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Silly book banning
By bk | November 23, 2007 18:28
An Ontario Catholic school board has ordered copies of The Golden Compass removed because the author Phillip Pullman is an atheist:
Now really, this is just silly. Based on a quick look at Wikipedia, they better also remove books by:
- Isaac Asimov
- Arthur C Clarke
- George Bernard Shaw
- Kurt Vonnegut
Among countless others.
Oh - they should also have kids avoid Katherine Hepburn, Ian McKellan, Gene Wilder, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, and anything by Steven Soderbergh. They better avoid Pink Floyd, Oasis, Billy Joel, many great philosophers and scientists - oh and they better not use Apple computers (which I truly love) ’cause co-creator Steve Wozniak is on the list.
And this is just a quick look at Wikipedia’s list of atheists and pulling out some notables - we could also take a look at the list of agnostics, oh boy!
These people need to realize that there have always been and always will be atheists and agnostics who really don’t attempt to censor the religious, but only ask that people think about these things critically. Forcing children to avoid a book, just because it might possibly call in to question some beliefs is only proof that their doctrine cannot stand on its own.
UPDATEDamn, PZ beat me to it by a few hours - one of the best bits:
I mean, we don’t see school boards screaming to remove Chuck Colson’s books from the shelves because the author is a convicted felon, which seems to me to be a much more serious indicator of moral turpitude than atheism, nor do we see a call to eject books by Ann Coulter because she is incredibly stupid, and is therefore a poor role model for students.
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They will have to drop books by Karl Popper, Ludwig Mises and Fritz Hayek as well. That would be a serious loss!
Posted by: Rafe on December 27th, 2007 at 4:18