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?

[eastforker]

Hey dummy, where do you think the word cult comes fromWord Origin & History cult 1617, "worship," also "a particular form of worship," from Fr. culte, from L. cultus "care, cultivation, worship," originally "tended, cultivated," pp. of colere "to till" (see colony). Rare after 17c.; revived mid-19c. with reference to ancient or primitive rituals. Meaning "devotion to a person or thing" is from 1829. Origin: 1400–50; late ME: tilling, place tilled (< AF) < L cultūra. See cult, -ure

[Notary Sojac]

God has permitted many of the apologetics links in your post to end up in 404 errors. I think He’s trying to tell you something...

[James C. Bennett]

Another problem is that you can’t have an entity create something without the entity itself being under the realm of time. Without time, eternity and an instant are one and the same, and all that happened and all that will happen, have already happened.

If a said entity has a definite moment when it creates something, then that entity, out of all eternity, underwent something that caused it to create - and that cause puts the entity under the bounds of time.

In other words, who created the creator? If no one, then why did the creator create only at a particular moment out of an infinite sea of time called eternity?

[HerrBlucher]

Fortunate for you as you have chosen to see it that way, but still pointless within the Atheist umbrella anyway. Same with Atheist morality. There is no absolute good and evil, only that which individuals choose as good and evil. And so Hitler, Stalin, and Mao just simply made different choices than say Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams, within the Atheist umbrella. If you are ok with that, then, again, at least you are an honest Atheist.

Speaking of Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams, what a kooky idea they had when they declared that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Kooky at least, under the Atheist umbrella anyway.

[James C. Bennett]

Agree completely.

[antiRepublicrat]

Religion is the Cause of All (Most) of the World's Problems

People are the cause of most of the world's problems. People will do bad things, whether for religious or any other motive. Religion can create conflicts that people choose to solve by horrendous means, see for example the Catholic/Protestant fun in England. However, that doesn't mean anything else wouldn't have sufficed as the excuse for the power struggles.

In fact, atheists have been responsible for most of it within the last 100 years.

Note limiting it to the last 100 years. This is basically the period after religions lost their hold on state power. Bad guys in power like to kill people, it's a basic fact. After religion lost power, it was no longer religious bad guys doing the killing.

[Notary Sojac]

I'm an atheist who thinks that the Jewish-Christian concept of good and evil has been of great benefit to our society.

Certainly American statesmen who grew up in that tradition have been far better stewards of liberty than have been Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.

But personally, I have never experienced even the faintest hint of anything supernatural in my 50+ years.

So even though the Christian religion has been a beneficial thing on balance, I find no indications that it is true.

[eastforker]

Here you are trying to define what an athiest is. That would be like a baptist,catholic,lutheran,morman,protestant,methodist,muslim, hindu bhudist etc, trying to define what a chritian is.You do not know, you can only speculate.Thats like a nonsmoker that has never smoked trying to understand why a smoker won’t quit.

[RegulatorCountry]

Hey dummy

... hence, the word uncultured, lol.

[HerrBlucher]

Athiests define themselves, they profess a lack of belief in God. After that though, things get more complicated because they have a difficult time accepting the logical consequences of that lack of belief. The fact is, without a personal God who establishes absolute morality, its all simply personal choice.

[eastforker]

The fact is, without a personal God who establishes absolute morality, its all simply personal choice......................................................................................That might be a better alternative then belonging to a cult!

[HerrBlucher]

That you believe that Christianity has been beneficial, means you have an idea of what things should be rather than what they are. This is the core of the Christian concept of the Fall of Man. Go with that, expand on it, dig into it. C.S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity” and “The Problem of Pain” go into great detail on that conflict.

[eastforker]

Whatsamatter, did the definition of cult and culture upset your balance?

[Notary Sojac]

Actually, I have read them both. You would probably be surprised to learn how many books of apologetics I have read. Probably more than books by atheists, I think.

[Notary Sojac]

And speaking of C.S. Lewis....

one thing he comes back to again and again in his writing is "what we must answer is not whether Christianity makes you a better person (clearly, sometimes, it does not) but whether or not it is true."

Whether Stalin was or was not a better person than Washington (was Torquemada a better person than the Dalai Lama??) is really not relevant to the question of whether Christianity is true.

[circlecity]

"many athiest have high moral standards"

If atheism is true then there is no such thing as "moral standards" because there is no objective basis for morals or "right and wrong". There is only personal preference and social convention, both of which are relative and purely subjective. Without God the normative becomes the personal.

[RegulatorCountry]

Your unintentionally hilarious admission that you’re uncultured nearly made me fall out of my chair, if that’s what you mean.

[eastforker]

You are another one, trying to judge someone by your understanding of the universe. You can not judge someone using subjective beliefs of your faith no more than I can judge you on mine. I could just as easily say that your beliefs are irrational based on a book that I deem to be mythical. That does not mean you are wrong in your beliefs,nor does it mean mine are either

[Allen In Texas Hill Country]

f atheism is true then there is no such thing as “moral standards” because there is no objective basis for morals or “right and wrong”. There is only personal preference and social convention, both of which are relative and purely subjective. Without God the normative becomes the personal.
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Me biting my tongue till the blood runs outta the corner of the mouth. This is pure bilge to put it mildly. Its OK till the piousness spills over.

“I am so much ‘gooder’ than thou”. Pleeeeeezzzzzzzzz!!!

[circlecity]

"You are another one, trying to judge someone by your understanding of the universe. You can not judge someone using subjective beliefs of your faith no more than I can judge you on mine. I could just as easily say that your beliefs are irrational based on a book that I deem to be mythical. That does not mean you are wrong in your beliefs,nor does it mean mine are either"

None of that has anything at all to do with my post. I wasn't judging anything or asserting any understanding of the universe. You completely avoid the point I raised. You said atheists can have high moral standards and I pointed out that is impossible if there is no God because objective morals are impossible without a God. I note atheists almost always avoid addressing this point because they can't.