In the aftermath of the toxic campaign for the American presidency, Stan Snowdon wrote that politics is dead and that we should “go back to the Bible” to serve as our guide (November 8).

Robert Ingersoll, an American lawyer and orator, did not think the Bible was such a good guide: “If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would strictly follow the teachings of the New, he would be insane.”

To make it worse, the depiction of God in the Bible is far from edifying, as Mark Twain explains: “The Bible reveals to us the character of God with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere.”

It was for such reasons that Isaac Asimov concluded: “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”