Will Toronto schools yank The Golden Compass?

Hrumph. Let the Catholics wallow in their ignorance. Pullman may himself be an atheist but the His Dark Materials trilogy is not a protest against God or religion in particular - it is a story about how religion can be perverted so far that god simply ceases to be useful/effective to the faithful and expires. There are lessons for the faithful in this story that go beyond a simple reading of 'god being killed' or secular heroism. It's one of the best works I've ever read and I'll definitely be there to see the film in the theatre, paying my dollars, the Catholic School Board be damned.

leave that kind of stupid censorship to the denizens south of the border and other earth-is-flat, world-was-created-in-6-days, creationism-rules foaming-at-the-mouth fanatics. Canadians should know better. His Dark Materials is one of the better works of literature across all genres of the last 30 years. It is exactly the kind of books that children need to read. Not only because it is superbly written, won numerous prestigious prizes, actually makes people think, but also, contrary to the nonsense posted on the Web, is a work of high morals from which the reader will likely emerge a better person. What is more disturbing is that this book has been around for 10 years now. It pre-dates the Harry Potter series. And it is only now, after 15 million copies were sold worldwide in 30 languages and that a movie is about to come out that the school commission is asking whether this book is appropriate for children ?!!? wow that really gives me confidence that these people are doing their job.

"Where they burn books, they will in the end burn human beings as well." ("Dort, wo man B?cher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.")
--Heinrich Heine

To Mark's last point, I agree, it's sort of amazing that a trilogy of books about (among other things) a war on heaven has gone unnoticed for so long and that only the movie's release has made these groups sit up and take notice. But I think the Harry Potter phenomenon really did keep HDM relatively "safe" up until now.

Banning books only make them more desirable to read.

Hopefully the Catholic board will ban some good critical thinking books by Shermer or James Randi.

The unbelievable prejudice that the Halton school board shows towards atheism sickens me. The satanic persecution of the atheistic masses by the Halton school board surely makes other Christians weep

Sean: it's the Halton Catholic schoolboard. They don't like atheists? GASP! Why I never! (insert some, somewhat suitable, joke about the Pope still being Catholic here)

It's a Catholic school board... obviously they are pro-Catholic/anti-Atheist. If this happened in a public school it would be a different story entirely.

It is clear that they fear mass-conversion to athiesm on the basis of this fantasy novel. Why ban it though? To really nip the problem in the bud they need to burn the author as a heretic! For that matter why stop there? Who published it? Burn 'em! Who did the cover-art? Burn 'em! Who sold the book? Burn 'em!

I do so love the smell of smoke and religious intolerance...

I don't see a problem with this at all - you have to do what you preach. It's a Catholic school board so it makes sense that they don't include books that don't promote the Catholic pov. It's not like this book is banned in the rest of the country. Any kid, Catholic or not can make his way to the local public library and pick it up there. No worries, no problems. Relax people.

Erm - Rick, the Catholic school board is a publicly funded board. But it's not segregation, because our Premier says so.

That said, I missed what was so great about HDM. It bored me rigid. My loss I suppose.

Rick is wrong to contrast the Catholic to the "public" board. Both the secular and Catholic public systems are, well, public. But he is right that pulling it off the shelves of Catholic schools -- which are not depositories for all books, only for ones that the schools select as reading material for their kids -- is perfectly consistent with the mandate of the Catholic system.

In other words, that this attracts any controversy at all is just a proxy for the issue of how people feel about a public Catholic school system altogether. (For instance, those who, like the premier with regard to non-Catholic faith-based schools, or Mark with regard to Catholic faith-based schools, stir the pot by assimilating such schools with now-struck-down racial laws.) In itself, the episode it is not very surprising.

Personally I find that most of the time atheists are a lot more closed minded then religious people. If atheism is your pov that's fine but don't force it on others - if religious people want to believe in the bible, koran or whatever else - they should be able to. Further, they should also have the freedom to support their pov by choosing to support some books over others. Simple as that. You want a free society - well, this is sort of how it works.

OK, sorry Ramius, but that's just laughable. I have never told a religious person that they have no right to believe what they believe, not even once. Yet I've been told I have no right to believe what I believe, about once a week since I was fifteen years old. There seems to be no end of religious folk who feel it's not just their right but their duty to try to shoot down my belief system. And being a part of a free society means that I put up with it, and embrace the existence of multiple viewpoints.

Banning a book, or any knowledge, is not an embrace of anything. It's an expurgation of an idea, and that is the death of freedom.

Okay, just wondering if there would be an equivalent moral outrage against a Jewish school pulling a book that identified Hebrews and Rabbuni as evil in the same way that this book does the Magisterium and Church faithful.

On that same note, can anyone name an equivalent person of faith who works at CBC radio and gets to preach from that pulpit in the same way that atheist activist Andy Barrie does so?

One has to acknowledge the Golden Compass as a victory for atheism. That supposes one has bothered to read and understand the trilogy.

