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That is a great idea, gomedome. As for Gideons in the nightstands or desks
of hotels, take it from me, they're still there. I haven't been in a hotel yet that didn't have a Gideon in it, including a couple owned by Indians. It's part of the American experience, I guess...
posted by
saul_relative
on September 2, 2007 at 11:16 AM
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saul_relative - the last hotel room I was in was in South Bend, Indiana
Just a few months back. It was owned by an East Indian gentleman and I was rather surprised when I opened the night stand drawer to find a bible in it. That is almost the entirety of what I base the statement " . . .some hotel rooms still have bibles in them." . . . I don't really know if my finding one is a relic of the past or still a common thing. A month prior to that I was in a room near Montreal that had a unique idea. They had a small wooden rack with about a dozen used books in it sitting on the bureau. The little sign on the rack said "free to read with our compliments but if you take this book with you when you leave, please drop a twoonie in the box at the main desk in the lobby" . . . it was a fundraiser for a local charity and a great way to sell used books I thought.
posted by
gomedome
on August 31, 2007 at 10:49 AM
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I read a report not to long ago that most of the hotels and motels in
the United States are now owned by Chinese interests. And, if this is true, how come I see so many Indians working at so many of them? Be this information as it may, how come we don't see more copies of the teachings of Buddha or Confuscious? And in the Indian-owned hotels, the
Bhagavad Gita? Now, that would be interesting. How about the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" and the Constitution of the United States? You can only read the same holy book so many times without it becoming an insult to your intelligence...
posted by
saul_relative
on August 31, 2007 at 10:27 AM
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sannhet - a person needs something to occupy them so they don't raid the
mini bar.
posted by
gomedome
on August 30, 2007 at 6:10 PM
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Justi - where does one start when someone leaves a comment that inquires as
to motive by suggesting intent?
". . . to hopefully destroy any belief in the Holy Bible?" . . . Yeah, that's right, I'm hoping that a blog read by a few dozen people daily will destroy the beliefs of countless millions.
How utterly ridiculous. We've had this discussion before, the answers are all still the same.
posted by
gomedome
on August 30, 2007 at 6:04 PM
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Gome -
What a great idea! I travel a lot as well. Now I may have a hobby for my travels.
posted by
sannhet
on August 30, 2007 at 5:24 PM
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gomedome
This question is not meant to be catty, offensive or anything other than I am interested. Why is it so important that you, who are not a believer, will give a part of each day to hopefully destroy any belief in the Holy Bible? If you don't believe in it why do you care if others do?
posted by
Justi
on August 30, 2007 at 4:30 PM
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posted by
A-and-B
on August 30, 2007 at 2:26 PM
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Xeno-x - the entire issue that I contend in this post is not so much the
validity of the writings or how people have arrived at their interpretations but more the implications of revising beliefs of years gone by.
The point being that if certain beliefs can be revisited and altered to suit new information as we uncover it, what does that say about the beliefs that were widely adhered to for so many centuries? Further; which of what is purported to be universal truths which are widely adhered to today, will suffer the same debunking in the future? This can even be extended further in the notion that if so much of what earlier man believed to be true has been proven to not be true, what portion of beliefs as held today are false beliefs?
posted by
gomedome
on August 30, 2007 at 12:24 PM
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in Genesis I
We are reading the work of someone who had read other works. Taking passages from other (mostly Babylonian) creation stories, the author molded it to suit his (probably a man) religion. I figure that, quite by accident, this author did not specifiy the length of days, thinking that everyone around him assumed the night and day cycle (no hours existed at that time). And same author did not realize that he had opened up to readers the possibility that before the sun and moon and stars were placed in the dome above, the days could possibly be of any length.
But then again, we cannot look into the mind of this long-dead author. He had to have taken ideas from more than one source, and realized that enormous eras had existed. Genesis II gives us a synopsis of humans moving from hunter-gatherer to agrarian societies in a day or so, implying that the author of that passage had intimations of events that had unfolded thousands of years before he wrote.
Christians, of course, have a different view of these two passages than Jews do. I have wondered in the past how people separated from the writing by a millenium and a half (at least, and in many cases, by about THREE millenia) can be so certain about its meaning, more so than the Jews, who happened to have written the book in the first place.
posted by
Xeno-x
on August 30, 2007 at 9:18 AM
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