Well, first of all I don’t think it was consciously designed; we’re talking of a time before modern academic disciplines. And second, the real shoehorning was pretty much over by 450AD. The Vulgate, Luther’s Bible and the KJV were not, I think, designed to produce a certain coherent narrative; the authors had unconscious assumptions derived from the societies in which they lived. You can’t compare the intention of the Bible to deliberate fabrications like the Book of Mormon or the teachings of Scientology; it comes from a completely different intellectual world. That’s why the Catholic Church has “tradition” and Judaism has the Mishnah; to codify the prejudices of interpretation. That is where you find the cherrypicking.
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Yes. He insisted it was about the deadening of intellect through television. He had numerous arguments with people about this, insisting it wasn’t about censorship but about the very real threat that television presented to the American public and their ability to think critically.
I would say, looking at things as they are in October 2016, he was right to be worried.
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As a whole, maybe not. Obviously the books that were assembled (by council, which is another word for committee) into the Vulgate were written down over many centuries. But at some point, every passage that isn’t a historically accurate account was deliberately made up by someone. Whether it was fabricated by one person or a whole bunch of people seems sort of beside the point. Myths don’t invent themselves. At some point, and with the Bible at many points, people lied. The main effect of having a bunch of liars seems to be that they couldn’t keep their lies straight.
ETA: To be clear, I’m not opining on the merits or lack thereof of the consequences of the lies. I’m merely pointing out that at some point someone flat-out made up the stories of things like resurrection.
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Remember. Minnesota also invented Gopher. I havea fondness for the protocol I BARELY missed as a relevant thing.
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You only really have to worry about the future of knowledge, art, literature and learning etc when they start burning them.
I am sure that there’s a few on here could quite happily quote passages from Shakespeare, but all the writings?
If it was published then it’s deserved in its own right to be scrutinized by all for any flaws it may contain and an insight into the world we live in or what has brought us to the world we live in, what the writer felt at the time with regards to his or her feelings on a given topic or the situation he or she were in and his or her lot in life in that period of history. These writings tell us about ourselves in a most intimate way which could take generations to re-learn.
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Is there anyone else here who determined which book they would memorize, as a result of reading Fahrenheit 451?
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Censorship is only really ever about one thing, limiting what people think. That’s why the Catholic Church regarded Luther as a terrorist.
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I’ve mostly got Macbeth down to memory.
“Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.”
We have an indy book store in Austin called Book People 
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With regards to the books title Fahrenheit 451 the melting point of Tin is about 450, so are we the ‘Tin Man’?
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And with so much money, and with it political influence, how would anyone trust an organisation like that? Too big to fail, I hope so!
I bet the cost of that Popemobile could feed a starving African country alone.
I pray for the day we collectively abandon all religion, as it’s been a very good way to control the masses by guilt so far and a promise they can’t substantiate, they wouldn’t even if they could because of faith and you have to believe blindly or you are not worthy.
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Remember, in about 2 weeks “the deplorables” will take a great collective lump. Lets just humor them for now? NAH!
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We hope!
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There’s an old saying that I think applies to the Trump campaign:
“The wheels spinning but the hamsters dead”
Deplorables are like those kids who insist their beloved hamster is still alive, then force whatever friends they have to play with it.
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Ditto. But I’m pretty sure that would require a major shift in human nature, so I can’t say that I’m holding my breath.
“One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn’t require religion at all. It’s this: “Don’t do unto anybody else what you wouldn’t like to be done to you.” It seems to me that that’s all there is to it.” ~ Arthur C. Clarke
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And that’s where we part company. (Incidentally the author P D James gets it - in one of her books she has a police detective who graduated in theology, which trained him in understanding the ways in which people delude themselves.) Myths do invent themselves. In oral traditions stories get elaborated. I expect you have stories in your family history that have been handed down where nobody has consciously lied, they have just misremembered and improved. We do, with different narratives down different family lines which have a core of original truth but have diverged. The Gospels depended, for instance, on oral tradition by the time they were written down.
A good example is the Battle of Tannenberg (the original one): estimates of the number who died vary from over a million to a few tens of thousands, and that was a large battle with many literate people present. Nobody was lying; they were telling the truth as they perceived it. (In some languages it is particularly easy to get numbers wrong; for instance in Russian “pyatdyesat” fifty and “pyatsot” five hundred, in German “neunzehn” 19 and “neunzig” 90.)
Lying implies intent, and I think this is very unproven for the Biblical narratives.
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Can’t agree more!
If you look through various religious texts and perceive from them a basic moral code on how we should treat each other, originally written that way to impart an understanding of human nature and to nurture the future generations growth, strength and to protect them, but empathise with another less fortunate and help, the rest is just BS, and I am in agreement 100 percent.
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I respect your position; but yes, we’ll have to disagree. My uncle liked to tell a fun story about one of our ancestors. I finally asked him, do you really know that, or do you just like the sound of it? His slightly sheepish answer: my grandfather told it to him, but he didn’t really know. It was a harmless enough lie, but he was lying, even though one of the people he lied to was himself. To quote Parmenides: nihil fit ex nihilo.
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I don’t think the effects of religion are universally bad, but I think that working from delusional framework leads to errors and opens the door for abuse, which is why we’d be better off without it, IMO.
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Having (unfortunately) grown up in a small conservative Texas town, the public library required permission slips to be signed by parents for anyone under 17 who wanted to read fiction not specifically for children. I remember handing my grandmother the note so I could read Doc Savage (yeah, a permission slip to read Doc Savage!). She was so furious at the library I was afraid she wouldn’t sign the thing.
I don’t remember having to sign a permission slip for my own kids, but I’m pretty sure if I did, I probably included a blanket permission stating they could read whatever the hell they wanted.
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What the hell… like 13 year old boys was the target age for those stories.
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