Ooo...if teenagers in high school are anything like they were when I was in high school...those books are toast.

we used to build stuff out of piles of the gideon bibles distributed just outside the health science complex at the UW. when the grad students from the nearby department (who unaccountably saw us as competitors) discovered this, the game was on. a loop of our chaps and theirs was formed to collect the most bibles from those handing them out, (sporting ad-hoc labware disguises as there weren't that many of us and even gideons might suspect). in the end, they "won". and both religion and science 'lost' that day. strooth!

I would put money towards that excellent cause.

JESUS I'm tired of bible thumpers believing the bible is a cure-all. Nobody has any real objections to churches having the right to exist, so fuckers please just LEAVE THAT SHIT in your churches. Or if not be prepared for people coming in with the Koran and the Bible and the Tao Te Ching, and the Communist Manifesto, come to that.

Don't you know the Bible is a magical amulet that protects you against evil? It can even stop bullets!

That's from just having it around you or on your person, of course. God knows you shouldn't, you know, actually read it or anything. Evil libruls keep pointing out stuff that's actually IN the Bible. They are missing the WHOLE POINT.

Actually, putting copies of the Bible, Koran, maybe not Joy of Sex but perhaps The Awakening, and other books (but not books meant solely as jokes) in places for students to pick up if they want is a good idea. It has been going on for a long time. It's called having a library.

In my college literature and Western civilization classes, we had a segment on the Bible (and the Koran, Homeric Hymns and vedas, where appropriate) because it's had such an influence on literature. So there is a legitimate argument for having a Bible in the library or for including it among other formative works in relevant classes.

But yes, I'm just waiting for some science teacher who's required to teach creationism to teach a Hindu or Native American version of the creation story and see how that goes over.

I wish you could get them to pick up and read a basic math textbook this way.

The really funny thing is these kids are all internet babies. It's a bit like leaving a Roman chariot in the parking lot.

Bibles come in really handy if you run out of toilet paper.

@2, If you prevented even one wayward soul from getting their free Book-o-Fantasy tales from the Gideons then yes, science did win just a little bit that day.

So... is this going to actually happen?

What #1 said. When I was at high school, those Bibles would've been rounded up like Easter Eggs at a hunt and had God knows what done to them.

No problem here, so long as any other organization that wishes to "passively distribute" their literature in the same manner is equally welcome [and no "content" exception for The Joy of Gay Sex and the like, as the Bible has some truly heinous shit in it].

And I would be picking up a bible a day myself: coasters, tire chocks, door stops, rolling papers, paper weights, a thousand-and-one household uses.

See, for this to make sense, you have to understand how evangelicals think.

One, they believe that reading something is essentially the same thing as believing it.(That's why they have trouble with things like Harry Potter.)

Two, they believe that a plain, obvious, literal reading of the text of the Bible inevitably points one to evangelical doctrine.

Three, therefore, they believe that the world -- since it is demonstrably full of many people who are not evangelicals -- must be full of people who have never read the Bible.

Four, and of course, the Bible is the most instantly fascinating work ever produced, so the only possible reason a person could have for never having read the Bible is never having had access to a Bible.

(I say this having been raised around evangelicals. They don't seem to have changed much in the years since I left the church -- if anything, they're worse, more insular and unwilling to consider how the world looks to people not of the tribe.)

Freedom from Religion Foundation just posted this on facebook. Awesome!

http://www.wogx.com/story/20610888/athei…

@6:

Yes, but you can't get warm fuzzies a la the Gideons for putting a copy the Bible in a school library. (only one copy will do - I doubt it would get checked out very much at all)

Which is really what this is all about. Making Christian "missionaries" feel smug about the good they think they're doing in the world, when really all they're doing is selling a book.

That, and trying to be sneaky about using a school's captive audience to promote your religion, for what it's worth.

@12:

And when *I* was in high school, they would have been burned in a Satanic ritual. Or more accurately, some weird heavy-metal-esque faux Satanic ritual.

When I joined the Internet in 1994, I was simultaneously surprised and intrugued to discover what real Satanism was.

One way or the other, when my kids are teenagers, it goes without saying that I'm going to be mildly amused by their attempts to shock me.

@8: "It's a bit like leaving a Roman chariot in the parking lot." Wonderful imagery.

@9: "handy if you run out of toilet paper." I'm thinking rolling papers.

Erm. This is not new. I graduated from a (very rural) high-school in Florida about a decade ago. I clearly remember periodically encountering random men (always men in suits) distributing tiny New Testaments to students in the main hall. None of that "left on a table if the students wanted them" either. They actually handed them to you, much like the people on college-campuses handing out leaflets who try to get every passerby to take one. Except, these were like Jesus-leaflets.

I managed to avoid getting more than one in my four years I think, but no. Not a new phenomenon. Sadly.

@14 And that is why I show up for this. To learn stuff. (And to read hilarious sex advice columns, but yes also to learn stuff.)

I had someone in a class give me a Bible once. It was a CCD class. At my church. As in we got the Bibles because we'd signed up for religious ed. At church.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/…

The local secular humanists are fighting fire with fire.

I find that Dollar Store bibles make great reading material for my cockatoos to destroy in their cages. They've read several bibles from cover to cover, yet they still don't care that I'm a pole-smoker. Altho one of them is a fundie, based on his prudish behavior when exposed to man-on-man porn.

Dan, I am deeply offended that you did not give equal time to Marxists.

I'm all for it. Reading the Bible was what made me decide to become an atheist.

The Central Florida Freethought Community is preparing our own distribution program. See all the news on this and our response efforts at http://www.facebook.com/CFLFreethought