Conservative Christians (Pentecostals, Evangelicals, Adventists, etc) hold to the Bible as their only creed. To start the destruction of their faith, at least if they take it seriously, all you have to do is discredit their scriptures. That’s how it all started for me and that’s also how it all started for Teresa MacBain (we talk about that in Atheist Nomads Episode 2), of course it’s a slow process from there that can easily take several years.

Liberal Christians and conservative Christians who managed to rationalize a way to save their faith after the former view of the Bible was shaken, pick and choose which parts of the Bible they want to pay attention to. If we’re honest here, every Christian does that, but the ones with a more “sophisticated” faith do it more. Those are the ones who berate atheists for taking as literal a view of the Bible as the fundamentalists, but I have to say, the fundamentalists at least have a consistent standard they use to look at their text.

If it is as Paul told his young protoge that “[a]ll Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16 NIV), then the following passages should all be held as equally valid:

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying… “You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness. And you shall not lie sexually with your neighbor’s wife and so make yourself unclean with her. You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” (Lev 18:1,19-22 ESV)

The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying… “As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you.” (Lev 25:1,44 ESV)

Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. (1 Tim 2:11-12 ESV)

And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” (Acts 16:13 ESV)

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” (John 14:1-4 ESV)

You hear conservative Christians rail on homosexuals all the time, but you never hear them condemn men who have sex with their wives, or even look at them when their naked, when their menstruating. You also rarely ever see them turning the page and promoting slavery. You see liberal Christians that are able to ignore all of Leviticus, even though such condemnations and allowances as above were spoken by God Almighty himself. Methodists and Episcopalians who don’t like atheists bashing parts of the Bible they ignore themselves, have no trouble ignoring the Pauline passages I quoted above since they let women serve as pastors and bishops and they obviously don’t find all of Scripture to be useful.

The sophisticated approach is to look at the passage and pull out the theme, divorced of its historical context so it can be applied today, but if you cut out all the primitive cultural baggage, then where do you stop?

Do you drop the creation myth and all other stories that contradict scientific and historical evidence?

Do you drop all passages that don’t fit with a humanist ethical framework since they just reflect the cultural prejudices of the era?

Do you throw out all the miracles as being slight of hand or the work of the wild imaginations of superstitious people?

Do you throw out the resurrection along with the turning of water into wine?

Do you throw out a character in a story who’s earliest written reference is from a guy who admits and brags that he dreamed the whole thing up?

Do you throw out the belief in a god as being the belief of primitive pre-scientific people?

There has to be some standard you can apply to discern what’s of value and what’s not, unless you just go off how you feel, it really does come down to all or nothing.