All That's Wrong with the Bible: Contradictions, Absurdities, and More: 2nd expanded edition

I found this little book interesting and useful. It was written by a formerly strongly Christian fellow who studied the Bible to a point that most do not, and his interest in and knowledge of associated languages led him to recognize, on allowing himself an unusual degree of self-honesty, a massive quagmire of problems with the Christian Bible that were, in and of themselves, strong enough to convince him that a well-meaning, all-powerful being would not likely allow those humans who penned his scriptures over centuries to produce a book with the numerous glaring problems he came to find in it. In that regard, it is a convincing and useful read.Reading that was useful to me, because I have ongoing questions about religion and Christianity, as the predominant faith in my country. I had for some time understood that there were contradictions in the Bible, but I am not a Christian (I am an atheist), so I have not read the entire Bible or studied it to the degree that I would recall contradictions that were spread over a distance of numerous pages. As such, what he had to say was resoundingly interesting to me. It added to my conviction that Christianity is as preposterous as any other prevalent religion.That being said, my primary problem was with his chosen title. There are numerous things wrong with the Bible beyond the contradictions and absurdities that he discusses. He discusses only the problems in the Bible as they relate to the Bible itself--different verses that contradict each other, actions of God that do not support the image of the caring father that the Bible depicts him as being, and such. I do not mean to outline the entire makeup of the book, and he offers much more than simply that, but all the criticisms are tied to problems within the Bible as it relates to its own story.A large part of what is wrong with the Bible, though, are things that were entirely missed by the Bible, in its having been written by ancient peoples who, unlike a purported all-knowing god, had only so much access to knowledge of the universe as they could at the time, and as such, these problems do not feed back into the Bible, itself, in that same way, but arise from our modern day knowledge of the universe and how things really work and when things really came into being, that the writers of the Bible could not have known. Any book that should rightfully be called "All That's Wrong with the Bible," should certainly cover these areas, as well, and there is no mention of the modern arguments against the Bible, at all. In fact, to put what I am saying into context, a knowledgeable person with such interest and knowledge as he has expressed and without fear of being hung or beheaded (it certainly would have been a rare soul!) could have produced what this author has done hundreds of years ago, I suspect.In terms of the more modern arguments against the word of the Bible, the same could not have been done hundreds of years ago (although some of the ancients did have their suspicions, they had no evidence to support them).I speak of things such as the idea of a god having masterminded and created all things and all beings, as was an ancient, simple explanation in distant days before we recognized evolution and learned of astronomy and quantum physics. Knowing what we do of evolution and evolutionary-geology, it is clear that the Bible is absolutely mistaken in terms of the order of creation. We know without doubt that the time factor tied to the unfolding of events in the Bible is absurd. Those who have gone to the trouble of calculating the age of the earth as being somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years, presumably responsibly done in response to careful consideration of the ages of generations and the history of occurrences outlined in the Old Testament, come to an absurd conclusion, when we know that if creation had been that recent and existence that brief, we'd not yet have received light to allow us to see most of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, when in fact, we can see light from distant galaxies that has taken billions of years to get here. In fact, most of the starry sky that seems to surround our globe would have been invisible to us if a God had created the universe only ten thousand years ago. There would be little more to see if it had been created a hundred thousand years ago! The only thing we'd see of stars would be part of our Milky Way Galaxy, and it would far from fill the sky--at any time, if you can even see it, it is only in one side of the heavens. I find it preposterous to believe that a well-meaning god would allow his scribes to misrepresent fact so absolutely. Why would he not want to take credit for the even greater grandeur of the universe he created, that the ancients could not yet appreciate?I do not respond in this way to start a new book or to admonish this author. I was impressed with what he wrote and found it interesting and useful information to pleasantly add to what I already understand of problems with the Bible and religion. I simply think he needs to pick a more accurate and less overstated title. His little book far from covers "All That's Wrong with the Bible."

