philoseeker

I am currently reading "The Born Again Skeptic's Guide to the Bible (or via: amazon.co.uk)" by Ruth Hurmence Green and highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the true nature of the Western Monotheistic religions--Judaism, Christianianity and Islaam.

I find it very hard to believe that anyone who even cursorily studies this book can believe 1) that it is anything more than a national epic of the ancient Hebrews (along the lines of the Illiad and the Odessey of the ancient Greeks, and 2) that if such a God as described there, if he actually existed, would be worthy of praise and worship rather than contempt.

It is little wonder that those who adhere to bible-based religions show so much perversity and mangled thinking.

Just a thought.

Acetylhexene

Is it anything like The Skeptic's Annotated Bible?

philoseeker

It's a bit more condensed. A good introductory volume.

brianrein

I'm with you, sir. When I was younger I used to read the Bible and wonder if maybe the stuff in it was true reporting - that Jesus' death really did cause earthquakes to rupture all the cemeteries and so on. But that was when I was 11 years old. Now it seems hard to fathom the fact that people see the Bible as something other than a fun bit of ancient mythology.

In addition, I contend that the God of the Old and New Testaments should be asking for our forgiveness, rather than us for his. Perhaps most notably for failing to communicate his "word" in a universal way - instead choosing to give it to some illiterate carpenter in the middle east in a form which would only last 30 years* - but also for his crimes against homosexuality, women, Jews, and people he allows to rot in Hell for no good reason

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*Remember, Jesus technically was the Word. The words WE have, by contrast, were written by a bunch of anonymous scribes 50-150 years later. You would think God would have had some sort of system to keep his word safe from alteration by dumb scribes, but he pretty clearly failed in that respect.