Common Atheists' Myths

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/atheists_myths.html ^

[truthfinder9]

Introduction

I know that Christians are supposed to be the ones who believe a lot of myths. However, the vast majority of atheists believe myths such as religion is the primary cause of wars, and the vast amount of atrocities have been caused by religious people, the Bible has been vastly changed over the centuries, Paul invented Christianity, and the list goes on and on. Find your favorite myth below and read the article so that you won't embarrass yourself in the future.

Atheists' Myths

• Atheists have Proven God Does Not Exist. Right? - Only if that god is not the God of the Bible
• Religion is the Cause of All (Most) of the World's Problems - Religion is not even close to being the leading cause suffering in the world. In fact, atheists have been responsible for most of it within the last 100 years.
• Are Most Wars the Result of Religious Belief? - Religion is implicated in less than 7% of all wars over the entire written history of mankind.
• Is Christianity a Made-up Myth Written by the Disciples? - Now really - would the disciples write about all their shortcomings, make the Christian church into a female, design heaven with no sex in it, and say that they were going to be married to Jesus in heaven? I don't know about you guys, but this is not what I would have written if I had made up the Bible!
• Paul Invented Christianity? Is the Founder of the Christian Religion Paul of Tarsus or Jesus of Nazareth? All Paul's core teachings were also taught by Jesus and the disciples, and are even found in the Old Testament.
• Misquoting Jesus: Does Bart Erhman Prove the New Testament is Corrupt? - Contrary to Erhman's claims, the New Testament canon was established in the early second century, and scribal errors/changes did not affect any significant Christian doctrine.
• The Christian Church Was Never Really Persecuted - Were all the reported persecutions of Christians were made up by the Christian church?
• The Bible Has Been Changed Over the Centuries From the Original? - Sorry, the manuscript evidence doesn't support this idea at all.
• Jesus Christ as God and the Trinity Was Not Invented Until the Fourth Century? Contrary to the claims of The Da Vinci Code, even secular sources indicate that Christians worshipped Jesus Christ as God no later than 113 A.D.
• This Joyful Eastertide: A Critical Review of The Empty Tomb (2006) - Has the resurrection been proven false? )
• The Universe Just Happened Without Any Need For a Designer - For all those who expect to win at lotto!
• There is No Evidence For the Fine Tuning of the Universe - The cosmological constant (dark energy) shows this belief to be false
• "The Lost Tomb of Jesus": Have the Bones of Jesus Christ Been Found? Only if Jesus had his ossuary inscribed when He was 2 years old!
• Omnipotence is Logically Impossible? Atheists attempt to define God out of existence through illogical arguments
• The Universe is Eternal - Contrary to atheist's claims, the majority of scientists state as fact that the universe had a beginning.
• Only Stupid People Believe in God - A large number of famous scientists believed in God, many being devout Christians
• The Roman Catholic Church's Condom Policy is Responsible For the Spread of HIV and the AIDS Crisis in Africa - Actually, HIV infection rates are lower in Catholic-dominated countries!
• The Myth of the Flat Earth by Jeffrey Burton Russell - The "history" that Christians taught a flat earth was not invented until the 19th century. (off site)
• People are Basically Good - Proof to the Contrary
• Jesus didn't really die on the Cross? - The old swoon theory doesn't hold up to historical/medical reality.
• Hitler was a Christian? - This seems like a no brainer, but there are free-thinkers who think he was. (off site)
• Jesus and Adolf Hitler - The new (and improved?) German Jesus (off site)
• Are Atheists and Theists Morally Equivalent? Aren't atheists morally superior to theists?
• Atheism Doesn't Lead to Immoral Behavior - Or Does It? In theory it doesn't, but in practice...
• Atheism and Humanism Provide Hope for the Future - The ultimate "hope" of atheism is eternal entropy as the universe loses all ability to perform work, and all life, consciousness, and knowledge is eternally destroyed.
• The Bible Teaches a Flat Earth Covered by a Solid Dome
• Teaching Religion to Children is a Form of Child Abuse? Dawkins's hypothesis is falsified.
• BLOODLINE: Serious Documentary or Hollywood Hoax? - by Gordon Franz MA
• Debunking Dawkins: The God Delusion
  • Debunking Dawkins: The God Delusion Chapter 1: A deeply religious non believer - Deception, lies, and misrepresentations.
  • Debunking Dawkins: The God Delusion Chapter 2: The God Hypothesis - Failure to support debunked assertions, quoting out-of-context, and a desire to escape moral accountability.
  • Debunking Dawkins: The God Delusion Chapter 4: Why There Almost Certainly Is No God - Richard Dawkins' Ultimate Boeing 747 argument is shown to be formally fallacious.
• The Universe Just Created Itself Out of Nothing - Why Stephen Hawking is wrong about God not creating the universe.
• Book Review: The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris - Sam Harris claims that science can determine human values, but just resorts to ranting about religion.

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

More Answers

• Answers for Atheists and Agnostics
  • Criticisms of God's Character from Atheists and Agnostics
  • Criticisms of God on the Basis of the Existence of Evil and Suffering
  • Religion is Stupid
  • Bad Christians
  • Bible and Science Criticisms
  • Answers to Bible Contradictions
  • Skeptics' Objections to Christianity
  • No Evidence of the Supernatural?

[kosta50]

I never said (any) Christian doctirne is true. As for God being subject to Higher Necessity, that comes from some Christian circles who claim that God had [sic] to become man.

[kosta50]

The only time I take offense here on FR is when someone posts to the effect that as an atheist, I cannot be a conservative, or that my atheism is harmful to America. With those ideas up I will not put....

