Sure, I think everyone agrees that some wisdom is to be found in ancient texts. Along with a whole crock of false claims.

When you say you believe in God, you are making claims which are unproven, such as recurrence of souls, heaven, and hell. You also are making claims that are verifiably false, such as Earth being 5000 years old, Noah saving species in a boat etc. Finally, you are choosing to ignore a lot of harmful dogmas in these texts, such as homophobia or killing of non believers.

All this because a 2000 year old book says so.

Yeah, but in that case you have to concede that the Bible is not miraculous inspired, so why is it any better than other books such as the Vedas or the Iliad? This is the whole problem in the foundation of religion.

It also shows the blindsight of progressive Christians: they're following a religion that at the foundation goes against things they believe. For example, new testament writers say that Jesus came to save from the sin of Adam, but if no Adam and Eve existed, the explanation does't work anymore.

What does it even mean its true? It's so convoluted and inprecise that most of the texts require interpretation and works only as high level metaphors. This claim is as meaningless as calling it the good book.

I think where people went wrong with this is that what at the heart of it people really want to mean is that the Bible is something they use to base their life around. Then other people come along and tell them that science is what they base their lives around. And instead of realizing that the two are different and there is inherent value in both, they responded by saying, "Well, my Bible is science."

At their heart, religious texts are accumulated wisdom that has held up over many generations. It is different from science in its ability to predict the world, but fairly similar in the way it can guide personal experience and expectations within the world.

Agreed. This is the part that really gets under my skin… its been my understanding for most of my life that the bible specifically is full of allegory, not history. Yet, so many many of the “believers” I encounter don’t know what “allegory” means. The bible is their literal truth!

Tbh, knowing this isn’t helpful. It somehow makes me more paralyzed in dealing with literal believers. It always feels like they know they’re full of shit, but won’t admit it. There’s a disingenuousness to it that very deeply bothers me.

>magical fairie text

The Bible was not written by magical fairies, but by regular people.

>it's not a single homogenous group

True, but most of the teachings remain the same throughout the different denominations. Sexual immorality is condemned constantly throughout the Bible, both in old and new testaments.

>are they not allowed to evolve and improve over time

Yes, Christianity has evolved over time. If by improve, you mean turning things that are sins into things that are not, then I will disagree and say that you can not do that. You can not simply go against God's word. If God said that something is a sin, you can't just reply back that it's 2019 and He should get with the times.

sigh

you've clearly never dealt with fundies. I was raised by people who taught me that literally every word was divine and that the entire bible is a historical document (there are millions of these idiots across the globe). These people will bend over backwards to explain to you how the wholesale murder of babies was totally justified. They'll even do it with a straight face.

You and I both agree that the Bible is no different than Harry Potter, and God happens to be a bad guy in the first half.

There are millions of people who live their lives believing that the entire bible is a 100% historical document. Having unshackled myself from these morons, this topic can be a bit of a sore point for me ;)

You could say the same thing about the Iliad or Aeneid, or the Arabian Nights, or pretty much any long-standing work of literature.

I'm not a Christian either, but I love the Bible - it's a book of great beauty and wisdom, and a foundation / moral guide for many of the world's great civilizations. If that isn't reason enough for you, then nothing will be.

"In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness."

I've never understood how anyone could believe this. Every single book of the Bible has lots of ancient versions, none of which are exactly the same as any other.

Yeah.. My personal introduction to Dawkins was actually some TV documentary he made that covered about the same topics as the God Delusion, then I read the book itself. Only after that I read the Selfish Gene, which IMHO philosophically was a much more interesting book.

I did sort-of follow the "new atheism" movement for a time, the "four horsemen" and all that [1]. But it seemed to pretty quickly spiral into the cringy culture war thing you mention, so I stopped.

[1] I don't agree with many of the things Christopher Hitchens said, but damn he was a good orator and public debater.

