When you tell a Christian that you’re an Atheist. Why do they immediately assume that you’ve never read the Bible and then assume once more that you don’t understand anything?
I was brought up in a Christian family. I read the old and new testament. I thought the stories sounded silly when I was younger. Then as I got older, the bible sounded more and more ridiculous. It’s not that I didn’t understand it. It’s that I understood it and chose not to believe in it. When my mom first handed me a bible and said I needed God in my life. I still wasn’t very convinced it was real.
Then after a long time of going to church and listening to more bullshit. I came to my own personal conclusion that all Gods were fictional and they were no more real than Unicorns, Vampires, Androids from the future, Mermaids, and Lochness.
But yeah. When my mom first gave me a bible and I opened it. This was my reaction pretty much:
Chris and Norm are good friends. One day they are talking:
Chris: Wow, you will not believe this book I’ve been reading!
Norm: What’s it about?
Chris: It is a manual for living a better life. It is also a guide to creating a better society for ourselves and our children. It has changed my life!
Norm: That sounds like an important book. Who wrote it?
Chris: The author is supposed to be the smartest person in the universe.
Norm: That’s amazing – if the author is the smartest person in the universe, the book must be absolutely brilliant. I can’t wait to see it. Do you have a copy with you?
Chris: Absolutely! I carry it with me everywhere I go! Here, have a look for yourself…
Norm opens the book to a random page, and he finds this:
Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I am the Lord your God. Keep my statutes, and observe them; I am the Lord; I sanctify you.
All who curse father or mother shall be put to death; having cursed father or mother, their blood is upon them.
If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbour, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death. The man who lies with his father’s wife has uncovered his father’s nakedness; both of them shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.
If a man lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall be put to death; they have committed perversion; their blood is upon them.
If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them. [Leviticus, chapter 20]
Norm is not quite sure what to say. He looks at Chris for a moment.
Norm: I thought you said that this is written by the most intelligent person in the universe. If we are going to follow what this author says, we have to kill half the people in America. We are supposed to kill everyone who has cursed his father or mother, everyone who has committed adultery, and every homosexual.
Chris: Well, that’s in the old testament, you see. The book is really two books, and the “old” part of the book doesn’t really apply.
Norm: Are you saying that the smartest person in the universe once wanted us to kill every adulterer and homosexual, but then changed his mind? That somehow makes it better? If the “old part” no longer applies, then why did you hand it to me?
Chris: Well, parts of it do apply.
Norm: Didn’t you just tell me that it doesn’t apply?
Norms opens the book to another random page and he finds this:
When you buy a male Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years, but in the seventh he shall go out a free person, without debt. If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s and he shall go out alone. But if the slave declares, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out a free person’, then his master shall bring him before God. He shall be brought to the door or the doorpost; and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him for life.
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please her master, who designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed; he shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has dealt unfairly with her. If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish the food, clothing, or marital rights of the first wife. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out without debt, without payment of money.
Whoever strikes a person mortally shall be put to death. If it was not premeditated, but came about by an act of God, then I will appoint for you a place to which the killer may flee. But if someone wilfully attacks and kills another by treachery, you shall take the killer from my altar for execution.
Whoever strikes father or mother shall be put to death.
Whoever kidnaps a person, whether that person has been sold or is still held in possession, shall be put to death. Whoever curses father or mother shall be put to death.
When individuals quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or fist so that the injured party, though not dead, is confined to bed, but recovers and walks around outside with the help of a staff, then the assailant shall be free of liability, except to pay for the loss of time, and to arrange for full recovery.
When a slave-owner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. But if the slave survives for a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner’s property. [Exodus, chapter 21]
Again, Norm is dumfounded. Here the author of the book is advocating slavery, the branding of slaves, and the wholesale beating of slaves. Norm is not quite sure what to say. He looks at Chris for a moment and then speaks.
Norm: You have to be kidding me. Here the “smartest person in the universe” is telling us that slavery is OK and that we are free to beat our slaves.
Norm opens the book to another random page and you find this:
I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument; also that the women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty. [1 Timothy, chapter 2]
Norm is nearly speechless. But he manages to find his voice.
Norm: Is this some kind of joke? “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man.” That is totally sexist! In America, there are millions of female teachers and we have women throughout our corporate and government hierarchies. No intelligent person believes that women should be silenced.
As Norm pages through the book further he finds that it is totally sexist from beginning to end.
Norm keeps opening the book to random pages, and nearly everything he finds is utter nonsense. Either it is meaningless, completely irrelevant, disgusting or downright wrong.
If Norm is a scientist it is even worse, and it starts with the very first line:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…
That’s not true. In the beginning a natural event created the universe as we know it, and the earth did not form until billions of years later. The creation story in Genesis is completely wrong. Simply read Genesis and you can see it. For example, the Bible says that light and darkness are created after the water but before the sun. Everyone knows that the sun came first, then the planet and its rotation (which is what causes light and darkness to occur on a daily basis) and then the water, and this all happened over million of years. There are many other problems with the Bible:
- Man did not come from a handful of dust through some mythological being. Man evolved from other species like every other living thing has for hundreds of millions of years.
- The Bible talks about a world-wide flood that covered earth in 5.5 miles of water and killed everything, yet we know it never happened. That is clear from the archeolgical record.
- There was no tower of Babel where God confounded the languages of mankind.
The list goes on and on. The Bible is nonsense in a thousand different scientific ways.
Ask yourself this simple question: Why, when you read the Bible, are you not left in awe? Why doesn’t a book written by an omniscient being leave you with a sense of wonder and amazement? If you are reading a book written by the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving creator of the universe, wouldn’t you expect to be stunned by the brilliance, the clarity and the wisdom of the author? Would you not expect each new page to intoxicate you with its incredible prose and its spectacular insight? Wouldn’t you expect the author to tell us things that scientists have not been able to discover yet?
Yet, when we open the Bible and actually read it, we find it is nothing like that at all. Instead of leaving us in awe, it leaves us dumbfounded by all of the nonsense and backwardness that it contains. If you read what the Bible actually says, you find that the Bible is ridiculous. The examples shown above barely scratch the surface of the Bible’s numerous problems. If we are honest with ourselves, it is obvious that an “all-knowing” God had absolutely nothing to do with this book.
The reason why the Bible contains so much nonsense is because God is imaginary. The Bible is a book written thousands of years ago by primitive men. A book that advocates senseless murder, slavery and the oppression of women has no place in our society today.
