Best books debunking Christianity

[vulcanlogician]

This is why pagan heros often struggle against those gods, or chart their own nobler (or baser) course in contrast to the wishes of the gods..why they are described as having done evil things...and echoes of this can be seen in the OT as well, even in the name "Israel".  Even by the manufacture of the NT, judeo-christianity had still not doiverced itself entirely from pagan roots, narratives, and themes...nor have christians today.

Sin (and redemption) as conceptualized by christians is remarkably similar to miasma.

Your assessment here reminds me of Jung and Joseph Campbell, whose work I find fascinating.The miasma comment channels Nietzsche. Also a fav of mine. IDK the etymology of the word "Israel" but it sounds like an eye-opener. 

You may be at least partially correct about the work of Plato. I'd have to go back and re-read since I'm drawing largely on my memory of study I did a long time ago. I would be very reluctant to accept the notion that any of the dialog is actually Socratic. Plato seems to have fictionalized Socrates to present his own philosophy.

It would be fruitless to splice scripture to see which vision of God is correct. Monotheism forces a single God to play many roles.

By the way, I fully understand that Socrates is a fictionalized mouthpiece of Plato. But his Early works are considered to be more "Socratic" than his Middle and Late works. In his Early works, Plato is often seen to be a "preserver" of Socratic wisdom. By the time we get to the Republic he is obviously developing his own ideas, merely using Socrates as an instrument, a character, a literary device. In his Late works, Plato stops using Socrates as a main character and replaces him with the Wanderer-- perhaps out of respect for the fact that Plato's ideas are now distinctly Plato's, and bear little resemblance to those of Socrates.

Personally, I hate the idea of "Platonism." But I love Plato. Scholars, in their quest to differentiate Plato from his famous mentor, have presented a rather anti-Socratic version of Plato, whereby Socrates is merely an asker of questions and Plato is an answerer of them. This is the wrong way to read Plato. 

As Julia Annas puts it: 

"Plato very much wants not to present his own position for the reader to accept on Plato's authority. He was aware of philosophers who wrote authoritarian treatises, telling their readers what to think about a number of large and important matters. Plato has very substantial and strongly held views on a number of issues; that is why he is so prominent in Western philosophy. But he also sees himself as a follower of Socrates, who wrote nothing, but examined the views of others, trying to get them to understand for themselves. Plato wants the reader to come to understand what is said for himself or herself."

Taking this into account, the term "Platonism" is something of a misnomer.