One of the charges Evangelical apologists love to level against atheists is that they don’t really know what the Bible says and teaches; that atheists are ignorant of that which they criticize. While it is certainly true that some atheists know very little about the Bible, the same can’t be said of ex-pastors such as myself, John Loftus, Dan Barker, David Madison, and the members of the Clergy Project. Nor can it be said of countless atheists who were formerly devoted followers of Jesus Christ; former Evangelicals who daily read and studied their Bibles and attended church every time the doors were open; former Evangelicals who devoured books on Christian theology and loved to talk about the teachings of the Bible. Such people know the Bible inside and out. Their paths from Evangelicalism to atheism are littered with well-worn, dog-eared Bibles. (Please see the From Evangelicalism to Atheism series.)
Many Evangelical apologists believe that only through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit can one truly understand the teachings of the Bible. Thus, a one-time Evangelical such as Dr. Bart Ehrman may have an academic understanding of the Bible, but he can’t really “know” the depths and intricacies of its teachings. This line of argument, of course, is an attempt to dismiss out of hand criticisms of the Bible by atheists and other non-Christians. Evidently, the moment I said I was no longer a Christian, everything I learned about the Bible during the fifty years I spent in the church and twenty-five years I spent in the ministry disappeared in some sort of supernatural Men in Black mind wipe. Thoughtful Evangelicals realize the absurdity of this argument and refrain from using it, but alas many Evangelical zealots aren’t “thoughtful.” In their minds, atheists are the enemies of God, reprobates, apostates, and haters of God, the Bible, and Christianity. No matter what we might have known in the past, now that we are followers of Satan, our minds and intellectual processes are ruined. No atheist can know as much about the Bible as a Spirit-filled Evangelical, or so they think anyway.
Does it really take the Holy Spirit to know and understand the teachings of the Bible? Of course not. And it is absurd to argue otherwise. The Bible is a book, no different from the Quran, Book of Mormon, or Huckleberry Finn. Any claims made for its supernatural nature require faith, a faith that is unnecessary to have when it comes to understanding the Bible. If a person can read, is he or she not able to understand what the Bible says? Don’t Evangelicals themselves admit this fact when Gideons hand out Bibles and non-Christians are encouraged to read the gospels? If the teachings of the Bible cannot be naturally understood without some sort of Holy Ghost magic, why challenge unbelievers to read the wrongly-called Good Book?
I suspect the real issue is that when atheists read the Bible, they are free from the constraints of doctrinal statements, systematic theologies, and hermeneutics. One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard about reading the Bible came from Dr. Ehrman, who suggested reading each book of the Bible as a stand-alone text. Let the author speak for himself. Of course, such readings of the Bible destroy attempts by Evangelical apologists to harmonize the Bible — to make all the disparate, contradictory parts “fit.” Go back and read the first three chapters of the book of Genesis without appealing to parlor tricks used to make the text mesh with what Trinitarian Evangelicals believe about God and creation. A fair-minded reader might conclude that there are multiple gods. An excellent book on this subject is The Evolution of God by Robert Wright.
Over the course of the twenty-five years I spent in the ministry, I read the Bible from cover to cover numerous times. I spent thousands of hours reading and studying the Bible, and thousands of more hours reading theological tomes. Even today, a decade removed from the last time I darkened the doors of a Christian church, I still have a mind brimming with Bible verses and things I learned as an Evangelical pastor. One of the ironies of the health problems I have, with its attendant memory problems, is that I tend to have problems with short-term memory, not long-term. Thus, I can’t remember that recent Christopher Hitchens quote I read, but I can remember a quote by Charles Spurgeon or John MacArthur from decades ago. Believe me, there are days when I wish I could flush my mind of all the religious nonsense that clutters up its space. So much wasted mental real estate . . .
