Atheism book found in home linked to fire suspect!

I assume atheist books were on the same shelf as the demon books, in his "dangerous supernatural creatures" section.

I saw it reported by one source that didn't report the demon book or the bible... only the atheism book. I wish the books (however irrelevant they may be) that criminals have at their houses would always be listed somewhere... would be interesting. I think we would find that most murderers in the united states have at least one bible and five cookbooks.

I saw this earlier today and wondered about the supposed implications of finding those two books. I guess they think atheists are in an 'axis of evil' with the demon-lovers (along with the New Zealanders).

Almost all murderers own a dictionary, therefore dictionaries cause people to murder. Q.E.D., sucka.

I heard this on the radio this AM as I was driving to work. A Bible wasn't mentioned, but books on atheism and demon possession were. The thought that occurred to me at the time was, I wonder if the reporter understood that the two topics were rather opposite of each other.

Oh sensationalism. Sigh.

Lynna posted a link to that on the last incarnation of the thread. I looked on Amazon.com and there is a good chance the book on demons is a Christian book while the book on atheism is a kind of self-help book. From the Yahoo News link:

Bourque's girlfriend and family live discovered paperback books titled "Demon Possession" and "The Atheist's Way,"

Daylight Atheism has a review of The Atheist's Way:

Summary: A worthy effort, but at best a shallow draught from a spring that can sustain much deeper drinking.

Wow. Militanty sounding, isn't it?

What's the sinister significance of the Skechers?

They should check his CD collection too...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varg_Vikernes

Hmm. If someone got to paw through my library in order to write a press account of what kind of horrible person I am, my religion bookcase alone would suffice to demonstrate that I am an atheistic Catholic pre/mid/post/non-tribulation rapturist/anti-rapturist who idolizes Hitches/Dawkins/Ehrman/Morris (Morris!?). I even have a Randall Terry book that I obtained during the fire sale when his radio show was going out of business (before he converted from being a freak-show evangelical Protestant to being a freak-show fringe Catholic).

And I worship Harry Potter and Iain M. Banks, etc., etc., etc.

And we haven't even gotten to the math shelves yet. (St. Augustine: "The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell.")

Oh, now, the police would have to hire a professional librarian and staff for a week to list all the books found in the average Pharyngula commenter's home, I feel sure.

Zeno @ 10:

Hmm. If someone got to paw through my library in order to write a press account of what kind of horrible person I am

I can only imagine what someone would say after perusing my various bookcases. After seeing the odd shots of some of my books on my moblog, a friend remarked "you have such eclectic taste." That wouldn't exactly bode well if someone was looking to make me out a monster of some sort. Ah well, one should never judge a book by its cover. ;)

Caine,

you're right... you should judge them by their binding...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropodermic_bibliopegy

Sorry, I just stumbled across that article and thought someone would appreciate it. lol.

Christopher Hitchens on Alexander Haig:

"Nobody has a higher opinion of General Alexander Haig than I do," I once wrote. "And I think he is a homicidal buffoon." I did not then realize that this view of mine was at least partly shared by so many senior figures on the American right....

jesusfetusfajitafishsticks, ever seen The Pillow Book?

Once had a friend of a friend perusing my shelves who said, on finding no romance novels or superhero comics, "Don't you have any GOOD books?" I believe she was staring at Edward Gibbon's work at the time.

No, I haven't! I googled it... I must find it tonight!

I can only imagine what someone would say after perusing my various bookcases. After seeing the odd shots of some of my books on my moblog, a friend remarked "you have such eclectic taste."

Nod. I wonder what among the well over 1000 books in my home the police and/or media would find worth mentioning. The Bible, and if so, which version? Book of Mormon? The God Delusion? The Heathen's Guide to World Religions? Bhagavad-Gita? Small Gods? Green Eggs and Ham?

I am willing to bet the collection of books includes at least one telephone directory. In fact, I bet most murderers, arsonists and muggers include at least one copy, if not more, of this tome.

So therefore we can conclude that the standard telephone directory induces people to commit violent felonies.

I have a bible, but I hide it in the closet.

The one that hit home for me was when a colleague pointed out that it was the coffee tables. Every set crime scene photos has one - (whisper) they must be involved.

Ignore the books they are a red herring.

What the hell is the difference between a book about demons and the bible? Have these people not read the bible? It's chock full o'demons. Some get transfered into pigs, sure, but plenty o'demons. By the way, Chock Full O'Demons is my favorite brand of coffee.

Bastion of Sass @ 18:

The Bible, and if so, which version? Book of Mormon? The God Delusion? The Heathen's Guide to World Religions? Bhagavad-Gita? Small Gods? Green Eggs and Ham?

I just walked into my living room, faced one of my bookcases, picked the 5th shelf up from the ground and wrote down the first 10 books on the left:

Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters
The Book of Tea, Okakura Kakuzo
The Meaning of Night, Michael Cox
Dream Brother, David Browne
Child Thief, Brom
Buried Alive, Jan Bondeson
The Great Derangement, Matt Taibbi
If Chins Could Kill, Bruce Campbell
The History of Hell, Alice K. Turner
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe, Douglas Adams

If having a book on demons and atheism makes you and evil satanist atheist, then if they ever looked at my bookshelf I'd be a Pagan-atheist-agnostic-Buddisht-Mormon-Protestant-Evangelical-Rapurist-Incan-Aztec-Serial-Killer-Victorian-Commie-Nazi-Jew-Archeologist-Anthropologist-Sociologist-Alien-Monster-Samurai-lover-Southerner-Lynched-Catholic-Poet-Druggie-Cook-Homosexual-Computer-Programer-Visual-Basic-Pantheist-Deist-Evolutionist-Theologian-Feminist-Secularist-Enlighten-Romantist-Post-Modernist-Orwellian-Artist-Asian-Han-Chinese-Despot-Anime-Geek. Wow.

This reminds me of the "Photographs of Adolph Hitler" found in Noriega's office.

Back when I worked in the prison system, I don't actually remember running into atheists among the prisoners. Plenty of born-again Christian types who were into Bible study though. Go figure.

Rey Fox, I have a Bible too.

If there were any doubt as to why I have one, all of the notes in the margins would secure any doubts as to my non-belief.

