To believe that the bible, in it's entire form, is the word of God is to, indeed, believe that God is a dangerously schizophrenic entity with a grudge against mankind. This is why one needs both faith, and critical thought. A critical examination of the bible reveals it for what it is — the Old Testament being a series of myths, mixed with the history of the Israelite people as they struggled to understand the nature of God. They started by assuming that the One God was just like their old gods; containing all the pros and cons of the people themselves; making them act "human" in their mythology. That is how they attributed God as having "Holy Wrath" and wanting his people to fear him. That ...

To believe that the bible, in it's entire form, is the word of God is to, indeed, believe that God is a dangerously schizophrenic entity with a grudge against mankind. This is why one needs both faith, and critical thought. A critical examination of the bible reveals it for what it is — the Old Testament being a series of myths, mixed with the history of the Israelite people as they struggled to understand the nature of God. They started by assuming that the One God was just like their old gods; containing all the pros and cons of the people themselves; making them act "human" in their mythology. That is how they attributed God as having "Holy Wrath" and wanting his people to fear him. That is what their old gods wanted, according to their teachings. The Old Testament documents the evolution of their understanding of God, as they slowly and painfully learned that their preconceptions were wrong (but also clinging to some of their preconceptions, even to the time of Jesus).

The New Testament, specifically the Gospels, contains as close as we can get to the literal words of God, as it's essentially hearsay of what God's son relayed. It contains the message that Jesus imparted, but coloured by the perceptions and beliefs of the writers. The remainder of the bible is simply the perceptions that another writer had on what he heard the teachings of Jesus were.

To believe that all those elements, considered together collectively is the Word of God is absolute lunacy. God gave us a Free Will to allow us to make our own decisions, but He also gave us an intelligent and clever mind to allow us to consider the writings of the bible critically. He expects us to use both.