Read Your God Damn Bible is a Godless Heathens project. We are atheists who wish to see more people become atheist.

This project came about largely through the Community members of Godless Heathens discussing an episode of Penn and Teller’s excellent Bullshit TV series - the “Bible - Fact or Fiction” one.

In it, Pen Jillette says “Take some time and put the Bible on your summer reading list. Try and stick with it cover to cover. Not because it teaches history; it doesn’t. Read it because you’ll see for yourself what the Bible is all about. It sure isn’t great literature. If it was published as fiction, no reviewer would give it a passing grade. There are a few vivid scenes and quotable phrases, but…there’s no plot. No structure. There’s a tremendous amount of filler and the characters are painfully one-dimensional. Whatever you do, don’t read the Bible for a moral code. It advocates prejudice, cruelty, superstition and murder. Read it because…we need more atheists—and nothing will get you there faster than reading the damn Bible.”

We got to talking about this - and it’s true. In fact, four of our community members are former Christians who came to an atheist position because of reading the bible. It’s pretty hard to reconcile what is contained in the book with the positions that many christians adopt.

Look at this page on the “New Christian” website. They say “Don’t try to read the Bible from the beginning, otherwise you could easily become disillusioned and give up! Make sure you start reading from the New Testament first”. They also suggest buying a special study guide with readings carefully chosen to keep you within the nice fluffy bits - but is that honest? is the Bible your holy book or isn’t it?

Isaac Asimov said “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived”.

What we want is for more Christians to read the bible properly - and that means all of it.