What I'm still trying to get my head around is why investigators are seizing books at all. The last time I checked, you were free to read just about anything you like. There actually is more chance of there being solid physical evidence on the soles of those Skechers than there is in the pages of those books.

I have Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, a copy of Mao's little red book, Macbeth, the New International Bible, various tomes on military history and weapons, and several manga in my shelf.

So if I ever go off the deep end and burn down a church, remember: I blame Hayao Miyazaki :(

This reminds me of the "Photographs of Adolph Hitler" found in Noriega's office.

It reminds me of Greg Laden altering posts, and exposing peoples's personal email addresses.

I don't own a bible, and probably the closest thing I've got to an 'atheist' book (in print at least) is either The Blind Watchmaker or God: The Interview.

I blame telephone directories.

It's the boredom of reading them that drives people to crime.

Well, of course it's salient that they had a book on Atheism, since every single one provides instructions on torching those that disagree with you, murdering and making war on those that will not subject themselves to your will, useful instructions on total warfare and genocide-how-to chapters on torture and child murder...

Oh, what's that?

They don't?

Look over there! *runs*

WowbaggerOM @ 31:

I don't own a bible

I don't either. I used to, but I don't know what happened to it. If I need it, I use Skeptics Annotated.

I hope that people don't become blind-sighted by this.

Caine wrote:

If I need it, I use Skeptics Annotated.

Likewise. I rarely make any references to the bible when I'm not online so it's perfect.

well, I don't think you can make much out of my book collection (lots of sci-fi, some archaeology, some social sciences, an atlas and The Travel Book); but my boyfriend owns a bible, the Necronomicon. the Satanic Bible, and a book called "The Witcher" :-)

Let me see, I have the Bible(KJV), the Koran, the Bhagwad Gita, Origin Of Species, The Communist Manifesto, a translation of Mein Kampf, The God Delusion ...

I am so screwed.

Oh, I forgot to mention my copy of Billy Graham's Angels: God's Secret Agents perhaps might be considered seize-worthy. Sounds pretty sinister and suspicious, no?

Bastion Of Sass @ 39:

Sounds pretty sinister and suspicious, no?

Yes, yes it does. Gods and their agents. Can't trust a one of 'em.

Come to think of it, I've got a few "devout" books lying about - a "Goffine's Devout Instruction," (circa 1896) a King James red-letter edition (undated), a German "Von Traualter durchs Leben" from 1888, and I used to have Osterreich's translated "Possession and Exorcism." Man, that was an awesome read.

I mostly have Goffine's Devout Instruction for such insightful tidbits as "Prayer after Extreme Unction" and the old arguments for purgatory. That and the commentary that reminds you indoor plumbing was an unheard of rarity among the laity.

Maybe these fellows read the bible, and took it literally.

I mean, isn't most of the old testament about smiting your enemies? They were just following instructions. Maybe the local pastor had given them a dirty look once.

Possibly burning down the church was a little extreme though.

This is kind of off topic, but you guys just got to check this out:

http://www.jakearchibald.co.uk/homeopathy/

It fits religion and pseudo-scientific thinking to a T!

elzoog @ 43:

This is kind of off topic

Instead of posting off topic here, you can post to the current incarnation of the endless thread.

I've got as bible- I use it mainly to double check and see if I can catch Patricia OM out on her encyplopedic knowledge of the thing.

I've also got a Quran but I bought that years ago in Jordan to stop some street seller thugs mugging me.

Looks like it's starting...

Someone torched the fundie church near where I used to live long ago.

No it wasn't atheists, evolutionists, or astrophysicists studying the Big Bang.

It was the teen age son of one of the members. He apparently had issues with the church although I don't know what they were.

Hmm.. so if having a book on atheism makes you an atheist, and having a book on demonology makes you a satan worshiper, then I guest I must be a master chemist, judging by all the chemistry books I own.

Or maybe I'm a mathematician, considering that I have an equal amount of mathematics books.

Or perchance I'm an artist, considering that I collect the works of Luis Royo.

"... and your honor, we also found a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica that included entries on arson and on atheism in the same volume..."

List of thingss most certainly found in the house of the average arsonist and thus of extreme indicia evidential value. If you have any of these items you should be very worried as you are either an arsonist or have the prediliction to be one. Get therapy, stat.

1) Toilet paper
2) Doors
3) Walls
4) Running water
5) A bed
6) Hair
7) Air
8) A chair
9) Toothbrushes
10) Bacon ( ok, that's only in Pharyngulite arsonist houses)

#23:

Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters
The Book of Tea, Okakura Kakuzo
The Meaning of Night, Michael Cox
Dream Brother, David Browne
Child Thief, Brom
Buried Alive, Jan Bondeson
The Great Derangement, Matt Taibbi
If Chins Could Kill, Bruce Campbell
The History of Hell, Alice K. Turner
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe, Douglas Adams

What kind of sorting is this? How do you find anything?

@Bride of Shrek OM

I have ham. Does that count?

What kind of sorting is this? How do you find anything?

I have no method to my book stacking either. It's all there in glorious dissarrayed layout. I'm going to play the "fifth shelf up" game too:

1)Coincidentally it's the one with the bible on it
2)Hungry Ghosts ( about China's communist famine) by some dude called Jasper Becker
3) The Code Book, Simon Singh
4)The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte
5) Tour de Force, Lance Armstrong
6)The Works of Oscar Wilde
7) South - The Endurance Expidition, Ernest Shackleton
8) Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary
9) The Girl Who PLayed with Fire- Larsson
10) The War Diaries of Weary Dunlop

Your lucky this wasn't the sixth shelf up which has about 300 law textbooks on it and I'd bore you all to death.

It's a bit like when teenagers commit suicide they always go looking for emo or death metal or other 'dark' music; no-one's ever mentioned anyone having ended it with Celine Dion albums lying around.

Next to - and in - my bed at the moment:
Even Cowgirls Get The Blues - Tom Robbins
Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
Christine - Stephen King
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language - Don Watson
Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett
Don Quixote - Miguel Cervantes
The Rules of Attraction - Bret Easton Ellis
There's Treasure Everywhere: A Calvin & Hobbes Collection - Bill Watterson
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote

Moggie @ 51:

What kind of sorting is this? How do you find anything?

