Atheists interpret bible verses

[Cyberman]

Even the talking animals and lights fixed to the skydome?

Every single verse. I look at it this way, you guys are begging for God to reveal Himself to humans and I think He did it through Jesus Christ and He left us the bible so that future generations can know about Him.

I'm not "begging for God to reveal Himself"; don't be silly. All I'm doing is waiting and asking you to present a case for why you believe the things you say. I accept that you believe these things; I'm asking you to accept your burden of proof. For instance, you just said that you think "God" revealed itself through this Jesus character. Ok, on what basis do you think that?

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Every single day I come here, I'm reminded of how amazing it is that Christians are so blind to the ubiquitous presence of their religion's influence on this culture, such that atheism (the absence of religious ideology) becomes an identity, rather than the effectively-nothing that it is.

If I was surrounded by a culture of people who all told me unicorns once appeared to mankind and left us with the Book of Unicorn which was written by all the people who really really saw unicorns once upon a time, that there were all-powerful and invisible unicorns who were awesome and yet somehow detectable only to people who already believe in unicorns, claimed to know what the unicorns (who by the way created this universe) think and how they wanted us to behave, and claim that only by following The Way of the Unicorn could I be a decent person... and oh by the way, here are symbols of unicorns and laws based on the Book of Unicorns, which we're going to constantly try to get passed, and oh yeah we're going to elect school board members who're in favor of unicorns, so we can subtly teach your children that they too should be unicornists... and so on, etc etc, ad nauseam...

Then I'd call myself an aunicornist, and sit here on the Aunicornist Forums explaining to people why I'm "begging for unicorns to reveal themselves".

And if you give it a serious amount of thought, you'd realize why this unicorn analogy is exactly the same crap we hear endlessly from religious believers, such that our active self-identity as aunicornists/atheists becomes necessary at all.

Otherwise, we'd just be normal people who like science and history and, well, reading.

[Redbeard The Pink]

Every single day I come here, I'm reminded of how amazing it is that Christians are so blind to the ubiquitous presence of their religion's influence on this culture, such that atheism (the absence of religious ideology) becomes an identity, rather than the effectively-nothing that it is.

If I was surrounded by a culture of people who all told me unicorns once appeared to mankind and left us with the Book of Unicorn which was written by all the people who really really saw unicorns once upon a time, that there were all-powerful and invisible unicorns who were awesome and yet somehow detectable only to people who already believe in unicorns, claimed to know what the unicorns (who by the way created this universe) think and how they wanted us to behave, and claim that only by following The Way of the Unicorn could I be a decent person... and oh by the way, here are symbols of unicorns and laws based on the Book of Unicorns, which we're going to constantly try to get passed, and oh yeah we're going to elect school board members who're in favor of unicorns, so we can subtly teach your children that they too should be unicornists... and so on, etc etc, ad nauseam...

Then I'd call myself an aunicornist, and sit here on the Aunicornist Forums explaining to people why I'm "begging for unicorns to reveal themselves".

And if you give it a serious amount of thought, you'd realize why this unicorn analogy is exactly the same crap we hear endlessly from religious believers, such that our active self-identity as aunicornists/atheists becomes necessary at all.

Otherwise, we'd just be normal people who like science and history and, well, reading.

There is ancient holy book that talks about Unicorns. It's called the Bible.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

There is ancient holy book that talks about Unicorns. It's called the Bible.

Meh, that's just the KJV, since the translators had no idea what mythological creatures the Hebrews were actually referring to, so they substituted "dragons" and "unicorns" for the other terms. It is fun to go to https://www.biblegateway.com/ and do a search for unicorns in the KJV, then switch translations to see how others dealt with the issue.

Numbers 23:22 - Authorized (King James) Version (AKJV)

22 God brought them out of Egypt;
he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn.

Numbers 23:22 - New American Standard Bible (NASB)

22 God brings them out of Egypt,
He is for them like the horns of the wild ox.

Numbers 23:22 - Young's Literal Translation (YLT)

22 God is bringing them out from Egypt, 
As the swiftness of a Reem is to him;

reem
n.
Hebrew name of an animal in the Old Testament (Job xxxix:9, etc.), now identified with the wild ox, but formerly translated in Latin as rhinoceros and in English as unicorn.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/reem

[JesusHChrist]

I'm still waiting to hear back from Sinner-boy-daniel if he thinks Zeus coming down to Earth as a swan and having swan-sex with Leda is legitimate, and if not, why not?

There is "testimony" after all.

