The ethnic cleansing begun in the time of Moses is brought to bloody fruition in the Book of Joshua, a text remarkable for the bloodthirsty massacres it records and the xenophobic relish with which it does so. ibid. p247
The Bible may be an arresting and poetic work of fiction, but it is not the sort of book you should give your children to form their morals. ibid. p247
Do those people who hold up the Bible as an inspiration to moral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is written in it? ibid. p248
Jesus’ family values, it has to be admitted, were not such as one might wish to focus on. He was short, to the point of brusqueness, with his own mother, and he encouraged his disciples to abandon their families to follow him. ibid. p250
New Testament theology adds a new injustice, topped off by a new sadomasochism whose viciousness even the Old Testament barely exceeds. It is, when you think about it, remarkable that a religion should adopt an instrument of torture and execution as its sacred symbol, often worn around the neck. ibid. p251
What kind of ethical philosophy is it that condemns every child, even before it is born, to inherit the sin of a remote ancestor? ibid. p251
God was only joking after all. Tempting Abraham and testing his faith. A modern moralist cannot help but wonder how a child could ever recover from such psychological trauma. Richard Dawkins, lecture The God Delusion, Lynchburg Virginia
The Bible myths are given a special privileged treatment. Richard Dawkins, interview Nicky Campbell, Big Questions: Is the Bible Still Relevant Today? BBC 2011
Why bother with the Bible at all? ibid.
Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings. Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
If you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures. Once again, we need look no further than the Jains: Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: ‘Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being.’ Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept. Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a theologically defensible reading of the Bible. ibid.
You are using your own moral intuitions to authenticate the wisdom of the Bible – and then, in the next moment, you assert that we human beings cannot possibly rely upon our own intuitions to rightly guide us in the world. ibid.
It is also worth noting that one can obtain a Phd in any branch of science for no other purpose than to make cynical use of scientific language in an effort to rationalize the glaring inadequacies of the Bible. A handful of Christians appear to have done this; some have even obtained their degrees from reputable universities. No doubt, others will follow in their footsteps. While such people are technically ‘scientists’, they are not behaving like scientists. They simply are not engaged in an honest inquiry into the nature of the universe. And their proclamations about God and the failures of Darwinism do not in the least signify that there is a legitimate scientific controversy about evolution. Sam Harris, The End of Faith
Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yoghurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever. Sam Harris
It is time we admitted, from kings and presidents on down, that there is no evidence that any of our books was authored by the Creator of the universe. The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breath-taking example of emerging technology. To rely on such a document as the basis for our worldview – however heroic the efforts of redactors – is to repudiate two thousand years of civilizing insights that the human mind has only just begun to inscribe upon itself through secular politics and scientific culture. We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself. Sam Harris
Is this really the best book we have on morality? Is it even a good book? Sam Harris, Believing the Unbelievable, Aspen Ideas Festival 2007
Much of the Bible and the Koran is life-destroying gibberish. ibid.
No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means. George Bernard Shaw
Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face. Ronald Reagan
When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land. Desmund Tutu
The Bible is one of the greatest blessings bestowed by God on the children of men. It has God for its author; salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture for its matter. It is all pure. John Locke
In all my perplexities and distresses, the Bible has never failed to give me light and strength. Robert E Lee
Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another) ... There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad. Aleister Crowley
Can you think of a single book that’s caused more confusion than the Bible? Dan Barker, lecture 2001, ‘Losing Faith in Faith’
Most of what Einstein said and did has no direct impact on what anybody reads in the Bible. Special relativity, his work in quantum mechanics, nobody even knows or cares. Where Einstein really affects the Bible is the fact that general relativity is the organizing principle for the Big Bang. Neil deGrasse Tyson
The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women’s emancipation. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Free Thought Magazine, 1896
The Bible teaches that woman brought sin and death into the world, that she precipitated the fall of the race ... marriage for her was to be a condition of bondage, maternity a period of suffering and anguish, and in silence and subjection, she was to play the role of a dependent on man’s bounty for all her material wants. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Such a woman was Deborah in the Book of Judges. She was a Judge, meaning not just one well versed in the law but a leader and one who is wise. Deborah is certainly a woman who commanded some respect. In the Bible she is identified as the fiery woman. She’s credited with turning around the fortunes of Israel by leading an army to take the land of Canaan. Bettany Hughes, The Bible: A History, Channel 4 2010
The Bible is a curious history: part folklore and part record. History is of course written by the victors. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 2/13: The Harvest of the Seasons, BBC 1973
Fundamentalists long for the return of a more moral America, an America that may never have been. All around them they see what they perceive as declining morality and spirituality. They reason that if humans share ancestry with the other animals, we have no reason to behave as anything other than animals. This view neglects the fact that humans are the only known animals with the ability to contemplate the consequences of their own actions. It also fails to recognize that there is a great deal of good in the world, the nightly news notwithstanding. Crime existed long before the theory of evolution, even before the writing of the Bible, and biologists do not like crime any more than the creationists do. Evolutionary theory is not a license to run amok, and neither is a belief in the literal interpretation of the Bible a guarantor of moral behaviour. Tim Berra, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism
Many of the central themes and stories were actually derived form much older religious doctrines, such as pagan and ancient Egyptian religions. Richard D Hall, RichPlanet online: UFOs & Religion
Here in what is now known as Iraq lies what is commonly regarded by historians and archaeologists as the cradle of civilisation. Between 3,500 and 1,900 B.C. the fertile area between the Tigras and Euphrates rivers was the home of the Sumerian people. The Sumerians also invented the first known writing system by using uniform script on clay tablets. In the nineteenth century archaeologists exploring the ancient ruins of Nineveh discovered 22,000 of these clay tablets. When they were later translated the texts described many stories similar to those found in the Judean-Christian Bible. Ancient Aliens s1e3: The Mission, History 2009
Closer comparisons between the Hebrew Bible and the Sumerian texts reveal many similarities, not only in their stories but also in their language. Adam is Hebrew for man. Adamu is what the Sumerians refer to as the First Man, the Sumerian slaves. ibid.