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Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them)
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48 Reddit comments about Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them):

u/crayonleague · 40 pointsr/atheism

Bart Ehrman - Jesus Interrupted (2010)

In this deliciously satisfying book, the author, a New Testament scholar, carefully reviews and assesses the New Testament with a detailed and extremely thorough analysis of the figure we call Jesus. This is not a rant, not an attack on Christianity, this is an objective and critical analysis of the New Testament, showing how the entire Jesus myth and indeed, all of Christianity is a purposely-designed fabrication rife with contradictions, inaccuracies, and sometimes outright falsehoods.

John Loftus - Why I Became an Atheist (2008)

If you want a one-stop total critique of Christianity, this is the book you're looking for. The author is a former Christian apologist turned extremely angry and prolific atheist. In this book Loftus attacks the full span of Christianity, addressing the philosophical arguments against theism, the historical incompatibilities and inaccuracies of the Bible, and the contradictions between creationism and modern science, and throughout it all is an undercurrent of personal experience as Loftus explains his own deconversion from devout evangelicalism to enraged atheist.

Concerning atheism.

These are for the people going "Well, I'm an atheist. Now what?" There's more to atheism than eating babies and posting fake facebook conversations on r/atheism. There's much more truth, beauty, and value in a universe without a celestial supervisor, where humans are free to make our own purposes and dictate our own paths. Thinking for yourself and recognizing the natural wonder of the universe is far greater than the false consolation any religion can provide you. These books show how.

Michael Martin - Atheism: A Philosophical Justification (1989)

In this book, Martin attempts a two-pronged defense of atheism: first by attacking theistic arguments regarding the implausibility of morality and purpose without God, second by defending against attacks specifically on atheism. In such a manner he makes a strong case for both negative and positive atheism. Though extremely dated, this book is a classic and a must-read for any atheist.

Erik J. Wielenberg - Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe (2005)

In this book, Wielenberg advances a naturalist philosophy and addresses the problem of nontheistic morality as weakly espoused by the likes of Dostoevsky and C.S. Lewis. First he challenges the claims of theistic morality, next he advances naturalistic ethics and displays how theological justification is unnecessary for a good and moral life. Concepts such as intrinsic morality, inherent human tendencies such as charity and altruism, and the idea of moral obligations are all addressed.

Richard Carrier - Sense and Goodness Without God (2005)

In this book, Richard Carrier, perhaps most well-known as one of the major modern debunkers of the Jesus myth, continues the trend of expanding metaphysical naturalism, but this is a more complex and thorough work covering the full spectrum of a developed worldview, addressing nearly every topic beyond just morality, and presents a complete philosophical outlook on life that is easy to comprehend and evaluate. A solid starting point for the newly atheist.

My personal picks.

Now, since this is my list after all, and after typing up all of that, I think I've earned the right to make my own recommendations. These are books that I think people should read that don't necessarily have anything to do with atheism.

Markos Moulitsas - American Taliban (2010)

This book reads like a collection of loosely-related blog entries, some of them written by angry teenagers, and Moulitsas himself is no philosopher or professor, but is still an important read for those of you who haven't been paying attention. In this book, the founder of Daily Kos draws the extremely obvious and transparent similarities between the religious right of America, and the Islamofascists across the pond, and displays how modern conservatism has largely been hijacked and/or replaced by a complex political machine intent on maintaining the power of a small group of white, male, Christian elite.

Chris Hedges - American Fascists (2007)

Okay, time for a more sophisticated take on the issue than Daily Kos stuff. Those of you who plan on staying and fighting in the US rather than simply getting the fuck out while you still can need this book. With a critical and objective eye, Hedges displays the dark and tumultuous underbelly of America and shows how an extremely powerful and well-organized coalition of dominionists is slowly taking over the country and seeking to transform it into a theocratic state. Those of you who are moderate Christians and similarly despise the lunatic fringe of Christians should also read this book. Hedges analyzes this Christian Right movement, allied with totalitarianism and a denial of reality, that has declared a jihad (or a "teahad", if you're a Tea Partier) on secularism and even on Christianity itself, utilizing religion for its darkest and most sinister purpose - committing cruelty and intolerance upon others in the name of divine supervision.

CJ Werleman - God Hates You, Hate Him Back (2009)

This is one of my favorite books and is a great book to unwind with after a critical look at Christianity. The biggest problem with the Bible is not the contradictions, the outright falsehoods, or even the blatantly made-up and ridiculous bullshit about magic and miracles and supernatural nonsense - it's the fact that, taking it all at face value, the God described in the Bible is the single most despicable and terrifying fictional villain ever imagined by humanity. This is a character that seems to actively despise mankind, and in this book, Werleman shows why with a hilarious and thorough analysis of the Bible. This book reads like Monty Python and is just as funny - not meant to be taken seriously of course unless you're a Biblical literalist, but still a great read.


Well, that's all I got. This list took about half a day to compile and is itself also woefully inadequate, there's quite a bit of books I haven't gotten around to reading yet. But, it should be much more sufficient than the current r/atheism reading lists and I've done my best to include the most recent works. If you have any books to add that you feel are noteworthy, please feel free to post them. I hope this list can help many people in their understanding of philosophy and atheism.

u/WastedP0tential · 20 pointsr/DebateAnAtheist

You wanted to be part of the intelligentsia, but throughout your philosophical journey, you always based your convictions only on authority and tradition instead of on evidence and arguments. Don't you realize that this is the epitome of anti – intellectualism?

