From atheism to Christianity? How so?

[pineapplebunnybounce]

I don't mean every thing a historian says is true, a historian can certainly lie about his own life. I mean an actual historian today who studied these sources and their conclusions. I don't even know if the gospel was actually Luke's and not altered, do I? In fact I know for a fact that it has been altered many times over.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I know I was just being a smartass. Plutarch had some pretty wild stuff in his version of history.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

Actually if the gospels make Jesus's resurrection true, then Elvis's would have to be true, too. Way more sources, no obvious ulterior motive, more recent and better documentation of the claims.

I haven't read Plutarch yet, I mean to though, it sounds interesting.

[RDK]

I take it you are still in your early 20s? Anyway, not to be cruel about it, but this sounds a lot like, "I used to be hooked on drugs, but now i'm hooked on Jesus." In time, you may recover from this unhealthy dependency as well.

Hey, no I am in my late 30s now. As far as drugs are concerned, when I converted to Christianity I was only smoking marijuana and cigarattes, which I gave up shortly after. It was during my journey with God towards the Christian faith that I fell into some particularly bad vices, but I was delivered of those before I gave my life to Jesus. The difference now is, I wouldn't go back to them for any reason; I feel like I've been set free. Before I came to my Christian faith I was still vulnerable to falling back into those vices. That addictive part of my personality is mostly dead now, although I still have some of those tendancies; such as using the internet too much.

If prayers got no results, no one would bother. RIGHT ON!

[Esquilax]

If prayers got no results, no one would bother. RIGHT ON!

And it's here that someone should point out that, in the real world, all the followers of every other god that has ever existed, that you think isn't real and thus could not answer prayers, nevertheless still prayed. Evidently, prayer can get no results and still be done.

[agapelove]

You did not reply to a lot of my previous post. I'm going to take it that you've conceded the points?

What did I miss that you feel needs to be addressed, that hasn't been addressed?

Pick a historian or an archaeologist that isn't an apologist by profession. Shouldn't be too hard if it's such an established "fact", should it?

I'll get back to you on this.

No but you definitely cannot claim that it happened. The source has to be discredited based on its own properties, not its claims. If it is a legit source, its claims still has to be supported by other sources.

The New Testament contains multiple accounts of the resurrection. You are lumping them all together when they were written by different people at different times. Flavius Josephus is a contemporary of the disciples and he mentions the resurrection as well. Even it were only a single source, it cannot be discredited for that reason.

Without archaeology you wouldn't be justified in saying that it does. Do you understand now, how this thing works? Just because I claim a I have a car doesn't prove I have a car but it doesn't prove I don't have one either. But without seeing an actual car it would be dishonest of you to tell someone else you know for sure I have a car. Well dishonest or gullible.

That isn't primarily how historical evidence is evaluated. You are making an erroneous claim when you say that if there is only a single source that is unverified by archaeology that we have no reason to believe it. There are other criteria for evaluating the reliability of a source. Here are some of them:

Human sources may be relics such as a fingerprint; or narratives such as a statement or a letter. Relics are more credible sources than narratives.

Any given source may be forged or corrupted. Strong indications of the originality of the source increase its reliability.

The closer a source is to the event which it purports to describe, the more one can trust it to give an accurate historical description of what actually happened.

An eyewitness is more reliable than testimony at second hand, which is more reliable than hearsay at further remove, and so on.

If a number of independent sources contain the same message, the credibility of the message is strongly increased.

The tendency of a source is its motivation for providing some kind of bias. Tendencies should be minimized or supplemented with opposite motivations.

If it can be demonstrated that the witness or source has no direct interest in creating bias then the credibility of the message is increased.

Before you get mixed up, just because one part of the bible has some basis doesn't mean the entire thing is real. I want to point out once again that even though you found a Hittite civilization, it is not proof that what happened to the hittites in the bible happened in real life. Do you understand the level of evidence I require now?

You're right; just because one part of the bible has been confirmed doesn't necessarily mean it is totally reliable. Conversely, just because you doubt one part of the bible doesn't mean the whole thing is unreliable either.

I think having someone resurrected you would get at least a lot of different sources describing the same thing happening. (The bible is one source, which has been heavily altered to suit political purposes since it was first compiled, another reason why it should be discredited as a source altogether).

There is absolutely no evidence the bible has been altered to suit political purposes, or any other purpose. The bible is the most well attested document in history, with over 20 thousand manuscripts verifying its integrity going back to the 1st century. Could you please provide evidence for your claim?

