For those that don't believe the Bible, what are your principle reasons for this?

Stories that are based on older Sumerian myths

Syncretization of other local religions El - Canaanite; Yahweh - Midianite

The clear reference to volcano worship in Exodus when Moses converted the Israelites to the Midian god Yahweh.

Evolution and rebranding of God post Babylonian exile - Zoroastrian influence as a result of the Persian Messiah Cyrus The Great.

Biblical reference to other gods - Gods were originally considered local to and champion of a tribe or region

Failed prophecies; self-fulfilling prophecies; "prophecies" either written after the fact or in during a period of upheaval which anyone with a bit of sense could have predicted.

Blatant political agendas.

Two completely different Jesuses: The Pauline Jesus and the Marcian Jesus

Blatant forgery of texts, texts falsely attributed to respected scholars (Eusebius' interpolation of Josephus' writings being a prime example in a feeble attempt to promote the historicity of Jesus)

Embellishments of the Marcian gospel by the other authors

Implausible events

Mark's gospel having parallels with Homer's Odyssey

Unreliable and inconsistent historical accounts

Nazareth did not exist as a town until at the 2nd century at the earliest.

Mistranslations in the Septuagint

There are other reasons but I think this will do for now.

Ecclesiastes 1:5, for starters. Then you have all the errors and contradictions. Then you have other arguments, such as "the punishment doesn't fit the crime", and what's going to happen to people who have never heard of Jesus (he said the only way to heaven was through him). Then you have the old testament where God supposedly wiped out entire peoples just so some people could have their "promised land". Why couldn't God make a new continent for Moses and his followers??? Why couldn't God simply pick those people up and move them somewhere else? There are hundreds of ways it could have been done better.

Then you have the fact that the earliest gospels were written well after Jesus' death. Don't you think with something as important as that, there would be something better? Don't you think a god would come up with a better way than sacrificing its "son"?

I could go on and on and on.

Ignoring for the moment the internal inconsistencies and the fact that it clearly consists of Bronze Age folklore, it's a claim that has nothing external to support it. Just like the Norse Eddas, Egyptian Book of the Dead, Bhagavad-Gita, Qur'an, and so on.

1. The Bible is a book. Originally written in a language that no one speaks anymore.

2. It gets a lot of things wrong especially when pertaining to cosmology.

3. The Bible doesn't prove a god exists anymore than a comic book proves Spider-man exists or that Harry Potter exists.

4. Ultimately it is because people who claim it is true and accurate have failed to fulfill the burden of proof. They haven't demonstrated a reason why I should accept it as true.

Depends on what you want me to believe. I can read the Bible and watch humanity move out of caves and into small communities of farmers and small tribes of nomads who followed their herds from food source to food source. I can watch us stop worshiping the old gods and offering our children to their service by passing them through the household fire.

I can watch us grow from a bunch of random families with no real resources to us living in small cities and learning to use tools. I can watch us learn how to govern both successfully and un-successfully. There are all kinds of knowledge in that old book.

There is also some very good advice. And some horrible advice.

But aside from some very loose anthropology and loose ties to humanity's climb out of the caves, there is no "truth" in the book anywhere.

I think that probably the people charged with keeping the stories in the Bible were telling the "truth" as far as they understood it. I don't see a conspiracy that stretches across 6000 years or anything like that, but I live in the modern world a world that would have terrified those people. You have to read the Bible while suspending your knowledge of how the world really works, which is not something that is easy for me to do.

See, I understand that I can't go "ask Abraham" how to build an internal combustion engine, the poor old dude would not have a clue. But, I can go "ask Abraham" if I should do what I believe to be right DESPITE popular opinion.

I can't go "ask Jesus" to help me discover a cure for the common cold because Jesus and company thought germs were "demons" that could either be "cast out" or kill the victim because the victim lacked the faith to be healed. But, I can go back and "ask Jesus" if I should lend my brother money AGAIN even though he never repays his loans on time. Because Jesus understood that I am my brothers keeper and he would tell me to support my family.

So, it depends of what you want me to believe about the Bible.

What is your reasoning against Osiris being not the same as Jesus?

He was crucified and ressurected.

He promised an afterlife.

He corresponds with many stories of the Bible.

Jesus is most likely just a rehash of all the different resurrection stories before his time. He probably didn't even exist.

