For all you UK residents I have made this petition on the Prime Minister's petition site. If you agree that Gideon bibles should be removed from hotel rooms then I urge you to sign up, it only takes a few moments.
If you want to link to the petition the address is http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/removebibles/, or just link to this post.
04/04/2007
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10 comments:
Isn't this something to ask the individual hotels, rather than enacting through law?
I would urge people to write to hotels, however in the past this has proved unsuccessful.
I would suggest that it is time to step up the pressure.
Ed, this topic has cropped up a lot recently on various atheist sites. Must be serendipity.
Anyway, I've blogged my 2 centimes worth and linked to your petition here: http://terrecuite.blogspot.com/2007/04/gideons-bibles.html
I don't think government action which limits freedom of expression is the right answer.
How about a "Dawkins Society" that donates copies of "The God Delusion" to hotels instead.
In the free exchange of ideas, reality may lose some of the debates but it always wins the arguments.
Freedom of expression does not mean putting books in hotel rooms. I'm not saying that the bible should be banned. I for one, and many others, just don't want to find it in hotel rooms.
Unfortunately there is no movement either free-thought or specifically atheist that could come close to matching the Gideons' funding.
As has been explained elsewhere this could lead to a library of different faith and non-faith books appearing in each room. Would it be fair to put Dawkins in every room but not Harris?
At the end of the day hotel rooms provide accommodation. If you want to read the bible/koran/Dawkins in a hotel room, bring it with you.
“Unfortunately there is no movement either free-thought or specifically atheist that could come close to matching the Gideons' funding.”
Not yet. But give it time.
“Would it be fair to put Dawkins in every room but not Harris?”
No, Harris should be there also as well as the Koran, Confucius, Gilgamesh and the pantheon of Greek and Roman gods. Does this seem ridiculous? It will to hotel owners too. If you want to win an argument, you do it with better evidence and logic. In the States during the civil rights struggles of the 1960’s the day wasn’t won by the government passing laws (although it helped). The scenes of Birmingham broadcast on television won it. When reasonable people are truly forced by strong evidence to evaluate long held positions, they can change. Trying to do it by force only reinforces their resolve.
Nah I like 'em. The last time I was in a hotel my Jewish buddy grabbed the book of mormon, I grabbed the one left by the gideons and we just went back and forth exchanging crazy quotes. I honestly just wanted to find the bit christians use to justify hating gays. I was armed with only the knowledge that if I'm "looking for some good hate, try leviticus." Sure enough I found it.
It was way more entertaining than anything on TV, at least until family guy came on.
I'm down with moving bibles to the fiction (sci/fi?) section of book stores, but I hate censorship too much to be ok with banning gideons from distributing bibles.
Look,i'm not religious,i'm atheist or maybe agnostic,but if i find a bible in my hotel room,you know what i do,i don't read it.With 'crackpot religion' being taught in schools,God advising Bush and a war on terror which is actually acting as a catalyst for terror. I don't think its a big deal.I don't press my trousers but i'm not gonna start a petition to get trouser presses removed from hotels.
Sure, I will bring my own Bible and another one to leave behind in the night stand for the next guest so they can apply all the power their reason to the Divine Book!
Welcome to the conversation seven years on!
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