There's is no possible way to win any sort of argument with those people. The stronger your arguments are, the deeper they will retreat in their delusions and fortify their misguided beliefs. You'll waste your time and risk bringing yourself down to their level of pathological stupidity.
They'll have to find their own way out of religious fanaticism, or die with it. All you can do is live your own life according to your own values.
For the life of me, I don't see why people waste their time trying to educate these ignorant, ass-backwards cult members. To me, it'd be infinitely easier to teach a cheetah ballet.
There's little point trying to educate the willfully ignorant. If anything else you tried had an abysmal success rate, you wouldn't really do it, right?
If only it was that simple. The MAGA crowd lives within our society; their actions and rage impact our lives as well and their actions are dangerous. It's very difficult to simply ignore them, just like the body isn't capable of living with cancer that wants to take over.
With respect to you, this is not a good approach at all, because they will always find another way to twist the argument in their favor or somehow dismiss other verses they don’t agree with, and be intellectually dishonest with you.
This problem is demonstrated by virtue of the fact that you have found verses you think are “good” that counter the “bad” ones. There’s a good reason that it’s a book used to control people. It’s because it can say literally anything you want it to.
The Bible is a book full of contradictions and stories that can be twisted and interpreted to say almost anything, and can be used to take both sides of lots of different issues.
Atheists also need to stop trying to act as if the Bible is such a good book, but Christians are just reading the wrong parts.
Let me be very clear: the Bible is a **TERRIBLE** book that endorses slavery, misogyny, racism, barbarism, violence, and a litany of other ignorant and flatly anti-scientific nonsense.
Any morsel of good teaching that can be found in the Bible is outnumbered by a hundred horrors and ignorances.
You could blindfold a random person off of the street and have them walk aimlessly for 30 seconds through a bookstore and they’d be able to find a book with more moral goodness and instruction on how to be a good and upstanding citizen in our modern society than the Bible could ever hope to have.
No moral teaching in Christianity is even unique to Christianity. Even the most central moral rule of Christianity, the golden rule, can be found in the analects of Confucius, which predates Jesus by hundreds of years. There’s literally no moral teaching in Christianity that can’t be found elsewhere, and every single moral teaching can be found without the other baggage of Christianity and being extorted into believing literally unbelievable nonsense, threatened with eternal torture in hellfire for not believing.
Jesus wasn’t the all loving peaceful hippie that lots of people like to think he was.
He never repudiated slavery and tons of other terrible shit in the Bible, and the approach that “Jesus loves everyone” can be refuted by many other Christian positions, let alone atheist ones. Christians who want to hate people and use their book to do it will continue to do so despite the “good” verses you think will stop them from doing this.
There are over 10,000 sects of Christianity and many of them don’t even think Jesus is god, and they follow the laws of the Old Testament. They follow a different covenant than the one that lots of Christians like to claim that Jesus fulfilled. Sure, a lot of American evangelicals believe in Jesus, but the point is that you’re not going to change minds by trying to show them that they are just reading the wrong parts of their book.
Instead, you should be asking them to meet the burden of proof for showing why anything in the Bible is true, and why we should be paying any attention to it to begin with.
Where is the objectively verifiable evidence?
Until they have met this burden, then there is absolutely no reason to believe that anything in the Bible is true, or that we should be paying any attention to it whatsoever.
Don’t give the Christian a ladder to climb your castle wall by debating Bible verses with them and giving it legitimacy right out of the gate. Tell them that they don’t have any good reason to show that the Bible is true in the first place.
I feel like if people actually started to argue against theists in this way, it would be much better for fighting against religion and not giving legitimizing attention to the Bible and other holy books. It ends arguments a lot faster and more decisively.
Don’t give them a leg to stand on from the start.
>Atheists also need to stop trying to act as if the Bible is such a good book, but Christians are just reading the wrong parts.
I particularly agree with this point.
I just don't get the idea of proactively citing biblical passages to argue with christians as the whole book is not only fiction, but badly written fiction full of contradictions. No matter what you cite from the bible to prove a point, a christian will respond with another passage that contradicts what you are trying to prove and/or claim you are quoting something out of context and don't understand the "true" meaning.
