The Born Again Skeptic's Guide to the Bible

Other reviewers have done an excellent job of describing Ruth Green's book. I just want to highlight what I find superb about the book. The book is not about the merits of what Christians might or might not believe. The book is about what the Bible actually says. It is fine to believe that God is love and that He has an eternal commitment to your well being. The problem is that while this all may be true, there is absolutely no support for it in the Bible. Ruth Green convinced me that there may be many devout and committed Christians in the world, but they not get that way as a result of actually reading the Bible. I can't imagine a truly committed Christian reading this book because it is just too painful. My advice for Christians who want to read the Bible is to skip the Old Testament completely and only read the New Testament under the guidance of a pastor who can tell you the large portions to avoid. The Catholic Church shielded the laity from the Bible for almost 2000 years. Read Ruth Green and you will have no doubt of the wisdom behind the Latin mass (when none of the congregation understood Latin.) A superb book that I have been looking for for many years. Read it at your peril!

After coming out of an abusive fundamentalist church, I read this book. While I knew the group I left was wrong, I still clung to many of the ideas I was taught based on the Bible. Green's ability in dissecting the Bible for what's NOT there (how come God never had to magically touch a man in order heal the familiy's infertility, it was always the woman at fault?) helped me come to the conclusion that the Bible was not infallible. Green pulls back the veil to show that the Bible is full of horrific values which our upbringing, cult-ure, and indoctrination inhibit us from understanding its true nature. The book is irreverent and funny, which may cause doubters to put it down before they understand its message. That would be unfortunate, since this book freed my mind from the slavery of fundamentalism.

This book should be required reading for churchgoers and Sunday school students. It shows how, subjected to even a moderate amount of scrutiny, Christian literalism collapses like the house of cards that it is. It also reveals the numerous sordid aspects of the "Good Book" that fundamentalists generally prefer not to discuss. The author undertook the mind-numbing task of reading the King James Bible from cover to cover, and she was rightly appalled by what she found. She does a fantastic job of showing the absurd and comical aspects of a literal interpretation of such horrific material. Fundamentalists would have us believe us that the biblical God is an all-wise, all-powerful, all-loving deity. The author puts the lie to that in a big hurry. Time after time, in hundreds of passages, the god of the Hebrews is shown to be a murderous, misogynist, xenophobic sadist. The Old Testament has God on numerous occasions ordering the murder of babies, the raping of women, and the annihilation of entire cities. Typical examples include 1 Samuel 15:2,3 ("Thus saith the LORD of hosts...Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling..."), Isaiah 13:15,16 ("Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished."), or Hosea 13:16 ("Samaria shall become desolate...they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up."). The New Testament God ups the ante even further by consigning the vast majority of humanity to eternal torture for not accepting such contradictory, nonsensical, and morally repugnant stories. As for the reviewer who called this book "absolutely terrible" and who claimed that it contains "the same tired old objections that...Christian scholars have answered," a number of things may be said. First of all, it is a virtual certainty that the reviewer did not actually read the book, simply because it is unlikely that any Christian literalist could withstand such a pummeling. Second, fundamentalists have NOT answered these "tired old objections" nor will they ever be able to do so because they have no answers to give. When faced with the contradictory and morally repellant nature of the biblical stories, fundamentalists routinely engage in obfuscation, semantic gymnastics, and changing of the subject. Third, the phrase "Christian scholars", at least in the context presented by the reviewer, is a contradiction in terms, simply because the concept of scholarship is fundamentally inconsistent with having one's mind made up in advance about the outcome of their investigations. It is for this reason that Christian fundamentalists are singularly unqualified as scholars and scientists. Fourth, the reviewer did not mention a single

Ruth Green has done a masterful job of dissecting piece by piece every story and line of the Bible. Unlike the reviewer who choose not to read this book before reviewing, Ruth clearly demonstrates having read every last syllable of the Bible. Many theists are taught only selected portions of the Bible. They conveniently gloss over the more horrific aspects. Ruth takes all passages into account, those where God is shown to be grand and those where he's spiteful, cruel and morally repugnant. What makes the Born Again Skeptics Guide entertaining is Ruth's healthy dose of humor on almost every page. These comments are intended to show the absurdity of the Bible while maintaining the reader's interest. A couple examples I took from a random page include how Ruth describes a scene where Jesus feeds the multitudes when scant bread and fish (a very common story). To this she says "the Hebrew grocers hoped no one would catch on." Or when Jesus walked on water, Ruth points out, "anyone can walk on water, it all depends on the temperature." These examples come from a huge list of proposterous claims in one chapter. Other chapters dissect whole stories and one even is devoted to sex! And to think, the only book allowed sex offenders in solitary confinement is a Bible! I give this book 5 big stars; it's both informative and entertaining. A challenge to theists and a resevoir of ammunition to atheists.