By the way, isn't it dishonest to claim that something happen and then when asked to prove it, say, well it's the nature of this event to not leave proofs behind. Then how can you claim it happened in the first place?!

I never said there was no evidence; what I am saying is that your demand that archaeology verify the resurrection is unreasonable. My question is that if you demand such proof, what proof would satisfy?

One evidence that I feel is convincing is the martyrdom of the disciples. They were direct witnesses to the fact of the resurrection. Do you think they made it up and died for a lie? What is your theory about that?

In summary, you only have the bible for resurrection. Yet this qualifies as historical while the Qur'an which states Jesus is not god doesn't qualify as a historical and factual document.

The reason the New Testament accounts are credible is because it is written by eye witnesses to the resurrection whereas the Quran was written 600 years later. If the Quran was written by eye witnesses I would consider it.

Something else interesting to consider is that within the first 150 years you have over 40 extra biblical sources verifying the life of Jesus and absolutely zero disputing it. Why the lack of testimony to the contrary, do you think?

I provided a link in my last post: did you not see it? In it, there was a list of several quotations of the golden rule that predate Jesus.

I have only seen two which predate the Old Testament and the best connection you could make to the golden rule is superficial at best. The translation is also disputed in the case of the eloquent peasant. I don't see how they prove the case.

Right, but Christianity didn't get to China until the eighth century, after Confucius had died, which means he couldn't possibly have been inspired by the old testament when he said that, putting the lie to your claim that the teachings of christianity are so unique and wonderful as to be divinely inspired, because no mortal could have thought of them. Mortals did, and they did it without help from your god.

There has been trade between China and the Middle East well before Confucius. Some estimates put contact between Egypt and China at 1070 BC

Some remnants of what was probably Chinese silk have been found in Ancient Egypt from 1070 BC. Though the originating source seems sufficiently reliable, silk unfortunately degrades very rapidly and we cannot double-check for accuracy whether it was actually cultivated silk (which would almost certainly have come from China) that was discovered or a type of "wild silk," which might have come from the Mediterranean region or the Middle East.[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road

I did that a few posts ago too: the concept of the dying and rising god, or even just the dying and rising protagonist, is a common narrative trope that was employed by numerous old gods. Baal, Baldur, Istar, Dionysus... numerous gods go through this, though Jesus is notable as being one of the few reported to actually be extant on earth after death. Wine as a symbolic instrument is notable in Dionysus' story too, and the idea of gods coming to earth in mortal aspects can be seen at the very least in Zeus' mythology.

Are you claiming that Jesus is a myth? The connections are superficial; Jesus came to Earth as a man and lived as a man, not as a God. He wasn't killed incidently and then brought back to life: his entire mission was to die for the sins of the world. Dionysus was the greek god of wine; is it surprising wine is symbolic in his story? Wine was also symbolic in the Old Testament and some of it had messianic undertones.

So the christians and their unselfish prayers weren't following god correctly because they... expected to see results? Of the prayers that you have said in the past would yield a result.

What I said was, trying to test for Gods existence by monitoring answered prayers will not yield results. God will not allow Himself to be approached except by faith.

Tell me, other than the fact that these prayers were conducted in such a way that their potential failure could be publicized with more weight than you christians could brush off with platitudes, what was it that these praying folks did to deserve not getting an answer?

I gave you a theory which was that the prayers themselves were always going to be answered yes or no the way they were, but that God simply brought a combination of people who would yield a nominal result into the study. He did not answer them differently because of the study.

My problem is that you then go on to say that if my prayer is unanswered, that too is god's will: you've set up a demonstration in which you believe god can be shown to exist, and then configured it so that no matter the result, or even if there's no result, the existence of your god is the only answer you'll accept.

I don't think you can prove Gods existence through answered prayer, or any other way. God has to reveal Himself to you individually.

It's not a valid question if you're willing to string it out to perception, because that's just a way to make your beliefs unassailable. Maybe you just fell victim to having a strikingly similar argument to the one Sye Ten Bruggencate would use, but the point is that at a certain level, what we've got to deal with is confirmation and corroboration: the commonalities between our shared perceptions, the things we both experience? Those can be said to be verified. The physical objects that look, smell, sound and feel like they should if they physically existed? Same deal. When you ask us if our perception could be faulty, we know it is, in part. That's why we don't always trust the things we experience exclusively; police continue investigating crimes beyond the testimony of their first witness, for example. But when you try to extend that out, to imply that multiple people corroborating the same events could be mistaken, simply because they're using their perception and that might be false, you enter into useless territory: we only have the sensory apparatuses of ourselves and others. There's no other method by which we can experience the world.

