Porn for Bibles

There are atheist groups out there doing stupid things, but this has to be one of the dumbest. A college atheist organization called, Atheist Agenda, has been conducting something called "Smut for Smut." They give out porn in exchange for bibles. Seriously.

In the view of club members, religious texts are as smutty as pornography because they contain violence and torture and spark religious wars. But mostly, it's a public relations stunt meant to ignite debate and attract new members to the club.

That sounds like reasoning that you might expect from some clueless college students. Unfortunately, when atheists groups -- even just a pack of moron students -- do something like this, it makes all atheists look bad. I've got nothing against porn, and quite a bit against the Bible, but trying to equate the two is just idiotic. Whatever else the Bible is, it's an extremely important collection of ancient writings with high literary value. Offering to exchange it for porn, as if there were some equivalence, just makes you look stupid. I'm not one who thinks religion deserves respect, but there's no need to spit in the face of believers with cheap and useless stunts.

Any atheist interested in increasing our numbers should be encouraging people to read the Bible and really think about it. Reading the Bible with a critical eye, learning about biblical scholarship, studying how it was written, compiled, translated and used throughout history -- these things destroy blind faith. Extensive Bible reading, combined with further investigation and critical thought, is the number one reason I became an atheist. And I'm not the only one.  

My Deconversion Story

I've read various accounts of how people became atheists, and it occurred to me that I have never posted my deconversion story. Mine is nothing spectacular, but it seems like the atheist thing to do, so here it is.

I grew up in a conservative Christian family. And when I say "Christian," I mean the type of believer whose faith rests in the ultimate authority of the Bible, and the necessity of personal salvation through Christ. We had a narrow definition of Christian, and didn't consider most who used the term to actually be Christians at all. For example, most Catholics did not qualify as Christians in our version of Christianity. We went to non-denominational "Bible-believing" churches. They usually did not have an actual pastor or preacher, but rather church elders. The main Sunday service was unstructured. Members would simply read and talk about Bible passages, initiate the singing of hymns, or pray, in a more or less haphazard fashion until the allotted time for the service came to an end. This service also included communion, and the taking of an offering. There was also a separate teaching service, Sunday school, and another service at night. A prayer meeting was held Wednesday night.

As a child I went regularly to pretty much all church services, with the exception of the prayer meetings, which were for adults only. On Saturdays we often had some church-related social activity, and our family friends were mostly fellow Christians. After dinner at home we usually read from the Bible, or other Christian devotional type materials. Memorizing Bible verses was another activity I remember doing. Other than Sunday School, most of the Church services were pretty boring for a kid. But I loved to read from a young age. So while I sat in all those services I read the Bible. I liked the Old Testament a lot, particularly the books with violent histories of the kings and leaders of Israel. Revelations was another favorite. But over the years I read the entire Bible multiple times.

I didn't question the fundamental truth of Christianity when I was young. But even as a child, I rapidly realized that many elements of theology were open to interpretation. As I got a little older, around 10 or 11, I started to disagree with certain things, form my own views, and looked for other theological reading materials. I read various books from the church library, and I loved Chick Tracts -- the little Christian propaganda comic books. I started paying more attention to any speaker at the church who seemed exceptionally knowledgeable. One in particular that I remember had advanced degrees in theology, and made reference to the Greek New Testament and Biblical source material. I was interested in more than just simplistic explanations, and wanted to really understand the faith, so I liked hearing from people who knew what they were talking about. I had a strong interest in history and learned all I could about the foundation and development of Christianity.

But by the time I entered high school, my faith was starting to slip away. I started to see faith as simple-minded belief that covered up glaring logical inconsistencies. Reading the Bible repeatedly led me to question many things. Many of the core concepts of Christianity, such as sin, the Trinity, the meaning of the crucifixion, and the Christian idea of God himself, made less and less sense. The more I thought about them, the less probable they seemed. There was simply no evidence that any of it was true, and I found it impossible to continue believing in something so illogical. Somewhere during my high school years I became a deist. 

When I was Christian, and as I became a deist, I also had a strong interest in the occult. As a Christian I read everything I could about the occult from the Christian perspective, and then in high school I started to read actual occult material. My interest expanded as I entered college. and I went through a phase where I toyed with the idea of paganism. I was strongly interested in ceremonial magic, such as that practiced by the Golden Dawn. But after a couple years of interest -- nothing serious, just mainly reading -- I came to realize that my interest was based on wishful thinking. I found the idea of magic, secret knowledge, ancient rituals, and multiple gods to be fascinating. But there was simply no evidence that any of it was real. My interest in the occult died out. My deism remained intact and was reinforced as I headed to graduate school. 

Through my years in graduate school my deism became agnosticism, as I started to question whether or not there was any God at all -- even a remote creator God of the universe. Eventually, maybe six or seven years ago, I'm not really sure when, I realized that if someone asked me the question: Do you believe in God? My answer would be "no." At that point I faced the reality that I was actually an atheist. I was probably an atheist well before that point, without actually admitting it to myself. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that not only was I an atheist, but also a materialist. I no longer believed in the supernatural at all, in an afterlife, or in the human soul. Years of extensive thought about these matters have only served to strengthen my atheism. If I were asked to name one thing more than any other that caused me to be an atheist, I would say reading the Bible. 

The Radicalism of Biblical Inerrancy

Bart Ehrman has an interesting post up in the On Faith blog at the Washington Post. Reacting to Christian responses to his new book, Jesus Interrupted, Ehrman points out that belief in the Bible as the foundation of Christianity is a relatively recent invention.

The idea that to be a Christian you have to "believe in the Bible" (meaning, believe that it is in some sense infallible) is a modern invention. Church historians have traced the view, rather precisely, to the Niagara Conference on the Bible, in the 1870s

As he notes,

To make faith in the Bible the most important tenet of Christianity was a radical shift in thinking -- away, for example, from traditional statements of faith such as the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed, which say not a word about belief in the Bible.

Although Ehrman's points are well-known to those knowledgeable about the history of Christianity, I suspect they'd come as a surprise to many of those who call themselves "Bible-believing" Christians.  As Ehrman writes,

Christianity has existed in places where there were no Bibles to be found, where no one could read the Bible, where no one correctly understood the Bible. Yet it has existed. Christianity does not stand or fall with the Bible.

This is also interesting from the atheist perspective, as atheists often attack Christianity by pointing out the many problems with the Bible. Such a line of argument can be effective with Christians who believe in the primacy of Biblical authority, or Biblical inerrancy, but is less compelling to those who hold more liberal versions of Christianity.

The Brick Testament

Anyone who hasn't seen The Brick Testament should check it out. New sections have just been added.  From the "about" page on the site:

The Brick Testament is the largest, most comprehensive illustrated Bible in the world with over 3,600 illustrations that retell more than 300 stories from The Bible.

All done with Legos. Whether you are an atheist or theist, it's still an amazing piece of work.

h/t Forever in Hell