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.

  • @kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4•1 year ago

    A few fun NT details…

    • “Marriage is between a man and woman” in Mark with a composition dated post 70 CE due to its inclusion of prophecy of the fall of the temple postdates the emperor of Rome (Nero) marrying two men in the 60s CE, once as ‘wife’ and then as ‘husband’ - so gay marriage would have been very top of mind when the gospel was written. What does not post-date it was Jesus, who would have had to have been making special mention decades before relevant to current events and then people would have had to remember as relevant for decades.
    • Paul in Romans 8 swears to the Holy Spirit he’s telling the truth. He has a habit of swearing that, such as in Gal 1:20 or 2 Cor 11:31 (both chapters where he’s discussing a different gospel being followed). But Romans 8 is entirely missing from Marcion’s copy, which may be the earliest extant form of the letter. Someone seems to have been blaspheming that holy spirit…
    • Even more hilarious is ‘Paul’ swearing (to Jesus Christ in some versions) that he’s telling the truth in 1 Timothy 2:7, given over 70% of polled scholars think the letter is a forgery.

    The Bible is actually a pretty fun subject to research secularly.

    Very interesting and unexpected stuff too. For example, the only other recorded interpretation of the sower parable from the first few centuries is the following:

    […] the seeds scattered from the unportrayable one upon the world, through which the whole cosmical system is completed; for through these also it began to exist. And this, he says, is what has been declared: "The sower went forth to sow. […]

    • Pseudo-Hippolytus Refutations 5.3

    Elsewhere this same group describes the seeds in more detail, connected this time to the “smallest seed” parable:

    That which is, he says, nothing, and which consists of nothing, inasmuch as it is indivisible — (I mean) a point — will become through its own reflective power a certain incomprehensible magnitude. This, he says, is the kingdom of heaven, the grain of mustard seed […]

    • Pseudo-Hippolytus Refutations 5.4

    The important context to know is that 50 years before Jesus is born Lucretius writes a popular poem on Epicurean physics in Latin, using the word ‘seed’ in place of the Greek atomos (indivisible).

    Which says things like this:

    Especially since this world is the product of Nature, the happenstance Of the seeds of things colliding into each other by pure chance In every possible way, no aim in view, at random, blind, Till sooner or later certain seeds suddenly combined So that they lay the warp to weave the cloth of mighty things: Of earth, of sea, of sky, of all the species of living beings.

    • De Rerum Natura book 2

    For those who know the sower parable well, look at Leucretius’s specific wording regarding failed biological reproduction:

    For a woman prevents pregnancy this way, resisting it, When she grinds her buttocks against the man’s member as it thrusts, Gyrating, her whole body turned to jelly with her lust. By doing this, she turns the furrow away from the straight and true Path of the ploughshare, and the seed falls by the wayside too.

    • De Rerum Natura book 4

    So 80 years later in Galilee a dude is publicly talking about the smallest seed growing into a place of rest and about how out of randomly scattered seeds only the ones to survive reproduce and the ones falling by the wayside of the path do not. This guy somehow allegedly upsets the Sanhedrin so much they ask the Roman state to execute him.

    Then decades later Paul, known to have been persecuting Christians, is in Greece where he has no authority telling people to ignore other versions of Jesus, initially talking about sown seeds in the context of the human body in 1 Cor 15 where he discussed a first and last Adam (a concept shared by the group I quoted from above), but then later in 2 Cor 9 is describing sown seeds in the context of proselytizing and collections.

    Decades after that you have the gospel of Mark describing a public telling of a parable about sown seeds that suddenly has a jump in place and time to a private explanation where it’s clarified that the parable is about proselytizing - a jump Mark never returns from even though we’re clearly back at the public shore in 4:35-36.

    There’s something tragically ironic to the notion that the historical Jesus was advocating Leucretius’s concepts of survival of the fittest and naturalism to the point of even using Leucretius’s own language and metaphors, upset conservative religious orthodoxy in his backwoods theocracy doing so such that it cost him his life, and that the later damage control attempting to correct the record back to orthodoxy was what ultimately survived so successfully that it not only was responsible for suppressing Leucretius’s own work for a millennium relegating it to being eaten by worms, but is still actively opposing the idea of natural selection in favor of intelligent design today.

    For additional context, here’s a quote attributed to Jesus from the work the group above was following on the topic of intelligent design vs naturalism where the latter is described as the greater wonder:

    Jesus said, "If the flesh came into being because of spirit, that is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels.

    Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty."

    • Gospel of Thomas saying 29

    (I also recommend looking at sayings 7-8 that immediately precede the sower parable in that work with all the above in mind.)

    As I said, it’s actually way more interesting and nuanced than you’d ever expect when you really dig in.

    • Cranakis OPEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      Wow! I said “teach me something” and you delivered. Thank you. I didn’t know any of this and want to dig in now. Have a good reference for me to start with on the subject of Lucretius?

      • @kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        Honestly the best resource is to read his poem.

        This is a very digestible modern translation.

        If you want a book more about the context of the work and its rediscovery, The Swerve did win a Pulitzer.

        But most summary discussion of Leucretius is focused on the Epicurean philosophy and its attitudes on death and hedonism, and gloss over or even don’t mention things like that it’s the only extant work from antiquity to explicitly describe natural selection:

        In the beginning, there were many freaks. Earth undertook Experiments - bizarrely put together, weird of look Hermaphrodites, partaking of both sexes, but neither; some Bereft of feet, or orphaned of their hands, and others dumb, Being devoid of mouth; and others yet, with no eyes, blind. Some had their limbs stuck to the body, tightly in a bind, And couldn’t do anything, or move, and so could not evade Harm, or forage for bare necessities. And the Earth made Other kinds of monsters too, but in vain, since with each, Nature frowned upon their growth; they were not able to reach The flowering of adulthood, nor find food on which to feed, Nor be joined in the act of Venus.