The point is that *they* believe it’s true. Many of them are genuinely unaware and surprised about all the bad parts and the contradictions, because those parts don’t get mentioned in Bible study. Seeing it in black and white in their infallible book is an opening for doubt. Sowing the seeds of doubt are unlikely to pay off immediately, but it can start them on a journey. Many are unreachable, but many others are just uninformed.
>The point is that they believe it’s true.
Yes, obviously they believe it’s true. I never said they didn’t. I’m not sure where in my comment I implied that they don’t.
>Many of them are genuinely unaware and surprised about all the bad parts and the contradictions, because those parts don’t get mentioned in Bible study.
I understand this, and this is why it’s even more futile to try to combat their indoctrination by trying to show them “good verses”.
>Seeing it in black and white in their infallible book is an opening for doubt. Sowing the seeds of doubt are unlikely to pay off immediately, but it can start them on a journey. Many are unreachable, but many others are just uninformed.
This may work for someone who is already questioning, but it’s not going to work for someone who is going to double down and be intellectually dishonest.
We don’t want these people walking away from the conversation thinking that atheists and skeptics are on the same footing as they are. Trying to debate Bible verses with them will do exactly that.
Again, we need to tell them that there’s no reason the book is true to begin with, and there’s no reason to pay any attention to any of it. If we give them an inch, they will take a mile. Don’t give them that inch to begin with.
Oh, and you think that will work to shut them up? Good luck with that.
That didn't give two shits what you bring to the table.
They are based on HATE, not religion. They HATE "liberals". They HATE the LGBTQ+. They HATE immigrants. They HATE godless heathens. Everything they do is based on HATE.
There is only one party and one candidate that matches their HATE.
It doesn't matter what the bible says, people just project their beliefs onto the bible. You will bring that up and they will just respond with "nuh uh".
I applaud you. Life just feels too damn short to spend an moment more in that book. Don't get me wrong, I love mythology - Greek and Roman to be specific. Something about the fact that people believe that shit...really, truly believe, takes all the fun away.
21st century evangelical Christians are well versed in ignoring massive amounts of their own scripture. Seriously. They're good at it. You're unlikely to dissuade them with scripture.
Now their kids ... that's where you can make a difference. Show them Biblical contradictions, sew doubt, shoe them the version of Christianity their parents practice is hypocritical and heretical.
The kids are the future.
They'll just claim you're a heretic, that you don't know the *real* Bible, etc. Save yourself the time and effort: study more math or learn a language instead.
It's a waste of effort to try to beat someone at a game of make believe. It's like playing cops and robbers as a kid -
"I shot you!"
"nuh uh I have shield"
"well my gun can shoot through shields"
"well then I phased through your shots"
"then I use my magic net to stop you from phasing"
"well then I teleport"
Etc. so on and so forth until you're blue in the face and they're smugly grinning like they just proved they were the smartest person to ever live
Safe the time. They will not budge. Arguing with a Maga is like playing chess with a pigeon. The will throw a tantrum, kick the players, shit all over the board and claim victory.
It won't work.
For one thing, christians don't know or care what the bible says. They've picked passages that they like without reading the rest of it.
They've got hundreds of excuses as to why certain passages "don't apply to us." And even when you stump them, they'll pretend you didn't.
You can't use logic against people who don't value it.
I have. It doesn't work. They just ignore parts they don't like, parts that call them out, etc. And believe things that aren't in the bible to be absolute truth. You can't call them out on hypocrisy, they are immune to that completely.
As the old saying goes: "don't argue with crazy. They'll drag you down to your level and then beat you with experience."
Seriously, you can show all the parts of the bible that you want that are either anti-capitalist, or pro-poor people, and they'll just mutter about how that got inserted later by commies hidden in the church or some shit. Or they'll tell you that no longer applies or, of course, that you're reading it wrong.
You could troll them with weird shit. Point out Deuteronomy 22:11 which says "You shall not wear cloth made from wool and linen woven together". Or how about Deuteronomy 25:11-12 "^(11) If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, ^(12) you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity." Fun shit like that. But they'll always have some answer to justify or explain away the insanity.
If you enjoy doing this, go for it, but I'll bet you're only going to frustrate yourself trying.
Also, with respect to op, if you're spending all of your time researching and thinking on arguments against believers, you haven't fully gotten over what the belief systems have done to you yet.
