Religious based censorship

[David]

"My kids are going to school to learn, not to become a homosexual or an abortion doctor or an atheist," said mother Laura Lopez.

Ms. Lopez wants to have about 80 books banned from public schools. They are books that disagree with her religious beliefs.

I don't believe in the Bible; why can't I get the Bible banned?

The reality is that every day, people complain about books they have never read, musicals they have never seen, art they can't understand. In the name of God, they demand those items removed.

The thought process goes something like this.. I am not smart enough to understand what I'm seeing/reading/hearing. Therefore, no one else could be smart enough either. It's pompous, arrogant and just plain wrong. But, books are still banned.

Is this right?

[phrog]

Few things boosts sales than an attempt to ban anything.

[minorwork]

Maybe when we learn how to start a cell from scratch, get it to metabolize, and reproduce we will find the necessity of culling(?). Social memes imitate biological behavior coded at the most basic level of life to determine what propagates a cell like structure. Apply this in increasing orders of complexity. Probably present at all kinds of levels.

Under what circumstances does this unthinking discrimination fail to have an evolutionary advantage? This be vague as the advantage must be clarified. For the work unit? One coal crew competing for bonuses over others. The family? Rooting for that nipple in one form or the other. Or, Daniel Dennett style; a group of controlling entities in myself banding with a group in you to enable the propagation of their particular version of madness. Lots of possibles here.

To think is to consider oneself suspect of not thinking. WTF?

[home8896]

Ms. Lopez wants to have about 80 books banned from public schools. They are books that disagree with her religious beliefs.

I don't believe in the Bible; why can't I get the Bible banned?

The reality is that every day, people complain about books they have never read, musicals they have never seen, art they can't understand. In the name of God, they demand those items removed.

The thought process goes something like this.. I am not smart enough to understand what I'm seeing/reading/hearing. Therefore, no one else could be smart enough either. It's pompous, arrogant and just plain wrong. But, books are still banned.

Is this right?

Even if I could get the Bible banned, I wouldn't. I was brought up with a rigid intolerance toward censorship. The whole point is to be presented with what people actually think and to be able to confront and ridicule at will. Without a free exchange of ideas and information, we stagnate and flounder in a place where critical thinking is aberrant and not tolerated.

Just because some books are printed (in my case "Babywise" challenges my longing for the free flow of information with a desire to ban and pretend these ideas don't exist) doesn't mean that we accept and agree with the things printed therein. It is up to us to refute the ideas and to dispel the ignorance and confront the culture that has spawned the books, in the first place. Now, in the case of books that go against something based on religion, that is the worst excuse to ban a book. Even entertaining the idea that a book is dangerous enough to ban should be based on an empirically verifiable reason. To say it offends one because it goes against one's religion is not enough to take it off public libraries.

Yeah, this is a deeply ingrained opinion of mine. My mom, her friends, and the library I worked at when I was a teen all influenced me. However, I agree with what they taught me, from my own conclusions, too.

[minorwork]

The Better Government Association does not publish all they know of the gangster thugs activities in the legislature. About 35 years ago I asked why they didn't expose the graft. The answer, "There is so much that nobody would believe it." In other words, such a volume would weaken the cases that they do pursue. They censor themselves. I can only wonder how the BGA missed the believe anything bible thumpers.

I would ban a book that pushes suicide so successfully that those reading it killed themselves. How would you evaluate that book? I'm not sure I'd want to. Maybe you could tell me how it ends. Oh. Right. You kill yourself for a cause. Martyrdom. Deja Vu!