One's private belief is not an obstacle to being a conservative, Republican, patriotic American. If that were true, we would have to declare many of our Founding fathers as left wing, liberal misfits.

[reasonisfaith]

So your argument has been so demolished, all that’s left of it is the word “had.”

[kosta50]

So your argument has been so demolished, all that’s left of it is the word “had.”

My argument was that God—in order to be God—cannot serve a higher necessity, and that therefore God didn't have to become a man (or anything else for that matter). That argument stands, your silly comments notwithstanding.

[reasonisfaith]

I’ll take out the words that don’t really matter, and rephrase my point: God fixed the problem from within. God became man.

[kosta50]

I’ll take out the words that don’t really matter, and rephrase my point: God fixed the problem from within. God became man

That was not the subject of my comment. The claim that God HAD to become man was.

What problem did God fix?

[reasonisfaith]

The problem of man’s inherent evil.

This includes the evil which manifests as blindness to truth. The evil which is foolishness masquerading as wisdom.

God gives atheists the chance to understand that an ideology with self as the initial reference point is morally, intellectually and spiritually bankrupt.

[kosta50]

The problem of man’s inherent evil

Why is that a problem? So, when did God "fix" it, given that the evil continues unabated.

God gives atheists the chance to understand that an ideology with self as the initial reference point is morally, intellectually and spiritually bankrupt.

Nonsense. The only thing God really hated according to the Bible was idol worship.

[James C. Bennett]

I frequently check this thread to see if any of them have figured out as to why David’s child had to suffer divine injustice.

[Eepsy]

You probably won’t like this answer, but here goes:

Jesus’s connection to the throne of David was through King Solomon, and therefore Bathsheba. It was God’s plan for David to marry Bathsheba in the course of time so that this lineage would come about, but David jumped the gun by murdering Uriah. If the child of this early union had lived, Bathsheba would have put him forward in favor over Solomon, who would then have been the younger son.

The lineage of Jesus must have been, for reasons we may never understand, very important to God. Why would He wait so long after the fall to bring about Man’s salvation? The only logical explanation, if you’re presupposing a merciful God, is that He did it as soon as He could.

This is why Catholics honor the Virgin Mary’s fiat. We don’t believe God would have just ticked her off the list and gone on to the next humble virgin had her response been “No, now that you mention it, I’d really rather not.”

[reasonisfaith]

The way God solved the problem was to through salvation. We are saved from our sins, but we have to be on God’s side.

What I mean is God gives atheists the chance to redeem themselves. Their sin is self-worship.

[kosta50]

I frequently check this thread to see if any of them have figured out as to why David’s child had to suffer divine injustice

LOL! No kidding...I wonder though, how well it would be received if, using David's biblical example, a worldly court spared a father and instead executed his newborn son for his father's crime.

[kosta50]

The way God solved the problem was to through salvation

That a matter of belief.

We are saved from our sins, but we have to be on God’s side

Are you suggesting man can save himself by deciding to be on God's side?

What I mean is God gives atheists the chance to redeem themselves.

By not giving them faith?

[kosta50]

The only logical explanation, if you’re presupposing a merciful God, is that He did it as soon as He could

You mean God didn't see it coming?

[reasonisfaith]

“That a matter of belief.”

Everything is a matter of belief.

“Are you suggesting man can save himself by deciding to be on God’s side?”

You don’t understand.

Man is drowning as he tumbles through the deep, dark current of sin. A river of his own making.

But God, in his great mercy, has thrown man a rope—Jesus Christ.

Man can choose whether or not to grab onto it.

“By not giving them faith?”

As I explained, the rope is there for atheists to grab onto. But (for now) they love sin, and are not strong enough to resist its pull.

[reasonisfaith]

You’re making the same mistake made by atheists again, and again, and again.

You can’t think of God as though he were a man. You will never know God’s circumstances, and you can’t think about what it’s like to do what God has done.

[James C. Bennett]

Yes, I’ve heard this explanation before.

However, if lineage was the criteria that lead to David’s child’s death for no fault of its, then what redemption did the Amalakite babies and children receive, ordered to be slaughtered by the very same deity? Besides, what “perfect justice” is it, when a child has to die for no fault of its - only because lineage order held a greater value than human life? That’s no justice at all.

You are aware of the risks of ‘justifying’ such acts, aren’t you? It makes the deity figure difficult to distinguish from that of the Muslims, who too, must resort to calling divinely-sanctioned murder as ‘acts of divine will’.

[kosta50]

Everything is a matter of belief

No it's not. We know many things as a matter of fact, not faith.

Man is drowning as he tumbles through the deep, dark current of sin. A river of his own making

Maybe you should stop watching horrors movies. Most people are decent individuals with some quirks.

But God, in his great mercy, has thrown man a rope—Jesus Christ

And how did man get to be in a position where he needed a rope?

Man can choose whether or not to grab onto it

Nope, the Bible says no one comes to him unless the Father gave you to him.

As I explained, the rope is there for atheists to grab onto. But (for now) they love sin, and are not strong enough to resist its pull.

Either the world is exactly the way God wants it to be or he is no God.

[kosta50]

You can’t think of God as though he were a man

I can only think of God the way Bible describes him, in anthropomorphic terms, because the authors imagined him that way. Personally I can't think of God in any terms because I have no idea what God is even if he is.

And if you say you can, why should I believe you?

[kosta50]

JCB to E: You are aware of the risks of ‘justifying’ such acts, aren’t you? It makes the deity figure difficult to distinguish from that of the Muslims, who too, must resort to calling divinely-sanctioned murder as ‘acts of divine will’.

Exactly!