It is correct that the New Atheists aren't the pinnacle of atheistic thought and didn't contribute many new ideas to the academic debate of atheism vs. theism or religion. But this was never their goal, and it is also unnecessary, since the academic debate is already over for many decades. If you want to know why the arguments for theism are all complete nonsense and not taken seriously anymore, why Christianity is wrong just about everything and why apologists like Craig are dishonest charlatans who make a living out of fooling people, your reading list shouldn't be New Atheists, but rather something like this:

Colin Howson – Objecting to God

George H. Smith – Atheism: The Case Against God

Graham Oppy – Arguing about Gods

Graham Oppy – The Best Argument Against God

Herman Philipse – God in the Age of Science

J. L. Mackie – The Miracle of Theism

J. L. Schellenberg – The Wisdom to Doubt

Jordan Sobel – Logic and Theism

Nicholas Everitt – The Non-Existence of God

Richard Gale – On the Nature and Existence of God

Robin Le Poidevin – Arguing for Atheism

Stewart Elliott Guthrie – Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion

Theodore Drange – Nonbelief & Evil



[Avigor Shinan – From Gods to God: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends] (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0827609086)

Bart Ehrman – The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings

Bart Ehrman – Jesus, Interrupted

Bart Ehrman – Misquoting Jesus

Burton L. Mack – Who Wrote the New Testament?

Helmut Koester – Ancient Christian Gospels

John Barton, John Muddiman – The Oxford Bible Commentary

John Dominic Crossan – Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography

Karen Armstrong – A History of God

Mark Smith – The Early History of God

Randel McCraw Helms – Who Wrote the Gospels?

Richard Elliott Friedman – Who Wrote the Bible?

Robert Bellah – Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age

Robert Walter Funk – The Gospel of Jesus

u/[deleted] · 18 pointsr/Christianity

"You can't use the Bible to prove the Bible!"

You attempt to debunk this argument by pointing out that the Bible is a collection of books. You say that you use John's testimony to corroborate claims in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Well, you can't exactly use Luke or Matthew to corroborate Mark's claims, because Luke and Matthew used Mark as a source. These are not three eyewitnesses writing independent biographies of Jesus; Luke/Matthew literally copy parts of Mark, often using the exact same words in the exact same order.

So, imagine we're in the court of law and I call a witness to the stand. We'll call the witness "Mark." Mark gives his testimony. Then, after hearing Mark's testimony, another two people—Matthew and Luke—come up to the stand and parrot what Mark said. Have they corroborated Mark's testimony, by parroting? No, they haven't.

Now, the even bigger problem is that Mark isn't even a witness:

>...all the Gospels were written anonymously, and none of the writers claims to be an eyewitness. Names are attached to the titles of the Gospels (“the Gospel according to Matthew”), but these titles are later additions to the Gospels, provided by editors and scribes to inform readers who the editors thought were the authorities behind the different versions. That the titles are not original to the Gospels themselves should be clear upon some simple reflection. Whoever wrote Matthew did not call it “The Gospel according to Matthew.” The persons who gave it that title are telling you who, in their opinion, wrote it. Authors never title their books “according to.”
>
>Moreover, Matthew’s Gospel is written completely in the third person, about what “they”—Jesus and the disciples—were doing, never about what “we”—Jesus and the rest of us—were doing. Even when this Gospel narrates the event of Matthew being called to become a disciple, it talks about “him,” not about “me.” Read the account for yourself (Matthew 9:9). There’s not a thing in it that would make you suspect the author is talking about himself.
>
>With John it is even more clear. At the end of the Gospel the author says of the “Beloved Disciple”: “This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true” (John 21:24). Note how the author differentiates between his source of information, “the disciple who testifies,” and himself: “we know that his testimony is true.” He/we: this author is not the disciple. He claims to have gotten some of his information from the disciple.
>
>As for the other Gospels, Mark was said to be not a disciple but a companion of Peter, and Luke was a companion of Paul, who also was not a disciple. Even if they had been disciples, it would not guarantee the objectivity or truthfulness of their stories. But in fact none of the writers was an eyewitness, and none of them claims to be (Jesus, Interrupted, pp. 103-104).

So, we have 3 Gospels written by people who never knew Jesus. These Gospels were written decades after Jesus' death. Matthew and Luke copied off of Mark. [NOTE: If you're an eyewitness, you'd write your own account in your own words; not copy someone else.] And then we have John, writing as late as a century after Jesus' death.

If I write a biography of Adolf Hitler, in 2019, am I 'corroborating' what other people have already written about him? No, and this is the reason we cannot say the author of John is 'corroborating' the Synoptic Gospels: He was writing about an individual he never knew, who died nearly a century prior to his writing.

Can we use 1 or 2 Chronicles to corroborate other books in the Old Testament? No, not really. As Wikipedia explains: "Much of the content of Chronicles is a repetition of material from other books of the Bible, from Genesis to Kings." Re-writing what somebody else already wrote is not "corroborating."

Which other book and/or author in the Bible confirms the authenticity of Paul's letters? Nobody does, and as it turns out, quite a few of Paul's letters are forgeries.

The Bible is a collection of books. You're right about that. But the Bible is NOT a collection of independent reports from 66 eyewitnesses who are all describing the same events, with everyone's testimony mutually supporting everyone else's testimony.

When you ask Christians why they trust the Bible, many will point to 2 Timothy 3:16-17. In doing this, they are assuming the trustworthiness of the Bible in their attempt to justify belief in the trustworthiness of the Bible. This is called begging the question, and it's a logical fallacy. This is why atheists are known to say: "You can't use the Bible to prove the Bible!"

EDIT: Yay, gold! Thank you :)

u/RxDealer · 7 pointsr/atheism

I always recommend "Jesus Interrupted". It has a non-harsh approach to showing inconsistencies in the Bible and specifically the gospels. The author is a former fundamentalist Christian scholar turned atheist.