I use my eyes. My house is stuffed with books. They're all over the place. I do keep most of the Discworld books together.

...more Skechers shoes...

It ain't the books. It's clearly the damn shoes.

I have many atheism books, 5 pairs of Skechers shoes, a Bible, a copy of A Table in The Presence, and two copies of Embraced by the Light. That's right, two. They keep me from setting shit on fire, you see.

WowbaggerOM

no-one's ever mentioned anyone having ended it with Celine Dion albums lying around.

...and yet if I had to listen to Celine Dion songs I would highly likely commit suicide.

Yikes. If they cataloged my book collection, I'd be under the lights;

"Who else has been reading here?"
Just me, sir
"Imma ask you one more time; Who else has been reading here?"
I promise, it's just me.
"Look, we have ways to make you talk. Now, who else has been reading here?"
OK, OK already. A Deadhead, a biology dropout, some space-case with an interest in cosmology, a math-deficient rube with an interest in physics, an atheist with a fascination of theology, a shade-tree philosopher, a woodworking savant with splinters, some dude who secretly loves Stephen King novels, and a guy whose mom sends him a lot of coffee table books for birthdays.
"So, where all of these readers?"
I'm right here, man!

WowbaggerOM @ 54:

Next to - and in - my bed at the moment:

Ooh, I want to play! Next to - and in - my bed at the moment:

New York, Edward Rutherford
The Sea of Monsters, Rick Riordan
The Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett
The Salmon of Doubt, Douglas Adams
Death and the Devil, Frank Schatzing
Cruelty, Kathleen Taylor
Dread, Philip Alcabes
Tripwire, Lee Child
The World Without Us, Alan Weisman
The Book of Genesis, illustrated by R. Crumb

boygenius # 58:

That was pure win.

Yikes. I need to work on my HTML fu!

Jesus,

You guys must have massive bed tables.

Me, I've barely got room for my 12 inch banana-shaped vibrator ( suck it Kirk Cameron).

Bride of Shrek OM @ 62:

You guys must have massive bed tables.

I sleep on a futon. The floor is my table.

You guys must have massive bed tables.

Err... Ummm... Sure!

Bride of Shrek OM boasted

7) South - The Endurance Expidition, Ernest Shackleton

I read one book on the Shackleton expedition, might look for this at the library, truly an incredible story.

Didn't make me want to burn chuches down, but Goats on Fire!

oh fine, I'll play too. sprinkled liberally around my workstation:

The Human Past, edited by Chris Scarre
color index, Jim Crause
The Imperialists, William Stuard Long*
The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett
Prisoners of Freedom, Harri Englund

-----

*that one's my mom's fault, please don't shoot me.

I swear to doG, either Sb or Moveabletype is fucking with my tags.

does my sketchbook count as a book?

They are accused of burglarizing and burning churches. Maybe the bibles were seized in case they were stolen from one of the churches. That would be important evidence of the suspects' guilt.

If you look at the list of items seized in the search warrant, there are a lot of things that seem irrelevant, and whose importance would only be known to the detectives investigating the case.

I just cleared away some clutter to see what books are within arms reach of my computer. One of them is Lamb (The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal) by Christopher Moore.

I can't recommend it highly enough! Belly-laughs on almost every page. First rate irreverent humor.

I like all of Moore's stuff, but IMHO, this is his masterpiece.

Hey, it's Texas, we'll Bar-B-Que anything, and we don't need no stinkin cookbook.

@everettattebury #69

Yeah, because when I torch a church in a demonic atheist rage, the first thing I do is steal one of their bibles. ;)

Dust @ #65

This is the personal account of the most awesome trek by Shackleton himself . It's ISBN 1 876485 09 4 if that helps.

I'm a bit of an auto/biography weird fan. I tend to chose a person in hsitory that fascinates me then read every bloodything I cna get my hands on about that person. I thus immerse myself in Shackleton/Weary Dunlop/Boudica/Joan of Arc/Henry 2/Lady Jane Grey/Pinochet/whoever to almost ad nauseum then go on to my next person. So far it's worked for me and given me a few topics I could pick for Mastermind if I'm ever on it.

Got the Autobiography of Ben Franklin sitting next to my aforementioned list; my wife found it useful in a college class which was run by a Texas fundy who ripped into any subject not Truly Christian, including one poor Turkish fellow.

My wife pulled out the Ben Franklin quote about allowing even "The Imam of Istanbul coming to talk about Mohommedism" (paraphrase) in a public speaking venue in her next piece. Made the woman squirm, which given her age raised a lot of dust.

Ben was a bit of a ham, but I'd certainly liked to have a beer with him; appeared to be an entertaining fellow.

You guys are all making me miss my book collection. I'm in a tiny dorm room with about 20 books total, most of them textbooks or required reading for school. The rest of the bookshelf is filled with cookies, papers, and dishes that needed to be washed last week.

Maybe if they found a copy of Lords Of Chaos, they might have something substantial.

Raven @47:

A similar story: Nearly 4 years ago, a man went into San Antonio's San Fernando Cathedral and smashed seven statues--while people were inside. Not sure if the witnesses in addition to staff were the religious or sightseers; the site is a popular tourist attraction downtown.

The vandal was a Protestant fundamentalist who claimed he was God, or speaking for God, and wanted to save sinners from worshipping idols, but anyone with sense (even the rational theists I worked with) knew he would be.

Most of the stuff broken wasn't particularly pleasing to the eye. but that's probably a good case of beauty in the eye of the beholder.

Fun fact: San Fernando Cathedral has a Flamenco Mass. It probably goes quite nicely with the Mariachi Mass at Mission San Jose's cathedral just a few miles away. I'm not sure if you can time it to attend both on the same day. I'll have to look that up!

