Is it odd that reading the bible has made me even more critical of Christianity?

I've read it too and there's some freaky *** stuff in there. I was telling my therapist and she was about to vomit...like the story where the gang of men from Benjamin tried to rape a travellor so the guy he was staying with tried to shove his young daughter out the door to avoid homosexuality....but instead the traveller shoved his concubine out the door where they gang raped her and killed her? And then he chopped pieces of her up and sent them to the different Isreali tribes to show what Benjamin had done...so the other tribes slaughtered the men of Benjamin, and vowed not to let their daughters marry men of that tribe. So then it was an issue of how Benjamin would survive, so they killed all the men of certain villages and the women and children who weren't virgins, and married the rest off? Then hosted parties for the tribe of Benjamin to grab and kidnap wives?


The bible's brutal.

Anyone who claims absolute certainty of the buybull hasn't read it. It's called the buybull because you have to buy the bull to believe it.

"Properly read, the bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."
- Isaac Asimov

Not at all. I was "on fire for the Lord" for years and years and the deeper I got into the bible the weaker my faith became.

One problem is that "religion" is full of people...flawwed, selfish, hypocritical people. It's the same as any other group, from fans of your favorite sports team to a group of atheists. Don't let the way religion is actually practiced (imperfectly) by people get in the way of your reverring God.

most people find religion more foolish after actually reading the bible. nobody who has actually read it could believe that stuff.

When i was young my grandparents try to take me to church, but were ask not to bring me anymore due to me asking to many question and never being able to grasp the concept of "blind faith". Bout ten years ago i asked myself why is christianity any different from any other religion if god is the "one true god". I thought surely all religions must be based on the same beliefs if this is true, so i too took it upon myself to see for myself what other religions say. After asking some questions to people of different faiths i came to the conclusion i was going about it all wrong. I then decided to take a historical approach and thats when real truth started to reveal itself. The bible was not a chritian religion,but rather a TOOL for men to lift them seleves up into power. It was a bust so then i started to dig a little more to see how it came to be. What i found was that christianity was a very divesified religion in the begining many sects. Each sect followed a different gossple as was recorded from diferent appostals, hence the book of so and so. Roman eporor Constantine when he decided to convert to christianity convened various chritian sect leaders, not all of them mind u,they got together to unify christianity and hand picked the gossples that would go into the bible, leaving out any gossple that didnt suit thier agenda ie. The apocrafic texts the book of mary portrying women as leaders in the religion, book of peter, book of judas, and the agnostic's that portrayed a more mistical side. Anyway i could go on and on, but this is why u have trouble decifering it. Not to mention that when king james had it traslated from aramayic to latian a lot was lost in translation.

First of there is probably more evil sin and horror written in the Bible than most other books, because there's a lot in the Bible about man when he's not following God's teachings, and it describes it graphically, doesn't it? It also counts the few who followed God and the huge number who didn't . In all the world Noah and his family were the only humans worth of saving from the flood. THe count is pretty accurate today, too, isn't it? These are vignettes from history--taken from hundreds of versions of the same material translated and compared and retranslated again and again, with almost no change---Somebody's looking out for it. Don't worry about being sincerely skeptical--everyone intelligent is. Take the advice of the Book itself. Open it(what a concept!) to Matthew Chapter 7, verse 7 and honestly do what it says.....Love Noelle

Yes, i completely get what you're saying. The bible itself is full of contradictions and some of the things said just aren't rational, even if you believe and have faith in Christianity and the lord; it still seems a bit over-exaggerated with the stories that are included(Abraham sacrificing his son to show his devotion to the Lord, seems a bit drastic because isn't it contradictory to god's teachings to have to show him your devotion with murder, aren't people taught that God shows mercy? so in turn it doesn't make sense, if God shows mercy he would never ask that of anyone.) Contradictory to the faith isn't it?.

At the age of 13, in a time of crisis, I read the Bible, in a search for God and understanding. I found that I didn't like that God, and I was shocked and appalled at what I learned about the "heros" Moses and David. Nowhere was there any objection or condemnation for Japeth sacrificing his virgin daughter as a "whole burnt offering" to that God, and he lived out his life as a judge. Biblical morality didn't suit me at all, and I never have, nor will I ever, worship anything of the God of Abraham.

I doubt it.
It certainly had that effect on me.