Atheists interpret bible verses

[Redbeard The Pink]

The disciples and the other writers of the new testament were tortured and faced death threats throughout their ministry. Is it not reasonable to assume they were telling the truth or do you think they were defending a lie? It seems to me they had much incentive to not preach or write down anything about Jesus, yet they still did. It doesn't seem they profited at all from what they believed. One can only question whether or not they saw a resurrected Jesus.

(Emphasis mine)


Indeed, one would have to question such a thing...or whether they saw Bigfoot...or flying sex snakes...or any other host of hallucinations that might drive a mad man toward death. Just because someone is seeing it, doesn't make it real.


As others have mentioned, non-Christian people around the world die for their beliefs at least as often as Christians do.

The alternative explanation is reasonable, but I don't hold anything to be true based on convenience. 

Convenience isn't your problem, my friend. Faith is your problem. It's fine that you don't hold things to be true on convenience, but you shouldn't be using faith, either. Evidence is virtually the only valid basis for defensible truth.

And there is mention of Jesus by other historians like Josephus and Suetonius. The disciples were the only ones who witness the walking on water miracle by Jesus according to the gospels, so I wouldn't expect another party to write about it.

Josephus has been dead as an apologetics tool since the 1800s. Tacitus is pretty much the only other non-Christian source, and there's a lot of dispute over him, too. Pretty much everyone else who wrote about Jesus (historian or otherwise) was a Christian, giving them every reason to fabricate things to support the story they liked.

It takes faith to believe the bible. I think it's reasonable though, especially considering the prophetic nature of the book. But its hard for me to argue the validity of miracles because it goes against the laws of nature. That's probably what Jesus was trying to tell us; that He was in control of the forces of nature and was able to do these things because He is God.

Nothing that requires faith is a reasonable belief. Also, I don't know if you know this, but not one Bible prophecy has been fulfilled, especially not in the way the Bible said it would. Tyre still stands, Egypt isn't a barren wasteland devoid of humans or animals, and the Nile never dried up.


If Jesus existed and was trying to tell us anything, he was pretty express about it. "Hold nothing close because the world will end soon" seemed to be the general gist of his message.

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.

Atheists aren't generally begging Gaud for anything. If the Bible is Gaud's best attempt at making himself believable and knowable, it indicates one of three things:


1. Gaud routinely murders humans in droves, making him evil and not worthy of worship.

2. Gaud made up a story that is contrary to reality and wants us to believe the story instead of reality or he'll send us to Hell, making him evil and not worthy of worship.

3. The people who made up Gaud didn't know enough about science or the natural world to properly evaluate their own assertions.