Why I think atheists should not reject all religious text.

[robvalue]

I have been through quite a lot of the bible, in detail. The extremely few good bits of advice it has to offer are blindingly obvious to any reasonable person.

Also, it's entirely pointless for morality because it's stuffed full of so much immoral stuff, you have to have already decided what is moral in order to pick out the moral bits.

I don't dismiss all ideas in a book because I don't like the book. But I don't pick up books irrelevant to what I want to learn, either. I don't pick up a cookery book because it might just have something about swimming in it.

I have no problem reading and evaluating holy books. I've seen enough of the content over my years to have a good idea what's going on. And I'm being presented with the best bits, mostly.

My verdict? It's shit. If your aim is to learn about morality, read a book about morality. Why would I expect Bronze Age nomad barbarians to know something about morality that I haven't already learned from civilised society? Same goes for wisdom. They didn't know fuck all, that's pretty clear.

I get what point you're trying to make, but I think its misguided. If you think we should read through ever bit of religious literature ever written, in any religion, just in case there is some tiny bit of wisdom that isn't completely obvious... Why? That would take a long time, and a lot of hunting down the material, for extremely little or no likely gain. We only live for so long (atheists anyway) so if I want to spend time learning, I go to the good stuff.