The title is not about me, it’s something that is claimed to happen. I’ve seen in movies and heard a few famous people say they picked up a Bible, read the whole thing and found out about this amazing man who is and will save the world. Frankly, I just don’t believe it happens.
I was listening to the new “Life After God” podcast and a woman who is doing her sociological dissertation on the topic of people deconverting said it was common for people to read the whole Bible and DE-convert. She didn’t stop and talk about whether or not that was her opinion or based on data. It would be interesting to find out. If I’m right, a mass de-conversion is waiting to happen in millions of unread Bibles sitting in nightstands all over the world.
I don’t know how many people actually convert after reading the Bible. I’ve personally never met one. In my experience the majority of Christians (and religious folks in general) believe what they believe because they were raised to. Cognitive inertia and social pressure take it from there.
As for the Bible itself: it’s largely irrelevant in the modern world and becoming more so every day. It’s hundreds of years out of date. Its moral teachings are shallow at best, deplorable at worst. It’s inaccurate, incoherent, and for the most part poorly written.
On a personal level, it played a part in the death of what indoctrination/faith I tried to have when I was younger.
Building on what Dead Monky said, I do see how people could actually read it and de-convert. They’re fed this notion that the Bible is some magical thing, and fed only portions by their preachers. When you actually read it, you start to see it’s nothing of the sort. And especially if you read about how it came to be, and double especially the King James version, it really loses its magic.
It's hundreds of years out of date.Brings up a point. Could the bible and Christianity survive a newer translation of religion? Instead of the 47 translators that wrote the KJV, with the internet we could have thousands of translators contribute.
I wasn’t talking about the translation. Rather the content of the books themselves. Even the newest books are hundreds of years old. They were written in a world vastly different from the world of today. The needs and sociopolitical realities of the Roman-era Levant (or, Grodd forbid, the Bronze Age Levant) are so different from those of the modern world as to be almost alien. And that’s not even considering the often, let’s be frank here, barbaric mores and norms of the period which form an integral part of the world view and moral teachings contained in the Bible. So in short, the Bible is outdated and irrelevant and no amount of re-translation is going to change that.
EDIT
Fixes, rewrites
I wasn't talking about the translation. Rather the content of the books themselves. Even the newest books are hundreds of years old. They were written in a world vastly different from the world of today. The needs and sociopolitical realities of the Roman-era Levant (or, Grodd forbid, the Bronze Age Levant) are so different from those of the modern world as to be almost alien. And that's not even considering the often, let's be frank here, barbaric mores and norms of the period which form an integral part of the world view and moral teachings contained in the Bible. So in short, the Bible is outdated and irrelevant and no amount of re-translation is going to change that. EDIT Fixes, rewritesI agree, but those who think it's the word of god go to great lengths to convert kids by coming up with "new" translations. They'll twist Her word so as to minimize the "bad" parts and make it appear to address modern needs.
Richard Carrier has a great analogy. The Bible, and this has been going on since at least the 4th century, is full of blood sacrifice and genocide. It’s like an early version of personal computer operating systems. They didn’t work very well. But each of us has figured out tricks to do when we boot it up to keep all the bad stuff from popping up and instead focus on the parts we like. The problem is, you can’t save that work, you have to do it each time you boot up. So if someone who doesn’t know the tricks opens it, they might see all the commands to stone their neighbor and think that’s how it’s supposed to work.
Not just bloodshed and genocide. It’s got incest, infanticide, slavery, promotion of child murder, religious intolerance/fanaticism, petty cruelty and heaps of misogyny. A good book for the childrens.
I can’t say I read the bible cover to cover, but a few years ago after one of my friends was pontificating on how the US is a Christian nation, I picked up a copy of the Jefferson Bible at our local library and did read through that (and it is just the “New Testament”, not the whole thing). As I’m sure most people know, Jefferson did not “write" his bible but merely took out all the magic tricks and other absurdities. His claim that this Jesus person, while not having any direct familial relationship to a deity (like Hercules), was still a nice guy who taught some good lessons.
Unfortunately, even his version took some digging to pull out very many pearls of wisdom. Oh sure, I thought the story about not tossing stones at prostitutes when your own character may not be impeccable was noteworthy, even though even the most bible thumping of politicians seem to have missed it, the rest didn’t seem to have enough off of which one could base a religion much less “words to live by".
It’s more of a weapon, not something to read. Like a hammer.