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Interrupted-Revealing-Hidden-Contradictions/dp/0061173940

If you give them something to aggressive, they will just shut down immediately.

u/JesusHMontgomery · 6 pointsr/exchristian

So, first, and I realize this isn't exactly comforting, but there will be a freak out time no matter what. There will be some time where you feel like the world is ending, and no matter what you do, it will still feel that way. It was that way for me (though we aren't the same, so maybe your experience will differ): every night, up late, praying and sweating and crying. Is there someone in the real world you can talk to? Having a meat body to grab onto for comfort is huge. Also, I wish I'd known about Reddit (not sure if it existed yet) when I went through my biz. This subreddit would have been amazing.

Ironically, part of what pushed me out of Christianity was learning more about it: being really on fire for it. When you learn church history from the church, it's very skewed and specialized, but when you step out of that and examine it from an objective historical point of view, things get crazy. And more calming.

In case you missed it elsewhere in this thread, John Shelby Spong was very comforting for me.

I think A History of God gets mentioned on this sub at least once a day. It's not an easy read, but immensely illuminating as it shows that, essentially, the guy we call god with a capital G is really just a lesser Canaanite deity worshiped by an insane shepherd. But because of Abraham's weird life, all of western history plays out.

It's been awhile since I read Jesus Interrupted, but if I remember correctly, it's about how what the historical Jesus probably said (because we can't possibly know) has been manipulated by history to satisfy different political goals.

Zealot tries to recreate to the best of the author's ability Jesus' world, the philosophies he grew up with, and the philosophies he most likely would have taught. Some parts of this read like an amazing novel, and it has some crazy historical stuff. It really blew my mind.

I read Pagan Christianity right at the start of my dark night. I've mentioned it before, and it confirmed a lot of my suspicions about Christianity actually being fancied up paganism (Zealot discusses that a little as well). It's written from very much a contemporary Christian perspective, so it has some errors that drive me nuts: i.e. Jesus almost certainly wouldn't have ever meant he and god were literally the same, because no half-serious Jewish person of any era would assert that.

It's stupid late where I am (and my toddler already makes sure I'm constantly sleep deprived), so the last thing I'll leave you with:

When I was going through my "dark night of the soul," I still considered myself Christian afterward for quite awhile. It's just that the kind of Christian I felt I had become was so radically different from what I had been that it warranted night sweats and crying. Since then, each progressive deconversion has been less and less painful by magnitudes. But while I was going through it, I kept thinking about a quote in some book I'd read about how, "God made you with the brain you have, the talents you have, the interests you have, and the curiosity you have: pursue that and glorify god." I reasoned (and I feel this is pretty solid) that if god were real, he'd have to be so outside our everyday experience that no one is getting it right; because if he weren't that alien to us, if he was even slightly comprehensible, he couldn't be god. And if god were real, he'd (it?) know how incomprehensible he is, and unless he were insane or evil, he couldn't possibly be just in punishing us for doing whatever we thought was best and in good conscience. The process was still painful, but it definitely made me feel better about ripping off that hairy band-aid.

If you don't already, I'd recommend writing as you go through all this. If you can stomach it, put it some place public, like a blog, so people can bear witness.

Dammit. I said I was going to bed 20 minutes ago.

Sorry-but-not-sorry for the wall of text.

u/sp1ke0kill3r · 6 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

Bart D Ehrman Misquoting Jesus and Jesus Interrupted would be a valuable place to start.
There are also some videos on youtube of related lectures or debates.

Edit, I would add Dale Allison's book, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus.

u/NukeThePope · 6 pointsr/atheism

I think you're being unrealistic about this. As a first-order approximation, to counter all extant religious beliefs you'd need an amount of text equal to the sum of the texts behind those beliefs; i.e. you'd need one 1000-page book to thoroughly refute the Bible, one for the Upanishads, one for the Koran and so on. And that hasn't yet started talking about philosophy or sociology or the wealth of information that science brings to the table.

Realistically, an author of an atheist reference needs to restrict his focus or risk creating a work that is too big for even a consortium of authors to write and too big for any normal reader to read and use.

Once you do that, you discover it's been done before and is constantly in the process of being done.

  • Look at Dawkins' seminal introductory work, The God Delusion as a starter.
  • A more philosophical/scientific outlook is in Dan Dennett's Breaking the Spell.
  • Sam Harris devotes a whole book, The Moral Landscape to a discussion of what morals could work like if not defined by religious dogma.
  • In The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking explains how the universe didn't need a god to come about.
  • The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan is a classic lamenting the gullibility of the public regarding supernatural phenomena.
  • Bart Ehrman has spent much of his life writing a whole series of books, such as Jesus, Interrupted to show how the Bible is inconsistent and a haphazard collection of human errors from antiquity.
  • David Fitzgerald devotes a whole book, Nailed, just to explaining why the central figure of Christianity most likely never existed.
  • Richard Carrier explains in Sense and Goodness Without God one possible world view for atheists, Metaphysical Naturalism. Many others are possible!

    In theory, your book would have to combine all these and more. In practice, what people do is read and recommend books like these, and then if they discover a question they feel has not been adequately addressed or that they have special insight on, they write yet another one.

    ----

    EDIT: I guess a collection of important atheist classics would not be complete without Darwin's The Origin of Species - this link is to the complete book text of the First Edition, online. Not an atheist work in and of itself but the ramifications of Darwin's theory blasted a gaping big hole in the Biblical concept of creation and Biblical inerrancy - perhaps even more so than the Copernican (among others) discovery of heliocentricity.
u/EsquilaxHortensis · 6 pointsr/DebateReligion

To be honest -- and I promise that I'm making this as not-a-copout as I can -- my feeling is that if you're even taking the position that the entirety of the Bible is authentic and accurate, there's such a gulf of understanding between us that trying to bridge it would be well outside of the scope of a few posts.

