One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad.― Aleister Crowley, Magick: Liber Aba: Book 4
Fundamentalist Evangelical Christians believe the Bible is literally true. That it is in addition to a holy scripture it is a history book. Stories such as the Garden of Eden actually happened. Talking snake and all. The Bible is inerrant in their view, without error.
Yet, there are two[1] different[2] creation accounts in Genesis. One chapter apart are two different creation stories with different orders to the acts of creation. Before you've even completed the first book of the Bible you are confronted with a conflict in the message!
God is considered 'all good', or omnibenevolent. Yet he is often described as 'jealous'[3], 'wrathful'[4], 'a consuming fire'[5], and 'vengeful'[6] in the Old Testament. Are these qualities to be considered 'good'? Isn't anger bad?[7] Then, later, in the New Testament it is claimed that "God is love"[8]. How can love be jealous, vengeful, wrathful, a consuming fire? The "fruit of the Spirit"[9], that is of the Holy Spirit - one part of the Trinity of God, is "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness". How does this square with vengeance, wrath, jealousy?
God's character is inconsistent throughout the Bible. As many have noted before, God changes from an angry, warrior-like, storm God in the Old Testament to a peaceful, loving God in the New Testament. For example, Paul describes God as "not a God of disorder"[10], yet it is God that "confused the language of the whole world"[11] at the Tower of Babel.
Sometimes the conflicts occur so close together as to be amazing. Not long after prohibiting[12] the creation of graven images, God instructs[13] that two graven images to be created for the Ark of the Covenant. This conflict occurs less than five chapters apart from each other in the book of Exodus. While the proximity isn't as close as the discrepancies in Genesis, it is noteworthy for how diametrically opposed the two instructions are.
God even condones lying[14], yet is said to not lie[15]. God is good[16], yet it is from God that comes disasters[17]. Where is the justice and good in punishing children[18] for the sins of their parents? The discrepancies add up and continue.
Perhaps, if the Bible were considered to be allegorical, or filled with metaphor, one could look past the inconsistencies. One could understand the errors of logic and discrepancies if it was a human book, meant to try to interpret God. But this is not the Fundamentalist way. It is to be considered utterly, entirely true.
This leads to a wide gate through which doubt begins to creep and then flow. If the very foundation of the faith, God's True Word, is so filled with wrongness what of the rest of the Christian message?