Atheists to rip up Bible

[L.Y.S.]

They are dicks. But some people, usually dicks themselves, only respect other dicks. If there's no dicks on your side, those dicks are gonna keep dicking you. So we need some dicks. And on the whole, there are far more dickish things these dicks could be doing. So dick on, dicks.

So many dicks I thought Richard Cheney was gonna show up.

 

[Dunstan]

Maybe it's dickish, maybe not, but really I just feel that it's disconnected from what they say they're trying to achieve. If your point is that the Bible contains a lot of "moral teachings" that are anything but, then what does that have to do with ripping out pages? That you'll be left with a "moral" bible, or an "atheist-approved" one? Hardly. Jefferson at least went farther and took out the supernatural stuff.

There are so many better ways to highlight the confused morality of the bible, like God Hates Shrimp.

So I suppose I understand where the "dickish" thing comes from, because this comes across more as a publicity stunt with an excuse tacked on.

 

[Foster Zygote]

They'd do so much better if they'd draw the crowd by claiming they were going to shred it, then just shred it figuratively by quoting a long string of internal contradictions in The Bible. They could even give away the highlighted bible to a church or something (and let THEM be dicks by refusing it.) Let us not mimic the stupidity of that Christian preacher who burned the Koran.

I agree. It's more for effective, if one's goal is to encourage people to question the veracity of the Bible, to say, "let's open the thing up and actually read it". It certainly worked for me.

 

[Howie Felterbush]

i find book burning repugnant.
books are treasures. the bible is a lovely, culturally relevant collection of myths and stories.
it is really impossible to understand the evolution of western thought and art without the bible.

Quoted for truth.

Destroying a book is pretty tool-like behavior. I can't even bring myself to throw away lousy books, I usually donate them. Nursing homes and jails are usually glad to take them.

 

[Foster Zygote]

i find book burning repugnant.
books are treasures. the bible is a lovely, culturally relevant collection of myths and stories.
it is really impossible to understand the evolution of western thought and art without the bible.

Yes. The tragedy isn't that people read the Bible, it's that they think it should be regarded as an objective guide to morality. It would be just as tragic if they felt that the Epic of Gilgamesh was the ultimate guide to life.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Local skeptic/atheist group, Backyard Skeptics, are planning on ripping pages out of a Bible in my hometown.

http://www.ocregister.com/news/bible-317251-gleason-say.html

Personally, I'm opposed. Seems to fall into the "being a dick" category.

Agreed. Nothing to be gained from it.

Yes. Once again I don't understand this tendency that some atheists have to imitate Religious people. For instance, Boyd Rice and his "Satanic Church" which is basically Atheism turned into a Religion.

They'd do so much better if they'd draw the crowd by claiming they were going to shred it, then just shred it figuratively by quoting a long string of internal contradictions in The Bible. They could even give away the highlighted bible to a church or something (and let THEM be dicks by refusing it.) Let us not mimic the stupidity of that Christian preacher who burned the Koran.

That would be brilliant!!!!

 

[HansMustermann]

Assuming that they bought or otherwise own that copy of the bible, hey, go ahead. It's not like there aren't dozens of companies more than happy to print and sell another copy. Creates jobs, I say.

 

[Lamuella]

needlessly provocative and rude, unlikely to gain any converts.

While I support their legal right to do so, I think it's a dickish action.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Not only comes under being a dick, it also gives believers reason to say that atheists are dicks.

Third, it is irrational. Never try to beat believers in the realm of irrationality (like, don't wrestle with pigs). It is irrational because the atheist POV is that the bible is just a book. So why rip pages out of some book?

Hans

 

[angrysoba]

It depends.

As some people have suggested it might be in the Jeffersonian sense of "cut out XYZ with a razor blade" if it fails to meet up with conditions ABC and let's see what is left. I don't see what is wrong with that if it is simply a bit of research.

If you decided to publically burn a Bible then I would think that it is likely a silly thing to do but for slightly different reasons to burning a Koran.

Burning or ripping up a Bible is symbolically vandalism as is the same for the Koran.

But...

It doesn't seem anyone here has worried that destroying a Bible will inflame Christians to the extent that those Christians will go on the rampage, burning and pillaging in their wake.

Would anyone like to comment on the risks of inflaming a violent religious clash between Christians and those filthy Bible burners?

 

[Lisa Simpson]

Their other local campaign was much less dickish. They paid for bus stop space all over the county. This one was outside my son's high school:

 

[Lamuella]

I'm going to be honest, if my local skeptics group did something this ill thought out and mean spirited, I'd leave immediately.

 

[Darat]

I went for planet x. Unfortunately trying to get publicity is very difficult without being extreme, and that's always been the way. The media aren't interested in the mundane, they want sensationalism, so to garner attention folk often do things that are bloody stupid, hoping that in the resultant attention they can get their message out to more people. Sadly it rarely works out for them because that's not what the media is interested in.

