Disappointment

I love to read. This is fairly obvious to anyone who knows me and/or has spoken to me for more than ten minutes. I've loved to read ever since I was a child - I'd devour books almost as soon as I'd received them. It's an expensive addiction, especially now that I've graduated to things more complicated than The Babysitters Club.

I have a broad range of authors and subjects on my shelves. Among the non-fiction inhabitants are of course Harry and Lyra, but also Lestat and Scarlett. They share the space with Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, Alison Weir and Elizabeth Wurtzel. I try to spread my trips to the bookstore so that they are few and far between because it's not unlikely that I'll scour the store until I've found more than $50 worth of reading. (I won't mention textbooks, which are required reading and very expensive.)

So today I was offered free books. There was a group handing them out in the science building on campus under a neon yellow sign that merely said 'FREE STUFF.' Intrigued, I went over to check it out and saw that they were handing out bundles of the following: highlighters, a guide to the New Testament, and Case For a Creator.

In case you haven't heard of it, Case for a Creator is described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_for_a_Creator#The_Case_for_a_Creator
I'll basically just say: yeah. It's known for being a famous piece of biased trash written by an investigative journalist. (I should point out here that I'm not against bias - but I am against hypocrites who claim to be unbiased and then show bias - re: FOX NEWS.) Please note that he's honoured by Christian apologists but not scientists - though he's claiming to speak to both. For a debunking of the book, visit this site: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/paul_doland/creator.html

The girl at the desk said "Want a free book?" Not "Hi, I'm *blank* from Campus for Christ (http://www.usc.uwo.ca/clubs.asp?cid=29). We'd like to inform you about *blank.*" Just "Want a free book?" Anyone who hadn't heard of this book before, as well as its terrible bias (it claims Michael Behe as an expert on this...come on) might just pick it up and flip through it. Clearly they didn't think much of our intelligence levels since they were trying to lure us with the idea of free books and not explaining that they were offering up religion too.

So I walked away, sat on the floor, and started to write up a blog post about religion on campus. But it was too long and I didn't feel like posting it yet. Really I just wanted to mention that I'm irritated. These people walked into a science building and handed out religious propaganda. If I'd walked into one of their chapels to hand out On The Origin of Species, I'd have gotten into a great deal of trouble. How is it that it's prejudice to undermine their fairy tale beliefs but it's perfectly fine for them to disregard my faith in common sense and rationality?

So yeah. I didn't get a free book like I thought I would. Fuck you, Campus for Christ.