The Golden Compass

[davywavy]

One thing that keeps on coming up about Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy is that it contains, apparently, anti-religious sentiment.
I have to say that when I read it this passed me by entirely, but Evangelical Christians in the 'states are burbling in their usual frothing fashion about 'foisting atheism on children', and I've read atheists (seemingly) everywhere rattling on about how they approve of doing just that.
In as far as I can remember from reading the books, the villains are the 'Magisterium', a church who worship a god who turns out just to be the 'first angel' who is pretending to be a god. Now, as far as I remember from reading Paradise Lost, the 'first angel' who pretends to be god is usually referred to as Lucifer, or the Devil.
The reaction to this leaves me slightly boggling. Obviously Pullman's grasp of theology is so poor that he's written a book in which the villains are Satanists whilst thinking he's doing the exact opposite, but what is so depressing is just how many people - atheists and folks of religious bent - he's got to go along with him in this. You'd think that people who feel so strongly about a subject - either positively or negatively - would know a little more about their subject before they started spouting off, wouldn't you?
But then again, this is the internet. Ignorance isn't so much a hindrance as an advantage round here.

Comments

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

I absolutely loved the first book with its pan-dimensional adventuring. The second book was still OK but the last one made me really uncomfortable.

Is atheism the same as saying "religion is bad"? It's the latter the book seemed to be saying. I'm not religious by any means but I didn't like it.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

The first book was jolly entertaining. It's the latter two, when he starts writing about Metaphysics and plainly knows nothing about it, where it all goes downhill.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

*nods*
I know very little so I can't quantify Pullmann's knowledge. I was just confused and when more and more religion came into it, I just wanted to stop. I also thought that after the first book it wasn't really children's material anymore.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

The first book was pretty good, I rather enjoyed it. The second book annoyed me and by the time Lyra had <Item> stolen I had stopped caring if she got it back or if she was run over by a bus. I stopped reading at that point.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Yes, the steampunk and cyber-bears and so forth were very imaginative and fun. Unfortunately it seems he only had one good idea and once he'd used that all he had to preach from was his wonky soapbox.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

The 'Religion is bad' message, I'd say, is seriously undermined when we find out that that every religious person in the book turns out to have been worshipping the devil all along.
I'd think that worshipping the devil being a bad thing is a fairly uncontentious statement and I don't understand what all the fuss is about, unless most people's grasp of such things is really, really poor.

Oh.