available for atheists' reading, then the pickings are very slim indeed

Careful and critical readings of these texts are, by now, nothing new, and such readings can actually be quite informative. The history of interpretation also can often be interesting. Wells, however, thinks it enough to take a half-sentence here and there and snicker

For example, at Philemon 7, Wells finds himself quite amused by the bowels of the saints are refreshed by thee, brother, which he considers an absurdity. But this side-steps all the interesting questions, such as -- Why did the King James translators, who so often adopted Tyndale's translations wholesale, choose this language here instead of Tyndale's 'For by thee (brother) the saints' hearts are comforted'? Or What exactly did the Greek word 'splagchnon' signify to Paul or his readers? -- since it is plausible that other times and places have had their own idioms, the actual meaning of which was determined by usage and could not be simply decoded from the actual function of the anatomical organ, just as our He's got guts or She has a good heart are not intended to lead to discussions relating to his digestive processes or her coronary by-pass surgeries

I glanced through a few other of Wells' webpages, and the story is much the same: cheap-shots seem Wells' primary interest. And they're mostly at the level of a smart but cynical high-school sophomore: regarding Genesis 1:29 (for example) I have given you every herb, Wells wants to know Is it okay to smoke marijuana?, which very much reminds me of the many phony questions I and my friends asked in our adolescence. For most people, a time comes in life, when one begins to focus upon what one can actually do, rather than upon the cheap-shots one can take

The fact that the infallible holy text actually says what is absurd.

Or is his interpretation of an infallible holy text to billions just wrong?

Kautsky was entirely unsympathetic to any of the supernatural stories in the New Testament

Schweitzer's 'Search for the Historical Jesus' (1906) was similarly interesting, though Schweitzer set out to apply critical methods to a study of the historical questions associated with the gospels and concluded "There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the Life of Jesus. The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give His work its final consecration, never had any existence. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb" -- and yet (curiously) reaching this conclusion without losing his Christian faith

Bloch's 'Atheism in Christianity' (1968) was also interesting: an atheist and a Marxist like Kautsky, Bloch (unlike Kautsky) did not attempt a scholarly historical approach to the texts, but managed to discuss them in a lyrical style, simultaneously exhibiting some of the conflicting histories of interpretation and some of the dialectical tensions there

Ehrman's 'Lost Christianities' (2003) was also interesting, the work of a former fundamentalist become genuine scholar of ancient texts, both informative and a pleasure to read

But these were books written for adults, not for snickering adolescents

Yet when it comes to the bible, evolution is the myth, in all it's forms.

and not weigh like... 50 lbs.

with the aim of providing a defensible translation: it runs a thousand pages or so