Just in time for Christmas, Hollywood has released The Golden Compass, a film based on the first book of a trilogy of children's novels written by atheist Philip Pullman. Pullman is not a fan of his fellow childrens' writers J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis. He denounced the Lord of the Rings trilogy as "infantile" and absolutely hated the Chronicles of Narnia, calling it "morally loathsome" and "one of the most ugly and poisonous things I've ever read."
This is downright weird.
Some critics have objected to the overdrawn contrast between the forces of light and the forces of darkness in Christian fiction, but Pullman's trilogy is no less Manichean. The only difference is that in Pullman's world the evil regime is run by God Himself. Pullman pictures a kind of Calvinist moral structure, run by a kind of Catholic network called the Magisterium, and behind the whole oppressive system is a tyrannical God. As Pullman envisions it, the church kidnaps and tortures children and subjects them to hideous experiments in which their bodies are separated fro their souls and the children are turned into zombies who are then left to die. Pullman's trilogy finally ends with God being killed, the collapse of the Calvinist moral rules, and the emergence of sexual freedom.
Profoundly stupid stuff. I was not surprised to discover that Pullman is a big fan of atheist Richard Dawkins. Pullman speaks of religion in terms that could be lifted directly from The God Delusion. Pullman has been quoted saying it is not even possible for God to exist. "Every single religion," he says, "that has a monotheistic God ends up by persecuting other people and killing them because they don't accept him." Actually this is flatly untrue of Judaism and Hindusim and only in a very qualified sense true of Islam and Christianity. It would be more accurate to say that every atheist regime, from Communism to the Nazi regime in Germany, has systematically persecuted and killed its opponents for practicing traditional religion and for not accepting their secular race and class-based ideologies.
Certainly Pullman knows that there is nothing oppressive or murderous in today's Anglicanism. He is free in his native London to believe or not to believe. What is it then about religion that he's so strongly opposed to? For Pullman, as for many atheists, the problem with Christianity seems mostly to focus on sexual freedom. Reviewing Pullman's work in The Atlantic Monthly, Hanna Rosin writes, "The most curious aspect of Pullman's theology is the primacy he places on teen sexuality...the whole series builds up to a celebration of losing your virginity." So here is Pullman's case against religion. Basically, religion is what asks you to pull your pants up. This may be termed Pelvic Atheism.
True to form, Hollywood has stripped Pullman's movie of its overt anti-religiosity. The evil guys in the Hollywood version are not God's minions but a kind of amorphous Nazi-type dictatorship. Pullman can take solace, however, in the fact that the movie will probably lead a lot of people to read his books. Aren't we fortunate to have an atheist children's novelist whose main objective seems to be to corrupt the minds and morals of the young?
Reader Comments ( Page 4 of 35)
46. danny,
if you are christian why would you be calling me a dipshit?
brian at 11:40AM on Dec 17th 2007
47. My apologies to my fellow atheists...I've simply been letting others make the extemely easy arguments here, whilst pointing out the obvious absurdity of this post by D'Strawman. Err, uhh, the SUPER-ABSURDITY of this one in particular, and with it, the coining of a new D'Strawman phrase. It's so absurdly laughable, I really do not wish to contribute a "real" answer to any of it.
And really, Bridget,
"Just wanna be, your teddy bear
Put a chain around my neck
And lead me anywhere
Oh let me be
Your teddy bear."
--The Elvic Atheist has left the building
brandon at 11:40AM on Dec 17th 2007
48. Brandon, you kill me boy!!! LoL.
dawn at 11:40AM on Dec 17th 2007
49. I do not find cursing to be crude. I do not interpret the commandment "do not take the lords name in vain" as cursing. I think it has to do with people that falsely do something in the name of the lord like televangelists. Besides... hell, damn, and ass are in the Bible. If you look up the origins of most curse words they are fairly new and just because humans place a taboo on a word doesn't mean God did too. Maybe he just didn't get the memo.
danny at 11:41AM on Dec 17th 2007
50. Mr. D'Souza, in the words of Ronald Reagan, "There you go again". The same old futile attempt at characterizing people who don't believe in god(s) as being intolerant and genocidal maniacs. And then there is the desperate and blatant lie to the uninformed, gullible, and uneducated in trying to make Hitler out to be an atheist.
It's not surprizing at all that you fail to point out, within the ideology you espouse, the first, the original, and the most massive genocide ever perpetrated in the universe - the great flood of the Bible. You remember, where God kills, with the exception of a family of eight, every single man, woman, child, toddler, infant, and fetus on the surface of planet Earth. And, with the exception of the male/female pairings on the ark, God's wrath also kills every single sinful animal that moved on the planet.
What an incredible sight Noah and his family must have seen - the floating, bloated bodies of hundreds of millions of dead human men, women, children and billions of dead animals.
Let's also not forget that God has another record-setting genocide planned for us. There are around six billion humans on this planet. About 2 billion call themselves Christians of some sort and the rest are not Christians. As we know from the Bible when God's offspring Jesus returns to Earth he is going to take all the salvagable Christians with him to paradise in Heaven and the remaining FOUR BILLION PEOPLE are going to be cast into a lake of fire to their deaths and, to boot, subsequently tortured for all ETERNITY in the afterlife!
