so my daughter's taken an interest in reading the Bible, which i've been ok about because she's sooo nonreligious, i'm just glad she's taken an interest in learning about religion in general. i guess i intentionally raised my children without too much religious influence so that they could see it from an unbiased perspective when deciding whether to become religious or not. If you grow up in the church, someone is always there to explain to you why in the old days it was ok to marry among the family, or why God put the tree in the middle of the garden that he didn't want anyone to touch. So, we read a creation story together and while she had all these doubts and questions and didn't seem to agree, she still wanted more. She said she wanted to read the Bible every day. So, she started reading one day and got to about Genesis Chapter 9ish where Noah is drunk and he curses Ham. She came to me and asked what does this mean Mommy. I asked her what was going on and she said something about him getting drunk and being naked, I don't know. So, I told her close it up and we'd get back to it later. So, I'm just now reading. Right after this part is the curse to Ham who is clearly father to our black nation--his descendants being Egypt and Cush and Sheba. I really did want her to have a positive outcome from reading the Bible, but I'm afraid she's going to be very disgruntled. She's already making comments like "Why would God destroy the whole world?" So, as I've been explaining the oldness of the Bible, much of these early texts coming from actual stone tablets (kids don't even realize there was a day when there was no printed book, no copying, etc) where the originals are not even around any more. Even some of the oldest originals available have huge cracks and erosion. Not to mention, these are ancient languages that we might not understand the storytelling style of, use of metaphors or color in language. So many variables with the Bible. I've told them to be careful and look at what doesn't seem to make sense, or contradict something somewhere else, or if the passage doesn't seem to follow the rest of the story. I've noticed this quite often in the Bible, small discrepancies, and I attribute it to those factors. Which is why I'm so wary of the Bible. And, you can't trust one part and not another. It's not sensible for me to think like that. Of course there is the Quran which corroborates many things in the Bible, and these are the things that I can safely assume to be correct.
Here's the things I, and my child, notice to be strange about the Bible:

God is always cursing somebody
God is always talking about "us" and "we"
Why did God not want people to know the difference between good and evil?
Why would God not want people to be one, and able to accomplish anything working together and then mix up their language so they couldn't do nothing? Genesis 11:5-8 makes it seem like once man started getting intelligent God didn't like that, like his creation was out of control so he had to fuck him up a bit to slow him down. I mean, that's kinda wack.

I'll come back to this...