Lego Bible Too Racy For Sam's Club 484
localman writes with this excerpt from CNET: "Through his hit Web site and three popular books, [author Brendan] Smith has spread the gospel of 'The Brick Testament.' But now, because of what it says are concerns about 'mature content,' Sam's Club, one of the nation's largest retailers, has banned in-store sales of the fourth book in the series, The Brick Bible.
Okay, ALMOST gave a damn (Score:5, Insightful)
BUT then I read the article and found out that Brendan Smith SELF-CENSORED his book at the request of Sam's Club in order to make more money.
So... I am supposed to care that a guy who willingly took a dick up his ass got more then he bargained for?
Hell no. Smith approves of censor ship in name of the almighty dollar well, then he has to go all the way. If you want me to care about your lack of freedom you shouldn't have given it away first. This guy has no principles clearly, he only cares about selling less books.
Let this be a warning, you can NOT negotiate with religious extremist. Give them a finger and they rip of your arm then beat you with it. Why do you think Larry Flint the smut peddler was defended by civil rights groups? Not for the sake of porn itself.
Not censorship... (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm, no matter what happened (I'm not familiar with the book), a store deciding they don't want to sell a product isn't censorship.
Hypocritical (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad Excerpt! (Score:2, Insightful)
Haven't seen the book, but given that it was authored by an atheist, is it possibly taking a jab at the Bible, rather than being a 'bible told through Legos'? If so, maybe after some complaints, someone looked at it more closely and decided they didn't want to sell that kind of product.
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
News flash: Christianity is only 33% of the world belief, so just by that measure, most of the world doesn't believe in the contents, making it a work of fiction in their view.
Then there's that the bible references plenty events that clearly didn't happen, such as a global flood or the plagues of Egypt, which definitely is fiction.
Re:What is this doing on Slashdot? (Score:2, Insightful)
What is this doing on Slashdot? Let's see...
Has all the hallmarks of a Slashdot story.
Completely logical actions... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parents pick up what appears to be a children's book, later discover it uses legos to illustrate sex in a few of the images. Sam's gets numerous complaints, pulls the book off the shelves, and tells the author the book sells well, but they won't stock more unless he removes the few sexual images. He does, and his books continue to sell rather well. Honestly, the whole "Bible" detail of this story is simply a confounding factor to make slashdotters say OMG religion so dumb! Censorship! etc. Does the KJV speak in plain terms about sex? Sure, if you speak English euphemisms from the 1600s. This is why parents are a lot more comfortable reading the KJV to their kids, rather than showing them lego people having sex. Let's all go back to our caves now; nothing to see here.
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Insightful)
I am failing to follow your argument there. What does the % of population believing something have to do with it being fact or fiction?
Re: events that didn't happen... how do you know that? Can you name one?
Actually that's not how belief works. Unless someone is brainwashed as a kid, you have to provide evidence that something is real for them to believe any of it and not expect them to try and disprove it.
Re:Completely logical actions... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, so it's okay to read to children so long they don't actually understand what it means? And the problem of representing it graphically is that it makes it understandable?
I think there should be consistency: Either both the book and the bible should be removed, or both the book and the bible should be fine to sell.
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think "evidence" means what you think it means.
Re:Facebook Post Suggests the Website is the Probl (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't parents know how to manage kids' use of computers & the internet?
Re:Not censorship... (Score:5, Insightful)
So any product WalMart/Sam's Club doesn't sell is now the victim of censorship? No wonder Slashdotters have such a warped vision of the world.
So, logically, if/when WalMart/Sam's Club and maybe a handful other megacorporations own all production and distribution of everything, there will be no censorship, since it isn't called that when you use the power of money and connections instead of the power of law and police?
Yay, future!
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: events that didn't happen... how do you know that? Can you name one?
- flood... many Christians don't see the flood as global.
Right. And many Christians don't believe there was a walking talking snake and magical fruit in a garden of eden either. In fact the majority of Christians accept evolution, effectively acknowledging the entirety of Genesis is fiction.
However I find it odd that you are complaining about him calling the bible fiction, and somehow your argument against him is to point out that many Christians accept that it's fictional.
You're just fussing over how much of it is fictional. No one I know of disputes that many of the people, places, and events events in the bible are historical, just like no one disputes that many of the people, places, and events events of greek mythology are historical. There probably was a real battle-hero person named Hercules, just like Jesus was almost certainly a real person. However when you know that Medusa and Harpies are fiction, I'm baffled why would anyone believe it wasn't fictional for Hercules to be the son of a God with the strength of a hundred men? And when you know a global flood and walking talking snakes are fictional, I'm baffled why anyone would anyone believe it wasn't fictional for Jesus to be the son of a God and rose from the dead?
