I'm grateful I wasn't raised with religion. It makes it far easier to see the conversation logically. To me, the Bible was written to keep the masses in line. And that includes making women believe that they are a gift for men and need to follow what their man tells them.

So, in essence, if we're told "from God" that we need to do *these things* or we're going to hell, if we're superstitious enough - we might just believe it!

So for many years people have considered the Bible to be the ultimate source of knowledge, but to me it reads like a bunch of stories, clearly written by men, that tell us how to live so that we won't "get in trouble".

And isn't it funny how men are supposedly the leaders in the home, but rarely is that the actual case?

Religion was made up for men by men. It's no different to me than when we believed that a dude flew a chariot across the sky to bring up the sun. We simply didn't know any better, so we filled in the gaps to make it make sense. Well now we know that we circle the sun, which is why it comes up and goes down every day. It's no different with the stories from the Bible. We filled in the gaps of our understanding, said it was from God and threatened those (especially children) who didn't listen with eternal damnation. Tell me how that isn't child abuse.

No, the Bible is not the moral authority religious folks think it is. Especially when you consider the translation errors, missing parts, etc etc. simply a book about self serving principles meant to keep people in line.