Some of the main objections were: how can the bible be from god when it is full of contradictions, why does the old testament god seem to be for slavery eg in deutoronomy when he forces women to marry their captors, and why is he for stoning children,

This is what I've learned, from far wiser sources than me, but when reading the bible, you need to figure out the following - 1. Did god say that 2. Did man say that 3. Did man think god said that. One clear example is when god says 'thou shalt not kill' then in the next chapter, Moses is thinking 'I think he meant jew should not kill other jew, but it's ok for me to go and wipe out these other people'.

The bible is full of good things, as well as unfortunate things, as well as contradictions, which reinforce it's validity. Think about it - if a document written by 40 people over 1500yrs was completely congruent with no contradictions, it would be highly suspicious. As it's written over such a long time period, there are some passages written before events occur, and some in hindsight. There's a passage where it says God told them to kill a certain people, but in hindsight, the next author, writing 100 or so years after an event, says it was the devil who told them to go to war against a particular people. This contradictions comes about because in hindsight, going to war at this time brought tragedy to the Jewish people. (If you want I can track down the exact passages in the bible, but I hope you get the idea.)

What you need to understand is the direction god is taking people/society as they get to know him, get closer to him.

Here's an awful sounding passage, which taken out of context, people love to say god condones forcing women to marry men they don't love... Here's a great example from dueteronomy 21 that sounds terrble:

10 When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, 11 if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. 12 Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails 13 and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. 14 If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.

Now, is god all for women marrying men they don't love, and all for shaving their heads and clipping their nails. Of course not. Moses wrote this, and it was such a huge leap forward for womens' rights, god breathed life into it. You see, according to Persian, egypitan and greek law, women were property, even nobility, and when you conquered a people, you raped all the women, and kept the hot ones as sex slaves. And when you got tired of them, you sold them on as sex slaves. Now, by forcing marriage, you gave the women the same rights as you other wives, and if you divorced her, she became a free woman. Barbaric by today's standards, but a huge leap forward for womens' rights. Women would have been, wow, what a great god, whereas the men would have stood around asking 'is god this nice?' The whole shaving of hair and nail clipping had to do with traditional jewish mourning. remember, she's just lost her family in a conflict. And as she is now one of the family, you let her mourn as one of your people now, as a jew, as this is your new family. Again, absolutely barbaric custom by today's standards, but a huge leap forward for those times.

Women would have been celebrating such thoughts, and amazed at the kindness of God, while the men would have stood around wondering 'is god that nice.'

There are so many awful sounding passages, but when you look into the historical context, are completely the opposite.

Another passage atheists like to use is the stoning of children. Again, this is from Deutoronomy

'18 If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, 19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. 20 They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” 21 Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.'

On the surface, this looks like god is all for stoning children, or at least it looks like moses thinks god is all for stoning children. But here's some facts about that passage, which you can verify if you do the research into jewish traditions.

First of all, it's not talking about a child as some people say, as how many drunkard children do you know. But secondly, in ancient times, when a son married, he didn't leave home, but they just built an extension onto the home. Now if you've got a son causing grief and disrupting the home, there were steps taken to remedy this, but if nothing worked, he was take to the gates and stoned.

Now is it possible the word 'stoned' might have another meaning? If I told you I went out last night and got stoned, would you think 'poor guy, went out last night and got hit on the head with a stone?' Of course not. Is it possible 'stoned' had another meaning back then? Yes it is.

In fact the stoning was to signify a spiritual death, as he's being cast out from the village into the wilderness, and in the Mishnah, which is the Jewish law book, it clearly states the stoning was never to be a literal stoning. And it then goes on to say that if the son repents and comes back home, the father is to cook him a meal. That would be pretty hard to do if he had been stoned to physical death.

If you look at Abraham, the founding father of judaism, when he was asked to sacrifice his son, this was absolutely normal practice for all the cultures at that time. So when God asked him to sacrifice his son, this was quite standard, and yet god spared him, because one day he would provide.

Ultimately Abraham took the world from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice, a huge leap forward. Was god finished? Of course not. Along comes Moses who took them from infinite animal sacrifice to one animal sacrifice per family, another step forward, especially in times when food was scarce.

In fact in Micah, he says they never needed to sacrifice all along, and that god allowed it as it made the jews feel better. Such heresy got him killed. Interesting how the prophets were often killed, especially when suggesting god is kinder than they though.

But sacrifice for sin is a huge problem, because ultimately how does one know if they've paid enough? That's why sacrificing children ultimately came about, because surely by sacrificing what is most precious to you will atone for your sins.

It's why Jesus makes the most sense. Because I see now the way I've lived and the harmful things I've done, and I truly don't know if I could ever atone. So while I accept his free gift of forgiveness, I'm still working on forgiving myself, but I must, because I don't want to scorn such an incredible gift.

Oh, and another false accusation atheists make is that all the other religions are just the same as Jesus ie horus was born of a virgin, as was mithras - you can see the mocking on Bill Maher's Religulous. If you bother to look, this is so not true, in fact Mithras was born out of a rock, and very little is known of him, and Horus was not born of a virgin, and a simple history check will show this.

In fact people like Bill Maher quoting outright lies reinforces my belief in christianity, as the increasing mockery and outright lies, and twisting of facts fits right in with what we should expect.

On another note, and this is my opinion, and nothing to do with the historical parts of the bible, but I have some thoughts on the people that god does seem to say 'have nothing to do with' and on the surface, seems to condone their killing. If ISIS were your neighbours, would you want to have contact with them? And did you know that what ISIS is doing now, is probably nowhere near as bad as what the ancient Assyrians did? The ancient Assyrians were infamous for their cruelty, torture and warring. They were infamous for skinning people alive and keeping them alive for as long as possible. I find it interesting that there is a return to such barbarity today. Do you think our governments should try to reason with these people, or do you think that people who behead children should be wiped out?. It's just my opinion, but I wonder if God had good reason for letting things turn out as they did.