Personally, because a thorough understanding of the Bible shows that its teaching is quite different to what is often portrayed in media and in the assumptions of people like myself who had not previously read it.
You can take many individual parts of the Bible out of context and make it sound like madness but reading the whole in its entirety has a narrative that many miss.
For those raised on the internet and faster gratification (like me), try The Jesus Storybook Bible which I personally think is a great effort at paraphrasing the original.
Reading the bible and seeking answers to the difficult questions that presented (rather than tossing it out at the first seeming inconsistencies) is what began my journey from atheism to being a follower of Jesus.
Further reading that helped along that journey:
1) Mere Christianity by CS Lewis
2) The Reason For God by Tim Keller
3) Anything by John Lennox
4) Many discussions by Ravi Zacharias
Regardless, this is not me attempting to invalidate all the points already made to the contrary, but an attempt to point out that belief in the bible isnt the most rediculous thing concievable and there are thoughtful, scientific people who identify as Christian, are not republican, trump-supporting or homophobic. Example: Francis Collins, leader of the Human Genome Project
I would recommend Christians read the Bible for exactly that reason.
Christians should be forced to confront the absurdity of their holy book and the psychotic lunacy of the Abrahamic God before deciding not only to base their life and worldview on it, but to raise their children to believe in it and to vote for candidates who enshrine it into law.
At the very least, we might have far fewer Christians who insist upon Biblical literalism.
>Many of those who insist on Biblical literalism have already read this stuff.
I would argue that many likely haven't, or at least not all of it. There are plenty of Christians who construct a coherent narrative of what the Bible "says" in their heads based on cherry-picking and second-hand interpretation, believing it was inspired, word for word, jot and tittle, Old and New Testaments (in whatever form their church currently accepts[0]) by God Himself. They're told that Jesus was prophesied about in Daniel, and that certain monsters in Revelation represent Apache helecopters, and that everything makes perfect sense because the dots are connected for them.
But if one wants to believe that the world was created in seven literal days, one either has to fudge the definition of "days" (which many do) to account for the actual evidence, and come up with some reason for there being two completely different creation accounts in the Bible, or come to terms with the fact that the Bible is a work of fiction written by fallible human beings to understand their world in ways we understand far better now.
When I was in Sunday School aeons ago, I certainly had more questions about the Bible than answers, and it eventually became clear that the people teaching me had no greater or more profound insight into the nature of reality than I had. There are bound to be others who will read the Bible and start to have doubts that what's described there represents absolute truth. When you read it yourself, it's incoherent and irrational.
But you're right, there are some people you just can't reach.
[0] let's just ignore the numerous Biblical canons in existence, or that awkward period when all non-Latin translations were considered heresy, or that other awkward period when there was no singular canon, only numerous oral traditions and Gospels, many of which were decided after the fact to have not been the Word of God after all...
Not the OP but... I read Gospels once. Or twice, actually.
The first time as a clueless teenager and it made me worry that maybe this paranormal stuff is real because so many people seem to believe it. This was probably the closest to "being a Christian" I had ever got. If you so desire, feel free to say it's crap and not what this religion was supposed to be about etc. etc., I don't mind at all. That's how I was raised by my parents - they seem to be a hard case of "belief in belief".
The second time in my twenties - it gave me some idea of how people may have come to believe in this paranormal stuff and helped me get over it.
> I would not want to believe in such a neurotic, angry god.
I'm under impression that people may have created gods in their own image so to speak, which immediately makes me wonder if there will come a time that you will eat these words. Denial much?
That's overly broad. I was hoping for something more specific. Again, not trying to be contrary. I sincerely want to understand why some highly intelligent people can read this book and be convinced of the existence of God, while other highly intelligent people can read it and end up convinced otherwise. I find that outcome interesting.
