# Index of Forbidden Books: 2012 edition (open spoilers likely) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 20, 2006, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327 "2006-07-20T13:28:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2006, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/21 "2006-07-21T16:49:27Z")
> [@Operation Ripper](#): > > Rgr that, was just wondering as many of the above posts hinted it was a Christian dictatorship. It seemed to be Christian in . . . well, style, but the name of Christ never was mentioned in the book that I can recall. Scudder seems to have supplanted him, and Scudder was really more like Mohammed – a political and religious ruler combined. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2006, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/22 "2006-07-22T03:19:32Z")
I did kind of like what finally happened to the last Prophet, when the rebels pulled off the Second American Revolution. The Temple Virgins got to him first, and “left him barely something to identify at an inquest.” ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2006, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/23 "2006-07-22T11:25:31Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > I did kind of like what finally happened to the last Prophet, when the rebels pulled off the Second American Revolution. The Temple Virgins got to him first, and “left him barely something to identify at an inquest.” And I suppose it’s my own fault that the thread has turned into a “This Can’t Go On…” discussion rather than a censorship discussion. Must name threads more carefully. Back to the topic: another book I think likely to be censored in the event of a fundamentalist dictatorship is _The Dark Side of Man_, by Michael Ghigileri (whose name I’m sure I butchered), a work on evolutionary psychology. Likewise, everything that Richard Dawkins ever wrote, and probably (though not certainly) Stephen Hawking. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2006, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/24 "2006-07-22T13:50:55Z")
Ben Bova’s [_Jupiter_](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812579410/sr=8-2/qid=1153575934/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-8508178-8162241?ie=UTF8) (or anything in the [Grand Tour](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour_%28novel_series%29) series, I guess), where the fundies-in-power of New Morality play a villainous role, desperately striving to block the discovery of extraterrestrial sentients because the existence of such doesn’t fit with their worldview – God made only **man** in His own image. I guess if the religious dictatorship hypothesized in the OP saw it that way – **any** SF novel featuring ETs would be banned, including Lewis’ allegorical Space Trilogy. And SETI would be defunded. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2006, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/25 "2006-07-22T22:57:17Z")
I have another piece of data showing that C. S. Lewis is mostly ignored by fundamentalists. Several posters have given links to websites showing that a few fundamentalists think Lewis is a traitor to the Christian faith. Those websites aren’t typical of fundamentalist belief though. They mostly think that he was a sincere Christian, but he isn’t really very important to their worldview. After all, Lewis said very little about abortion or gay marriage, and he didn’t rant about how terrible liberals are. He seldom even talked much about politics at all in his books. I don’t think fundamentalists even read Lewis that much. Several years ago, I noticed that Christian bookstores run by fundamentalists tend to only have perhaps a half a dozen to a dozen copies of Lewis’s books in stock. On the other hand, at a downtown D.C. bookstore/restaurant with semi-hip clientele, I noticed that there were about forty copies of Lewis’s books on stock. Bohemian yuppies are more likely to read Lewis than fundamentalists. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2006, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/26 "2006-07-22T23:01:04Z")
> [@Wendell Wagner](#): > > After all, Lewis said very little about abortion or gay marriage . . . He probably would, if he were living today. But considering the time he did live in, what could you expect him to say? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2006, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/27 "2006-07-22T23:37:42Z")
Lewis had a long list of subjects on which he didn’t say anything because he felt that to do so would detract from his talking solely about “mere Christianity” (i.e., not talking about subjects which he considered were not central to Christianity and hence were not matters which all Christians had to agree on). For instance, he says quite specifically at one point that he didn’t have anything to say about birth control. He recognized that other Christians disagreed with him about the subject and that his personal views could not be considered part of mere Christianity. He seldom mentioned homosexuality in works published during his lifetime. The closest he came to explaining his position on it was in a letter to a younger friend written late in his life and only published after he died. He said that active homosexuality was no greater sin than adultery for a married heterosexual. (Lewis had at least two good friends who were apparently homosexual, Arthur Greeves and Neville Coghill, but by all accounts he never said or implied to them that he thought they were particularly sinful.) Similarly, at one point he said that he couldn’t say much about gambling, although he thought it was probably a sin when done in excess, since he felt no temptation to it himself. At one point in the Chronicles of Narnia, there’s a sentence something like “Aslan only tells people their own story,” and one of the things that that means is that one is only supposed to worry about one’s own sins, not others’. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2006, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/28 "2006-07-22T23:46:49Z")
