Is the Bible a Good Book?

1. Well, bro, you know nobody would criticise it if it was a book about what the men of old did. They criticize it because it is rather claimed to be a moral book, in fact claimed to be the most morally upright book ever. Based on this claim it should be heavily criticized and revealed for all to see. You understand perfectly, I'm sure.

2. It's actually hard to say what is good or bad but I'm sure that everyone knows selling your daughter to slavery is bad, that is easy.

3. Christians and jews are claiming the same god, and there are many things they both agree this god did.

I think most Christians are aware that there is bad stuff in the Bible. I can't speak for every Christian of course.

In my experience, nope. But if your experience is different, cool.

The Old Testament isn't generally considered irrelevant by Christians but it is the old covenant and it was superseded by the new covenant (New Testament) so where the new doesn't support the old, it no longer applies.

I don't even have to argue about whether it applies or not, that's not the point, the point is that there was a time (according to the Bible) when their god said these cruel evil things. The fact that he ever said it, even though he no longer goes by it, is a huge shame already, do you not agree?

If he was a man then one can pardon him and say people make mistakes, people change. But a god? A god who is said to be all-knowing, future-seeing, and all-wise, one has to be an avowed fool or at least brainwashed to let that slide.

Also, context is everything. For example, the bit about selling your daughter into slavery doesn't mean quite what you seem to think it means (see https://jewishbelief.com/selling-a-daughter-into-slavery/ and https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/does-the-bible-support-slavery for example). This isn't God advocating slavery. Also, this wasn't some brand new law passed down from God but more like improvements on existing man made laws and customs that had already been established long before Exodus was authored. Not everything in Exodus is or should be interpreted as new law passed down from God.

Thanks, bro, but this doesn't matter for the simple fact thAt instead of condemning it he told them how to do it. Since slavery is evil, any effort from him to speak about slavery is supposed to be pure condemnation. Look what the Bible said:

7 “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. 8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself,[b] he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. 9 If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter.

It's just like you talking about the armed robbery of innocent people with your kids but instead of condemning it you tell them "when you rob an innocent person, don't give them more than 6 punches to the skull and if you're to kill them don't put more than three bullets in them. Now be a good chap and run along".

Or you speaking about rape with your son and instead of pure condemnation you go like:

"If you rape a girl, don't ejaculate inside her, also don't beat her too much while getting her to succumb, gunpoint is the best. Or at least knife-point"

Do you understand @darth-cryptic? It's a simple matter of don't show people how to do evil in a better way, but rather condemning evil completely. I hope you don't need me to tell you how evil slavery is, humans frequently get drunk with power so you can only imagine how they treated slaves, people they had complete power over, back in the day. A moral god would have never let such a practice continue. But of course, a god didn't write this book as I said, people wrote what they wanted and lied that it was via the direction of a god. It's really easy to see through their BS.

These passages generally aren't readings you would typically hear in church not because they are trying to hide something (after all, it's right there in the Bible for anyone to read) but because they have little relevance today as they were specifically applicable to pre-existing laws and customs of the time.

This is a good point, but it doesn't apply to every passage I mentioned here. For example, is bodily defects no longer relevant? Why don't they read the part about people with defects being a disgrace to God to people with defects to show them what their god thinks or once thought about them? But they don't because they know it is pure evil!

The part about Jesus promising some people that rapture would happen in their time, why don't they read it to Christians to show them how unreliable Jesus's words can be?

I'm not going to try to explain every bad thing mentioned in the Bible because it has already been done ad nauseam and thanks to the Internet it is all pretty easy to find. Atheists tend to ignore it though. Both Christians and Atheists love to take Bible passages out of context to make a point. I fully understand not believing in God. I don't understand the need to attack the Bible based on the most superficial interpretations though. If you really want to make this a "deep dive" then address the historical context, what "slavery" means here, the existing laws and customs at the time, etc. The links above make for better deep dives but obviously from a different point of view.

You have no idea how much I would love to see you pick at least one passage or point that I have made here and show me how it doesn't make sense, how it was taken out of context or anything like that. I'd really love that.

I didn't see the part in your comment from "Some more context for other things mentioned:" to the bottom. Now that I see it I think it would take a lot of time to explain each of them, let me go with the easiest one first for now. Leviticus 21. This is what you said:

Leviticus 21:16-24 (this had to do again with the context of the time..."blemished" persons would have been seen by the people of the time as imperfect or unclean and not a good representative for God as a priest. Interestingly, these versus are specified to apply to the descendants of Aaron.)

That doesn't excuse the way blemished people were spoken of, the reason you gave for why they were not good representatives weren't mentioned in the Bible, this is you doing damage control, the Bible itself gAve it's reasons clearly, here they are:

23 yet because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary. I am the Lord, who makes them holy.

As you can see, the simple reason is that he would desecrate the altar due to his defect. And the Bible mentioned examples of these defects:

16 The Lord said to Moses, 17 “Say to Aaron: ‘For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. 18 No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; 19 no man with a crippled foot or hand, 20 or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. 21 No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the food offerings to the Lord. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God.

Common deformities in humans. Even if people considered them poor representatives is their creator not expected to use this chance to tell people that they should be accepted as humans too? But here he is saying they shouldn't step on his altar with their defects that it amounts to desecration.

It's simple, men hAve always discriminated against people with defects so they wrote it in their book and lied that it was a god who told them to write it.