If you mean that he's like an avatar for douchebag atheists, then sure. If you mean that he's emblematic of atheists in general, then it's about as accurate as claiming Fred Phelps encapsulates what's wrong with Christians. Which would be something a douchebag atheist like this guy would say.

Has any decent person ever existed who wore a sweater vest?

Mr. Rogers

Yeah, I guess I left out a qualifier. I guess I meant "professional atheists" as opposed to ordinary, disinterested atheists like myself.

Or you could just admit you're freaking agnostic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatheism

I'm just wondering how exactly it covers 2,500 years of Jewish history. I'd heard 1,000 years BC as a long range estimate, 500 as a more modest one. Unless SexyDuckCop thinks it describes all the stuff since Jesus too, like a constantly updating newsfeed.

Its Folklore, but folklore is a form of history telling. Its more of an emotional telling of history. There's thoughts and values that are recorded in more than just facts and figures. Also it can be read as history for its effect on history. We have people still using it to affect what our society does right now.

But that doesn't make it non-fiction. Fairy tales are folklore, and if one of them is based on an actual king, that's nice, but that doesn't mean that king slew a dragon or had a magical flying horse.

If I have a book of Native American folklore, and it's well-researched, then it's non-fiction insofar as it's an analysis and presentation of a belief system. A book of just the beliefs presented as fact, however, is not non-fiction.

I'm just questioning the poster's assertion that it's a mix containing non-fiction. It can go in the same section as Dianetics and the Book of Mormon, but neither of those are non-fiction, either.

It has Romans in it and they definitely existed.

It can also be argued to be a law book. It contains the laws and rules for how these folks were supposed to conduct themselves.

Mythology, which covers both the primary source material as well as all of the scholarly work done on those sources, is generally non-fiction. But the original stories themselves are technically fiction (unless, as always, any evidence can be provided).

The claim that the bible represents Jewish "history" is another matter altogether.

Myth and History, Merged into Mystery!

That's from Hercules in New York, starring Arnold Strong.

One of my favourites.

SPK: Literally every piece of non-fiction carries flaws and limitations, but that doesn't suddenly make it fiction. If that was true, everything ever written would be fiction. It breaks down the definition of both words. If I write a book about the capture of Pablo Escobar and one of my interview subjects lies to protect his family, that doesn't make the entire work fiction. Besides, if I classify the works of Thucydides and Herodotus as fiction just because they contain inaccuracies, I risk misleading people into thinking they were INTENDED to be read as fiction, as opposed to an honest, if not flawed, attempt at writing a historical document.

Besides that, how could a poem or lamentation or book of laws qualify as fiction at all? How could you possibly disprove an anonymous person writing "I am very sad" 1000 years ago, or a rule book that says "Do not eat anything with cloven hooves"? Just because you don't agree with the rules doesn't suddenly mean they don't exist.

IrishWhiskey, there's two kinds of men in the world: Those with an edit button, and those without.

That is a legitimate concern we need to be watching out for.

Two of Gmork's stars are rooting for Sweatervest and his Poochie the Rockin' Dog atheism.

Yes they are, because those are two stars of evil.

Way to remember how the rating system here works, moron. I'm not siding with the atheist, I'm agnostic. Try harder to troll.

Amen to that.

I somehow watched 0:37 of this guy without disgorging.

nailed it.

Agnostic.

This sort of sanctimony is why I've never completely discounted the "atheism is a religion" argument. It's like the Dave Chappelle bit about wearing a whore's uniform.

The fact is, every single person I've met in real life who has self--identified as an atheist is like this, and I know plenty of people who absolutely don't believe in a deity but refuse to identify as atheists for all sorts of reasons.

Doing the Lord's work cogdiss.

Put it in with the Gor books

I'm sorry. I'm trying to stop, but it's an uphill battle. I'm also the one who keeps putting Robert Crumb's Book of Genesis next to the Bibles and the Book of Mormon into New Age.

The Ann Coulter books in Men's Health...that wasn't me. That was a friend of mine. He isn't as clever.

That reminds me of when I worked at a nonprofit thrift shop that mostly raised money to help subsidize rent and medical costs for low-income AIDS patients. Someone donated half a dozen 100 year old fur coats and we put them out for about 0 each. Within a day, PETA type activists had slashed them all up with razors because they have absolutely no concept of hwo the real world actually works. So thanks, anti fur crusaders, for making sure the death of a couple dozen minks a century ago wasn't used to support a humanitarian cause.

Well, the bookstore I used to work at, we kept being told to put Bill O'Reilly in the Political Science section. Corporate headquarters pranking everyone.

Since I started working at a library part time to fill the gaps in my freelance stuff I've been making a study of what periodicals tend to be spread around haphazardly like their readers just don't give a fuck about inconveniencing everyone else. Big surprise, readers of the Wall street Journal and the Economist are some of the worst.

When I worked at a record store we used to put old Vanguard Stereolab records in the Stereolab section to mess with the hipsters who occasionally drifted in (we were strictly a grouchy old dude/hardcore crate digger store; the owner had mostly stopped stocking new music in the 90s because he was disgusted with the 90s hipsters flooding in at the same time and buying things they'd never cared about because OMG FORCED EXPOSURE REVIEWED THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND NOW IT'S COOL, and worse yet people who bought tribute albums of artists they had never heard because of the bands who played on the tribute - classic grouchy record store move but I support anything that punishes people for following trends). Nobody bought any of the phony Stereolab records on my watch but a few of them came pretty close.

Evilhomer you've probably been in the store I'm talking about. Most fun place I've ever worked, AND I got to meet DJ Premier!

The one time I did actually "catch" someone putting the Bible in sci-fi, I shit you not, it was a guy wearing a trilby and his friend had a fedora. I almost felt sorry for them.


Almost.

I used to be roommates with a quaker who grew up in a Jesus hippie commune and had some pretty questionable beliefs about reality in general, despite being an awesome person. I actually ended up siding with her in a debate about the bible as an eyewitness document, simply because the literally fedora-and-vest-wearing Atheist who was arguing with her was such a dunce (despite being more or less factually correct).