Sorry, J. I just can't see the presence of divine inspiration in this library (the Bible is not a book, it is the collected writings of a civilization) after having undergone extensive additions and deletions and almost continuous editing for millenia. It exhibits a variety of different literary forms, genres, and styles, political, religious and philosophical writings, history, poetry, fairy tales, in other words, it is an omnibus of middle eastern and eastern Mediterranean thought over millennia. It is full of different interpretations, contradictions and inconsistencies and reveals the evidence of the thousands of minds which contributed to it. There is no unifying theme or coherent thought underlying all of it, other than the general concept of monotheism as it developed over centuries.

Yeah, I know, religious scholars would disagree with me, they find all sorts of hidden clues and profound references in it I can't see, but you will note they cannot even agree about them amongst themselves! The Bible has been interpreted in a thousand different ways; they cannot all be right, but they can certainly all be wrong.

You can't use the Bible to demonstrate the legitimacy of religion by claiming that the Bible is divinely inspired, so therefore it must be infallible. That is circular reasoning and I recognized it as soon as my teachers started reading and interpreting Bible stories to me in elementary school. In Florida, in the 50s, religious instruction was not only allowed in the public schools, it was required.

What I get out of reading Scripture is a look back all the way to our prehistory, and a fascinating but incomplete record of the development of our civilization. It's a magnificent journey filled with glimpses into our past, as is Homer or any of the world's great religious documents. But that is all it is.

And speaking of Homer, I prefer him to the Bible. I like the people better. I've used this anecdote before, but I think it's worth repeating. The ancient Hebrew tradition was that knowledge was inherently evil, that the original sin was eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. It was a religious system based on obedience and subservience to the divine, I always found that to be sycophantic and undignified. To the Greeks, the Gods were a lusty and quarrelsome lot, sharing all the failings and shortcomings of mortals. Man challenged them at his peril, but he often did so anyway. Odysseus had his men tie him to the mast of his ship so he could hear the Siren's song with his own ears, damn the consequences. Knowledge was not sin, it was the only thing worth having. There is nothing like that in the Hebrew tradition. And he sailed straight to the gates of Hell to learn how to find his way home, where his wife and child were. That's what really mattered to him, not immortality or the delights of Circe's bed for all eternity.