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Comment by jefflombardjr | Hacker News Reader

I think this book should be required reading along side the bible: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17568801-zealot

Jesus was an incredible person. The bible taken out of context as it is in corporate christianity, really truly doesn't do Jesus justice.

If you love Jesus, read that book - it will only make you love him more.

If you are an atheist - read that book, it will give you a historical basis on which you can critique modern day Christianity.

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Not to sound too snarky, but I would suggest reading some more respected sources before saying "Reza Aslan" and "historical basis" in the same breath.

Jesus is dead for some time and I don't care about him at all. I care about the people that are damned by their peers just because they had sex with their mate; I care about the children that are taught literal bullshit instead of science; I care about the families that fell into dysfunction just because someone told them a perfectly OK thing (such as homosexuality, science, some kinds of biology/medicine, etc) is wrong; I care about the women that are taught that patriarchy is what God wants, and so on. I don't need context of Jesus to recognize the behavior of Christians as seriously messed up.

It's definitely fine to disagree, but it'll take more than something you read on a reddit thread; such glib articulations are probably better served on Twitter.

The API is pretty sweet, it's surprising we don't have a kind of standardised API for the entire Western Cannon and then some.

"In the new reconstruction [atheism], we do not see the promised greatness or harmony. Instead we are trapped in a world of violence, discord, emptiness, alienation, and racial hatred... The infrastructure of our society has become mindless and senseless because the foundation upon which we have built cannot support any other kind of structure. Ah, but it is at this point that we have played a game with words and lied to ourselves a thousandfold. Let me say forthrightly that what we have actually done is smuggle in foundational strengths of Christian thought, buried far below the surface to maintain some stability, while above the ground we see humanism's bizarre experiments growing unchecked. If we truly put into place the same principles below the ground that we flaunt above the ground, we would completely self-destruct. And though in the classroom we have tried to dignify what we have done, the songwriters and artists have called our bluff."

- Ravi Zacharias (1946-2020), from Can Man Live Without God

I live in a very dominantly atheist country, and this whole paragraph seems completely made up if I compare it with my experience and statistics. Here is way less violence than in any country with more religious people - and we're speaking about the country that inspired the protestant movement and was the target of two crusades.

I agree it's good to care, and I think you're being downvoted because of your association fallacy. There are Christians that teach science, that believe in evolution, that aren't sexist, etc. There are also athiests that are sexist, are anti-vaccination, and homophobic. It would be just as wrong to say athiests have no moral standing.

If you want a future where people treat each other right, then don't demean them, else you're just continuing the cycle.

Atheism has no holy book nor organizations promoting such behavior, and there is nothing to indoctrinate anyone with. Christians behave like decent beings in spite of the Bible and the Church, mostly due to existing in a modern secular society that does not allow atrocities they did when they were in power. I fully recognize that there are many decent religious people, but that does not mean the religion is not promoting and causing said behavior in many many others. And I am specifically not demeaning the people as I see them as victims, but religion (as in the general concept, not just Christianity/Catholicism).

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