        For all creatures need Many different things, we realize, to multiply And to forge out the links of generations: a supply Of food, first, and a means for the engendering seed to flow Throughout the body and out of the lax limbs; and also so The female and the male can mate, a means they can employ In order to impart and to receive their mutual joy.

        Then, many kinds of creatures must have vanished with no trace Because they could not reproduce or hammer out their race. For any beast you look upon that drinks life-giving air, Has either wits, or bravery, or fleetness of foot to spare, Ensuring its survival from its genesis to now.

        • DRN 5.837-859

        Or nearly nailed Mendelian trait inheritance:

        Sometimes children take after their grandparents instead, Or great-grandparents, bringing back the features of the dead. This is since parents carry elemental seeds inside – Many and various, mingled many ways – their bodies hide Seeds that are handed, parent to child, all down the family tree. Venus draws features from these out of her shifting lottery – Bringing back an ancestor’s look or voice or hair. Indeed These characteristics are just as much the result of certain seed As are our faces, limbs and bodies. Females can arise From the paternal seed, just as the male offspring, likewise, Can be created from the mother’s flesh. For to comprise A child requires a doubled seed – from father and from mother. And if the child resembles one more closely than the other, That parent gave the greater share – which you can plainly see Whichever gender – male or female – that the child may be.

        • DRN 4.1217-1232

        They got a number of things wrong as well, but it’s a pretty remarkable work and worth reading through if you have any interest in the history of scientific theory and thought. It’s pretty wild we still learn Aristotle in school (largely the result of the church favoring Plato and Aristotle’s embracing of intelligent design) when the Epicureans had such a better picture in retrospect.

        • Cranakis OPEnglish
          2•1 year ago

          Holy shit. That’s crazy! It sounds like that they had evolution figured out more than halfway, thousands of years before Darwin. I’m reading more now but others won’t and I admit ignorance here. What happened that kept this idea from continuing to grow?

          • @kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2•1 year ago

            Yeah, it’s pretty wild. I had no idea the theory was that explicit that long ago until digging into this myself, and one of the biggest hurdles in even seriously discussing the more nuanced stuff and the connection of these philosophical ideas with later Christian sects declared heretical is getting past the almost instinctual rejection of the notion that this was understood back then.

            They didn’t have the science or experimental evidence to back it up, but luckily the quotes from the material are detailed enough that it’s pretty clear they had a great grasp on the theory itself.

            As for what happened to prevent its growth, the answer is religion, and in large part Christianity.

            Even at the time, the idea of naturalism/evolution over intelligent design was a minority view with most people favoring Plato’s intelligent design in Timaeus or their respective religious creation myth. With the rise of Neoplatonism in the 2nd century CE, Epicureanism fell further in popularity.

            Then after the Roman empire became Christian, differing opinions became much more dangerous. In fact the only surviving copy of this poem was being eaten by worms in a monastery when the secretary of the Pope bribed a monk to liberate it back to his pre-Renaissance book club.

            You can see early church authors call out Lucretius and Epicurus by name when they dismiss their ideas, such as Lacanthus from the 3rd century CE, here dismissing the idea things randomly came together without design from atoms:

            Thus, because he had taken up a false principle at the commencement, the necessity of the subjects which followed led him to absurdities. For where or from whence are these atoms? Why did no one dream of them besides Leucippus only? From whom Democritus, having received instructions, left to Epicurus the inheritance of his folly. […] In the next place, by what mutual compact, by what discernment, do they meet together, so that anything may be constructed out of them? If they are without intelligence, they cannot come together in such order and arrangement; for nothing but reason can bring to accomplishment anything in accordance with reason. With how many arguments can this trifling be refuted!

            • Divine Institutes, Book III (Of the False Wisdom of Philosophers) chapter 17

            So if the godly Christian writers are making such compelling arguments against those nearly atheistic philosophers, and heresy is a bad thing to be kept away from the people that it might lead them astray…well those books and ideas need to be shut away.

            The hostility towards them was around even in Jesus’s day among Jews. In the late 1st century CE the Talmud had a quote from a Rabbi Elezar saying “why do we study the Torah? To know how to answer the Epicurean.” And over the years the word for Epicurean even ends up becoming the word for ‘atheist.’

            So you just had a time when it wasn’t clear what was true and what was false. And rather than keeping both around (like weeds and wheat when you don’t know which is which) people were self-assured that they knew Leucretius was wrong and that their intelligent design ideas were right, and effectively uprooted it from history. Just ever so barely failing to erase it completely.

            But yeah, I often think about how the world might look if ideas like light being made up of tiny indivisible parts moving quickly (what Einstein won his Nobel proving) or evolution had been continuously considered for 2,000 years instead of shuttered up and forgotten for 1,600 years until being rediscovered in just the past few centuries.

            • Cranakis OPEnglish
              2•1 year ago

              I suspected it was Christianity that killed it, using the power of Rome. There have been similar knowledge purges in other religions/cultures also. Pretty frequent. It’s this general idea that makes me resent religions and the religious. It was when I started to realize how much religion held society back from progress, and how much it stifled individual freedoms and personal agency that I began to get a bit bitter against it.

              I really enjoyed everything you wrote on this post. I’d invite you to make some posts of your own in this community too. I always want to learn more and you sound like you’ve gone down some rabbit holes.