Despite the fact that the Bible is hopelessly boring, the characters have no depth to them, and many of the stories challenge human credibility and morality the Bible remains the bestselling book of all time. The History Channel recently capitalized on the books popularity with much success. Now they are planning on creating a sequel mini-series.
Tag Bible
I recently saw the new Superman film, “Man of Steel” and the religious media is ablaze with talk about how the film was “filled” with Christian references. To be honest, I really didn’t see any Christian references in the film… at least not any more than one can pull out of any film if you were intent on finding them.
I recently started working part time in retail and I can foresee some issues that might come up and I want to hear your opinions on them. For starters, I see a lot of my fellow coworkers wearing religious necklaces. Should I wear atheistic jewelry?
{EAV:c6d7b7430df44c04}
The Bible contains a lot of extremely silly and ridiculous claims and unless you are a diehard Bible literalist, that should be pretty obvious. When religious believers come face to face with these silly and ridiculous claims of their religion, they typically fall back to the old, “that part is a metaphor” card. Let’s examine that briefly.
For starters, I would like to inquire about this so called “metaphor.” What exactly is the claim a metaphor for, exactly? I mean when Jesus says that it is better to pluck out your eye and chop off your hand rather than to steal or feel lust, he prefaces it why saying that it is better to lose these body parts than to have one’s soul tortured for all eternity. So what exactly is that a metaphor for? Maybe that wasn’t one of those metaphor parts of the Bible?
There is an atheist meme that states that any part of the Bible that contradicts science or is just blatantly ridiculous is obviously a metaphor. Basically, this meme is making light of the ever sliding scale of biblical credibility.
The old “metaphor” card seems to be the new “God of the Gaps” excuse. It seems that as time goes by and our scientific understanding of the universe grows, there also seem to be more and more metaphors in the Bible. Funny how that works out.
Praise be Christian Piatt! One of my fellow contributors on Huffington Post is the very liberal Christian, Christian Piatt. In the past, his articles almost seem to be atheistic. His newest article takes on the same article I took on yesterday. But more than that, his article gave me an interesting thought that I want to share today.
There was a recent article on Huffington Post about whether Christians should be watching Game of Thrones. This to me is just another example of Christians being afraid of fiction.
I’m pretty excited because on Saturday I’m going to the Wizard World Comic Book/Sci-Fi convention. This got me thinking about the link between science fiction fans and atheism.
I made a comment on the Huffington Post Religion’s Facebook page the other day that I didn’t believe Jesus actually existed. Now one can debate whether my belief is valid or not, but that isn’t what one Christian chose to do. No, one particular Christian decided to lash out in hate toward me instead.
A few years ago, the now Pope emeritus wanted to create a “dialog” with atheists… who aren’t strident in their lack of belief. Only, “noble atheists” were invited and to the Pope, that means that no atheists who are actually critical of the Catholic Church were welcome. Now Catholic bloggers have taken up a similar call for a “dialog.”
Last night, I was a guest lecturer at a community college sociology class. The subject was atheism and secular humanism. I started out talking about the beginnings of religion and at one point outlined how the Old Testament came together. One fundamentalist Christian in the class questioned my account and well she should have because it is pretty damning to her fundamentalist beliefs and because I think it is important to question everything.