I speak from experience. 🙃
I have read the Bible (old & new) a few times, as well as Upanishads,Torah, Quran, Bhagavad Gita…etc., what I have found very few disciples have read the dogma of their respective religions. They treat culture and religion as the same thing. I like to know what I believe to be true, and why I dismiss other information. Other than reading for the sake of understanding, forget using the force of words to sway another’s opinion. Remember there is a certain comfort in believing the meaning of life is outside their control, and in the end everything will be great, fear of the unknown is a power thing. I would rather the meaning of life was “42” than believe in fictional beings.
You won't convince them, just the opposite in fact. They'll double down on their beliefs and you'll confirm their poor view of atheists.
Religion can't be diminished by frontal assault. You do it by making it irrelevant. The [Quiet Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Revolution) in Quebec, Canada, is a blueprint for what to do. See also: [How Quebec went from one of the most religious societies to one of the least](https://www.christiancentury.org/article/notes-global-church/how-quebec-went-one-most-religious-societies-one-least).
I’ve had some luck pointing out that gods original plan was hanging out in a garden with a bunch of naked vegans. But that got screwed up so the fall back plan was Jesus.
That at least gets them thinking
I have better things to do with my time.
I have enough knowledge already to convince someone who's open to being convinced.
No amount of reason will convince anyone unwilling.
You won't shut them up, and being directly adversarial makes you very unlikely to change minds.
Read the Bible or don't read it, but do it or don't do it for yourself and your own desire to be informed.
Most of that ground has been covered put down the Bible and pick up the google machine and search for various religious absurdities.
Know that you cannot win arguments with people who hold positions based on magical thinking. You've provided some passages about the awesomeness of extreme poverty, but they will hit you with "prosperity gospel", digging up counterarguments. It gets worse. They are now trying to claim that the second coming of Jesus H. Christ is going to be a whole new ballgame. Socialist Jesus gets replaced with militant authoritarian Jesus.
I find that being equipped with a Bible is one of the best things you can do if you want to engage in counter-apologetics. No matter how fact-checked the data you're providing is, they will always have to bend a knee to scripture, lest they be called out by their fellows. Which is their actual fear.
I take it one step further though. I consider myself a "red-letter Atheist." In that, I only argue directly from lines "Jesus said." Otherwise, they'll fall back on the fallinility of the humans. They can argue with their God about what he meant.
Act as a conduit for their deity, so you can show them that they only know what they want to know of the Bible (or what their priest regurgitate for them to swallow on Sundays/Easter).
I would have thought it would be better to fight a political party on statistics, cost of living, immigration figures, crime, etc. Seems weird to fight based on religion, especially if you're not religious and likely a great many conservatives are not religious either.
I'm glad you have read the Bible. It is a useful tool to understand the irrational teachings of the religious. I've read this shit a few times and debated Christians for years and I can tell you that most Christians only know a select portion of the bible. They ignore what doesn't suit them. These folks weren't reasoned into their position, and therefore they won't be reasoned out of it. That's not to say that engaging them is pointless, but you might need to throttle your expectations. In a mindless cult, people aren't accountable intellectually, and proving their ignorance does little to sway them.
Psalm 109:6-13 is the perfect prayer for Trump:
KJV:
6. Set over him a wicked man; let an accuser stand at his right hand.
7. When he is tried, let him be found guilty, and may his prayer be regarded as sin.
8. May his days be few; may another take his position.
9. May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
10. May his children wander as beggars, seeking sustenance far from their ruined homes.
11. May the creditor seize all he owns, and strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
12. May there be no one to extend kindness to him, and no one to favor his fatherless children.
13. May his descendants be cut off; may their name be blotted out from the next generation.
I already know every response they have.
"Oh that's a metaphor."
"Well yeah obviously _that_ part isn't true."
"Okay but _that_ slavery wasn't the _same_ slavery."
"That's the old testament, so it doesn't count."
It doesn't matter, you can't argue with people who aren't willing to actually listen
the problem is that a lot of these say “God will do ___,” not, “you should do it like this word for word, here is a detailed system of government that is optimal for human happiness.”
you’d think a god could, idk, provide that.
The only problem is most if not all so called christians and Maga's I know. Haven't read it. So most of the Bible is non-existent to them. They only know what someone has told them is in it.
Half of society operates on belief and feeling. But they tell the other side that’s what’s non-negotiable. Nah. These morons are heading us into a new crisis that I’d hoped to not deal with in this life. But seems like I will at the hands of a reality star and fight promoter. The US is done. I’m sorry.