Businessman on Train: [reading a newspaper] I see the police have made another lightning raid.
Priest on Train: I suppose young girls was involved?
Businessman on Train: One found naked in the bathroom. "Breasts smeared with peanut butter. The police also found a bag containing 15 ounces of cannibus resin. The bag may also have contained a small quantity of heroin."
Denis Dimbleby Bagley: Or a porkpie. The bag may also have contained a porkpie.
Businessman on Train: I hardly see what a porkpie's got to do with it.
Denis Dimbleby Bagley: Then how about a turnip? The bag may also have contained a large turnip.
Priest on Train: The bag was full of drugs. It says so!
Denis Dimbleby Bagley: It's the oldest trick in the book.
Priest on Train: Book? What book?
Denis Dimbleby Bagley: The distortion of truth by association book. You all believe heroin was in the bag because cannibus resin was in the bag, but the chances of it actually being there are certain 100 to 1.
Businessman on Train: A lot more likely than what you say.
Denis Dimbleby Bagley: About as likely as the tits smeared with peanut butter.

"... a home linked to one of the men ..."

What the hell does that mean? A house that one of them threw a rock at? A friend's brother's classmate's aunt's daughter's friend's house?

How are these items in any way related to the case? Let's take the rifles as an example - were they used to set the church on fire or were they used to threaten anyone? If these are the items the cops found and are holding as evidence, there's a special word for the cops involved: dumbasses.

If the teabaggers ever get into power, there will be headlines saying, "BOOKS found in home of suspected criminal!!!!"

Do we only look at print books here, or can we include the pdf-collection on our e-readers/laptop as well?

Because I've got a copy of Hovind's PhD (Pretty humongous Drivel) "thesis" on my e-reader. Guess that makes me suspect of tax-evasion.

Jadehawk, OM @ 68:

does my sketchbook count as a book?

A book of art would count, so I say yes.

gravendeel @ 81:

Do we only look at print books here, or can we include the pdf-collection on our e-readers/laptop as well?

Yeah, e-books count; Hovind not so much. ;p

Jadehawk, OM | February 25, 2010 2:56 AM

does my sketchbook count as a book?

The pen and ink sketch of the flaming church is particularly incriminating.

Uh--Bride: you can put the books in the drawers of the tables, too, you know. And on the floor around them.

So it's more a bedside collection that what's on my bedside table. Yeah, that's the ticket.

#10

I'm apparently a worshiper of the Crimson King, Sauron, Voldemort, and whatever the hell those ice zombie things from A Song of Ice and Fire are.

Sauron and Voldemort aren't such a surprise from you.

If I ever do something really bad (and get caught), I'll implicate just about every idea-based group in the world with my home library.

We had a Christian lady cleaning a few years ago who browsed our books and finally had to ask, "Are you Buddhist?"

No. Maybe it was the martial-arts books.

The reason for the reporting has to do with the Texas evangelical community. Basically as the churches were burning they had already long decided that it was a group of atheists inspired by militant atheists like Richard Dawkins. I encountered several claims exactly like that.

Basically the idea is that atheists are all evil and militant and such harsh tones lead to violence of burning down pretty vacant churches while nobody is around. Because the church folks had already assumed they were atheists, the reporting is making a big deal of the "confirmation". It's a bit like thinking somebody is a witch and then finding a mole.

I've got a fair number of books by atheists, but not really any "atheist books" in the sense of books about atheism. I do have a pile of Bibles (incl. an interlinear Greek-English New Testament), and, most damning no doubt, a few books on medieval heresies.

Also a copy of Das Kapital (its impenetrability is widely exaggerated, but it's dull as dust), and a lot of no-doubt satanic speculative fiction. It's a miracle I haven't killed anyone yet.

Aquaria @ #84

Uh--Bride: you can put the books in the drawers of the tables, too, you know. And on the floor around them

.. no space hon. My serious collection of dildos, vibrators, handcuffs, slings, lubricants, whips and chains take up a hellish amount of room.

East Texas church arson suspect Jason Robert Bourque (right) calls himself "Mr. Brightside" on his MySpace page, lists his religion as "Christian -- other..."

and apparently is a pyromaniac - surprise!

http://watchdogblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/02/church-arson-suspec…

Jadehawk, OM:

does my sketchbook count as a book?

Sure. Why should it be a published work? As far as the "importance" of books in the current circumstance, I submit that any work you produce says more about you than something you may or may not have read.

Hand it over!

Interestingly, Baptist Press has no mention of any of this irrelevant dreck.
http://bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=32349

Bride of Shrek OM @ 90:

My serious collection of dildos, vibrators, handcuffs, slings, lubricants, whips and chains take up a hellish amount of room.

Treat them like tools - a good sized sheet of pegboard, some hooks, brackets, and several box shelves, and it's all nice and tidy and easy to hand. With plenty of room for books, ya know, things like the Kama Sutra and other interestin' things.

About book collections... seriously, I want to catalog mine by some library classification or other (which is not so important so long as the book has a distinct number like the Library of Congress classification), but library science is closed to the amateur, it seems.

Does anyone know of any way I could take, say, the ISBNs off my books and catalog them that way without having to drop a needless chunk of change on a membership to a professional database? I've Googled for resources and I haven't come up with anything satisfactory.

badgersdaughter @ 94:

I've Googled for resources and I haven't come up with anything satisfactory.

Don't know if it would work for you, but Library Thing is good. I have 200 of my books catalogued there; I haven't done more because life got hectic and I didn't have any free cash. Now that I've remembered, I'll have to fork over the $25 bucks for lifetime.

You can catalog 200 books for free, then it's as many as you life for $10.00 a year or $25.00 for lifetime.

Aarrgghh, as many as you like, not life.

#94:

If you've got a Mac with a webcam, there's a package called Delicious Library from delicious-monster.com which will use the camera to read the barcode and look it up. I jtried this out with my Macbook for just long enough to say "hey, that's rather cool", so I can't say how usable it is in the long run.

Ok I'll play too!

Bad Astronomy by Phil Plait
I never knew that about England by Christopher Winn
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
Tickling the English by Dara o'Briain
The greatest show on Earth By Richard Dawkins
Forgotten Voices by Max Arthur
and the ubiquitous God Delusion.

And my significant other loves Skechers shoes..
So I'm expecting the knock on the door any minute...

And my significant other loves Skechers shoes..

<movie geek>Is it because he/she doesn't have a Prada backpack?</movie geek>

And by "atheist" book, which book do they mean? Because it's quite possible that what they call atheist, we call something entirely else.

My serious collection of dildos, vibrators, handcuffs, slings, lubricants, whips and chains take up a hellish amount of room.

