FL: Please stop selling witchcraft books written by witches

Kiyah said:

I can only think of one, I would tell you which one but I'm afraid you might pull it.

You have a good sense of humor.  I imagine a large red 'pull it' button at Bellingham HQ.  A finger hovering above the button .... nooooooo!

At heart (and this seems to go back to at least the 2nd century, so there's probably a reason) ... some church sins are red hot (great for destroying competing churchmen, back then), and others are ... well, 'all have sinned and ..." you know the rest. You get a 'grace' pass. Two thousand years later, it's the 'pull-it' button!

Kiyah said:

We need to start a running list of all the books FL will sell before they'll sell a book affirming gay Christians. 

Oh, my.  My library is pretty sinful. Starting with ... well, even saying it on the forum is not ok.  I suppose, if I claim it's for research?

OK, so Logosian imaginations don't run riot, I was thinking about all those YHWH-was-a-Canaanite-god books (quoting from the Bible). Or ... well, you get the drift.

There is an old saying.... "That which satisfies everyone satisfies no one". If it is FL's policy to have any and all books ever printed in Logos, then it comes back to "Caveat empteur (sp?)" which means... "buyer beware!" 

xnman said:

I'm against it.

This is one of those topics like many of late, that I hesitate to get involved in due to the fact that I would be so tempted to very clearly state my belief, and thereby violate the rules of this forum.

That being said, I do have to defend the statement that xnman made. He did not state that his opinion was correct. Neither did he state that his opinion was better than everyone else's opinion. He merely stated his own personal opinion about what he would disagree with being included in Logos.

Logos is foremost a Bible Study App – it says so right at the top of the page. All of us, even those of us who come from similar traditions, will go about Bible study in our own unique way. Sometimes this causes a difference of opinion in what materials really do help or hinder Bible study. Some we may accept but disagree with, while others we may find uncomfortable and particularly improper.

While there are a certain number of books mentioned in this thread that, in my opinion, would be more a hindrance to Bible study than a help, perhaps others may find them beneficial in helping them grow in God's word.

I'm quite saddened by some of these comments.

One thing I believe is important is to make a distinction between a book about the occult written by a Christian and one written by a pagan.

I support access to the former, never to the latter.

When we buy a book the result is that the author gets a cut of the proceeds and, who knows, can boast about his sales.

If these were hard copies, would you have an occult book on your shelves so that when your non-Christian friend visits he can see it? Would you have a statue of buddha or a demonic painting in your home so that you can study it and get to understand it?

And since the discussion has moved to homosexuality, would you have a picture of two men kissing displayed?

As I said, I'm saddened.

Roger

Roger Pitot said:

If these were hard copies, would you have an occult book on your shelves so that when your non-Christian friend visits he can see it? Would you have a statue of buddha or a demonic painting in your home so that you can study it and get to understand it?

No, Roger, I wouldn't get excited about my book shelves.

In our neck of the woods, an 'occult' title would be a great conversation starter, where Christians lean both ways ... many do. And I don't even know what a denomic painting even looks like.  I do have a book on imagery and demons ... from Amazon,, so I suppose Logos' skirts are clean on that front. And regarding gay, when various Christian denominations are in the middle of that phenomina, yes, Logos should provide perspectives.  Along with greed, capitalism, and poverty.  Dorothy Day!

Tony Walker said:

 I for sure am as heterosexual as they come, but when the Apple Watch has a pride wallpaper baked into the OS that’s going further than Target.

I mean, to be fair, Target was making Tuck bathingsuits for babies and todlers. So adults can dress up male babys and toddlers in skimpy female suits, without people knowing their biologically male child, was male.

I'm not sure a background available as a choice is going further than assisting adults in twisting children. But I do agree that we tend to pick our battles - perhaps we should be less like Jesus at the crucifixion and more like Jesus cleansing the temple in todays culture. I'm not sure. I tend to stay out of that stuff, and just focus on telling people about Jesus, and letting Jesus deal with the culture. But perhaps we should be doing more.

EastTN said:

This is a discussion among Logos customers about what products we would like to see them offer, and which we would prefer they not offer. No more, no less. My preference would be for Logos to remain a specialty retailer. You might prefer that they become another Amazon, but with better software. That's fine, and catering to your preferences may be a better business strategy for them. But this discussion is not about censorship. No one is talking about forcing books off the market. Amazon is still going to be offering this book, and many others on paganism, regardless of what FaithLife chooses to do.

