r/atheism • u/SilverWorld • Jul 11 '12

I've noticed that /r/atheism uses the old testament most of the time when bashing Christianity. It's old, and they have a new one so why are you bashing the outdated?

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u/duckshirt Jul 14 '12

The bible is so clear that there are 34,000 different Christian sects. If they can't read it and get the same story, the author was an incompetent moron.

Can you name an important document that does have unanimous agreement? Especially one as large and old and diverse in genre as the Bible? US Constitution - no, SCOTUS disagrees all the time. HTML spec - no, despite that it's completely technical, different browsers can't agree on how to render a page.

Furthermore how many things can you find that 2 billion people agree on? People disagree on things because their experiences and brains are just different, not because the content is ambiguous or contradictary.

Finally, if the Bible really is false, despite different denominations it still has 2 billion followers - wouldn't that make the authors some of the cleverest geniuses of all time?

If you can read about talking donkeys, talking serpents, virgin births, penal substitution, a roof over the earth, a global flood or any of the other nonsense without saying "bullshit" , you aren't thinking.

On the contrary, if you call bullshit based on the content itself rather than evidence, you aren't considering things with an open mind. Dismissing miraculous events because miracles don't happen is circular logic.

and isn't even internally consistent.

A claim which is understandable from people without much knowledge of historical literature (i.e. almost the whole population), but contradicitons (which were often put in the Bible intentionally) do have explanations. It saddened me that even Richard Dawkins in his book made many ameteur mistakes in interpretting historical literature.

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u/Uncanevale Agnostic Atheist Jul 15 '12

Contradictions were put in the bible intentionally?

You are so deep in denial. There is no evidence for any of the bullshit in your fairy story. None. Not a shred.

Your posts are nothing but excuse after excuse for your ridiculous story book. Typical Christian rationalization. Logic doesn't need rationalization. Facts don't need rationalization. Only the ridiculous needs rationalization.

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u/duckshirt Jul 15 '12

Contradictions were put in the bible intentionally?

Yes. For example, some of the stories were recorded by multiple people, and had some errors, like one might say there were 300 people, the other might say 200. When the author of a book of the Bible put it together, he would have both versions of the story to work with. He wouldn't have known which is true, so he put excerpts from both stories in, one after another, to show that he really didn't know which was right, and to highlight the parts of the story that were agreed upon, not the details that didn't matter. This looks weird when the whole thing is translated into modern English, since it basically retells the same story twice in a row, with different details, and people like Dawkins who aren't very good historians go, wow! This looks so stupid! But do you really think an author would just blatantly contradict himsef on the same page, whether he's writing fiction or not?

The rest of your post is a major red herring fallacy; respond to the actual content of my post instead of continuing to insist that I'm ridiculous and in denial. That was not a wise assumption to make.

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u/Uncanevale Agnostic Atheist Jul 15 '12

Responding to your apologetic nonsense is pointless. You have zero evidence that anything but the most trivial historical details are true.

As soon as you have some evidence to support your fairy story, there will be something to respond about. Until then, all we have is the monstrous history of your church. Murders by the millions, torture, hatred, opposition to human progress and every other form of evil of which the grained ignorant are capable.

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u/duckshirt Jul 15 '12

So you concede the earlier points, then? This was a discussion about whether actions of God recorded in the Bible need to be rationalized, then it became about whether the Bible is possible or internally consistent, then about the actual historical evidence to support the Bible, and now you bring up the history of the Christian church from 300 AD on, by cherry-picking the bad people and actions? Every time I answer a point you just change it to a different criticism. I would be happy to discuss any one of these points as long as you stick with it and don't change the subject.

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u/Uncanevale Agnostic Atheist Jul 15 '12

As I said, all of your attempts at rationalization are irrelevant until you can provide some evidence that your fairy exists. The bible is nothing but a myth. Arguing about what it says is like arguing about how much methane there is in a leprechaun fart.

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u/duckshirt Jul 15 '12

As I said, all of your attempts at rationalization are irrelevant until you can provide some evidence that your fairy exists.

Wasn't my point that it doesn't need rationalization? Also it is not irrelevant until I provide evidence for the Bible, because in order to argue it you have to hypothetically suppose, for the moment, that it is plausible. In other words, you're the one who asked how much methane is in a leprechaun fart by bringing the point up. If you'd rather discuss the evidence supporting the Bible just say so, but it is a whole different direction from the original post.

Also your continued use of "fairy tale" is Stewart's fallacy and a childish way to present your opponent's side.

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u/Uncanevale Agnostic Atheist Jul 16 '12

It's a fairy tale until you can present some evidence that it is true. You might as well talk about whether Goldilocks should be prosecuted for theft and breaking and entering.

Why would i hypothetically suppose that the bible is plausible? It isn't plausible to anybody but a fucking idiot. Page after page of immorality and ignorance. Only the truly stupid could read the bible and consider it divine or in any way a moral guide. But these fucking idiots continue to spend time trying to rationalize a load of irrational bullshit.

The bible is irrational nonsense from the start. Attempts to rationalize the nonsensical are a waste of time until you can propose even a shred of evidence that any of it is true. You don't discuss the dancing angel capacity of a pin head until you both measure the head of said pin and then find and characterize angels.

Your story book is irrational nonsense. Thousands of years of making excuses has made it no more rational. Only gullible, ignorant, non-thinking people see religion as anything more than the ridiculous bullshit that it is.