The best and easiest answer to this one is, “Well I do—that’s one of the reasons I’m a secular humanist [or freethinker, etc.].” A number of non-religious people credit reading the Bible as at least part of the basis for their lack of religious faith. But there are also a number of other possible responses to a question like this.
It’s worth pointing out, probably gently, that the Bible is one of the most horrible books (or set of books) around, even though it does have beautiful and inspiring parts as well. It may help to have a few Bible verses handy to cite out of the hundreds that are especially disgusting or horrific (see below or the follow-up essay, “More Biblical Nonsense,” for examples). Or perhaps you should just quote Thomas Paine, the man who made up the name “The United States of America” and inspired Revolutionary War patriots with Common Sense. Paine wrote, in Part I of The Age of Reason (1992 [1794-1795]), “Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind” (Exton, PA: Wet Water Publications, p. 12).
Or you could cite serious scholars of the Bible—like Burton L. Mack (John Wesley Professor of the New Testament at the School of Theology at Claremont), who describes himself as “a biblical scholar and historian of religion who has been engaged in the academic study of religion and culture for thirty years.” In Mack’s book, Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth (1995), he carefully lays out how the books of the Bible came to be written, developed, edited, and chosen (or excluded) from the “Word of God,” turning “a counter-culture philosopher with no grand messianic pretensions, into the Christ, the dying and rising son of God.” Or you could offer them a copy of Michael Ledo’s book, Bible Bloopers: Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Too (published in 1997 by the Atlanta Freethought Society). Or of Robert G. Ingersoll’s great nineteenth-century book, Some Mistakes of Moses. Worth consulting yourself is Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: The Old and New Testaments by Isaac Asimov (Avenel, NJ: Wings Books, 1981).
The simplest approach (it may very well not be the wisest or most effective), for those of us who are Bible critics is to refer the questioner to specific Bible verses. This will sometimes get one called a “Bible basher”—but it is instead a reasonable thing to do; a critical reading of any text is not only acceptable but required by common sense. The easiest place to quickly find Bible verses, in whatever language or Biblical version you might want, is a fine web-site sponsored by sincere Christians: Bible Gateway, found at http://bible.gospelcom.net/.
If a questioner insists, as he probably will, that you’re just taking a specific verse “out of context,” ask him to explain, by all means, in exactly what context it’s OK for God to command his followers to slaughter men and male children, keeping thousands of virgin girls for themselves (Numbers 31). Or ask exactly what context makes it just or reasonable to require people to stone to death someone who picks up sticks on the Sabbath (Numbers 15). Or if you’re dealing with someone who favors taking “objectionable” books off library shelves, read Isaiah 36:12 (King James Version) to questioners and ask if they really want a book that describes people drinking “their own piss” and eating “their own dung” in school libraries. I do not favor removing books I object to, by the way—including the Bible.
And read your Bible. We get more new and newly rededicated secular humanists that way.
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CFI SUMMIT
OCTOBER 24-27 2013
TACOMA, WASHINGTON
Joint Conference of the Council for Secular Humanism, Center for Inquiry, and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
The transnational secular humanist magazine
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