Atheists, Agnostics, Doubters: What made you disregard the Bible?

by DubR 59 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  DubR
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  daniel-p

  The Bible.
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  keyser soze

  Science.
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  ziddina

  Hah, Hah! What Daniel-P said!! Yeah, DubR, I saw Jonathan Dough's comments on the "Atheists ever attacked by Demonz" thread; that guy sounds like a JW or Born-Again, and not in a good way, either...

  Here's my reply - I originally posted this under "To you what was the Watchtower Society's Biggest Lie?" - this was the "Ah-HAH!" moment - well, the first one - for me...

  From that previous thread:

  "For me, it wasn't the Watchtower's biggest lie; it was the bible's lies. To realize (at the age of 8) that the Israelites were too stupid, ignorant, or uneducated to realize that the mountain 'Moses' was receiving the 'Ten Commandments' upon was a VOLCANO... An actively erupting one, at that....

  Exodus 19: 16-19, Christian Standard Bible... "On the third day, when morning came, there was thunder and lightning, a thick cloud on the mountain, and a loud trumpet sound, so that all the people in the camp shuddered. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet god [they almost ended up meeting their maker, all right... Where's a pyroclastic flow when you need one??] and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was completely enveloped in smoke because the lord came down on it in fire. Its smoke went up like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain shook violently. As the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and god answered him in the thunder...."

  Yeah... Clearly a primitive, ignorant tribe's - group of tribes' - attempt to explain a volcanic eruption. The descriptions of volcanic eruptions in the mythology of the Native Americans living near Mt. Saint Helens are much more picturesque and delightful, by the way...

  I was speechless. If this book [collection of books; biblyos] was supposed to be 'divinely inspired', then either the Israelites were idiots who didn't have a clue as to how the earth really worked, or their god didn't have a frikkin' clue - or wanted them in danger of being destroyed while 'he' was handing out orders, or... Their god didn't really exist.

  And that was it. I saw behind the mask, and was changed forever."

  Zid

  
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  The Almighty Homer

  I think atheists don't disregard anything other than the exception that it was not guided by a deity of sorts in the writing of it.

  It was wholly written by men who lived in a era of their own and who expressed their unique living experiences.

  For myself it just holds some historical interest.

  Embellished stories of the great Israelite god of that particular culture are strung throughout the bible.

  With the advance in science and technology we can clearly understand that those words written were simple stories of

  embellishment in an effort to strengthen the ideological form of their god and also to strengthen the identity of their particular culture.
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  keyser soze

  I started to question the bible long before I questioned the WT. It was only when I started realizing the fallacy of the bible that I was able to examine the JW religion more critically.
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  PSacramento

  When you guys read the bible "before" did you think it was to be taken "literal" and that it was error proof and such?
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  Joshnaz

  I thought the bible was scientific until I read about Moses's magic tricks. turning staffs into snakes, getting water from a stone, crap like that makes me not believe in the bible.
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  PSacramento

  ziddina,

  I only know of Professor Humphreys that thinks that Mt.sinai was a volcano in Arabia, are there any others that concurr with that?
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  OnTheWayOut

  As I realized that the WTS religion was not "the truth," I naturally wanted to know what "the truth" really was.
  As I investigated the WTS religion, I also investigated the Bible. I figured- if God exists and uses the Bible as HIS Word, then He let me down. As I reached out totally sincerely many years ago to do his will, He let me join a dangerous mind-control cult. So many religions use the Bible in so many different ways, I had to learn how the book could be made to say anything the groups using it wanted it to say.

  I discovered that there were other accounts written about Jesus, such as those found at the Nag Hamadi site. I even got insight from The DaVinci Code, not so much that it was true, but that we don't know the real truth about Jesus. A plethera of books and websites helped me see that the New Testament was certainly not prophecy, but written after the fact by people who never met Jesus. Paul was the first Christian writer whose works survived, but his Jesus was more like a STAR WARS Jesus- A long time ago in a galaxy far far away... No time period for Paul's Jesus, no lineage, no ride into Jerusalem, no being put to death story, just a mythical man. Whether Jesus ever lived, I don't know. But nobody wrote of such a miracle worker during his lifetime. I learned that many God-men of many religions came down to earth and were born of a virgin. Apparently, that is the basic formula- A God-man is larger than life if he visits people. People know that he was born of a woman, so they have to say that his birth was miraculous and pure.

  I already saw that science could easily debunk the Old Testament stories of the flood and Genesis in general. I learned from documentaries and websites that archaeology and science proved how man is much older than the Bible makes room for, there is clear evidence of evolution, a global flood could not have happened, the Jews didn't have an exodus from Egypt, David was the king of a small empire that never included the entire 12 tribes, and that the Jews were still clearly polytheists in the days of David and Solomon, and they never ever actually lived under the Mosaic Law (which could not have been handed from God to Moses).

  I learned that the Bible came out of a group of captive people in Babylon, possibly from more ancient writings but edited. I learned that it's stories were much like the stories of other religions. Both the Old and New Testaments were written chock full of legends that were probably allegory, but certainly not literal accounts. It seems that Judiasm started out as allegory that nobody really believed, just as nobody really believed there were actual gods residing on Mount Olympus. Someone forgot it was allegory along the way. Same with the Jesus stories.

  Many say that JW's turn atheist because they were bitter with the JW religion. That may be true to start with, but a thorough examination of the facts really is an end to bitter ignorance.