All of us, believers and nonbelievers alike, whatever our reasoning, have to agree that the bible can be downright brutal. Apologize, theologize, demythologize, liberalize and rationalize all you want—those barbaric scriptures are still being sold in bookstores. Many courts use the bible as the standard of truth telling and U.S. presidents place their hand upon it during inauguration—a practice, incidentally, not mandated by the Constitution. But any version of a “holy book” that contains barbaric decrees cannot be entirely palatable to the modern world.
