What Major Intellectual Issue Most Keeps You From Accepting The Christian Narrative?

[Mr.wizard]

" What Major Intellectual Issue Most Keeps You From Accepting The Christian Narrative?"

This question is being asked to Atheists, isn't the answer obvious?

[Mister Agenda]

I'm not talking about hitler, i'm talking about communist regimes, and the body counts are very much quantifiable...

I have less in common with Stalin because I'm an atheist than you have with Osama bin Laden because you are a Christian.

[Huggy Bear]

I'm not talking about hitler, i'm talking about communist regimes, and the body counts are very much quantifiable...

I have less in common with Stalin because I'm an atheist than you have with Osama bin Laden because you are a Christian.

How so?

[Chad32]

And how do I do that? Unless you're using a vague definition of scapegoating.

What did you eat for dinner yesterday?

Eating isn't scapegoating, even if it means something had to die to do it. Scapegoating is putting your crimes on something or someone else, and acting as if that absolves your wrongdoing. Glossing over the fact that you're harming something innocent in the process, because apparently innocent and pure things make the best sacrifices.

Yes, unless your dies is nothing but fruit, and the non root part of vegetables, you're killing something to eat. But you have to eat to live, so it's not a criminal act. Unless you're just killing for the sake of killing. In which case praying over a goat, or killing a different thing, is not making the problem go away.

I'm tempted to just erase this response and say "An apple and leafy greens because killing is wrong", and see where you take this argument.

[Shell B]

That's not even quantifiable, for one. For two, I believe you're thinking of Hitler, and he identified as Christian. It also doesn't then follow that disbelief in god is absurd, even if it were true that atheists committed more atrocities than religious people. There are many other factors. You could look at whether they have less rich social lives because they're not in church all the time. Maybe they're more likely to be shunned by their religious families, so they are dealing with that. Maybe just the act of not believing in god makes them less likely to worry about consequences (all of which I think is ridiculous). That doesn't mean god is real.

For what it's worth, I don't think religious people or atheists are any more or less monstrous, though I can say for sure that organized groups of religious people slaughtering those who feel differently is definitely more common than organized groups of atheists doing anything other than go to Comic Con together.

I'm not talking about hitler, i'm talking about communist regimes, and the body counts are very much quantifiable...

In that case, you're sort of right, but your conclusion is wrong. *Some* communist regimes were awful, atheist and definitely racked up body counts. However, I meant that measuring the number of dead by atheist and dead by religious is not possible. We can't possibly say one "side" is more deadly than the other. What we can say with certainty is that people don't commit mass atrocities in the name of atheism, whereas they have in the name of religion. I think that's really what it boils down to. Not many people commit a crime in the name of "I don't believe in god," but plenty do in the name of god.

[Mister Agenda]

I'll take a stab at this. I was a Pentecostal Christian. I read the KJV cover-to-cover. I read it again in a modern English version to make sure I had understood it correctly. I had. Before I even got to the NT, the barbarity commanded by Yahweh and the inconsistence of the narrative had me convinced that it did not originate from some theodic being. The story of Adam and Eve is ludicrous, akin to a moral test of toddlers involving leaving them in a room with a loaded shotgun and a guy motivated to get them to play with it. How were they supposed to know they were doing evil before they learned the difference between good and evil? Why does Yahweh pretend he can't find them? Isn't that dishonest? Why didn't they die the day they ate the fruit, like Yahweh said they would? Why didn't God accept Cain's sacrifice? That's all just in the first few chapters. In addition, I had been taught that God never changes, but reading the book through like that, the evolution of Yahweh from chief deity of the Hebrew pantheon, to greatest God evah to 'those other gods ain't even real' is pretty evident. Plus, I caught a few contradictions, and Pentecostals believe the Bible is perfect.

Then the NT. God goes through another change, becoming a God of love, not war (but Jesus introduces the concept of infinite suffering for finite crimes), to the point that early Christians refused to fight. They got over that when they came to power, of course. The endings of each of the Gospels are a mess when you compare them to each other, Matthew (IIRC) has rodeo Jesus riding a colt and a donkey simultaneously (it's clear he's trying to make the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem fit a prophecy that he does not actually understand).

