Equating the Bible with white-supremacist propaganda leaflets is like equating On The Origin of Species with Mein Kampf because Hitler advanced evolutionist arguments in support of the right of the Aryan supermen to eradicate Slavs, Jews and the handicapped. The fact that a malicious and evil bigot misapplies the contents of the book to further his evil does not make the book itself evil.
Presumably if you supported an organisation that placed pamphlets mildly and reasonably explaining evolution in hotel rooms, you’d have no problem with people deliberately seeking them out and trashing them unread because they were being used to lead people away from God?
The flaw in that argument is the assumption that the bigots are the ones misapplying it. But from my viewpoint, it’s more like bigots using Mein Kampf to support their bigotry - the Bible IS a crazy, evil document, promoting a crazy, evil ideology. The ones who pervert it are the ones who try to do good in it’s name.
You no doubt disagree; but do remember that not everyone agrees with you that the Bible is remotely a good, or even neutral book.
First of all, my argument does not rely on how a given work might be mis-represented or mis-applied. The nature of the work itself is also relevant to the point under discussion. There is nothing in On The Origin Of Species that incites or condones violence, slaughter, bloodshed, hatred, bigotry, prejudice and division. The bible explicitly does all of these things, in both the old and the new testament.
Secondly, I think your point contains a hidden premise, namely that those who cite the bible when preaching bigotry and hatred are mis-representing its contents. This is not necessarily true. It is possible to quote the bible perfectly accurately and fairly, without taking anything out of context or playing other rhetorical games, and see messages of hate, division and slaughter. If you think the same can be said of Origin of Species, please provide one or two relevant quotations.
I agree with you. I have not contended otherwise.
If I leave free literature in a hotel rooom, I think someone hiring that room can do with that literature as they please: read it, bin it or use it to steady a wobbly table. I have no contract with them. I choose to leave the literature behind. What happens to it after that is not my call.
Incidentally, and aside from the main point under discussion, I do not follow why a text about evolution could be said to lead someone away from a god or gods. I believe I’m right in saying that Origin of Species was written by someone who believed in a god.
The flaw in this analogy is that it’s no misinterpretation or distortion that parts of the Bible really do advocate some pretty vile things. It advocates for genocide, slavery, racism, sexism, brutal theocracy, religious intolerance and murder for trivial offenses. When bigots seize on those things, they are not misapplying them, they are reading those ancient, archaic sentiments correctly. It’s really those who re-interpret and fanwank the Bible to bring it into conformity with modern sensibilities who are doing the distorting.
Spam is spam. If people want to throw away pamphlets left in their hotel rooms, that’s their prerogative. Why would the content make any difference?
So, intentions matter, do they? You seem to want to argue that both ways.
Then surely the “intention” in this case is that the guest use the bible for the “intended” purpose. Why is that so hard for you to understand?
On the contrary. Very relevant to the question.
If you have a problem with a space you are renting - then don’t rent it.
Of course you have a “right”. This isn’t a question about legal rights, it is an issue about acting like a childish jerk.
You have the “right” to do lots of things that get you classified as a jerk if you do them - for example, you have the legal “right” not to leave a tip even when waitservice is good.
Who is talking about “holy and sacred”?
Oh right - that would be you.
Point is not to treasure this stuff, but to refrain from pointlessly destroying it. There is a difference.
Pointlessly destroying the free stuff left for your use in a hotel room is jerkish, whether it is a pizza ad, a gideon bible, or the shower cap.
Makes no difference, other than that destroying a pile simply magnifies the trifling.
The obvious point of using “pile” is that it shows where your logic leads - trowing out a single menu isn’t a big deal, throwing out a stack clearly is; and according to your position, the one is as “okay” as the other.
Once again you mix up legal rights with the freedom to act like a jerk.
A waiter does a job knowing that the customer may not leave a tip and has no legal right to a tip. Nonetheless, not leaving a tip when one would be appropriate is jerkish.
Similarly, destroying stuff left for your use violates no law (that I know of), but is childish and jerkish.
No, THEY are wasting resources by manufacturing garbage to put in my hotel room. By your logic, you are victimizing internet spammers by filtering spam, because it takes money to create and distribute spam.
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Now, something you do is them doing it? Like they made you pointlessly destroy stuff by putting it in your way?
The “spam” analogy is absurd - that’s no different from them mailing you a bible; of course in that case throwing it out isn’t jerkish.
Well, yes as a matter of fact.
Once again, legal property rights have noting to do with it.
Again, there is no “responsibility” to do anything; there is a “responsibility” to refrain from pointlessly destroying stuff, even “free” stuff that is “yours” because someone left it for your use - if you want to use it.
