About

I’ve decided to read the whole bible, beginning to end. My motivation is not really to better understand what Christians believe (though of course if that happens that's great)…I think I have a fairly good idea what many Christians believe, and as far as I can tell it has little to do with what the bible actually says, in its entirety. And it’s not really because I just want to read it and go, “bwah ha ha, this is so ridiculous,” though I suspect I’ll do a fair bit of that along the way.

I’m just curious to see what the entire bible actually says. I want to read the whole book, and see if it makes any sense at all. I want to see what the nature of the God described in the bible is, and if the morals laid out in the bible are really all they’re cracked up to be. I want to read it and see what it says for myself, rather than listening to someone else's interpretation.

I've been told that reading the bible is some sort of life-altering experience...that if I would just read it, I would be overwhelmed by its inherent truthiness and be convinced of God's existence once and for all. I figure there's only one way to find out: try it for myself and see.

I think it is important to know what the bible says, because while I am pretty sure the vast majority of Christians do not actually believe in the entire bible (nor should they, from what I know about parts of it), 30% of Americans say that the bible is the literal word of God and should be read literally, word for word. I suspect these are many of the same people who fight so hard for things like traditional marriage, school prayer, national day of prayer, creationism as science in public school, more difficult access to birth control, abstinence only sex ed in public schools, and so many other things that are an obnoxious affront to the separation of church and state.

There is also a certain element of me wanting to just be able to say that I have read the whole thing. Whenever I try to talk to someone about religion, it generally degenerates to…

Other Person: You’re just taking everything out of context!! Have you even read the bible?
Me: Well, not the whole thing…
Other Person: Checkmate.

So I want to read the entire bible, partly so I can say, “Yes, I have! Nyah nyah nyah.” Or maybe there is some grand context, and I can learn what it is and stop taking things out of it. We’ll see.

Obviously, I decided to blog about my reading the bible. This has been done several times before (see for example, here and here), and I don’t expect that I will say anything unique or special. I’m blogging it mostly for my own benefit; I think I will need a way to keep track of what I've read and what I thought of it. I could just write it down for myself and leave it at that, but I decided to clutter up the internet with another blog...just because I can, lol.

So that’s pretty much what this is going to be…I’ll read some chunk of the bible (New International Version), then write down a summary and what I thought of it. I’ll probably be critical and sarcastic, but I’m going to try to be fair. I realize am super biased going into this; I already think that the bible is bullshit. But I would like to think that I am not so pig-headed that even if it did actually make sense, I would just keep desperately clinging to my assertion that the bible is bullshit.

I have no idea how long this will take, but hopefully I’ll stick with it until I get to the end!