Obviously. I am an atheist today because I went to Catholic school where I had to read the bible. Nothing makes better atheists than those who actually read the bible.
Isaac Asimov famously said “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
I mean duh, they’re descended from the intellectual reflex that believed translating the book and receiving mass in your own language were sins.
Of course they don’t read the book, they believe only their priest can read it “right”, and they probably look at accusations they don’t read the book with confusion over “Well of course not! Don’t tell me you anarchist lunatics are reading it yourselves!”
The Jesus Christ of the New Testament was a dark skinned communist who belabored loving and helping immigrants to his followers, whipped the greedy, and informed them they would go to hell if they didn’t stop being selfish fucks.
If the Jesus of the new Testament both existed and returned, the “Christian” right would be first in line to kill him again so they could get back to worshipping this guy:
The Jesus of the Bible also believed the Kingdom of God would be a literal Kingdom that would arise within the lifetimes of his followers.
That is what happens when you actually read the Bible literally, instead of metaphorically.
Also, I forget which Gospel it is, but one of them features a zombie apocalypse of the dead rising out of their graves when Jesus dies on the cross.
Also, more to your original theme: Jesus was fucking homeless for his adult ministry.
He and his followers just stayed at random people’s places who were sympathetic to his movement.
He did not have a steady job, he was not a productive member of society and he certainly did not have a nuclear family.
If Jesus was here today, he’d be shunned, starved, imprisoned, likely become a drug addict and die on the streets, and this would be by design and with approval of many of his most outspoken followers today
but one of them features a zombie apocalypse of the dead rising out of their graves when Jesus dies on the cross.
Matthew. I am not sure exactly what the author was thinking at the time. It does align with what a minority of Jews believed would happen (Ezekiel hints at it) as well as Paul’s letters so I want to say he invented it to align but it almost feels like he got it from the oral tradition.
He did not have a steady job, he was not a productive member of society and he certainly did not have a nuclear family.
I almost feel bad for mentioning this because it is minority view but I think Paul had a conception of him as a Nazar from birth, like Samson. As you said he is living this sexless, unproductive life, wandering around, barefoot, telling people that the Lord will provide. It could also explain the incident at the temple. From what we can tell Paul knew something hostile happened there but not what exactly. Nazarsbl were required to give an offering to end their lifestyle and at the same time the Temple almost always turned them away as insincere.
So Paul thinks the orders of events are something like this:
Jesus is a born Nazar He goes around until he feels his tasks are completed. Shows up to the temple with his followers. Temple says no way, get out. His followers convince the Temple. They let him into the first gate. Satan sees defeat so gets involved and starts a brawl. Infests Pilot and Pharisees. He gets crucified. Satan thinks he has won. Turns out God disagrees and accepts the perfect sacrifice. And since the ending the Nazar oath was a forgiveness offering it all works out nicely, Jesus gets everyone forgiven.
If the real Jesus stood for all the same values that you do, why are you an Atheist?
If I stand for all the same values that Jesus did, does that by default make me the son of God?
That depends on what you mean by “stand for”. Do you only preach those values on the Internet, where no one can ultimately hold you accountable? Or do you live them in real life, where standing up for them might entail taking risks to defend them?
“Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” — Matthew 7:21
For me, I don’t need jesus to give me morals, I have them on own. I don’t believe in a angry guy in the clouds creating this. It’s mind blowing to me, that people believe in it, it’s clearly a form of control. There are many religions, what makes one right over another? Feelings? I like to think more scientifically and logically.
Right?
I have decided I want to be a good person. I don’t need a sky daddy looming over me threatening torture if I do something wrong.
In fact, I would argue I’ve become a better and nicer and more accepting person after leaving religion. I was taught to basically hate LGBTQ, all the other religions, and a list of other “sins” and “wrong beliefs”…
It’s just another form of tribalism and control. I’m out. I’m gonna be over here being as kind and compassionate to my fellow humans as I can.
Assuming all the stories are true and accurate, Jesus from the Bible was a pretty chill dude and good human. His dad, on the other hand, makes Hitler look like Mr Rogers. So there’s that.
I used to believe it all, but the more I learned, the more I questioned, the more I questioned, the more it all fell apart.
Notable things that led to my deconstruction/atheism:
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The sheer number of times the Bible has been edited. From key words omitted or added to entire books added or removed. It’s like a cobbled together series of Grimms Fairy Tales and Op Ed news articles by hundreds of people for over a thousand years. If it was real then why has it been edited and changed so much though history? Couldn’t a god that wrote that make it divine and unalterable.
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The sheer number of contradictions.
