Nah, the end of the Bible is Revelation. It doesn’t explain a bit–it just makes things more confusing.
Didn’t anyone see that episode of X-Files where it was revealed that those Bibles were really used for government surveillance?
No, I think that a significant number of travelers actually want a Bible in their room, and see it as a good thing that one is available.
I’ll pick it up and shake it, just in case somebody else knows about the urban legend of money in bibles and decide to make it come true. No money yet, but several girl’s names and phone numbers on the title pages over the years. SWMBO and I snicker about that.
You’re afraid that the Bible will hitch a ride back to your house and create a thousand more Bibles?
I doubt the hotel would allow it but, if I saw one, I’d likely leaf through it for a few minutes, get bored (from what I understand it’s not very entertaining reading) and then go on with my life. Books aren’t magic and if their sheer presence causes you discomfort that’s pretty much entirely on you.
Hey, you wanna spoiler that?
Reported.
Just as well— that last chapter really goes off the rails.
I’m an atheist to the bone, but even I cannot honestly say the Bible is in the same league as Mein Kampf. The former is so commonly found in hotel rooms as to be quite unremarkable. The latter would be construed by many people as some sort of actual threat of violence.
I really don’t get what the big deal is. If you don’t want to read it, leave it where it is. I don’t use the hair dryer, either, but it doesn’t bother me that it’s there.
When I enter a hotel room, I throw the hair dryer right in the garbage because fuck those guys imposing their beauty standards on me.
I didn’t say that books were magic, nor that they would cause me any discomfort. That’s “entirely on you”.
My point was that it’s clear that hotel management would not allow just anything to be placed in their hotel rooms, for fear of offending guests; and if the bible were something unfamiliar that were assessed de novo on its actual content, it is offensive enough that hotel management would certainly remove it - just as they would remove a KKK tract. And the idea that not all the bible is evil and offensive is irrelevant - if I put a copy of a Dr Seuss book in a hotel room, with “kill all gays” scrawled on p32, what would happen?
It’s quite clear that horribly offensive Christian propaganda gets a free pass because of its cultural familiarity. Christians whining about persecution and atheist attacks is utter drivel.
No I think panache45 is referring to bedbugs’ religious philosophy. Those things make Fred Phelps seems like a progressive. Last time I got into a conversation with one I would have been glad to have any form of more liberal reading material, even the Old Testament, to bleach my brain with.
“Horribly offensive Christian propaganda”? You seem to be confusing the Bible with a Chick tract. To Christians and nonchristians alike, the Bible is ancient literature (in addition to its status as holy scripture for Christians). And all but the most oblivious realize it was written long ago, and thus is a product of its time. Being a reflection of its time and culture doesn’t make it any more offensive than the Norton Book of Classical Literature.
Baptists, mostly.
No, really:
From Separation of Church and State
In the era of the founding of the nation, Baptists were non-conformers from the established state churches, either in England or in the Colonies. Non-establishment was important to them, both for self-defense and in recognition of freedom of conscience.
That’s the sick but predictable irony of the current cultural situation: yesterday’s persecuted minority is today’s wannabe persecutors.
Let us not confuse the Baptists of the 18th century with the Baptists and Southern Baptists of today, though. The modern church is not so disinclined to mix church and state, it seems.
Nonsense. To Christians, it’s a sacred book, and it’s placed in hotel rooms to proselytize.
And this would carry more weight if there were not still widespread homophobic bigotry, justified by the majority of the bigots on religious grounds. If it were really *true *that nobody took the horribly evil parts of the bible seriously in the modern world, then I agree that it would certainly be no more a problem than the anti-Semitism in Merchant of Venice.
Incidentally, the oft-repeated claim that the bible has literary value? I don’t think the people who claim that have actually read it. 95% of it is garbage in style as much as in content.
I’d be careful about that. I knew a guy who, whenever he’d hook up in a hotel, would put the used condom in the bible.
I thought it was pretty stupid myself, but he seemed pretty proud of the act.
When staying at Marriotts I dig checking out the copy of the BoMormon and the hokey illustrations on it.
…yes. A quiet, unobtrusive, polite form of proselytism that neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket nor makes noise that keeps me awake nor buttonholes me in the driveway to chew my ear off.
I’ll take it.
Yeah, harmless to you - but I suspect that you’re not an LGBT teenager growing up in a small town in the Bible Belt.
When people stop spewing hatred of their fellow human beings, I will happily adopt your laissez-faire attitude to religious belief.
oooh, do we have a timeline for that yet? Or is it like fusion, always 50 years away?
I just hate the reminder that people can be so obtuse.