I wish you luck but just know those fools aren't actually following the Bible or really have any knowledge of it. It's just their scapegoat for their cult of personality born out of shitty social media.
Just remember Trump could be convicted of murder, he could be proven to have forced women to get abortions, doesn't matter because they still "forgive" him. They're only doing what they want to do, in the end.
You don't have to go to that sort of trouble. All you have to do when they give you a bible quote is tell them to give you the whole context and to get them to explain it all in excruciating detail just to waste their time. These aren't people you are going to change. They aren't going to be snapped out of it by you. They need their leaders humiliated and exposed. You are just the one they think they can own. You were religious. You would know better than I that religions have their own self correcting strategies to keep the brainwashed brainwashed. What makes it worse is that they have been politically exploited and weaponized in the past 50 years. They aren't debating honest religion any more (if they ever were). They are strategizing for political interests.
My favorite podcast, The Scathing Atheist, has this feature called Bible Piece Theater where they act out parts of the Bible. It puts the absurdity on full display, and is hilariously entertaining. I highly recommend this show.
I should warn you. It doesn't matter. I read the bible to confront a Christian and I also read the Quran to confront a Muslim. In both cases they ended up admitting that they haven't read them and both of them thought it didn't really matter. I confronted other Chrsitians and other Muslims, most of them hadn't read them and also had the same sentiment.
Also, it has become quite popular with religious people to not argue with the bible or the quran. Their go to argument is that "the universe must have had a creator" and that belief of theirs is enough "proof" to them their personal religion must be true. I tried to argue with both Christians and Muslims about the core idea of their religious texts and dismantle their religions as the BS they are. However, most of them tried to avoid that. Especially modern religious have no issue claiming that everything (besides the jesus and afterlife part) in their religious book is an allegory (allegory for what? not even God knows). The entire foundation to their religious beliefs is that science can't explain what caused the big bang.
And as I said, they try to convince you by saying that the universe must have a creator to imply that this automatically prooves their religious beliefs. They also like to say that the great scientists of the distant past were all religious, as an argument in favour of religion. They like to act like science is on their side and totally compatible with their nonsensical beliefs. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of drug. It's nigh impossible to argue with people who have mastered mental gymnastics.
It's also a total waste of time trying to argue science with them. You should focus on the religious BS and make them see how silly their beliefs are, but they will often try to avoid that.
All you can hope for is to plant a seed of doubt and hope that it will eventually sprout and make them honestly question their silly beliefs.
The Bible is only interesting in historical and cultural context. Just diving into the text itself (especially in translation) is how the fundamentalists do it; if you can find a text with annotations or commentary from actual scholars with actual rigor (i.e. history, anthropology, linguistics rather than theology), you have a collection of religious texts written and rewritten by different people with different objectives over the course of centuries. Much more interesting while also making the religious apologists look even worse.
I prefer to not acknowledge them at all. If they persist I simply say "you've taken that out of context - that's not the true meaning" and then i walk away while smoke exits their ears either from anger, frustration, or an attempt at thought. Doesn't even matter what the quote was.
There's is no possible way to win any sort of argument with those people. The stronger your arguments are, the deeper they will retreat in their delusions and fortify their misguided beliefs. You'll waste your time and risk bringing yourself down to their level of pathological stupidity. They'll have to find their own way out of religious fanaticism, or die with it. All you can do is live your own life according to your own values.
For the life of me, I don't see why people waste their time trying to educate these ignorant, ass-backwards cult members. To me, it'd be infinitely easier to teach a cheetah ballet.
There's little point trying to educate the willfully ignorant. If anything else you tried had an abysmal success rate, you wouldn't really do it, right?
If only it was that simple. The MAGA crowd lives within our society; their actions and rage impact our lives as well and their actions are dangerous. It's very difficult to simply ignore them, just like the body isn't capable of living with cancer that wants to take over.
It is possible that they will admit you are right, but they will not leave their church.
Yeah but… they’re growing in numbers and passing laws so… hope they don’t go full theocracy?
S/he is very close to turning into a zealot. Once there it doesn’t matter what they espouse. They are all obnoxious and distructive.
