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Should I read the Bible?
Posted on: June 18, 2009 - 5:28am
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Should I read the Bible?
That way when I get into an argument with a Christian I can say: Did you even read the Bible?
I'm sure it'll nab me a victory in an argument 90% of the time.
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Nothing would ensure you to be more of an atheist than reading that thing.
It is a horrifying book.
Theism is why we can't have nice things.
The High Council of Atheist Elders can not approve your request.
You do not have permission to read anything related to the various versions of, or the Bibles themselves.
That is all.
Of course you should. You want to know what you are talking about when debate christians. And yes, you probably would have read more than them. Most just go off of phrases that are not even in the bible.
"Take all the heads of the people
and hang them up before the Lord
against the sun.” -- Numbers 25:4
If you want to debate the Bible with Christians, then yeah... read it. If you want to get an idea of just how dangerous and horrifying Christianity is, read it. If you just want to argue that the God Concept is nonsense, it's not necessary. I find that resorting to arguing the Bible is giving ground I don't need to give. Before we even start talking about the Bible, a Christian needs to give me a reason to suspect that the Bible is accurate.
Obviously, they can't.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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It's still a great historical relic. You just need to be be able to tell what's fact and what's fiction. I think it's a good idea to read it.
That is the biggest problem that you will encounter (I think) when debating a christian. They like to assume that the bible is accurate. What they don't realize is that just because it is in their does not mean that I believe it.
Your should also be able to quote scriptures from memory bc apparently that makes you more christian.
"Take all the heads of the people
and hang them up before the Lord
against the sun.” -- Numbers 25:4
I reccomend the International Standards version...its written in the plainest English... The King James version makes you want to kill a kitten after 4 pages.
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Heh, true, but it's also the least correct.
It's good to be pretty familiar with what you claim to be a crock of shit. If people start spouting verses at you as if they prove something though, just reply with a quote from your favorite book, that usually takes the wind out of their sails. Hamlet and 1984 have worked wonders for me. For example:
Christian: "For God so Loved the world, that he gave his--"
Me: "What dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause."
Christian: "..."
Me: "Yeah, just like that."
I love that people just presume that you're never read John 3:16 and that after hearing it you'll magically turn into a God-fearing, church-going Christian.
"Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to heaven. Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine, himself the primrose path of dalliance treads. And recks not his own rede."
I read this in Losing faith in faith by Dan Barker, and I have had this happen to me. People quote Psalms 14:1 (NIV):
The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."
They call you a fool for not believing. You counter with something they will not expect, the words of Jesus "himself", Matthew 5:22 (NIV):
But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.
Lol, nice.
"Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to heaven. Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine, himself the primrose path of dalliance treads. And recks not his own rede."
Yeah dude, that is a really good one, I may actually commit that one to memory.
"Take all the heads of the people
and hang them up before the Lord
against the sun.” -- Numbers 25:4
With me, it turns into an arguement of me trying to prove to so-called 'Christians' that even they don't really believe and neither does any other so-called Christian. You can tell they're all phonies.
The more you argue with Christians. the more you'll realize that they don't even really believe, but they want you to believe.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
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This is true, I guess I never really believed either. It is just that I had invested so much of my life to it I didn't want to give it up.
[mod edit: quote funtion]
"Take all the heads of the people
and hang them up before the Lord
against the sun.” -- Numbers 25:4
Most Christians have not read the entire Bible. That's for sure.
I think it's defenitely worth reading, even just as a story book and for its important historical and cultural role.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Well, have you ever spent any time with the “Good News” version? It is basically a plain English version but Bowdlerized to the point that half the time, you can't tell what the heck is going on. For example, it calls eunuchs “men who don't marry”.
Although on the matter of varying levels of accuracy, I would note that there is no most accurate version out there. Taking the KJV, which most bible thumpers think to be the best bible out there, I will note that it was not translated directly from some ancient Greek source as is commonly believed but rather from a document known as textus receptus, which was first published in 1516.