Logos is first and foremost a research platform, and if one is researching witchcraft, he or she might like to use this work as a source.  I would rather Logos include works and leave it to he discretion of the users than to not offer works. 

For instance, I taught a class on world religions, and I covered Satanism, so I wanted Anton Lavey's Satanic Bible as a source, but Logos doesn't offer it, so I had to get it through another avenue.

EastTN said:

I don't want to see my specialty hardwood store start stocking construction grade pine two by fours. I'd rather they focus their efforts on ensuring a quality supply of quartersawn oak, figured maple and sustainably grown tropical hardwoods. That's not "censorship" of two by fours - Home Depot has them by the pallet-load. 

This is a false analogy.  Logos is a research library which sells many resources related to Religion.  You don't want them to sell books on witchcraft, but what about Islam, or Mormonism, or even Gnosticism and Gnostic Gospels?  I would hope you wouldn't want those works taken out.  Out of all of those I just mentioned, Witchcraft is the only one mentioned in the Bible, though one could argue that early forms of Gnostic thinking are there as well.

My point is that you are looking at Logos as a Christian bookstore, but it is a Research Library, and research can take many avenues related to the Bible and Christianity, and some of those avenues necessarily delve into paganism.

Joseph Turner said:

My point is that you are looking at Logos as a Christian bookstore, but it is a Research Library, and research can take many avenues related to the Bible and Christianity, and some of those avenues necessarily delve into paganism.

That being said, not all of the debated works would be considered credible sources for research. 

Personally, I see Logos as a Christian research library. I’m not offended by non-Christian primary sources being included. Sometime, I find myself questioning the inclusion of resources that lack the academic value or is more of a work advocating transforming Christian moral teaching from X to not-X.

If Logos should go too far from the concept of Christian research library (it hasn’t yet), I’ll probably vote with my wallet.

Roger Pitot said:

One thing I believe is important is to make a distinction between a book about the occult written by a Christian and one written by a pagan.

I support access to the former, never to the latter.

But if you were writing academically, then you would be required to read the original source, and not just someone else's summation and opinion of that source.  That's the issue here.  Logos is a research library.

Roger Pitot said:

Roger Pitot said:

If these were hard copies, would you have an occult book on your shelves so that when your non-Christian friend visits he can see it?

Aboslutely!  Just like I have the Quran, Gnostic Gospels, and other sources from which to do original research.

Roger Pitot said:

Would you have a statue of buddha or a demonic painting in your home so that you can study it and get to understand it?

And since the discussion has moved to homosexuality, would you have a picture of two men kissing displayed?

Getting a book to do original research and what you describe here are not comparable.  When I taught on Satanism I obtained a copy of the Satanic Bible to understand the beliefs of that sect of Satanism.  That doesn't mean that I hung upside down crosses and images of Baphomet on my walls.

David Wanat said:

I’ll probably vote with my wallet.

To me, that is the best way. I started doing that quite some time ago when Logos first strayed from selling strictly Christian material. I used to treat Logos like a Christian bookstore. I was willing to pay a more, sometimes a lot more. But since they changed, I buy almost all of my leisure/general reading from my local Christian bookstore (yes, we still have one) and then Amazon. If my money is going to be used to support homosexuality, the occult and such, I might as well contribute less to it, by buying what I want cheaper and read it in my preferred format (hard copy or on a Kindle Oasis). Unfortunately, in today’s world, almost anywhere we shop, our money will be used to support things we don’t want it to. That’s just reality and a moral choice.

GaoLu said:

Logos sends a personal vision statement by selling such books or by not selling such books.  That personal vision may or may not be customer driven.  

That is not a forum issue one way or the other.  

May I respectfully suggest that this may be a 'corporate non-statement'? - rather than the personal vision statement you suggest.

Perhaps a list of put-in-L books came up, + the person so tasked just did it.

Maybe they knew this book was iffy, but the worker smiled +put it for sale.

Logos' lack of attention to their book catalogue stands out to me as a shoulder shrug.  Mgt is weak here.

I see a git-'er-done + move on vibe.  Some books don't have: listed authors, bios of authors, # pages listed, sample installed.  Some titles are future enough that certain data cannot be provided, but I see corporate indifference re lack of improvement.  Indifference = corporate non-statement.

EastTN said:

and that's just sad.

Not getting excited, but Libby used to offer model railroading ... among other great spiritual tomes (notice how I used 'other', confusing the flow).  I don't remember FL saying they were going to tighten up their model railroading offering: https://www.logos.com/search?query=title%3Arailroad&sortBy=Relevance&limit=60&page=1&ownership=all&geographicAvailability=all  (I'm surprised, so many in Florida).