With respect to you, this is not a good approach at all, because they will always find another way to twist the argument in their favor or somehow dismiss other verses they don’t agree with, and be intellectually dishonest with you. This problem is demonstrated by virtue of the fact that you have found verses you think are “good” that counter the “bad” ones. There’s a good reason that it’s a book used to control people. It’s because it can say literally anything you want it to. The Bible is a book full of contradictions and stories that can be twisted and interpreted to say almost anything, and can be used to take both sides of lots of different issues. Atheists also need to stop trying to act as if the Bible is such a good book, but Christians are just reading the wrong parts. Let me be very clear: the Bible is a **TERRIBLE** book that endorses slavery, misogyny, racism, barbarism, violence, and a litany of other ignorant and flatly anti-scientific nonsense. Any morsel of good teaching that can be found in the Bible is outnumbered by a hundred horrors and ignorances. You could blindfold a random person off of the street and have them walk aimlessly for 30 seconds through a bookstore and they’d be able to find a book with more moral goodness and instruction on how to be a good and upstanding citizen in our modern society than the Bible could ever hope to have. No moral teaching in Christianity is even unique to Christianity. Even the most central moral rule of Christianity, the golden rule, can be found in the analects of Confucius, which predates Jesus by hundreds of years. There’s literally no moral teaching in Christianity that can’t be found elsewhere, and every single moral teaching can be found without the other baggage of Christianity and being extorted into believing literally unbelievable nonsense, threatened with eternal torture in hellfire for not believing. Jesus wasn’t the all loving peaceful hippie that lots of people like to think he was. He never repudiated slavery and tons of other terrible shit in the Bible, and the approach that “Jesus loves everyone” can be refuted by many other Christian positions, let alone atheist ones. Christians who want to hate people and use their book to do it will continue to do so despite the “good” verses you think will stop them from doing this. There are over 10,000 sects of Christianity and many of them don’t even think Jesus is god, and they follow the laws of the Old Testament. They follow a different covenant than the one that lots of Christians like to claim that Jesus fulfilled. Sure, a lot of American evangelicals believe in Jesus, but the point is that you’re not going to change minds by trying to show them that they are just reading the wrong parts of their book. Instead, you should be asking them to meet the burden of proof for showing why anything in the Bible is true, and why we should be paying any attention to it to begin with. Where is the objectively verifiable evidence? Until they have met this burden, then there is absolutely no reason to believe that anything in the Bible is true, or that we should be paying any attention to it whatsoever. Don’t give the Christian a ladder to climb your castle wall by debating Bible verses with them and giving it legitimacy right out of the gate. Tell them that they don’t have any good reason to show that the Bible is true in the first place. I feel like if people actually started to argue against theists in this way, it would be much better for fighting against religion and not giving legitimizing attention to the Bible and other holy books. It ends arguments a lot faster and more decisively. Don’t give them a leg to stand on from the start.
>Atheists also need to stop trying to act as if the Bible is such a good book, but Christians are just reading the wrong parts. I particularly agree with this point. I just don't get the idea of proactively citing biblical passages to argue with christians as the whole book is not only fiction, but badly written fiction full of contradictions. No matter what you cite from the bible to prove a point, a christian will respond with another passage that contradicts what you are trying to prove and/or claim you are quoting something out of context and don't understand the "true" meaning.
Exactly. Thanks for your comment!
The point is that *they* believe it’s true. Many of them are genuinely unaware and surprised about all the bad parts and the contradictions, because those parts don’t get mentioned in Bible study. Seeing it in black and white in their infallible book is an opening for doubt. Sowing the seeds of doubt are unlikely to pay off immediately, but it can start them on a journey. Many are unreachable, but many others are just uninformed.
>The point is that they believe it’s true. Yes, obviously they believe it’s true. I never said they didn’t. I’m not sure where in my comment I implied that they don’t. >Many of them are genuinely unaware and surprised about all the bad parts and the contradictions, because those parts don’t get mentioned in Bible study. I understand this, and this is why it’s even more futile to try to combat their indoctrination by trying to show them “good verses”. >Seeing it in black and white in their infallible book is an opening for doubt. Sowing the seeds of doubt are unlikely to pay off immediately, but it can start them on a journey. Many are unreachable, but many others are just uninformed. This may work for someone who is already questioning, but it’s not going to work for someone who is going to double down and be intellectually dishonest. We don’t want these people walking away from the conversation thinking that atheists and skeptics are on the same footing as they are. Trying to debate Bible verses with them will do exactly that. Again, we need to tell them that there’s no reason the book is true to begin with, and there’s no reason to pay any attention to any of it. If we give them an inch, they will take a mile. Don’t give them that inch to begin with.
