It's Sunday, so what the heck... thoughts on atheists, Christians and Bible things... [View all]

Back in the day when I was as "Four Horseman" an atheist as atheists get, I still knew that history scholars and archeologists had found from a few thousand years of parchment/scroll writings that a system of morality existed before the historical guy, Jesus, put all that historical law & prophets wisdom into 2 sentences -- his Two Great Commandments. Those ideas didn't come from the Greeks or Romans, either. But from thousands of years of struggle to see "earth as it is in heaven."

Even as an atheist I unconsciously held the second commandment as worthwhile to live by, and noticed that even the four horseman did.

I also learned a few other things since then.

1.
One word that's evolved over at least three millennia since Abraham (before the sacking of Troy and the emergence of the Buddha) and the Hebrew tribes sorted out morality and consciousness, a word that's become mainlined enough to be used by most everyone today — is the word faith -- whether it's faith in oneself, loved ones, friends, institutions, humanity, nature, science, the universe, or cosmos.

Looking back I realize that all the atheists/agnostics/nones I've known and still know, whether they do/don’t use the word faith, still have that heart feeling, whether it's faith in themselves and others -- and that they don't confuse faith and trust.

2.
I've learned that 48% of scientists claim to be Christian. Because scientists learn more about the micro/macro of the universe, atheists and everyone else benefit from all that.
They can thank scientists for their faithful work, both literally (both Christian and atheist scientists built the James Webb telescope) and metaphorically (the awesomeness of the universe).

Atheists also
— have faith in Joe Biden, and even trust a faithful Christian leader who's overseen $136.6 billion of loan 'forgiveness' so far (he also knows debt forgiveness is a biblical thing);
— like that he's worked to get the opponents' votes for all kinds of improvements, and how, regardless of other old guy with 91 criminal counts, he tries to keep the congressional culters rational and forward looking;
— like that Joe’s a regular separation of church and state president who’s now publicly fighting the lying christian nationalists & their criminal leader;
— enjoy the social and economic benefits of a Christian president who practices governance the way they don’t even know his Bible teaches.

Because of all that Biden's done, he'll be getting more of the christian/nones/atheist votes in 2024 than any christian nationalists will, even down ticket.

So while atheists can call any ‘God’ a delusion, and the Christian Bible bullshit, they can also be more glad than they realize about living with the benefits of that “delusion” and “bullshit.”

3.
I daresay if there’s a problem with christians, it’s the loud mouth fearful power worshipper types who read nothing -- neither bills nor bibles -- who hate the stranger, who live for national strife and rule of men, who follow their strongman cult to demolish reading, schools, journalism, history, science, equal rights & democracy, or anything else that Simon Rosenberg calls what the greatest political project has done for humans -- the Democratic Party ever since FDR.

So the no true Scotsman christians know that no one will reap what they've sown like the christian nationalists will. Biden's got them, and they're going down.

Christian or atheist, that's all to the good.

4.
This brings up a few issues I have with anyone saying that anyone can interpret the Bible any way they want to justify anything they want.

If Yeshua/Jesus wasn't real, then his summed up teachings of spirit and morality within the Two Great Commandments -- presented across four writers who died within 100 yrs of the date they claim Jesus died — then those two commandments had to come from somewhere. So where do they come from? From parchments and scrolls of those trying to sort out morality and governance. Written through the struggles of two millennia, Jesus's two great commandments still stand as peak human morality.

Jesus expanded what those two sentences meant through the red letter quotes in the 4 gospels.

Here’s what gets me about Christians: only 30% of Christians actually read what they consider The Word of God.
Even when they read, reading isn’t understanding, and forget studying the writers and times that Word came from! WTH.

So understanding The Word is a problem that 70% of Christians either don’t know they have or don’t even want to know. Theirs is the original sin of laziness.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/04/14/5-facts-on-how-americans-view-the-bible-and-other-religious-texts/ https://patrickoben.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/state-of-the-bible-2022-frequency.webp

To hear secondhand about what the historic Jesus said is one thing. To at least understand what one reads as the Word is to at least see the Bible as an ancient historical record. To understand through some minimal study of the New Testament is to see that the historical Jesus stands as a moral bridge for humans — putting all religions aside, even a bridge from the "letter of the Law" life of pharisaic leaders in the Old Testament to the "spirit of the Law" life of Christians. Which makes it also easy to understand why he left his "home religion.” As do many of any religion.

And not for nothing. It's okay to understand that ancient biblical writers often used metaphor, because they did. So using both their historical contexts of meaning, while seeing any modern applicability of the Word about love, spirit and morality -- that's the intellectual part of faith.

Any second hand interpretation of what (the red letter) Jesus actually said — where the non-reading 70% of Christians just want to 'hear' what the Bible and Jesus were/are about, say, once a week at church — that’s a lazy decision they've made to be deceived by anyone. Which is more bullshit than anything in that millennially compiled history book.

5.
Here’s something that cursory readers, or case-building out-of-context Bible quoters, or lazy Christians, don’t know or don't care to know:
The content of the Bible needs to make sense in its own historical contexts, whether or not it makes sense in ours.
Most people, Christian or otherwise, don't care enough about that world bestseller to make that effort.
So even as an ancient historical record it's rejected out of hand.

I can tell you as a former teacher of African American lit, Women’s lit, American lit and World literatures, that decision right there is an inexcusable sin of analysis at the heart of willful ignorance about humanity. The synonym for ‘willful ignorance’ is stupidity.

Peace and love, fellow Democrats!