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ChristianKl comments on Rational Evangelism - Less Wrong
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The difference between HPMOR and the bible is that the bible really isn't that fun to read.
Many Christians have never read the full bible because the book is so boring.
Well hang on, I assume you (like me) have only ever read a translation of the Bible. You might have a wholly different view of its "fun-ness" were you a native speaker of ancient Hebrew, etc.
But more to the point (and note that I'm not religious), I find the Bible, meaning the King James Authorised Translation, an awesome book to read. The language is sublime and compelling, and the origin of so many of the phrases in our language that have passed into everyday use. But then, I love Shakespeare for many of the same reasons, and I've heard it remarked several times around here how Shakespeare isn't fun to read, so I guess there's no accounting for taste.
You find the Bible boring. I tried HPMOR, and found it insufferable and incredibly boring. These are facts about ourselves, not about the books.
No, when I say the Bible is boring then I'm referring to the fact that there are a lot of self professed Christian who can read but who still haven't read it.
I'm not referring to the fact that my personal experience of reading the bible was boring. I never had any interest in reading the bible cover to cover.
Whether or not the original version of the bible is interesting when you are a native speaker of ancient Hebrew is irrelevant for considerations of which movements win in the battle over followers in the modern Western sphere of ideas.
Yes, but you have to set that against all the non-religious/non-Christian people who find the Bible beautiful and fascinating. The King James Bible is generally regarded as one of the greatest literary works ever produced in the English language. There is no book that everyone likes.
I'm not sure we can trust general critical consensus in this case, if there is such a thing as objective literary quality that we can attribute to a work. There's a massive halo effect with its finger on the scale here, no pun intended. Not even just for Christians; the Bible and particularly the King James Version is so basal to English-speaking culture that the two are hard to disentangle. Note also that literary quality and significance are often confounded in e.g. reading lists, and the KJV's unquestionably a hugely significant part of the English canon.
That said, there are parts of the King James Bible that I find fascinating and beautiful and generally of high literary quality. I'm just not sure we can say the same for the work as a whole, which I find frequently turgid or repetitive or painfully clunky -- particularly in the Mosaic books past Exodus, and in the Pauline epistles of the New Testament.
It's funny, but I bet a greater percentage of atheists have read the bible cover to cover. I have.
It might be what made them atheists. Reading the old testament and actually taking it seriously should raise a few flags with any clear thinking person.
Atheists in general can name more of the 10 commandments than the average Christians.
I was minding my own business, reading 1Samuel, then suddenly God ordered the extermination of an entire ethnicity that hadn't even appeared for several books (and generations, in-universe), then turned on Saul when he went soft and saved the livestock and took the king alive. Even as far back as Pseudo Philo, there were (not even half-hearted) attempts to explain what the hell happened, there.
If only that were an isolated incident. One interesting theist writer, who is notable for dissolving Free Will and refusing to accept arguments that let God off the hook for evil and not rejecting scientific evidence because he wasn't a complete idiot, when asked about old testament genocides, bluntly admitted that explaining those commands of God is one of the hardest parts of taking the Bible seriously.
(Pseudo Philo is basically first-century Old Testament fanfiction, which covers from Genesis through the end of 1Samuel. It's much more fun, tries to make females stronger characters, and is much lighter on all the genocide and rules-to-become-obsolete. In particular, Pseudo Philo's version of Kenaz, a throw-away side-character in Judges, gets an epic upgrade, including the introduction of the seven artifacts of doom and what amounts to a Bankai. As a bonus, the important characters almost always take their access to a picky-but-omniscient being at least halfway seriously (they never ask for instructions on how to solve the world's problems, but they at least ask questions and expect answers, and request replication of a variety of miracles before agreeing to anything.). Were I to write a RATIONAL! Old Testament while still trying to claim God is good, I'd probably use Pseudo Philo as the main source material.)
How is it possible to read the Old Testament seriously?
I still get the giggles every time I think about "Stoned to death with stones! Their blood is upon them!" I picture a recurring Monty Python skit like the Spanish Inquisition, but in this one, they run in singing the tag line, stone someone to death, and run out.
Easily. It is just one of the most influential writings in the history of the Western civilization, probably second only to the New Testament.
And that's why I read it. But I could't repress the giggles. Can you?
Why, yes, I can, actually my standard reaction tends to yawns rather than giggles :-P
That's my point. The attempt to read the Old Testament seriously might be a few unbelievers. If you are discussing Christianity with a Christian and they have never seriously read the Old Testament that's the perfect thing to tease them about.
I mean if you have read the bible cover to cover and just couldn't take it seriously and the Christian you are talking to never actually read his holy book from cover to cover, they are in a hard position that's very difficult to defend.