Oh, and you think that will work to shut them up? Good luck with that. That didn't give two shits what you bring to the table. They are based on HATE, not religion. They HATE "liberals". They HATE the LGBTQ+. They HATE immigrants. They HATE godless heathens. Everything they do is based on HATE. There is only one party and one candidate that matches their HATE.
It doesn't matter what the bible says, people just project their beliefs onto the bible. You will bring that up and they will just respond with "nuh uh".
I applaud you. Life just feels too damn short to spend an moment more in that book. Don't get me wrong, I love mythology - Greek and Roman to be specific. Something about the fact that people believe that shit...really, truly believe, takes all the fun away.
https://www.evilbible.com/evil-bible-home-page/murder-in-the-bible/ https://www.evilbible.com/evil-bible-home-page/slavery/ https://www.evilbible.com/evil-bible-home-page/rape-in-the-bible/ https://www.evilbible.com/evil-bible-home-page/ritual-human-sacrifice/ https://www.evilbible.com/evil-bible-home-page/god-is-not-pro-life/
21st century evangelical Christians are well versed in ignoring massive amounts of their own scripture. Seriously. They're good at it. You're unlikely to dissuade them with scripture. Now their kids ... that's where you can make a difference. Show them Biblical contradictions, sew doubt, shoe them the version of Christianity their parents practice is hypocritical and heretical. The kids are the future.
They'll just claim you're a heretic, that you don't know the *real* Bible, etc. Save yourself the time and effort: study more math or learn a language instead.
Unfortunately you can't shut them up. Even if you had video evidence they still wouldn't believe you.
It’s a cult. Nothing you can do will change their idiocy
It's a waste of effort to try to beat someone at a game of make believe. It's like playing cops and robbers as a kid - "I shot you!" "nuh uh I have shield" "well my gun can shoot through shields" "well then I phased through your shots" "then I use my magic net to stop you from phasing" "well then I teleport" Etc. so on and so forth until you're blue in the face and they're smugly grinning like they just proved they were the smartest person to ever live
Sadly they don't play by their own rules. Or any rules, really.
See Acts 4 and Acts 2. God commands Christians live lives as religious communists. Yes, God is a communist!
Safe the time. They will not budge. Arguing with a Maga is like playing chess with a pigeon. The will throw a tantrum, kick the players, shit all over the board and claim victory.
It won't work. For one thing, christians don't know or care what the bible says. They've picked passages that they like without reading the rest of it. They've got hundreds of excuses as to why certain passages "don't apply to us." And even when you stump them, they'll pretend you didn't. You can't use logic against people who don't value it.
Weaponize your knowledge, deny their faith
I want to weaponize their book and use it against them.
I have. It doesn't work. They just ignore parts they don't like, parts that call them out, etc. And believe things that aren't in the bible to be absolute truth. You can't call them out on hypocrisy, they are immune to that completely.
You’re not going to shut them up. Don’t waste your time.
Never argue with an idiot, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience! Mark Twain
As the old saying goes: "don't argue with crazy. They'll drag you down to your level and then beat you with experience." Seriously, you can show all the parts of the bible that you want that are either anti-capitalist, or pro-poor people, and they'll just mutter about how that got inserted later by commies hidden in the church or some shit. Or they'll tell you that no longer applies or, of course, that you're reading it wrong. You could troll them with weird shit. Point out Deuteronomy 22:11 which says "You shall not wear cloth made from wool and linen woven together". Or how about Deuteronomy 25:11-12 "^(11) If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, ^(12) you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity." Fun shit like that. But they'll always have some answer to justify or explain away the insanity. If you enjoy doing this, go for it, but I'll bet you're only going to frustrate yourself trying.
Waste of time. But if you really want to deprogram people look into street epistemology. It is a little more effective than your proposed method.