I'll try to summarize as best I can, here.

Old Testament: The Torah was not given to Moses by God. Large portions of "God's laws" existed in other cultures before even the Jews claim that they were given to Moses. Like, word-for-word, verse for verse, verbatim. Sometimes with minor changes. The Law is clearly not entirely divine in origin, if any of it is (personally, I think I see the hand of God in places in Deuteronomy, but I'm not sure). Similarly, a great deal of the OT is founded upon pre-existing myths from other cultures in Mesopotamia. We're able to discern several different agents at work in the text, including people who clearly have very different conceptions of God, writing at different times, as well as any number of redactors. In some cases, it's pretty clear that the final version of the text was based upon a later writer completely failing to understand the original writer. In some cases, multiple incompatible versions of stories were combined into the text serially by redactors who clearly had no idea that the text was supposed to be "perfect". Check out the stories about how David met Saul, for example. Also, a lot of the traditional interpretations of things came about when the Jews noted the many flaws, inconsistencies, and absurdities in the Torah, and invented all sorts of amazing (and often ridiculous) explanations for them.

For more on this, I cannot recommend highly enough James Kugel's How to Read the Bible. It's written by a very intellectually honest orthodox Jew, which is very valuable to me because it's as unbiased as possible while still being sympathetic and open to the theist view. No joke, I will buy this for you in a heartbeat if you send me an address. It will radically transform and improve your understanding of these things.

As to the Gospels, you ought to be able to find any number of websites describing its inaccuracies and contradictions. Of course, there's a strain of fundamentalism that insists, through astounding intellectual dishonesty, that there are no contradictions. To assert this, one must use a definition of "contradiction" that would be prima facie absurd in any other context. The differing accounts of Jesus' birth, the date of the Last Supper, and so, so much more. Also, many of the accounts of Jesus' life are clearly, shall we say, modified to make the points that the authors cared about, such as Jesus's genealogy falling into nice round numbers that it actually didn't. Also, a lot of details seem to have been invented after the fact to give the impression that Jesus fulfilled prophecies that he likely didn't (As a Christian this doesn't bother me; I don't see the OT as inerrant, so it's not surprising to me that many of its prophecies were wrong). For example, the narrative wherein the family has to travel for a census (never happened) so that Jesus could be in the city that prophecy said the Messiah would be born in (he probably wasn't).

For more on this subject... I like Marcus Borg. Actually, this book by him and N.T. Wright does a great job examining such matters from multiple perspectives, as it's written in a format where they disagree with each other and give their own takes on things. Borg represents (IMO) rational but honest scholarship taken too far, whereas Wright represents a more traditional but still informed perspective. This book covers many important topics, such as many of the miracles, the nativity, the resurrection, and so on. If you want to be able to defend yourself against atheist attacks, buy this book if only for Wright's sections. But read Borg's, too. They'll open your eyes to so much.

Okay, now let's talk epistles. The wikipedia article on the subject of the Pauline Epistles is a great jumping-off point. For a more in-depth treatment, I really liked Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted though it definitely deals a lot with the gospels as well.

I'd like to make two more points in closing. The first is that there's just no reason at all to think that the Bible is accurate and authentic in its entirety. None. It doesn't even claim to be. It can't. It wasn't fully compiled until hundreds of years after its constituent parts were written, therefore it logically cannot be self-referential. When (not) Paul wrote that all scripture is God-breathed, he couldn't have been including the books that hadn't been written yet. Also, as you'll see if you read Kugel's book, much of scripture is clearly not inspired. Some would argue that it's still the book that God wanted us to end up with, but that raises the question of why there are so many different versions. Some bibles have books that others don't. Some translate things in contradictory ways to others. There is just no way to suggest that there's some kind of special force watching out for this book; we'd first have to posit that there's a single "right" version and then ask how we know which that is.

Secondly, consider so many of the things in the Bible that are, to put it mildly, inconvenient. Are iron chariots God's Achilles heel (Judges 1:19)? Why didn't any contemporary writers (including the other gospel authors) say anything about the zombie horde that broke loose in Jerusalem (Matthew 27:52-53)? Oh, and let me tell you a story:

God made the world and he saw that it was good. Except, it wasn't. So he decides that he's going to kill everyone except for one good guy and his family. So two (or seven) of every kind of animal gets crammed into -- well, we'll skip this part, you know it. But anyway, afterward, God realizes that he's made a huuuuuuge mistake and promises not to do it again.

And that is where rainbows come from.

u/tedivm · 5 pointsr/religion

Jesus Interrupted is a fantastic book that explores the actual history of the bible. It goes over how they've dated each book, how ideas have evolved over time, and what can or can't be considered accurate.

I highly, highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the bible as a historical document as well as anyone who wants to know how christianity has grown and evolved over time.

u/HaiKarate · 5 pointsr/exchristian

> If God is the same today as he was before, then where is he?

I'd say it's because he never was.

> A corrupt and perverse generation asks for signs, but all I want is something, anything, a reason to keep believing.

What's your standard for truth? Is it stories and emotions? Or is it evidence and logic?

I left Christianity when stories and emotions no longer did it for me. And it took me a LONG time to reach that place.

The only things that I define as being absolutely true are things that are backed up by solid evidence.

> On the outside I am a Christian, on the inside I am a fraud.

Nah. Christianity is the fraud, and it's one that many, many people are caught up in. You shouldn't beat yourself up over being liberated from something that you probably didn't have much choice in. If you grew up in a religious home, then you were indoctrinated into being a religious person. You were likely brainwashed into thinking that Christianity is the only way. Just like kids growing up in Iran are brainwashed into thinking that Islam is the only way.

I recommend that you watch this video series, Why I am no longer a Christian. I think you'll find a lot of good info there.

