The guy who handed over his daughters, instead of the guests, to be raped by the men in the village who wanted to “know” the guests. I had taken it upon myself to read the entire bible. Start to finish. I couldn’t get through the Old Testament without feeling serious cognitive dissonance. I continued, though. It didn’t get any better. Bashing babies against rocks, wiping out an entire ethnic group because they didn’t believe the same things the israelites believed, murder by bear, the abject cruelty and slaughter of children and women, the slavery, kicking out your slaves and the children you had with them into the wilderness, just because your wife was jealous. All of that and more. The New Testament is not much better.
My grandmother, my rock of gibralter, right after my mother, used to tell me that the Old Testament god was a child: petty, jealous, mean, selfish and self-centered. The New Testament god was a grown up: empathetic, loving, etc., and sometimes, grown ups had to make hard choices when it came to survival. My grandma is catholic. She sees the bible’s Old Testament largely as metaphor, not a literal historical set of documents. To her, it’s a general overview of how brutal it was for humans to live, and what they had to do to survive. The New Testament is closer to us in time and she believes the dichotomies of differences are explained by the telephone game. Mostly the same, but with some differences she can live with because overall it’s, as I said, the same. She doesn’t believe in most of the miracles and fantasies that are in there. She’s more of a realist than that. Although, and she says this all the time, it’s a bit of fabrication by the church to enhance the wondrousness of god and christ.
I really, really wanted to see it her way. But it ended up with me rejecting the entirety of my faith and the whole enchilada propounded by the bible. I saw it as a manifesto of a group that had, temporarily, come out the winner in the battle of the fittest. Justification for why they were the only ones who could live and prosper in a certain area, and why no one else was allowed to do the same. You know, live and let live.
I don’t see the bible as any different than the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson, or the Brothers’ Grimm. If I don’t believe in fairies, elves, unicorns, dragons, etc, then why would I believe in the supernatural elements of the bible? It’s not real. None of it. If it was real, why can’t archaeologists (and I am NOT including “biblical archaeologists” or, worse, Ron Wyatt-ites) find any evidence? Because it was never real. I can go on to include the repackaging of more ancient civilisations lore and the blatant plagiarism of entire canons of Sumerian/Akkadian mythology. But I will leave it at that.
I don’t see how anyone who honestly deep dives into the question: “What do I REALLY believe?” Can come out the other end of that tunnel and reject every other circumstance as false, and only one circumstance as “truth” when all of it is exactly the same.
ps: My epiphany happened when the Hubble pictures were published. Although I was already on the track to losing my religion, the images clinched it for me.
pss: I guess I didn’t really follow the instructions. I read the bible and ended up an atheist. But it is not any less disturbing reading the bible as an atheist, than it was as a believer. Disgusting is the milder of my reactions.
pss: I promise I won’t edit again after this one. I stated I had an epiphany when Hubble’s images were published. That’s only partially true. A segment of Scientific American (PBS), about the “God Helmet” was the real clincher. If anyone is interested, I posted a long list of links regarding the device and the scientist who devised the contraption somewhere in the forum. Easily googled and also on wiki.
