What would happen if you start taking the bible as not the literal truth but just a story ?

For example the New Testament and the life of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Why is it so important that he dies or was crucified? I think that what he did, helping the weak and all the disadvantaged is more important than whether he was born of a virgin, or turned water into vine, or raised the dead.

I have a proposition now, from now on when you read about the life of Jesus think of him as a myth. A great myth, of a man who resembles and embodied all the good aspects of Humanity, charity, forgiveness etc…  isn’t that more important. If you start thinking of Jesus as exactly that (a myth)  then mainstream society will take you more seriously. We all know and you truly do know (if you think about it) that it is impossible to be dead for 3 days and then wake up and ascend to heaven, or feed 5000 people with 2 fish. But you make it seem as if it is a suicide pact, that if you don’t believe that Jesus was born of a virgin than why should you believe that charity is good. You  have to make that choice, between superstition and facts between ignorance and love between blind faith and true understanding.

You cant successfully defend or propose seriously that 2000 years ago, when there was no knowledge of modern medicine, that a man healed the blind.

But what you can defend is that love and forgiveness are virtues and no “atheist” can take that away from you.

So in conclusion if you want to be taken seriously you must shed the silliness of the bible and perhaps read a book that I recommend it is titled  The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth and it was written by the former American President Thomas Jefferson. In it he takes out all the stupid stuff in the bible and keeps only the words and deeds of the historical Jesus. 

Excess religion being the belief that, ancient parchments written over 1000 years ago contain all the necessary methods and ideas required to run a society in the modern day. Don’t laugh. Many anti-abortionist and anti-gay  rights supporters still cling on to this belief that god anticipated all of future society’s problems and told ancient priests how to solve them in a very loosely organized and poorly written book called the bible. They point to obscure quotes from the bible or any other pre-enlightenment holy book as the one and only method to solve society’s problems. What should we do to two consenting grown (male) adults who want to join in a spiritual bond? We should take away their right to do so of course! Why? Because the writings of ancient Hebrews over 2000 years ago supersedes the rational and beautiful love between 2 individuals( don’t get me wrong I’m not gay and actually am a little homophobic, but anything I can do to stop these people from dancing naked in the streets is good! ). And how do they respond to those who wish that women should be given control of their own body? They cry out against the “sinful” woman who wishes to throw away gods gift. Putting aside all the reasonable arguments for abortion, the simple reality is that allowing a child to come into a world where right away he/she is not wanted, and grows up feeling as if they are a misfit and a burden on society, is a serious crime! The aforementioned rallying points of fanatical “believers” are just a drop in the great hypocrisy that is organized religion. The ludicrous idea that ancient scriptures have a greater authority than centuries of rational debate over government and human behavior is indeed a dangerous premise.

Modern Civilization as I speak of is Western civilization. The corner stone of Western civilization is the philosophy of liberty. The main ingredient of Liberty, being the right of self ownership. Self ownership stresses the idea that the individual has the highest claim on their own life and has the right to better themselves in any way they see fit as long as it doesn’t impede the self improvement of other individuals. Excess religion in its most lethal doses (like in the Middle Ages) dictates that a super powerful creator owns everything in the universe and has appointed religious executives to monitor humanity. These religious bureaucrats assume moral powers greater than those bestowed on the rest of humanity stemming from god’s infinite power. These bureaucrats claim a higher right on the individuals lifestyle, because their power comes from an infinite source that is unverifiable. I am of course speaking of the unimaginably corrupt clergy of the Catholic Church in the middle ages. However the same thinking is being reborn today with rightwing and radical Christians claiming a higher moral ground due to their religion and trying to impose their will (because they think they have a higher claim on our lives than we do) on the rest of us whether we are gay or women.

When the legitimacy of self ownership is eroded the direct result is the destruction of personal freedom. When a society no longer believes in personal freedom, the society might as well be dead. “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”, Matthew 22:21, lets keep God’s laws away from Man’s laws.

Let me say that I am not a Christian and if you are not Christ, and have ever met me you would be convinced that I’am the Antichrist.

When you get to debates with Christians and you start exposing the weakness of their position they retreat to their fortress, which is proving there is a god. Now I cant successfully or logically defeat that point. But the truth is I don’t have to. Just proving there is a god doesn’t mean Jesus was his son. For example no one now a days believes in Mithra or Zeus or Osiris, but each of them were gods in their own time. The Christian/ or Believer of any faith, has to not only prove the existence of a God put also that their Deity is the right one. The latter is an impossible task.

In the case of Christianity for 2 reasons.

1. The story of Jesus is NOT ORIGINAL (Osiris, Mithra, Dionysus, various Pagan Gods of Northern Europe)  had identical attributes. So what makes Christ right and all others wrong?

2. While there is almost insurmountable proof that a Jew lived in Palestine around 30 AD named Jesus, and that he was a teacher and ran his ministry. There is NO PROOF that he preformed miracles, not by the Jewish Historian Josephus, nor the Roman Historian Tacitus ( Both of whom lived around the time of Jesus, unlike certain people who wrote the Gospels 300 years later) nor any Greek records, and those Greeks wrote down everything, funny that they forgot to write down that the son of god is coming to rescue them!

“But he ascended to heaven for all the world to see”

I’m sorry but the whole world didn’t see, and those who did were a bunch of illiterate, peasant, women living 2000 years ago, whose testimony in court would be as valid then; as a Muslim woman’s testimony in an Arabic Court today.