Yep, it’s banned book week, and one person who has an opinion on the subject is author Philip Pullman, who’s book Northern Lights (turned into the movie The Golden Compass) is high up on the list of books in the crosshairs of religious institutions. Here’s his thoughts on the subject, care of the Guardian:

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.

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We talked a little bit about the Temple of Science a few weeks back, and now Wired has an interview with the creator.

Artist Builds Temple of Science | Wired Science from Wired.com

Keats’ conception of that idea took shape as a two-story building complete with stained-glass windows patterned after cosmic microwave background radiation and a liturgy based on the sounds of the Big Bang. The Atheon opened Sept. 27 at the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, California.But, could science replace religion?

The question has intrigued both rationalists frustrated at the persistence of what they see as superstitious dogma, and religious believers as well as all-purpose skeptics unwilling to promote science, with its mixed and messy history, to a position of absolute authority.

Keats doesn’t claim to take sides, but says he just wants to give people a chance to think. In December, he’ll host a public discussion at the Atheon, with people invited to bring their own models. “It’s important that this Atheon not be seen as the only model. It’s one possibility. The best thing would be for people to engage these questions, and consider what form religion could take as science.”

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Here’s a video of a guy who is convinced he can psychically communicate with babies being tested by James Randi. There are 4 parts to this “documentary”, but I only included the one where they actually put his “skills” to the test. Otherwise, I found their reporting a little naive.

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I’m not one to normally write about economic issues. Although I do hold very specific and, as some would say, rather radical economic views, I have noticed a trend in economic thought which mimics the fundamentalism found in religion. I am referring to The Church of the Free Market.

I’ve recently been studying the economic trends of the past 40 years, and found it to be quite enlightening. It gave me a glimpse into the deceitful world of big time economic players (the main one being the economic guru, Milton Friedman), intent on changing the world in their vision.

I started off innocently enough: after the Second World War, the world saw economics as a major player in world politics. It was, in large part, the financial meltdown in the west (as well as the prolonged crisis in post war Germany) that allowed Fascism and Imperialism to become so dangerous. It was now understood that proper guidance and monitoring would be necessary to avoid global catastrophe.

At the time, Keynesian economics ruled the day. The “invisible hand” of the free market was seen as nothing more than wishful thinking, and countries began investing heavily in their own infrastructure. With the ability to use tax monies, countries were able to build huge nationalized projects that greatly increased their wealth and security. Everything was going well.

But like any system, it wasn’t perfect. Without the necessary capital, poorer countries were finding it hard to generate enough money to make any nationalized projects a reality. In the wake of their turmoil, the wizards of free market economies allied themselves with military juntas in order to drastically reform the once socialist policies of countries like Chile and Argentina, often relying on torture, kidnapping, and intimidation. The results were dramatic. Where a thriving middle class had once existed, now there were only two classes: the very rich, and the very poor.

The new found wealth of the privileged few convinced many that the world was ready for unfettered free markets again. With every financial crisis in desperate countries, cries for deregulation and privatization followed. The results were dramatic; each country that allowed this unfettered market saw the same results as in Latin America; a huge financial opportunity, all the cost of the destruction of the middle class.

And now we turn to the bailout in the US. The very laws that used to protect the market against wild speculators were eroded, and the consequences were huge. Wall Street, without any infusion of cash, threatens to crumble under its own bloated weight. The government is offering a huge sum to buy out all bad debts and owed assets, but there is no clear stipulation on how the nearly 1 trillion dollars will be spent.

And just as this is happening, Neo-Cons are moving quickly to try and pull a fast one on everyone. Former House Majority leader Newt Gingrich wants to try and encourage other neo-cons to repeal the remaining protective laws in Wall Street. He would also like to see the privatization of schools and social security.

There is a direct corollary between free market fundamentalists and religiosity. Free market enthusiasts feel that the market is like magic: one only needs to put their trust in it and everything will be fixed. Anytime it crashes and burn, they blame only the fact that there are still TOO MANY REGULATIONS and that by completely obliterating them, everything will be right again. This is nothing more than unjustified faith in a economic philosophy that has shown itself to be highly flawed and imperfect. The fact that Neo-cons are usually deeply religious does not surprise me. Deep denial and delusion are all part of the religious framework they operate under.

I worry that this type of fundamentalist thinking is going to cause untold havoc. The same people that demand you believe in only their God want you to also only believe in their economic vision. The fact that both of these ideologies cause untold misery is of no importance to them. Simply believing is enough.

Of course it shouldn’t be. We cannot allow ourselves to be continually fooled by their rhetoric. The transparent fact is that the current financial crisis is a result of the destruction of laws intended on regulating it. No amount of “accountability” would change that very fact. The notion that individuals must take more responsibility for their actions ignores the fact that it was their intense self interest that led them to this crisis in the first place. Every one of these bankers and business people probably thought they were doing well, and they operated within the confines of the law. To have a revisionist view of this negates the opportunity to learn what happens when so much trust is placed on the free market.

The money that will be paid by the taxpayers, none of whom asked to be burden with such a cost, is another demonstration of the failure of the invisible hand. If the economic fundamentalists really have so much faith, they should let the chips fall where they may. Surely, their invisible hand will fix everything, right?

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If you’ve ever wondered why some people get hard core into their church weirdness, witness if you will how eerily similar these services are to raves, complete with the few guys who just take that shit too far.

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We mentioned a while back that John McCain and Barack Obama were answering questions relating to science and technology on a website called Science Debate 2008. Obama released his answers a few weeks ago and now John McCain has responded as well. You can now read the two candidates’ responses side by side here.

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There’s still a bit of hope that not every American politician has lost sight of the importance of their founding document, the Constitution. Barack Obama went on the offensive, criticizing the GOP for a comment Sarah Palin made about him in a speech:

“Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.”

Obama stated that habeus corpus was “the foundation of Anglo-American law”, and emphasized that it’s the right of every human being to know why they are being charged, and to go through due process.

Since the attacks of 9/11, the Republican party has convinced Americans that the right of law is a strategic weakness that their “enemies” will exploit to no end. Their efforts have been directed at the complete erosion of the very rights that many have died fighting for, all for the perceived perception of safety.

What is sad is how complacent most American citizens have been regarding the destruction of such highly praised values. Fear has gotten the best of many, and there are individuals that would rather live in a police state than run the risk of another terrorist attack. The irony, of course, is that the very people meant to protect you become your oppressors; as you place more trust and responsibility in their hands, so is it abused. The Founding Fathers – themselves witness to such repression – knew all too well the effect power has on individuals. They set about creating a system where such abuses would be impossible.

It’s refreshing to see that a presidential candidate has decided that pursuing terrorist should not erode the values that still make America the country it is. In the past 7 years it has been difficult for me as a Canadian to view the destruction of these values and not feel as though the world was losing something important. I can only hope that my neighbors to the south reclaim their country from the very people that are so intent on destroying it.

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From the EFF:

Over a period of twelve hours, between this Thursday night and Friday morning, American Rights Counsel LLC sent out over 4000 DMCA takedown notices to YouTube, all making copyright infringement claims against videos with content critical of the Church of Scientology. Clips included footage of Australian and German news reports about Scientology, A Message to Anonymous/Scientology , and footage from a Clearwater City Commission meeting. Many accounts were suspended by YouTube in response to multiple allegations of copyright infringement.

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