What pop culture influence primed you for atheism?

I feel like this is kind of a tricky question, because I think the tendency is for the hardcore religious people to look at that kind of thing and say, "see, that just brainwashed you into losing your faith; that's why I don't let my kids watch or listen to anything secular!" Dan Barker once made the comment, "If I had limited myself to Christian authors, I would still be a Christian to this day."

Of course, we atheists see that is a recognition that it's important to expose yourself to different viewpoints to increase your chances of reaching conclusions which are actually consistent with reality. But for dyed-in-the-wool believers, that can just be read as a cautionary tale which should teach diligent Christians to quit reading and watching the infidel material you've been absorbing, because it could cause you to lose your faith (not because your faith is wrong, of course, but because those heathens are so darn good at deceiving people).

I actually had a whole debate with my brother one time, after he said that he thought my enjoyment of comics and such worldly media was partly responsible for my break from the church. I don't remember him ever being able to give any good reasons why he thought that was the case, but the point is that when believers become non-believers, other believers who want to hold onto the feeling that their belief is rational look for things like this to justify how the apostate only left for irrational reasons.

That being the case, I have to state up front the caveat that I don't think this did anything like that (brainwashing me into apostasy or making me leave for irrational reasons), and in fact I don't think this really did much to make me leave the church in the first place (the question is about what primed you for atheism, and I wasn't a full-scale atheist until long after I left the church). With those caveats, I think the answer for me is a podcast called You Made it Weird with Pete Holmes. The show features Pete interviewing various famous people (the vast majority of whom are fellow comedians), but as the title suggests, they get into some topics that are far off the beaten path of the usual interview, and one of those topics is God and religion. So while listening to that podcast, I heard people with a lot of different viewpoints talk about why they held those viewpoints.

What's kind of ironic, though, is that there's been this weird sort of mirror parallelism between Pete's story and my own. His upbringing was similar to mine in that he was raised in the church and sincerely believed it himself, but then he lost faith as an adult. When I first started listening to the podcast, I was still a dogmatic believer, but chill enough that it didn't offend my sensibilities to listen to someone who had left the church. I guess I just figured my faith was stronger than his, and I inwardly cheered whenever one of the guests professed faith as well.

Anyway, this mirror parallelism I mention is basically, in the episodes I listened to as a believer, Pete was very much like, "fuck religion, I'm just done with it," and it seemed like most of his guests were atheist or nonreligious. But then, in the episodes I listened to after I became more of a full-scale atheist, Pete seemed to drift back to a more spiritually-minded, "I don't go to church but I do pray," "I don't know if the stories in the gospels are true, but I really like the ideas they convey" kind of guy, and it seemed like more of his guests were either somewhat religious, or the kind of person who calls themselves an agnostic and says it takes just as much faith to be an atheist as a theist (to his credit, Pete usually did a really good job of straightening those people out about how "agnostic" and "atheist" are not mutually exclusive, and how ascribing the label of atheist to yourself does not necessarily indicate a claim to knowledge).

I recognize that this is most likely an effect of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, at least in part, but it still kinda humorously seems as if Pete Holmes (and the show) are going along this path that seems to mirror and reverse my own. I suppose it would be really funny if, after a few years, I slid back into a softer "spiritual, but not religious" stance, and then the episodes I was listening to at that time showed Pete developing into a rabid anti-theist.

So yeah, that's probably a much longer answer than anyone would ever expect to such a simple question.

Is ignoring the Old Testament law cherry-picking?

When people like Sam Harris say that forgetting about the "vile" parts of the Old Testament law is cherry-picking, isn't that a deliberate distortion of Christian theology?

This is a fairly common defense, that the bad parts of the Old Testament law can be "legitimately" thrown out because the New Testament establishes a new covenant. This is undeniably a crucial aspect of Pauline theology, so if you start with the presupposition that the Bible does not ever contradict itself (even if it appears to), then yes, you can say that the New Testament (taken as a whole) does establish that.

But even so, there are parts of the gospels where Jesus emphasizes the importance of keeping the old law. Take the story of the rich young ruler in Luke 18, for example. Anyone who's been to Sunday School will know all about how this guy asked Jesus "what must I do to be saved," and Jesus answered, "sell everything you have and give it to the poor." But what most people seem to overlook is that before Jesus says this, his first response to the question about how to inherit eternal life is simply to keep the commandments. He didn't say (or even hint), "just wait until I rise from the dead and believe in me, and you'll be set." He said to keep the Old Testament laws. Remember, that was in response to a question, not just about how to be a good person, but how to inherit eternal life.

Another example is in Matthew 5, when Jesus said he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. Sure, that sounds more or less like the New Covenant doctrine. But then, immediately after that he says that not one stroke of the old law will disappear until heaven and earth pass away. I've had discussions about this before (quite recently, in fact), and the question for me with this passage always comes down to this; why does the phrase "until heaven and earth pass away" even appear in this verse at all, if his resurrection is the point when he will fulfill the old law and usher in the new covenant?

Matthew 23:2-3 could certainly be seen as an instruction to continue keeping the old laws, but that's a bit more subtle.

I would agree that Paul teaches that the old laws don't need to be kept. But who is the higher authority for you, Paul or Jesus? Heck, Paul even said himself in Romans 7:12, that the Law is holy. See, that's another big problem with this defense against those ugly parts of the Old Testament. New Covenant theology says those laws are not necessary for salvation, but it never says that those laws are evil or wrong. It never disavows them. So to act like this doctrine makes it okay to just completely forget them now is exactly the cherry-picking that Sam Harris said it was.