To use another analogy, if the hotel allowed a company to host a promotional buffet that comes free to all guests, by your logic all the food in the buffet is “yours” because you can eat it if you want; in theory, you could eat all of it. So you have a “right” to tip it into the garbage, assuming that the chef is right there to make more for any other guests?
Well, no; common sense dictates that it is only “yours” to the extent you actually want to use it. It isn’t “yours” to deliberately destroy, whatever the situation may be under the property laws of your jurisdiction.
Your position is no different from that of a PETA member who discovers that the hotel he’s staying at is allowing a company to promote its new line of sauces by hosting a free ribs & bacon buffet, and decides that, because ‘meat = murder’, it is his “right” to go there, take plate after plate of ribs & bacon, and drop them in the garbage.
He may well have a perfect legal right to do just that.
No, intentions don’t matter. Once they abandon the property, their intentions in doing so become irrelevant.
There really is no option when it comes to hotels, though is there? They all have Gideon Bibles. If I rent a space, it’s mine while I’m renting it. If you don’t want me throwing away your spam, don’t put it in my space.
Is someone who throws away a take-out menu being a “childish jerk?” Who is being victimized by me throwing away my own unsolicited spam?
I’m still waiting for someone to identify any actual victim of this alleged “jerkdom.”
You. You seem to have some weird notion that people don’t have any right to dispose of unsolicited litter and spam left in their private rented spaces.
What exactly IS the difference?
Wow. You really do think it’s jerkish to trash a pizza ad? I don’t even know how to respond to that.
Were talking about what gets abandoned, unsolicited, in other people’s private spaces. If someone abandons a pile of pizza ads on your front porch, are you going to cherish and treasure them forever, or are you going to throw them away? Do you save all your junk mail?
You need to identify a victim of this alleged jerkdom.
This is a bullshit analogy. People who spam hotel rooms have done me no service and are entitled to no expectation as to what will happen to their spam.
To WHO?
If you’re stupid enough to abandon property, you have no right to whine about what happens to it. Do you throw away junk mail?
The only difference is the method of delivery. It’s still unsolicted advertising delivered to someone else’s private space.
It has everything to do with it. You’re trying to tell people what to do with their own legal property.
No there isn’t. There is no such responsibility whatsoever. Doesn’t exist.
No, the anaolgy would be if they left it in my room. I would be free to eat or not eat whatever was left in my room, especially if I didn’t ask for it.
You just like to make up rules, don’t you? Nope, if it’s mine it’s mine. There are no conditions. Those who abandon crap in my room have no right to set conditions on what I can do with it.
The false anaologies just keep on coming with you. Once again, the only proper anaolgy would be to what people leave in your room. No one is talking about getting Bibles from a shelf in the lobby and throwing them in the trash. If a hotel agrees to let a rib joint leave a plate of complimentary ribs in each rooms, are you telling me that a vegetarian guest would have no right to throw them away?
The local Roman Catholic Church has a little garden with a stone for all the “murdered unborn victims of abortion.” I once made a pink heart with “for all the victims of “pro-life” violence” on it and left it on the stone.
You don’t have to rummage very far, it’s right in the top drawer, and hey, if someone doesn’t want an unsolicited item abandoned in their private space, no one has a right to tell them they have to treasure and protect it.
And when I come and leave a Bible in your home without your leave, you can do what you will with it. But when it’s been left, reasonably discreetly, in a *rented *space in case someone might like to make use of it, then you don’t have to “treasure and protect it” :rolleyes:, you only have to leave it alone.
Last fall, as the U.S. presidential election was coming to a head, my boss and I were running some errands and stopped for lunch. On a table near the door was a display the restaurant had set up, and somebody had left a Chick tract there as well. I’d heard a story on the radio earlier that day about how some Christian Fundamentalists believed and were spreading the idea that Obama was the literal anti-Christ, and I was pissed off at their hateful idiocy. When I saw the Chick tract, I flew into a momentary rage, grabbed it and threw it violently in the trash, much to my boss’ surprise.
While I don’t think destroying the Bibles is terribly mature, I don’t think it qualifies as anything more than immature. The Gideons I’ve met would make the comment that the person throwing it out, or defacing was at least considering the book to have some meaning, and that’s a place to start.
Interestingly, I own something like 9 Bibles, and I’ve never bought one. I think 2 or 3 of them are from the Gideons (not from hotel rooms though).
I do recall getting use out of one of the hotel room Bibles once, though. I don’t think the Gideons would’ve been happy about it, as I used it to look up verses to make a point against some Christian in an on-line argument.
There is no difference between leaving it in my house and leaving it in my rented hotel room. My space is my space. What you abandon in it belongs to me.
