Here's what us athiests really need:

[Binkie The Clown]

We should take some text, say Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and mark it of into short book:chapter:verse divisions just like the Bible, and when someone debates us by quoting the Bible, book, chapter and verse we can reply by quoting something relevant to our own point of view, authoritatively giving them book:chapter:verse of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to prove our point.

The fact that most of the text is rambling nonsense shouldn't deter us, after all, we can cherry-pick the most relevant passages and bend them to our purposes just as well as the Bible-thumpers can. After all, didn't Alice herself prophesy that such a book would be written when she said "There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought!" (Second Rabbit Chapter 4, verse 9) And since Alice is eternal (II Rabbit 4:12 "'But then,' thought Alice, 'shall I NEVER get any older than I am now?") she must be the daughter of god.

As to why this particular book should be treated as a holy book, it's a mystery, and like it says in the Chronicles of the Tea Party, Chapter 7, verse 23: "Alice sighed wearily. 'I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, 'than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.'"

Or is there another book that would make a better "Holy Scripture" for us to quote chapter and verse from? Maybe Finnegan's Wake? According to Wikipedia, Finnegan's Wake...

... is significant for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's death, Finnegans Wake was Joyce's final work. The entire book is written in a largely idiosyncratic language, consisting of a mixture of standard English lexical items and neologistic multilingual puns and portmanteau words, which many critics believe were attempts to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams. Owing to the work's expansive linguistic experiments, stream of consciousness writing style, literary allusions, free dream associations, and abandonment of narrative conventions, Finnegans Wake remains largely unread by the general public.

That sounds like a perfect religious text just waiting to be "creatively interpreted' in order to prove any point whatsoever.

[seabeyond]

1. sorry. thought this was gd, not a group. nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. There's more sense in Alice in Wonderland than in the equivalent length of the Bible

Despite being written by a man who had taken holy orders (largely because that helped his university career at the time), it is free of the vomit-inducing moralising that had characterised British children's books until that point.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. À la recherche du temps perdu

The author's ability to write sentences that extend over pages is the key. Plus always in the original sacred french.

[mr blur]

4. "The Once and Future King" -

it's got everything - based on old myths/poems, made up of different books, it's got kings, queens, magic, love, sex, betrayal, sacrifice, revenge, fighting, a holy man...

[Binkie The Clown]

5. Oooo, I like it.

Or perhaps something with Hobbits and a strong polarization between good an evil.

[Mr.Bill]

6. The writings of

Hunter S. Thompson come to mind.

[bvf]

10. Deuteronomy is already about as Gonzo as it gets

although I take your point.

[deucemagnet]

7. Clearly, Lewis Carroll's hand was guided by God,

because I can't offer any proof that it wasn't.

[onager]

8. Well, he was certainly a Prophet of the A/A Group

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."

"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.”

[LiberalAndProud]

9. To be fair, we can pick at least 66 books.

We should convene a council.

[Binkie The Clown]

11. To authentically imitate the Bible, however,

we should take bits and pieces of many different books by different authors, and edit them to get rid of anything we object to.

I'm sure we can find an "old testament" book, say something by Charles Dickens, that can be interpreted to prophesy something that happens in a "new testament" book by a more modern author, say Kurt Vonnegut.

How's that for proof of authenticity? The Vonnegut chapter was prophesied by the much more ancient Dickens chapter. There's no way Dickens could have know about Vonnegut, except by divine revelation.

[LostOne4Ever]

12. How about the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the New Testament? (nt)

[AlbertCat]

13. I thought the Star Wars films had this covered.

AND.... action figures!





May the Force be with you....