They could not be content to call Tinky Winky gay. It wasn’t enough for them to attack Harry Potter as a source of secret Satanic influence over America’s children. Now that they’ve protested against the dead Albus Dumbledore being gay, right wing religious groups are intent upon purging fiction of Thought Sin, and so they’ve moved on to crusade against a new set of characters that have never existed except in the imaginations of their fans.
The activists of the Religious Right, supported by their associated pundits in conservative news columns and on cable television networks, are all in an uproar about The Golden Compass. The book, part of a fantasy trilogy by Philip Pullman, deals with talking polar bears in elaborate armor, bombs made out of hair, and a magical compass of destiny… so, naturally, the Religious Right suspects it is promoting atheism.
They’re demanding the book be pulled off library shelves, and trying to force Scholastic Books from selling any more of Philip Pullman’s books, even though they’ve been very financially successful. The reason for this opposition is that the right wingers accuse Philiip Pullman of being an atheist. It’s impermissible, from their perspective, to allow any person who doesn’t believe in gods to publish works of fiction.
Technically, Philip Pullman is not really an atheist. He’s an agnostic, saying quite clearly that he doesn’t know if God exists, and doesn’t think that anyone can know such a thing. However, it’s difficult for the Religious Right to campaign against an agnostic, so they just go ahead and call Pullman an atheist.
The same people who are campaigning against allowing people, Christian or not, to read books like The Golden Compass, are also campaigning in favor of right wing presidential candidates in 2008. That’s as good a reason as any to counter them with a vote for a progressive presidential candidate who doesn’t support efforts to censor fiction just because it’s regarded by some as religiously heretical.
(Source: The Toronto Star, November 22, 2007)
Pssst: The Golden Compass is also coming out in a couple of weeks as a feature length movie.
And yet, somehow, these same christians are the ones who’re “being persecuted.”
Funny ol’ world, isn’t it?
Anybody who actually read the books would know that they aren’t atheist. Because, see, they have deities and spirits and supernatural superpowers in them. That’s not atheist.
The people who are complaining about this trilogy don’t want you to read a book that they don’t themselves understand. Oh, please.
You don’t have to agree with a theological system to read a book and enjoy a book that contains that theological system. I don’t agree with Pullman’s theology (yeah, it’s got a theology, see, not atheist) but I enjoyed his books. They have great characters, and Pullman knows how to write a suspenseful scene, and the books are purposefully morally ambiguous, and they make you think about what is right and what is wrong without neatly cleaving the world into two sides, one that drips evil red poo and the other that has shiny clean good hair every day.
If you want a book with GOOD and BAD nicely separated for you, a book that affirms what you already believe, then by all means don’t read the book (unless you want to criticize it, in which case you clearly should know what you’re talking about first, which means reading the book) — after all, it’s not written for people like you. But if you’re a person who is able to handle some ambiguity and some thought experiments, and if you’re a fan of the Fantasy genre, I think you may really like the books.
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Eeek! Eeek!
Right wing religious crusade!
Conservative pundit campaign!
But wait, what does the link actually say?
The Halton Catholic board decided to remove the book from school library shelves? A book that promotes killing God. A private Catholic school. What’s wrong with that?
For one thing, it doesn’t sell books. Nor will it improve your google ranking.
Never mind the facts!
Panic! Read the book! Freak out!
The Religious Right!!
Eeeeeeeeeeekkkk!!!!!!!!
Eeeeek! You don’t have the facts straight, Iroquois. It’s in Canada, and that private religious school is government-funded!
You didn’t read the book, Iroquois, and you didn’t read much about that school, either. Seems you don’t mind the details much when it comes to religion.
Your link makes it very clear that this is a Catholic religious school, Peregrin.
Specifically it states “We asked you whether you agree with the Halton Catholic board’s decision to pull the fantasy book…”
Really, do you consider a Catholic school’s board to belong to the “Religious Right”? I just don’t see it.
I’m looking for all the “demanding”, “uproar”, “forcing publishers not to sell books”, “campaigning for right wing presidential candidates” (from Canada, no less!) teased about in your article, but in the link you provided, I only see a religious school board deciding something’s not appropriate for their religious school library.
The last time I checked, the function of religious groups was still to promote religion, not to promote atheism.
It seems like YOU are the one not minding details.
You think it’s the job of the Canadian government to fund religious censorship?
That’s your bias, then.
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In promoting religion, sometimes they also indirectly promote atheism.
It seems like you are saying, Peregrin, if the government funds a religious group, they then have the right to tell that religious group what to believe in. As long as the government is telling them to believe in your own religious orientation, no problem, but what happens when the government changes hands and someone in power is telling religious schools they must teach a religious view you loath?
Public funding of religious institutions is a slippery slope–both for the government and for the religious groups.
If a religious group takes government funding, they are under an obligation not to engage in religious discrimination by selectively censoring texts from the school library just because they disagree with the religious beliefs of the school’s founders.
Under this model, what happens when government leadership changes is that nothing changes – there is still no censorship of dissent allowed, if the intent is to encourage only one religion through the preservation of student ignorance.
Where is your reference for this Peregrin.
I am no expert on Canadian law, but it doesn’t make sense that a school that is specifically religious would not be permitted to promote that religion. After all, that’s why they established a religious school in the first place.
Surely you’re not saying that under the Canadian system a religious school is required to promote other religious orientations.
Further, it would seem it is the job of a school board to make judgments about what is appropriate for children in their system.
Part of that judgment, at least in this neck of the woods, is that religious schools do not encourage critical thinking or even creativity. The teachers too are expected to stay within the curriculum and not get fancy. Many frustrated teachers here end up back in the public system, but that is the nature of private religious schools and they have a right to do it.
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Some people can find something satanic in everything these days, you just have to look hard enough and have extreme paranoia;
See that donkey thing on the left – looks mysteriously like a flying goat… its looking at me… why is it smiling? what does it know?
Maybe im just paranoid or maybe ITS THE END OF THE WORLD!!!!
Im gonna go stock up on food now….