 

[epepke]

Trivia of the day: Burnt Bible pages are considered an excellent source of ink for prison tattoos.

 

[Darat]

There's the "E" again!

 

[Ocelot]

You know, I think what I wrote for that other book burning applies just as much here.

Seriously - if these were magazines, we would all say "so what?" - the binding into books shouldn't make any difference.

You're totally right of course. My feelings toward the humble book are entirely irrational. Sure there's good reason to venerate the knowledge and culture preserved within its pages but my love of the book itself is far far more than that. For me a book is like how I imagine the crucifix is to a Christian or the star of David to a Jew. It's not about what it is, paper bound and covered, or even what it symbolizes but what it becomes by acting as that symbol.

Perhaps a Christian can explain if I'm right. Is a crucifix simply jewellery or even just a declaration of your faith, or does it become something more? Is it a metaphor for your deity choosing to walk a mile in your shoes and then make the ultimate sacrifice for you? Is it more than just a symbol or representation of that concept? Does it in fact embody it? Because that's how I feel about books. It's not rational, it's a feeling.

For me a book even one as lowly as a Dan Brown sequel-by-numbers embodies more than it actually is. First it represents one of the greatest achievements of mankind: the ability to preserve our cultural inheritance in written language. Then it transcends representation and becomes the embodiment. It's not just the tale of a handsome-professor-dashing-between-historical-monuments-in-wide-eyed-amazement-at-the-world's-occult-machinations-revealed-by-a-series of clues-only-he-can-resolve-to-save-the-world-from-evil-and-get-the-girl. It is every tale: the awful and the inspirational; every discovery and theory: the revolutionary and the duds. It is the very ability of mankind to record this information and hand it down to the hundreds of generations as yet unimagined and unborn. It's not just a book, it's a single expression of the book. The book is what allowed Newton to "Stand on the Shoulders of Giants." The book is why there are now almost enough doctors and why they're getting better at what they do. The Book is arguably the greatest accomplishment of mankind. It is, for the person who considers mankind to be represented by the sum of our knowledge and experience no less than the afterlife itself.

I know that's stupid and irrational really. When I find that my wife has steamed her Stephen King novel from reading in the bath, when she folds the spine back on itself or folds the corner of a page down to mark her place, I wince. I really do and we get into the daftest rows about it. I know that as an individual book it's not a unique and irreplaceable cultural expression. It's a best-seller for goodness sake. There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of extant copies in hardback, paperback and probably digital too. One of the great properties of information as represented by the book is its abiding nature beyond any individual expression. That's what made the printing press such a treasured invention. In the case of a Stephen King novel it'd be one of the most difficult pieces of information to lose from the tree of human knowledge that there is. Yet the way I was brought up was with reverence for all books. That means care for each and every one. When you harm one book, you're disrespecting the book.

The doozy of it is, the missus has just as much love for books as I have, perhaps more: the weight in her hand, that tactile progression through the pages that won't let you abandon a book when there's too little left in your right hand, book smell, all of those wondrous sensuous things that us bibliophiles will wax lyrical about. Yet she looks to a books history rather than its future. She was brought up just slightly differently. To her, a well thumbed tome that falls open at treasured chapters does far more to warm her heart than a pristine book that shows no sign of having left the shelf. Perhaps she's right and I do books a disservice by wrapping them in cotton wool, perhaps I ignore and insult their treasured qualities of endurance. But that's a rational argument and the way I feel about books is not rational, it's emotional. It's love and only emotional arguments apply. Here books lose out not because my wife is right but simply because I love her more.

There can't be logic or rationale behind such feelings. Why are bound volumes the subject of such bibliophilic ardour when in truth the most profound advances in human knowledge appear first in periodicals? I've honestly no idea. It can only be for some irrational aesthetic. I'm sure many of you will cherish the same concept: valuing our ability to record information. Some will even see how a solitary book can be representational of that concept but won't feel the same passionate hurt that I feel when someone desecrates the embodiment of what I hold to be sacred. After all when these individual books are gone, the knowledge they contain still exists elsewhere. If they were burning unique items like the last copy or the original manuscript then we'd see some more outrage from the rationalists. Actual information would be lost. But even though that's not what's happening, this book burning is indeed intended to be a metaphor for exactly that. The harm done isn't real, the book, is still the book and I can still love and enjoy it every bit as much. It's a metaphorical harm: just a construct of the mind. In Pastor Grizzard's mind and in my mind he's metaphorically destroying information that challenges his beliefs. That he wants to do that rather than respond to the challenge; that he wants the world to know his intent hurts me emotionally. No rational real world harm, just the emotions associated with knowing someone despises your feelings and wants you to know it.

