There is scarcely a page of the Bible on which an open mind does not perceive a contradiction, an unlikely story, an obvious error, an historical impossibility of one sort or another.

Thousands of years ago only Christ could walk on the water. Today anybody can do it; you just step on the garbage.

Consider the wave of revulsion that floods the average person when he or she hears of the practice of human sacrifice by the Aztecs and other so-called primitive peoples. How savage and barbaric such practices seem. But when a Christian or Jew comes across human sacrifice in the Bible (see Jephthah's immolation of his daughter in Judges 11:30-40), is he or she repulsed?

There are hundreds of millions who believe the Messiah has come. If he did, then it is unfortunately the case that his heroic sacrifice and death have had no effect whatsoever on the very problem his coming might have been expected to address, for history demonstrates, beyond question, that we Christians have been just as dangerous, singly and en masse, as non-Christians.

To those who wish to punish others -- or at least to see them punished, if the avengers are too cowardly to take matters in to their own hands -- the belief in a fiery, hideous hell appears to be a great source of comfort.

We must never forget that both good and evil flow from the Bible. It is therefore not above criticism.

Civilization itself . . . can easily be swept aside when mob passions are aroused.