The latest Jesus and Mo strip, called “speech” came with a note:
The original story is here.
And that leads to an article in The Freethinker (click on screenshot to read the whole thing):
Jesus and Mo’s reaction:
This strip will of course be banned in Pakistan, the land of Outrage about Religion. But since it satirizes both Christians and Muslims, it should be banned everywhere. Clearly, the Religion of Peace is really The Religion of Offense.
David Robertson, of the Wee Frees, is a professional outrage merchant. Some of us remember interacting with him as “WeeFlea” on various atheist forums.
Well, I guess Jesus has a point in that the UK is a “christian” country and can thus favor one religious tradition if it wants. The cartoon reminded me of this story:
https://abcnews.go.com/Travel/fifty-shades-grey-replaces-bible-british-hotel/story?id=16853389
I don’t think this is right. England has an established church, the CoE, but it was never established in Scotland. Scotland had an established church but the Kirk was disestablished I think in the 1920s. The CoE was disestablished in Wales too. So England is officially Christian but the UK is not.
England is constitutionally a Christian country in that the Church of England is an arm of the state.
Scotland is not constitutionally a Christian country but it is a Christian country by tradition.
I stand corrected – sorry.
I’d go stay in that hotel!
On the few occasions when I’ve found a Gideon bible in a motel room I’ve been (a) disappointed, then (b) checked the flyleaf to see if the legend* is true. And been disappointed again.
cr
(* The legend that all the local ladies of negotiable virtue write their phone numbers in the front of Gideon bibles)
Great job by the hospital in Scotland. After all, it is a hospital, not a book store.
I recall FFRF taking the DOD to task for allowing religious institutions to put bibles in the rooms at all the on base temporary housing locations (hotels basically).
I wonder if they might take the little Jesus on the cross decorations from over every door in the hospital I was in a while back. Hospital was called St Francis so not likely.
Just as long as they don’t stop stocking the rooms with a nice selection of minis.
Yes, I have to tell you though, the mini bars are usually only available to to officers (BOQ) Bachelor Officer Quarters. The higher the grade, the better the room. The military is very much a class system. Even as a civilian, my room would depend on my govt. grade and the military equivalent. Everyone gets the bible.
DoD hotels are now run by the Holiday Inn chain. Rooms, with the excepting of O-6 and above, are assigned equally. The standard of hotel rooms on the military bases in the US has improved greatly. I am retired from the Army and my wife and I use military installations while traveling.
In an age where everyone can have the bible with them on their phone, pad, or computer for the ‘price’ of merely a few seconds of download time, putting the paper book in hospitals (and hotels) is nothing more than territory marking. Environmentally irresponsible territory marking, even.
I know at least one adult who has no internet-capable device it would be practical for him to take into hospital
David Robertson:
A fundamentalist preacher decrying perceived fundamentalism in his opponents.
It’s a bit like politicians going on about “rhetoric”; apparently, it’s only ever their opponents who use rhetoric, but never they themselves.
The Religion of Offense. I like it! Perhaps a better name for the Authoritarian Left.
Interestingly the spokesman for the Gideons Society (who are supplying the Bibles in question) actually took a pretty reasonable position:
I do have to give them due credit for that.
It is refreshing to find somebody with a sense of proportion on these issues.
Personally, I wouldn’t object to the Gideon bible so long as there were a couple of other (non-religious) books there as well. I’d rather have reading matter (including bible, which I can choose not to read) than none.
cr
Whatever happened to brochures on “points of interest” in your area, or local restaurants, or attractions? The list of available TV channels and premiums?
You usually get those as well but they don’t make very interesting reading.
And re-reading a bible does?
Some of it makes very interesting reading.
I make it a point to always toss the Bible in la poubelle if I find one in my hotel room.
There is something so irksome about having this Christian crap shoved in your face against your will. I know I shouldn’t let it bother me but it does. These fuckers will never leave well enough alone.
Really?
I’ve been to many hotels and I’ve never had a bible shoved in my face. Usually it’s kept out of sight in a draw in the bedside table or desk.
And just because you don’t want to read it doesn’t mean subsequent guests necessarily also don’t want to read it.