Most venting on this issue are doing so solely on the misinformation of Star, CBC and Global reports claiming it to be an issue about the author's atheism, rather than the propaganda of his child directed anti-religious indoctrination.

Imagine also the outrage if Mel Gibson tried to fund a Hollywood film with an equivalent type of anti-Atheist message. The horrors of religious propagada run both ways folks.

Secularism is not the absence of faith, but the co-esistence of all faiths along with the non-fathful. Somewhere Canadian media got the idea that secularism is a safe place to be free of faith and only for atheists and like-minded philisophical zealots are allowed to vent with fervor.

Please, let me apologize for this interruption, y'all get back to your Christian and Catholic hate-on.

Great follow up piece from the Star here:

http://www.thestar.com/Speakout/Voices/article/278999

Yet another reason why we shouldn't have Catholic schools...

P.Z. Myers has commented on this at Pharyngula.

"...the propaganda of his child directed anti-religious indoctrination."

There is no arguing that the trilogy is clearly and forcefully critical of organized religion. I wouldn't really call it an atheist work though; I think it depicts more of a pantheistic universe with its "dust" imbuing everything.

However, arguing against religion doesn't make the book propaganda. It's the counterpart of the Narnia series, in that His Dark Materials critiques religions in the same way that Narnia promotes Christianity. But Narnia certainly shouldn't be removed from any library shelves, even public school ones, just because it promotes Christianity.

Any publicly funded school has a duty to educate children. Education entails giving children the tools to think and decide for themselves. Catholic schools should be about teaching children the tenets of the Catholic faith, not about indoctrinating the children in it and bannign all other ideas from being heard.

Okay, just wondering if there would be an equivalent moral outrage against a Jewish school pulling a book that identified Hebrews and Rabbuni as evil in the same way that this book does the Magisterium and Church faithful.

To which publicly-funded Jewish schools are you referring, Colan?

I don't remember any protests submitted by religious people against teaching Darwin hypotesis of unguided evolution given as a proven theory in secular public schools. This is despite the fact that unguided evolution goes against history, statistics, common sense, and leads to perverted moral values.

Why this concern about what is taught in religious schools, whatever they decide? I am not wasting my time and the time of my children on different ideas speculating on serious topics - too many ideas, too little time.

Hello Ontario,
Remember the election 6 weeks ago? You resoundingly told the world that using public money funding only catholic schools was not only OK but was what would save us all from social unrest etc... You reelected a Premier who openly preaches discriminating against non-Catholics...and now you are upset that catholic boards are taking liberties by banning books?
So people who are upset by this decision should just look in the mirror and live up to the fact that they recently voted for bigotry, discrimination and giving catholic boards a unique privilege.
You reap what you sow. Deal with it.

It is so sad that this is the most intelligent article I've read on this issue. (Not that bloggers can't be good, but I'm assuming you aren't paid to do this).

And it is so true that despite some people complaining about a so-called war on religion and belief, atheists aren't challanging the Narnia books (which are not only stocked in public school libraries but very often assigned to children as required reading). Thank you for being honest and realistic about Lewis' themes. He wouldn't have been ashamed of them, I don't know why so many insist on denying the importance Christianity plays in those novels.

I'm a religious person (most of the time) but I'm pretty sure censoring books and ideas is a pretty good way to create athiests out of little Catholic kids.

Thanks Gee. HDM is my favourite book, so any chance I get to generate some conversation around it is payment enough, believe me. :)

Disparishun,

You suggesting that if an institution, any institution, gets public funding, any pressure group should be allowed to demand oversight?

Why not tell publically funded gay groups to carry anti-gay literature?

Ensure that publically funded abortion clinics carry anti-abortion lit?

What about having the CBC use activist personalities of all faith or anti-faith groups, not just the fashionable ones?

But then again, like the Star and the CBC, you probably think that only groups with which you personally agree should get public funding.

What goes around...
Colan

Thanks for the veiled threat, Colan.

Here's a great piece from the Globe this morning:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071127.wlgolden27/BNStory/lifeFamily/home

(If they pull that link just try searching for "Spinning the Golden Compass" in Google News)

"I don't remember any protests submitted by religious people against teaching Darwin hypotesis of unguided evolution given as a proven theory in secular public schools. This is despite the fact that unguided evolution goes against history, statistics, common sense, and leads to perverted moral values."

It's not I hypothesis bro, it's a theory (A theory represents a collection of facts and make testable predictions - a theory in science is very different from the general use of the term). Just like gravity. If you go to TalkOrigins.org, you'll find enough information compiled from different areas of study to show that change at the level of species over time through random mutation is currently rock solid.

What I've quoted above is not only a straw-man argument, but a gross misrepresentation of evolutionary theory.

It's science, and that's why it's taught in the science classroom. IF the discovery institute ever decide to use their massive annual operating budget to actually find some evidence for intelligent design, scientists who intellectually honest will take I.D. seriously.

Peace.