Enlighten Yourselves

[Delicate]

Well, for one, "the Bible" is not a singular book, but a collection of several works spanning around 1500 years. There's an incredible amount of cultural/temporal diversity between the various works, despite the fact that the authors all believed in Yahweh.

This is the main problem with it...
The people who wrote it, had no knowledge of any god.... they had no foresight, no insight, nothing tangible... they believed.
Like people believe nowadays, so did they believe back then.

Unless, they knew it was a con...

That's an assload of speculation on your part isn't it?

For all we know, they might really have had these supernatural experiences. Maybe it was drugs. Maybe there really was a God. Maybe it was aliens. Maybe it was supernatural demons/spirits pretending to be God.

It's very hard for me to believe that these longsuffering Israelite peasants wandering through the desert had the time and inclination to make up, memorize, and indoctrinate others into their beliefs if they knew it was all false.

That's a lot of wasted effort that could have gone into farming or hunting or what-not.

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You can be an atheist and still admit that the Bible, as a collection, is a literary masterpiece.

All the semi-different cultures doesn't make it a masterpiece. Are the hindu scared texts masterpieces as well? They are a collection of stories.

I don't know about you, but I found the binding of Isaac story incredibly captivating as a child. I still do, in fact.

I might say the same about the Hindus and Gilgamesh as well, if I took the time to look into them. Why not?

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Delicate: I wonder, have you actually read the bible as a story from start to finish?

The Bible isn't a story from start to finish...