“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
– Isaac Asimov
Bible promotes Atheism
Published December 14, 2008 Quotes 17 CommentsTags: atheism, belief, bible, Evil
17 Responses to “Bible promotes Atheism”
- 1 Trackback on December 15, 2008 at 6:51 pm
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Somewhat Sinful 
Websites like The Dark Bible, Evil Bible.com
all show the scriptures you never hear mentioned in any church. Xchristians.net is a site for
people who are sick to death of the fantasies written in the Bible. There are so many discrepensies in the Bible that wouldn’t most people who pay attention to what is written there wonder what is really meant to be believed. In fact Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus are all fully explained and are shown to be the worst form of cruelty and violence.
I guess when you pay 10% of your salary as a tithe at these churches you expect to have the bible interpreted properly for you.
This begs the question: Why is it so hard to understand for religious people in this day and age? Common sense should tell them that what is is written in the the most famous book known to
North Americans is all hog wash. No one who reads Harry Potter books believes what is written there, it’s just entertainment.
No offense, but it seems like more ignorance in what the Bible actually says. The Atheists are worse than Baptists in taking things out of context. At least the evil bible website looks like it has been abandoned.
It’s astounding how blithe, dismissive, and curt critics of religion can be. I just don’t understand how someone can honestly say something like “Common sense should tell them that what is is written in the the most famous book known to North Americans is all hog wash.” As if it’s just so plain that Christianity and it’s central text are all fairy tales and everyone who has ever believed it is stupid, and anyone who has half a brain would scoff at such claims as those made in the Bible. Making these sorts of ignorant, dismissive claims without making a real argument is just a way to avoid having to actually engage in reasoned dialogue about the issue by pretending its simple and obvious.
@Michael,
I’ve sat down and read the piece of hogwash you are referring to from cover to cover. If you want to be a genocidal society, the old testament is a fine guide. If you want to be a society that forgives itself for being genocidal and wants to rule the earth the new testament is a fine guide. If you want to be a society that is unabashadly genocidal and wants to rule the earth read the Koran.
Aspentroll:
I quite like skepticsannotatedbible.com; I find the categorised access to all controversial passages very useful.
Polycarp:
The problem I found in being a Christian and interpreting the Bible is that you have either been programmed or accustomed yourself to taking everything at a certain angle. I’m amazed I never even questioned that God ordered genocide, mass-rape, infanticide and other horrors. Regardless of context, for an all-powerful and loving God this must be completely unnecessary. Then of course there are the contradictions where more than one book, notably the gospels, can’t agree.
A book, *the* book, by the God of the universe should be a remarkable piece of work. It brilliantly written and not open to any interpretation that the reader wishes. Instead it seems like God made Shakespeare and countless others better authors than he himself. If that’s the best he can do, then it’s not really believable.
Michael Glawson:
I agree somewhat and get rather frustrated reading statements like “all believers are idiots”. When I stopped believing I didn’t suddenly gain more intelligence, I just paused to think about something that I hadn’t before.
This blog is not really designed for religious debate. It’s more a place to vent and gather information. I have started another blog for the purpose of raising questions in a calm and rational manner: reasoningwithgod.com
“If you want to be a society that is unabashadly genocidal and wants to rule the earth read the Koran.”
I think they are more towards crushing nonbelievers and less killing everyone who is different. Of course, it took them a couple of decades to have a schism and the ideological opponents count as infidels.
Asimov’s experience has not been mine. Unlike him I actually study the Bible with professionals at a major secular university and have come to the opposite conclusion. Properly read (and whoever thinks that “Asimov’s Guide to the Bible” is reading the Bible properly needs to get a CAT scan) the Bible, controversial passages and all, points clearly to the reality of God and the true meaning of life. But it needs to be studied on its own terms. The Bible must be allowed to be what it is, a disparate anthology of genres and times periods which express a variety of different perspectives but which all center around God’s action in history, and human response to that action. I recommend Gerd Theissen’s The Bible and Contemporary Culture, written by a real Bible scholar, for a better perspective.