The same can be said of desecrating a holy symbol. Even if a crucifix is the embodiment of the life and sacrifice of Jesus, that life, that sacrifice is unchanged by the desecration of the symbol.

These are, after all irrational feelings. If we chose to take offence at someone sticking a rusty nail through a communion wafer (which has magically become the body of our deity) or emptying their coffee grounds over the Koran, (divine guidance expressed in the most beautiful form of words ever to grace our language) or burning books (the embodiment of humankind's ability to preserve our cultural inheritance) then perhaps we deserve to be insulted for believing such a pretentious load of claptrap about simple mundane arrangements of carbohydrates. When someone desecrates a holy symbol, perhaps in truth, it's just a fracking cracker, or it's just a statuette or piece of wood. But that desecration is also an act conceived and carried out as an insult to those who hold these things to be sacred. We are emotionally hurt by these affronts as the perpetrator fully intends.

Perhaps the fact that my feelings on this matter are not rational opinions means they deserve no respect. Perhaps the only arguments that would convince you otherwise are emotional rather than rational and would be equally disregarded. I can only hope not.

And yeah at the end of the day I'm a rationalist too. I blink and I see the rational argument and it dominates my decisions as and actions. I think, so what, another person on the other side of the world who hates and disrespects the honest upstanding life I wish to bring my children into. Big hairy deal! There's plenty more where he came from and there always will be. No real harm done. Ignore him. Deprive him of the attention he craves. Pity him. Get on with your life.

But those emotions do not then become unfelt. Whilst they may be ultimately disregarded I did feel them. They exist, they are real.

And it's not just that Pastor Grizzard's flock are oblivious to the fact that some of us feel books in general to be a sacred embodiment of the book: one of mankind's greatest achievements. They know full well at the very least that the bibles they're burning are held to be sacred by billions more Christians than the few romantic bibliophile humanists who feel the way I do. They know full well that they're offending people's cherished feelings. They know and they just don't care.

The lesson here is not that religious faith can blind us to the insult we cause our fellow man, it's that free BBQ chicken and the support of a peer group as small as fifteen people is usually enough to do that on its own. Perhaps they just need a few more books...

 

[angrysoba]

You know, I think what I wrote for that other book burning applies just as much here.

I put my iPod nano in the top pocket of my shirt and my wife washed it. Totally my fault as I was drunk when I did it.

In some ways it marks a pinnacle of human endeavour and I recklessly destroyed it just like that.

In some ways I feel bad but in other ways I don't think it really matters.

I used to hate anyone so much as bending the spines on my books but these days I scribble all over books I read and allow them to get bloated in the sun or the bath. I keep them on a shelf and try to make sure they don't get stolen but I think of them as things that get used and things that don't need to be revered for their own sake.

If someone were to pull out a book, any book, and destroy it, I would be somewhat horrified at the intentional vandalism. But unless they were demanding the complete and utter suppression of the book and the refusal to let such a book exist then I would still go along with it being that person's right as an owner to do to their property as they wished.

Ripping up a Bible or burning a Koran tends to be an outward display of proud and gormless philistinism and/or ignorance but it isn't the end of the world. Don't give those who seek attention such attention I reckon.

That's all....

bye.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

I went for planet x. Unfortunately trying to get publicity is very difficult without being extreme, and that's always been the way. The media aren't interested in the mundane, they want sensationalism, so to garner attention folk often do things that are bloody stupid, hoping that in the resultant attention they can get their message out to more people. Sadly it rarely works out for them because that's not what the media is interested in.

Also, the problem with doing something stupid to get the message across is that it often results in getting the wrong kind of message across. In this case, that All atheists are nothing but a bunch of troglodyte savages.

 

[FireGarden]

They'd do so much better if they'd draw the crowd by claiming they were going to shred it, then just shred it figuratively by quoting a long string of internal contradictions in The Bible. They could even give away the highlighted bible to a church or something (and let THEM be dicks by refusing it.)

Or mass produce Jefferson's Bible.

Let us not mimic the stupidity of that Christian preacher who burned the Koran.

Rather mimic what some did when that preacher announced 'burn a Quran day'. eg, the original burn a Quran day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91AM7665cbo

There were some others, too.

 

[sadhatter]

It's begging for attention by being a dick. If atheists want to be taken seriously, respected, and not reviled as a bunch of angry jerks...Well, this is the exact opposite of achieving that.

Besides that, I have an instinctive revulsion towards any sort of book "burning."

I agree this has little point, and book burning, per sae is wrong. But...

I don't know if it is as common everywhere else , but " 'round these parts" it is a common urban myth that bibles that have not been damaged ( for example, a page torn out.) cannot burn, and by extension this proves that they are the word of god.

So in this instance, if they were burning one, to disprove this myth, yes i would support it. But it doesn't seem they are doing it for any valid reason.