Prison purge of religious books

Mercy replies, anyone?

absolute travesty.

if they want to make it so that the guards can't lead prayers, etc. it's probably a good thing. taking out materials that everyone should have access to if they want it is another. of course i don't just mean the bible, people should have access to any religious books they want. a few copies of si and carl sagan wouldn't hurt either.

Well this is flying like the proverbial lead balloon. Snivel

Its a shame, the bible was always a good source of paper to make cigarettes from when the cig papers ran out, nothing worse than a hand full of tobacco and nothing to smoke it in

The way round this one is to heavily emboss all religious books with the words. "This book is a work of fiction" !

(actually we could also add a "Government Health Warning"....."Your religion can seriously damage the health of others")

hey if that's what it takes, fine.

i wouldn't mind seeing the same warnings on the tv news and the daily soaps, however. as for science books, such warnings aren't necessary, science is only useful if you continue to debate it. (personally i think this wonderful attitude should extend to other genres of learning and literature...)

Re: Prison purge of religious books

Not the first step -- yet another baby step by which government cuts back human rights under the guise of fighting terrorism.

Is it primarily an attack on human rights or an attack on religion?

Fahrenheit 451

Even Mad magazine?

Since freedom of religion is a human right, I don't see the two as mutually exclusive.

Is that another word for the Bible ?

Maybe religions shouldn't be allowed to indoctrinate trapped people (who have little else to read). Maybe this was an act of kindness to protect the prisoners?

Maybe the prison chaplain should be required to represent all religions equally.

Maybe prisons should be required to provide a balanced proportion of reading materials.

Or maybe the prisons should be required to provide the prisoners with nothing else except "Programming for Dummies" and "General Physics" books, so they can contribute to the engineering job force when they get out (we could use more engineers).

(Mercy post)

i totally agree that religion shouldn't be used to indoctrinate prisoners.

i would never shuffle them into a service or religious meeting of any kind, unless they wanted one. note that i suggested even having atheist/skeptic materials available to them. and if you're to be fair, you'd need secular reading materials or they really wouldn't have "anything else" to read, that's completely true. removing religious materials isn't the answer however.