That's not quite it, but consider, for instance, that you're asking according to an incorrect standard. Cover to cover? And? Reading the Bible cover to cover is not necessarily appropriate; we already know the canon is out of chronological order, distorting the telling of the tale.
You're more about accusing per your own aesthetics, which actually is accounted for in the Bible.
The thing about people answering your questions is that even if they did have a version of all the answers, they would still be unsuitable to you because they will never meet your standard.
It's not really a matter of wondering what's wrong with you. You're after such a worthless prize, and this hatred is nothing new. Your telling sounds kind of like the right-wing columnist finding all those liberal hipster coffee shops where apparently everyone speaks a right-wing pretense no liberal ever actually hears from another.
In the end, it is likely these caricatures you describe misunderstand their scriptures; this would not be unsurprising, compared to history. To the other, though, it is clear you do not understand.
Remember, though: A lot of people won't be able to answer your childish inquisition because your questions themselves are based in ignorance. Compared to Scriptural distillations of everything in the Universe including the stuff people don't know, no, you don't actually know that much better. When the problem is that they do not satisfy your take on religious scripture, then your take on the scripture becomes relevant. And when it's clueless and accusing and devoted entirely to your own satisfaction, you're just another religious zealot making things worse.
Imagine one of those video debates between atheist and theist in which the theist actually answers all of the questions according to the atheist's discursive idyll. And then consider what a self-satisfied atheist declaring victory will have achieved: He will have won a dispute in which both people are wrong.
It's two hundred seventy-four years since Pensées philosophiques, and it's as if a proverbial pretty much everybody missed the note. Actual Christianists? Well, why would they pay any attention to Diderot? But the critics of religion? Part of the point of which criticism is that the critics are supposed to know better? Not yours? Okay, whatever. Religious zealotry is as religious zealotry does.
Remember that for many people, converting isn't actually changing religions. A Christian converting to Islam is still an Abramist. Most Satanists don't truly leave their Christendom or Islam behind, simply change roles within the story. Textually, the Ninth Statement makes the point very nearly explicitly. Also, Gardnerian witchcraft can become an imposed historical interpretation with many unresolved interpretive stations, but what makes it so attractive to Christianists falling away is its basic structural commonality and apparent advocacy of goodness. And where these conversions away from Christianity intersect with identity, empowerment, and aesthetics, we ought not be surprised to find atheism similarly oriented. The atheistic identity seeks empowerment within familiar aesthetics. This is both practical and circumstantial. That is, there are reasons why it works out this way.
When I ask that controversial question regarding what people know about what they discuss and criticize, or that other, apparently confusing one, about why anyone would let people they already know are wrong set the boundaries of discourse, the protests and befuddlement do make a certain amount of practical sense. After all, how much effort and resource should an atheist spend learning which particulars of religion? And, honestly, the answer depends on each atheist, and their decisions about political argument.
And when it comes to political argument, religious zealots having it out such that everyone is declaring victory in an dispute by which none of the disputants are actually correct is still just a bunch of religious zealots making a bunch of noise.
If you encountered one who had, would you know?
According to what definition of truth?
Remember, you're asking questions according to your own priorities. Cover to cover? Yes, there are cover-to-cover Christians, but the record clearly shows that cover to cover is not the way to read the Bible. Sinister confusion? Hey, I have a question: Are ignorant, accusing atheists who demand to know what is wrong with the people who fail to satisfy them really so awful, or are they just people? For the most part, people seem to be well-intended, even to the point that we can wonder at the definition of being well-intended. For instance, do you actually think you're being rude or inappropriate? Some people disdain the pretense that they could be inappropriate, and talk about what's wrong with others, instead; there are also those who justify themselves, and they, too, talk about what's wrong with others. Perdurabo prefaces his lies by recalling Bacon: "What is truth, said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer." Over a century later, his point still stands.
Thus:
Well, that kind of depends on how we define truth.
The answer that no, actually, it's not, is a neurotic mess, and likely near the heart of what you hope to indict. The answer that yes, it is, becomes a bit more figurative. In either case, though, we cannot escape basic questions of faith and mystery.
Experientially, we already recognize some of the problems with certain manners of faith. But your question here reflects the pretense of something sinister, and compared to much more mundane behavioral realities of conditioning, imperfect comprehension, mundane living priorities, and what we might describe as neurotic tension, it seems easy to overlook the point of mystery.
And if it seems a pitiable excuse that they are frail and confused, with priorities awry because that's just how their lives and the world around them have gone, that makes them as perfectly and pathetically human as the next person.
Some Sufis refer to it, generally, as being earthsick. There is an old Arabic poem that includes a consideration about how, if another requires such crookedness, even one who strives to be better still has his jahl about him. Modern Christians often discuss the prospect of being born into sin; the question of our human frailty does not simply attend being physically weak or slow or infirm, but also the health of our psyches and suceptibility to corruption. In more secular literature, how many heroes must necessarily be tragic, and in that context we might consider how any given juxtaposition of heroic virtue and tragedy actually works.
Some months ago, we discussed↗ related aspects:
• As you read through other various scriptures and lores from around the world, you will find much seemingly implicit sentiment that the ultimate reality is what it is, and the stories deal with mundane questions of daily life. It seems worth reminding that, in history, philosophy has, at times, been something of a luxury; the underlying philosophies of religion are, generally, even more esoteric than those of politics, economics, or history.
• Compared to daily life, it seems worth noting that if Francis Barrett was apparently born to a humble family, he was of sufficient means to fail repeatedly at attempted balloon flight, in addition to translating and speculating on Qabalistic and Christianist-metaphysical manuscripts.
• If the Salish people don't happen to have finely resolved and metaphysically determined tables describing which angel has what authority over which day of the week, and, furthermore, the daily schedules of diverse angels given which authority over what hours on any given day of the week, there might be a reason. I'm pretty certain they also never invented an invisible college, either.
• Compared to daily life, it seems worth noting that if Francis Barrett was apparently born to a humble family, he was of sufficient means to fail repeatedly at attempted balloon flight, in addition to translating and speculating on Qabalistic and Christianist-metaphysical manuscripts.
• If the Salish people don't happen to have finely resolved and metaphysically determined tables describing which angel has what authority over which day of the week, and, furthermore, the daily schedules of diverse angels given which authority over what hours on any given day of the week, there might be a reason. I'm pretty certain they also never invented an invisible college, either.
In a related issue, only a few weeks later, I reminded↗ someone else:
• While notions of gods and celestial influence allude to grand and complex systems, what people seek therein pertains to everyday life.
• Here is a contrast: Existential questions of life and death, purpose and meaning, to the one, and, What day is it? to the other. Most religious people's focus, has to do with daily life. Say what you will about how ridiculous some religious priorities sound, but we're also assessing neurotic outcomes.
• Here is a contrast: Existential questions of life and death, purpose and meaning, to the one, and, What day is it? to the other. Most religious people's focus, has to do with daily life. Say what you will about how ridiculous some religious priorities sound, but we're also assessing neurotic outcomes.
And just to bring it around, along the way I eventually pointed back to a prior note↗ about earthsickness:
• If, for instance, frail humanity responds individually and collectively in ways that set ritualistic hooks with affecting superstitious, and thereby neurotic, influence, here we find the earthsick accretions to an otherwise sublimated idea of perfection compared to the frailty we witness, endure, inflict, and fret over.
Sometimes it feels like I'm repeating myself, but it's uncertain what actually needs repeating, and here we are, again.