If their gods want their books in the rooms then they should “poof” them there themselves. Lazy is one thing, but having omnipotence and being lazy (lazimpotence) is without excuse.
🙂
Even as a devout secularist, I have no problem with hospitals putting in nightstand drawers a book they have reason to believe a substantial number of their patients might want, rather than keeping a pile in a storeroom and awaiting specific requests. In certain neighborhoods, it might be appropriate for there to be a Koran rather than a Bible in the drawer. In either case, if you’re going to do that, you should have a supply of alternative books for those who want them. (In selecting alternative books, reasonable judgments about likely demand will be necessary. Do we really think we’ll need four copies of Zoroastrian scripture?) Or you could provide neither, but a hospital is designed to help patients get and feel better, not to straighten them out on philosophical issues.
Consider #8 above; putting bibles in rooms makes some people feel worse. Instead of comforting them, it angers them.
This is aside from the obvious ‘preying on the weak’ potential, i.e. targeting not just Christians who want to read their religion in times of stress, but nonChristians who would never normally reach for a bible and only do so in the hospital because it’s the one (and only one!) book of philosophy/theology there.
So, the choice to put literature in someone’s room is not a ‘no harm no foul’ decision. Yes there’s going to be a subset of patients for which this gesture is appreciated, nonpredatory, and may help their healing process (at least psychologically). But that is not going to be the case with all patients.
As a P.S., it seems perfectly reasonable to me for a hospital to ask an identified next of kin if the person might want a bible, koran, or other holy book and giving it to them if they say yes. But let’s keep it ‘opt in’ rather than ‘opt out.’
And as a P.P.S., consider also the ‘picking sides’ trouble a hospital gets itself into if it offers a protestant bible (the Gideons are protestant) to a Catholic; the protestant bible doesn’t have the same OT books in it as the Catholic one. Or consider some other society doing a vice versa, and introducing a protestant to a bible with the Book of Judith in it. Or consider what might happen if a society stuck in an NIV version but the patient is a hard core fundie evangelical who thinks anything but the KJV is a blasphemous satanic work. There’s pretty much lots of ways to go wrong here and only a few ways to go right.
Ever spend the night in a Marriott Hotel?
Hmmmm. I think this runs afoul of the most basic tenet of medicine – primum non nocere.
“you should have a supply of alternative books for those who want them.”
As a compulsive reader, I would most fervently support that. With the proviso that the ‘alternative’ books should be popular, not religious.
(I usually take the precaution of taking a paperback in my pocket. Ever since I had to wait three hours in my broken-down car with nothing but the Motorsport Association’s Competition Regulations to read. Indigestible is not the word).
cr
I don’t think it is even hygienic.
There are actually motels in Northern California which have both Christian Bibles and Buddhist sutras, but nonetheless no copies of Thomas Paine’s “The Age of Reason”
Or WEIT, I assume. Wouldn’t that be cool? I would invest in a hotel that had a copy of WEIT in the top dresser drawer.
Keep this up, what the fuck is Rocky Raccoon gonna find in his room?
I recall that some Christian lot wanted to put bibles in all tramping huts in New Zealand. The response by one tramping spokes person was along the lines of that it was OK if the pages weren’t too shiny
Or too rough, if you know what I mean.
I have no doubt whatever that (given the inevitable occasions when paper in such huts ran out) the spokesperson’s scenario would have eventuated. 🙂
cr
And on an NZ but only vaguely related note, a scientific survey by the Wilberforce Society published this morning reveals that of NZers:
35% responded no religion;
20% responded spiritual but unattached to a religion;
33% responded Christian;
of the remaining 12%, no religion recorded more than 2%.
As might be expected, the younger respondents were less religious than their elders.
I would note that “small and vociferous” would more aptly be applied to Robertson’s Free Church of Scotland (who don’t like being referred to as the “Wee Frees”), and that Robertson himself seems to have somewhat of a career as a (usually offended) ‘talking head’.
Of the other ‘offendees, the Christian Party is equally schismatic (being radicals who broke off from the Christian Peoples Alliance), and the Christian Institute seems to do nothing but swim against the cultural tide.
One wonders why anybody cares.