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If you point out some of the more blood curdling texts in the Bible or the Koran, your more sophisticated god botherers will often come up with an argument something like this.

Of course you can go through the Books and pick out some repulsive quotes. This is because they were written a long time ago. We don't suggest that the whole of our holy books are literally true any more, we simply see them as metaphors for deeper truths. You should focus less on the text, and more on the experience.

There are some points about this approach which immediately leap to mind.

Firstly, you may not take these books literally, but a lot of people do, and as a result they can say and do some extremely unpleasant things. We are alarmed by these people, who are arguably the majority of theists in the world, and we insist on our right to robust debate with them, whether or not you think we are being sufficiently respectful.

Also, as metaphors, as guides for behaviour, as history, even as literature, both books are rubbish. You'd have to give the King James Bible some credit for phrase-making, but most of that is down to the translators. The Koran is quite the most tediously repetitive book I have ever read, although again there is the occasional rhetorical felicity.

If you look at the Genesis account of creation, for instance, it clearly isn't a hstorical account, but neither is it an effective metaphor. For one thing, everything happens in the wrong order. God makes plants before he puts any life in the sea, and even before he makes the stars. For another thing, you get no sense of the immensity of the universe, of the complexity of biological life, or of the vast aeons of time it took to get from. Compared with Dawkins or Tyson, there's really not much poetry.

If you want a moral code, Kant or Russell are better. If you want history, Robin Lane Smith is better. If you want literature, Shakespeare is better. If you want metaphors, bloody Star Wars is better.

When religious moderates cherry pick from the Books, they apply modern criteria. They like the stuff about being kind to each other, so they take that on board and ignore the stuff about subjugating women and stoning sodomites. If you're going to cherry pick, what criteria are you applying? Everyday secular ethical reasoning, just like the rest of us.

Having said all that, obviously if people must have conversations with their imaginary friend we'd rather they were nice ones. Cherry pickers may seem odd to us, and we may dislike the mental tricks they use to get to where they are, but if every religious person in the world became a religious moderate the world would clearly be all the better for it.

Learn more about this author, Jon Eccles.
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