Some­times I like to think that I could give up writ­ing about, or talk­ing about, athe­ism. But that would mean ignor­ing a bunch of inter­est­ing things on the Internet.

I’m drawn to some posts like a moth to a flame. Per­haps it’s because I like argu­ment. Per­haps it’s because I like truth. Each of these points below is prob­a­bly wor­thy of sev­eral indi­vid­ual posts. But I’m going to con­dense them for the sake of not bor­ing peo­ple who are here for other reasons.

Every time I read an athe­ist blog I leave feel­ing frus­trated. Mostly because they make the same spu­ri­ous and gen­er­ally mis­in­formed claims they accuse Chris­tians (and other the­ists) of mak­ing against them.

While I’m sure many of these claims are true in the expe­ri­ence of the peo­ple mak­ing them — that doesn’t mean they’re inher­ently true.

Here goes.

1. Read­ing the whole Bible will not neces­si­tate the rejec­tion of God
   I read this one all the time. The lat­est instance was on this post Con­trary to the pop­u­lar belief held by athe­ists my life would be a lot eas­ier if I wasn’t con­vinced God existed. It is in fact pos­si­ble to read the Bible and gain a deeper appre­ci­a­tion of God. That’s why peo­ple go to Bible Col­lege and end up in Chris­t­ian ministry.If an athe­ist wants to cri­tique the Bible there’s plenty of more ratio­nal things they might say. It is pos­si­ble that the God pic­tured in the Bible might look like a God you don’t want to wor­ship — assum­ing you get stuck on the things that hap­pen in the Old Tes­ta­ment. But the Bible does not con­tain con­tra­dic­tions that make “rea­son­able” peo­ple reject it.I sus­pect we all approach the Bible with a par­tic­u­lar philo­soph­i­cal bias and this is likely to be confirmed.

2. The Bible was not put together by a bunch of power hun­gry men seek­ing to serve their own inter­ests…
   Nor was it con­sis­tently rein­ter­preted and retrans­lated over time in order to suit agen­das. Any such trans­la­tions have been weeded out and cur­rent trans­la­tions used by major denom­i­na­tions are based on the inter­pre­ta­tions of pan­els of experts in the orig­i­nal languages.If an athe­ist wants to real­is­ti­cally cri­tique the men who framed the core doc­trines of Chris­tian­ity or picked the books in the Canon the worst that can be said about them was that they were deeply deluded and sort to present a con­sis­tent case for their beliefs. To sug­gest ulte­rior motives is a gross mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any his­tor­i­cal facts based entirely on prejudice.If, on the other hand, an athe­ist wants to make smug dis­missals of the text based on their own assump­tions that’s fine. But don’t expect your asser­tion to be accepted as con­vinc­ing evi­dence by those of us who have read the Bible…

   I agree that you don’t need to read the entire Bible to know that it is a cob­bled together mish­mash of myths, biased his­tory, and poetry from an ancient nomadic peo­ple that didn’t know much about the universe.

3. Sug­gest­ing that the Bible should be under­stood in con­text is not “wig­gling” on the Christian’s behalf.
   Nor is it dis­hon­est. It’s the way Chris­tians, ortho­dox, Bible believ­ing Chris­tians, have been doing things since the early days. Believ­ing that the Bible should be under­stood in its con­text is not a new idea. Nor is it “lib­eral”. In fact, it’s the way Jesus approached the Bible (when quot­ing the Old Testament).Disagreement over inter­pre­ta­tion does not con­tra­dict any­thing the Bible says (in fact the Bible pre­dicts it). Ques­tions of tex­tual inter­pre­ta­tion are not sim­ple and it’s likely that there will be some dis­agree­ment. If you pull ran­dom verses out of their con­text and present them (or a series of sim­i­larly plucked verses) as your proof text it is anal­o­gous to a Chris­t­ian sug­gest­ing that Hitler’s eugen­ics pro­gram is the nat­ural out­work­ing of Darwin’s The­ory of Evolution.

   Chris­tians will con­tinue to claim that I’m tak­ing it out of con­text, mis­in­ter­pret­ing it, or just out­right lying. I have seen this hap­pen over and over again with Bible-savvy athe­ists who were in debates. These peo­ple are so made up in their mind that no amount of rea­son will work.

4. Chris­tians shouldn’t keep push­ing the Bible as though it’s evi­dence for God
   Why not? If God exists (which Chris­tians believe) then the Bible seems like a nat­ural way for evi­dence to be pro­vided across mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions. This sort of think­ing misses the point of Chris­tian­ity completely. 

5. Every posi­tion athe­ists take on the Bible is a result of faith, bias and what they’ve been taught
   This by itself does not inval­i­date their beliefs. That’s how we all come to con­clu­sions and deci­sions. But to dis­miss Chris­t­ian inter­pre­ta­tions of bits of the Bible on the basis of indoc­tri­na­tion while blithely dis­miss­ing the whole thing as a fairy­tale is to cre­ate false dichotomy. Just because some­one has been “brain­washed” it doesn’t mean what they believe is wrong. And just because some­one claims to come at some­thing in an open minded fash­ion using their own rules of engage­ment doesn’t make their con­clu­sions correct.

Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

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