Does reading the Bible make you atheist?

Probably not.

I see this a lot on social media:

The Soapbox Atheist @Soapbox_Atheist

“One of the best ways to become an atheist is to actually read the Bible. Have you sat down and actually read the Bible?” — Dan Barker

His question is valid. (How many of you have sat down and actually read the Bible?) But the statement at the beginning is one of those pithy atheist statements that gets retweeted by other atheists who probably don’t stop to think about it. The implication is that Christians are only Christian because they don’t understand what Christianity is; if they actually read the Bible, they would become atheist. As tempting as it is to immediately dismiss or agree with this statement, it behooves us to think about it first.

Are you reading this thing?

Let’s start with the facts. According to several surveys I looked at, including a survey by the American Bible Society, half of Americans rarely or never read their Bibles. This does unfortunately include Christians, who make up 63% of the American population. But the flip side is, half of Americans do read their Bibles. The American Bible Society found that in 2021, about half of the Americans they surveyed were “Bible Users” who regularly engaged with scripture. And this is up slightly from a previous survey. If Mr. Soapbox was correct, then we would expect about half of Americans to be atheist, which they clearly aren’t.

Now, here are some sobering facts. Christianity is on the decline in America, while atheism and agnosticism are growing. Would you be shocked to know that the percentage of atheists has doubled in a decade? Well… don’t be. It went up from a mere 2% in 2009 to 4% in 2019. Agnosticism rose by a similar amount. Atheists have historically never been, and still aren’t, a significant part of the American population, even though they stand out disproportionately in places like academia and social media. What should shock you is that, by far, the greatest change in America in the last generation has been for the group called religious “nones.” These are people who don’t identify as anything in particular in terms of religious belief, and their numbers have grown from 16% in 2007 to a whopping 29% of the population in 2021. Many “nones” were raised Christian and dropped out of the faith once they got older. This signals a terrible failure on the part of those of us still in the body of Christ, especially since the “nones” tend to know very little about the Bible and Christianity. We need to be doing some serious soul-searching to figure out how we’re letting so many people down.

So, what of the original claim that reading the Bible is one of the best ways to become atheist? Hold on a bit, we’re almost there.

A Pew Research survey on religious knowledge indicated that the two groups in America who were the most knowledgeable about the Bible and Christianity were evangelical Christians (#1) and atheists (#2). Yes, atheists. Those annoying atheists on Twitter saying they know more about Christianity than most Christians… might indeed. Don’t get too excited, though. Most of this knowledge is pretty basic stuff, like what Easter commemorates and what constitutes the Holy Trinity. What this tells us is that most Americans, Christian or otherwise, are dismally lacking rudimentary knowledge of the Bible and Christianity. My own experiences from my atheist days, and later as a Christian engaging with countless atheists, has shown that their knowledge of the Bible and Christianity, while above average, still tends to be woefully superficial. There are exceptions, of course, but in general, they don’t demonstrate a deep, nuanced, coherent understanding of either.

So here’s what happens. The vast majority of people who leave Christianity become “nones.” They tend to be the least knowledgeable about Christianity. Something drove them out of the church, but it wasn’t knowledge of Christianity or the Bible. These nones don’t identify as atheist or agnostic or anything else, they just drop any religious identity. A small percentage of those who leave Christianity go on to become atheists and agnostics. Since these people tend to be intelligent and better educated about the Bible and Christianity than the average—though not well educated about them—this greater than average knowledge, combined with other factors, contributed to their atheism. To paraphrase the famous quantum physicist, Werner Heisenberg: a little knowledge leads to atheism; a lot leads to God. Further, as sociologist Elaine Ecklund discovered when conducting research for her book, Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think, the seeds of atheism were sown in youth with many of the bright, inquisitive atheist scientists she interviewed. They’d had profound questions about Christianity that went unanswered by parents or pastors at a time in their lives when it was the most important.

Thus, we have a losing formula:

high intelligence + superficial knowledge - meaningful answers from Christian mentors = atheist.

But that only applies to a small subset of Americans.

The two mistakes atheists like our Tweeter above make is they overestimate their knowledge and solipsistically believe their experience is universal. Most people who drop out of Christianity do it for reasons other than knowledge of Christianity and the Bible. Half of Americans regularly engage with scripture and do not become atheists. Moreover, as Christian philosopher and theologian, William Lane Craig points out, Christian philosophy is on the ascendant and undergoing quite a revolution in the academic world. If anyone has read and knows the Bible, it’s these people.

And then there is my own experience. I was raised atheist, and was a hardline anti-theist until I was in my late twenties when I began to believe in God in large part because of what I learned through my studies as a physics student. As a graduate student, I was introduced to the Bible by an Orthodox Jewish theologian and physicist. After studying both the Old and New Testaments deeply for about five years, I became thoroughly convinced not only of their truth, but that I wanted to become Christian. Had I been exposed to this knowledge as a young person, I doubt very much I ever would have been atheist. Which leads me to believe that it’s no use partially educating inquisitive young people about Christianity. We need to go all-in.