When someone comes along and says, "trust me", red flags should go up. Remember the fellow who bought the Brooklyn Bridge? How many people have lost their life savings because they trusted, had faith in, people (roofing contractors and other scammers) or banks (this recent mortgage foreclosure situation) or public corporations they bought stock in, managed to "fold their tents and disappear like Arabs in the night"? Something about these people, banks or businesses made their customers trust them, believe in them, have faith in their ability and intention to "deliver the goods". And after the loss, whether large or small, other people came along and ranted and raved, "you should never have trusted this person/bank/business without references, proof that there were who they said they were, and they could and would do what they said they'd do!" "Well," says the victim, "they have a book out, and there were these people who gave testimonials,..."

Well, why would it be any more right to believe in any religion, have faith in any god, without demanding to see SOLID PROOF for oneself, NOT BASED ON THE TESTIMONY OF OTHERS OR OF A QUESTIONABLE BOOK?

If you want to get a feel for how easy it is to fool people, read Wendell Potter's "Deadly Spin". If you want to get an idea of how religions have taken hold, remember the comment by Cardinal Richelieu, "give me a child for his first 7 years, and I will have him forever!" (Some have written it as "give me a child for his first 7 years and I will show you the man".)

We've been duped. Our ancesters, back to "year one", have been duped. And because there were so many people, generations weaving in and out, moving here and there, the church heirarchy became powerful and grew. And it continues as a monstrosity of religion, with the heads of a hydra, all speaking at once, out-shouting the reasonable and scientific world, that dulls our wits and keeps us under it's collective thumb. Except for those of us who have, sooner or later, opted out.

As for the other religions, I don't know much about them. I believe that their books were written after the bible and thats about all I know.

On that point, I can assure you that you are simply incorrect. There are many world religions in existence today that are followed by many millions of people and that have holy books that are considerably older than the Christian Bible.

Take Buddhism, for example. Siddhartha Gautama, who was the founder of Buddhism, lived around the 6th century BCE, about 600 years before Christ. There are many Buddhist texts, including the Perfection of Wisdom texts and the Lotus Sutra, that come from that time. Buddhism, I note, has more than 700 million followers today.

Hinduism, as well, has texts that predate the Bible. One of Hinduism's holiest texts, the Bhagavad Gita, dates back to at least 50 years before the time of Christ and may be as much as 500 years older. Hinduism has close to 900 million followers.

There's also Taoism, another Eastern religion that has its roots in the BC era. The Taoist sacred text, the Tao te Ching, was written about 600 BC by the sage Lao-tzu. Taoists, while less organized than Buddhism and Hinduism and therefore harder to count, probably number in the hundreds of millions.

One could even consider Zoroastrianism, a Persian religion that's believed to have influenced Judaism during the period of King Cyrus (who is mentioned in the later books of the Old Testament). Although Zoroastrianism has only a few million followers worldwide, it is still around, and its major holy text, the Avesta, may date as far back as 1000 BC.

In any case, if your sole criterion for believing in a religion is that its holy book is the oldest, then why are you Christian and not Jewish? The Old Testament predates the New Testament by centuries. (And if you were to say that the New Testament fulfills and completes the Old Testament, please note that the Islamic Qur'an makes exactly the same claim about itself relative to the New Testament.)

I don't want to spend more time in the Bible because I doubt the Bible, but because there is so much I don't know, but the one thing I do know is that I believe no matter what... So when I shut my mind off and let my spirit speak to me I cannot deny the truth. Its hard to explain.

However, as I have said, people of many other religions and faiths, including many that are directly incompatible with yours, have expressed this very same utter and complete conviction when they proclaim the truth of their beliefs. But they can't all be right.

Human beings are fallible, something I'm sure you as a Christian believe already. No matter how thoroughly convinced a person is of the truth of some idea, they can still be wrong. What makes you so certain that other believers are mistaken but that you aren't? As you yourself have admitted, you know very little about these other religions; how do you know you wouldn't experience this same feeling of conviction if you tried one of them?

Ok, I'm getting off the subject. I read over Hosea 13:16 and it does sound really bad, but as I looked I noticed that that there are more scripture to that and in many different places. I really don't know much about that scripture, but I will soon, because I will study it. I do know this, that it is a metaphor or a figure of Speech. I know that this is not the answers you are looking for, but this is all I know.

I'm not looking for any particular answer; I'm just trying to bring to your attention some things about your own religion you may not have been told about. And with all due respect, I don't think that verse is a metaphor. I suggest you read the surrounding context - that chapter is all about God's anger at people who have failed to obey him, and what he will do to those people. And, there are many, many other verses in the Old Testament which depict God as threatening dreadful, horrible punishments upon people who disobey him. I could have cited a dozen other verses just like this one.

But let's say you're right and it is a metaphor. What does that change? Does that make the message of this verse any less terrible? Would you ever speak in such violent and hateful terms to someone you loved, even if you only meant it metaphorically?

While you're studying, I have another verse you may not have been aware of. This one is from the Old Testament Book of Numbers, chapter 31, and concerns an incident in which the Israelite tribes, led by Moses, were fighting a rival tribe, the Midianites. The following verse presents itself as straight-up history and is surrounded by verses that are also plain and historical. There is no chance that it was intended as some sort of metaphor. This is from verses 7 to 18:

"And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.... And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle. And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? .... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

Do you think that verse was inspired by God?

