FreeThinkingAtheist.com

     I have to admit that what started me down the path of an becoming and Atheist is the Bible itself. The Bible forms the whole basis for Christian belief. Without credibility and validity to me, there can be no belief. From this point I ventured into doubt despite people telling me to just trust God. But in all reality, you cannot force yourself to believe in something you don't think is true, without going to drastic measures. Christians make it seem like I chose this path or something. Actually, it came quite naturally. It's the Bible that I probably dislike about religion the most. 

    Believe in whatever God you want. But do not trust a 2,500 year old book of folklore, that misleads the rest of your life into thinking you have to "serve" ANYBODY. Do not trust this very book that seems to heavily conflict with what is real, like science. If you have a need for a God in your life, it doesn't have to be the Christian God. Do you really trust the corrupted people who put the Testaments together in the first place? If God's word was intended to be in the Bible, his word has most surely been corrupted beyond belief at this point. Humankind is greedy, remember? Sure it's not really God's fault, it's the fault of humans. That's why you should not trust the Bible. Believe in what you want, but do not pour your very lives into the words of this untrustworthy book. 

Any reasonable human being should question what they believe in on a regular basis. I know I do. Just as Thomas Jefferson said: "Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear."

 Now, the Contradictions:

The Bible is riddled with repetitions and contradictions, things that are quick to point out in criticism. For instance:

- Genesis 1 and 2 disagree about the order in which things are created, and how satisfied God is about the results of his labors.

- The flood story is really two interwoven stories that contradict each other on how many of each kind of animal are to be brought into the Ark–is it one pair each or seven pairs each of the "clean" ones?

- The Gospel of John disagrees with the other three Gospels on the activities of Jesus Christ (how long had he stayed in Jerusalem–a couple of days or a whole year?)

- All four Gospels contradict each other on the details of Jesus Christ's last moments and resurrection.

- The Gospels of Matthew and Luke contradict each other on the genealogy of Jesus Christ' father; though both agree that Joseph was not his real father.

Repetitions and contradictions are understandable for a hodgepodge collection of documents, but not for some carefully constructed treatise, reflecting a well-thought-out plan.

Of the various methods we've seen to "explain" these, the most common excuses are:

1. "That is to be taken metaphorically" In other words, what is written is not what is meant. I find this entertaining, especially for those who decide what ISN'T to be taken as other than the absolute WORD OF GOD–which just happens to agree with the particular thing they happen to want…

2. "There was more there than…." This is used when one verse says "there was a" and another says "there was b," so they decide there was "a AND b", which is said nowhere. This makes them happy, since it doesn't say there WASN'T "a AND b." This is often the same crowd that insists theirs is the ONLY possible interpretation (i.e. only "a") and the only way. I find it entertaining that they don't mind adding to verses.

3. "It has to be understood in context" I find this amusing because it comes from the same crowd that likes to push likewise extracted verses that support their particular view. Often it is just one of the verses in the contradictory set is suppose to be taken as THE TRUTH when if you add more to it, it suddenly becomes "out of context." How many of you have gotten JUST John 3:16 (taken out of all context) thrown up at you?

4. "there was just a copying/writing error" This is sometimes called a "transcription error," as in where one number was meant and an incorrect one was copied down. Or that what was "quoted" wasn't really what was said, but just what the author thought was said when he thought it was said. And that's right–I'm not disagreeing with events, I'm disagreeing with what is WRITTEN. Which is apparently agreed that it is incorrect. This is an amusing misdirection to the problem that the bible itself is wrong.

5. "That is a miracle." Naturally. That is why it is stated as fact. Right.

6. "God works in mysterious ways" A useful dodge when the speaker doesn't understand the conflict between what the bible SAYS and what they WISH it said.

Popularity: 45% [?]

Taken from the so-called "good book" that supposedly teaches good morals. Links to the actual passages are provided. And don't give me that "oh, it's taken out of context" nonsense. 

    1. Find an attractive prisoner of war, bring her home, shave her head, trim her nails, and give her new clothes. Then she's yours. — (Deuteronomy 21:11-13)

    2. Find a prostitute and marry her. — Hosea (Hosea 1:1-3)

    3. Find a man with seven daughters, and impress him by watering his flock. — Moses (Exodus 2:16-21)

    4. Purchase a piece of property, and get a woman as part of the deal. — Boaz (Ruth 4:5-10)

    5. Go to a party and hide. When the women come out to dance, grab one and carry her off to be your wife. — Benjaminites (Judges 21:19-25)

This is actually kind of funny, yet at the same time, it is not. It makes you think twice before thinking about bring your child up a Christian and making them actually READ the Bible.  

Popularity: 46% [?]

Christian theology has Jesus of Nazareth willingly go to his death to pay for the sins of all mankind. After his death, he goes to Hell for a couple of days before returning from the dead and then ascending into Heaven. What really happened? Did he die for the sins of man or was he executed as a traitor and rabble rouser? Did he really rise from the dead or was his body stolen? When one steps out of the theology and looks at the death of Jesus from another point of view, things seem clearer.