[sinnerdaniel94]

Every single verse. I look at it this way, you guys are begging for God to reveal Himself to humans and I think He did it through Jesus Christ and He left us the bible so that future generations can know about Him.

I'm not "begging for God to reveal Himself"; don't be silly. All I'm doing is waiting and asking you to present a case for why you believe the things you say. I accept that you believe these things; I'm asking you to accept your burden of proof. For instance, you just said that you think "God" revealed itself through this Jesus character. Ok, on what basis do you think that?

Jesus' resurrection from the dead.
no resurrection = no Christianity

Anyone can claim to be the Son of God, but Jesus said He will show one sign and that was that He would be raised from the dead 3 days after He was killed. Jesus appeared to the disciples as well as hundreds of others in His resurrected form, and His followers went from scared to bold in their faith. why? because they KNEW everything He said was true because Jesus proved it by His resurrection.

As you know, many Christians died for their faith in Jesus Christ; I refuse to believe that they were defending a lie. I believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and that life everlasting is through Him.

[Cyberman]

Fine. Now show that the resurrection happened. I don't care about the "die for a lie" thing, that's a red herring and has nothing to do with your assertions about the resurrection. Remember the September 11 hijackers? Would they do what they did if it was based on a lie?

[Redbeard The Pink]

I'm not "begging for God to reveal Himself"; don't be silly. All I'm doing is waiting and asking you to present a case for why you believe the things you say. I accept that you believe these things; I'm asking you to accept your burden of proof. For instance, you just said that you think "God" revealed itself through this Jesus character. Ok, on what basis do you think that?

Jesus' resurrection from the dead.
no resurrection = no Christianity

Anyone can claim to be the Son of God, but Jesus said He will show one sign and that was that He would be raised from the dead 3 days after He was killed. Jesus appeared to the disciples as well as hundreds of others in His resurrected form, and His followers went from scared to bold in their faith. why? because they KNEW everything He said was true because Jesus proved it by His resurrection.

As you know, many Christians died for their faith in Jesus Christ; I refuse to believe that they were defending a lie.  I believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and that life everlasting is through Him.

Sooo...you're claiming that if the resurrection didn't really happen, Christianity never would have started, right?


So by the same logic, if the Buddha had never gained enlightenment, Buddhism would never have started, and that's why people believe in Buddhism and are willing to die for it. Buddhism, therefore, must be true.


Also, if Mohammed didn't really receive a message from Allah, the Quran wouldn't have been written, so I guess that proves the Quran is true, too, right?


Are you seeing the problem here? You think Buddhism is a lie, and yet there are those willing to die in the name of Buddhism. You think Islam is a lie, and yet there are those willing to die for Islam. You aren't convinced that other people's religions are true just because people are willing to die for them, so why should we accept your religion just because people are willing to die for it? You wouldn't accept your argument if another religion used it, so why should we accept that argument from you?

[JesusHChrist]

“It was fun because I have a great luxury that I'm a professional liar — that's what a storyteller is. Or at least that’s what I try to be. It's the one socially acceptable way to completely deceive people, and that's what they want." - Neil Fallon of Clutch

Your gospel writers are storytellers.

[JackRussell]

I'm not "begging for God to reveal Himself"; don't be silly. All I'm doing is waiting and asking you to present a case for why you believe the things you say. I accept that you believe these things; I'm asking you to accept your burden of proof. For instance, you just said that you think "God" revealed itself through this Jesus character. Ok, on what basis do you think that?

Jesus' resurrection from the dead.
no resurrection = no Christianity

Anyone can claim to be the Son of God, but Jesus said He will show one sign and that was that He would be raised from the dead 3 days after He was killed. Jesus appeared to the disciples as well as hundreds of others in His resurrected form, and His followers went from scared to bold in their faith. why? because they KNEW everything He said was true because Jesus proved it by His resurrection.

As you know, many Christians died for their faith in Jesus Christ; I refuse to believe that they were defending a lie.  I believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and that life everlasting is through Him.

People die for stupid things all of the time: personality cults come and go throughout history and in ancient times people were understandably more ignorant and prone to believe strange supernatural claims, they had no way to tell otherwise as the scientific method was still very much in its infancy and possessed by only a handful of people.

They weren't so much defending a lie as unable to realise the truth. We now know that people who have been clinically dead for 3 days do not ever get up again. Occam's razor suggests therefore that they bought into a made up story that played upon their desire for a Jewish messiah to save them from a brutal Roman occupation.