why is the atheist obsessed with the Bible

I see. Okay, let's give this a little bit of a test.Do you know one thing that is very positive about the cross of Jesus ?Here is it. The cross of Jesus terminates everything that plagues and troubles the fallen man. Paul said "I have been crucified with Christ".He means that when he gets into the realm of the living available Spirit of Christ, he experiences that everything negative of sin and self has been TERMINATED along with Christ's death.This is really positive. You see, most people entertain the thought that Jesus is coming to help us, reform us, or even improve us. No. Paul pioneered to experience that when Jesus died He Terminated the old Adamic nature.Putting a little bluntly, and at risk - Jesus made suicide obsolete. The sinful self can be put to death by identification with Christ. "I HAVE BEEN CRUCIFIED WITH HIM".You have a bad temper ? Stand by faith on the truth - "I have been crucified with Christ."You have a problem with lust ? Stand by faith on the word of God - "I have been crucified with Christ".No one who comes to Jesus Christ really has his or her own spiritual experience. What Christ has accomplished becomes available and applicable subjectively though identification with Him."When Jesus was crucified on His cross, He terminated my greedy lustful self. He terminated my evil mood. He crossed out my self pity, my depression, my anxiety, my jealousy, my foolishness."The cross, in the New Testament, is usually spoken of in terms of terminating, putting to death that which plagues us.I don't have to WRESTLE with my lust. I do not have to grit my teeth and say "I WILL do BETTER! I Will do BETTER! I WILL, I WILL, I WILL, I WILL DO BETTER. I will SELF IMPROVE."No. One can stand on faith and unleash great empowering in one's life by declaring "I have been CRUCIFIED with Christ. It is no LONGER I that live. It is Christ who lives in me." This is positive! Christ's cross puts to death, terminates, nullifies those evil aspects of the fallen Adamic nature. He does not self improve you. He terminates and resurrects you.This is very positive. If you have no experiene of identification with Christ, it is hard to understand. But if you DO have experience with applying what Jesus did to your life, it is very confirming.What I mean is this. You come to believe in Jesus as your Savior. You're not too sure about a lot of things. And, oh, these unbelievers and skeptics sound so reasonable. Maybe you're wrong. Maybe God is not real. Maybe Jesus never lived at all let alone died and rose from the dead.Then one day you notice Paul's word and you take it into your own experience, by faith - He notices that things he struggled with for years to no avail, are now getting transformed in him. Something is simply putting his bad habits to DEATH. Some power is TERMINATING the bad things that enslaved him for years.Because of this liberation, because of this experience of freeing in identification with Christ, the believer is CONFIRMED that he must be on the right track. This is evidence, that another life has entered into his being. Someone is mingled and united with his very personality.Ego is gone. Yet it is not totally gone - " ... it is no longer EGO that live, but it is Christ who lives in me, and the life which EGO now lives EGO lives in faith - the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me." The LOVE of Christ is manifested in the action of Christ Distributing Himself into a man's personality. That is God dispensing His divine nature into man, killing of by the cross, the old Adamic germs, and germinating within him a union of the divine and the human - a mingling of God and man.This is very very positive. Athanasius captured it when he said "God became a man so the man might become God".God became man, so that man might become God in life and nature but not in His Godhead. This death and resurrection transforms the believer. Christ's death and resurrection become our history. We can apply Christ's death and resurection.We can APPLY Jesus. Yes. It is encredible that I myself believe this stuff. But its true. That is right. And there are some things which tick us off.I have found the experience of God to be like this: You want God to be on YOUR side. But He wins you over to HIS side so He can show you that He really is on YOUR side.We came into this world, HOODWINKED. You remember the movie The Matrix ? They lived in an illusionary world controled by Artificial Intelligence.We came into this world as into an evil MATRIX which without God's mercy, we cannot possibly detect.The Triune God has to DISPENSE His life and nature into us to free us out of this LIE. Christ was totally out. Paul and others GOT OUT. They got out of the lie and into Christ. And into Christ is in union with the uncreated and divine life of God.I know some of these words sound strange to you. In light of what I share above - all who come to receive Christ must realize this fact - we have been crucified with Christ. We have been raised with Christ.You may think that this is a postive wishful thinking. This is not wishful thinking. It is standing on the divine facts. Whether I agree with Sodom or do not agree with Sodom, I and every heterosexual and homosexual has the same fact - WE have been CRUCIFIED with Christ and RAISED UP with Christ.Whatever you are, I am pretty sure that if you stand by faith on the facts that you have been crucified with Christ, buried with Christ, and raised with Christ, you will be brought into a more truly joyful existence."Lord Jesus, I may not agree with everything in the bible. I may not like some things I read in the bible. And some religious people have a real bad flavor about them Lord. But I know that I have been crucified with you. I have been buried with you. I have been raised with you. I stand on this fact."This kind of identification with Christ will release joy and empowerment, and a rich humanity in your life. You will enjoy God and you won't want to go back to the old sad life of sin.The perfect human life of Jesus Christ can be distributed and dispensed into people through His Spirit. He is available. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

