The Bible For Atheists

This is a book I have to write. I can't believe the title hasn't been taken already. I think it would be a hit just from the title alone. Do a Google search -- nothing there. It's a goldmine waiting to be dug.

Of course I am uniquely qualified to write the book. As an atheist for 25 years, and as a Disciple of Christ for about five, me thinks there is no one better to explain the Bible to Atheists than I.

It would not be a proselytizing book. It would be a review of the Bible from an Atheist's perspective. This is exactly the perspective I had as I read the entire book for the first time as part of a 34 week Disciple course given by our local United Methodist Church. The entire book would be a survey of the Bible as mythology, and then at the end, there would be "the twist." The theological and philosophical twist that marked my change into a Disciple of Christ.

I believe the "atheist's perspective" is entirely logical. If you assume that God is mythology, then a consistent view of the Universe can be built that explains everything without the existence of God. In fact, given a historical perspective, there are many scientific truths that were resisted by the Church, and Atheists have been persecuted by Christians as much as early Christians were persecuted by the Romans. The Atheist can lay claim to a position of higher education, a lack of religious superstition, and a general feeling of superiority over the believer. Atheists think highly of their knowledge relative to others. I know I did.

But what is the twist? The twist comes from a realization that knowledge itself is a religion. Everybody believes in something. The Atheist believes in knowledge. There is a fundamental flaw in worshiping knowledge, and the Atheist truly does worship knowledge. They don't see the flaw in their own thinking, because from the Atheist perspective, what is true is true, and everything else is false.

Now it took me many years of worshiping knowledge to give up on it as a religion. But I can understand those that still worship knowledge. In "the twist" I will share my own thinking that led me to become a Disciple of Christ. I don't have time to write it all down in this blog post, you will have to read the book! Leave me a comment if you like the book idea, and if I get enough "pre-sales" I'll start working on it.

But the twist starts by recounting a story of my Atheist buddy and me seeing a car with a TRUTH fish eating a DARWIN fish. You may be familiar with the fish as a Christian symbol, and the Darwin variation of a fish with the little feet. My buddy remarked that he was a believer in TRUTH as much as any Christian, and Darwin is the TRUTH!

Now, what is an Atheist? In my experience, there are two types of Atheists. Atheists who believe there is a fundamental TRUTH to the Universe, (it just doesn't require the notion of GOD to explain the truth) and those that believe even the notion of "truth" is relative. Their belief in "relative truth" rejects any notion of an absolute truth. Now those type of Atheists are really hard core. They not only don't believe in GOD, when pressed to the wall they will admit that they don't believe ANYTHING. If you are one of these types of Atheists, there's no helping you. You are a Godless soul! You're going to hell for sure, Good Buddy! :)

Now, once you get an Atheist to admit he believes that in a fundamental Truth, believing is God is no big step at all. God is Truth. The question becomes, "what else is God?"