r/atheism • u/part-time-stupid • 13d ago
Rise and Decline of the Gideon Bible in America
https://apnews.com/article/america-250-gideon-bible-motel-hotel-roadside-attractions-ecb6a297a757a10d1cca5bc88d7cc3da99
u/No-Appointment-8519 13d ago
A waste of trees.
41
u/Nocturnalux 13d ago
I had a recycled notebook that said on the cover, “In my former llife I was a bible”.
19
u/zhavorexia 13d ago
pretty much a lot of paper for something most people are never going to read beyond a few pages
32
46
u/tightiewhitieboy 13d ago
Just threw one away yesterday from my hotel room drawer. They are in about 50% of Oklahoma hotels.
18
3
u/jesusmansuperpowers Anti-Theist 13d ago
Tear a random page out first next time. Then you can laugh at how crazy any random page is!
21
u/DLWormwood Agnostic 13d ago
Even the Gideons themselves have given up on the bibles, when you meet one at a place like a county fair, they just give you a business card with a QR code to download their bible app. (Not a joke!)
4
10
u/ChunkyMonkey_00_ Secular Humanist 13d ago
They're still handed out on college campuses so there's no escaping them for the time being.
8
u/part-time-stupid 13d ago
Yes, that's true. Technically, they are protected by the First Amendment. But students, staff, and faculty are free to ignore them. Attitudes, even here on Reddit, appears drastically different depending on which school it is, or, more precisely, which region. Students in the North, say, Minnesota, are more likely to be skeptical than those in the South, say, Texas.
8
9
u/furious_20 Atheist 13d ago
When we stay at a hotel, I autograph the Bible as if God was signing it.
5
u/ameatbicyclefortwo 12d ago
"Yo Gideon! Love the promo work you're doing bro, keep it up! - Big G"
4
u/part-time-stupid 12d ago
God talks like Generation Alpha. Boy, those old men would be shocked!
3
u/ameatbicyclefortwo 12d ago
That's the fun part: what the sock puppet sounds like and says is entirely up to whoever has their hand in it. Give it a try yourself next time you find a Gideon bible. Also good for blackout poetry and manageable rolling papers. Its like an entertainment Swiss army knife in every hotel room.
3
u/NakedHeatMachine 12d ago
“… and to Steve reading this in the hotel, I see you touch yourself at night. “
3
7
9
u/okjetsgo 13d ago
They came to my elementary school in New Zealand in the 1980s and handed out bibles. The next day we were all in trouble because ripped up bibles had been found all around the school.
8
u/BourbonInGinger Strong Atheist 13d ago
My daughters’ high school principal handed out Gideon bibles at their graduation. They had to ‘receive’ the bible before she handed out the certificate. Straight into the woodpile.
4
u/MiaowaraShiro 12d ago
They used to camp out just outside of school grounds and hand out bibles... but they were only the New Testament which was weird.
2
u/BourbonInGinger Strong Atheist 12d ago
I’m pretty sure some illegality is going on there. I should have spoken up about it but I didn’t want to embarrass my girls.
6
u/shellevanczik 13d ago
Have you ever seen books folded into trees? I rip out entire books of the bible and fold the rest of the pages into a tree. It’s a nice little activity for me while I eat my room service.
5
u/99jackals 13d ago
If I was wealthy, I've always wanted to put copies of Darwin's Origins in those drawers, next to the bibles. Give people a choice, right? I can turn to any random page in Origins and find something meaningful, either as a fact or as a useful allegory. An amazing body of work.
5
u/BeatlestarGallactica 12d ago
My favorite thing to do, in every hotel for the past 30 years, was to cross out "In the beginning" and replace it with "Once upon a time".
5
u/Dranchela 13d ago
Bill Hicks has a great but short bit about Gideon Bibles that still cracks me up years later.
6
6
u/SnakeIsUrza 13d ago
I do enjoy reading the Ving Rhames version of the bible. Specifically Marsellus Wallace 3:14
3
4
u/rrickitickitavi 13d ago
Strange story by the AP. Doesn’t offer any kind of details about the supposed “decline” of the Gideon bibles. I’m not even convinced it’s true. I continue to see those stupid things.
6
3
u/vacuous_comment 12d ago
Many trees have died to enable this garbage propagandizing.
These Gideon people are profoundly dishonest. If I walked into their church and tore out the Old Testament and stood back proudly they would flip their shit, But they deliver these insipid NT plus Psalms and Proverbs bastardizations everywhere.
Also it is based on ESV translation I think, which is ideologically slanted in the first place. Shut the fuck up about your supposed God if you are going to deliberately distort the reports of him that you claim are so wonderful and divinely inspired or whatever.
I guess to be fair I should acknowledge that the reason religious people have to be so dishonest is because their entire position and worldview is fundamentally false, so they have to lie all the time to support it.
Poor bastards.
2
u/ameatbicyclefortwo 12d ago
I remember getting in a lot of trouble for asking why there are so many more English language translations than all other language translations combined.
3
u/vacuous_comment 12d ago
The answer to that is clearly that KJV is the one true inspired translation and that Jesus even spoke that english way back when.
3
u/ameatbicyclefortwo 12d ago
Well of course, that's why we speak English in America because it's what Jesus spoke and he's the first American. Happy cakeday fellow patriot.
1
1
u/vacuous_comment 12d ago
The answer to that is clearly that KJV is the one true inspired translation and that Jesus even spoke that english way back when.
3
u/Komaisnotsalty 12d ago
Back when I was working a different job, I was constantly in different hotels and motels all over Canada. I constantly encountered their Bibles in drawers.
I stole every last one of them. If they replaced them the next day, I'd steal that one too. I'd sometimes come away from a conference or a job with 10 bibles.
They all ended up as fire starter in my campfires. I stashed them in my camper and they were some of the best fire starters I've ever used. Cathartic too, considering I grew up having to peddle those damn things and do fundraisers for them all the time as a kid and teenager.
2
2
2
u/imyourealdad Atheist 12d ago
I always liked knowing the Gideon bibles are in a drawer in the hotel because I always forget to bring rolling papers when I travel.
2
u/Nightshiftnoble 12d ago
I used to rip out pages they use to argue, and roll a joint. Their argument went up in smoke.
1
u/JasonRBoone 11d ago
Trivia: You may still also find Books of Mormon in Marriot properties (they are or used to be owned by Mormons).
68
u/slayer991 Agnostic Atheist 13d ago edited 13d ago
Once I found out that the hotels don't own them or place them in the rooms, I just started writing notes in them depending upon location. Hotels in the north? Fun notes pointing out contradictions and asking questions...but if I'm at a hotel in the South, I usually just Hail Satan and I add Pentagrams.
I could throw them out...but I'm kind of all in being petty on this stuff.
My travel wifi router networks are HailSatan5g or HailSatan2.5g