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Re:To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
Science and religion cannot co-exist because they are both searches for truth, but have different notions of the nature of truth. Religion treats basic truths as already known (my god exists and is responsible for everything) and then seeks to justify and glorify this base knowledge. Science assumes that truth is unknown and seeks to get closer to this unknown goal, regardless of where the search takes us. For religion to co-exist with science, the first step would have to be for you to admit that you might be worshiping the incorrect god and to be open to switching gods should evidence cast doubt on your current position; since that's incompatible with the very concept of "faith", the two approaches are irreconcilable.
what else is new? (Score:3, Insightful)
That probably has something to do with the fact that the Bible itself is vulgar and violent: it contains human sacrifice, genocide, infidelity, and incest, much of it actually approved by God!
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
"True religion is free of dogma and superstition and embraces all truth."
I'm not sure if you are aware of this... but when you take a bunch of beliefs and filter out the false ones, keeping the truth: a) you are going to have to eliminate some of them, and b) what you are left with is dogma.
"whether or not they are true is completely secondary"
Hmm... so Christ didn't care about truth? It doesn't matter if things are true or not? Didn't you just say Christ wants us to embrace all truth?
Nice post of post-modern mumbo-jumbo though. Unfortunately, what is true for you doesn't happen to be true for the rest of us. ;)
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Insightful)
Christian churches vastly overreport their membership. A very large number of Christians neither knows, nor agrees with, official Christian dogma and beliefs. Many are nothing but "cultural Christians".
WMT caves to religious hypocrites... (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Insightful)
I also think that atheists go too far... they see all of the problems of religion, but do not see the clear path through those problems to a set of beliefs that are not bound by the religionist superstitions and dogma.
That's called philosophy, not religion.
True religion is free of dogma and superstition and embraces all truth.
What is this "true religion" you speak of? All you did was redefine religion to what you wanted it to be. Let's try a dictionary [yahoo.com] instead:
"1. a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
1.b. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship."
Of course, the average person doesn't have any direct experience with such powers, so they rely on religious authority in the form of dogma, prophets, religious texts, and the like.
I happen to believe that it is only in and through Christ that one can have the most personal, the deepest, and the most significant growth.
Ah, so this is your "true" religion. You have accepted religious authority from a prophet that was written about 2,000 years ago. You could also go with secular humanism and ditch the mysticism.
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Insightful)
I have plenty of evidence on which to believe Christianity to be true.... and conversely, plenty of evidence to believe other worldviews are false.
Oh, good, then you're a good person to ask this question to. Why is there only one Christ? Surely an all-powerful god would give the same message to everybody in the world throughout all times? Yet we don't see Christian teachings in isolated places like China, the Americas, Africa, etc. in ancient history. And where was the Christian message before Christ?
It's like different people, isolated around the world and left to their own devices, came up with different answers. Yet 2,000 years later we're supposed to believe the Christian Bible is the one true religion, and all those other ones are not.
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you prove the distinction below. You start from the assumption of that the bible must contain truth, or at least be valuable, and try to interpret until it seems to fit. I go in the opposite direction: I look at each part, evaluate it on its own merits, and then assign a worth to the whole based on how the parts hold up.
Then it's useless to even try to guess what it might mean, if you can create any tortured interpretation you want. I have no need to try to reconcile the bible with reality, as I'm not invested in it. If the bible's account doesn't add up, I don't try to twist the language into sort of fitting: I simply conclude it's wrong and move on.
Simpler explanations: whoever wrote the "all wiped out" part initially was wrong, or whoever wrote the later encounter of Caanites was wrong about them being Caanites, or the order of events is mistaken.
Point. But it's still quite a few dead people, and the rest of the plague should kill quite a few more.
But that's precisely it. In science we do intentionally do everything in an overly wooden way. Correctness is paramount, and imprecision is heavily frowned upon. One thing that makes me so sure that the bible is bunk is the amount of fudging needed. If it was 100% solid that'd be impressive indeed, but it isn't, and needs "intrepretative keys" like you say above, and each of those I see as a failure.
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
re: #1 - OK, for example, explain consciousness within the atheistic worldview
So if you were alive before 1700, I suppose you would be asking us to explain lightening within the atheistic worldview? Just because we can't explain it doesn't mean it is therefore God.
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I do not understand how someone who is an atheist lives believing that nothing has any meaning and will inevitably end in the heat death of the universe.
Maybe because atheists find meaning in their own. lives and live fully knowing this is all there is and it's best to make use of what we're given.I don't need the promise of an after life to make this life worth living.
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Insightful)
Overreporting their membership is different than skewed statistics. Membership has nothing to do with what a person believes in their heart, it has to do with who went through the membership process and is in regular attendence. That is rather easy to measure.
You are right however that polls can show wildly varying statistics on the number of Christians in an area. For instance, start your poll with "do you believe in Jesus", and you might get 80% yes. Continue on to "do you believe that Jesus saves" and you might get 70%. Finally ask "do you believe in a personal God who judges people for their sins", and watch that number plummet to about 40%.
Christianity has become very much a part of US culture to the extent where people will declare themselves christians simply because they try to live by some moral code and be nice to others. Im sure everyone who understands this-- athiest and christian alike-- would agree that it is not an ideal state of affairs, when 40-50% of your population doesnt know what they believe.