That's what under the bed is for. Unless you don't have a platform bed with drawers below or your bed isn't high enough for storage units. I discovered many moons ago that little ones and nosy visitors (like my oblivious-to-boundaries Mom) are less likely to look under beds than inside night stands.

... oh nevermind, it was an actual atheist book.

@ kantalope #21:

a colleague pointed out that it was the coffee tables. Every set crime scene photos has one - (whisper) they must be involved.

My home must be safe from being a crime scene then - unless the criminal (murderer, burglar, arsonist or whatever) carefully brings a coffee table with them.

Otherwise it would have to be some bizarre sort of a police plant - like having a throwaway gun to incriminate the unarmed, innocent person they just shot (according to TV/film versions of US police behaviour anyway).

Just to be on the safe side, I have
moved The Boomer Bible &
God is My Broker to a prominent
position near the door.

My type of game...

Let's see, one shelf contains
The Annotated Sherlock Holmes 2vol
The Annotated Alice
The Feynman Lectures on Physics 3vol
The Cartoon History of the World 3vol
The Canterbury Tales
The Iliad 4 vol. Bryant Translation
The Odyssey 4 vol. Bryant again
The Aeneid 2 vol. Cranch
The Odyssey 1 vol. Palmer illus. by Wyeth
A Study of History 10 vol. Toynbee

Of course that's one of my oversized shelves, which explains the variety somewhat.

Then, on another bookcase I have a shelf of grimores, including demonology books, the Golden Dawn, etc. Below that is a shelf of mythology books, from folklore of various lands to Campbell's The Masks of God. The next shelf is filled with RPG gaming books.

I wonder why these books are all grouped together?

I have a gigantic coffee table. I must be guilty of everything!

(Does it matter that coffee has never been served on it?)

So if someone gets arrested for some crime involving ranch dressing (and anything involving ranch IS a crime)...

Will they come after me because of my large cookbook collection if I happen to be nearby?

I have four books on my bedside table:

Eric Flint & David Weber 1634: The Baltic War
Joe Abercrombie Best Served Cold
Barbara W. Tuchman A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
Brink Lindsey Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle For Global Capitalism

Sorry, nothing on demons.

@ Moggie #97 (and hence #94, #95 too)

I have found Delicious Library to be awesome - the interface is cute and the barcode scanning works pretty well with my webcam. I've got all my books on there now, along with CDs, DVDs, XBox games and stuff too. It even lets you add people to it so you can track who you've lent things to... You know, if you have any frustrated librarian urges you need to deal with at home :)

(it doesn't allow you to set fines or late fees though ;-)

Library Thing is an solid system too - I gave that a go for a while (until I picked up a free license for Delicious Library in a shareware bundle). Some of my more book-a-holic friends swear by it.

Skechers are sketchy.

I have a copy of Good Omens by my bed, 'cause I'm re-reading it. And The Greatest Show On Earth, which I just finished reading.

Yet I have ne'er burnt down a church, or a playhouse.

Am I doing it wrong?

OK, I'll play too. Here are some selections from the top shelf of my living room bookcase.

Dishonorable Passions, Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003: Eskridge.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Rowling
Erasure: Everett
Straight Man: Russo
The Sociology of News: Schudson
Money, Myths, and Change: Badgett
The Ancestor's Tale: Dawkins
Innumeracy: Paulos
Genome: Ridley
The Stuff of Mind: Pinker
On the Origin of Species: Darwin
God is Not Great: Hitchens
The God Delusion: Dawkins
Breaking the Spell: Dennet
The Cry for Myth: May
The Bible
Tao Te Ching
The Q'uran

Hmm. My house contains at least 2 Bibles, a Book of Mormon, a Bhagavad Gita, and several books on Egyptian history and hieroglyphics (in addition to my wife's historical fictions and speech pathology books, and my comp sci stuff). Oh, and two borrowed books on atheism that I really, really need to read and return. I wonder what assumptions they could draw about me.

Nothing about demons, though. Pity, that sounds like an interesting read. It's sorta like listening to somebody describe the emperor's S&M outfit.

My problem is anytime I leave a book on my bedside table, my big ass 110 Lbs. Chocolate lab will eat it after I go to work.

So far he's claimed

Coyne - Why Evolution is True
Shubin - Your Inner Fish
Ansel Adams - The Camera
Stéphane Reynaud - Pork and Sons

and any number of magazines and other paper items.

Big dummy

Oh My Science! I have three bibles in my home, too! Stop me before I start burning things.

Rev,

Huzzah for chocolate labs! They have good taste.

The coffee table thing would certainly make "going equipped" easier to spot:

"Yer honour, when arrested, the accused had on him a gun ..."

"Perfectly normal. Nothing suspicious in that. I have one here myself."

"... a tyre lever and screwdriver ..."

"Not particularly incriminating. Perhaps he needed to fix his truck."

"... and a coffee table."

"That's it then. Send him down."

It makes me glad that my copy of Che Guevara's "Guerilla Warfare" is safely in a box in the spare room.

Of course, they'd only have to take a look at my DVD and comics collections to cart me away as undesirable. And the books by John Pilger...obviously I'm some kind of dissadent.

@Rev

Well, he definitely has good taste. Did he learn anything from their brief passage through his tract? :)

I heard that on the radio this morning, and my reaction pretty much was "that did not take long." I am just counting down now until the locals start saying (c'mon folks, say it with me): "those guys were NOT really Christians."

Well, he definitely has good taste. Did he learn anything from their brief passage through his tract? :)

Hard to say, when i last saw him he was attacking his stuffed Duck and slobbering all over the place.

I don't expect to see his setting up a View camera, smoking a Boston butt or espousing on the wonders of Evolution when I get home but you never know.

I think it's useful to have more than one bible if one is actually studying it. Of course, having a KJV and a more modern translation like the NRSV is one thing, but also looking at different study bibles to see different viewpoints is very illuminating. For example, the very academic New Oxford Annotated Bible (my preference) gives stylistic, historical, and archeological evidence that the pentateuch was an amalgamation of works by different people over many years. The NIV Study Bible, which puts forth a largely evangelical perspective, pretty much says "Bullshit, Moses wrote it all."

Hmm... I have a whole occult section in my library (lots of books on contemporary and historical african diaspora religion) and several atheist books. I have a bible or two around some where too I am sure.