Talking snakes and donkeys. The sky is a 'firmament'. The OT is half between mythology and fable. The NT at best is a gross exaggeration of the deeds and words of an apocalyptic rabbi who ran afoul of the Romans. Don't get me started on Paul.

The main intellectual problem with accepting the Christian narrative is, frankly, that many parts are ridiculous. As an atheist I can keep whatever good I can find in Judaism and Christianity (and Buddhism and so forth) and throw out the rest. I can keep hippie Jesus (good Samaritan, love your neighbor, be more forgiving) and reject mean Jesus (cursing innocent figs and failing to condemn slavery).

If you threw out everything that was harmful and irrational in Christianity and kept the best of it, you might have something admirable. But a wise man is supposed to have said something along the lines of knowing a tree by its fruit. The fruit of Christianity is at least half spoiled.

And that's not even addressing the failing of supernaturalism in general as a hypothesis.

[Huggy Bear]

What did you eat for dinner yesterday?

Eating isn't scapegoating, even if it means something had to die to do it. Scapegoating is putting your crimes on something or someone else, and acting as if that absolves your wrongdoing. Glossing over the fact that you're harming something innocent in the process, because apparently innocent and pure things make the best sacrifices.

Yes, unless your dies is nothing but fruit, and the non root part of vegetables, you're killing something to eat. But you have to eat to live, so it's not a criminal act. Unless you're just killing for the sake of killing. In which case praying over a goat, or killing a different thing, is not making the problem go away.

I'm tempted to just erase this response and say "An apple and leafy greens because killing is wrong", and see where you take this argument.

If that is your definition of scapegoating then it doesn't apply to Christianity.

And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. - John 6:35

Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you - John 6:53

So giving ones life in order for someone else to live is not evil according to your own statement.

[Mister Agenda]

I have less in common with Stalin because I'm an atheist than you have with Osama bin Laden because you are a Christian.

How so?

I'm not a communist and think communism was a terrible idea in execution and probably in theory as well. I'm opposed to totalitarianism all around. So position-wise, all that leaves me having in common with Stalin is not believing in God, and that's assuming he actually did not, he was not clear about that. I assume he also didn't believe in many other things I don't believe in, like faeries and Santa Clause, which presumably you don't believe are literally real, either. So just the (probable) atheism.

Now Osama bin Laden believed in the God of Abraham, as do you. He believed in the old and new testaments, as do you, though he likely did not trust their accuracy as much as you do. As a Muslim he believed that Jesus (Isa) was born of a virgin and getting crucified wasn't the end of him, and he will be back for judgment day, he just didn't believe Jesus was literally the son of God more than anyone else, just a major prophet. He was likely a creationist, believed in a global flood, all the things that come for your religions sharing some of the same roots.

That's how you have more in common with bin Laden as a Christian than I do with Stalin as an atheist.

[Chad32]

Eating isn't scapegoating, even if it means something had to die to do it. Scapegoating is putting your crimes on something or someone else, and acting as if that absolves your wrongdoing. Glossing over the fact that you're harming something innocent in the process, because apparently innocent and pure things make the best sacrifices.

Yes, unless your dies is nothing but fruit, and the non root part of vegetables, you're killing something to eat. But you have to eat to live, so it's not a criminal act. Unless you're just killing for the sake of killing. In which case praying over a goat, or killing a different thing, is not making the problem go away.

I'm tempted to just erase this response and say "An apple and leafy greens because killing is wrong", and see where you take this argument.

If that is your definition of scapegoating then it doesn't apply to Christianity.

And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. - John 6:35

Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you - John 6:53

So giving ones life in order for someone else to live is not evil according to your own statement.

Jesus says he takes the world's sins on himself so that we may be saved. That's scapegoating. Putting your sins on someone else so you can avoid the punishment.

[Mister Agenda]

So giving ones life in order for someone else to live is not evil according to your own statement.

The scapegoat is not the guilty party. That's the point, and the problem. The wrong person is being punished.