You're confusing the word of jaywill with the word of God. I'm glad you said "hell bent".What's really ugly is when people suppress their own consciences to obey the "word of God".

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"It appears that many of you turn to Hebrew to escape the English...." -- Joseppi

None of that is positive because at the heart of it all is you think you are born a piece of shit and need to ask your invisible friend to make you happy. You can go ahead and be a piece of shit, I'll make myself happy. No invisible homies necessary.

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"What can be asserted without proof, can be dismissed without proof."-Hitch.

I'm sorry but the Christianity you describe and try to market seems to be little more than a worthless shell, a cheap and pitiful excuse of a religion designed only to be easy to market.There is NOTHING in what you said that talks about being a Christian, "accept Jesus" has almost nothing to do with that. Salvation as you present it is just a mockery. And Jesus did not die for our sins, he lived to teach us how to be Human.The Sacrifice is NOT Jesus death, it is the fact of his life.When Jesus said to take up Lacrosse, he was not just talking about the sport. The cross is what we are commanded to do. We are charged to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, educate the children, comfort the sorrowful, protect the innocent and forgive those who are not so innocent.Christianity is not about salvation, not about a joyful life, not about relief but about charge, about commitment, about fidelity, about compassion, about doing.What you market is an easy sell, I can see that, but it is NOT the message I get from reading the Bible.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

No, the words themselves are fine. It's the order in which you choose to put them that's giving me trouble. Sorry, but that's a bunch of incomprehensible word salad to me. Can you put it in English?There is one bit in there that I understood: Sorry, but there's nothing "exceedingly positive" to me about needing to believe in a being for which there is no objective evidence before you can be happy. The idea that that may actually be true saddens me profoundly. And the idea that anyone would call such a being a loving father sickens me.

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson

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We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

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It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate

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...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist

There are no "sponsors". Percy owns this site, alone and independently, and his view is acceptance of evolution. As Huntard pointed out, Percy is also a deist, so of course you wouldn't see anything about atheism. So we're determining the ability to read coherently through the length of time someone has been here and the number of posts they make?
I don't know about you, but by actually reading the posts is how I determine it. I prefer quality of content over the amount of it. Each to their own, I guess.I don't like what you write mostly because it's full of apologetics and theo-nonsense. But as you say, "that is good enough for now". If you want to draw his attention to the thread and ask him to post his own explanation, then send him a PM. Otherwise how do you expect him to know or care what is going on in a thread he obviously has ceased participating in?And again, I have explained that he could have easily been referring to the group of people that weren't crazed religious fundies, such as that member, by using "our". The fact that he happens to be an atheist does not mean he always speaks for atheists.
To exemplify: the fact that you happen to be a Christian does not mean you always speak for all Christians (in fact, not that you ever do or could). You don't think they react because they've heard it before and just aren't interested or because they see obvious problems with fundyness?
If you're going to complain that people don't like being told they "need to hear {that} good news" then you should be willing to let Muslims, Hindus, Jews, pagans and Buddhists preach to you whenever they want, without interrupting, without arguing back. But you clearly won't because you are the one with the good news and you are the one that must be allowed to speak. Do you see the problem with acting that way?
Maybe you could change your gameplan accordingly. then we'd all be much much more happier to hear what you say when you start discussing theology. I make an effort to read the first page (gauge initial response to the OP) and then the newest five pages, with reference to any post linked from before that where necessary to gain context of the recent discussions. Where I haven't read the thread that day, I'll go back to reread the last page I saw and work onwards. Perhaps you haven't noticed it because you aren't an atheist?
"Many modern atheists" are regular people and don't care about the Bible any more than they care about Egyptian or Roman mythology -- usually a lot less because those two are actually interesting and varied. The atheists you see online or in public are usually those reacting to Christians like yourself, people who attack atheism while promoting the Bible in its place: if you try to tell someone they're wrong on something using another thing to support that attack, do you really expect them not to fight back?You might see atheists pick on details because the details often contradict whatever attack is being supported by the story. See any of multiple other threads for examples; Jar is especially adept at doing it and there are at least two others with notable skill at pointing out where fundies have got the facts completely wrong.You might also see those details picked on when they are factually incorrect. The examples you give are things that indicate the story is made up using names that somebody saw in a book, because of the historical chronologies compiled from other sources; somebody in the Bible says "this guy was with this guy" or "this guy at this time/during this event" when they were decades apart indicates clearly that they're making shit up. And if you want to keep ignoring the points made so that you can crusade against "the evils of atheism" or play the martyr, I'll just pass you by without a sidelong glance.

