In his recent article “How To Deal With Unwanted Hotel Bibles? Don’t Read Them” Ed Brayton interacts with an article recently published at “Friendly Atheist” (and originally published in the magazine “American Atheist”). In the article the author (Steve Lowe) advises that when atheists are in a hotel room they should take the Bible down to the front desk and politely confront the hotel staff on how offended they are at having a Bible in the nightstand drawer.
Seriously?
As Brayton points out, this is childish behavior which is deeply counterproductive to the goal of providing atheism with a respected place in the public square.
Can you imagine if everybody took Lowe’s advice?
How about an animal rights activist who walks into a hotel room and finds a picture of a rodeo hanging on the wall? Should they take the picture off the wall and march down to the front desk to confront the clerk because they believe rodeos are inhumane? Would that kind of behavior raise the profile of animal rights in a positive way?
And maybe the nutritionist should badger the hotel clerk to complain that there is a pop machine full of sugary drinks on level three.
And the Christian conservative should definitely march down to the front desk to complain that HBO shouldn’t be available in rooms with children.
And the environmentalist could complain about the excessive number of fresh towels that are made available to hotel guests.
I’ll tell you this much: if everybody took Lowe’s advice then it would make the front desk job a lot more interesting.
