Why believe the bible though? What evidence is there that it is true? The gospels were all written a very long time after Jesus' death and contain many inconsistencies. And what about the dichotomy between the old testament god, vengeful and generally pretty nasty, desperately paranoid about whether people believed in it, and the new testament caring sharing god, who doesn't smite anyone? Isn't it likely that all the OT smiting stuff was just descriptions of natural disasters and epidemics of disease by people who didn't understand what was really going on?

Even some contemporary religious loons describe AIDS, for example, as god's vengeance on whoever contacts it.