Really, the books don't have an atheistic viewpoint - they have a Gnostic viewpoint. But most fundies don't have enough of a nuanced view of other peoples' belief systems to differentiate between the two.
David -----Original Message----- From: Jim Davis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 10:00 AM To: CF-Community Subject: "The Golden Compass"... what's this about Atheism? Here be Spoilers (come to think of to both "The Golden Compass" and "The Bible"). I finally got around to finishing the trilogy. I knew from the religious right that these books "promoted atheism" but, of course the first book had nothing of the kind in it. The second book began to poke nastily at the church and the third book opened things up hugely in that direction... but never, ever did these books even come close to presenting an atheistic point of view. Anybody care to share some light on this? In the books: 1) God ("The Authority") ABSOLUTELY EXISTS. Yes, he's not immortal or omnipotent, but he is (or was) immensely powerful and easily fits the classic view of God. 2) Angels exist. Lots of them - especially many of them names explicitly in the bible. The angelic rebellion exists. Granted the books make it clear that "angels" were probably men once but still... 3) Ghosts and the land of the dead (very "Hell-like") exist. When you die you continue on in spirit form. 4) We have "souls" (the Daemons) and it's made clear that even if you can't see your Daemon, it's there. 5) "Dust" is portrayed as unifying, intelligent force of elementary particles absolutely necessary for life and completely responsible for intelligent life. While Pullman never presents directly as such it's clearly analogous to the new-age babble-speak about "The Intelligent Universe" and the "something out there". So where's the atheism? I realize that these books are profoundly anti-religious but it seems like blaming atheism for that is just plain wrong. Pullman never claims an absence of God. He only slantways claims a materialistic viewpoint (in that "Dust" is described as a physical - but intelligent and sentient - partical). I'm just not seeing any atheism at all in this. If anything the books end up as a soft sell (a "stealth campaign", to use the words of the anti-atheism crowd) for informal religion than for atheism. Am I just missing the point here? Jim Davis ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;192386516;25150098;k Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:259522 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