First of all, Jesus was executed by the Romans because he proclaimed himself to be the Messiah. Jewish tradition held a Messiah would come to liberate them and he would wander into Jerusalem on a donkey. Christ followed this tradition and played himself up as the Messiah. Since most Jews believed the Messiah would be a military leader, and since Jesus went Chuck Norris on the money changers in the temple, the Romans had to take note. Did they have a revolutionary in their midst? Was this the next Spartacus?

Next, Jesus' welcomed and consorted with outsiders. He was not your typical Corporate Holy Man of the 1st century. Instead, he advocated for the weak and those without hope. He tried to redeem prostitutes and those of low character. Jesus even comforted lepers. He provided a voice for those without a voice. He was a man of the people. Jesus advocated for the poor. A modern equivalent might be Martin Luther King Jr. whom advocated for garbage men on the eve of his death. Both men were a threat to order.

To the Jewish leaders, Jesus posed a threat to their power and their control over their religious doctrine. To the Romans, Jesus was cultivating the lower orders for his insurrection. Jesus of Nazareth had to go.

So, Jesus goes on trial and is convicted. Pontius Pilot orders his execution. It is unlikely Pilot pleaded with Jewish leaders for his life. This was probably thrown in the Bible by later writers to either distinguish between Jews and Christians or by someone that was anti-Semitic and wanted the Jews to look bad. Pilot was a Roman governor and would not have had any qualms about executing a potential Spartacus.

Jesus is then crucified. Crucifixion is both painful and humiliating. The victim gets to die in front of anyone that passes by. Jesus lasted three agonizing hours on the cross before expiring. In a gesture designed to keep the Jews happy during their holy time of year, Pilot allows Jesus' body to be removed. Usually, the bodies remained on the cross and withered. The bodies of the Spartacan Rebels stayed along the Via Appia for years. Christ's body was removed and buried.

Now things get interesting. According to scripture, he returns three days later. However, this is unlikely. Crucified people do not return from the dead. Most likely, the apostles removed the body from a tomb in common and placed it in a family plot. Then, they went around telling everyone that Jesus came back. Another possibility is the resurrection was a metaphor. Jesus' body died, but his spirit and message lived on through the Apostles. Jesus' teachings were resurrected by the Apostles, so Jesus himself came back from the dead.

This is not meant to denigrate Christian religion. It is meant to come from a Roman Perspective and how they would have viewed events in the first century. That being said, most Romans outside of Judea would not have known or cared about the Jesus Movement.

Popularity: 43% [?]

As an American Atheist, I certainly cannot simply discard Christianity, without giving the Bible a chance, despite the Bible is riddled with corruption and lies resulting from govermnmental tampering, and not to mention, biases selection of books to be included in the Bible in the first place. But despite these, I still take a look around in the Bible, sometimes just to see what off-the-wall or incorrect things I can find, that simply amazes me that Christians simply take this stuff in without asking questions, they are happy to be spoon-fed. Well I'm not.

Genesis 2:7 "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

- this one has always seemed odd to me, I've heard this line before. The funniest part about this line is that a Christian will openly believe we were made out of non-carbon dust (as God has just created everything, any dust would just be earthly dust, not having carbon in it, because plant life was JUST created), yet all the evidence in the world couldn't convince a Christian that we evolved from lesser life forms. For one thing, we are made mostly of Carbon, just like anything that's living. Perhaps they'll edit the Bible to read "And the Lord God formed man from the carbon dust on the ground". I wouldn't put it past them. 

Genesis 2:17 "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

This one stuck me as odd as well. I thought that the reason we sin, is because we have free will. And the reason we have the free will TO sin in the first place is because Eve ate from the tree of knowledge. So why would God create a tree that could harm his creations, why even risk it, especially knowing they will eat from the tree. Does he not care about his creations? Certainly a caring mother would not leave its baby in a crib with a big plastic bag, knowing that if the baby took from this plastic "tree of knowledge", it would die of suffocation. No, a caring mother would simply not PUT the plastic bag there in the first place. I just don't understand why a God would create evil. It has no purpose in life, from a Christian perspective, considering heaven is to be void of all evil. 

Genesis 2: 21-23 "And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." 

- this claim is simply outrageous. Clearly, something like this would have been easily accepted by the inferior minds of 1,000-2,000 B.C. and would also give them a perfectly good reason to oppress and take advantage of women. In fact they have it backwards, it's the man (and woman) that are created from the woman (through childbirth) plus a little borrowed DNA from a man's sperm. This claim is clearly bogus, and outright laughable.

Genesis 3: 4-7: "And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons."