Well, my experiences of the supernatural are confirmed and corroborated by the vast majority of people on Earth. I believe around 80 something percent of all people believe in God. According to you though that doesn't matter so how do we determine whether our experiences are accurate or not? At some point you're taking a leap of faith in what you believe.

Yeah, the moment you start presupposing anything, beyond very basic axioms, you've discarded rational discourse.

God is a basic axiom, being a self-evident truth and the only guarantee that reality is actually real.

If you're referring to Leviticus 19:18, (“Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against . . . thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”), then I must point out that Leviticus reached its final form between the 3rd and 6th centuries BCE. While some of its composition predates the 6th century BCE, because it was edited up until that point, no single passage can be dated to before the 6th century BCE. Confucius was writing at this same period in time, during the 6th century BCE, so there is no way to claim that any passage in Leviticus in particular predates Confucius' quoting of the golden rule. And given that some of Leviticus may date to after Confucius, it's entirely possible that the editors of Leviticus got the idea from Eastern philosophy rather than the other way around.

I also notice you just completely ignored that rules of reciprocity similar to the golden rule occur in both the code of Ur-Nammu and the Eloquent Peasant, which I pointed out earlier. In particular, the Eloquent Peasant which dates to the Middle Kingdom (c. 2040–1650 BC) includes the admonition: "Do to the doer to cause that he do thus to you." Predating even the oldest of the Mosaic texts under the most liberal dating. Convenient of you to ignore it.

The first millennium BCE in China, India, and Persia, was a time of great advances in philosophy and religion, in which many of the ideas that appear in Jewish religious lore also found expression in other cultures. The first millennium BCE is in the middle of what is loosely referred to as "the Axial age" as there appears to have been a simultaneous blossoming of culture and philosophy across diverse cultures around the globe about this time. There is plentiful evidence that similar philosophies sprung up multiple places across the globe almost simultaneously, and the example of it springing up in first millenium BCE Judaism is therefore unremarkable and underscores Esquilax's point that your Judeo-Christian ethical philosophies are not unique and original to the Jews and Christians.

I've got numerous source books of both Chinese and Indian philosophy from this period, but I'm not going to waste my time looking up examples if all you're going to do is cherry-pick which evidence you respond to, and even then claim more than your evidence actually shows. The apologetic store house that you're dispensing these pearls from contains nothing but sand and rotten grain.

I've replied to a lot of different people; my apologies if I have not addressed something. Let's say that you're right and that the Golden rule predates the Old Testament, which I am not conceding; what does that prove to you? The bible says God has given every culture in every time revelation of His existence and divine nature through the Creation, and of His laws through their conscience. Therefore every culture has a certain knowledge about God and that may have included some basic knowledge of the golden rule. Citing this one instance does not make the case that Jesus borrowed His teachings from elsewhere; you would have to prove it was systemic and not one or two isolated incidents.

[Minimalist]

I know I was just being a smartass. Plutarch had some pretty wild stuff in his version of history.

Of course, Plutarch was real. Big difference.

[Esquilax]

I have only seen two which predate the Old Testament and the best connection you could make to the golden rule is superficial at best. The translation is also disputed in the case of the eloquent peasant. I don't see how they prove the case.

I could say the same thing about the divine providence of the old testament.

There has been trade between China and the Middle East well before Confucius. Some estimates put contact between Egypt and China at 1070 BC

Yes, but the first record we have of christianity in China is from the eighth century, and I'm not going to charitably accept assumptions that you only have because they prove your point.

Are you claiming that Jesus is a myth? The connections are superficial; Jesus came to Earth as a man and lived as a man, not as a God. He wasn't killed incidently and then brought back to life: his entire mission was to die for the sins of the world. Dionysus was the greek god of wine; is it surprising wine is symbolic in his story? Wine was also symbolic in the Old Testament and some of it had messianic undertones.

