One of the issues I have with any organized religion is the way the rules governing the religion are passed on. Typically, this is through some sort of book, The Bible, The Quran, Battlefield Earth for example. The problems with these books, as I see it, are two fold. Firstly, they are written by third parties, not directly by the deity. Secondly, and inexplicably, they are directly tied to the time and place they were originally written. In some cases this means talking about animals and tasks that were around at the time, in others it’s raging sexism or homophobia. Either way this results in proponents of the religion interpreting certain aspects in their own way. A way which tends to suit their already established beliefs. And they can do this because of the inherent ambiguity of language. This essentially gives practitioners an “out”, and allows them to selectively believe parts of their holy book. Compounding this is the fact that many of these books have been translated multiple times between numerous languages.

So when reading this short list of quotes taken from The Bible, remember that many Christians choose not to follow these statements, because that would be ridiculous. They did choose to believe that a man can walk on water, and an invisible entity created everything in seven days.

For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the LORD. Whoever does any work on it must be put to death.

Exodus 35:2

If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property.

Exodus 21:20-21

For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother; his blood is upon him.

Leviticus 20:9

When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. And when the Lord your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourselves. And you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you. Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded.

Deuteronomy 20:10-17

I’m an “all or nothing” sort of guy so I find it hard to understand the stance that Christians take on the numerous contradictions and inaccuracies in the bible. If you were to ever read The Bible, it becomes blatantly obvious that it was written by people of the time who had no divine guidance. The simple scientific mistakes, which very much reflect the thoughts of the people at the time, really back this up.

Source: Scary Bible Quotes