(June 2, 2015 at 2:14 pm)Chad32 Wrote: Yeah. If we're going to start banning things for having a lot of violence and sex in it, the bible is one of the things that needs to go. That's why they say you have to be "in the spirit" or something when you read the book. Taken from a skeptical point of view, especially when you learn about the culture and history surrounding the bible, isn't going to strengthen most people's faith.
I think it is good for children to read the Bible. It helps convert them to being atheists when they read the stories about how evil god is.
Also, if we look at the matter historically, access to the Bible has helped break up the hold the Catholic Church had on people. For a long time, the Bible was available in Latin, but not in the local languages, so regular people who were literate could not read it, even if they could get their hands on it. (And, of course, many regular people were illiterate, but that made no difference for this purpose if the only Bibles were in Latin anyway.)
Henry VIII had an English edition of the Bible made, after he broke away from the Catholic Church, and that helped solidify protestantism in England, because people could read it and see that the Catholic Church had not been following the Bible. It undermined their authority.
Without it, people had no way of knowing if the Catholic Church was following "god's word" or not. The priests, of course, told the people that they were.
The Catholic Church flourished better, the more ignorant they kept the masses.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