Also, if you'd like to read some books on what the mainstream of Biblical scholarship actually believes about the Bible, I'd recommend starting with some Bart Ehrman books.

u/DeusExCochina · 5 pointsr/atheism

No answers yet?

Many of the atheists here agree on Bart Ehrman as a good source. He's a Bible scholar who used to be Christian but whose studies have left him an atheist. He's written a whole series of books about how the Bible was cobbled together and, self-plagiarized, forged and fiddled, and so on. There's a field or method of study called critical analysis that makes the Bible's authenticity problems apparent, and Ehrman writes that stuff into popular books.

Two of his hits have been Misquoting Jesus, Jesus, Interrupted and Forged. The latter is perhaps his most explicit indictment of the intellectual crimes behind the Bible. Lost Christianities and other books talk about the many gospels and other writings that never made it into or were excised from what's known as the Bible today.

Ehrman also has a bunch of talks on YouTube where he engagingly presents those same ideas.

There are alternatives, of course, and it could be argued whether Ehrman is "the best." But he certainly knows what he's talking about (mostly), is a recognized authority on this kind of stuff, and presents it well. Best of all (from our point of view) he doesn't Lie For Jesus.

u/TheFlyingBastard · 4 pointsr/europe

Np. If you like this kind of stuff, you should look into the books by Bart Ehrman. He's a New Testament scholar that writes about this stuff in a very easy to understand way. Misquoting Jesus and Jesus, Interrupted are the two books he became known for, and they have ruffled a lot of feathers, but his other books are very readable too.

u/Dr-Z0idberg · 4 pointsr/atheism

You sound like you want to be agnostic/atheist but your afraid of having the title associated with yourself out of fear of judgement.

Nothing you have said makes any sense if you are a real believer. Why cherry pick the Bible like that while claiming it is still divine? It makes no rational sense whatsoever.

I challenge you to read Jesus Interrupted by Bart D. Ehrman to learn a little bit of the true history of the Bible and Jesus and see if you still have the same view afterwards.

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Interrupted-Revealing-Hidden-Contradictions/dp/0061173940

u/Beaver1279 · 3 pointsr/religion

Read this.

u/Khufuu · 3 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

Bart Erhman's Jesus Interrupted

or many other popular books by the same author

u/Strid3r21 · 3 pointsr/exchristian

I'd highly recommend [Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible] ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/0061173940/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_py3PybFQQ3YYA)

u/Borealismeme · 3 pointsr/atheism

Firstly, let me introduce you to TalkOrigins.org's index of creationist claims with the correlated rebuttals. The transitional fossil notion is one that has been debunked time and time again, get your sister to read CC200 and CC200.1 and try to rebutt those points. When she admits she can't then get her to promise never to repeat this ridiculously stupid argument again. Ever. We're tired of this one being brought up when it was debunked literally decades ago.

The Prophecies of Daniels are so vague as to be interpretable to mean just about anything you wanted. And no, the bible isn't backed up and proved by history. Buy her a Bart Ehrman book.

The evidence of the big bang is in fact THE WHOLE FUCKING UNIVERSE. And no it isn't proven. The thing about talking about events that happened billions of years ago is that we didn't have video cams set up to TIVO it. As such, we're forced to do things like exhaustive surveys of background radiation and try to piece the puzzle of what happened together. This is hard work, and hard science and your sister is welcome to find raw data and try to compute it herself. If she doesn't, then she really has no background or business or knowledge to critique the work of those who have. She's talking out her ass. Even further, even if we had no idea what happened instead of the rather good idea that we do have, then our answer would be "we don't know what created the universe". Because with science, when you don't know the answer to something, the best answer is "I don't know", not "Let's make up an invisible sky fairy and say he did it".

The word "true" doesn't apply to radiometric dating. It is based on sound science and it is accurate. Again, she's talking out of her ass. Tell her to prove that atom decay is somehow magically inaccurate and then we can talk. Also, since there are radiometric dating methods for a number of different elements, it's hard to see how she can claim every single one is faulty, and yet still enjoy the comforts of nuclear power, since the principles that drive a nuclear power plant are the SAME EXACT ONES that drive any (and every) other radioactive isotope.

u/mormonminion · 3 pointsr/exmormon

Bart Ehrman takes an objective look at the New Testament, basically debunking the entire thing. Jesus Interrupted is excellent.

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Interrupted-Revealing-Hidden-Contradictions/dp/0061173940

u/Knodiferous · 3 pointsr/DebateAnAtheist

FYI, just for future reference. It's "premise", not premiss. And precedent, not president. Consistency, not constancy. I'm not trying to make anything of it, I just proofread by instinct, and I can't use a red marker on here.

> unwritten premiss to your points seem to be that precise word for word constancy needs to be present for these texts to be constant with eye wittiness testimony

I don't think anybody's claiming that John pretends to be an eye witness to the tomb opening; after all, he said only one woman was there, so clearly he wasn't there himself. Obviously there's a lot of hearsay in the gospels.

But the events of easter morning, and my other favorite example, Jesus's last words before dying, are really really absolutely crucial. These are the fundamental parts of the whole new testament, and the whole christian faith.

The fact that all of the gospel writers get these wrong, is actually kind of a big deal. Read some more Bart Ehrman. This is actually the main topic of Jesus, Interrupted. Regardless of the fact that Jesus seems to have different personality traits in the different gospels,

How are we supposed to treat this book as the word of god, when it's clearly the fallible work of men who didn't even bother to get their story straight, and who can't remember the simple details of the most important events of their lives?

u/hedgeson119 · 2 pointsr/atheism

Dan Barker, was a pastor and fundamentalist, now head of the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
Video Book Website

Bart Ehrman, studied at seminary, was a fundamentalist, now agnostic (functionally atheist, somewhat by his own admission.) He covers this in at least one of his many books, Jesus Interrupted.

