-fulfilled prophecy on the part of Christianity though so at best meaningless and at worst an example of intellectual dishonesty.
There are lots of things written in the NT that are purported to fulfil prophecy from the OT, but that isn't especially impressive given that the people writing the NT scriptures could have had a copy of the OT right next to them. It's like celebrating getting 100% in a test despite having the answer key.
See thats where you do not understand the history of the existence of Christ.
Firstly, your statement is unsupported by the historical facts. The prophecies such as the ones in Daniel are proven to have been written before the events occured. It wasnt New Testament writers who wrote the book of Daniel...OR ISAIAH (because he also talks of the coming Christ many hundreds of years before it happened). Just because a scroll is dated 1 - 2 centries before Christ (The Great Isaiah scroll found at Qumran), doesn't mean the man himself lived then...we know Isaiah was about 700 years before Christ and Daniel about 400.
The Isaiah scroll is clearly much earlier and yet it also talks about the coming Christ.
Isaiah and Daniel were not contemporaries nor did they live near each other. Telephones and internet didn't exist back then, nor did high speed travel. 750 miles (Jerusalem to Babylon) may as well have been the other side of the world! So there's that!
Secondly,
I would suggest you read well known atheist Bart Erhmans books on the historical Jesus.
Even Bart shows quite conclusively that Jesus the man really existed...just that Bart denies He was raised or that He is God.
So the issue for non believers is largely misinformed idea that the entire bible is a made up fairytale. That quite simply is wrong and people who believe this kind of nonsense about the bible are uniformed and simply rehash statements from other sources that have not bothered to adequitely check for themselves. Bart Erhman may be a non believer now, however even he, after actually checking, agrees many of the individuals in the bible really existed...especially Christ.
If an atheist scholar can prove the existence of Christ, then that adds significant support for the historicity of the rest of the bible. When compared with other physical evidences, it's pretty difficult to refute. You seem to think the New Testament is largely made up. That's as stupid as maintaining the world is flat...it obviously isn't. The historicity of the new testament is as sure as the world is round. There are significant eyewitnesses of eyewitnesses who have written about it. In addition to those written records, we have archeogical evidence and even writings outside of the bible...its overwhelmingly in support of the facts of the New testament record. If the historicity is accurate, its likely the rest is too...because lies and half-truths rarely stand the test of time before being exposed as fraudulent. Internal and external inconsistencies an errors are found...and given there was no telegraph in ancient times, you can see how near impossible it was to facilitate these kinds of prophetic lies given the distances, different individuals, and different cultures involved in the bible story.
The only part we cant prove is the faith bit. That becomes a fair assumption based on the historical evidence. Btw, because it's eyewitness writings, it's a far better bet than scientific theory where there are no eyewitnesses! (talking about evolution)
