Could an Atheist Team Win ‘The American Bible Challenge’?

3 Atheists chosen at random could probably blow  Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, and Pat Robertson clean out of the water, but they’d be accused of cheating somehow.

My inner troll is deeply, deeply aroused.

too bad I’m not American, I’d have done some brushing up 🙂

 What, divine intervention?

Get Hector Avalos, John Loftus, Dan Barker and Michael Baigent.   Between them, they probably know more about the bible than all of the cardinals and bishops of the entire Catholic Church.

Do you have to know the Bible, or do you have to *love* the Bible? I’d love to see atheists on a show like this, but I suspect they’re only going to allow Christians.
Sounds like some kind of self-congratulatory attempt to downplay the whole “atheists know the Bible better than you” rumours they might have been hearing…

Might be fun, anyway. You just know there’ll be Youtube videos after every episode pointing out the bits they got wrong or glossed over.

Presumably they’ll try to avoid questions about interpretation, though. Unless the contestants are all the same denomination, that could get ugly!

I wonder what bible verses will be chosen. I’m guessing they won’t be the ones that show god off to be a petulant bully.

I think getting a team of atheists ul there that win wiuld be great, however, I sincerely doubt the casting agents will go for it.

If you can convince them the controversy would generate huge ratings numbers though, well, that would almost guarantee an atheist team.

Since they’re pro-Christian, you can be sure that they won’t be quizzing on any of the nasty parts.

Sort of “name three of the ten commandments”: “Don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t kill… um… man am I glad three are enough.”

Rather than: “What should you do to the inhabitants of a conquered nation you plan on settling in?” (kill them to the last child) or “why did God send bears to kill forty-two kids” (they made fun of Elisha’s baldness) or “what should be done to a woman assaulted within city bounds” (stone her, since she didn’t scream loud enough).

I know the Bible fairly well, but I’m not proud of it. 

I think a team of atheists would have a very good chance to win, and the producers know this:  http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/28/nation/la-na-religion-survey-20100928  So they might not want to touch a team identified as atheists with a ten-foot pole.  Their main audience is highly religious Christians, many who would have a conniption fit that an atheist team was even allowed into the competition.  

Short-term thinking producers might like the idea of all the free pre-competition publicity that the controversy from indignant Christians would provide. The longer-term thinking producers, and more importantly, boycott-shy sponsors might hesitate to alienate their audience base by bringing in those awful atheists and spoiling the good, clean, Christian-only competition. 

If the atheist team actually won, many Christians would pass bricks through their colons that this humiliation was televised.  After they’d spent themselves on outrage, they’d be rationalizing that it doesn’t matter, since knowing the Bible isn’t nearly as important as believing the Bible. 

Yeah, we got that, since the less you know it, the easier it is to believe it.

With Aron Ra and Thinking Atheist dude.  Or maybe Thunderf00t.

 I doubt a group of Jews or Muslim would make it either but they explicitly list Jews and Muslims as options among the team’s religious affiliation (as well as other and won’t disclose).  Oddly enough they don’t seem to be allowing for mixed religious affiliation within a team.  One wonders which Bible they will be using (Catholics include the Deuterocanonical books and if they include those most Protestant teams will be toast)?  If they use the Ethiopian church list, we will see some very baffled teams.

We’ll start with some fairly  simple questiona. In the Christian versions of the scriptures two books start with “in the beginning”, name them.  The Tanakh or Hebrew Scriptures are divided into three parts, name them (either English or Hebrew names).   What language was Daniel in the Catholic Bible originally written in.  Where was the Codex Sinaiticus stored for most of its history and why is it important?

dude atheist have to get on this than announce themselves as atheist a little into the show so the filming is already done and the studio can’t back out. I know that i know the bible better than most of the christians i know. 

 No shit, “Name the two daughters who got their father drunk and then raped him in order to get pregnant?”

I’m just shocked this is going to be on GSN. I would have thought a religious channel would be a better fit.

While it’s true that the average atheist knows the Bible better than the average Christian, you can bet your bottom dollar that you won’t be going up against average Christians on this show. You’ll be going up against Reverend Gene Scott risen from the dead, and his stripper wife, and some cyber-Bible built just for the competition.

I live in L.A., and I wouldn’t mind joining a team here, but I think it’s folly to expect that the kind of questions they’ll be likely to ask are the kind of questions atheists are more likely to answer than someone who’s been leading a Bible study group for the past 20 years. Just sayin’.

Good idea. Matt would wipe the floor with pretty much anybody they put against him.

