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> I read the Bible out of curiosity and ended up joining a church, so that's pretty consequential. Is there a bigger story here? I'm not the type that would fi

> I read the Bible out of curiosity and ended up joining a church, so that's pretty consequential. Is there a bigger story here? I'm not the type that would find reading the Bible appealing but I can say without a shadow of doubt that if I would, it would not awaken any latent desires for religion.

Intermernet 7y ago
I've read 3 different versions of the bible and it converted me from an agnostic to an atheist. I think GP may have been predisposed to religion (or at least to the social aspects of joining a church) as the bible, as interesting as it is, is only as interesting as any other selected and vetted collection of philosophy and story telling. Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam also have very interesting texts worth reading. This isn't meant to be insulting or dismissive, I have nothing but good will to GP, but statistically just reading the bible doesn't usually lead to joining a church. If it did, you could lose the rest of the evangelism and missionary practices and not really see a dent in the population of Christianity.
- emodendroket 7y ago
  To be fair, few people actually read it in the first place (one big way in which my experience of church was not what I imagined)
  - Intermernet 7y ago
    Which is actually a pity. The bible is at least as full of pithy quotes and genuinely helpful, thoughtful points to consider as the usual self help books. It's definitely worth a read, but so is a lot of Greek philosophy, poetry, other religious texts and a bunch more. Hence the original question that spawned this whole thread! There is original, thought provoking content being written all the time. This HN post has already given me a few recommendations for finding it, both in fiction and non-fiction.
    - emodendroket 7y ago
      There are factors working against it, like the length, the popularity of the KJV with its archaic language, long sections of somewhat boring genealogies or religious laws, and so on. But I'd always chuckle at Bart Ehrman's observation that it was very strange how many students he had who said they believed the Bible was the literal, inerrant word of God yet hadn't ever read it -- after all, "wouldn't you want to know what he had to say?"
      - Intermernet 7y ago
        I wonder what the absolute number of living people who have actually read the bible is compared to the number of people who have read Joyce, Tolkien, Tolstoy, even George R R Martin! There are many texts that are long and arduous, yet they are sometimes worth the effort to read! In many instances the rewards are seemingly unsubstantial but they all provide something that can shape subsequent thoughts in many ways. I suppose it's a matter of priority and interest. Ah well, vive la différence!
        emodendroket 7y ago
        And of course, some of the authors on your list would be enhanced by being conversant with the Bible. That was kind of what led me to read it in the first place.
        Breza 7y ago
        I finished the Bible last year. It took a lot longer than other equally long books have taken me to read. The Bible is really a collection of a bunch of different books. The constant narrative changes can be hard to follow. To be clear, I'm really glad that I read it, but I understand why a lot of people don't.
- ar_lan 7y ago
  > it converted me from an agnostic to an atheist I don't think these are necessarily mutually exclusive, but treating them as if they are, I'm curious why. I would presume your definitions, based on this, that: * agnostic = "I don't know if there is anything" * atheist = "I do know that there is nothing" I have mostly met agnostic atheists, being "I don't know if there is anything, but I believe there's nothing", whereas it seems you are a gnostic atheist. I'm curious because I somewhat took an opposite path in my life - reading Godel's Incompleteness Theorem exposed myself to the idea that I can't ever know what's out there, so it lead me to agnosticism.
  - Intermernet 7y ago
    I translate atheism similarly to amorality. An amoral action or thought is orthogonal to the existence of morality. An atheist is orthogonal to the existence of god / gods. The existence or non-existence of any deity is not only unprovable, it has only academic influence on my actions or thoughts.
  - therealdrag0 7y ago
    Philosophically I call myself agnostic. But colloquially I call myself an atheist. Also while I'm agnostic about there existing _any_ powerful being (god), I'm pretty dang confident that the gods described in religious texts do not exist. So in that sense, I am atheist (towards human religions). And it is in this last sense that I could see someone going from agnostic-to-atheist by reading the Bible or in other ways learning more about religion/psychology/history.
emodendroket 7y ago
Not really. The New Testament grabbed me in a way I didn't anticipate.
- bufferoverflow 7y ago
  "Slaves, obey your masters" wasn't enough to dump in in the trash?
  - dang 7y ago
    No religious flamewar on HN, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tptacek 7y ago
  That's interesting. I was raised Catholic and am still now a sort of very detached Catholic and I read the New Testament earlier this year and it had kind of the opposite effect on me --- not so much in any fundamental way regarding what I believe spiritually, but in my attitude towards the church itself. I spent 12 years having priests and nuns drill the basic story in all its details into my head, and what's in the actual book is very different. Tom Bissell --- who is sort of a lighter, breezier version of the kind of essayist David Foster Wallace was, and who has done a lot of serious writing about and in video games, which is not my thing at all but maybe HN's --- has a sort of travel/essay book about the apostles, where he visits each of their purported burial sites and uses that as a starting point for an essay about some aspect of the region, the particular apostle, or some broader aspect of christian faith, which you might find interesting.
  - emodendroket 7y ago
    That sounds interesting. Thanks for the recommendation. I do think coming into it without any particular expectations, and while watching secular videos about it, was actually helpful in being able to get something out of the text. I was raised Catholic but I guess my upbringing wasn't particularly rigorous in that way so I didn't have that many preconceived notions about what the text was "supposed to" say.

