When it comes to strawman arguments, atheists are second to none. Take, for example, this meme which continues to circulate to this day. It's almost as if someone just Googled the word "atheism", clicked on every atheistic blog they could find, grabbed the dumbest slogans they could, and strung it together to make the most infuriatingly infantile meme I've ever had the displeasure to read. Yet, sadly, it's not just regular internet trolls who believe this is what Christianity is about. Many of these things have been stated, in one way or another, by popular atheist apologists. What's worse, they are believed. Therefore, I feel it's worth spending some time to explain exactly why this meme is factually wrong.
First, is God "cosmic"? This is like asking if Bill Gates is digital. For God to be cosmic, He would have to be a part of the universe, yet God created the universe (Genesis 1:1), and therefore He cannot be cosmic. Even the flesh embodiment of the Son was fully human, thus He is no more cosmic than we are in that regard.
To call Jesus a zombie is just not serious discussion. There's a reason zombies and the like are called "undead". It's because while they give the appearance of life, their bodies are fundamentally different than before reanimation. They are effectively still dead, it's just that they are capable of voluntary movements. By contrast, nothing about Jesus' post-resurrection body is dead, nor is His spirit changed. To call Him a zombie is flat out dishonest.
Then we come to a fundamental misunderstanding of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is not the belief that Jesus is His own father. Rather, it is the doctrine that God is one God, but is existent in three persons: The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It's understandable that a human being cannot understand this, since nothing on Earth has such a triune nature. However, there is one similar phenomenon on this Earth: Conjoined twins. Some conjoined twins share their thalamus, a vital point of their brain. This enables them to see through each other's eyes, feel each other's pain and even hear each other's thoughts. Though they are one in body, and share one mind, they are two distinct entities. Obviously, the Trinity is different in many regards, but this is the closest we have to this on Earth. At any rate, to call Jesus His own father is like saying a coinjoined twin is her own sister, or his own brother. Each member of the Trinity loves us very dearly and plays a different role in our salvation. It was the Son who died on the cross at the Father's will, but this is not "sacrificing Himself to Himself."
Then you have a critical error in the memer's understanding of the Gospel, because they claim Jesus makes us live forever if we eat crackers and wine. First, side note: It's bread and wine. There is no cracker involved. But more importantly, the Lord's Supper, also known as communion, plays no more a part in our salvation than a video camera plays a part in winning a sport's game. The Lord's Supper is done in remembrance of the cross (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24-25). In Christianity, nothing we do saves us (Ephesians 2:8-19; Romans 11:6). Any "gospel" that purports to save by works is antithetical to Christianity. Anyone who doesn't understand this fundamental doctrine forfeits the right to be taken seriously in a discussion. Salvation by grace through faith is Christianity.
In brackets, the memer betrays the origins of his flawed understanding of Christianity, because they put in brackets "that then turn into His flesh". The only thing that's accurate about this is that they capitalised the H in "His". Nowhere does the Bible claim that the bread and wine literally turn into the flesh and blood of Jesus. There is one religion that believes the Lord's Supper involves the literal flesh and blood of Jesus: Catholicism. Catholicism is not Christian, though to be sure, there are true Christians who identify as Catholics, some of them even serving roles within the Church.
Because Catholicism is not a Christian religion, it doesn't matter what they preach about the nature of the bread and wine. They could preach that a pink and purple dragon flies out of the Pope's eyeballs every time someone takes a bite, it wouldn't affect Christianity in the slightest. But what's even worse is that transubstantiation doesn't teach that the bread and wine turn into the flesh and blood after it is eaten, but when it is consecrated by the priest. So the memer is not only wrong about Christianity, they're wrong about Catholicism! Woe betide this person if they dare claim they used to be Christian...
Prayer is then called telepathy. This is a grey area, because telepathy is defined as communication by means other than the known senses. Prayer can be communicated in any way, whether spoken, gestured, or just thought. But however it's sent, God is obviously beyond human. He has more senses than we do because He has all of them. And He could create more!
Then it's claimed we tell Jesus we accept Him as our Master. Again, true in some ways, not so true in others. Particularly untrue if you're a mature Christian. In the earlier stages of faith, one might tell Jesus they accept Him as master, but a more mature Christian knows that He always was. He's an atheist's master, too. The difference isn't the permission to rule, but the acceptance of grace. Think about it: If you disobey the Government, do you think you can get away with denying their authority in your life? "Sorry officer, you can't arrest me, I don't accept your authority over me." In reality, we've all sinned, we're all guilty before God, and we're all due for a pretty harsh, yet just judgement. What we are accepting isn't the Lordship of Jesus, but the free gift of grace He has extended to us by taking the aforementioned judgement upon Himself.
The memer then calls sin an "evil force", which is removed when the "crackers" and wine are consumed. But sin is not an evil force. Sin is when our will contradicts the will of God. It is when we think or do something contrary to what He designed us for. And in this lifetime, it will never be fully gone. No Christian is without sin, which is the point of salvation. No amount of bread, wine, or crackers will change that.
Then we're told we inherited sin from a "rib-woman". As opposed to a monkey woman? Severe doctrinal errors aside for a moment, I find it odd that anyone would bash the idea that Eve was created from a rib. Biologically speaking, humans can only be created by a union of two existing humans, but if the natural way was the only way, there would be no human beings. We have to have come from somewhere, and I think it's a lot more logical to say God intentionally created two original humans than to believe humans are the end result of a single celled organism that magically created itself, then gradually evolved into different animals until finally humans were born. I know this is the tu quoque fallacy, but if you're going to bash Creationism, it's probably a good idea to make sure your own idea isn't bat crap crazy.
But as it stands, we aren't said to have inherited sin from Eve. In fact, Eve is mentioned twice by name in the entire New Testament, both regarding how she was decieved, but neither claiming this is why we are sinners. Rather, it is Adam who is credited with bringing sin into the world. This, in itself, shows the atheist's ignorance, as anyone who really studies Christianity knows this.
And then we have every atheist's favorite slogan: The talking snake. To be fair to the atheist, Genesis alone does nothing else to indicate the snake was a supernatural being other than the fact it could talk. However, other places in the Bible identify Satan as this snake. One can debate whether Satan merely took the form of a snake or whether he possessed one, but no one in the history of ever has read the Bible and concluded that talking snakes were ever supposed to be a regular occurrence.
Furthermore, there is no evidence that the tree of knowledge of good and evil possessed any magical powers. It could have been exactly like the other trees around it. The significance of the tree is that God had explicitly forbidden Adam and Eve to eat from it. As an analogy, imagine a child (we'll say they're around 12, since Adam wasn't exactly freshly weaned from his mother's breast...) is given full access to a packet of cookies. His father says he can eat all the cookies, but he must save one for him. But the child is greedy and eats every last one. There was nothing special about that last cookie, but because he had been commanded not to eat it, the child is now in trouble, and he knows it.
It's amazing how unbelievably wrong this meme is. It presents itself as a definition of Christianity, yet it sets up a domino line of straw men, which it then proceeds to knock down. You can almost see where some of the errors come from, yet whoever made the meme cannot grasp even the basics of theology. Even the one doctrine the meme comes close to accurately describing 1. does not come from the Bible and 2. isn't even what Catholicism teaches! And yet, despite being riddled with more errors than a fishing net has holes, this meme gets shared over and over again all across the internet. Is this the sorry state atheism is in? Is Christianity so unassailable that the greatest weapon atheists have is to bash a false representation of it? The only good thing about this meme is that it allows me to make this post demonstrating just how desperate some atheists can be.