As you can see, they all pretty much say the same thing, things is it is all a bunch of hooey, They use revisionist history to substantiate this belief, like the idea that it was borrowed from Mithra, Poppycock & balderdash, Many doctrines of the Christian faith have parallels in Zoroastrianism, e.g., the virgin birth, the son of God, and resurrection. Some scholars say that Zarathustra (a.k.a. Zoroaster) lived around 600–500 BC. If that is the case, David, Isaiah, and Jeremiah (all of whom mention the Messiah, the resurrection and the final judgment in their writings), lived and wrote before Zarathustra. Some scholars say that Zoroaster lived sometime between 1500 and 1200 BC. If that is the case, the case for Christianity borrowing from Zoroastrianism would be stronger, but the fact is we don’t know when Zarathustra lived (hence the disagreement among scholars), and so this argument is speculative at best. The Greek historian Herodotus (5th century B.C.) doesn’t mention Zoroaster in his treatise on the Medo-Persian religions, though Plato, who was born roughly around the time Herodotus died, does mention him in his Alcibiades (see Wikipedia’s entry on Zoroaster;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster).

But establishing when Zarathustra lived is only the first step. Next, we have to establish what he actually taught (as opposed to what modern Zoroastrianism claims he taught). The only source for Zarathustra’s teachings is the Avesta, and the oldest copies we have of the Avesta date from the 13th century AD. The late date for this collection of writings lends no support whatsoever to the idea that Christians borrowed from Zoroastrianism (the oldest copies of the Jewish Scriptures that we have today date centuries before Christ, and the oldest complete manuscripts of the Christian Scriptures we have date from the 4th century AD).

This looks to be another case of skeptics citing a pre-Christian religion, assuming that the post-Christian form of the religion (which we know about) has remained faithful to the pre-Christian form of the religion (which we know nothing about) and speculating that the similarities between the religion and Christianity are due to Christianity borrowing from the religion in question. It’s a philosophical argument without solid evidence to back it up. Have we any good reason not to suppose that it was Zoroastrianism which borrowed from Christianity and not vice versa? We know that Zoroastrianism borrowed freely from the polytheistic faiths of the region in which it became popular. Mithra, for example, was a Persian god who found a prominent role in Zoroastrianism. Mithra’s Hindu counterpart is the god Mitra.

All philosophical arguments aside, we know that Jesus Christ was a real historical figure, that He fulfilled numerous specific prophecies written and preserved hundreds of years before His life, that He died on a cross, and that He was reported to have risen from the dead and interacted with men and women who were willing to suffer horribly and die for this testimony.

I've read it. Honestly, that is why. It is a mass of inaccuracies and contradictions. It drips with innocent blood spilled to glorify god. So much anger and hatred. Then we are told of god's love, and something happens. You realize the people who espouse religion don't really understand it. What they teach are family values.

I actually read the whole thing. I was a confused Christian when I started, and by the time I got through Numbers I was absolutely certain that it couldn't be the word of any real god.

Because some of it, if not most of it was fabricated.

Babylon is Christianity! The Catholic Church is the mother, and all the different Churches that came from it are her child whores!

The Catholic Church wrote the Bible and it is the beginning of, or mother of Christianity.

Christianity is the pagan cult in Rev. 17:5 BABYLON the Mother of Whores.

Also the Catholic Church wrote the Bible which is fabricated in many places. The story of Jesus in the Bible is different then the Quran because it's a copy of Mithraism.

jdstone.org/cr/files/mithraschristianit...

The truth is that Muhammad is gods prophet, and the Koran is proof of that! And the Koran is proof that the bible version of Jesus is a fabricated story!

The bible is part pagan mythology and that's why it's different from the Koran version of the Jesus story where Jesus is not a god, or son of god, and he does not die on the cross for he sins of man like in pagan mythology of Mithra. The god of Constantine who want only 1 religion to help unify the roman empire!

According to Professor John Crossan of Biblical Studies at DePaul University the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (274-337 CE), who was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity, needed a single canon to be agreed upon by the Christian leaders to help him unify the remains of the Roman Empire. Until this time the various Christian leaders could not decide which books would be considered "holy" and thus "the word of God" and which ones would be excluded and not considered the word of God.

jdstone.org/cr/files/mithraschristianit....

Mithra has the following in common with the Jesus character:

Mithra was born on December 25th of the virgin Anahita.

The babe was wrapped in swaddling clothes, placed in a manger and attended by shepherds.

He was considered a great traveling teacher and master.

He had 12 companions or "disciples."

He performed miracles.

As the "great bull of the Sun," Mithra sacrificed himself for world peace.

Mithra ascending to heaven in his solar cart, with sun symbolHe ascended to heaven.

Mithra was viewed as the Good Shepherd, the "Way, the Truth and the Light," the Redeemer, the Savior, the Messiah.

Mithra is omniscient, as he "hears all, sees all, knows all: none can deceive him."

He was identified with both the Lion and the Lamb.

His sacred day was Sunday, "the Lord's Day," hundreds of years before the appearance of Christ.

His religion had a eucharist or "Lord's Supper."

Mithra "sets his marks on the foreheads of his soldiers."

Mithraism emphasized baptism.

The original Trinity is: MITHRAS, RASHNU and VOHU MANAH -- 3 "persons," but yet "one."