And how does Isaac Asimov justify that quote? I’m curious.
You are free to believe what you think is right (or wrong). However, to say other are fools just because they differ from you in their thinking is a sign of mental imbalance. It’s a mystery that among all the ‘sacred’ books why only the Bible is coming under the axe!?
It would be worth noting that you are not the first in this breed of super intelligent, “common sense users” to come up with this theory.
The narrative accounts in the Bible are recorded history and not instructions for you to follow. You see it alongside the Harry Potter and are influenced by the bewitching tales by default. The Bible is not a mere book, it is an invitation to an eternal relationship, it is the indestructible seed of life that would transform anyone who yields to it’s authority, even you. Millions around the world who experience this power of God’s love do have their brains in the right place.
I myself am an atheist, but this is a little excessive. I have read the bible, and studied it for years until I decided i didn’t believe what was written in it. To a logically thinking person it does seem there are too many discrepencies in books of the bible such as genesis and revelations, especially since these were written by men FOR MEN, but everyone is entitled to their beliefs and the last thing the rest of us need is another extremist who can’t live and let live. If people want to follow blind faith let them, everyone knows that the bible was written by philosophers who didn’t know any better anyway 😛
Meisteh,
“The problem I found in being a Christian and interpreting the Bible is that you have … accustomed yourself to taking everything at a certain angle.”
Well, of course. You must understand that everyone, Christian, Atheist, Theist, New Ageist (is that a word?), looks at everything from a certain angle. To think that our life experiences, what we learned as children and adults from various sources, early-ingrained prejudices, in short, everything that has made us who we are, do not color the way we see the world in its vast complexity is, at best, naive. This is the idea of “worldview.” So the “problem”, as you see it, is not limited to Bible-believing Christians. The real question is whether one or the other worldview is coherent enough to be a reliable lens through which to see the world. And, by the way, not all worldviews are equally valid, but that’s best left to another forum.
The problem with all of of you is that you are all reading an unoffical translation. Read the bile in hebrew to see what it really says, undertand the meanings that have been coded and passed down in hebrew manuscripts for 3,000 years and then have an opinion. You sound like grade 2 kids arguing about how to run a nuclear power plant with a professor of nuclear physics after reading a text book translated by a third rate translater on the subject.
Moshe asserts that a proper reading of the bible requires fluency in ancient greek, hebrew, aramaic, etc. Perhaps he or she can show us exactly how the “original” text, or an accurate translation thereof, differs from the translations used today?
Littlemissblogger, it’s a valid point you bring up regarding discrepencies and contrary passages; my question to you is why this might really make a difference. If we hold the bible up to the same standards as we might a textbook on chemistry, then we must of course demand coherency throughout. We have to remember, though, that canon is set in community. Both testaments came to be through use, not revelation; as the community of faith used the texts to describe God and their relationship to God, certain writings emerged as being particularly useful or true. Indeed, the New Testament wasn’t set into canon until three hundred years after Jesus’ death.
What this means for us is that we must evaluate the bible on its own terms. The writers and readers of the bible didn’t require its consistency for thousands of years; as art, as literature, the bible’s job is to point to God via the experiences of both men and women in a world in which war and famine, poverty and vice, sickness and death seem to have the last word. Taken as threads in a greater picture, the books of the Bible are meant to inspire and make meaning, not supply formula or even proof.
If we present the bible to the mind of the modern rationalist with the hope that they will find everything within as orderly as algebra, we will be disappointed. If we present the bible as art, we no longer insult their intelligence. Literature is always taken on its own terms. And it’s no less life-changing for all of that.
To think the bible should be written as an exact map to find god is the dumbest thing in the world. Turn left at poverty, right at a loved one died, and then a U-turn after losing your job, and bam there you will find god. How dumb can one be. Religion is about your experiences, the bible is people telling about theirs, a description of events. Why would God have given us a brain if he was going to tell us how to do everything in a book. Not even a Christian, but your bashing of other peoples religion is ridiculous. I would hate to see what your ignorant mind would say about the Asatru.
now I’ll stay tuned..