When I first came to the USA, I recall being scared and shocked upon going to the hobbies section of a magazine shop and seeing all the different gun magazines. Come to think of it, it still scares me a bit, but I suppose I’m used to it – cultural differences and all that. Today I found something I’d not noticed before in the magazine section of Borders at Sunset and Vine that scares and shocks me a bit. I’m not sure I should just leave it at cultural differences. It seems more like a problem, to me. Let me see if it jumps out at you:
Is it just me, or is one of these magazines scarily out of place?* (Click for larger).
The magazine I’m thinking of had, upon closer examination, scholarly-sounding discussions of the parting of the Red Sea, the Resurrection, and other miracles, as though they were historical and scientific facts. It is published by the American Bible Society. Now don’t get me wrong: – I’ve nothing against people discussing and believing in that material, but I cannot understand why it is in the History and Science section. I checked that it was not just one magazine gone astray. There was a whole pile of them in place. What is going on?
This is depressing.
-cvj
(*The obvious candidate, New Scientist, is not there, so save that joke for another time.)
Think of it like this. Imagine that you were in a bookstore in a town with many immigrants, and there, among the astronomy and science magazines, was a magazine called “The Scientific Truths of the Koran”. Would you disapprove? If not, you probably think that all religions are as good as all kinds of science. But if you would indeed disapprove of the display of the Koran magazine among the science and history products, then you are really saying that the Koran is bad because it is full of lies and terrorism, but the Bible should be treated as science because it is, you know, the Bible. And we should believe in the Bible because, well, we should.
Personally I think that magazines and books about religion should not be mixed with magazines and books about science.
Seriously, no more Night Sky? But how will we know where the stars are at night? …
And if you’re like me and don’t actually look at the words on the covers, just the pretty pictures, then the Scientific American with the 3,300,000 year old skull jumps out as being the oddball out, until the Criminal Mind on the MIND magazine reminds you that it’s not another nebula/planet/thing-like-that (especially if you say the swirly stuff behind the hand is colorful, and therefore a nebula) …
Phil, Night Sky will no longer be publishing ??!! I just checked the S&T site. You’re right. Well, I hope that means that Kelly Beatty can return to S&T and apply his immense talents there. I thought that the magazine’s high quality standards decreased after he left.
I’m usually far more disturbed by seeing the Science (and History) magazines in the “Men’s” section.
grrr…
As for:
“I’m still waiting for someone to come out and say that these are myths and that myth has its own reality which is not provable by the scientific method.”
I’ve heard that in the Catholic church for years.
That much is quite obvious…. A kid uses the sectioning in a bookstore as a guide. It is not coercion, but it is nevertheless to be accepted (especially by a child) that if you pick up something in the science section that it might have something to do with science. Otherwise why have signs at all? It forms an impression and a basis for further misconceptions. Shame to get tht from a bookstore, a place you’d think you could trust as being run by people who have a love of knowledge. Or are you saying that children should only be accompanied by adults in bookstores? (Adults who themselves might not be able to tel the difference…)
-cvj
I cannot see the difference between teaching kids intelligent design in the science classroom in school and having pseudo-scientific magazines about the bible in the science section of a bookstore.
Perhaps you’re not thinking hard enough. Kids in a classroom are a captive audience, and the teacher is a figure of authority. There isn’t much choice in the matter – where you send your kid to school is determined mostly by which school district you live in, unless you can afford private school or you are able to provide home schooling. And a child cannot skip classes without the State getting on your back.
There is no such coercion (it is not the most apt workd, but I can’t think of another) in a bookstore.
Perhaps you are better able than me to draw the line.
I cannot see the difference between teaching kids intelligent design in the science classroom in school and having pseudo-scientific magazines about the bible in the science section of a bookstore. It is all part of the same thing, differening only in degree perhaps. But I still consider it alarming. Perhaps this is because I consider bookstores (especially given the continuing and growing faliure of schools in many communities) to be a vital part of the list of places where people can come to get vital educational materials.
Your position suggests that you consider bookstores to be entirely places of entertainment, and not education. I don’t, but we can agree to disagree.
I’m not suggesting legislation or anything. Just that people be educated to the point where they can see that the picture in the post above simply does not make sense, and where the bookstore shelf-stacker (no matter how religious they may be -that is their right-) is educated enough to see that it it does not make sense.
Best,
-cvj
Dr Johnson,
“This is the same beautiful logic that has store managers deciding whether to give someone their medical (or other) treatment or not – based on their personal religious beliefs.”