And indeed thru the Bob-ian years, they seemed quite comfortable with a very wide assortment.  Remember the 'Shades of Grey' question, and the ambulances required for all the heart attacks?

Now, for clarity, Libby's interest in tiny trains, doesn't speak to your preferences; not trying to confuse that issue.  Only to say, the company has long had a wide vision of content.

DMB said:

Only to say, the company has long had a wide vision of content.

And that's not what I look for in a Christian bookstore. Maybe you do. But my personal feedback to Faithlife, as one customer, is that I would prefer they take a more curated approach. It would make it easier to find what I want, I'd be more confident that the books I'm considering buying are high quality and likely to be useful to me as a Christian, and I'd likely spend more.

As an aside, that search turns up a grand total of 11 books having something to do with the word "railroad". Three of them are about the Underground Railroad, one of them is a summary of a Pulitzer prize winning novel about the Underground Railroad, and one of them is a cookbook.

That leaves six books that are actually about railroads, which would seem to be the exception that proves the rule. Clearly, the railroad market didn't turn out to be a big winner for FaithLife. I doubt witchcraft will either, unless they manage to attract a very different customer base. Doing that would require significant enough changes in their business model, offerings and marketing approach that they would likely lose many of their current customers. They would almost certainly lose me, even though I already have an absurd amount of money invested in the Logos system.

EastTN said:

And that's not what I look for in a Christian bookstore. Maybe you do. But my personal feedback to Faithlife, as one customer, is that I would prefer they take a more curated approach. It would make it easier to find what I want, I'd be more confident that the books I'm considering buying are high quality and likely to be useful to me as a Christian, and I'd likely spend more.

As an aside, that search turns up a grand total of 11 books having something to do with the word "railroad". Three of them are about the Underground Railroad, one of them is a summary of a Pulitzer prize winning novel about the Underground Railroad, and one of them is a cookbook.

That leaves six books that are actually about railroads, which would seem to be the exception that proves the rule. Clearly, the railroad market didn't turn out to be a big winner for FaithLife. I doubt witchcraft will either, unless they manage to attract a very different customer base. Doing that would require significant enough changes in their business model, offerings and marketing approach that they would likely lose many of their current customers. They would almost certainly lose me, even though I already have an absurd amount of money invested in the Logos system.

It is a sad day when someone comes to someplace like Logos who seem to profess to be a "Christian" organization and yet they support all kinds of heritical and false teachings about the way God, His bible is.... Yep, a sad day indeed! It's almost like a person claiming to be a Christian and then watching porn all day long...  in my mind at least.

What happened to Christian morals?

What happened to Christian  ethics?

What happened to Christian principles?

Maybe... sold down the river of life?

MJ. Smith said:

The one change I would really like to see is that if a customer sees a book they find offensive, they write to Logos rather than posting it on the peer-to-peer forums. I've purchased several books solely because there was such a bruhaha on the forums I wanted to be informed.

I would like to see that too. Perhaps Logos could designate an email box or other structured mechanism for doing that.

xnman said:

EastTN said:

And that's not what I look for in a Christian bookstore. Maybe you do. But my personal feedback to Faithlife, as one customer, is that I would prefer they take a more curated approach. It would make it easier to find what I want, I'd be more confident that the books I'm considering buying are high quality and likely to be useful to me as a Christian, and I'd likely spend more.

As an aside, that search turns up a grand total of 11 books having something to do with the word "railroad". Three of them are about the Underground Railroad, one of them is a summary of a Pulitzer prize winning novel about the Underground Railroad, and one of them is a cookbook.

That leaves six books that are actually about railroads, which would seem to be the exception that proves the rule. Clearly, the railroad market didn't turn out to be a big winner for FaithLife. I doubt witchcraft will either, unless they manage to attract a very different customer base. Doing that would require significant enough changes in their business model, offerings and marketing approach that they would likely lose many of their current customers. They would almost certainly lose me, even though I already have an absurd amount of money invested in the Logos system.

It is a sad day when someone comes to someplace like Logos who seem to profess to be a "Christian" organization and yet they support all kinds of heritical and false teachings about the way God, His bible is.... Yep, a sad day indeed! It's almost like a person claiming to be a Christian and then watching porn all day long...  in my mind at least.

What happened to Christian morals?

What happened to Christian  ethics?

What happened to Christian principles?

Maybe... sold down the river of life?