Teresa McBain, Clergy Project member, if you know about Jerry DeWitt, you should know her.

Yeah, take a look at some of the Clergy Project stuff they say that have more than a hundred pastors / church leaders alone. Also check out Recovering from Religion, they deal with people who are not clergy.

Edit: Dan Barker is actually Co-President of the FFRF, he runs it with his wife.

u/throwawayaccount94 · 2 pointsr/ReasonableFaith

We have 4 things written 30+ years after an event, based on oral stories, that all say the event happened differently. It isn't a fact, because we don't for sure know it happened. We don't have video evidence, we don't have living witnesses. I can write something saying 30 years ago my friend was Batman, doesn't mean it's a fact.

I suggest you look at these two books.

u/B_Master · 2 pointsr/atheism

The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings - Bart D. Ehrman

I didn't see anything by him in the FAQ but I think he's a great author on the topic of Christianity and The Bible; he started out as a biblical scholar before becoming an atheist.

Edit: That book is actually a bit heavy to start with, it reads like a text book. I'd recommend starting with Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why or Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

u/mavaddat · 2 pointsr/atheism

Funny you should ask, since that is the subject of his latest book.

In short, yes, Ehrman believes that there was a first-century Jewish man named "Yeshua" (the proper English transliteration of the Aramaic ישוע, which we incorrectly call "Jesus") who made messianic claims, garnered a sizable following among his fellow Jews, and was probably crucified.

However, Ehrman has made a career out of demonstrating exactly how the New Testament is unreliable as a source of historical information (see for example, Misquoting Jesus or Jesus Interrupted).

If you're interested to learn more about his new book, here is a brief reading he did for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

For more on Ehrman's opinion on the reliability of the Gospels, see his debate with fellow New Testament scholar Craig Evans.

Hope that helps!

u/seifd · 2 pointsr/atheism

If the Bible is the word of God, it'd have certain properties. I'd expect it to be right about the history and nature of the world. All evidence suggests that it isn't. Biblical understanding of history and nature is right in line with what you'd expect from ancient people.

I would expect God to be able to keep his facts straight. The Bible does not. From what I've read, scholars seem to have a pretty good handle on who wrote the various parts of the Bible based on the agendas revealed by these contradictions.

Finally, if the Bible was the word of God, all his prophecies would come to pass. They have not.

Finally, I'd like to note that there are Biblical scholars that hold this view. They include Robert M. Price, Bart D. Ehrman, Richard Elliot Friedman, and Burton L. Mack. I guess they're all misinformed too. If only they had studied the Bible.

u/jasoncaspian · 2 pointsr/AskHistorians

Sweet. Pretty much any book by Ehrman is super easy to read. He's an amazing author. My two favorites by him are Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) and How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee if you feel like exploring him further.

Please let me know if you or your mother have any questions. I love discussing these topics.

u/The_Mighty_Atom · 2 pointsr/exchristian

>>Finally! do you have any good book recommendations? Again, thanks!

Ooh goody, I always love it when people ask for book recommendations. :)

Here's just the tip of the iceberg:

u/cashmeowsighhabadah · 2 pointsr/exjw
u/plaitedlight · 2 pointsr/exchristian

I'll just encourage you to give yourself time and recognize that this might be something like a grief process. It is exciting and amazing to suddenly see so much of the world and people more complexly. But there is real loss associate with leaving the religion of your youth. Be kind to yourself.

Some resources that really helped me:

podcasts: Life After God; Voices of Deconversion

youtube: CrashCourse Big History and World Mythology; Pale Blue Dot and Humanity (short speeches by Carl Sagan)

blogs: cstroop

books: Pure; Jesus Interrupted (or really anything of Ehrman's) (these are Amazon links, but local libraries are a great option)

u/astroNerf · 2 pointsr/atheism

> Resources about the accuracy of the Bible.

Anything by Bart Ehrman would be a good start, particularly this one.

> Resources about whether faith is helpful/good/useful.

Check out Dr. Boghossian's talk Jesus, The Easter Bunny and Other Delusions. He talks about why faith is not a reliable method of epistemology.

> Morality (I've always been told that its impossible to be moral without God, but a lot of you suggest the Biblical God is not at all moral, with plenty of verse quotes)

QualiaSoup has a 3-video playlist that might help you to sort things out.

> Science vs religion.

This is a broad topic. You might narrow it down.

There are claims that religions make that are scientifically testable. For instance, a literal interpretation of the bible is incompatible with what we know about science. If however, you define a god to be outside the universe and undetectable by science, then sure, that's something that science isn't interested in. You only run unto conflicts where a religion makes a claim that science can disprove.

With that in mind, science and religion are polar opposites when it comes to epistemology. Here's a cartoon that illustrates this idea in a very broad way. There are many cases where a religion will retain ideas long after they should have been discarded.





u/czah7 · 2 pointsr/TrueAtheism

The books mentioned. Amazon Zombie bot should be around to reply shortly.

"The Bible Unearthed" by Israel Finkelstein.

"Jesus, Interrupted" by Bart Ehrman

"Forged" by Bart Ehrman

u/VaccusMonastica · 2 pointsr/Christianity

Fallible humans writing over many years of what they believed to be true regarding Nature and the Universe that got copied and recopied sometimes with scribes making honest mistakes while others actively changing the Bible to suit their needs making it say what they thought it should say and cutting out parts they didn't want in it.