The reasons I divorced Jesus are many. I have spent countless hours writing about why I am no longer a Christian. That said, the primary reason I am an atheist today is the Bible. As I began to have questions and doubts about the central claims of Christianity, I decided to re-read and study the Bible, determining what it was I really believed. I found that many of my beliefs were false or grounded in narrowly defined theological frameworks that could not be sustained intellectually. Once I let the Bible speak for itself, my Evangelical house came tumbling to the ground. I tried, for a time, to find a resting spot that allowed me to hang on to some sort of Christian faith. Alas, I did not find these things satisfying intellectually. Eventually, my slide down the slippery slope landed me where I am today — a committed agnostic and atheist.
At the very least, Evangelical apologists should grudgingly admit that many Evangelicals-turned-atheists know the Bible as well they do. Now if we could get apologists to know and understand atheism/agnosticism/humanism as well as many ex-Evangelicals know the Bible, that would be great. People such as myself have a distinct advantage over many Evangelical apologists. We have lived on both sides of the street. We have read atheist authors and Christian ones. That’s why, when an Evangelical wants to argue with me about the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible, I ask them, have you read any of Bart Ehrman’s books? If they haven’t, I don’t waste my time with them. Their problem is one of ignorance, and until they are willing to do their homework, there’s really no hope for them.
I will forever, until dementia or death robs me of my mind, remain a student and reader of the Bible. My reasons for doing so are different today from what they were when I was pastoring churches, but my goal remains the same: to help people see and understand the truth.
Books by Bart Ehrman
The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
How Jesus Became God : the Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
Forged: Writing in the Name of God–Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer
About Bruce Gerencser
Bruce Gerencser, 62, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 41 years. He and his wife have six grown children and twelve grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.
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Parts of the bible horrified me, and like some/most Christians I ignored the horrific parts. When I was deep in the throes of deconstruction, I heard a podcast with Rob Bell who said that we were reading the bible all wrong. We should look at it as a compilation of writings with content that the writers thought was important to save or to communicate. We should understand that it wasn’t a history book but a collection of ancient stories and genealogies and so forth.
Of course, it’s the inerrantists who have it all wrong, and it amazes me that otherwise intelligent people can cling to belief that these works ate cohesive and inerrant when obviously they aren’t as they don’t even align with each other.
Requiring the “Holy Spirit” to properly read the Bible is a lot like Ken Ham’s “Biblical glasses”. It allows you to gloss over things topics and edicts that are culturally irrelevant, represent an obsolete world view, or an antiquated morality. The Bible is actually quite malleable to suit the prejudices and culture of the reader. I suppose it is like a lot of things, you get out of it what you put into it. Of course God sounds a lot like you…He is YOU!
Well, I was interested in understanding your point of view, but after reading your Dear Evangelical letter, I pretty much decided that anyone who spoke that hatefully about any group of people probably didn’t have anything useful to say to me. Good luck in your endeavors.
*sigh*
And you totally missed the point of that post.
In the NT, I used to avoid Revelation; I didn’t like the doom and gloom. I also tended to dismiss passages that did not confirm my theology. More in that I was sure they did support it, I just needed to figure it out.
When it came to the OT, I remember telling myself all the time how I was glad God did not treat his saints like that anymore.
Yes. The Bible sure does leave itself open to so many different interpretations as well. You would think God would make “the way” indecisively clear. Instead it is vague enough to go in many different directions. Allowing to a gigantic number of various christian organizations giving way to so much confusion as to which is the right way. So that’s one of the things that puzzeled me. Also there are so many commensense things like; why is the apostal Paul the only one to have a great light from heaven shine on him, and a voice from heaven for his salvation experience yet God doesn’t do that for anybody else. If God “is not willing that any should perish” then why don’t more people have this light from heaven shine on them? Or why doesn’t God have the angels get the gospel out. If we are supposably God’s only hope – why would he devote such an incredibly important task in the hands of unfaithful people. Isn’t that like putting the thief in charge the bank (crude analogy). Also why does God send “strong delusion” ( as spoken in 2Thess) to make lost people even more lost? This is NOT in harmony with the God that “so loved the world”. There are so many examples one could give that would lead them to the conclusion that something is not right. But it does take some stepping out of “the box” to see that. By the way I really liked your post on being in or out of “the box”
Christopher Hitchens ruled. Common sense and reason. All others, religious zealots, are ignorant people. I could prove it but it’s the waste of time on such ignorance.