In a lot of ways I find the other religions to be more interesting, probably because I haven’t been exposed to them as consistently my whole life. I’ve read up on a lot of other religions/belief systems, but I haven’t actually read their “holy books” (if they even have one) so I didn’t mention them. Religion is an interesting subject for me though anyway. 
If you haven’t read the Illiad, you’re also missing out.
I read/looked through my Picture Bible when I was a kid. Does that count?
Theists don’t like logic? 
Speaking as a born-and-raised atheist who later became a born-again Christian who later became a dead-again Agnostic who later read the Bible cover to cover, I say go for it.
Genesis and Exodus are each fascinating in their own way. Leviticus and Numbers will bore the shit out of you, but push through. Joshua is a great adventure tale, and anytime someone tells me they can find something marvelously inspirational in any Bible passage, I show them Judges 19 and tell them to have at it.
Reading the prophets really makes you realize that the Jewish society of the time didn’t really seem to be as religiously devoted as some would tell you, given that there were so many heretics for the prophets to rail against century after century. Comforting, really.
And there’s a really sweet resolution in the last couple of books of the Old Testament upon the return from the Babylonian exile. A broken civilization trying to ressurect itself.
The New Testament in turn, will really make you wonder how much of what people call Christianity is really from Jesus and how much is really from Paul. And it all ends with Revelations, which will make your head spin.
Of course not. Anything that requires thinking threatens to blow our fragile little minds by making us realize that the God we worship makes as much sense as a giant purple space unicorn with anal tentacles that controls the entire universe. Why, as soon as we learn about “logic” we’ll stop believing in garbage and start wearing black eyeliner and making snide comments about “conformists,” always punctuating the word with a snort. 
On the OP: I do not think atheists should read the bible to gain a better understanding of religion. There are so many different ways to interpret the bible–even among people who take the bible as literal truth (and, believe it or not, such people are a minority of Christians) there are differing opinions. Just look at the enormous variety of beliefs held by Christian churches. Christianity, even for fundamentalists, isn’t just the bible–it’s the bible and some tradition for interpreting it.
I think an atheist interested in holding a meaningful debate on religion would be better served by reading books on theology then by reading the bible.
Speaking as a devil’s advocate, this could be the strongest case for NOT studying religious texts. If you want to re-engineer society to be less blindly religious, you would do well to start phasing out the religious texts (as was practiced in the Soviet Union). Neverminding that this is censorship and would be impossible to do unless you were, well, god, it would be a most effective method.
Personally, I think that studying world mythology is important, and sometimes very entertaining.
If you’re trying to phase out religious texts to make people less blindly religious, what skin is it off your back if an atheist reads it? It’s not like I’m going to suddenly start beating people over the head and condemning them because of stuff in there.
Who wants to “re-engineer” anything? My motivations were simply that I found the subject matter interesting and, being one of the cornerstones of just about any society one can think of, having some familiarity with sacred scriptures is about the only way one can get some appreciation for the big picture. Scripture is, for many, one of the first principles from which their logic and world-view proceeds, so if you know nothing about that, you’re fairly clueless about the roots of their motivations. To me it has nothing to do with “re-engineering” (and I have no interest in such a thing anyway…I think ideas should compete on their own power and merits, and hence it’s not so much engineering as evolution by natural selection). It has everything to do with being a bit more informed.
I am atheist, and I have read the OT and the Quran back when I was an agnostic and searching. However, I would have a much harder time reading them now. In those days I was more willing to read such things, and more open-minded. I’m sure I couldn’t make it through the OT again.
HOWEVER - I do recomend it, all the same. How can you know unless you sit down and read it yourself? And I don’t recommend reading a book about it, but actually hunt down a good translation of the Quran, and **read ** both cover to cover.
Why not have a companion text to help you out? Theologians, linguists, archeologists, Biblical historians, philosophers, etc., spend their entire lives trying to understand the Book and its implications…or even what a particular passage really means in a literal sense. What makes you think sitting down and plowing through cover-to-cover will be sufficient for educational purposes? Especially if you come from a secular background, it could be really easy to come away with some radically different ideas about the meaning of the scripture that what it is intended to convey, or what contemporary, vs. ancient worshipers, took the passages to mean. The Bible is an incredibly rich and varied source, and the history (what we can glean of it, anyway) behind its composition and assemblage is fascinating. I can’t see how not being informed of the wealth of knowledge applied to understanding it could be an effective approach to Bible study.
Besides the moral aspects of censorship, forbidding something just makes it more appealing. If I were trying to destroy religion (which I’m not) I’d publicize all the embarrassing parts of the Bible - the parts that don’t get into the picture Bibles.
Reading the Bible is just the beginning. Reading theology is good also, but if a theologian says God is A, it is good to know the Bible passage where it says God is ~A. And it is also good to read archeology and science. While reading detailed discussions of the importance of the Garden of Eden, it is good to remember that the place never existed.
Sorry I meant not to substitute something else for the Bible or Quran (we are talking about both, right, not just the Bible?) rather than reading it at all. I don’t see any problem with a companion text, although I don’t necesarily see the need for one.
If a book can’t stand on its own, and needs companion text to truly define what it means, then that book seems inferior to me. This is only my opinion, of course.
I think everybody should know the Bible and the Quran fairly well. They’re both, regarding of what else you may think that they are, at least extremely influential literary works. I think people should be acquainted with them for the same reason that they should be acquainted with Shakespeare: simply because of the enormous influence they’ve had on our culture.
I’ll say the same for Star Wars or Matrix or Stephen King or any number of other things that are not considered fine culture, because that has nothing to do with it. You should keep up with these things to maintain basic human competence, as Cecil puts it.
In addition to all the cultural and philosophical reasons mentioned, You should read the King James Bible simply for the language. Along with Shakespear, the KJV has some of the most beautiful english ever, and serves as a foundation for modern english. Also the stories are fascinating, and even if you don’t believe they are literally true, they contain a lot of material for thought and reflection.
One great version for casual readers is this. It’s the KJV without a lot of the geneologies or obscure Jewish laws. Also it doesn’t have those annoying chapter and verse numbers which clutter up the pages of most Bibles. When you read the Bible as a whole it has a markedly different effect than picking little bits at a time. I recommend it.