Just for clarification, jar is NOT an atheist but a Cradle Creedal Christian of the Episcopal Chapter of Club Christian.I think the difference is slightly more subtle than just Atheist/Theist/Christian/etc .I find that a lot of the Atheists and Agnostics actually have read the Bible. By that, I mean they do not just grab passages out of context, rather they seem to have actually read the manual.I have found that far too often Christians ideas of "reading the Bible" is from Bible study groups where some SOURCE, some leader says, read this passage and I'll tell you what it means. Too often the "passage" is simply one or two verses taken totally out of context. They then have a tradition that the Bible interprets itself. They jump to some other part of the Bible that was written by someone else entirely, often from a different era, culture and mythos than the first passage, take a few lines again out of context and use those as "Proof Text".A day or so ago the Book of Ruth was mentioned. But to really understand the Book of Ruth you need to understand parts of Genesis, Numbers, even some Deuteronomy and Chronicles. Until you sit down and actually read the Bible cover to cover, not once but several times, I'm not at all sure you can really understand much of it.The Bible is an anthology of anthologies, with a very general purpose of presenting snapshots of how people viewed their God, their community, the others around them and their world in general. Until you can see it as other than some monolithic tome with but one message you just don't get it.Edited by jar, : fix gram mare

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Reading the Bible through turned me away from my church as a pre-teen. Before I left, I talked to the minister, bringing along a list of problems.It took me about 5 minutes to see he had never read the Bible through like a book, but instead had this weird schematized view where disparate parts were tied together with baling wire: he used the Bible like an 8-Ball Oracle. He had no thematic understanding or grasp of the narrative arc.After listening to some of my complaints, though, he did warn me against the Unitarians.

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Dost thou prate, rogue?
-Cassio

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Real things always push back.
-William James

I think that is very often the case. Trying to read the Bible "as a book" is almost certain to turn folk away. It is not "a Book", its a collection, an anthology of anthologies.And you gotta watch out for them Unitarians. Remember they came from Transylvania.I think it is really hard to really understand Christianity when you are told to look for Answers to QuestionS and not answers to question.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

-Paint Your Wagon

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson

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We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

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It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate

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...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist

Oh, I understood that part. I'd inherited my older brother's Science Fiction Book Club books and membership, so I knew all about the anthology/omnibus thing. I read it exactly that way, and I heard a hundred voices.Yes, as it turned out, those Unitarians were awfully wicked. Bongos. Guitars. Non-white shirts.But not as wicked as the Southern Baptist and Church of the Nazarene girls.

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Dost thou prate, rogue?
-Cassio

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Real things always push back.
-William James

By that comment I meant of course that any literalist fundy trying to say it's actual historical fact will be shot down by you demonstrating they are really fictional narratives.My apologies for implying you were an atheist.

My appetite for reading survived, freed to concentrate on back issues of Amazing Stories and Ace Doubles: those left my credulity less strained.

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Dost thou prate, rogue?
-Cassio

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Real things always push back.
-William James

Ah yes. Had to become a Royal Ambassador one year for just that reason...

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

No biggie. I just take Christianity seriously and hate it when Christians misrepresent what is actually there. After all we are expected to have actually read the manual, the Club Charter.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!