David Plotz read the entire Bible and wrote about it for Slate.
He gains a great appreciation for this greatest collection of literature, but nonetheless remains an agnostic. It's not so strange really, Christopher Hitchens, stubborn and articulate atheist, has a great appreciation for religious literature and architecture. Plotz explains his realization that The Bible is the source of so many things:
You can't get through a chapter of the Bible, even in the most obscure book, without encountering a phrase, a name, a character, or an idea that has come down to us 3,000 years later. The Bible is the first source of everything from the smallest plot twists (the dummy David's wife places in the bed to fool assassins) to the most fundamental ideas about morality (the Levitical prohibition of homosexuality that still shapes our politics, for example) to our grandest notions of law and justice. It was a joyful shock to me when I opened the Book of Amos and read the words that crowned Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.Unfortunately, Plotz "leave(s) the Bible as a hopeless and angry agnostic. I'm brokenhearted about God." He is disenchanted with God because he cannot understand him. A modern day Grand Inquisitor, he puts God on trial and finds him guilty of murder, but more importantly, vindictiveness, capriciousness and inscrutability.
So I must submit Him to rational and moral inquiry. And He fails that examination.How ridiculous. What is his basis of rationality for judging an omnipotent creator and his role in events that happened thousands of years ago? What moral standard will he use? NY Chic, laid back LA? Would Plotz tell a carpenter how to build a house, a mechanic how to fix a car? May I suggest consulting a rabbi and listening to understand?
By arguing with The Creator, Plotz demonstrates that he believes on some level. I don't think it has occured to him that he is arguing with a yardstick over the length of an inch.
http://www.slate.com/id/