These contradictions are glaring once you see them. The Bible is such a hard read, and so often boring, that to hunt down and find these contradictions, is just hard. I could never do it. But once you see them as this book shows them, and then go back and see if they are really in the Bible that way, verbatim I was really truly amazed. They are. ??!! Why, they have left them in the Bible, as is, all these years is a real wonder. I guess hardly anybody really cares, or notices them. We call ourselves Christians, but we really can't get through reading the Bible. It really needs to be re-written and cleaned up quite a bit. The contradictions leaves us wondering - like WHAT?! It's plain shameful. One has to expect more. I did, and was let down.The Bible is not what I thought it was. Jesus would have to be asking questions too. Not to "throw the baby out with the bath water" though. The Bible has many very good messages and passages. Just flawed blatantly in a surprizing amount places at the same time. That is disturbing.For God's sake - clean it up. How long can these mistakes go on? Some people claim to beleive it is ALL true, but as it is, sadly, it can not be ALL true. The contradictions have to go. Maybe simplify it along the way too, thus getting, or enabling people to really read it in its entirety. Sure, leave the old books around for history. Surely don't burn them, but develop a more useable Bible for the masses. As is, it's kind of embarassing in too many parts.

Book was in perfect shape. Delivered promptly.

It is nothing less than astonishing that well into the second decade of the 21st Century there is still a need to write books about the contradictions, moral depravity, absurdities and other assorted idiocy found in the Bible. The Bible bares the marks of its lowly and barbaric origins. It was written by primitive people living in a violent period of time, but it is still taken to be a serious source of ethics and history by many credulous people. Anyone who can read the Bible and come away thinking of it as the ‘The Good Book’ is intellectually and ethically compromised.One has to engage in exegetical acrobatics and intellectual sophistry to draw ethical lessons from the retrograde Bible. There are the obvious examples of Bible readers grounding their arguments for ethics on the same scriptures and failing to agree on what those scriptures say. The Bible is a toxic vat of staggering cruelty that continues to destroy lives to this day. It makes believers privilege the abstract fiction of God over the concrete reality and wellbeing of real embodied human beings. To convince themselves, Bible literalists are really selective literalists in that they chose only those passages that affirm their predetermined ideology and conform their fixed beliefs.The Old Testament can best be thought of as ancient barbaric Jewish mythology and the New Testament as literary fiction, and not very appealing in terms of decent literature or engaging fiction. Biblical practices are no different than voodoo practices. Bible believers are astonishingly ignorant, astoundingly intolerant, staggering bigoted and stunningly credulousLest any think that I have been hyperbolic in this review by being obviously churlish, ostensibly pejorative or overtly tendentious, I am actually speaking from experience. I am unfortunately related to such bewilderingly ignorant people who take pride in their ignorance as a sign of their virtue and authenticity. I was once told “there are certain things God does not want me to know”. This means anything that might cast doubt upon their fictional beliefs.The only place in which I disagree with the author is whether or not to disregard the Bible. The author says no since it is still a basic text of Western Civilization whereas I think it should be considered an embarrassment to Western Civilization and thus be disregarded. The author admits that, with great irony, the biggest reason why he stopped believing in the Bible was found in the contents of the Bible.

This is a straight forward primer for those trying to get their heads around the obvious debating points for atheists and agnostics. Personally if you're starting down this road, this book will put you in a good position to engage with the discussions in these communities be they on social media etc.

The format is very useful. Easy to read with a stream of challenging contradictions. It's a real eye opener and worth buying

An interesting and highly readable book. One more weapon in the atheists’ arsenal...Colin G.

Very interesting analysis of the text.

It's good to remind us of some of the most dubious parts of the book, its numerous contradictions and confusions, and its commendation of some truly horrible deeds -- such as approving of the human sacrifice of a child to the deity. I only fear that those who need the information most are least likely to have read the Bible with the attention needed to appreciate the points being made. Faith is a powerful drug.