Flannery O'Connor An Annotated Reference Guide to Criticism Book

As nothing more than a piece of literature, this isn't even a good book. As a basis for religion, life, and/or government, it's dangerous. The entire Old Testament is filled to the brim with outrageous fiction and illustration after illustration of a diety who can't make up his mind, doesn't think rationally and is ruled by emotion, and reigns down punishment on beings he created, knowing that the very composition of their beings would lead them away from his will. This diety created two imperfect beings and set temptation directly in front of them and when they disobeyed him, he was angry and told them to go make more of themselves. When they did, he got angry with how disobedient they were and wiped them all out through extremely elaborate, ineffective means on more than one occasion...well, almost all. Nobody even knows who wrote the books of the Old Testament or exactly when they were written but they take them as absolute, inerrant fact passed down from the mouth of god himself.

The Gospels of the New Testament are nothing more than an illustration of a diety playing the part of a neglectful, absentee parent who, again through extremely elaborate and ineffective means, attempted to "get back in touch" with his creations using a middle-man. The letters from Paul that comprise pretty much the remainder of the New Testament are nothing more than the narrative of a mass-murderer who never even met the man over whom he spent so much time raving. Who wrote Revelation? Nobody knows, although there's plenty of speculation. Have the prophecies in Revelation come to pass? Nobody knows, because everybody has interpreted them a different way. Oh sure, I could write something cryptic on a piece of paper about two women being pregnant with the same baby and eventually something would happen where I could twist my words just enough to prove my statement. But that wouldn't make it fact.

If you want to read a book, don't bother with this one. If you want a basis for belief, just look around you and think for yourself. If you want to be a sheep and ignore the logic and reason inside that brain that *god* gave you, this is your book!