I also have a whole collection of books on the Third Reich, but that doesn't make me a Nazi any more than my large collection of books on Medieval European art makes me a Medieval Artist.

No this isn't a no-true-scotsman argument of atheism, I just don't think having a book on your shelf says much about what you do or don't believe one way or the other.

Or else I am a *VERY* confused woman.

One atheist book, one demonic book and three bibles.

Yeah, that pretty much settles the source of the problem, doesn't it?

I am not sure what people would make of my book collection. Some of the stuff sitting within arms reach.

Let It Blurt-Jim DeRogatis
Dead Until Dark-Charlaine Harris (Long before the TV series.)
The Runes Of The Earth-Stephen R. Donaldson
Fire Sale-Sara Paretsky
TV-A-Go-Go-Jake Austin
The End Of Faith-Sam Harris
The Fundamentals Of Extremism:The Christian Right In America-edited by Kimberly Blaker
Crack In The Edge Of The World-Simon Winchester
Brotherly Love-Randye Lordon
What's The Matter With Kansas?-ThomasFrank
The Nazi Doctors-Robert Jay Lipton
Down The River-Edward Abbey
Henry Ford And The Jews-Neil Baldwin
The Inner Circle-T. C. Boyle
By Permission Of Heaven:The True Story Of The Great Fire Of London-Adrian Tinniswood
The Orwell Reader-George Orwell
Mother London-Micheal Moorcock
Geek Love-Katherine Dunn
Intimate Violence In Families-Richard J. Gelles
The Woman Warrior-Maxine Hong Kingston
The Chinese In America-Iris Chang
The Last Witchfinder-James Morrow
This Dame For Hire-Sandra Scoppettone
Fun House-Alison Bechdel
The Night Watch-Sarah Waters
Philip K. Dick Is Dead, Alas-Micheal Bishop
Hong Kong-Jan Morris
The Age Of American Unreason-Susan Jacoby

I'll play. I checked our living room bookshelf, which is mostly hard-bound books, especially antiques or Franklin Library type. Here's what I found on a couple of shelves.

Bibles (2 are NIV, one is a Thompson Chain Reference, one is in Japanese, one in Arabic).
A Hebrew-English Old Testament from 1919.
The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
The Alarming History of Medicine, by Gordon
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Treasure Island
Your Inner Fish
Pale Blue Dot
The Renaissance Artist at Work, Bruce Cole
The God Delusion
Fairy Tales, Hans Christian Andersen
Tales From the Arabian Nights
Selected Lives, Plutarch
Paestum, John Griffiths Pedley
Textbook of Pathology, MacCallum, 1916

I hasten to add that some of those were old college textbooks of mine. I majored in Religion Studies (NOT Theology!) and Art.

I'm working my way through Fontane's "Der deutsche Krieg von 1866" (about the prussian-austrian war of 1866), in a reprint edition using the old fraktur type. Makes me wonder if my local PD has anyone able to find out if it's subversive or not (or if they cared).

So what would my current read, The Little Drummer Girl mean?

Almost all murderers own a dictionary, therefore dictionaries cause people to murder. Q.E.D., sucka.

That's "OED," sucka. I have three hundred dictionaries and I'm not afraid to use them.

Jarred C. (#48):

I guest I must be a master chemist, judging by all the chemistry books I own.

What would a person be, who owned a large number of books on what best goes on the hook to lure in bigger fish?

Some years ago several churches in this area were burned, and a rash of rumors went around as to who was behind it and their motivation. I had the pleasure of speaking to a local minister who was convinced such arsons were the initiation rites of a lesbian coven (and regret now that I was too naive at the time to inquire what role bacon might have played in these rituals).

At any rate, eventually a "drifter" was arrested, reportedly confessed, and was convicted of all these torchings. He claimed, according to the local fishwrap, that his actions were revenge for the prolonged sexual molestation within a church that had left him too disturbed to maintain a job and home.

Let's hope the investigators in Texas check the personal backgrounds of these accused bibliomanic pyrophiles as thoroughly as they do their shelves.

Bride of Shrek wrote:

no space hon. My serious collection of dildos, vibrators, handcuffs, slings, lubricants, whips and chains take up a hellish amount of room.

When the police raid your house and confiscate obviously atheistic Satan-inspired objects, and the media gets a hold of the list, whoa!!

1) Collins Spanish Dictionary
2) Beginners guide to XML
3) Performance Flying - Dennis Pagen
4) The Science of Secrecy - Simon Singh
5) Fermat's Last Theorem - Simon Singh
6) The Scottish country Miller - Enid Gauldie
7) Men, Women and 10,000 Kites - Gabriel Voisin
8) Longitude - Dava Sobel
9) Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything - F David Peat.
10) A Short History of Nearly Everything. - Bill Bryson.

...at least 6 of them unread - forgot I had them. My 'to read' pile is at least 2 feet thick without these. Must. stop. spending. time. on. the. internet. and. read. more.

This is fun!

*The Greatest Show on Earth - Richard Dawkins
*Where Men Win Glory - Jon Krakauer
*The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya - Nagaru Tanigawa
*Barefoot Gen vol. 2: The Day After - Keiji Nakazawa
*The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick
*Roadmarks - Roger Zelazny
*Time's Last Gift - Philip José Farmer
*Mobile Suit Gundam 1: Awakening - Yoshiyuki Tomino
*The Doctor's Wife - Sawako Ariyoshi
*The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell
*Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
*The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea/Temple of the Golden Pavilion/Confessions of A Mask - Yukio Mishima

Personally, I think it was the shoes!

The notion that inanimate objects are responsible for people's actions will be the downfall of civilization. Everyone in the world owns a knife. So fucking what?

The notion that adults' exposure to ideas should be controlled by some federally-appointed board of mental nannies is just as bad.

Varying ideas and ideals of all sorts are everywhere, as are books, knives, rifles and shoes. Fortunately, the billions of people who own all four and use their brains don't go around committing arson. If they did, there wouldn't be a building left standing.

I've got books on shelves and boxes in every room except the bathrooms and the dining room.

Once when one of my kids was little, his math homework assignment was to count all the books at home. He quit when he got to 1,000 out of sheer boredom. His teacher asked me, "really?" I said, "really."

