if you pray you'll find god if you're willing to excuse every instance of that not happening? This is just confirmation bias run amok: you'll circle every hit, while ignoring every miss, and yet somehow I'm supposed to think you and this prayer action has any credibility at all?

If I told you that burning your house down will result in you winning trillions of dollars, and in the ashes of your house you remain penniless, would you continue to believe me if my excuse was that some magic force arranged it so that this time you wouldn't win trillions? Would you continue burning down houses, or would you decide I was delusional?