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My history of reading the Bible is rather unique. My father was a religious maniac, to put it mildly. He literally destroyed our family with his radical brand of Christianity. He used to keep my brother and me up past midnight reading from the King James Bible when we were only 2 and 3 years old. From an early age, I developed an awe and reverence for the Bible, especially after he left, ditching his religion for booze and crack-whores. I wanted to keep up the faith he had disowned.

So I read the Bible for myself by the time I was nine. Sadly, it did nothing but confuse me further. I found contradictions in it, even then. This terrified me. I thought: Is God not real? Am I deceived by Satan and on my way to hell? I would cry myself to sleep at night over such thoughts.

When I was a teenager I totally rejected the Bible. I read books on Deism, Atheism, even Satanism, anything that was totally against what I'd been brought up with. For years I would argue vehemently with anyone who even hinted at a belief in the Bible.

It's only been recently that I've gone back to it. I made a lot of friends over the years who were Christians but who weren't as nutty as my old man was. They finally got through to me, to some extent. As I read through the Bible again, I realize that yes, there are contradictions, and yes, there are stories that promote killing in the name of God ("holy war"). And yet, there is a lot of good in that book - or more properly, those 66 books.

Even on the most base level, it's the foundation of all our literature. Any kind of literature you want is in there: drama, comedy, horror, fantasy, poetry, wise essays, letters, even erotica/pornography if you have a taste for that. A good reading of the Bible provides you with a solid foundation in all literature and gives you a deep insight into the human condition. It's not the best-selling book of all time for nothing.

It also gives you a pretty good insight into how mankind's ideas of God have changed over time. You start out with a very crude image of God in the Old Testament, a God who requires animal sacrifices and often slays those who displease him in cold blood. This God, Jehovah, much like the Muslim God Allah, doesn't bother trying to make converts: Those who don't bend to His will, He kills or has killed. His chosen leaders tend to live in palaces of luxury, with all the women they could possibly handle, and they display the same mercilessness of the God they believe in. They pretty much kill anybody

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