speech

Original story here.

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Discussion (20)¬

  1. HelenaHandbasket says:

    I wonder how much it would cost to get a copy of The Origin of Species into every hospital and hotel room? I’d chip in

  2. Laripu says:

    No-one reads those bibles anyway. They just cherry-pick parts to justify cruelty. If you put information on evolution there, they’d use that to justify extermination of ‘inferior races’.

    The problem lies more in the psychology of evil people than in the content of their literature. Evil people will use any and all writing as a pretext for their evil acts.

    And good people, with their psychology, will cherry-pick parts to give support to the good things they do.

    How do we raise people with good attitudes?

  3. alex palr says:

    I’m wholeheartedly in favour of bibles in hotels, hospitals or whatever. It’s a wonderful opportunnity to write on it a lenghty funny an atheistics disclaimer and also doing some underlining of the most “inspirational” passages.

  4. Blake says:

    There should be a box-set of all the J&M books in every hospital room!

  5. M27Holts says:

    I have my maternal grandmas bible. It has sentimental value. It also reminds me that if I swore on that old green book my old gran would believe even the most egregious lies. A useful life lesson me thinks.

  6. Vanity Unfair says:

    In my Grandma’s family Bible my birth was entered on the page for deaths. Which might explain some things.

  7. DOC says:

    May God roast me on a spit, barbecue me on a grill, boil me in a pot, roast me in an oven, fry me in a pan, & microwave me IF I BE LYING!

    UNITED ATHEIST LEAGUE VS ALLIED ATHEIST ALLIANCE

  8. I think there should be a Larousse Gastronomique in every hotel room.

  9. Someone says:

    I’d recommend a bible or koran in every toilet except those gilded edges really sting.

    Regarding psychology, it’s best to raise people with good values whilst ensuring dogma doesn’t play a part. Obviously there must be consequences for one’s actions but these need to be realistically outlined, so that skills for detecting lies, deceit and madness are well honed for future use.
    If only it were that easy.

  10. Welshman says:

    I’ve been pleased to find one of those little Gideon bibles in a hotel room in the past.
    The paper’s so thin the pages can be used in an emergency as a Rizla.

  11. martin_z says:

    I’m told there was a time, not all that long ago, when the Gideon’s Bible in each hotel room was quite useful to travelling businessmen – if you opened it to the endpapers, there were frequently some phone numbers if you wanted some female company…

  12. DiscoveredJoys says:

    Or you could take a highlighter with you and mark up all the sexy bits and genocidal bits. It would help pass the time.

  13. Dr John the Wipper says:

    DiscoveredJoys:

    Define “sexy bits”, please.
    Not much that meets MY definition of sexy, unless of course you mean anything related to gender differences and the ways to handle those.

    Genocidal will be easier to find though…

  14. HelenaHandbasket says:

    Some of the Song of Solomon gets a tad racy. But, for the most part, unless you are into homosexual gang rape (e.g. Genesis 19); rape used as weapon of war (Numbers 31) and, of course, the stoning of adulterers (Deuteronomy 22) then the sexual tastes presented are a bit of “niche” market these days.

  15. M27Holts says:

    Paraphilias are a strange quirk of the human mind. I have no.problem with any of them except the two illegal kinks namely paedophilia and strong coercive violence. The bible and the Koran positively encourage both of those of course. Let’s hear the hysterical (historical) apologists bleat about it being normal in the dark ages….

  16. FreeFox says:

    I always fancied the weird love quadrangle between David, King Saul, Jonathan and Micah. ^_^

  17. FreeFox says:

    But then I also always wondered what was going on between Paul (and Silas) and Timothy, and what exactly happened in that tent when God “knew” Moses. ^_^

  18. Reid Malenfant says:

    Everyone is biased, everyone cherry picks and everyone see’s more sense in their own perspective than in anyone else’s. Such features are not exclusive to Theists, far from it.

    We are only rational occasionally, largely when it suits us, because we seldom need to be in daily life. Rationality is not a quality of mind that was directly selected for; we certainly don’t use or need it for our most important (evolutionary) decision by far; that of mate selection and consequent reproduction.

    Well, perhaps with the exception of arranged marriages, physical attraction, personal preferences and falling in love are predominantly unconscious emotional responses driven by a multiplicity of factors, many of which we inherit. That’s what we are baby; human.

    Just saying, that’s all.

  19. pink squirrel says:

    No sexy bits???
    The annals of a brothel could scarely contain a greater range of indecent expressions

  20. WalterWalcarpit says:

    Excellent.
    I thought you might pick up on this story.

    Was it not in one of these threads that an hotelier in, I think, the Lake District that said he had placed copies of The God Delusion in his rooms?

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