An excellent piece in today’s Guardian by Philip Pullman, author of the wonderful His Dark Materials trilogy, debunks censorship during the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week (it’s important to point out that they celebrate the books, rather than the censorship).

The censor’s dark materials

I hope the authors have done very well out of the increased sales they’ll have enjoyed, but this kind of thing only invites the rest of the world to consider the American public demented.

In fact, when it comes to banning books, religion is the worst reason of the lot. Religion, uncontaminated by power, can be the source of a great deal of private solace, artistic inspiration, and moral wisdom. But when it gets its hands on the levers of political or social authority, it goes rotten very quickly indeed. The rank stench of oppression wafts from every authoritarian church, chapel, temple, mosque, or synagogue – from every place of worship where the priests have the power to meddle in the social and intellectual lives of their flocks, from every presidential palace or prime ministerial office where civil leaders have to pander to religious ones.

My basic objection to religion is not that it isn’t true; I like plenty of things that aren’t true. It’s that religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good. Read full article here…