I think this is covered by what I was saying in that it is illegal. I think the magazine example stays within the limits of advocating a particular view (free speech) without having the goverment imposing a particular view (freedom of and from religion).
“It is also the same logic that leads to people pushing to teach intelligent design in science class.”
While my devotion to democracy finds me respecting that people might want to advocate teaching their religion in a class, separation of church and state makes this illegal in a public school but of course, this kind of teaching already happens in private schools.
Though, an overview class of global religion would probably do some people some good. It seems to me that it would at least help Americans interface better with people coming from other more traditional cultures. Also probably the cure to fanaticism is to let people know every culture has their own creation story and there are and have been thousands of cultures.
“However you should not inflict your religious beliefs on others.”
I am not sure how an odd placement of a magazine is inflicting the belief on others. Do you mean there should be no religious advocacy in places where people not of that religion might hear or see it? I am not really for this myself. But on that score, I do wish freedom from corporate propagandizing whether religious or otherwise but that’s not really been the standard in public spaces.
It is after all possible to have a religious book store isn’t it? And one can have a secular book store too. Is there a law against something in between? How about a ostensibly secular bookstore with a sometimes religious stacking policy? I suppose we tend to have an expectation of blandness in big brands like Borders. But why is this?
TheGraduate
Oh, sure. This is the same beautiful logic that has store managers deciding whether to give someone their medical (or other) treatment or not – based on their personal religous beliefs. Lovely cultural choice that is.
It is also the same logic that leads to people pushing to teach intelligent design in science class. Where have you been the last few years?
Sorry, but what you say is utterly ridiculous.
That is not live and let live. I am very happy for the religious to exist and be part of society. However you should not inflict your religious beliefs on others. Plain and simple.
-cvj
(Sorry to seem harsh about this… but this is such a major and common misunderstanding of what democracy is.)
It’s probably less a matter of a store policy that the religious magazine were placed in that section and more a matter of whoever was stocking the shelves wasn’t paying attention to the actual content but only looking at the space pictures.
I think two corner stones of America are capitalism and democracy. On the first, perhaps this placement of the biblical magazine flatters enough christian buyers that they purchase more copies of the magazine while not dissuading science buyers enough that they don’t buy the scientific american or whatever they were looking for. But even if this placement is wrong and doesn’t make money over all, it’s experimentation with different placements of objects in stores that leads to discovering the most profitable places to put things.
On the issue of democracy, I would not want to one day live in a country where the place I put a magazine in a store was going to be an issue. Sure, for a person who doesn’t take religion factually, placing that book there is as bad as saying 1+1 = 3 but the point is we all know there are devoutly religious people who think of their books as speaking the literal truth. They not only exist but they are part of society. They can be bookstore managers or shelf stackers or even bookstore customers. And they have their own beliefs about the nature of how we got here. I have always wondered why people care so much about devout religious people in developed countries. Why not go to the Amazon or Papua New Guinea and find some animists to quarrel with in addition to admonishing the American christians or the muslims of Turkey? Seperation of church and state ends with the government. Private citizens are allowed to think of the bible as fact if they want. One of the joys of multiculturalism, is that there are alternative cultures, where different ‘facts’ come into play. As long as these new ‘facts’ are compatible with democracy and the law, what more could one want?
The bible magazine was in with science because all the shelf space in the “irrepoducible Idiocy” section was taken up by unsold issues of “New Scientist”.
Ha! I got the joke in here.
Clifford, after hearing this report from your local bookstore, I truly mourn the fact that our Founding Fathers were remiss in not including Separation of Church/Religion from Reason/Science as one of their chief mottos for Revolution. After all, in retrospect, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson (both celebrated for their scientific minds) ought to have had the foresight to embed Separation of Religion and Science into the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. On second thought, though, this historial misfortune perhaps is just an illustration of hindsight–instead of foresight–being in sharp focus.
Ah, I thought for a moment you meant “Night Sky”, also in that picture. I have been informed it will no longer be published. I have a column in it, so now I’m looking for work…
I’m still waiting for someone to come out and say that these are myths and that myth has its own reality which is not provable by the scientific method.
I can only hope that this was written facetiously, because otherwise, a few thousand (world-wide) colleagues and peers have dedicated their academic careers to something that apparently doesn’t exist. On the other side of that coin, the academic discipline of the archaeology of the ancient middle east, has major competition from zealously funded biblical archaeological studies performed by laypersons whose sole objectives are to “prove” the literal textual referents of their King James and Revised Standard editions of their bibles. That, coupled with the ongoing efforts of the Israeli government to destroy research sites and artifacts that differ from their vision of their own historical record (bulldozers do amazing damage), and the interesting (and still not fully researched) attack on the great museum in Baghdad that housed the finest collections of Mesopotamian artifacts, documents, records, etc.–we, historians of religions are finding it more difficult to do our jobs well. The sort of pulp magazines, as exampled above, are fodder that further encourages people to do great harm to our human history. What was that thing that Marx said about controlling the future?
pedant:- No I have not seen it. Maybe it is here on some cable channel or other… I don’t know. Will keep an eye out for it.
