We kick off our series on the book of Acts and start with yet another telling of the ascension of Jesus. Slightly different from Luke but very different from the other gospels. Judas gets replaced. The Holy Spirit comes on everyone at the Pentecost! Lapping up their loins with tongues of fire. And the early church starts getting persecuted simply for yelling at everyone that they killed Jesus. Send us a text Support the show Website - https://www.biblestoriesforatheists.com Reddit - https://www....
Aug 14, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Ep 29•Transcript available on Metacast We wrap up our 18 part series on Jesus and the gospels with his bouncy ball burial. You just can’t keep this dude down. While there’s some discrepancies among the gospels on the burial, that’s nothing compared to the resurrection. None of them can agree wtf happened. How many angels were there? Were they men or boys? Were there solders there? Did the women run off and not tell anyone what happened? It’s a big mess, but we’ll lay it all out in our (finally) last episode of the gospels. Send us a ...
Jul 31, 2022•1 hr 29 min•Ep 28•Transcript available on Metacast This is it folks. The crucifixion. The grand climax. Where God’s Holy Spirit comes on all of us. But first we find out what happened to Judas, who realized what a Judas he had been to Jesus. But of course, no one can say for sure what happened to him. Jesus is put on trial before Pontius Pilate who oddly comes across as a pretty decent dude. Too decent, mayhaps. And Jewish people seem to be suspiciously too eager to have Jesus killed and save ANOTHER JESUS! And finally we discussion the crucifix...
Jul 17, 2022•2 hr 45 min•Ep 27•Transcript available on Metacast We start off by asking the ultimate question… What are the nuts in your life? But then we start talking about Jesus. Jesus goes to the garden of Gethsemane where he keeps praying and his disciples keep falling asleep. Even when an angel shows up and scares Jesus so bad he starts sweating blood. Judas does what he does best and betrays Jesus. He comes up with a suspiciously specific signal to point Jesus out to the crowd. His arrest is a pretty straightforward story of a guy getting his ear cut o...
Jul 03, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Ep 26•Transcript available on Metacast Jesus is about to have his last supper and he uses his apparently psychic abilities to tell the disciples how to get it set up. Then Jesus strips down and washes his disciples’ feet. I don’t know why he had to get naked for it, but there you go. Unless he’s not naked. Unless there is an opposite to “outer” clothing that we can’t think of. Linz finds out that Judas was the treasurer of the disciples and we realize that they’re just Jesus’ board of directors and he’s the executive director of thei...
Jun 19, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Ep 25•Transcript available on Metacast “Was the Gospel of John Changed to Suppress Mary Magdalene?” by ReligionForBreakfast – https://youtu.be/rfy6oiB_U-A Crucifying Tony Stark – https://youtu.be/V9_AeLmuRKc?t=120 Turns out Jesus wants us to #TaxTheRich! At least that’s what he tells some Pharisee’s who try to trap him by asking one question and giving up. Also, Jesus is asked important questions such as if a woman clearly kills 7 brothers, all of whom she married, which one will she be married to at the resurrection. Resurrection? A...
Jun 05, 2022•1 hr 27 min•Ep 24•Transcript available on Metacast Zacchaeus the Tax Collector What does it take to get Jesus’ attention when you’re vertically challenged? Hope you’re good at climbing trees. If you are, hope you have space for Jesus to invite himself over for the night. Parable of the Ten Minas / Bags of Gold We discuss prosperity gospel cultists’ favorite parable about needing to gain interest on your money in order to win God’s love. Jesus Comes to Jerusalem We arrive at the first Palm Sunday. Jesus has to figure out how to ride a donkey and ...
May 22, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Ep 23•Transcript available on Metacast It’s a Mother’s Day episode! Josh’s mom, Jill, and Lindsay’s son, Connor, join us. Speaking of mothers, we dig into the questions around Mother Teresa’s work. Was she actually helping people or just raising money for the catholic church? We cover the parable of The Prodigal Son, the Shrewd Manager, and the Unmerciful Servant. Jesus randomly drops a “don’t get divorced” line between stories. And we analyze the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (not that one, although maybe it is that one). There’...
May 08, 2022•2 hr 36 min•Ep 22•Transcript available on Metacast Happy Orthodox Easter! What the hell is that anyway? We kick off with Jesus spitting in some dirt, making some mud, and rubbing it into the eyes of a blind guy to make him see again. Which is weird since he’s healed a lot of blind people before yet never needed to spit in their face to do it. Hmmmm…. There’s the Parable of the Rich Fool, where we are told either that you need to not store up great wealth, or if you do you need to also donate to the church. It’s not quite clear which way this mor...
Apr 24, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Ep 21•Transcript available on Metacast Don’t look it up. Let’s see how well you remember it. Try to complete this sentence, “Our Father, who art in heaven…” Of all the commandments God handed down throughout the Old Testament, which is the greatest? Trick question! Two of them are the greatest! And Jesus breaks them down, or has them broken down for him, depending on which gospel you read. The sisters Mary and Martha show up. In theory these would be the sisters of Lazarus, however he doesn’t seem to be around in this story. Hmmmm. W...