While Christians have usually viewed some parts of the Bible literally (though not the same parts for different Christians in different times and places), the idea that the Bible is entirely to be understood literally (and the related idea that the Bible is the entire basis for Christianity) is a relatively new doctrine, belonging to a small (globally, though more prominent numerically and, even moreso, politically, in the US) subset of Christianity. (As the Bible directly contradicts itself on basic things like sequences of events in several places -- even within the first couple chapters of Genesis -- its also an internally inconsistent view, so its hard to see the alternative as a cop-out, since its the only possible internally-consistent approach.)

Reading the Bible had the opposite effect on me. It made me into a Christian. It's so Holy and so truthful. It's exact. I've never read anything like it.

The difference is that you've answered every question as a probability of some unknown, which is just not something that most people do.

> I am pretty sure that most of the stories in, for example, the Bible were always meant to be read as metaphorical anyway.

That seems like a hot take. The bible being intended to be metaphorical seems unlikely. Especially given how much of it is just a straight historical log of things that happened. The stories were certainly embellished to convey certain takeaways, but it seems unlikely that you as the consumer were supposed to read past the embellishment. Retconning interpretations of things to be figurative because they no longer hold up against irrefutable science these days doesn't mean the text was intended to be figurative.

I think this may be too reductionist. The Bible contradicts itself on a lot of topics (ie, the age-old dichotomy between the fire-and-brimstone Old Testament God vs the turn-the-other-cheek New Testament teachings). It's hard to reconcile God telling the Israelites to murder the women and children of Canaan with "love thy neighbor as thyself" unless you adopt a pretty cold-hearted standard for who your neighbors are.

That's the problem with religious fundamentalism: there's text available to support all sorts of terrible stuff.

I don't see why that's a meaningful comparison. I'm inclined to say, so what?

First off, I'm not religious. Second off, this kind of personal attack is not welcome here.

As I already said, every scholar of religious studies finds the books by Hitchens, Dawkins, etc. to be amusing at best. I can't educate you on the academic study of religion in a HN comment. If you are actually interested in reading criticism of such people and not just bashing non-atheistic people, I suggest looking into comparative religion and religious studies.

I have studied the Bible and other world religions for over a decade in higher education. Have multiple years of Greek and Hebrew education, and includes Aramaic, and Latin. I can tell you MOST people don't really care what the Bible says and most just care of how thy feel and/or think. Most things in history of Christianity have very little to do with what the Bible says. (I was working on a PhD in Historical Theology which is the nerdiest of focuses when it comes to Theology.

If people ever want to have a discussion and are Christians it is hysterical to me to talk scripture with them and realize they will just twist something out of the air and consider themselves proven. In the exact terms of "Global Warming" which I was speaking about there are zero scriptures that supports the idea that it doesn't matter what people do or don't do with global warming but for those working to protect the earth it is in the Bible. So the funny thing is that these Christians are so strongly opposed to the science of Global Warming against the Bible they claim they are fighting scientist for.

How can you go around telling people what they can and can't believe? What does it mean, in your opinion, to "be a Christian"?

> But at that point you can just base your worldview on Lord of the Rings or whatever you want because its your morals driving the interpretation, not the other way around.

You say this like it's a bad thing, it isn't, but in any case religion doesn't work that way. A Church of Tolkien hasn't been around for hundreds of years to be passed down from generation to generation.

It might be logically consistent to mock one religion or another in this manner, but it isn't kind, and it certainly isn't going to change people's minds.

For many religious people, family is the most important aspect of their lives, and for better or worse religion has woven its way into the fabric of family bonds.

I appreciate the deep and sincere regard for rationality and science that atheist viewpoints bring to the table, but I think the more evangelistic expressions fail to appreciate the wildly interesting tapestry of traditions that are the religions of the world.

People will believe whatever they want, that's never going to change. Others might feel they don't have that freedom. Why waste time trying to change minds about something as immutable as religion, of all things? Better to build up than to tear down. We're all stuck on the same planet, might as well make some friends while we're here.

I like the idea of a religion in which "this religion is bullshit" is considered dogma. Bokononism toys with the idea, although arguably that all goes wrong anyway..