Atheists are in some cases more likely than evangelicals to realize that the Bible teaches theonomy, the position that God reveals moral obligations instead of conscience and that the penalties of Mosaic Law are universally obligatory in Christian theology, and plainly teaches it at that, because they are not immersed in a church culture that will punish them for actually admitting what the Bible says instead of endlessly trying to fit into vague, conflicting traditions that have become mainstream in the lowest common denominator distortions of Christianity. Some atheists might have been raised in the evangelical culture of utter philosophical/theological ineptitude, but they, under the right circumstances, can more easily read the Bible without any of the petty assumptions and traditions that evangelicals so desperately cling to driving them to deny what the text says and pretend like it says something it does not. Evangelicals are more concerned with an emotionalistic connection to Christianity and keeping a superficial peace with fellow evangelicals to do the same as these atheists.
This kind of atheist can read the commands to kill adulterers/adulteresses (Leviticus 20:10) or sorcerers/sorceresses (Deuteronomy 18:10-12) and easily see that, whether they like it or not, these are commands of the Bible. They can see that the only possible ways to interpret these instructions are to say that, within the context of Christianity even if they despise it, God gave an evil command, which contradicts what the Bible says about God being righteous, or God changed his moral nature, which contradicts what the Bible says about God not changing, or the Biblical God's commands to kill people for such things and other commands are an inherent part of Christian morality no matter how deep in denial evangelicals are. Unhindered by the desire to conform to church traditions, these atheists can at least better understand that theonomy is the Biblical stance on everything from moral epistemology to criminal and social justice better than most Christians.
Suppose an evangelical objected to this. Do they believe one of the two options here that so obviously contradicts the rest of the Bible? If so, they are outright stupid or they are desperately trying to hold onto anti-theonomist theology because they emotionally dislike the idea of killing people or having any sort of Biblical instructions on justice that are not random, conflicting constructs of different cultures--something made all the more pathetic in light of the fact that Christians and non-Christians almost always micromanage amoral aspects of other people's lives and prefer criminal punishments that are far more severe than those of the Bible (even today, a life sentence in prison, with or without prison rape or almost permanent solitude, is objectively harsher than any earthly penalty for sin that Mosaic Law demands).
The other side is evangelicals wanting to fit into a church of shallow, irrationalistic fools who literally do not know their left hand from their right hand philosophically, with their fellow evangelicals usually just blindly embracing whatever traditions some arbitrary person they respect passed on. It is always emotionalism and tradition that are at the heart of all denial that the Bible teaches theonomy. To avoid this error, one must give up the asinine and easily refutable idea that subjective conscience proves anything about objective moral obligations, but this on its own is more than many people are willing to do. Even evangelicals who change or abandon some popular evangelical ideologies will almost always retain this belief that they can somehow just "know" something is truly evil or good because of personal feelings. Even the ones that think they are truly avoiding assumptions about Biblical teachings or philosophy in general typically are (indeed, almost no one is a true rationalist).
There is no such thing as an intelligent, philosophically competent, or Biblically accurate evangelical. After all, an evangelical who gave up emotionalism, church traditions, and a shallow focus on salvation over logic, epistemology, and morality would not be an evangelical at all! Very little of true Christianity is reflected in evangelical ideas, the latter of which are themselves in conflict with each other to the point that not even all of what evangelicals believe could possibly be true at the same time. The idea that God is inherently good and that his commands are only good relative to geography and time are incompatible, as is the idea that God is cannot change and that God did indeed change almost all of his moral nature and the demands that flow from it--and evangelicals believe these things all at once. Even atheists can actually have an easier time understanding that the Biblical doctrine of theonomy was plainly there the whole time.
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