Well, now that Costco says it isn’t fiction, it must be true. All this arguing, all the debates, all the wars could have so easily been avoided.
All we need to do now is get Costco to label the global warming books as non-fiction.
3 Likes
I know I’d be hard-pressed to find really religious people here on BB, but what’s with the pointed ridicule of the Bible? I mean, Christians should respect the Muslim faith, right? Don’t we want them to get along? But if you don’t want to respect the Christian faith, isn’t that a little hypocritical?
I don’t think that the Bible is fact, but I acknowledge that some people do, and I think that’s fine.
5 Likes
I don’t think that’s fine. That shit starts wars and gets science classes perverted with creationism.
7 Likes
The Bible has recountings of actual historic events, as well as transcriptions of ancient legal systems and the like. It also has fictional stories meant to illustrate a point or provide a shared belief system to its readers. It’s hard to classify it one way or the other.
The Bible is a fascinating work and you don’t have to be religious to appreciate it.
9 Likes
I don’t care much for people who believe that a supreme being commands me to live by certain metaphors.
5 Likes
Thanks to our U.S. constitution, I respect everyone’s right to have their own beliefs. I am under no obligation to respect those beliefs. Someday, I hope the believers learn to see the subtle difference here and that they are entitled to the former but not the latter.
9 Likes
The Christians I know believe in evolution and global warming, and don’t believe that scientific learning and belief are mutually exclusive. I don’t either.
Not all religious folks are hate-mongering closed-minded right-wingers.
2 Likes
True. Just the ones who feel compelled to make other people’s lives miserable. If all “spiritual” people would simply moderate themselves and use their beliefs exclusively as an internal comfort/guide then no one outside their circles would be making negative generalizations based on previous behavior.
2 Likes
Hey, I totally agree with that. But when people mock something like the Bible, they’re not just insulting the lunatic zealots; they’re insulting the reasonable believers, too.
I think what initiated the mocking was the outrage by the person who found the book listed as “fiction”. Hopefully after the apology, the book will be categorized as “religion” and not nonfiction, but I wonder if Costco really has all that many categories. Are they routine book sellers? My point being, are they limited to fiction/nonfiction tagging?
2 Likes
Could we get away with “Folk Tales”?
1 Like
You’re right, unfortunately.
1 Like
There’s a big difference between respecting people who hold a particular belief, and respecting the belief itself. Sadly, many religious people confuse the two very easily.
Similarly, there’s a difference between respecting a belief, and treating it as though it is as factual as its adherents think it is.
8 Likes
Fair enough. At the same time, I think that some of the people who’ve posted would be mocking it even if it hadn’t gotten the preacher upset. Besides, I think the preacher’s Tweet saying
doesn’t sound like outrage to me.
I don’t know how Costco is set up for book selling. That’s a good point though, too.
2 Likes
sadly, even if the label just said “Book,” some pastor somewhere would be up in arms because it didn’t say “The Good Book”.
1 Like
Well it wasn’t screaming outrage, but it certainly qualified as snarky annoyed commentary intended to create larger outrage, since it was posted on social media. It’s the equivalent of Doctorow writing, “Rob Ford, excellent mayor…hmmm”.
I think it would have to stand as an historical document at least. It certainly wasn t intended as fiction in the modern sense of the word. I tend to think that some parts at least could arguably be taken as transmissions of eye witness testimony, however corrupted by time… We have the case of other cultures transmitting stories orally for centuries if not millenia, only recently committed to text, that were taken as myth/religion and in some cases turned out to have more than a grain of literal truth to them, when seen in the correct light.
And that section should be kept in a separate room. To get into that room, you must show ID to prove you are an adult.
1 Like
Persuasive or … pervasive?
1 Like
It doesn’t qualify as a history document by today’s standards either. People who write history books have to have at least some other evidence of events to back up assertions, like correspondence or Newspaper articles and the like.They don’t toss in a metaphor loaded with judgement. You can’t have a mass of whimsical improbabilities. Otherwise, Lincoln as a vampire hunter would qualify as history.
5 Likes