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The fact that there are countless thousands of other religions all claiming to be the only one. Most have their own books. Their own prophets. Their own stories. There’s a ton of overlap and commonality, almost as if they all pull from similar cultural stories. If any religion were true, wouldn’t that god have some way to make their religion the only one? And if you want to argue that it is a test of some sort then it’s a crazy test because it’s impossible to ever choose one out of thousands of clones and spinoffs.
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If it is all true, why did the god need people to write a book to tell the story, but did it hundreds of years after the Jesus stuff and thousands of years after the creation stuff? Couldn’t the lore book have been created and existed on a little pedestal for all to see or something? What about the millions of people that died before it was written? What about all the people that have lived and died having never heard about it even once? It’s unfathomable.
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If religion is good and right and moral then why are priests, pastors, and other religious leaders the ones committing so many SAs and other awful behaviors? Similarly, why is an entire political party so intertwined and permeated with religion while committing the most awful of actions?
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Lastly, go read the old testament, specifically all the stories where the response to almost everything is murder and genocide. Like, one person commits some sin and the god just murders everyone and burns the whole city down. Seriously? That’s “good”? That’s worthy of belief and worship? The flood story. The Jericho story. The Sodom and Gammorah story. Etc etc. That god’s solution to everything is psychopathic mass destruction and death. You’d think a good god would come down and be like “Hey guys, let’s talk”.
Yeah, I get where you’re coming from. My dad was a real asshole as well. He’d literally rather leave me dying in a ditch than suffer a single word of criticism from me. Weird how that works, huh? Almost like there is some truth to the Bible after all…
Unfortunately, I can tell you from harsh experience that becoming atheist and deconstructing the entire faith isn’t going to lead to any sort of salvation at all, the only thing it’ll accomplish is your own undoing. It’s a very slow and agonizing death by a thousand papercuts.
Because there are plenty of people who stand for the same values, and I don’t worship them either.
Because Jesus or any other mythical figure is not required for anyone to have the same or similar values.
Your logic doesn’t follow. Evidence for the existence of Jesus and god – either the Yahweh or any of the other ones – is scant (in the case of Jesus) or nonexistent (in the case of his dad). Sharing similar values to what Jesus allegedly had is not evidence for his existence, nor that of any gods. In this context, the “real” Jesus is as he is depicted in scripture. That doesn’t necessarily mean he was a real person in reality, so don’t get that part twisted. What the poster you’re replying to is interpreting a character as he was written.
It’s exactly the same thing as claiming, “Captain Picard would not do XYZ, because it is inconsistent with how he was written in every single episode.” That may be so, and maybe we all know who Captain Picard is and what he does, but that still doesn’t make Picard a real person. Having a taste for tea, Earl Grey, hot does not require that any person actually believe that Picard physically existed, nor that his published actions were anything more than the fancy of some scriptwriters.
Because Jesus or any other mythical figure is not required for anyone to have the same or similar values.
That’s true, but it helps having an example as a role model to look up to, because you’re not going to go far without one.
Honestly, I could care less if it’s Jesus, Luke Skywalker, or Jean-Luc Picard, as long as your atheism isn’t an excuse for smoking weed and watching porn all day. All I’m saying is to be careful about throwing out the baby with the bathwater when you leave organized religion behind, because while the church you grew up in may very well have been a den of thieves and fully deserve your condemnation, not all of them are, and there’s thieves outside of the church, too.
I don’t think there was a real Jesus but I concede you do have a point. Everyone builds Jesus in their own image, even atheists. It takes effort not to. The natural tendency of anyone who was ever infected with this meme or has Christian friends is to try to find something redeeming about him.
Have heard male homosexuals tell me he was gay, heard black power types tell me he was black, heard a scholar in Greek literature tell me he was a secret Hellenistic Jew, heard him described by hippies as a hippy, by fire and brimstone types that he laid down the law, by SJW that he was a social activists, by communists that he was a communist, by a pacifist that he was a pacifist, by rabbis that he was a rabbi…
He can’t be all of those things, he can however be none of those things. He is the blank slate that people scribble on what they want, and what they want is a version of themselves with super powers.
That’s a very good point, and it’s interesting that you rarely (if ever) hear atheists claim that he was an atheist because he made himself equal to God and abolished the church of his ancestors in order to replace it with his own. It’s almost as if they either didn’t understand the Gospel, or they simply do not want that kind of responsibility, and prefer to endlessly complain about organized religion instead.
As a counter point Jesus would have also said “What on earth is a ‘government program’?”
Those kids would be very upset if they could read
None of them have. Like the Trinity was invented at the first ecumenical council of Nicaea over 300 years after the stories of the gospels. The word and concept have no biblical basis whatsoever. So even back before the biblical canon was finalized they weren’t reading it and made it up as they went.
