> You're still doing the exact same thing. "Eastern ideas" is a leaky set and faulty abstraction. You have pointed to no actual bounded idea or ideology within that set. You proceed to attribute two ideas--the illusory self and non-theism--to that set, again without referent to anything.
You wrote:
>>>>> The problem is that there is almost 2,000 years of culture and the metaphysical beliefs of well-more than half of the human population predicated upon their beliefs being entirely unique and an off-shoot of Judaism and not a fundamentally different syncretic import *from the east*.
This claim is predicated on the term "east" (in its philosophical sense) refering to something real. If it's impossible to associate concepts with 'the east', then your own assertion is as meaningless as mine.
In any case, the word 'east' (in this sense) can't be accurate in the way 'grass' or 'human being' can be accurate. It has multiple meanings, unlike them. But it doesn't follow from this that it has no meaning. One can assert things of 'the east', in the way that one can assert things of 'communism' or 'protestantism' or 'long-haul flight' -- other terms where one could argue over the meaning. If we can't assert things of the east, then we can't assert things of those terms either.
But we can assert things of these terms. There is a common agreement about what they mean that's sufficient for meaning to be shared. We can say 'Protestantism teaches salvation by faith alone', or 'Communism calls for the abolition of private property', or 'transatlantic flights are long haul', even though there may be some examples of all of these where the predications are wrong.
It's the same for the term under discussion. Most if not all of the meanings of 'the east' used in discourse today[0] contain the ideas I asserted (illusory self, etc). Therefore your argument -- that my assertion that certain ideas are 'eastern' is meaningless -- fails. Had it succeeded, it would have fatally undermined your main assertion.
>> Am I wrong to claim that the ideas I listed are associated with the east? Does the undoubted fact that there are hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies undermine the claim?
> You're wrong to claim that association is in any way relevant to what I've written.
Re-read your words I just quoted, which is what I object to, and which I keep trying to come back to. Is the association really "not relevant"? I have asserted that a) certain ideas are commonly and correctly associated with 'the east'; that b) said ideas are anathema to Christianity, in fundamental ways, and therefore c) your claim that Christianity is a 'syncretic import from the east' is false. That is pretty much my whole argument[1]. If you can show that either of my premises is wrong, you nullify my objection to your statement. It's not only relevant, it's central.
> If I said "Christianity believes that Jesus visited North America" it would be rightly seen as the words of someone who had so little understanding and charity to the concept and diversity of Christianity that it would fall into the "not even wrong" category.
I could easily deny that though. Only one tiny and very new sect believes it. You can't claim that about my assertions, you've merely claimed they're not relevant.
> You've a priori stated more than once "Christianity is not 'a syncretic import from the east'" which already shows that this isn't really a dialogue
I was responding to your point where you stated the opposite. The disagreement, or the dialogue, is over which belief is true.
> If your position is that these similarities are insufficient to establish influence, what evidence would you regard as sufficient to establish influence in principle? And, applying that standard consistently, which of the existing pieces of evidence fail it, and why?
There is influence in a certain sense, clearly. But your statement is much stronger. You asserted that Christianity is a syncretic import from the east, not that it was influenced by it in some sense, which is obviously true.
[0] Remembering that words exist by convention!
[1] This includes my statement about the Roman persecutions. My point when bringing this up was to show that Christianity considered itself the only way for everybody, which also undermines your assertion that it's syncretic, and is also a major difference from the east. My point was not that monotheism or anti-syncretism was the cause of the persecution. I'm neither asserting nor denying this: it's not relevant to the discussion.
(EDITED slightly to hopefully improve clarity a bit)