i am an atheist and i know "the" bible better than many christians, but i am not talking about the christian bible. with that i am not familiar. familiarity with either bible is not the reason i am not a christian, nor the reason why i am an atheist. i have never been a christian; i was raised as a secular jew. i never read our bible when i was young. i read it out of interest these days. it hasn't changed me into a religious person (i never was one -- well, okay, i was more active as a jew for one year when i was about 14, to my family's surprise and amusement) nor swayed me from my atheism (disbelieved in any gods since age 15) but it's interesting on many levels. i think i have enough of a grip on many parts of it to argue with christians who, for example, think the whole sodom think was about god's hating gays (it was about god's hating the discourteous, unwelcoming and inconsiderate, which describes many of the christians in question!) i can make their heads spin discussing onan. i can agree, conditionally (again, which bible) with your statement that many atheists know the bible better than most christians. i may even be able to agree that belief may well depend on not realizing what it is one purports to believe. my only quibble is that i don't know whether most atheists even ARE ex-christians, and if they are, whether they became so as a result of reading one or the other or both of the bibles. it does depend largely on each reader's sense of humor, i suppose.

g