I'm a lifelong atheist and I've never considered the bible (or any other religious text) to be anything vaguely authoritative and it's been a lifelong puzzle to me why people do. But having thought about this a good deal, the existence of religious faith tells us things about humanity - not all of it good things but not all of it bad things either. Ie. how we shape and manipulate the texts, how we can reason profoundly but not necessarily rigorously, how we long for a sense of community and how we are influenced profoundly by respected members of our community (or more narrowly family).
And I understand the best predictor of whether you believe or not is whether the people you respect believe or not (citation needed, I know). Not how rational you are or how good you are at asking difficult questions, or how good you are at verbal pugilism. We are, after all social animals, not rational individuals.
Jesus asked a crowd stoning a woman "he who is without sin among you, cast the first stone." This appears only in the Gospel according to John and it's not in the earliest versions, so this story is almost certainly apocryphal. We can do this rational scepticism about this story, and yet it's still somehow powerful.
I think some of the people casting stones on this thread should ask themselves what is the causal (causal not the rational - big distinction) reason they are atheists? What circumstances (not inner ponderings) led you to atheism (or to religion for that matter). I would put it to you if the important intellectual figures in your life were religious, you would be of their religion too. Religious belief is a very human thing you are taking people to task over.
