Okay, there is no objective way to reach an agreement about what the inherent principles of the Bible are. It has been the subject of sometimes-violent disagreement between Christians forever.
How about, oh, I don't know, reading the Bible?
An atheist just doesn't believe in God. Atheism doesn't require that they hold no moral principles. I prefer the term agnostic, and I think that the Golden Rule is a discoverable fact informed by our evolved nature - this gives me some pretty clear beliefs about the wrongness of things like abuse, slavery, etc.
Agnosticism is a separate matter. Agnosticism holds that it is impossible to know if there is a God, not that there is no God. Atheism does not eliminate morality. All that it does is require morality to be sourced from the individual, which is anarchy. Perhaps I have not been clear on that, and I apologize.
You cite the Golden Rule. Do you, ah... know where that comes from? Because it is quite literally quoting the Bible.
"Name 5 examples in which Christianity has made people worse than they were before" is a weird way to frame this. Surely this is a dodge to avoid talking about the many evil people in history who were Christian and the many evil things done in the name of Christianity?
You did not refute nor answer anything of this argument. As I have said, Christians commit evils. But when people become Christians, they become better. I am making a relative comparison of the before and after of a conversion to Christianity, and I am claiming that the after is better, though not perfect, than the before. You have not refuted this, instead circling back to what you have said and what I have responded to multiple times.
You can't know whether Christian belief informed Western thought, or whether Western belief informed Christian thought. That huge majorities in the West were Christian for centuries doesn't mean that all good things from the West are inherently Christian and, if it does, then it means an awful lot of the bad things are inherently Christian too.
How about, oh, I don't know... reading what they wrote? Because what they wrote is clearly in favor of Christianity. As I mentioned, the American Founding Fathers, which provide the basis for most of western thought nowadays, cited the Bible more than all other sources combined.
I'm not saying that just because a majority claimed Christianity they were based on Christian principles. While that is a suspicious indicator, it is not proof on its own. Rather, the philosophers, lawmakers, and people who actually formed western philosophy and ideas of justice is who I am referring to.
The slave owners and abolitionists were both Christians. Many of the slaves themselves became Christian. That you feel comfortable saying only the abolitionists were true Christians revealed to me that you're probably almost never encountering that many people or arguments from outside your faith community (hence my reference to your social group).
I'm not saying they weren't true Christians. What I'm saying is that they did evil things, which are only evil by Christian standards.
The difference between Christians and every other culture is not that they had slavery. Every worldview, including Christians, has allowed slavery. The difference is that Christianity got rid of slavery. Again, this is a matter of relative comparison. Christians are not perfect, but they are better.
And yes, I do encounter people that believe different things, including those who are Christians and believe different doctrine. Only because I have encountered them can I speak so strongly on what I believe. If I hadn't debated others before, then my faith would be untested, which would be a silly faith to have. Your assumption that because I believe this I must not have met anyone else is a narrow-minded assumption to make, and proves to me that you have never actually considered Christianity as anything more than a group of people to be mocked for being hypocrites (and I'll join you in mocking the hypocrites).
Again you choose to focus only on the Christians whose moral you disagree with and use a slight-of-hand to define all other believing Christians as non-Christian based solely on your particular version of Christianity. You don't get to define it, no one can, and those Christians doing bad things also had scriptural arguments to justify their horribleness.
I don't get to define it, no. But what I do get to do is go to the Bible and read it, and realize that it says "God created man in His own image" (Genesis 1:27), and then draw the conclusion that if we are created in God's image, we have value.
Really what you are arguing against here is not the Bible, but false interpretations of it, which I can agree with it. So I recommend that you go read it and actually see what it says, and then you'll see that oh, it doesn't justify slavery, and oh, it does command us to love others, and oh, it does support civil rights.
Frankly CF, you don't really know who you're talking to. I know you're a high schooler and I can tell from this conversation that you're not an avid reader of ideas that don't conform to your faith tradition. At a minimum, you might want to consider that I'm a little older, I wasn't always agnostic, and I've had plenty of engagement with Christians and Christian ideas (not least from my childhood Lutheran church). That I didn't find all of these ideas eternally convincing doesn't mean I'm not aware of them. It's very possible to understand Christian theology and also disagree with it.
Neither of us do. I may be a high schooler, and I may be younger, but at a minimum you may want to consider that I have read plenty of other ideas, and have discussed plenty with people who believe those ideas. That I didn't find those ideas eternally convincing doesn't mean I'm not aware of them. It's very possible to understand the theology of other worldviews and also disagree with them.
My contention here is not that you cannot have come from a background in which you were not taught Christian theology, but that you either forgot it, didn't understand it, or were taught poorly. You seem to be equating what Christians do individually with Biblical truth, which indicated to me a lack of understanding of Christian theology. You asked from where did God come from, which indicated to me a lack of understanding of Biblical views on God. You claimed that appealing to authority is not morality, which indicated to me a lack of understanding of the Christian view of morality. You implied that as soon as one learns of other worldviews such as Atheism, they must be convinced that Christianity is false, indicating to me that your teaching on Christianity, if it existed, was shallow and incomplete at best.
The Bible is subject to multiple interpretations and contains within it all sorts of contradictions on moral issues. For many modern moral issues it gives almost no real directives, which puts the burden even more on subjective interpretation. Christianity has no standard other than what a particular Church or Pastor grafts onto their particular reading of scripture. Just because they claim to be aiming towards a Godly and objective morality doesn't mean they're hitting the mark.
There is plenty in the Bible with regards to modern moral issues, what specifically are you referring to?
If you take the Bible at face value, not as some obscure non-understandable document, but as saying what it says, simply as it says it, then it's rather simple.
Again, you are providing an argument against false interpretations of the Bible, not the Bible itself. Again, I can agree.
"Christianity has no standard other than what a particular Church or Pastor grafts onto their particular reading of scripture."
If that is what you were taught in your Lutheran church growing up, then no wonder you got a skewed view of Christianity. Christianity's standard is not what pastors or churches say, no. What pastors and churches say should not be taken immediately as truth, but should be tested against the Bible. If the teaching contradicts what the Bible says, then the teaching is false.
Sola Scriptura!
"Just because they claim to be aiming towards a Godly and objective morality doesn't mean they're hitting the mark."
I couldn't agree more. False teaching in the Church is a big issue, and was also at the time of the Bible's writing. There is much instruction on how to determine if a pastor's teaching is in line with the Bible. Would you like me to go over it?
There are many ways to have a morality without falsely equating morality to "what God wants". And since in practice it's impossible to actually know what God wants, the answers that atheists come up with are not necessarily better or worse than were Christians end up.
What you are saying here is essentially that "you can have morality without a moral standard" which is contradictory to the very nature of morality. Morality is the guide for what is good and evil, and the only way to have laws is to have a giver of laws, or a standard. If you claim that anything that anyone says can be a moral truth, then you've thrown morality out the window entirely, and you just have anarchy. You say it is impossible to know what God wants. Again, this is where I become speculative of whether you have ever read the Bible. If you had, you would know that it is really quite easy. The Bible says as much. It's not some mysterious book of archaic and strange vague writings. It is specific, applicable to the modern day, and fairly clear.
The answers that Atheists come up with are often contradictory to the Bible, so they are far from the truth. Again, Christianity is based on the basic premise that:
What the Bible says is true and good.
Anything contrary to it is false and evil.
Every argument I have seen that you've given is against false interpretations of it, not the Bible itself.