"Reading Breeds Intelligence"

I just read the His Dark Materials trilogy (you know, the books that preceded the Golden Compass movie). I got so many of those dang emails warning me away from the athiest (read pure evil) author and the film that I'd had enough, so I read all three.

If you haven't been heavily warned against the corrupting influence of these books, you're clearly not sufficiently integrated into your religion. The author is, after all, a person who doesn't believe in God. BOYCOTT!!! I highly recommend the reading. First, I think the books were well-written and the story-telling was swift and strong. I like books with a good current to sweep me along, and these had that aplenty. I get where the whole killing of God thing seems sort of heretical, but I also see where anyone with even the most remote sort of intelligence can distinguish fact from fiction. I furthermore have zero tolerence for the notion of censorship when it comes to the written word, and think it a paltry faith indeed that can't withstand a good old-fashioned piece of science-fiction. I encourage you to read them, mostly because they were pretty fun reads, and then I suggest you go to the author's website and read this speech about education. It's long, but so good, and voices exactly what I've been feeling and what I've become invested in working on here. And to that, at least, I say amen.