> [@Wendell Wagner](#): > > Lewis had a long list of subjects on which he didn’t say anything because he felt that to do so would detract from his talking solely about “mere Christianity” (i.e., not talking about subjects which he considered were not central to Christianity and hence were not matters which all Christians had to agree on). For instance, he says quite specifically at one point that he didn’t have anything to say about birth control. He recognized that other Christians disagreed with him about the subject and that his personal views could not be considered part of mere Christianity. He seldom mentioned homosexuality in works published during his lifetime. The closest he came to explaining his position on it was in a letter to a younger friend written late in his life and only published after he died. He said that active homosexuality was no greater sin than adultery for a married heterosexual. (Lewis had at least two good friends who were apparently homosexual, Arthur Greeves and Neville Coghill, but by all accounts he never said or implied to them that he thought they were particularly sinful.) Similarly, at one point he said that he couldn’t say much about gambling, although he thought it was probably a sin when done in excess, since he felt no temptation to it himself. At one point in the Chronicles of Narnia, there’s a sentence something like “Aslan only tells people their own story,” and one of the things that that means is that one is only supposed to worry about one’s own sins, not others’. Then I guess Lewis **would** be on the Index! Goes without saying that _The Communist Manifesto,_ etc., likewise would be banned. And probably anything by Carl Sagan or any other prominent skeptic or scientific materialist. Famous skeptic and debunker [Martin Gardner](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gardner) would be banned – not only because he is a skeptic but because he is an avowed “philosophical theist.” I.e., he subscribes to no traditional religion and rejects all supposed revelations, but he still believes in a personal God, a conscious being to whom one can pray and expect answers and who can provide a personal afterlife, all for reasons explained in his book [_The WHYS of a Philosophical Scrivener._](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312206828/sr=8-1/qid=1153611945/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-9161653-5447225?ie=UTF8) To fundies, that kind of heresy is even more threatening than outright atheism. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2006, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/29 "2006-07-22T23:48:53Z")
The Book of Mormon would be banned under any but a Mormon religious dictatorship. The Koran too, probably (depends on how large a minority Muslims are at the time and how much resistance they’re willing to put up and how far the dictatorship is willing to go in dealing with them). ---
**Author:** ![rayh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@rayh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rayh)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/30 "2006-07-23T00:24:13Z")
**[Behold the Man](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behold_the_Man)** by Michael Moorcroft would be banned. > [@](#): > > This novella is about the philosophical issue of whether or not it even matters whether the historical Jesus ever existed. Does something need to have happened historically for the myth surrounding it to be powerful? Which is more important, myth or history? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/31 "2006-07-23T00:37:13Z")
> [@rayh](#): > > **[Behold the Man](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behold_the_Man)** by Michael Moorcroft would be banned. And Kazantzakis’ _The Last Temptation of Christ._ The movie version was the only film I’ve ever gone to that was being picketed (by fundies, of course). Only two picketers, but still! JESUS: **I’m** Jesus of Nazareth, and I didn’t die on the cross! ST. PAUL: So what? If you are Jesus, you’re not the Jesus I’m preaching about. People need to know God loves them, and I’m giving them that. You know, I’m glad I met you, so now I can start forgetting you. **BANNED!** ---
**Author:** ![jake1964](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/50afbb/32.png) [@jake1964](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jake1964)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/32 "2006-07-23T02:51:34Z")
Waiting for the Galactic Bus and The Snake Oil Wars by Parke Godwin. ---
**Author:** ![Operation\_Ripper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/34f0e0/32.png) [@Operation\_Ripper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Operation_Ripper)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/33 "2006-07-23T04:30:59Z")
Pfft. Why even guess? The index exists now, not in the US though (at least not Federally). There are enough “religion”-oriented governments extant to give us a good idea of what to expect: [link](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_books). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/34 "2006-07-23T04:48:03Z")
> [@Operation Ripper](#): > > Pfft. Why even guess? The index exists now, not in the US though (at least not Federally). There are enough “religion”-oriented governments extant to give us a good idea of what to expect: [link](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_books). Actually, [you don’t have to look beyond the U.S.](http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/challengedbanned/challengedbanned.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/35 "2006-07-23T12:46:41Z")
> [@Operation Ripper](#): > > Pfft. Why even guess? Because it’s amusing? Because it lets us share books worth reading (as anything Jerry Falwell opposes is probably worth a gander)? Because if I’d wanted to start a political discussion I’d have gone to Great Debates? Pick one. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/36 "2006-07-24T14:31:50Z")
I’m fairly certain that Tom Robbins’ _Another Roadside Attraction_ would be right out the window. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327/37 "2006-07-24T18:53:10Z")
> [@](#): > > Because it lets us share books worth reading (as anything Jerry Falwell opposes is probably worth a gander)? I dunno, Jerry Falwell and Nehemiah Scudder alike would probably have issues with the entire output of L. Ron Hubbard, but that doesn’t mean they’re worth reading. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/index-of-forbidden-books-2012-edition-open-spoilers-likely/365327.md?page=1)