I'm claiming that the Jesus story, the miracle claims, were embellishments made to the life of an itinerant Jewish rabbi. Yes, the connections are superficial; such things are. It's just another evolution of an old story, nothing more. To be clear, your only proof of its authenticity is that it's so wonderfully unique as to be divinely inspired, and when you're shown other places where similar themes and teachings pop up, your only response is that these are superficial. Well, yes... they're similarities, not literally the same story. It doesn't need to be identical to prove the only claim you've made wrong.

What I said was, trying to test for Gods existence by monitoring answered prayers will not yield results. God will not allow Himself to be approached except by faith.

Better tell that to all those televangelists and miracle workers who film and screen prayers being "answered," then. I guess they were wrong all along.

Also, what is it that your god has to hide, here? Why's he lying?

I gave you a theory which was that the prayers themselves were always going to be answered yes or no the way they were, but that God simply brought a combination of people who would yield a nominal result into the study. He did not answer them differently because of the study.

And misrepresenting the facts is still a lie, something god can't do, so one way or another, someone's wrong here.

I don't think you can prove Gods existence through answered prayer, or any other way. God has to reveal Himself to you individually.

Yes, that's rather the problem; the only evidence you have is the things you feel inside your head. Convincing yourself that something's true does not make it so.

Well, my experiences of the supernatural are confirmed and corroborated by the vast majority of people on Earth. I believe around 80 something percent of all people believe in God. According to you though that doesn't matter so how do we determine whether our experiences are accurate or not? At some point you're taking a leap of faith in what you believe.

So, this is important: they don't all believe in the same god. See, you can't just conglomerate every deist and theist together when it suits your purposes, because these are not the same experiences. They're different ones, owing to experiences with different gods, not always the one you believe in, and even with regards to the ones that are about the christian god, there's major disagreements as to what he's like. You're just pretending, here; there's no corroboration involved, because the vast majority of those people disagree with the god you're pimping.

Try not to be dishonest, here.

God is a basic axiom, being a self-evident truth and the only guarantee that reality is actually real.

You can't say god is self evident because if he was you wouldn't have such disagreements over what he's like, and besides, I disagree with your fiat assertion. Now you're just lying, which is absolutely a sin according to your religion.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

You did not reply to a lot of my previous post. I'm going to take it that you've conceded the points?

What did I miss that you feel needs to be addressed, that hasn't been addressed?

Well hittites for one. And then the ones you omitted in this reply would be what I said about William Lane Craig. You basically asked me if I was rejecting your sources just because I didn't like it (implying I was being intellectually dishonest), and I've shown why WLC isn't worth one bit credulity and you don't reply. Do I take it that you concede?

Pick a historian or an archaeologist that isn't an apologist by profession. Shouldn't be too hard if it's such an established "fact", should it?

I'll get back to you on this.

No but you definitely cannot claim that it happened. The source has to be discredited based on its own properties, not its claims. If it is a legit source, its claims still has to be supported by other sources.

The New Testament contains multiple accounts of the resurrection. You are lumping them all together when they were written by different people at different times. Flavius Josephus is a contemporary of the disciples and he mentions the resurrection as well. Even it were only a single source, it cannot be discredited for that reason.

Ok, I looked this up after talking to you about the new testament. So they were written like 80 years after the resurrection supposedly happened. If they were 10 year olds they would have been like 90 when they wrote it. How reliable is that? And we know they weren't kids, they were adults when Jesus was there, what are they all more than a 100 years old? How reliable can you be at that age? And some historians think that the gospels borrowed from each other. So not really independent sources are they? Flavius was born in 37 AD, how could he have seen anything? Whatever he wrote would have to be hearsay.

Without archaeology you wouldn't be justified in saying that it does. Do you understand now, how this thing works? Just because I claim a I have a car doesn't prove I have a car but it doesn't prove I don't have one either. But without seeing an actual car it would be dishonest of you to tell someone else you know for sure I have a car. Well dishonest or gullible.

That isn't primarily how historical evidence is evaluated. You are making an erroneous claim when you say that if there is only a single source that is unverified by archaeology that we have no reason to believe it. There are other criteria for evaluating the reliability of a source. Here are some of them:

Human sources may be relics such as a fingerprint; or narratives such as a statement or a letter. Relics are more credible sources than narratives.

Any given source may be forged or corrupted. Strong indications of the originality of the source increase its reliability.

The closer a source is to the event which it purports to describe, the more one can trust it to give an accurate historical description of what actually happened.

An eyewitness is more reliable than testimony at second hand, which is more reliable than hearsay at further remove, and so on.

