Infinite Possibilities-- Limited Probabilities

Hi! I'm an agnostic atheist and secular humanist. The title pretty much sums up my outlook on reality. My obligation is to rational skepticism. You shouldn’t fall in love with your principles because then you run the risk of being blind to their flaws and neglecting to modify them when they prove false.

I am aware that there are a lot of atheist blogs out there, so I'm going to try to make this one different from the others. I'm going to skip the rants that you've heard a million times and I'm going to skip making fun of religion because you can find plenty of that elsewhere. The goal is to make more positive than negative arguments if possible.

I may state things as facts, but all is subject to change as new evidence emerges. I enjoy playing with ideas without necessarily believing them. I also like questioning and generally prodding at other people's opinions without necessarily disagreeing with them

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Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor

 

Now that I’ve finished the Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible), some observations that didn’t fit into the reviews:

  • I started reading the Bible in order to understand why people believe in Christianity. I figured it had to be pretty powerful in order to convince so many people to believe in such crazy things. After reading the first five books, I am more confused than when I started. Do Christians even read the bible? I’m starting to think that the book is just a prop and the true heart of Christianity is elsewhere.
  • Deuteronomy chapter 13. I can’t think of the words to describe how I feel about it, but look it up. If you’re a fellow atheist you’ll probably understand.
  • My parents dragged me to church almost every week for the first fourteen years of my life. I retain information well, so reading the Bible feels like remembering a dream. But with the addition of all the sexual things and the atrocities. It was like watching Oklahoma for the first time as an adult, except Oklahoma improves when you understand the sexual humor, the Bible goes from being a fable to being a horror story in the worst sense. 
  • I was not prepared for the level of incoherence I found. It reminds me of My Immortal or Legolas by Laura, except no one takes those seriously. I know that some Christians claim that evolution can’t possibly be true because it doesn’t make sense to them, so I can’t claim that the Bible can’t be true just because it doesn’t make sense to me, but…
  • The point of view is very third-person limited to Moses except for Deuteronomy, which is largely first-person from Moses point of view. Moses’ character arc is relatively consistent I guess, but the others? I can’t even tell what their motives are. They seem to change personalities every couple chapters. This, of course, supports the documentary hypothesis. But the thing is, even if the Bible has been reshuffled and edited, they did not do an acceptable job of it. Stories are often changed and adjusted. Take BBC’s Sherlock. BBC’s Sherlock is taking original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and adjusting them to fit modern times, as well as a new medium, and it is wonderful. But imagine if Stephen Moffat had adjusted Sherlock’s story-line and completely neglected to change that of Watson, Moriarty, Irene Adler, or any of the other characters. It would fail, BBC would probably fire Moffat and not even film it. So if the Bible isn’t even up to the standards of British television (which is not to say that British television has low standards, it’s a lot better than American television), why is it considered perfect by so many people? 
  • I thought that spotting inconsistencies in the Bible would be like spotting continuity errors in a movie- requiring luck and cleverness. But no, they’re obvious.
  • Of course I saw all the atheist blogs talking about how the Bible is incoherent, violent, etc. but I honestly thought they were exaggerating until I saw it for myself.
  • I just want to know what goes through Christian’s heads when they read the Bible. I don’t understand how they can read it without seeing how crazy it is. Reading this thing is doing a lot to solidify my atheism. I mean, if anyone can come up with a good argument or evidence for the existence of a god, I’ll listen to them with an open mind, but they could only convince me to be a deist, I’ll never be Christian again.
  • I’m still going to continue with this project. Maybe I’ll make another of these observation posts when I reach the end of the history books, which will be after 12 more books.

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    honestly, the dark gray on light gray thing… it has to stop… without impeccable vision it blurs into one glob, hurts the...
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    Just one thing. Why would you read the Jewish text to understand Christianity? I understand that the Bible has these...
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