You don't need any holy texts to determine that god doesn't exist and to argue against one's existence. While the path to atheism often winds through the ranks of the devout, one's disillusionment with the idea of a holy god only precludes a single variation of a supreme being. For some that may be enough, but there is a more absolute way to realize the world. From a debating standpoint, it should be our goal to reach a simple conclusion; one that can be falsified with a single fleck of evidence, yet holds up in the face of every lie. Simply, there is no evidence for the existence of god. The fact that there is a bible or a quran or a Torah makes no difference in the matter.
It has been said too many times that the bible is full of contradictions, but any self-respecting Christian will deny this is true. We pull parts from the quran to make our points, but every Islamic sect has their own interpretations of it. We go back and forth about mythology and how unlikely it is to be right. Here's the deal, though: none of it matters. There is no god and nothing is holy. It IS all myth. There is not a single biblical argument for the existence of god that will ever matter in the realm of reality. Appeals to emotion have no bearing on actuality. Life goes on no matter how we imagine it to work. Therefore, I simply don't bother treading within the pages of fantastical text when reasoning.
I am not an atheist because I reject all holy texts. I am an atheist because there is no evidence for god and what we learn through science tells us that there is no room for a god in any of it. I am not rebelling against god because there is no god to rebel against. I study the world, the reality we live in, and have found no case for god outside of our silly, fallible, emotional minds. Though many people use god as a tool to explain the world around them, those who know more do not make the same assumptions. Because god is never implicated in our understanding of reality (for those who actually understand it), all things attributed to "him" are moot.
To me, arguing holy texts is akin to fighting on your opponent's turf. They can get dirty and tell you that you're misinterpreting their beliefs. It is easy to write off criticism as misunderstanding. In the end, it doesn't matter how you interpret it - it is all nonsense in the way of understanding our physical reality. It doesn't matter if the bible is moral or immoral, it is fiction. The miracles that Jesus performed have no significance because he never existed. I could give a shit what Allah thinks or how perfect Mohammad is, because it is all a flight of fancy. I deal in reality and any debate I have will be based on hard, verifiable facts - things that if you actually do deny, you deserve to be called an idiot.
I also don't deal with hypotheticals. You've heard the arguments before. If atheists ran the world, we'd all be living in despair. Stalin's killings were motivated by atheism. These are unverifiable statements, again. The stuff of fantasies and overactive imaginations. As it happens, I completely disagree with the negative conclusions that religious people produce about non-believers. So, we're down to option vs opinion. Who is right? This is an impossible debate that deserves no attention. While we are entitled to our conjectures, this alone does not make them more worthy than others.
I am not saying we should not read the bible. I'm not saying that the stories within are useless in any sense. Simply, using it as grounds for debate on the topic of whether a god exists is missing the point. We can move the debate out further, to reality, where if we can determine that no god exists, then all texts that rely on one's existence become irrelevant in the conversation.
If someone wants to argue points that I don't care about, I tell them swiftly that they're talking about unverifiable, subjective ideas and that no discernible fact could possibly be derived from any of it. Therefore, if one wants to debate, we can do so upon things that are real, tangible, and actually make a difference in our reality. It is only within those boundaries that we can develop real, living ideas. While the hypotheticals and the fancy myths may influence the behavior of billions of people, progress is rarely made by rehashing bad ideas. And believe me, religion is a really bad idea. The fact that the world is so mired in fantasy tells me that the path of progress points outward, toward rationality. While this may be my opinion alone, I intend to use real, substantial ideas to help me see clearly.
The rest is fluff.
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