This is a reply to the piece written by Benjamin L. Corey which you can read at The Official Blog of Benjamin L. Corey titled “S%#t I Wish (Some) Atheists Would Stop Doing (And Saying)”. I’m not going into the equivalent of “I’m not a racist I have a black friend” rather I will simply provide four things I wish Christians would stop doing.
- Please stop assuming that just because we are atheists we haven’t read the bible.
- It’s simply not true. In fact statistics show we read it more than you do1. Reading the entire bible is the reason quite a few of us are atheists.
- Please stop saying there is a “proper” way to read the bible.
- There isn’t. Other than reading each book as an individual book you read them like you read any other, there is no instruction manual provided on how to properly read the bible and the bible itself says “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation” 2 Peter 1:202 It is what it is.
- Please stop claiming that just because we go one god further than you do in our lack of belief we are somehow “immoral”
- The bible is a pretty horrific book. If you have read it you cannot deny that finding love in it is a pretty difficult thing to do and if your morality came from the bible you would be stoning your waitress on Sundays. Morality has zero to do with religion and it’s not objective. Morality comes from the need to preserve a society and each culture views things differently.
- Maybe lay off the “Religion is good for humanity” nonsense
- At one time, maybe, but there is not a single good thing that can be done by religion that can’t be done without it. And with religion comes bigotry, misogyny, child abuse, and more… all tax free.
Let’s be serious for a minute. The three major Abrahamic religions all come from books that command the killing of nonbelievers. There is no co-existing with that and religion has proven time and again when it gets the opportunity that’s exactly what it will do.