Apr 10, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Ep 20•Transcript available on Metacast Have you ever wondered when Jesus went from a middle eastern person to a white Anglo-Saxon? No… it doesn’t just stem from German Protestant racism. It was the Transfiguration! When God bleaches Jesus’s clothes white and “transforms his face”. Before that though we hear the confession of Peter. It’s pretty lame for a confession. More like him just being like, “Hey, I know you’re the messiah.” A boy with epilepsy is brought to Jesus. His disciples keep trying to drive out the demon and it doesn’t ...
Mar 27, 2022•1 hr 28 min•Ep 19•Transcript available on Metacast Remember when the apostles all left to minister to Israel and Jesus said they wouldn’t be done before he returns? Well they’re done… awkward. Also, don’t forget, they kept getting talked about even when they were “gone”. Jesus throws his own Fyre Festival where 5,000 people show up and no one thought through logistics of buying food, or probably showers and toilets. The Sons of Thunder can’t seem to get anything done. So with just a few fish and loaves Jesus feeds the 5,000. The apostles seem to...
Mar 13, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep 18•Transcript available on Metacast It’s a parable filled episode and we dig into the storytelling of Jesus. Is he a great storyteller like Homer or Aesop? Or more like a Blue’s Clues reject writer, getting pissed off when the kids don’t understand what the hell the mustard seed means? Where the moral lessons aren’t to give to those in need or don’t be sexist, no matter how helpful those would have been to hear. The moral lessons are to believe in Jesus and that’s it. Josh pucker’s some Christian buttholes by pointing out that Chr...
Feb 27, 2022•1 hr 21 min•Ep 17•Transcript available on Metacast This was an interesting one, folks. We find out how one major character’s traditional backstory is complete bullshit. But first, the BIG sermon. You could even say it’s mountainous. It’s the Sermon on the “Mount”. Because that sounds better than Sermon on the “Level Place”. We kick it off with the Beatitudes. Both sets of them. And we discover where the persecution fetish in so many pious folks comes from. Who cares about the War on Christmas, we declare a War on Easter! For absolutely no reason...
Feb 13, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Ep 16•Transcript available on Metacast We kick off this episode hearing a miraculous story about two blind men somehow being able to follow Jesus as he dodges their pleas for help. After he relents he’s suddenly stopped by the most pointless demon ever to exist. We get a riveting story about plucking grain on the sabbath. Jesus picks 12 of his disciples (which may have been all his disciples) to become “Apostles” and go throughout Israel to spread the word. He says they won’t be done by the time he returns, which makes sense because ...
Jan 30, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep 15•Transcript available on Metacast These days to get famous you just need good looks and a smartphone. But people forget that to get famous in biblical times you needed to cure leprosy and paralysis. But life is tough when you become a religious influencer. You get crowded. And there’s probably other problems. It gets so hard sometimes you get indignant at people who want your help. No matter how much you tell people not to talk about you healing them, they just go out and blather on about it to everyone. “Oh look at me! I can wa...
Jan 16, 2022•52 min•Ep 14•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode we kick off finding out the bible (which is perfect) has conflicting genealogies for Joseph, Jesus’ step dad. And Josh blowing Linz’s mind that John 3:16 isn’t a verse about good sportsmanship. When we finally dig into the story of Jesus we look at his first miracle! Such an important event would obviously be thoroughly documented in each of the gospels. Wait, no. Actually it’s just in one of them. And for his first miracle, obviously Jesus is going to do something crucial like h...
Jan 02, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep 13•Transcript available on Metacast Ho ho ho all you sinners and sodomites! We’re jumping the shark with a Christmas special! Made even more special by Josh’s mom, Jill, who stopped by as our first guest. We review Kirk Cameron’s Christmas shit-show “Saving Christmas” and discuss “Christmas with the Chosen: the Messenger”. With such as thorough title, will it be as thorough with the story of the nativity? We dig into how Christmas got started. What was Saturnalia? Was Jesus born on December 25th? And who who who was the real Santa...
Dec 19, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jesus jumps from twelve years old to thirty years old without any apparent need to inform us about his formative years. Did he get acne? Or surprise boners? {Insert raising Lazarus joke here} Did he get his Masters in Divinity from ITT Tech? Also, we quickly struggle with how to organize stories that take place at different times in all the gospels. Like seriously, they cannot agree on when things happened. But the first story we dig into is Jesus’ baptism. This first story we come to that is in...
Dec 05, 2021•49 min•Ep 12•Transcript available on Metacast Merry Christmas, sinners & sodomites! In this week’s episode we dive into the gospels with the birth of our lord and savior. A story so vital and so foundational to the religion that it only appears in two of the gospels. But that’s ok, because in the two we have the stories line up perfectly, with minor exceptions for the time, place, events and people. That’s right, we’ll hear a story about a small family on the run from an evil king escaping to Egypt. Then we’ll hear about a small family ...