Reading the Bible actually was directly related to my conversion to atheism. As mentioned above, I was raised Christian but most Christianity is based on a very small percentage of select verses that tend to be comfortable and easier to process. At about the age of 21, I decided to get serious about my faith and decided I was going to read and try to understand the entire Bible and become an even more devout Christian and within a year, I was an atheist…any belief I had was gone whether I liked it not.
Richard Carrier has a great analogy. The Bible, and this has been going on since at least the 4th century, is full of blood sacrifice and genocide. It's like an early version of personal computer operating systems. They didn't work very well. But each of us has figured out tricks to do when we boot it up to keep all the bad stuff from popping up and instead focus on the parts we like. The problem is, you can't save that work, you have to do it each time you boot up. So if someone who doesn't know the tricks opens it, they might see all the commands to stone their neighbor and think that's how it's supposed to work.I think that happens quite often. Good analogy.
Reading the Bible actually was directly related to my conversion to atheism. As mentioned above, I was raised Christian but most Christianity is based on a very small percentage of select verses that tend to be comfortable and easier to process. At about the age of 21, I decided to get serious about my faith and decided I was going to read and try to understand the entire Bible and become an even more devout Christian and within a year, I was an atheist...any belief I had was gone whether I liked it not.It was Christians as much as the bible that made me an atheist.
Reading the Bible actually was directly related to my conversion to atheism. As mentioned above, I was raised Christian but most Christianity is based on a very small percentage of select verses that tend to be comfortable and easier to process. At about the age of 21, I decided to get serious about my faith and decided I was going to read and try to understand the entire Bible and become an even more devout Christian and within a year, I was an atheist...any belief I had was gone whether I liked it not.Ditto. I enrolled in a small evangelical seminary in Dallas and only lasted a few weeks. Studying the Bible left a lot of unanswered questions, most of which were answered in Darwin's books and Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden. Even The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is more realistic than the Bible.
I read the bible as a kid. Realized it was no different than the Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Roman…mythologies I had been reading. Turned me into an atheist.
Reading the Bible actually was directly related to my conversion to atheism. As mentioned above, I was raised Christian but most Christianity is based on a very small percentage of select verses that tend to be comfortable and easier to process. At about the age of 21, I decided to get serious about my faith and decided I was going to read and try to understand the entire Bible and become an even more devout Christian and within a year, I was an atheist...any belief I had was gone whether I liked it not.Ditto. I enrolled in a small evangelical seminary in Dallas and only lasted a few weeks. Studying the Bible left a lot of unanswered questions, most of which were answered in Darwin's books and Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden. Even The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is more realistic than the Bible. I was constantly studying the Bible and was even considering moving to Californina in my early 20s to work for a conservative radio station/organization. That was 8 years ago...I am 29 now, but that feels like so long ago due to the fact that I've changed my views so much. I recall in the Old Testament reading about God "loving Jacob, but hating Esau" saying simply "he will have mercy upon whom he will have mercy" and providing the anology of "a clay vessel cannot question its maker" and ask "why one was created for his glory and the other not." This demonstrated that the Bible depicts human as pawns in Gods game and apparently some are just made to go to hell, case closed. Then the other verse that helped me solidfy my inability to believe in the goodness of the religion was when Pharaoh was "forced by God" to disobey him so that God could use him as an example of evil. According to the scripture, Pharaoh wanted to do good at one point but was forced to be evil (using the language that "He (God) hardened Pharoah's heart." Scripture like that above, espoused with science just converted me to atheism. I remember talking to some people in my life and pointing out the two scriptures above and they refused to even think about them (apparently they too thought those verses are particularly ominous but refused to want to discuss them because they realized they didn't have answers) and it was clearly causing cognitive dissonance for me to press these uncomfortable verses and stories.
I’ve only read bits and pieces of the bible, and what I have read strikes me as mostly tedious but not really offensive. Maybe if I had the patience, I would try to read it cover to cover.
However if I was a believer, I’d say the bible isn’t the be-all end-all of faith - so it doesn’t negate faith.
I tried reading it once… Back in the early '80’s, I think. I couldn’t get past the ‘begats’ and had no interest in pursuing it any further.
EDIT: Interesting… I tried to add (carriage return), ‘take care’, (carriage return), [my name] and the forum software thinks it’s spam…
Odd. I’ve had it reject several things I’ve tried to post. But they all involved links to research on pr0n or various sex trades.
People don’t “convert” by reading the bible. They are indoctrinated into one of the religions supported by it. Reading it can bring people to their senses if they’re open to seeing it as it is rather than how they were taught it is. Too many are not however.
Lois
It's more of a weapon, not something to read. Like a hammer.Or bludgeon.