If a number of independent sources contain the same message, the credibility of the message is strongly increased.

The tendency of a source is its motivation for providing some kind of bias. Tendencies should be minimized or supplemented with opposite motivations.

If it can be demonstrated that the witness or source has no direct interest in creating bias then the credibility of the message is increased.

(red highlight added by me)

The ones I highlighted in red are archaeologically determined. In fact if a source isn't archaeologically verified, it would be thrown out. Do you understand the difference between verifying as source and verifying a claim? Because that is the key here. If you cannot archaeologically verify your source (do they have the original copies of the gospels?) then there's no need to even think the sources are authentic and therefore there's no reason to check the claims. As for sources that talk about fantastical beings, yes you do need archaeological evidence. What, am I suppose to think that people in those times do not write novels? They don't lie? Everything they say is real? Is everything in your diary real? Come on. The bible saw fit to lie about Exodus. What was their motivation there? Oh and genesis too.

Oh and at the time the gospels were written, there were already really strong Christian groups in those area. That is as good a motivation as any to write a gospel. Especially for someone who has never met Jesus.

Before you get mixed up, just because one part of the bible has some basis doesn't mean the entire thing is real. I want to point out once again that even though you found a Hittite civilization, it is not proof that what happened to the hittites in the bible happened in real life. Do you understand the level of evidence I require now?

You're right; just because one part of the bible has been confirmed doesn't necessarily mean it is totally reliable. Conversely, just because you doubt one part of the bible doesn't mean the whole thing is unreliable either.

Did I say it was? And please try to stay honest here. I don't reject the bible because I "doubt" it, I reject it because there has been evidence to the contrary and the rest of it is pretty much bullshit and regularly breaks the known laws of physics and it hasn't satisfied the burden of proof.

I think having someone resurrected you would get at least a lot of different sources describing the same thing happening. (The bible is one source, which has been heavily altered to suit political purposes since it was first compiled, another reason why it should be discredited as a source altogether).

There is absolutely no evidence the bible has been altered to suit political purposes, or any other purpose. The bible is the most well attested document in history, with over 20 thousand manuscripts verifying its integrity going back to the 1st century. Could you please provide evidence for your claim?

Why don't you present your evidence that it is the "most well attested document in history"??

Nevertheless.

The compilation of the bible, the gospels at least, was made because they wanted 4 gospels. No more no less. So they picked whatever 4 best suits their needs and put it in the canonical bible. (it's on wikipedia, which has links to sources) That's an alteration to the bible.

Ok, let's look at the KJV version. I actually saw this in a documentary about English monarchy, but I looked this up and found:

Instructions were given to the translators that were intended to limit the Puritan influence on this new translation. The Bishop of London added a qualification that the translators would add no marginal notes (which had been an issue in the Geneva Bible).[8] King James cited two passages in the Geneva translation where he found the marginal notes offensive:[43] Exodus 1:19, where the Geneva Bible had commended the example of civil disobedience showed by the Hebrew midwives, and also II Chronicles 15:16, where the Geneva Bible had criticized King Asa for not having executed his idolatrous grandmother, Queen Maachah.[43] Further, the King gave the translators instructions designed to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology of the Church of England.[8] Certain Greek and Hebrew words were to be translated in a manner that reflected the traditional usage of the church.[8] For example, old ecclesiastical words such as the word "church" were to be retained and not to be translated as "congregation".[8]

Furthermore,

For their Old Testament, the translators used a text originating in the editions of the Hebrew Rabbinic Bible by Daniel Bomberg (1524/5),[120] but adjusted this to conform to the Greek LXX or Latin Vulgate in passages to which Christian tradition had attached a Christological interpretation.[121] For example, the Septuagint reading "They pierced my hands and my feet" was used in Psalm 22:16 (vs. the Masoretes' reading of the Hebrew "like lions my hands and feet"[122])