Pretty much in the very early days of the church, all documents had to be copied by hand. So if you wanted a copy of, say, the gospel of Matthew, you had to go to someone who already had it and make a copy of their copy. In the process, mistakes were made and any copy would likely carry over the mistakes that were already present in earlier copies.
In fact, the earliest manuscripts that we have are from the middle of the second century and thus full of bits where they vary from one copy to another. Also, in the process of hand copying the bible, some scribes changed bits around intentionally for various reasons. That process continued right up to the beginning of movable type.
In fact, the textus receptus was compiled because by that time, the errors that had accumulated to the point where (by modern estimations) there are more errors in the bible than there are words in the bible.
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Oh I agree, there is no "best" accurate version out there. It would be absurd to pick up any bible and think it's saying exactly what was originally intended. However, as new versions come out, revisions are made to fix things that "don't make sense." I feel that certain things are changed to not only make more sense, but to alter previous aged opinion. We can all agree, that the Church isn't going to allow things to be changed in a "bad way." I think it's ignorant to assume it can't be changed the other way, too.
IMO, you should read the bible for 2 reasons:
1. So many pieces of western lit contain biblical references, or are based on the bible, that you really need to have a working knowledge of the bible to understand everything.
2. It's hard to argue that something is stupid if you haven't read it and can't provide examples from the text.
I dare do all that may become a man-Who dares more is none
My favourite response to this is:
"See, even a fool can figure it out."
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That is not a nice thing to say. You act like it has stories of incest, infanticide, genocide and a orgy of violence in a final battle. It's like you think someone really sat down and wrote such a horrible thing.
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Rather than wading through the entire thing you can look up those verses they love to quote and read them in context. I have yet to find a single one that has the meaning in context that they give it out of context.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
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You should, and I say that to christians all the time.
I really should read it again. I'm getting rusty on my references. Problem is, I can never get passed Genesis 1:1 without thinking to myself "What an enormous waste of my time, I could be doing so many other things right now." The list of things I'd rather do is almost endless.
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The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
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Well, that is part of the inaccuracies. People have changed things out of a feeling that some bit of text ought to be other than what it is. The last several verses of Mark are a good example. Prior to the tenth century, the gospel ended at 16:8 but that was a bit of a let down. So someone added a dozen extra verses to tell what happened after that. The problem is that there are no earlier textual sources that say that that bit ought to be there, never mind what that bit should actually say.
There could well have been an earlier source for the changes that just does not survive today but ten centuries of sources don't say so, so at best, the earlier source must have been fairly recent compared to the earliest version that we know to have it.
Also, remember that the basic meaning of church doctrine has evolved over time. A thousand years ago, the church was into massing huge armies to march off to the holy land to kill the unwashed moslem hordes for the glory of christ. So changes made during those times would reflect the beliefs of the time which are very different from what a lot of people think now.
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Yep, you're right. It's bad enough we have to deal with the bullshit and the fantasies, but also the biased translations. I cannot take a literal bible-thumping Christian seriously at all. If they at least admit a large portion of the bible is metaphorical and even incorrect, I can have a conversation with them.
Well, if you do decide to give it a go, I warn you: It's boring. The OT at least is very dry and very repetitive (the KJV version, at any rate). I didn't make it all the way through into the NT, so maybe that was better. Lots of "And so God didith decide that if hisith mosteth faithfuleth didith..." blah blah beating around the bush. It almost never just straight-up spits out what a character is going to do - the book just deliberates and deliberates. Descriptors are also constantly in the way (it's always a 'blue sky' or a 'dark sky' or a 'wrinkly robe' etc), which is a dealbreaker for me. I can handle one or two adjectives per chapter in a book at most; the OT is just brimming with them.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
EDIT: BLAMMO!!!
No theists allowed in here, tough guy. Get your macho on elsewhere.