exchristian

I'm an atheist. I was raised religious and still have numerous Christian theists in my life.

The Bible is the best argument against Christianity.

At every turn, and in a myriad of contexts, whether to dunk and prove a point, or to insert a conflicting argument that will actually make a religious person think, knowing the Bible has been of great personal value to me. I'll make some posts in the coming weeks to discuss some of the points below that I'd like to share more deeply on. This post is trying to make the case that the Bible is the weak spot in the Christian armor. Theists wriggle when you make them explain their own book.

The whole text is daunting. It is supposed to be. The Bible is confusing, disjointed, sometimes scary, violent, and obscene, other times mind numbingly boring. Unapproachable by rank and file Christians without "help interpreting." Christians of all faiths cherry pick parts to justify their beliefs. "Bible study" is the vehicle that each denomination uses to teach and justify their specific beliefs.

But, whether you are early in deconversion, halfway there, or fully awake, you can look to the Bible and find tons of evidence against any of Christianity being real, grounded in fact, or believable at all. Taken as a whole, and not cherry picking verses, the Bible can be understood, in it's context.

I challenge any believer or non believer to read the entire Bible, using any realistic, scholarly translation. When something doesn't fit or doesn't make sense, research it. It blows my mind how shaky the Bible is while reading any book completely, especially remembering that this is the justification for the entire religion.

Start at the beginning, really studying it, and you will realize modern Christians do like 10% of what "God commanded" in the OT. They offhandedly disregard the rest as old Jewish nonsense and simultaneously use the 10% they do hold on to justify hating anyone that loves someone that's not approved. I'm not in favor of letting people get away with that. Want to quote Leviticus to justify homophobia? Explain why wearing mixed fabrics, eating shellfish, and getting Jesus tattoos.

The OT is crazy all the way through. If I started listing all the things the OT condones that are objectively immoral by modern standards, it would be its own (very long) post.

Even better, look at the NT. If you are already deconverted, and have people around you that still believe, this is bread and butter. Many of the tactics Christians use to dismiss valid arguments about the OT won't work on the NT.

Some of my favorites from the NT (feel free to comment with any of your favorites I may have missed):

• The gospels were written long after Jesus would have lived by people that lived after Jesus died (not the apostles that they're named after). They were written in a language no apostle would have spoken (Greek instead of Aramaic).

• The apostles don't match each other on critical points of the Christ story. Read from crucifixion through the tomb to resurrection in each of the 4 gospels and you will see what I mean. Try to make a list of "facts" from each and compare. Why are they wildly different?

• Paul: 13 of the 27 books of the NT (nearly half) are attributed to Paul but even Christian scholars have to admit that at least 3, and probably 6 of those 13 are written by someone else claiming to be Paul. The Bible has Jesus dying 33 CE. The writings of Paul are 15 years to 34 years later. Paul's writings are the foundations of most of modern Christian thinking. Christians gloss over the shaky historicity of Paul's writings. These books were written specifically to create a religion from the cult that had sprung up around them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_epistles#Authenticity

• Revelation: Oft quoted and preached on to instill fear in the audience. Christians completely misunderstand this book in context. First, Revelation is written somewhere 81-96 CE, ~50 years past the crucifixion. The author, John of Patmos, is not an apostle either. Just done guy in exile, named John. It matches a literary style common at the time where apocalypse was the theme. It is a deeply symbolic work and is clearly about the Roman empire, and the writers problems with it, if you give it any serious study. Revelation is not, and cannot be a prophecy for many reasons, the biggest being over kill. Logically read, the earth is totally devastated 3 or 4 times over. By the middle of the book everyone on earth would already be dead. Revelation 6 has the Sun going black and the stars falling from the sky to the earth, by chapter 8 the sea is poison. 22 chapters total and there is enough destruction to kill us all at least 3 or 4 times before the halfway point. Read up on apocalyptic literature of the time. It is all intended to be code so that the author can condemn and talk shit about his enemies in a way that won't get him killed in court (John of Patmos, the author, is already in enough trouble with Rome at the writing to be living in exile, and yet the work is shit talking against Rome). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptic_literature

Thanks for reading. However, I don't ever want to be confidently incorrect. Please tell me if you disagree with anything and I'd love to hear what others think is important, relevant to this topic. Expand please. Teach me something.