For their New Testament, the translators chiefly used the 1598 and 1588/89 Greek editions of Theodore Beza,[124] which also present Beza's Latin version of the Greek and Stephanus's edition of the Latin Vulgate. Both of these versions were extensively referred to, as the translators conducted all discussions amongst themselves in Latin. F.H.A. Scrivener identifies 190 readings where the Authorized Version translators depart from Beza's Greek text, generally in maintaining the wording of the Bishop's Bible and other earlier English translations.[125] In about half of these instances, the Authorized Version translators appear to follow the earlier 1550 Greek Textus Receptus of Stephanus. For the other half, Scrivener was usually able to find corresponding Greek readings in the editions of Erasmus, or in the Complutensian Polyglot. However, in several dozen readings he notes that no printed Greek text corresponds to the English of the Authorized Version, which in these places derives directly from the Vulgate.[126] For example, at John 10:16, the Authorized Version reads "one fold" (as did the Bishops' Bible, and the 16th century vernacular versions produced in Geneva), following the Latin Vulgate "unum ovile", whereas Tyndale had agreed more closely with the Greek, "one flocke" (μία ποίμνη). The Authorized Version New Testament owes much more to the Vulgate than does the Old Testament; still, at least 80% of the text is unaltered from Tyndale's translation.[127]

And, a highlight point:

The translators appear to have otherwise made no first-hand study of ancient manuscript sources, even those that – like the Codex Bezae – would have been readily available to them.[129]

It really doesn't look that well preserved from this angle. King James' bible was translated at a time when the church of england was experiencing factionalism in the congregation, namely protestant and puritans weren't getting along. So he translated a new bible.

By the way, isn't it dishonest to claim that something happen and then when asked to prove it, say, well it's the nature of this event to not leave proofs behind. Then how can you claim it happened in the first place?!

I never said there was no evidence; what I am saying is that your demand that archaeology verify the resurrection is unreasonable. My question is that if you demand such proof, what proof would satisfy?

One evidence that I feel is convincing is the martyrdom of the disciples. They were direct witnesses to the fact of the resurrection. Do you think they made it up and died for a lie? What is your theory about that?

You said it would leave no archaeological evidence, you said a resurrection can only leave eyewitness accounts. Testimonies are not evidence.

I don't know, what is your theory about people who claim Elvis resurrected? Has he resurrected, in your opinion? And if not, what is the difference between the testimonies we have for Elvis and those for Jesus? Elvis has way more independent sources and better documented too.

In summary, you only have the bible for resurrection. Yet this qualifies as historical while the Qur'an which states Jesus is not god doesn't qualify as a historical and factual document.

The reason the New Testament accounts are credible is because it is written by eye witnesses to the resurrection whereas the Quran was written 600 years later. If the Quran was written by eye witnesses I would consider it.

Something else interesting to consider is that within the first 150 years you have over 40 extra biblical sources verifying the life of Jesus and absolutely zero disputing it. Why the lack of testimony to the contrary, do you think?

List this 40 sources. Even the gospels themselves weren't written by people who've seen Jesus. If that makes it into the bible, I'll be surprised if any of these 40 sources are contemporaries.

ETA: the quotes about KJV came from wiki, which has links to the books they referred to.

[agapelove]

I'm claiming that the Jesus story, the miracle claims, were embellishments made to the life of an itinerant Jewish rabbi. Yes, the connections are superficial; such things are. It's just another evolution of an old story, nothing more. To be clear, your only proof of its authenticity is that it's so wonderfully unique as to be divinely inspired, and when you're shown other places where similar themes and teachings pop up, your only response is that these are superficial. Well, yes... they're similarities, not literally the same story. It doesn't need to be identical to prove the only claim you've made wrong.

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.

Better tell that to all those televangelists and miracle workers who film and screen prayers being "answered," then. I guess they were wrong all along. Rolleyes

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

Also, what is it that your god has to hide, here? Why's he lying?

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.

And misrepresenting the facts is still a lie, something god can't do, so one way or another, someone's wrong here.

What facts are being misrepresented? All He is allowing people to do is come to a conclusion based upon their acceptence or rejection of Jesus Christ. The facts are that He exists and did answer all of those prayers; the conclusion that men come to is based on the revelation they already have.

Yes, that's rather the problem; the only evidence you have is the things you feel inside your head. Convincing yourself that something's true does not make it so.

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.

So, this is important: they don't all believe in the same god. See, you can't just conglomerate every deist and theist together when it suits your purposes, because these are not the same experiences. They're different ones, owing to experiences with different gods, not always the one you believe in, and even with regards to the ones that are about the christian god, there's major disagreements as to what he's like. You're just pretending, here; there's no corroboration involved, because the vast majority of those people disagree with the god you're pimping.

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 can't say god is self evident because if he was you wouldn't have such disagreements over what he's like, and besides, I disagree with your fiat assertion. Now you're just lying, which is absolutely a sin according to your religion.

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.