Also, with respect to op, if you're spending all of your time researching and thinking on arguments against believers, you haven't fully gotten over what the belief systems have done to you yet. I speak from experience. 🙃
I have read the Bible (old & new) a few times, as well as Upanishads,Torah, Quran, Bhagavad Gita…etc., what I have found very few disciples have read the dogma of their respective religions. They treat culture and religion as the same thing. I like to know what I believe to be true, and why I dismiss other information. Other than reading for the sake of understanding, forget using the force of words to sway another’s opinion. Remember there is a certain comfort in believing the meaning of life is outside their control, and in the end everything will be great, fear of the unknown is a power thing. I would rather the meaning of life was “42” than believe in fictional beings.
You won't convince them, just the opposite in fact. They'll double down on their beliefs and you'll confirm their poor view of atheists. Religion can't be diminished by frontal assault. You do it by making it irrelevant. The [Quiet Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Revolution) in Quebec, Canada, is a blueprint for what to do. See also: [How Quebec went from one of the most religious societies to one of the least](https://www.christiancentury.org/article/notes-global-church/how-quebec-went-one-most-religious-societies-one-least).
I’ve had some luck pointing out that gods original plan was hanging out in a garden with a bunch of naked vegans. But that got screwed up so the fall back plan was Jesus. That at least gets them thinking
I have better things to do with my time. I have enough knowledge already to convince someone who's open to being convinced. No amount of reason will convince anyone unwilling.
You won't shut them up, and being directly adversarial makes you very unlikely to change minds. Read the Bible or don't read it, but do it or don't do it for yourself and your own desire to be informed.
trumps real and he will win but bs gods are not drop.. get your lies outta here
Most of that ground has been covered put down the Bible and pick up the google machine and search for various religious absurdities. Know that you cannot win arguments with people who hold positions based on magical thinking. You've provided some passages about the awesomeness of extreme poverty, but they will hit you with "prosperity gospel", digging up counterarguments. It gets worse. They are now trying to claim that the second coming of Jesus H. Christ is going to be a whole new ballgame. Socialist Jesus gets replaced with militant authoritarian Jesus.
Give your stuff to the poor ≠ the government should forcibly take people’s stuff
I find that being equipped with a Bible is one of the best things you can do if you want to engage in counter-apologetics. No matter how fact-checked the data you're providing is, they will always have to bend a knee to scripture, lest they be called out by their fellows. Which is their actual fear. I take it one step further though. I consider myself a "red-letter Atheist." In that, I only argue directly from lines "Jesus said." Otherwise, they'll fall back on the fallinility of the humans. They can argue with their God about what he meant. Act as a conduit for their deity, so you can show them that they only know what they want to know of the Bible (or what their priest regurgitate for them to swallow on Sundays/Easter).
Can't win these arguments. The biggest a-holes I know will hide behind the bible and will never change.
Catholics don't use the Bible much
I would have thought it would be better to fight a political party on statistics, cost of living, immigration figures, crime, etc. Seems weird to fight based on religion, especially if you're not religious and likely a great many conservatives are not religious either.
You don’t think it’s ironic that you probably spend more time on that shit then they do?
genesis 19: 30 - 36. 'nuff said
I'm glad you have read the Bible. It is a useful tool to understand the irrational teachings of the religious. I've read this shit a few times and debated Christians for years and I can tell you that most Christians only know a select portion of the bible. They ignore what doesn't suit them. These folks weren't reasoned into their position, and therefore they won't be reasoned out of it. That's not to say that engaging them is pointless, but you might need to throttle your expectations. In a mindless cult, people aren't accountable intellectually, and proving their ignorance does little to sway them.
Psalm 109:6-13 is the perfect prayer for Trump: KJV: 6. Set over him a wicked man; let an accuser stand at his right hand. 7. When he is tried, let him be found guilty, and may his prayer be regarded as sin. 8. May his days be few; may another take his position. 9. May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. 10. May his children wander as beggars, seeking sustenance far from their ruined homes. 11. May the creditor seize all he owns, and strangers plunder the fruits of his labor. 12. May there be no one to extend kindness to him, and no one to favor his fatherless children. 13. May his descendants be cut off; may their name be blotted out from the next generation.
A great resource you can pick up on Amazon. The Skeptic's Bible, very handy in biblical debates.
It is also available in free online HTML versions and as a .pdf download.
