Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by World Walker on July 20, 2009 at 8:47am

My parents encouraged reading the bible. They were convinced that the act of reading the bible activated the spell by which God would inform a person through the interpretation of the various way different lessons from the books of the Bible. At one point my parents were convinced I was falling out of faith for lack of effort and offered $5 per book of the Bible that I read. I started with the New Testament because the books were shorter and I went on to read everything short of Psalms and Proverbs. The best defense against the Bible for someone like me is a simple reading.

I don't think Catholicism or Christianity are alone in the phenomenon of streamlining the "right" answer, spoon feeding it to your children and peers and forgetting to check the analytical means by which the right answer had been found in the first place.

Permalink Reply by Joe Burke on September 5, 2009 at 4:02pm

I started reading the Bible but got so bored I couldn't finish. From what I can tell, Catholics aren't the only ones who don't encourage people to read the Bible. I know protestants and most of them haven't actually read it either.

Permalink Reply by Barb on October 8, 2009 at 7:54am

Yes. I read the bible twice (second time I skipped the begats- LOL)

The first time I read it I remained catholic. I was a kid at the time and just figured I couldn't understand what I read. The second time was during a renewed interest in my religion of birth. I read it cover to cover. I took it in this time, but, crazily, decided it seemed so bad because it was old. I continued with my religion to some degree, but the knowledge of the book was always there, nagging at me.
A year or two later I rejected all religions (after exploring some of them). My memory of the bible was a factor in this.

I was never encouraged to read the bible by my parents or clergy. I think this avoidance (not a doctrine) of the bible is more prevalent in Catholicism, but I understand the protestant religions do not encourage (and even discourage) reading the bible beginning to end, and, only read what is picked out by pastors (bible studies). I do not believe that true believers of these religions have gone through the boring torture of reading their morally disgusting book front to back. If they did, they would reject it sooner or later.

Permalink Reply by Clarence Dember on October 12, 2009 at 7:03pm

I think my parents were over awed at the prospect of their son being educated by the R.C. Church and so they did not attempt to steer me to the bible. I got catechism for instruction along with the various rites and rituals for a young apprentice in the R.C. faith. My mom read and still reads devotional parts of the bible regularly. I'm probably the only person who read it through cover to cover (in my family). I had more curiosity growing up and this was ridiculed by many in the church and in my family. I'm not a devotee in search of an oracle however, so even though I have a bible with concordance that is really a thorough and complete rendering of scholarly doctrine from a Christian perspective, it is only significant to me in an anthropological sense. It's fun to point out the philosophical defects in reasoning that are promoted in the bible, a book with no humor at all, purporting to offer guidance to the entire species of humanity. I don't recommend it as a code of behavior or a historical bench mark. It is blatantly anti science and part of the male pronoun Flat Earth approach to what we are given.

Permalink Reply by Gregory Marshall on October 26, 2009 at 2:23pm

I went to Catholic school from 7th through graduation, the only time I remember us discussing the bible was when we shredded the biblical creation story in the bible. Ironic, that in a religion class we debunked the creation story. I think I read it more after school when I was trying to find out what and why I believed. I guess you can say reading the bible is just one of the many things that lead me to the path of rationality. The absolute greed I saw in religion was the main thing, but understanding that the bible was bullshit was involved as well.

Permalink Reply by Rose Bug on February 9, 2012 at 10:36am

Not really. I went to Catholic school for 13 years. We studied the Gospel, but that's really about it. We spent more time on the catechism of the Catholic church.

Permalink Reply by Gwaithmir on May 5, 2012 at 1:11pm

I had to read selected parts of the bible when I was in Catholic grade school. It caused me to have serious doubts about God's alleged goodness and His love for humanity. Instead, I came to view God as an unethical, insecure, narcissistic bully who I couldn't possibly look up to or love. Later in life, as part of an ongoing comparative religions study, I read six different versions of the bible. Reading the bible with an open mind was very instrumental in my becoming an atheist.