Not because of the questionable moral bits, but just because it's so many different styles that don't connect together very well. It's not always clear that a considerable amount of time has passed and several books overlap. It's loosely organized in "chronological" order, but the timeline is a bit difficult to follow, particularly in the New Testament. Unless they realize that, they have little chance of getting out.īecause the Bible is a loosely connected, poorly written, mess of several books jammed together that were voted on by committee. Manipulated is more like it, by social controls, and by fear. Many of them are just content to be where they're at as well, so lazy does apply. I do think cowardly isn't quite the right word to use in regards to those who are stuck in fundamentalism.
I have seen people suffer so needlessly in the church, due to their beliefs. Those who haven't grown up fundamentalist just cannot understand the extent of the indoctrination. I was also reading Richard Dawkins at the same time and he saved me from having to slog through all of it, luckily. Well, I only got through the first few chapters of Genesis before I metaphorically speaking threw it in the trash. Ironically, I decided to get curious enough to read all of it, not only the parts that I taught for sunday school lessons (yes, I was a sunday school teacher who hadn't read the bible!). Mind you, it didn't take me long at all once I started reading the bible to see it for what it was. It was only gradually as an adult, as I began to pay attention to the hypocrisy of those leaders, the social dynamics and controls of the church and the way they operated, and yes, very last, the bible itself, that questions began to surface. And, I trusted the leaders of the church in regards to the truth. And why did I not question it? Because I was conditioned to believe that questioning itself was a sin. When you grow up utterly believing something to be true, you're pretty unlikely to question it unless something pushes you to do so. The way this operates is by indoctrination from childhood. How can this be? I am a former fundamentalist. They seem more interested in what the ancient holy fathers had to say. I was shocked to discover how little they know. I asked a few of his xtian friends and family if they had read the bible. If your god had written a book, wouldn't you want to read it? However he believes that the stories of Noah and Adam and Eve literally happened. He is xtian orthodox and they don't believe the bible is infallible. Everything he learned as a child was via clergy, Sunday School and church camps.
I recently discovered that my fundy husband has never read the bible.