No. of Recommendations: 9
Unless "atheism" has a dogma that goes beyond, well, not believing in god, would big tent atheism allow for someone finding in the bible things of value?
It is possible, though far from certain, that the Bible once had 'things of value.' In the most primitive society there may have usefulness in having otherwise ignorant people band together against adversaries, although I would offer adversaries such as 'the weather' rather than 'that other tribe that believes those other things' [See: every religious war since the beginning of history and the countless millions of unnecessary deaths.]
One of the things that is surely not of value is continuing to believe the stories have literal meaning, as, say, 25% of Americans (the approximate percentage of Evangelicals and Fundamentalists) do. They will tell you, indeed, they will insist that every word of the Bible is inerrant, and that these things are literally true:
A donkey can talk
Women came from men (tip: it's the other way around)
A woman turned into a pillar of salt
The sun stood still for a day
Hundreds of thousands of animals lived on a boat for 6 weeks
Water droplets didn't scatter light rays until after Noah
Blowing a horn will make stone walls fall down
Plants grew before there was sunlight
One person knows what God wants, and you must obey
A man lived in a fish
It's OK to rape a woman if you pay her father
God destroyed a building because it was too tall (but leaves geosynchronous satellites alone)
Genocide can be a good thing
Many people have been resurrected
One guy lived over 900 years
A river turned to blood
The very first man and woman had 3 sons but no daughters
If you like I could go on for pages and pages with this nonsense, and I reiterate, 25% of the country believes this to be true. I'll also acknowledge that the percentage used to be higher, much to the detriment of people like Copernicus and Galileo, and thereby the entire human race which was set back centuries in scientific progress. Or perhaps I should mention the prohibitions on dissection, medicines, food choice, even tattooing?
No, the Bible is just loaded with malarkey, and what little value it has is as an amusement for how desperately ignorant primitive peoples were. Unfortunately, many clung to those myths and used them as a source of power - and still do today - slowing down human progress yet again.
But if you actually pay attention to what is written about the bible, what is studied about the bible, the impact of learning the history of the bible on people who start out as literalists, you will probably think the increased number of editions is because researchers had a lot more to say about the bible and its history including the way it is translated, the choice of the books included, the likelihood that some books are forgeries, etc.
Unconvincing apologia. The history of the Bible is not about 'research', it's about power. The King James Bible is because of (do I really need to explain this?) King James. The Council of Nicaea was a way for the establishment church, which was still fighting pagan and other religions, to codify its myths and provide a solid marketing front against others. It is true that everywhere, everything religion is used for control (yes, including Ancient Egypt, Aztec priests and all the others, but we are talking about the Bible here ) and those many revisions are just another way to insert and assert one point of view over another. (See: Leviticus vs Jesus)
The Bible is a joke. It's a sad joke, to be sure, and one that has, on balance, been a negative force on humanity (thank you Joel Osteen, et al) but I suppose the relatively few passages for good ('do unto others') should count for something, so that probably excuses all the wars, prejudice, miscegenation, prejudice, belief in magic, and the rest that it has fostered down through the ages.