I actually do have most of my nonfiction books roughly sorted by subject, and fiction by author, so just listing what I have on a single shelf wouldn't be much fun. So I'll list the first book on each shelf of the non-fiction section in my library:

The Holy Bible--Catholic Action Edition
Moral Minds, Marc D. Hauser
Introduction to Logic, Copi and Cohen
The Ancestor's Tale, Richard Dawkins
ABC's of Nature (Reader's Digest)
The Gardener's Catalogue
Wildflowers of America, H. W. Rickett
The Complete Home Medical Guide for Dogs
The Beatles:The Unseen Archives
Fugitive from the Cubicle Police, Scott Adams
MAD about the 80's: The Best of the Decade,
Grant Geismann
Successful Photography, Andreas Feininger
The Knitting Experience, Sally Melville
Black Hawk Down, Mark Bowden
Blake: A Biography, Peter Ackryod
Learn French the Fast and Fun Way

That shelf is one of the shelves where I keep large and tall books. Let's see, first ten in order:

1. Anatomy for the Artist, Jenő Barcsay
2. The Ashley Book of Knots, Clifford W. Ashley
3. Origami Design Secrets, Robert J. Lang
4. Building Your Own House, Robert Roskind
5. The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It, John Seymour
6. Lohengrin in Full Score, Richard Wagner (Dover ed.)
7. Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vols. I & II, Julia Child (et al.)
8. European Peasant Cookery, Elisabeth Luard
9. Le Guide Culinaire, Auguste Escoffier (English trans. unabridged)
10. The New Larousse Gastronomique, Prosper Montagné (English trans. 1977 unabridged)

"Holy" books on the shelf below that:

- 3 Bibles (Revised English Version, New King James Version, and Scofield Study Bible)
- Faith & Practice (the Quaker guidebook)
- The Book of Mormon
- The Dhammapada
- The Koran
- The Egyptian Book of the Dead
- The Rig Veda
- The Analects of Confucius
- Tao te Ching

That's not a very good sample of my bookcases, to be honest.

Hmmm, now that I think about it, maybe I should shelve my bibles with the rest of the fiction books.

Heh heh, I'm totally gonna screw with the CSI crew: The Book of Mormon, HP Lovecraft, a history of the Crusades and half a dozen pulp-porno novels :)

I would like to present a koan.

Is Atlas Shrugged a book you will appreciate more if you never read it?

Background knowledge: I have read only The Fountainhead in preparation, and I found that pretty hard to keep down, especially toward the end.

Is Atlas Shrugged a book you will appreciate more if you never read it?

I can't say... I read it when I was fifteen. Are you fifteen? Then you might appreciate it.

What I can tell you is that you will appreciate it less if you read the entire goddamn thing out loud, as I did one year; my ex-boyfriend asked me to read to him while he packed the apartment before we moved (I was laid up with a broken leg but I think I may have done the more onerous work).

Are you fifteen?

Mentally, no.

my ex-boyfriend asked me to read to him while he packed the apartment before we moved

Either you read at Johnny-5 speed, or that was one hell of a long packing session.

It was a long packing session. He didn't really feel like doing it at all.

Tickling the English by Dara o'Briain

Ooh... that's going on my list. (Off-topic, but I was afraid that Mock the Week would suffer more than it has without Frankie. Glad to be wrong. However, I'm effing sick to death of Russell Howard. Anyway...

Currently on my desk:

Fool and Lamb - Christopher Moore
Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett
Consider Phlebas - Iain M. Banks (have to give him a shot after hearing all the praise around here)
Phantoms in the Brain - V.S. Ramachandran

The best use I've found for my two Bibles is (along with a Bhagavad-Gita) to elevate my monitor.

No Skechers. 3 pairs of Converse All-Stars.

If anyone's interested - because I know you're all dying to know (if you didn't already) - the movie reference for my comment in #99 in Ten Things I Hate About You.

Janine - sitting next to me now are books 5 and 6 of the Sookie Stackhouse series. I like the books, but I like the series more - probably because of how good it all looks (and they look; thanks to Lafayette and Eric I've spent some time contemplating my, er, orientation), and that it's not just through one person's perspective like the books.

Books of Interest in my collection
-The Baghvad Gita (only read half of it)
-1984
-The God Delusion
-God is Not Great
-The God Virus
-Small Gods
-Galileo's Daughter
-Age of Reason
-The Universe in a Nutshell
-A couple of Culture books by Iain M. Banks

Other books I've read recently
-The Greatest Show on Earth (on loan to a relative)
-Good Omens
-More Culture novels
-Decent-sized chunks of the Bible (Skeptic's Annotated and Catholic Youth editions)
-Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

So clearly I'm an astronomer-historian-theologian-evolutionary biologist-biblical literalist-immunologist-hindu-physicist-atheist-catholic-enlightenment-american revolutionary-Orwellian-satirist and the only reason I haven't burned anything is because I'm too busy trying to figure myself out.

Is Atlas Shrugged a book you will appreciate more if you never read it?

Background knowledge: I have read only The Fountainhead in preparation, and I found that pretty hard to keep down, especially toward the end.

I want to read one or both of those back-to-back with Das Kapital and/or the Communist Manifesto. My theory is that they'll cancel each other out so I won't wind up with either extreme opinion. Or maybe they'll annihilate like matter and antimatter when I put them on my bookshelf and I'll get hit with the radiation.

THe Communist Manifesto isn't as left wing as you'd think, really. Marx /liked/ capitalism just fine; He simply thought we could do better, and that the better was communism. He didn't write HAET THE CAPITALISTS or anything like Rand did communists.

BosOM @

This is the personal account of the most awesome trek by Shackleton himself . It's ISBN 1 876485 09 4 if that helps

Helps, and now on hold for me at my local library!

Goats on Fire!

Roasted Penguin!

Gee, I wonder if they found a dictionary too ?
then they could say they found a book "about communism" in the house. Releasing that there were "Books on Atheism " is how you try someone in the press in Texas. Of course only an Atheist would have books on demons... because the other kind of pretend monster must have influenced them.

On my computer desks I have six or seven different versions of the bibble. I love calling out fundies who don't know what their book says.