Book Suggestions:

[Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (Plus)](http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060859512/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320261985&sr=1-3]()


Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them)

u/FeChaff · 2 pointsr/exchristian

Since you know about Richard Carrier I would assume you already have read some of the well known Anti-religionists like Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Dennet, Stenger, etc. If you are talking about secular biblical scholarship and historical analysis there isn't anyone who keeps me interested as much as Carrier, but I haven't read much in that subject. Some others include Robert Price and Bart Erhman.

There are several good essay compilations by John Loftus which are more generally directed at Christianity. They include essays by Carrier and Robert Price and a number of other secular thinkers. The Christian Delusion I think is the first in that series. Hitchens's The Portable Atheist is another good collection which includes older writing aimed at all religion. Bertrand Russell is a great, too.

u/OneManNinjaClan · 1 pointr/atheism

No no no, you all have it wrong. Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins are great and all, but the best case against Christ is written by Bart Ehrman: Jesus Interrupted

u/ExMennonite · 1 pointr/atheism

I am not a theist btw -- I am a diest at best. I just don't like reading nonsense (in any form).


If you believe that Jesus is 100% mythical, I would like to present Barth Ehrman, a highly respect HISTORIAN who has spent a great deal of his career on separating the myth of Christ from the reality.

He is just one of many HISTORIANS who work on things like this. They have a wide variety of tools for the work of separating myth from history. Are you aware of any of them?

Here are some of Bart's books:

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Interrupted-Revealing-Hidden-Contradictions/dp/0061173940/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278421235&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Apocalyptic-Prophet-New-Millennium/dp/019512474X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278421235&sr=8-4

http://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Historical-Introduction-Christian/dp/0199740305/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278421235&sr=8-8

You may also want to check out "the Context Group" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Context_Group

Here are some of their books:

http://www.amazon.com/Life-Galilean-Shaman-Anthropological-Historical-Perspective/dp/0227173201/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278421621&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Peasants-Matrix-Mediterranean-Context/dp/1597522759

Now it's your turn -- please present scholarly and respected sources for the idea that Jesus is 100% myth.


I can help you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Doherty

http://www.thegodmovie.com

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Puzzle-Christianity-Challenging-Historical/dp/096892591X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278422009&sr=8-1

These people DO have an ideological ax to grind. I'm not buying it. Are there myths in the story of Christ? Of course. Is it 100% myth with no historical figure behind it at all? No way.

u/TouchedByAnAnvil · 1 pointr/science

>> I don't know of a book that traces the lineage of the myths

Jesus Interrupted

u/w_v · 1 pointr/zen

> If you you'd like to post a coherent alternative interpretation of the Platform Sutra

It's not a full alternative interpretation, but Alan Cole's paper has an interesting analysis on the Master Huineng section of the Platform Sutra and how it relates to the battle of hierarchies in early Chan history.

> don't you find it unsettling when texts are thrown in the face of people who never read them and never will, to prop-up positions that are contradictory to these texts?

Not at all. I don't presuppose newcomers will ignore something they're clearly interested in, nor do I assume they're too dumb to realize these are difficult translations of ancient texts in a language that scholars are still working out.

Maybe if Chan scholarship becomes mainstream the way Biblical criticism has then we could move past the “Zen ≠ Buddhism” point—a point which shouldn't even be controversial anymore.

>why will you present me a text that claims the opposite, that meditation is the center of Zen practice, just because it's more "poetic" and I'd enjoy myself more?

Thank you for pointing this out. You're hitting the nail on a very important issue in all ancient literary/religious studies! For example: There is a story in one of the gospels concerning a woman taken in adultery (”He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone.”) The story has been so popular throughout the ages that even Mel Gibson couldn't help inserting it as a flashback in his Passion film.

Turns out it was never in the original gospel. It was added by a copyist centuries later! (the reasons we know this are outside the scope of this post.)

Does this mean we should remove that story from every Bible in the world? What about the fact that for almost two thousand years people believed it was a Bible story and it formed part of their faith and practice? Does that not count for something? If we cut the New Testament down to only the parts we're sure are earliest it would be very, very short indeed. I am not qualified to argue either way w.r.t. the lineage texts but I'd love to read a knowledgable discussion about it!

Returning to Zen/Chan: How do we deal with the fact that most people are taught Zen = Meditation practice? Even the word is complicated. Meditation comes from the Latin meditari, meaning “to think, contemplate, devise, ponder.” Would modern translators have used “meditate” if they were discovering these texts for the first time?

Maybe, maybe not. But no one would argue that zero knowledge of the texts is preferable to some knowledge of the texts, which brings us to:

> Many readers prefer the actual meaning, especially when you claim the "poetic" translation is so distorted.

Lay-readers don't know very much about the history, theory, and practice of translation. They think accurate means formal equivalence but that kind of translation is unreadable to anyone not steeped in historical textual analysis.

Only scholars read “word-for-word” translations of the Bible. I've read parts of one. It's unreadable because I neither have extensive knowledge of the underlying ancient greek nor of Early Christian literary development.

> First of all, if Ewk is a poor victim, haggard and harassed, then he couldn't possibly be enlightened.

Everything you wrote after this I feel unequipped to discuss. I'm not trying to dodge but it feels like a combination of faith-based statements regarding “enlightenment” or personal issues with Ewk himself. Regardless, I enjoyed this exchange. Thank you.

u/remembertosmilebot · 1 pointr/exchristian

Did you know Amazon will donate a portion of every purchase if you shop by going to smile.amazon.com instead? Over $50,000,000 has been raised for charity - all you need to do is change the URL!

Here are your smile-ified links:

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Why Evolution Is True

The Skeptic's Annotated Bible

Why There Is No God

Jesus, Interrupted

The God Argument

Deconverted: A Journey from Religion to Reason

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u/ChristianityBot · 1 pointr/ChristianityBot

Removed comment posted by /u/bdw9000 at 01/06/15 08:37:51:

> I highly recommend a book called Jesus Interrupted which is about precisely this topic.