Nov 21, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast While reading Genesis in our first several episodes, I noticed odd things. The same stories repeated, stories with inconsistent details, and conflicting commandments. Things I’m sure I noticed growing up as a Christian, but I wrote off as a lack of biblical knowledge on my part. I started doing research into what modern science and scholars can tell us about the actual history of the bible and the people it talks about. What I found cracked my view of the world apart like the first time evolutio...
Nov 07, 2021•2 hr 56 min•Ep 10•Transcript available on Metacast Does God only love a few thousand people? Is there a second set of Ten Commandments? Is Moses getting exposed to high doses of radiation? Is Aaron getting bullied into building bull gods? All these questions and more go unanswered in this week’s episode. God asked to talk to Moses, bulls need to be killed. Time for blood magic. After spraying the crowd down with bull blood, Moses takes a group up to see God in the flesh, but not really since people can’t see God, but it says they saw God and the...
Oct 24, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast We get to the actual exodus in this episode, wherein the Israelites exit Egypt. But first they need to fake out Pharaoh so God can kill more Egyptians. Much like the Ever Given, God parts the Suez Canal and causes a serious mess for international trade. Oh yeah, and needlessly kills people. But it’s fine, because it’s so people know that God has glory. The Israelites arrive in the wilderness, get thirsty, and completely forget everything that has happened. To keep them from running back to the E...
Oct 10, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast Here it is, folks. The plagues! You know. That time when God wiped out a whole bunch of people instead of just letting Pharaoh do the right thing. And why? Because they wanted to get Pharaoh’s dick hard… I MEAN HEART! Or do I? We learn why the NIV bible’s footnotes seem to think you didn’t need God for most of the plagues to have happened at all. The first Passover comes up and it turns out there’s a contradiction in the rules for Passover and even in the bible they have to deal with that contra...
Sep 26, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast Things have been looking grim for the Israelites since the days of Joseph. God has allowed their chosen people to fall into slavery because… reasons. But then came Moses. We’ll dig into Moses’ mom’s scheme to get paid to take care of her son. His trip through the desert which will later take him 40 years to get through. And the gay power-couple who become his fathers-in-law. Then we settle in for a mushroom trip in the desert. The Angel of the Lord shows up, sets a bush on fire, and then gets sh...
Sep 12, 2021•1 hr 17 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast And on the fifth episode we wrapped up the story of Joseph. And the story was mediocre, at best. You know that awkward moment when you run into that brother you sold into slavery who is now a super successful right-hand ruler of Egypt? We’ve all been there, and thankfully the bible provides relevant moral lessons when in such a circumstance. We start with the Jacob family staring contest. No one wins, everyone goes hungry. May the odds never matter because God just does whatever they like anyway...
Aug 29, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast You’ve seen the musical, now hear the disturbingly disappointing actual story of Joseph and his Technicolor Dream Resume. In this dramatic re-imagining of Rudolf, the Red Nosed Reindeer, Jacob’s favorite son is the little tattle tale all his brothers love to hate. Remember, kids. Snitches get thrown in a cistern and sold into slavery! Tired of hearing about Joseph after only one chapter? God thought you would be! So we get a little side story following Joseph’s brother Judah. That scamp gets int...
Aug 15, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast Like every youth pastor has said since 2001, Shrek wasn’t the first to go bonkers from a talking donkey. Meet Balaam. A pagan prophet with a reverence for God. A conman with the night time number to the Almighty. The misunderstood messenger who only does what God tells him and somehow ends up the bad guy. Buckle up for some holy whiplash, folks. God never changes Their mind, except when They do. Then They’ll take you on a Them-damn roller coaster. And don’t forget to ask for specifics when God t...
Aug 01, 2021•40 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast We pick the story up where we left off in Genesis 30. Jacob is married to his two cousins, and tricked into working seven additional years by his uncle / father-in-law. Jacob adds a few servant wives who start cranking out sons like it’s their only purpose. We learn the fair price for mandrakes when selling them to your back stabbing sister. And God finally remembers Rachel! We’re going to ignore that means that God forgot something. Jacob rips off his uncle before splitting town. Rachel almost ...
Jul 18, 2021•1 hr 29 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast We kick off this podcast with the story of Jacob. How do you succeed in life in BCE 1800 when you’re a 2nd born twin, and an indoor kid with a hairy jock brother? The answer is obviously damn good lentil stew. Also, lying. Also, marrying your cousins instead of Hittite women who annoy your parents. We learn the how to handle yourself in a foreign city with a hot wife. Say she’s your sister and you get free stuff! As a bonus, if she gets raped you won’t get killed. This works so well it happens t...
Jul 04, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast 
