How do atheists see Jesus' parables?

[Chad32]

Like any stories, you can sometimes learn morals from them. Though some lessons will be outdated or backwards. Like the story of the man who builds his house on sand, and another o rock. You're meant to come away thinking faith is the rock, but the need for revivals shows that faith is not a rock.

That particular story is rather odd. Who kills or abuses people just for being invited to a wedding? And why would you tie someone up before throwing him out the door, instead of just asking him to leave and come back with better clothes? Actually, who prepares a wedding before invitations are even sent?

I assume the wedding represents heaven, but I don't really know what moral we're supposed to take from it.

 You do not understand the story of the house built on the Rock, why should you understand the parable about the wedding feast and it's obvious you are not going to by the way you responded to it. Do you remember what Jesus said about the parables to His disciples, seems you are living proof of what Jesus said, and all you needed to do was look it up on a christian site to get the answer.

GC

Edit: Didn't see Huggy's first post before I posted this, it explains what Jesus told the disciples, you should read it.

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If all were freely invited he wouldn't have had to sneak in. So, either he wasn't invited and all were not welcome, or he was invited and was then kicked out. Which is it?

I think this is a wonderful example of christian charity.

 You see he was invited but he didn't want those outside of the banquet to know he entered so he snuck in, as Huggy stated, he wanted the good things without properly attaining them. You might say he was a pretend Christian, the church is full of them unfortunately. 

GC

Oh, I think I understand them well enough. They're just bad metaphors, when given enough thought. You seem to be reading more into the wedding story than what is there. We don't know why the one guy at the wedding wasn't wearing the proper clothes, or why that even matters except to show how petty the king is. We didn't need Jesus to tell us his god was petty, though. This is the same guy that had a man stoned to death for picking up sticks on the wrong day of the week, after all.

There's another nice story for you. We don't know why the dude was picking up sticks that day. Not supposed to work on the sabbath, but maybe he didn't think gathering kindling counted as work. Or maybe he'd been too busy to clean his yard the rest of the week, from doing real work. Doesn't matter I guess, because he gets killed, and the topic quickly changes to clothing.

It's hard to say which stories are meant to be literal, and which metaphorical. I guess the standard could be, if the literal interpretation of a story makes god look like a psychopath, then it's a metaphor.