-cvj
I’m still waiting for someone to come out and say that these are myths and that myth has its own reality which is not provable by the scientific method.
I sort of say that, if you read some of the science/religion posts on my blog. I’ve never explicitly said that myths have their own reality, but I have said that certainly myths and fiction in generaly can be enlightening and valuable for people who think about them.
It is weird, though, to have that magazine in the middle of a whole bunch of science magazines. It is out of place.
Ok, can you stop with it now? Thanks.
-cvj
You should take on board one of the gun lobby’s cosmic insights, and apply it to the Book: Guns never do any harm; that’s done by those who pick them up. Entirely off topic: have you checked out any of Heston Blumenthal’s cookery programs, currently on air in the UK? I find that they cheer me up, whatever I run into in the Newsagent’s (except, perhaps, the news itself).
The first item here is worth reading too
http://users.aristotle.net/~russjohn/literary/rants11.html
http://users.aristotle.net/~russjohn/literary/guncon.html
[Extremely long quote deleted in view of the fact that the reader can just follow the above link, (and the fact that this thread is not primarily about gun control.) Sigh. -cvj]
I’d question putting Discover in with the science magazines as well.
As for gun magazines, I live in hunting country in a town named, of all things, *Rifle* I occasionally gives lectures on being a vegetarian at the local schools, and the kids are mystified that anyone wouldn’t eat meat. I asked my dad why he kept his hunting rifle when he hadn’t hunted in years, and he said (this was the 1970s), “In case the Soviets invade.” I was surprised that he actually thought the Soviet Communists might make it all the way to Rifle, Colorado. I realize that I wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for a long line of meat-eaters and hunters, but the fondness for guns now seems beyond ridiculous.
Hahahahaha! To be fair, it does have a vaguely astronomical-looking thing on the cover. 🙂
p.s. Hey! I like New Scientist! 😉
Hi Clifford, falsifiable Biblical prophecy was allegedly confirmed by events. The main problem with Moses’ theory of science (M-theory for short) in the Bible is the lack of beautiful, rigorously understood equations and the lack of repeatable experimental confirmation. Luckily, people don’t make those mistakes today in science (allegedly).
And as we all know the bible is not part of history nor does it contain any history what so ever.. or something..
The prevalence of guns in the US differs greatly by state. Where I went to college, there was a gun range on campus for the use of the students and staff. I’ve always felt that metals should be recycled, but the combination of 30-06 brass and empty beer cans was particularly disturbing.
My understanding for the origin of gun rights in the US is that it started as a reaction against British practice. In Britain, one required a certain social rank to legally own a firearm. Since the US was to be a land of the free, all men were granted rights equal to the best of the British. As is well known, during the revolution and war of 1812, private US citizens owned many times more warships than were owned by the federal government.
I’ve been in the UK for three months now, and I never noticed the lack of gun magazines, but now that you mention it… wow! I’m also a little shocked and awed by the bible magazine, but not surprised. I find that many devout Christians swear by the truth of these events based on “numerous reliable studies”. And when I’ve asked, “HOw reliable can they be? Wouldn’t incontrovertible proof of the bible’s veracity be very big news that everyone would know about?” I usually get unconvincing responses. But the point I’m trying to make is not that The Bible isn’t real (which would frankly go against my beliefs), but that there just isn’t that in-your-face proof these magazines pretend there is to generate sales. It’s like all the technological advances for anti-aging cream. If there really were such a breakthrough, I’d hear about it from Nature and other sources before those commercials for Nivea.
Well, whatever it is, it has no business in a science and history section. Just like religious material has no business in the science classroom.
Cheers,
-cvj
Well, both fundamentalists and atheist anti-religionists adopt the same assumption, except opposed to each other. The fundamentalists assume that the Bible events are real. The atheist anti-religionists also assume that the Bible events are supposed to be believed in as real, therefore can mock them and the believers as absurd. I’m still waiting for someone to come out and say that these are myths and that myth has its own reality which is not provable by the scientific method. “Biblical” pseudo-science is an attempt to appear “rational” and “scientific” rather than mythical.