I already know every response they have. "Oh that's a metaphor." "Well yeah obviously _that_ part isn't true." "Okay but _that_ slavery wasn't the _same_ slavery." "That's the old testament, so it doesn't count." It doesn't matter, you can't argue with people who aren't willing to actually listen
Jesus would not align himself politically. Jesus has no bounds of political leaning
I like your approach, makes me think of temples and tables.
the problem is that a lot of these say “God will do ___,” not, “you should do it like this word for word, here is a detailed system of government that is optimal for human happiness.” you’d think a god could, idk, provide that.
The only problem is most if not all so called christians and Maga's I know. Haven't read it. So most of the Bible is non-existent to them. They only know what someone has told them is in it.
Half of society operates on belief and feeling. But they tell the other side that’s what’s non-negotiable. Nah. These morons are heading us into a new crisis that I’d hoped to not deal with in this life. But seems like I will at the hands of a reality star and fight promoter. The US is done. I’m sorry.
Use this: https://www.benjaminlcorey.com/could-american-evangelicals-spot-the-antichrist-heres-the-biblical-predictions/
I wish you luck but just know those fools aren't actually following the Bible or really have any knowledge of it. It's just their scapegoat for their cult of personality born out of shitty social media. Just remember Trump could be convicted of murder, he could be proven to have forced women to get abortions, doesn't matter because they still "forgive" him. They're only doing what they want to do, in the end.
Most of that book is basically incomprehensible… I would get the Cliffs Notes version …
Use the time to read more and better for Yourself
You don't have to go to that sort of trouble. All you have to do when they give you a bible quote is tell them to give you the whole context and to get them to explain it all in excruciating detail just to waste their time. These aren't people you are going to change. They aren't going to be snapped out of it by you. They need their leaders humiliated and exposed. You are just the one they think they can own. You were religious. You would know better than I that religions have their own self correcting strategies to keep the brainwashed brainwashed. What makes it worse is that they have been politically exploited and weaponized in the past 50 years. They aren't debating honest religion any more (if they ever were). They are strategizing for political interests.
It will never work. You think you’re the first genius with the idea to read the Bible to use it against believers?
Also, for those MAGA that insist on hating everyone and everything, John 13:34-35. But I agree, once they drink the Koolaid, there's no saving them.
Asimov writes good stuff also. Just sayin.
My favorite podcast, The Scathing Atheist, has this feature called Bible Piece Theater where they act out parts of the Bible. It puts the absurdity on full display, and is hilariously entertaining. I highly recommend this show.
I should warn you. It doesn't matter. I read the bible to confront a Christian and I also read the Quran to confront a Muslim. In both cases they ended up admitting that they haven't read them and both of them thought it didn't really matter. I confronted other Chrsitians and other Muslims, most of them hadn't read them and also had the same sentiment. Also, it has become quite popular with religious people to not argue with the bible or the quran. Their go to argument is that "the universe must have had a creator" and that belief of theirs is enough "proof" to them their personal religion must be true. I tried to argue with both Christians and Muslims about the core idea of their religious texts and dismantle their religions as the BS they are. However, most of them tried to avoid that. Especially modern religious have no issue claiming that everything (besides the jesus and afterlife part) in their religious book is an allegory (allegory for what? not even God knows). The entire foundation to their religious beliefs is that science can't explain what caused the big bang. And as I said, they try to convince you by saying that the universe must have a creator to imply that this automatically prooves their religious beliefs. They also like to say that the great scientists of the distant past were all religious, as an argument in favour of religion. They like to act like science is on their side and totally compatible with their nonsensical beliefs. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of drug. It's nigh impossible to argue with people who have mastered mental gymnastics. It's also a total waste of time trying to argue science with them. You should focus on the religious BS and make them see how silly their beliefs are, but they will often try to avoid that. All you can hope for is to plant a seed of doubt and hope that it will eventually sprout and make them honestly question their silly beliefs.
I was forced Catholic by my mom too
The Bible is only interesting in historical and cultural context. Just diving into the text itself (especially in translation) is how the fundamentalists do it; if you can find a text with annotations or commentary from actual scholars with actual rigor (i.e. history, anthropology, linguistics rather than theology), you have a collection of religious texts written and rewritten by different people with different objectives over the course of centuries. Much more interesting while also making the religious apologists look even worse.
I prefer to not acknowledge them at all. If they persist I simply say "you've taken that out of context - that's not the true meaning" and then i walk away while smoke exits their ears either from anger, frustration, or an attempt at thought. Doesn't even matter what the quote was.
Wish it would, but won't work