That's fair. I sort of realized that was the tone before sending my message, but didn't really know how to reframe it. Figured I'd just put out my view in all its bluntness.

Now, my usual answer is that older doesn't mean better.

If Christianity is 100% true, it makes sense that different, but false versions of true things would crop up. A global flood I'd say is easy to explain: Noah and his family knew the story, told their kids, and eventually it got telephone-gamed into oblivion.

The trinity is harder, but I'd argue that trinities are ever present in our world. They can be found everywhere. If this is one of God's marks on His creation, I don't find it surprising certain peoples have discovered this common occurrence and misidentified what it is or its ultimate meaning. It's also possible that Adam and Eve knew of the trinity before the fall, and that this one is another case of the telephone game.

Now, for a hypothetical example, if something happens to me and I tell the story to my kids, and they tell their kids, and they tell their kids, eventually the story will change. Now my great-grandkids don't know the true story, but have bits and pieces. Luckily for them, I'm an old motherfucker and am still around, so I can tell them the true story. Also luckily for them, my memory is still great in my old age. So now, I've given them the original story as it happened, which is of course going to clash with some of the changes the story went through getting passed down the chain.

To make it even closer, let's say my great-grandkids write it down. Then 5 generations later, I'm a ghost with perfect knowledge of my life and I appear to one of my children to tell him the true story. Then they all starting using that version. Now 5 more generations later the original is discovered despite the fact everyone was happily using my version. The original is 10 generations old, while mine was only written 5 generations back. But mine is true and the 10-generation-old "original" one isn't.

I suppose all of that is to say: God set the record straight with the Bible.

Nevertheless, it's possible that the Bible ripped off these older writings, but I see no reason that's more likely than the alternative I present. We don't know for certain, and it'd be foolish to assume that older is automatically better. So all we can do is look at all the evidence, and I've certainly seen enough evidence to believe Christianity independent of all these things. The Gospels are compelling, and, for me at least, evidently true. Once that is established, I suppose the rest comes as a matter of faith based on the evidence that lead me to such beliefs.

Interestingly, I was just watching a video that poses some compelling evidence for the location of several of the stories in the Old Testament. They line up perfectly with the Bible's version of events. These locations fuse evidence of historical events with what is written down in one of these ancient texts.

This was the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIpvIVLQ2Dk

I actually got kind of burnt out after watching the first two parts and was going to call it quits, but now you've got me wanting to finish it. So thanks I guess, :)