The Integrity of Atheists

Bart Ehrman. Ever hear of him? Most atheists who blog sure have. Ehrman is a guy, much like John Loftus. Well, they left the Church for different reasons (those that visit John's blog should ask John what happened) but both men are those kind of atheists that swear up and down that they used to be dyed in the wool Christians.

They absolutely knew that Jesus existed as God incarnate right up until they didn't.

They were saved right up until they weren't.

They served the Lord right up until they denied Him.

And then? Well then these men turned on Christianity like pit bulls in a dog fight turn on each other. Take Bart for example. He went from claiming that the Bible is God's Word to saying that there are literally hundreds of thousands of textual errors and is utterly unreliable. Internet atheists eat that kind of stuff up like it's their favourite meal. Come to think of it. That kind of thing is their favourite meal.

It makes me wonder, if Ehrman wasn't telling the truth about being in a healed and forgiven relationship with Jesus the Christ, is he telling the truth now? Or did something happen to make him turn with such vengeance on the one he used to call his Lord and Saviour?

Here's why I ask.

Ehrman says that there are hundreds of thousands or errors in the Bible when reality paints a much different picture. Most everyone knows that if a copy writer wrote an “a” instead of an “e” and that error was copied 50,000 times, it's counted as 50,000 errors. Technically these people are correct, but only technically. The greater contrast between reality and what Ehrman says in his book is really quite astonishing. You see, the New Testament has around 20,000 lines of text. Of those 20,000 lines of text only forty lines are in question. Roughly one page.

Atheists tend to get quite excited over news like this because, and here's the strange thing about atheists. Atheist read the Bible more literally than any other group of people on the planet. Why, to listen to an atheist you would think that literary styles like allegory or metaphor, poetry or history don't even exist. Anyhow, the thing is, these sentences that are in question, that Ehrman says he's discovered are already highlighted in the Bible. These lines that are in some ancients copies and not in others are not something that's been hidden from anyone.

Back to the point. Almost all of the variations are insignificant to the meaning of the text. Say it this way, say it that way, the meaning stays the same. What's more, the variations that are left do not affect doctrine in the least. No Christian doctrine is built upon those texts.

So why would Ehrman and Loftus and others of their ilk make such a big deal out of this stuff? Because the presupposition of atheism desperately needs such distractions. Atheism must have such hooey to keep atheists from paying attention to the evidence, to help them deny the existence of Creator God. They need this to distract them from the fact that they stand before a Holy God guilty as charged. 

Are atheists people of integrity? How do you describe people who claim to be good (without God of course) but don't even live up to their own moral standard?