Atheist blogger and new member

Hello everyone, my name is David but I am known online as chatpilot. I was a former Pentecostal evangelist preacher for four years about 18 years ago. Since then I have embraced atheism and no longer believe in the biblical God or gods of any kind. I have been blogging for a little over a year and have been sharing my experiences as a former evangelist and the many reasons why I gave up my faith. I love to write and have been doing so as long as I could remember and as in life even in my writing I like to keep things simple. That is why on my blog page you will not hear philosophical discussions for or against the existence of God, nor statistics and all that other mumbo jumbo used by scholars. My blog is meant to target those atheists and believers who like me just want to get their information in a language that they can understand. Feel free to come see me and leave comments on my blog at http://chatpilot-godisamyth.blogspot.com/ or on my youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/chatpilot?ob=0&feature... I look forward to hearing from you all soon.

Very interesting. I'm an atheist myself, but was never brought up to believe. I find those who have let go of faith quite fascinating in terms of what caused the disbelief. My boyfriend was brought up in the church, literally, every moment of his family life was in church. 7 days a week. Now he is an atheist.

Thanks for your comment Jamie. What did it for me was actually sitting down and reading the bible in its entirety from cover to cover. I did this not just once but four times! After reading the scriptures I had a different opinion about God and did not see him as a loving father figure but more like a divine dictator and moral monster.

Fully agree about the biblical God being a moral monster. But again, easier for me to say, never believing. I find it very brove for those who have a belief they are raised with to question it. Much like coming to a country without knowing a language, it must be like being lost for a while. I like your blog, but am admittedly completely ignorant of the bible for the most part.

Greetings Chatpilot! I'm here because of your post. I thought it sounded interesting and worth checking out. I'm not quite sure why I would want people to read my blog here rather than directly on the blog, so I probably won't be importing it. But this looks like a cool place to connect with other bloggers and get ideas.

Hi David. My name is Luis, from México. I think that your poll could include another option: "God created man and left him alone to manage himself"

One question. When you mention the Bible, which one are you referring to? King James Bible?

regards

Hola Luis, actually when I mention the bible I am speaking of the bible in general. But I have read the King James in its entirety and I prefer to use the New Jerusalem translation of the scriptures in my citations on my blog. By the way your poll suggestion is excellent and in my haste I had overlooked that option. Thank you for pointing it out I will ammend it as soon as possible.

Since I do not read ancient hebrew, aramean nor greek, I mostly use also the New Jerusalem version of the bible. But I have found many relevant differences between most of the translations available (Vulgata, Septuaginta, King James, etc). So, it seems that I never will be able of knowing the exact message of the scriptures. I also like to read books about historicity of Jesus, recently one of them Jesus Misquoted, by Bart D. Ehrman, precisely a title about translation concerns, mistakes, misleading and untrue citations. An alternative title among the editors is Jesus did not say that. Interesting.

hi Pilot
nice to meet you here. waiting for walking around or your blog

im new too here. :shakehand:

I used to work for Oxford University Press a couple of years back and I have actually met with Bart Erhman. I have read most of his books including the one you mentioned and I find that the only thing he and I tend to disagree on is the historicity of Jesus. He believes that Christianity was founded on the life of a real person but that the biblical narratives are exaggerations and that the miraculous aspects are not true. I on the other hand don't believe that there is sufficient evidence for the existence of the biblical Christ. Read Jesus is Dead by Robert M. Price and if you want to read a great online article about the historicity of Christ here is the link: http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_... also read Jesus neither God nor Man by Earl Doherty.

I really don't think you need to know Aramaic or Greek to see that the bible message is myth. Many competent scholars that have taken the time to do so have come to the same conclusions.

Thanks, I am glad to make your acquaintance. Enjoy the blog and when you can comment on some of the articles.

Thank you for the link. I will read it certainly. As well, I´ll see if I can get the books here in México. On the other hand, I also think that there is no sufficient evidence about Jesus' historicity. The historians Flavius Josefus and Cornelius Tacitus, (Suetonius, may be) is all we have, and as you surely know, some scholars believe that their short testimonies could be apocryphal or modified.

I was raised as a catholic. I quit when I was a teenager but I would say that I am in search of my own spiritual path by means of my soul, spirit, heart and most of all, my brain (if any).