Halo Halo! – Karma and the Bible
Karma is a bummer. Karma is a Buddhist concept allied to reincarnation. Be nice this time and your next life will be good. Be an illegitimate so-and-so in this life and look out buddy because who knows what you might come back as.
This column eschews karma and all religious fairy tales but seeing someone get bitten on the bum for previous unkindness is gratifying to the atheistic too. For future reference, we do not endorse schadenfreude. Well maybe just this once. American censors, it’s you we mean.
At the mention of Galileo, Freddie Mercury and Queen fans, and others, will start singing to themselves, ‘Thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening me, Galileo, Galileo, Figaro – magnificoo,’ from Bohemian Rhapsody. Galileo Galilei was a sixteenth/seventeenth century Italian astronomer who came into conflict with the Catholic Church. His support of Copernican heliocentrism, ie, the planets revolve around the Sun, and not the prevailing religious view that the Earth was the centre of the universe put Galileo on a collision course with the Catholic hierarchy. He was fortunate to get out of it without serious bodily injury.
Nobody expects the Roman Inquisition! Whether Galileo did or not expect it, when science contradicted theological mumbo-jumbo, a heap of trouble was the result. Founded in 1542 the Roman Inquisition is still going strong. It’s now known as the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Among other things, Galileo found himself on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, which is a list of books catholics were forbidden to read. The index was discontinued in 1966. History is littered with examples of censorship of all kinds. It never bodes well for someone or other. Which brings us to the present day.
An American writers’ organisation, Pen America (Guardian, 20 April) has been monitoring the incidence of book banning and, over a period of six months, has seen a 28 percent increase in such activities within American public schools.
Shades of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Sounds like the USA is determined to carry on the fine traditions of the Soviets and the NSDAP to name but a few.
Won’t somebody think of the children! Helen Lovejoy, wife of the Reverend Lovejoy, was forever crying out in The Simpsons. She sounds like the sort of person who would use that as emotional blackmail to impose their own views upon others.
Pen America says that bans are more common in states that are Republican-run.
A Utah school district – home of the Mormon church and a place that Joe Hill didn’t want to be seen dead in after Utah executed him – has banned the Bible (for vulgarity and violence) from school libraries and is considering banning the Book of Mormon too. (Guardian, 3 June). That’ll teach the proselytising equivalent of the Jehovah’s Witnesses! Your fairy story got banned! How’d you like that evangelists? Guess you reap what you sow. Last word to the Simpsons’ Nelson Munz: ‘Ha Ha!’
DC
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