... in response to submission Major differences between the Gospels? posted by /u/barkjon at 01/06/15 08:36:44:

> I've never really figured out what the main differences are between each of the Gospels, but it really fascinates me. Besides different Gospels describing different events in Jesus' life, how are they unique? How does each author's writing style seem to differ?

Just very curious about this.

u/_____FRESH_____ · 1 pointr/Showerthoughts

That may be the case, but you have to remember the people who "witnessed" these events first hand didn't write it down. It was verbally told from person to person. I think when you break down the day in question it's not really as special as everyone wants it to be. The entire scene in the bible where Pilot reluctantly kill Jesus over the thief Barabbas never happened. In fact Pilot killed so many jews that there are letters to Rome complaining about his rampant killings. He wouldn't have bat an eye at killing yet another jew trying to push sedition on everyone. The bible is a great book of interesting stories that like any other story told and retold has been greatly embellished and tweaked to fit the narrative of the time. It's believed the story of Pilot asking the Jews who he should kill was added because those stories were sent to Rome and were meant for the Greek romans of the time. They softened the message so Rome wouldn't come off as complete dicks.

If you haven't read it I highly recommend Zealot by Reza Aslan (http://www.amazon.com/Zealot-Life-Times-Jesus-Nazareth/dp/140006922X) or Jesus Interrupted by Bart D. Ehrman (http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Interrupted-Revealing-Hidden-Contradictions/dp/0061173940)

Both books are great and the audio books are read by the authors.

I pulled most of my points from these books and they say it much, much better than I ever could. They both do their own translations of the original Greek texts and have help with the Aramaic translations.

u/ResearchLaw · 1 pointr/atheism

I highly recommend two key books by renowned New Testament scholar and professor Bart Ehrman. Professor Ehrman is among the most respected authorities on New Testament Studies and Scholarship in the United States.

(1) Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them) (2010);

https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Interrupted-Revealing-Hidden-Contradictions/dp/0061173940/ref=mp_s_a_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1548990181&sr=8-11&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=bart+ehrman+books

and

(2) Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (2007).

https://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060859512/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1548990181&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=bart+ehrman+books&dpPl=1&dpID=51Th%2BI5OOGL&ref=plSrch

u/dblthnk · 1 pointr/DebateAnAtheist

Hi r1mmer, welcome to the community!

It looks like you have gotten some pretty good responses here but let me try to put the answers more concisely:

The Bible fitting together: There are three main issues here.

-One, the argument is fundamentally flawed because anyone can add to a common theme in a semi-coherent way as long as he read the preceding books. Even if there were no contradictions, there doesn't need to be an external omniscient guiding hand for the next guy down the road to read the previous books and write a little more without contradicting them.

-Two, the current composition of the Bible are the accepted books, chosen by church elders out of many candidates. Of course they would exclude the books that don't fit. (I believe others have linked some sources for this.)

-Three, the contradictions are there if you take a deep breath and think critically about them. A good example to start with is the crucifixion and what it meant. In the first Gospel written (Mark) a distressed and confused Jesus cries out to God about being forsaken and dies. In the last Gospel written (John) a calm and collected Jesus commends his spirit to God and dies. The stories are different and the meanings are different. I would highly recommend reading this book for all the details.

On a side note here, if someone argues that the Bible is infallible, I like to use the contradictory numbers of horse stalls for Solomon's horses. It's a number and much harder to defeat with the typical tactics like reinterpreting meanings, although they certainly try (It clearly says stall, not the number of horses lol.) Here are a bunch more numerical contradictions.

Starting year for our calender: This one is pretty easy. Starting dates for calendars all over the world throughout time are retroactively applied to an important event in that various culture at that time. Winning a great battle, forming a nation, the fictional birth date of a deity are all starting points that have been used after the fact. Just because Jesus was important to a culture 500 years after he supposedly lived doesn't mean anything spectacular actually happened at the starting date of the calendar they invent. That needs to be verified using other evidence. Here is the wiki link.

Morality is arbitrary: These are always the funniest arguments from Christians because when it comes down to it, everyone forms moral beliefs the same way regardless of specific religion or lack thereof. It comes down to cultural expectations and personal taste. The fundamental basis of morality is rooted deep in our psychology in universal, innate, evolutionarily derived psychological systems. Each of us may innately favor one more than another, like respect for authority over empathy, or even lack some of them altogether in rare cases. Our culture fills in the specifics over these systems and there you go. The question you should be asking your Christian friends is why they are attracted to the themes of love and forgiveness in their faith. If you didn't value those things to begin with, you wouldn't be drawn in. And why can there be so many different takes on morality from the same book? If you have little empathy and a lot of respect for authority, slaying the infidel is easy, but much harder to do if you have much more empathy than respect for authority. Jihad being a actual religious fight or an internal struggle are radically different interpretations derived from the same book (sorry, drifted into Islam for the example there) and the difference is in the person.

u/Korollary · 1 pointr/DebateAnAtheist

I'm sorry to hear about your problem with your GF.

(Technically, you could have posted this to /r/atheism. You're not really debating anything.)

Unfortunately, there's not a brief resource that debunks Christianity. Usually they are full length books. There are several written by biblical scholars, former pastors, etc.:

u/iHobbit · 1 pointr/IAmA
u/rhett121 · 1 pointr/history

The Birth of Christianity : Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060616601/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_e2iDybDHY5QAM

Is one of them

Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0061173940/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_W3iDybFQNJAF5

Is another. Neither are what I would call textbook quality as far as history is concerned but they are interesting none the less. Like I said, I would be interested in something more anthropologically historical during the time period and how it relates the people of the time and the need for this new religion. I've always found history interesting and more recently, specifically religious histories.