Of course, a preface saying that some (unspecified) passages are morally unacceptable would be fine.

I appreciate your decision to share your views on this site. It's always a concern of mine to reach out to the religious community rather than just preaching to the choir, so to speak. I have to note, however, that your comments really didn't address the substance of my article, and so I'd like to better understand your views with a few questions, if I may.

First, you wrote that you "believe in the word of God as competely true", but what do you consider to be the word of God? Have you read the Bible all the way through? (Most Christians haven't.) Are you certain that you can endorse everything it contains as good and righteous advice?

You may not be aware of the many verses the Bible contains that endorse quite shocking instances of bloodshed, hatred, killing and horror in the name of God. In one verse from the Old Testament Book of Hosea, for example, God promises to punish the city of Samaria for its nonbelief in him by sending armies to kill its people, rip open the bellies of its pregnant women, and smash its children against the ground. (Hosea 13:16). You spoke highly of Jesus' grace and mercy; do you really believe, then, that he would inspire a passage such as this? Do you think he would react with such violence and fury just because people weren't obeying him as he wanted?

I do know without a doubt that Jesus is true and real and that he heals. I have had many encounters with him. He speaks to us in so many ways. He speaks to us in dreams and visions. He speaks to us in our prayer time with just a still small voice that just flows from within.

I'm sure your belief is genuine, but I have to ask what makes you so certain, considering that members of other religions use the exact same arguments as you to support belief in totally different gods. Muslims often claim that Allah sends dreams and visions to them confirming the truth of Islam. Hindus, Taoists, Sikhs and many other religions claim to hear God's voice in prayer. Even Christians who are certain that God has spoken to them personally often disagree dramatically regarding what God's wishes and desires are. And it has been demonstrated that religions other than Christianity can influence and alter people's personalities in important ways; for example, there are groups that claim Buddhist meditation can reform prison inmates. All these groups are making the very same claims as you, only using them in support of different religions and different faiths. Can you give me any reason to believe you over them that is not completely dependent on unprovable, subjective personal experience?

I don't consider myself qualified to decide which passages are the word of God and which ones are not.

Oh, come now. You really put so little confidence in your own moral judgment that you don't consider yourself qualified to decide whether a biblical passage that demands the wholesale slaughter - man, woman and child - of an entire people is the divinely inspired word of God?

I call this phenomenon "induced ethical dyslexia": religious believers often become so accustomed to accepting authority unquestioningly, rather than making up their own minds, that they can't recognize evil for what it is, even when it is staring them in the face, if that evil is endorsed by their own religious tradition. My upcoming post "No Commandments" is going to discuss this very phenomenon.

Preserving the Bible in its currrent state has a certain illusion of historical continuity and it can also be used to make an important point: even if you think you're inspired by God, you can still get things horribly wrong.

That is an interesting point, but to be honest I think it's far too subtle for most believers to grasp. Again, if Katharine Schori's Bible and the Bibles of her congregations had margin notes indicating flatly that verses like this were not the word of God, I might acknowledge the point - but I strongly doubt they have anything like that. Even liberal religions tend to shy away from that degree of encouraging critical thinking among their members.

Atheist's don't really have an equivalent, but would you not be annoyed if someone pruned the works of Robert Ingersoll, removing all parts that they felt were irrelevant today, and attempted to impose this pruned version on others?

As I'm sure you know, Philip, the situation is not at all comparable. Robert Ingersoll never, in his published works, endorses slavery, calls for the genocide of those who believe differently than him, or demands the shedding of innocent blood to forgive wrongs. And if he did do any of those things, I wouldn't need to prune his works, because I would simply conclude that he was not a good moral authority to follow and set aside his writings altogether. But if he did call for such things, and if for some reason I was bound to believe in him rather than just finding a new source of morality, I would not only accept that pruning, I would demand it.

I bible is the inspired word of God. That is what it says. All is based on belief. If you believe. It is putting your faith in action. Faith is believing something that you believe, because you believe it. People come to Christ by faith, people don't believe by faith. Faith is believing in something or someone without logical proof. Being a Christian or an Atheist takes faith, either way.

Kelly - from reading your post, have you considered the possibility that you are actually worshiping first and foremost not a god, but a convention you are calling "faith". This faith makes your god possible.

Ok, "Generally speaking" was a poor choice of words. I don't use the Bible as God's Word.

If the Bible contains the word of a god, especially an all-powerful god who created the universe, the book would be of incredible value. But if it contains just the words of men, while there could still be value, that value would be significantly reduced. Hence my wanting to understand your position on the matter as a religious person.

Enigma, are you an atheist? If not, I apologise for misrepresenting you.

Yes I am an atheist. But maybe you would agree with me that the Bible has a hold on many of the religious, far out of proportion than it should have. Adam points out in his essay that some liberal theologians like Katharine Jefferts Schori appear to be in effect backing away from the Bible. And yet they seemingly want to have their cake and eat it too. And so they continue to elevate a book that is at increasing odds with their positions, requiring the spinning of explanations to co-exist.

Enigma, are you an atheist? If not, I apologise for misrepresenting you.