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The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

Banned Books Week

By The Daily Dish
Sep 30 2008, 3:27 AM ET

It's this week. Phillip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass, writes about his book and the movie based off that book being targeted by the Catholic League:

...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.

If religion is about truth, why is it so afraid of error?

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