I expect that most of the questions on the show will go something like this “Name the chapter and verse for the following mealy-mouthed quote about love…”  Now name the chapter and verse for this passage about god’s law regarding unbelievers…”  Nothing substantive. just mindless memorization of the most appallingly non-useful information.  Worse than a spelling bee.  If somebody does not already have their brain stuffed full of this stuff ready to regurgitate, I’d never ask them to spend any time on it.

I have a distinct feeling there are a whole lot of people there with  a greater knowledge of the Bible than Matt Dillahunty. 

Yeah, sure three atheists chosen at random would no more than Rick Warren, Joel Osteen and Pat Robertson about the Bible. Sure they would.  I am an atheist, but the one thing that bothers me about a lot of other atheists I know is the fact that so many of them think their intellects are so superior to everyone else’s.  Regardless of what you think about those men personally, three atheists chosen at random are not going to know more about the Bible than three people who have spent their whole adult lives studying and speaking about it.    What are you going to claim next, that three toothless people chosen at random of the streets have a greater knowledge of the oral cavity than a dentist?

Actually, I saw a story on this show while I was standing in line at a particular store.   Three short verses were placed on the screen and the contestants had to indicate which were contained in the Bible. The trick was that the verses had been rewritten in such a way to obscure their origins. 

Yeah, it’s better to be ignorant of various subjects than to actually know about the things with which you disagree. Anti-intellectualism is always the way to go. 

I don’t consider the study of the Bible to be all that intellectual a pursuit. There are much more interesting subjects to study. I spent enough of my time on the Bible. Let me sum up; the Bible is bullshit and a waste of time.

The studio could back out by not airing it. The team would have to win, wait for the show to air, and THEN come out as atheist to make sure the message got out– and even then the episode would probably never be re-aired. 

Think of the publicity if atheists are not allowed on the show. We could win without answering a single question.

Then hold our own Science competition and let every faith based ‘thinker’ in. Many would be afraid to say anything but the World is flat!

No they wouldn’t. I wish they would (figuratively speaking) but unfortunately they seem immune to the sort of cognitive dissonance that would cause a rational person’s mind to not only explode but potentially end the thought processes of all rational people within a 100 mile radius. I picture it being like Obi-Wan when Alderaan is destroyed. 

“I felt a great disturbance in common sense, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in incredulity and were suddenly silenced.” 

Atheists assemble!

I think this is something to be explored further…one of the “religion” choices is “Not disclosed” and I think many atheists have a compelling story that could be considered great personal testimonies.

 or a MASTER deBATER?

If anybody is forming a team in LA, I would be interested in taking part. I’ll be the Executive Director of the Humanist Community at Stanford next year, so I’m only a short flight away in Palo Alto.

Just plaster it all over the internet. Most traffic would go to Youtube, but they’d need a backup on Vimeo in case people got butthurt and blocked the Youtube recording.

Ha! too true.

I don’t know the bible all that well, so I wouldn’t be a good contestant for this. I don’t think it really matters anyway though. Unless they put this on CMT or some outright Christian channel it’s almost guaranteed to fail. TV shows like this don’t really have the largest audience, even in the best of circumstances.

 I was at 60.1% when I stopped at question 200. How long is that test supposed to be?

How do you explain the fulfilled prophecies since you are so knowledgeable?
Israel regathered to same land and name after thousands of years? First time in history of man!  Daniel’s  70 week prophecy re: death of Messiah?  Tyre? just to name 3/2000

BE sure to sign Christopher Hitchens up on your team! He will lead you all by example!

 The Jews would like to have a word with your supposed claims to fulfilled prophecy: http://www.aish.com/jw/s/48892792.html

Could just answer each question with ‘who gives a shit.’

Though an avid Bible “scholar”, I would NEVER claim to be “christian”… But I love telling THEM what “THEIR Bible” says.  It is absolute CRIMINAL, the things those self-proclaimed “christians” and their self-ordained “reverends” say and do during one of “MY SERMONS”.  And I love the way the Scriptures “IN CONTEXT” burn a brand-new orifice on their rearward sides.  It’s actually a very sad thing, that those ring-nosed people PAY lying pastors to trick them at every turn.  In my overall findings, intelligent atheists have much more knowledge of the Bible than America’s so-called “christians” could ever wish to have.

 (1) Biblical prophecy has been fulfilled OVER AND OVER for thousands and thousands of years.  READ YOUR BIBLE, Big Papa, (Ecclesiastes).. There is NOTHING NEW under the sun, and what YOU perceive as the “future” HAS ALREADY TAKEN PLACE.
(2) The “Biblical” NATION OF ISRAEL consists of TWELVE Tribes.  There is only ONE tribe, JUDAH, occupying “what is called” Israel today.  As such, the TRUE Nation of Israel hasn’t even begun to pour into Israel.