- Here is it again, before the tree of knowledge was eaten from, there exists an evil: the serpent, that should not exist in order to tempt Adam and Eve. Clearly the serpent is an evil being, not to mention it talks. And of course, Adam and Evil at this point do not know of evil, so this begs the question, why would God create this evil serpent, especially when Eve could not possibly know that it is evil. So she was doomed for eating from the tree of knowlege. And if I, a mere mortal, can tell this, certainly God knew this. Why not just cut out the middle work and simply create man, with knowledge of good and evil? Or even better, not create evil at all. Why create bad design? That's just plain bad engineering. And the last claim is absurd. Adam and Eve weren't ashamed of being naked. This was thrown in to reinforce that being naked is taboo. In reality, if you place two babies on a deserted island (provided they survived) with no clothes, they would grow up being naked and think it's the norm. They would never, at any point, be ashamed of being naked, in fact if you gave them clothes, they would look at you like it's stupid, because in reality, it is. We are taught that our given goods are "bad" even though every living humans has either a vagina, or penis. This claim is absurd.

Genesis 3:16 "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."

- what an excellent example of the Bible purposely being shaped as a tool to control society, in this case, giving men the power and authority to do what they want with women. What a fucking shame. I honestly cannot see how any Christian can just let themselves be spoon-fed this illegitimate garbage. Please Christians, start asking questions and demanding answers! And this is only the beginning of the Bible. Considering Genesis is an important book for the big three: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, this is a great eye-opener to steer clear of Abrahamic religions. I think you'll have better luck with a polytheist religion, surely they make more sense than this. Better yet, try Atheism, it's great that science can give you rational explanations for things and have evidence to back them up. Perhaps that this is all symbolism, and maybe one ate from the tree of knowledge to spawn scientists and freethinkers, while the other perhaps didn't eat from tree of knowledge, and thus, they spawned religions to people could be ignorant for their existence and live, mentally, in the Dark Ages.

Popularity: 8% [?]

From "Atheist Universe: Why God Didn't Have A Thing To Do With It" book at Amazon.com:

"Americans believe 58% to 40% that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. By contrast,  only 13% of Europeans agree with the US view…I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose (from Clarence Darrow)…I've always considered atheism to be a very positive philosophy in that, by eliminating a very burdensome obligation to appease a non-existent God, an individual thereby gains maximum freedom to choose his own goals and ideals for a satisfying life…(about public prayer in school) Let's remember that Jesus warned the Pharisees NOT to pray publicly because such prayers were usually pretentious, insincere efforts to showboat…My own observation is that those most terrified of death are not atheists, but believers, uncertain whether they are going to Heaven or Hell…Historically, whenever primitive man lacked scientific understanding of an observed event, he created a 'God of the Gaps' to fill the intellectual vacuum…The wider the gaps in scientific understanding, the greater the historic need for a miracle working 'GOTG'…

As a general historic observation, each step forward taken by science has further distanced the hand of God from perceived intervention into natural events. As humanity's gaps of knowledge were slowly replaced by scientific understanding, a GOTG found fewer and fewer caverns of intellectual darkness in which to live…Believers create the illusion of answered prayer by systematically employing the fallacy known as 'Selective Observation,' a perceptual error also referred to as 'Counting the hits and ignoring the misses.'…The more tragic the event - and the higher the body count - the more inclined are the media to feature 'Miracle Survivors' on the six o'clock news…When, however, everyone dies in a catastrophe, such as a Jumbo Jet crash, the newspaper headline never reads 'Jehovah Out To Lunch During Doomed Flight.'…In plain English, we don't know why specific individuals live or die in disasters. We know that Christians are no more likely to survive than non-Christians; and the virtuous are just as likely to perish as thy corrupt…The Christian Church wholeheartedly believes this 'Divine' biblical prophecy, which announces that the vast majority of humanity will follow the wrong road in life and will, as a result end up in Hell instead of Heaven.

God - in his infinite wisdom - would have known in advance that most of humanity would have fallen victim to the gruesome torture chamber…a truely benevolent and omnipotent God would let bygones be bygones and forgive 'sinners' even though they adopted mistaken religious beliefs…But, Christians respond, 'without the shedding of blood, there can be no forgiveness of sin. And God only asks that we accept the blood sacrifice that Jesus offered for us on the cross.' And who, may I ask, established this rule that 'without the shedding of blood, there can be no forgiveness of sin'? The answer, again, is God….The fact that God supposedly demands blood before He offers forgiveness is indicative of the bestial mindset of the primitive cultures extant when the Bible was written…The myth of Hell represents all the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable…God was indeed created in man's own image…The two documents upon which our country was founded - ie, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States contain not a single word about Christianity, Christian principles, the Bible, or Jesus Christ…The Christian clergy of the Revolutionary period tried again and again to have references to Christianity inserted directly into the US Constitution, but they were refused every time by the Founders. Two 'Christian principles' may have indeed influenced the Founding Fathers. One was the Puritan practice of executing witches, the other was King George III's absolute mandate that his subjects worship in a manner approved by the Church of England…Witch burning and mandatory church affiliation are only 2 of many issues which led the Founding Fathers to establish a 'Wall of Separation between Church and State,' allowing, at each citizen's discretion, freedom of religion or freedom FROM religion…The National Motto was not changed to 'In God We Trust' until 1956. Likewise, the phrase 'under God' was not added to the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954."

Popularity: 6% [?]