“The road to Atheism is littered with Bibles that have been read cover to cover” Andrew Seidel. As one objectively reads the whole Bible, they’ll likely discover that God’s word is not so great. When asked for a book recommendation, a number of atheists have listed a complete study of the Bible as their first pick. Not Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion or Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great, but the good ol’ Bible. This is because any rational thinker who reads about misogyny, homophobia, slavery, rape, murder, child abuse, incest, genital mutilation, genocide, innocent slaughter, non-science, historical fictions, contradictions, inconsistencies, torture, fear tactics, and a number of other problems will morally question the validity of “god’s truth”.
The religious might think that all atheist are unlearned in the Bible and that’s why they don’t believe, but in reality many atheist study the Bible just as much as the religious except they don’t cherry pick only the good bits. For the believers, how can we know which are the good parts from God and which are the corrupted bits manipulated by Satan? Some will claim that we can use our god-given spirit feelings or the “Light of Christ” to know which parts are good. But why would God publish a book filled with errors that contradict our god-given feelings? Seems like we could just forget the whole book altogether and act according to our godly feelings. But my personal “god-feelings” tell me that consensual sex among informed adults in all varieties is moral which drastically contradicts others’ god-feelings.
One main issue that I struggled with is the idea that if there are obviously proven fictions in some sections of the Bible, then that brings to question the validity of other supposed non-fiction sections of the Bible. When addressing some stories like Noah’s Arc, Tower of Babel, Adam and Eve, Jonah and the Whale, Moses, The Creation, and so on, it’s been suggested that I consider these as metaphorical stories to learn from and not literal truths. Ok… But how do I distinguish the facts from the fictions? Where do I draw the line between a laughably false global flood myth and if Jesus really walked on water? I certainly can’t rely on my god-feelings to discern the difference.
Another poorly apologetic excuse that I’ve been taught is “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly”. In my opinion the ballsiest yet truest thing Joseph Smith ever said was that the Bible has errors. The apology says that errors have arose because of the evil corrupt power of Satan. But Satan’s power is not greater than God’s, right? An omnipotent God could have protected or corrected his precious truths, but decided to abstain his power that our faith might be tested and challenged. He made it impossible to scientifically verify and increasingly more difficult to believe in the only ambiguous instruction manual of life. I have to commit to a life of scholarly dedication of scriptural research while suspending rational thought and balancing cognitive dissonance just to try and maybe understand the Bible. Why the hell did an omnibenevolent and just god make it so difficult to make it into heaven? Again, a just God can NOT hold us accountable to a set of instructions and expectations not clearly explained and damn us to an eternity of hell for not following commandments we didn’t know about.
Other forms of scriptures like the Quran, the Torah, and the Book of Mormon (to name a few) all use circular logic and unverifiable fictions to prove they are correct. Some more laughable than the next. All scriptures claiming truth when just the opposite is true.
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