Ooooh, I just realized I owned a truly potentially damning book, at least if judged by its title:

Who’s Who in Hell: A Novel, by Robert Chalmers

Ragutis @ 144:

3 pairs of Converse All-Stars.

Chucks are the best. 5 pairs here, soon to be 6 when my Converse Tweeds arrive.

Is Atlas Shrugged a book you will appreciate more if you never read it?

About 75% of internet Randroids appear to think so.

Guess I'll take a turn too. Why not? I enjoy seeing what's on other people's shelves, why not share my own?

Let's see.. Top shelf closest to my bed: (Not going to go through what's on the shelf on my bed, that's just all the books normally mentioned here - 'Your Inner Fish', Dawkins' various works, Zimmer's 'At The Water's Edge', Prothero's 'Evolution: What the fossils say and why it matters', etc. Nothing unique! But when I go to the shelves..)

The Magic Goes Away Collection; Larry Niven
Heavy Planet (Hal Clement's Mesklinite series)
The Woman Who Swallowed A Toothbrush (And other bizarre medical cases); Rob Myers, M.D.
The Erotic Ocean; Jack Rudloe
The Living Dock At Panacea; Jack Rudloe
The Golden Compass Trilogy; Philip Pullman
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest; Ken Kesey
A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, and The Complete Short Stories; Mark Twain
Crystals & Crystal Growing; Holden & Singer
Catcher In The Rye; J.D. Salinger
Never Cry Wolf; Farley Mowat
Desert Solitaire; Edward Abbey
Travels With Charlie; John Steinbeck
Just So Stories; Rudyard Kipling
To Build A Fire; Jack London
The Inferno; Dante
2 copies of Johnathan Livingston Seagull; Richard Bach
Incident At Hawk's Hill; Allan W. Eckert
The Crossbreed; Allan W. Eckert
Audubon Society's North American Field Guide to Birds
Audubon Society's North American Field Guide to Insects & Spiders
Guide To The Mammals; Simon & Schuster
Field Guide To Birds East of the Rockies
The Mind of the Raven; Berndt Heinrich
The Songs of the Insects; Elliot & Herschberger
The Dinosaur Heresies; Robert Bakker
The Savage Garden (Cultivating Carnivorous Plants); Peter D'Amato
The Silva Mind Control Method; Jose Silva
The Man-Kzin Wars 1-5; Larry Niven (Editor)
The 6th Annual Year's Best S-F. (1962!)

After that it's double-stacked science fiction down to the oversized shelves, where my collection of O'Rielly, Linux, and other computer-or-WWW-related books begins. (Some of those are a little old, but hey, even if they're ten years out of date, when you're IN them, you just gotta keep a copy!) ;) Most of my other bookshelves are all packed with science fiction & fantasy stacked as full as I can get 'em but that set of shelves has most of my field guides, japanese-english dictionaries, computer-related books, and waayyy down on the largest shelves, my collections of Bloom County, Calvin & Hobbes, and original TMNT graphic novels.

It doesn't strike me as entirely irrelevant that someone who burns down a *church* has books on atheism.

It would be irrelevant to burning down a bank, for example.

defides | February 26, 2010 3:29 AM:

It doesn't strike me as entirely irrelevant that someone who burns down a *church* has books on atheism.

The book in question does not recomend burning down churches. Quite the reverse, in fact; it comes down in favor of nonviolence, except in self defense. Perhaps you should read it.
There are many other books on atheism, such as The God Delusioon, Breaking The Spell, which do not recomend burning down churches.
This sort of scaremongering - the idea that atheism necessarily has a connection to burning down churches - this is just more propagation of the "militant atheist" delusion, the self-aggrandizing religious belief that the non-religious are necessarily evil.
In an important contrast, the Bible - and there were not one, not two, but three bibles found in the room of the suspect - does in several places advocate severe violence, even to the point of genocide, against competing religions. But we know that most Christians won't go that far.

It doesn't strike me as entirely irrelevant that someone who burns down a *church* has books on atheism.

He also had a xian book on demonic possessiosn and 3 bibles. That isn't irrelevant either.

He may have thought he was possessed by a demon. That is a common explanation that mentally ill people who are in fundie cults use. Hell, the fundies don't believe it is an explanation, they believe it is The Truth. Doesn't look like his exorcism if he had one worked all that well.

Or he may have read his bible and realized that killing and assorted mayhem is all through it. Good thing he didn't try to reenact the genocides of the Canaanites, Amelakites, Amorites, or assorted other ethnic groups in the bible. Being a Canaanite or Midanite in Texas must be an unnerving experience.

Or he could have just been ticked off at the churches which he is reported to have attended. They have a history of abusing children and some of those kids grow up angry. The Catholics are the most notorious but they aren't the only ones.

Dust @ # 148

I hope you enjoy it. If you're lucky it should have the appendices with all the scientific data they managed to gather during the many months they were stranded ( and impressively kept gathering even though odds were on that they were going to die)

One of my favourite all time quotes is about Shackleton by Hillary ( who is, along with Mallory & Irvine, another of my biography obsessions). Ignore the prayer bit- he was quoted in the 50's on this but it's the sentiment and homage I love:

"For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton"

- Sir Edmund Hillary

does in several places advocate severe violence, even to the point of genocide, against competing religions. But we know that most Christians won't go that far.

We do? Tell that to the Northern Irish who finished off 450 years of Reformation wars a whole 9 years ago.

What stopped the xians from killing each other and everyone around them was real simple. The secular authorities a few centuries ago took away their armies and heavy weapons. We just got tired of all the bloodshed for no real reason.

It didn't stop it but it slowed it down. Xian terrorism in the USA is still a problem with an MD or two getting assassinated every few years. Scott Roeder was just the latest in a long line.

We do? Tell that to the Northern Irish who finished off 450 years of Reformation wars a whole 9 years ago.

I stand corrected. I'm a fool to forget the troubles (worse, I've read a few books about the troubles, though not recently). The troubles and some other wars cannot be explained away by claiming only a minority of Christians are to blame.

What stopped the xians from killing each other and everyone around them was real simple. The secular authorities a few centuries ago took away their armies and heavy weapons. We just got tired of all the bloodshed for no real reason.

Nah. "We" (a simultaneously very appropriate and inappropriate choice of pronoun) got tried of bloodshed not furthering the royal interest.