the skeptic’s annotated bible

Today I discovered the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible, a website that strives to address the following catch-22:

…faith tells [believers] they should read the Bible, but by reading the Bible they endanger their faith.

The SAB’s annotations flag things like

* Injustice
* Absurdity
* Cruelty and Violence
* Intolerance
* Contradictions
* Family Values
* Good Stuff
* Science and History
* Interpretation

One of the Bible stories that always bothered me is the story of God testing Abraham’s faith by asking him to sacrifice his only son Isaac. The SAB’s annotated version of this story points out various contradictions between the story and other passages in the bible and notes the violence, injustice and family values problems in the story with common sense assesments like this:

Abraham shows his willingness to kill his son for God. Only any evil God would ask a father to do that; only a bad father would be willing to do it.