I will fully admit that many people use the positive things in the Bible to become better people. They read the parts pertaining to loving thy neighbor, for example, and take them to heart. Many others, however, use the words of the Bible as an excuse to behave abominably.
These people will justify their bad traits by backing them up with biblical passages. Not only justify them, but inflame them. The stigma attached to homosexuality is predominantly due to religious texts. The prejudiced person will use "God's word" to condemn those whose sexual preferences are not in accordance with their own.
Some people justify their racist desires based on the Bible's support of slavery. God would never induce mankind to enslave creatures equal to human beings, they feel. So it stands to reason that slaves must be in some way inferior to those doing the enslaving.
And of course, the Bible is full of examples of women being treated as second-class or worse, thus propagating yet another myth of male superiority.
Would those people who live by the Bible's good words still live by them without the Bible? I think so. Those people who are genuinely good would have been good no matter what. Does the Bible make them better? Do they do more good deeds because of it? I would have to say that's fairly doubtful.
And what about those who use the Bible to back up their prejudices? Would they have been prejudiced without biblical support? Probably. But evidence would seem to indicate that the Bible expands that tendency.
Prejudice is a learned behavior. We are not born with it. If our friends or family are homophobic or racist, there's a fair chance that we will be, too. Being good, however, is not something absorbed from others. Everyone enjoys being treated well. And it takes no great leap of deduction (nor religious instruction) to realize that others will enjoy being treated well, also. And being nice to others is fulfilling, which is not something taught to us, but something we experience whenever we do a good deed. Treating each other well is also ingrained into us by evolution. If we did not treat each other well, our race would not survive.
At best, religious admonitions to be "good" serve only as reminders, little voices at the back of our heads that urge us to think of others. But the negative teachings of faith are dangerous. They plant new ideas, insidious ideas, where those thoughts may never have been before.
One might argue that if inherent behavior is to be assumed, then religious teachings will not cause a person to treat women poorly, for example, unless that were the person's natural way of thinking. But this is not so. Religion becomes an obsession for many people. People will do whatever they think God is telling them to do when stricken with religious fervor. Sadly, that fervor rarely induces people to go on charitable donation sprees, and all too often sends them out to blow up abortion clinics.
How can we condone teachings that induce or reinforce prejudiced, bigoted, narrow-minded thinking... thinking that is overtly harmful to others? How can the Bible be called "the good book," when so much of it is quite obviously anything but good?
It's time to put this book aside, to allow ourselves to be the good people we want to be, and not provide ourselves with religious justification, religious excuses, to be scum.
