zlacker

I'd say you are looking for problems rather than value, a form of critical reading appropriate to contracts, public affairs, etc. The Bible and similar texts are generally not contracts you need to accept or reject as a whole. They are not literal. If you look at them as literal and 'contracts', there are far more flaws than the ones you point out (including the sexist story I posted originally). They take a different form of critical reading:

They are sources of inspiration. Don't look for the flaws, look for the benefits. Imagine you go to an art museum or you play a computer game. Do you look for the worst paintings? Scour the museum for mistakes in the paintings? Do you read the game's code for bugs and poor coding practices? When you go to a bookstore, do you look for the worst book? What a waste of time that would be - you want the best, the most enjoyable and inspiring, not the worst.

> That Christians worship an unreasonable, malicious or mad, god with unreasonable standards. "Even when you were a gullible idiot and faced an influence I'd not accounted for despite being all knowing, I'm still going to punish you and all your offspring forever for what you did wrong, especially the woman and that's why childbirth hurts."

FWIW, that passage is part of all Abrahamic religions.

>>wolver+(OP)
> They are not literal

For most, indeed. And that's good! But I have met people who claim to think they must be absolute truth, then put a huge asterisk around all the bits I point out and say those don't count for whatever reason.

There was a meme back in the UK, that amongst Anglicans, only extremists actually believe in God. No idea how true that is.

> Do you look for the worst paintings?

Only when they're put on a pedestal and held to be amazing. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kiss_(Klimt)

Widely regarded as beautiful and romantic. To me, it looks like the guy has a broken neck, and the woman has been decapitated at the base of her neck, her head rotated 90° and re-attached to her torso by the ear.

Likewise, movies. The plot holes in Independence Day annoyed me so much that when the sequel came out, I started (and still have not finished) writing a book that takes the opposite road with all the mistakes the film made.

So, while I've played the Eye Of Argon game, I never even tried to finish reading it once my friends and I stopped playing, and I've never bothered watching whatever the film is that has the line "you're tearing me apart Lisa".

> FWIW, that passage is part of all Abrahamic religions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shashthi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hera

I don't limit myself to just Abrahamic myth and legend :)