The fact is, there are a LOT of Christians–and non-Christians too, I’m betting–whining NOT about the abuse, but about people bitching about Christians in particular and religion in general. 

If you want to complain about the Christian bashing, then do it SOMEWHERE ELSE.  This is NOT the time or place to change the subject.

The chief problem of Scripture–and I’m speaking as a Christian-turned Pagan here–is that each individual book within the Bible was NEVER INTENDED by its writer to be part of a definitive volume of other books that came together to create a singular, cohesive whole. 

The fact that there are contradictions between books, especially between the so-called Synoptic Gospels, isn’t because of misinterpretations.  It’s because when these texts were being written, one guy decided he didn’t like Gospel A, so he wrote Gospel B to replace it.  Other people came across Gospel B and maybe didn’t like that it contradicted Gospel A, so they re-wrote Gospel B, keeping it mostly intact but changing a few key phrases.  Along the way, this gospel became known by later Christians as Gospel Ba.  Another Christian, seeing these three gospels, might have thought that they were legitimate Scripture, but couldn’t understand or explain the discrepancies, so they took all three books, rewrote them into a single book, writing out all the contradictions and changing details so that it all fit together.  And meant this to replace all the others, calling it Gospel ABCD.  Then a later Christian came along, and seeing all these gospels, rather than treating them as the individual, complete-in-themselves books they were always intended as, put them all together, called the volume of books a SINGLE book, and said that there were no real contradictions.

This is why there are so many problems.  Christians–and sadly many non-Christians alike–insist on trying to make the Bible be a single book, when that simply is not the reality.  The reason why there are so many contradictions is because NONE of the writers ever intended their books to be read together as a single Scripture. 

What’s funny about the whole thing is that even a lot of non-Christians repeat the myth of the Bible as a singular whole when they try to separate the Biblical scriptures from human believers.  You see this whenever you see someone saying “gee, and here I thought the message Jesus taught of the Bible was love and tolerance, not cherry-picking Scriptures to justify hate.”  The reality is that even the Scripture writers themselves engaged in chery-picking.  This is, again, why we have one Scripture that has Jesus talking about loving thy neighbor while another has him talking about hating your nearest kin.

It isn’t bizarre, it isn’t a mystery, and it certainly isn’t a case of modern readers just misinterpreting a text.  It’s because people blindly insist on trying to make the Scriptures a unified whole when they just weren’t written to be anything like that.

Yeah, keep pretending that your imaginary friend will kick their asses. Because then we don’t have to bother fighting for justice in THIS world.

Also unfortunate that so many people who claim to be Christians continue to reject the best qualities of Christianity.

I rather thought that the christian belief was that god gave us free will so that we could choose to do good or evil?

God gave you free will so that you can choose to do what you’re told. I learned that from C. S. Lewis.

Besides which, “the bible tells them to do it” doesn’t explain the existence of dogmatic, controlling vegetarians (well, excepting John Hanvey Kellog, etc), or dentists, or atheists.

I rather think that your own blind adherence to your  precepts is stopping you from discussing this topic rationally. 

But none of this has anything to do with child abduction; this will be my last comment.

If you taught religion much like you taught Greek mythology, then you are right.

And that’s exactly how my children will learn it.  My wife was given an entirely religion-free childhood, which (to my way of thinking, at any rate) gives her insufficient context for a proper appreciation of culture and ecclesiastical art.  She knows what Michelangelo’s David is, but I suspect she might not know why he’s standing like that, whom he’s supposed to be looking at, and why he looks simultaneously relaxed and intent.  She and her mother both think that a Noah’s Ark playset is a perfectly harmless toy for our kids, and at this point it is, but at some point I’m gonna have to explain to the kids the context of the story, and why a nominally benevolent Deity felt He had to destroy the world and nearly everyone and every living thing upon it.  And explain that most of the people around us believe that this actually, literally happened.

Part of me really looks forward to the challenge of that conversation.  Most of me wishes I could just treat it like Greek mythology, or a Grimm fairy tale.  Or an old EC comic book.

The Waldorf folks certainly have their hearts in the right place, but our kids are going elsewhere.

to believe without thinking and follow without question.  its called faith.

I’m not sure that’s wholly accurate.  One is required to believe without concrete evidence, not without thinking.  My scholarship is faulty, no question, but I am unaware of any Biblical scripture, at any rate, that instructs adherents to believe without thinking.  There’s a whole lot that one has to take on faith, but I think even the authors of the religion in question realized that nearly every adherent would have cause to question their faith sooner or later.  And so the failsafe is built into the system: sooner or later you’re probably gonna doubt as stubborn reality keeps butting up against your faith, and so your faith, held in the face of all contrary evidence, is gonna be your price of admission to life everlasting.  You’re going to have to think about your faith and the ways it contradicts the concrete evidence of existence, the fact that you’ve never laid eyes on your Creator or your Savior, the fact that a large percentage of your prayers don’t apparently get answered, the fact that actual, observable miracles seem awfully few and far between these days, etc., and then thoughtfully reject the secular contradictions and embrace your faith, or you’re not gonna be Saved.

That conscious rejection of secularity and materialism is, I think, more what Christianity is looking for rather than just blind, unthinking, “because they say so” faith.

If you teach your children religion – much in the way science or math are taught – then that is indoctrination, as religion is not based in fact, it is based in myth.

If you taught religion much like you taught Greek mythology, then you are right.