The mass killing of those who don't submit to what you believe comes from the very Bible you worship. When it comes to genocide there is no group that has ever existed that holds a candle to the ideology you criticize all others for not believing.
Frank at 11:43AM on Dec 17th 2007
51. Hitler was not an atheist. In Mein Kampf he wrote,"I am convinced that I am acting as an agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's work." He repeated this line in a speech in 1938.
Dinesh is not debating, he is re-writing history. I guess even he finds this too shameful to concede that Hitler, as a believer in God and a Catholic, slaughtered millions in the name of God.
ericR at 11:46AM on Dec 17th 2007
52. A little addendum...
Tolkien didn't mean for his races to be comparitive. Humans were humans. Dwarves were dwarves. Elves were elves. Hobbits were Hobbits. Orcs were orcs. Remember, Tolkien loathed allegory. Orcs were no more meant to represent blacks than Hobbits were to represent children or english rural folk. Tolkien was inspired by the english rural folk, but hobbits were just as inspired by faerie tales of little folk. What mattered to Tolkien was that hobbits were innocent to the urges of power and domination, allowing a Hobbit to be capable of carrying this corruptive thing.
Orcs were created for one simple reason... cannon fodder. Tolkien was very aware of the consequences of humans struggling against other humans and all the ideological nuances involved and so he wanted the humans of the west to struggle against 'the other'. Even the humans that join Sauron are the other. So Tolkien created orcs and goblins to be able to die enmasse without any sympathy because they are all vicious and evil and that's that.
Ironically, people who think that Tolkien favored the elves probably don't realize that they are the most tragic race in his world, and the tragedy is of their own making. With complancency and vanity they allowed evil to become truly established in the world, and with pride and arrogance destroyed their ancient homeland.
So please remember when reading Tolkien that you can't employ too much cultural relatism. Tolkien didn't want his readers to sympathize with the enemy. They were vast and powerful and determined to crush all that were good. That's all that matters. Assume how you like why the southlings fought for Mordor. Greed for fear... doesn't matter. What matters is the story and the characters who represent the west.
Don't fall into the allegory trap.
Somber at 11:48AM on Dec 17th 2007
53. Excellent point, Frank. Your comment also underlines the idea that "good", in its attempt to triumph over "evil" will become evil itself through the means of defeat. In other words, if god's methods of defeat are evil, he himself becomes evil (like the flood). Of course, Christians place god above all morality and that alone is a huge flaw within the entire belief system.
emma at 11:52AM on Dec 17th 2007
54. Just for the record, I don't respond to brian little b and his asinine questions.
If anyone who has any sense wants to know about how evil and good are not black and white, but shades of grey, please post and I will respond
Linda at 11:51AM on Dec 17th 2007
55. Ah, it is brian, little b, and bridget on-line. All we now need is Rita, and we will have a complete retinue of blind followers of the all- powerful bearded man sitting on the cloud...waiting to throw a lightning bolt at somebody...just like Zeus before him....Hmmmm. a whole lot of things going on down here on this earth that the cloud man misses. like death of children in darfur. Oh yes...a compassionate god he is....
You know...if this magic man in the clouds existed...and you were going to spend an eternity with him in some sort of unproven afterlife, you would have to wait in quite a long line....because there are a heck of a lot other sheep (a couple of trillion dead christians at last count) who want the exact same things....yet you believe you're gonna look in his eyes and he's yours all yours and yours all alone.
The cult of the imaginary friend.....very sad.
Larry D. Davis at 11:51AM on Dec 17th 2007
56. This blog topic is kinda funny timing for me.
My daughter is in 4th grade and is in the gifted program. She received a set of Pullman's books for her birthday last month. I checked them out and decided I saw no reason to keep her from reading them. She is about a third of the way through the Golden Compass and it has already opened up opportunities for some interesting conversations.
The other day, she came home from school and told me that a kid in her gifted class saw her book and told her it was evil and bad.
Her response: "Have you even read it?"
Of course, his answer was "No" and that he was repeating what his parents said.
She then asked him if THEY had read it.
He said "No."
She said that was the end of that conversation and then she went on to tell me that she doesn't like to "just go along with what everybody else does just to be like them."
Damn. I love my kid.
I've said it before: Teach your children HOW to think and not WHAT to think.
FL Chick at 11:53AM on Dec 17th 2007
57. In tune with the season, what about
...wait for it...
ELFIN ATHEISM!!
You just KNEW Santa was up to something sinister...
Danny...richelle...where are ya when I need ya?!
brandon at 11:55AM on Dec 17th 2007
58. haha brandon what sup man? I was actually just thinking about the mormon hotel because I was reading mo roccas blog on mormons and watching his mormon cartoon on their beliefs. good stuff.
danny at 12:01PM on Dec 17th 2007
59. Linda... I'm curious. In a nutshell, how do you define good and evil?
And in addition, do you believe that human beings or human society tend towards one or the other?
Somber at 12:02PM on Dec 17th 2007
60. larry d.
yes one of my favorite turds. hey have you even read tolkine's trilogy? have you read th chronicles of narnia? if any of these atheist have not then they just need to pipe their hole shut. because unless you have you know nothing about his argument. atheism-no original thought
brian at 12:10PM on Dec 17th 2007