Intermernet 7y ago

I've read 3 different versions of the bible and it converted me from an agnostic to an atheist. I think GP may have been predisposed to religion (or at least to the social aspects of joining a church) as the bible, as interesting as it is, is only as interesting as any other selected and vetted collection of philosophy and story telling. Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam also have very interesting texts worth reading. This isn't meant to be insulting or dismissive, I have nothing but good will to GP, but statistically just reading the bible doesn't usually lead to joining a church. If it did, you could lose the rest of the evangelism and missionary practices and not really see a dent in the population of Christianity.

emodendroket 7y ago
To be fair, few people actually read it in the first place (one big way in which my experience of church was not what I imagined)
- Intermernet 7y ago
  Which is actually a pity. The bible is at least as full of pithy quotes and genuinely helpful, thoughtful points to consider as the usual self help books. It's definitely worth a read, but so is a lot of Greek philosophy, poetry, other religious texts and a bunch more. Hence the original question that spawned this whole thread! There is original, thought provoking content being written all the time. This HN post has already given me a few recommendations for finding it, both in fiction and non-fiction.
  - emodendroket 7y ago
    There are factors working against it, like the length, the popularity of the KJV with its archaic language, long sections of somewhat boring genealogies or religious laws, and so on. But I'd always chuckle at Bart Ehrman's observation that it was very strange how many students he had who said they believed the Bible was the literal, inerrant word of God yet hadn't ever read it -- after all, "wouldn't you want to know what he had to say?"
    - Intermernet 7y ago
      I wonder what the absolute number of living people who have actually read the bible is compared to the number of people who have read Joyce, Tolkien, Tolstoy, even George R R Martin! There are many texts that are long and arduous, yet they are sometimes worth the effort to read! In many instances the rewards are seemingly unsubstantial but they all provide something that can shape subsequent thoughts in many ways. I suppose it's a matter of priority and interest. Ah well, vive la différence!
      - emodendroket 7y ago
        And of course, some of the authors on your list would be enhanced by being conversant with the Bible. That was kind of what led me to read it in the first place.
      - Breza 7y ago
        I finished the Bible last year. It took a lot longer than other equally long books have taken me to read. The Bible is really a collection of a bunch of different books. The constant narrative changes can be hard to follow. To be clear, I'm really glad that I read it, but I understand why a lot of people don't.
ar_lan 7y ago
> it converted me from an agnostic to an atheist I don't think these are necessarily mutually exclusive, but treating them as if they are, I'm curious why. I would presume your definitions, based on this, that: * agnostic = "I don't know if there is anything" * atheist = "I do know that there is nothing" I have mostly met agnostic atheists, being "I don't know if there is anything, but I believe there's nothing", whereas it seems you are a gnostic atheist. I'm curious because I somewhat took an opposite path in my life - reading Godel's Incompleteness Theorem exposed myself to the idea that I can't ever know what's out there, so it lead me to agnosticism.
- Intermernet 7y ago
  I translate atheism similarly to amorality. An amoral action or thought is orthogonal to the existence of morality. An atheist is orthogonal to the existence of god / gods. The existence or non-existence of any deity is not only unprovable, it has only academic influence on my actions or thoughts.
- therealdrag0 7y ago
  Philosophically I call myself agnostic. But colloquially I call myself an atheist. Also while I'm agnostic about there existing _any_ powerful being (god), I'm pretty dang confident that the gods described in religious texts do not exist. So in that sense, I am atheist (towards human religions). And it is in this last sense that I could see someone going from agnostic-to-atheist by reading the Bible or in other ways learning more about religion/psychology/history.

emodendroket 7y ago

Not really. The New Testament grabbed me in a way I didn't anticipate.

bufferoverflow 7y ago
"Slaves, obey your masters" wasn't enough to dump in in the trash?
- dang 7y ago
  No religious flamewar on HN, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
tptacek 7y ago
That's interesting. I was raised Catholic and am still now a sort of very detached Catholic and I read the New Testament earlier this year and it had kind of the opposite effect on me --- not so much in any fundamental way regarding what I believe spiritually, but in my attitude towards the church itself. I spent 12 years having priests and nuns drill the basic story in all its details into my head, and what's in the actual book is very different. Tom Bissell --- who is sort of a lighter, breezier version of the kind of essayist David Foster Wallace was, and who has done a lot of serious writing about and in video games, which is not my thing at all but maybe HN's --- has a sort of travel/essay book about the apostles, where he visits each of their purported burial sites and uses that as a starting point for an essay about some aspect of the region, the particular apostle, or some broader aspect of christian faith, which you might find interesting.
- emodendroket 7y ago
  That sounds interesting. Thanks for the recommendation. I do think coming into it without any particular expectations, and while watching secular videos about it, was actually helpful in being able to get something out of the text. I was raised Catholic but I guess my upbringing wasn't particularly rigorous in that way so I didn't have that many preconceived notions about what the text was "supposed to" say.