The problem with this reasoning is that it automatically backfires on you and everyone else! Seventh Day Adventist claim to be Christians but you wouldn’t buy their books, would you? Same goes for Baptist, church of Christ, Pentecostals, etc.

Maybe Logos should be a “Religious Research Platform.” That way everyone is happy 😂😂😂

We all try to get along here because we share in common the same software, but I can assure you that none here would be eager to invite each other to preach at their particular denomination 😂  A Baptist wouldn’t invite a Mormon to preach at his church, A Seventh Day Adventist wouldn’t invite a church of Christ preacher to preach at their church, etc. because in a way they all think of each other as being wrong! But they’re all here calling each other “brothers” because we use the same software.

So yeah, “Logos Religious Research Library” would be a long but more suitable name!

DAL

xnman said:

It is a sad day when someone comes to someplace like Logos who seem to profess to be a "Christian" organization and yet they support all kinds of heritical and false teachings about the way God, His bible is.... Yep, a sad day indeed! It's almost like a person claiming to be a Christian and then watching porn all day long...  in my mind at least.

I don't think that logically follows. My religious tradition (perhaps others use the term as well) talks about practicing custody of the senses. One can, with a legitimate need, study a heretical work to discover how they went wrong. It would be wrong to do so out of curiosity or to look for "secret knowledge." 

I have studied religious traditions outside of my own to make sure I avoid bearing false witness against them. That's legitimate. I wish they'd do the same towards us. But if I were trying to find "secret wisdom" from reading them, that would be wrong.

I think the proper use of studying heretical works is so far removed from the porn analogy as to make it a fallacy of false analogy.

David Wanat said:

xnman said:

It is a sad day when someone comes to someplace like Logos who seem to profess to be a "Christian" organization and yet they support all kinds of heritical and false teachings about the way God, His bible is.... Yep, a sad day indeed! It's almost like a person claiming to be a Christian and then watching porn all day long...  in my mind at least.

I don't think that logically follows. My religious tradition (perhaps others use the term as well) talks about practicing custody of the senses. One can, with a legitimate need, study a heretical work to discover how they went wrong. It would be wrong to do so out of curiosity or to look for "secret knowledge." 

I have studied religious traditions outside of my own to make sure I avoid bearing false witness against them. That's legitimate. I wish they'd do the same towards us. But if I were trying to find "secret wisdom" from reading them, that would be wrong.

I think the proper use of studying heretical works is so far removed from the porn analogy as to make it a fallacy of false analogy.

Most sober reply I’ve read today! 👍

DAL said:

Be realistic! There is no such thing as a “Christian” bookstore! Strictly speaking, not even the gospel advocate would qualify as a Christian book store 😂

No True Scotsman

There may be no Christian bookstore that fully meets your personal standards - but that does not imply that the concept of a Christian bookstore is meaningless, or that the average Christian bookstore is no different from one targeting a different audience (e.g., a Mystery bookstore, or a porn shop).

You may want to argue that Logos should carry everything in the Amazon catalogue, and then some. That's a legitimate position to take, even if I disagree with it. And there are legitimate arguments that can be made for it. Some of them have already been made in this discussion thread. But these "gotcha" word games aren't helpful.

DAL said:

I can tell you about the real books that you should read to learn something but can assure you that you don’t really want to read those books and learn what’s in them.

I have read somewhere (can't remember where) that certain books, like religious objects, jewelry etc can attract demons into your house. If this is true, I guess the big question then would be whether or not demons attached to a book can operate through the conversion to digital format?

I did have an experience many years ago with such a book. I had been studying the topic of fasting and its spiritual implications. What you will discover if you search for books on fasting is that there are not a lot written by Christians that go very deep into the experience. There are tons of secular books on the topic now discussing the physical and health benefits, and there has been a virtual explosion in the interest in intermittent fasting. I have read or looked at most of them over the years.

But the number of really good Christian books discussing the experience of long term fasting is very small. Most of them are introductory level and only wade ankle deep into the experience. The most informative book I found on the experience was written by a man named Buhner, who is described as a herbalist and "sacred plant medicine" author.

The man gained his experience in part by leading people out into the desert on "vision quests" in the native American tradition, which included meeting your spirit guide etc. I was confident that I could take his religious connections with a grain of salt, and still gain some knowledge on the topic.

Turns out I was wrong,and I did have some real experiences after reading this book, and subsequently repented for having read it, and threw my copy of it in the trash. I also had the same book on my kindle, and it has the distinction of being the only book I have ever deleted from my kindle library.