From Penn Gillette. Remarkable reasonableness:
"If you want to become an atheist, I always recommend reading the Bible from beginning to end. Not a guided system of reading it, but just read the whole thing, and I think if you do, you come out being an atheist. I don't think you have to do anything special. I think at the end of a book about hatred, slavery, horrible acts towards women, crazy contradictory laws, and the jealous nature of this God, I think it's apparent that it was written by crazy people for political reasons. "
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That's why so many people read it on the subway.
ReplyDeleteHeh! That I never noticed. I need to pay closer attention to my surroundings. Then again, I haven't been on a subway in over a decade. I do run across a couple folks reading their bibles on Main Street in my little city. It's actually nice to visit with them. In all that nonsense about stoning kids with acne Genisisi: Rules) and righteous smoting from Above, there are a few gems to be gleaned.
ReplyDeleteThe thing does warm up a bit in the New Testament, but not as much as is typically alleged. When I recently dug back into it, The Book read like a manual for revolutionaries. "Leave your family and children and follow me! Fuck your leaders and teachers!!!"
All well and good, but it is not what gets popularly advertised.