Posted by Anthony on November 27, 2007
This is probably my last post on the “His Dark Materials” series and to tell you the truth I’m about ready to be done. There are innumerable issues raised by the HDM series and quite a bit that I wanted to respond to. This blog contains many of those responses and there probably could be even more said. It is my hope that my information serves as a starting point for Christians to learn more about these issues. These issues will always be with us and hiding from them is not the solution.
It has been noted that one of the issues with the Golden Compass is that it is not nearly as overtly anti-Christian as the later books. These themes have been purged even more in the movie so that the unwary movie goer and reader might not ever see what is coming in the later books. Granted, but there is one thing in the Golden Compass that has the potential to catch someone off guard.
In the last few chapters of TGC, chapter 21 in particular, there is a long, extended quote from Genesis 3. This follows a long discussion about the nature of ‘Dust’ and the Church’s grave concern about it. Lord Asriel, Lyra’s father is trying to explain matters and finally compels Lyra to open up the Bible to Genesis and read. In the main, the text is familiar. … “ye shall not surely die yada yada yada” and then it gets interesting…
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and your daemons shall assume their true forms, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to reveal the true form of one’s deamon, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband…
And on like that for awhile. When I read this material myself, I sort of sat back and wondered how the man thinks he can get away with blatant mistranslation such as this. Before my very eyes, I saw thousands of young Christians and even some older ones who ought to know better thinking about this telling of Genesis and comparing it with what they remembered. Has something been concealed in the translation? they may wonder. What else is being withheld? another might say.
Initially, the staggering display of intellectual deceit here took my breath away and then I realized what he was about and where he was going. It was here that I really understood that the Golden Compass, when talking about the Church, and Christianity, and the multiverse, and such, this material was taking place in one of these other rival universes and knew that the bridge to our own universe was on its way.
This isn’t intellectual deceit, you see, because this is merely how the Genesis account evolved in this particular universe. We need not dwell on the intellectual blindness that keeps Pullman from realizing that his whole multiverse system of thought means that there is really a universe where there was an Adam and Eve and a young earth. With innumerable universes to work with expressing all possible outcomes, the improbable will happen eventually: in some universe, the Christians are right. At any rate, this post is not about all that.
This post is for those who stumble on this passage and suddenly wonder if their translation of Genesis 3 is horribly flawed and Pullman is subtly revealing an alternate translation that has been brutally suppressed by that evil, nasty, Christian Church. I have no idea if this passage is going to be read in the movie, so maybe this post will only be for those that read the book.
Conclusion: No. The Hebrew text does not support this translation and Pullman doesn’t need it to because he can have the ‘Genesis’ in another universe say whatever he darn well pleases, and this passage is just that.
The truly astute reader will suddenly remember the pointed claim by Mary Malone that “The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all.” Was she speaking of the ‘Christian Religion’ of an alternate universe, or our own? When she reduced the oppressiveness of Christianity to be symbolized by the fact that Catholics expect their nuns to be celibate, was that an alternate universe, or our own? Correct answer: Our own.
If Mary (the ‘temptress’ of the series) was speaking of a Christianity in a parallel universe we might chalk it up to Pullman’s poetic license. But since he puts his most explicit assertions about Christianity in the mouth of a woman who comes from our own universe, we’ll have to admit it for what it is- a strawman that bears very little resemblance to actual Christianity.
Posted by Anthony on November 18, 2007
In my 15 page response to the Pullman series I indicated that his notion of God is a strawman notion. The problem is that he doesn’t know that, most atheists don’t know that, and even many Christian theists don’t know that.
In the Pullman series, ‘God’ is a very old ‘angel’ who was merely the first entity to become self-aware as a product of evolution. “Yahweh” then lied and told everyone that followed that he was their creator. In the series, Pullman admits that there may be a creator, and in one interview he says,
“If we’re talking on the scale of human life and the things we see around us, I’m an atheist. There’s no God here. There never was. But if you go out into the vastness of space, well, I’m not so sure. On that level, I’m an agnostic.”
A comment like this helps us see clearly that what Pullman thinks of ‘God’ is nothing like what educated Christians mean. It would be evident to educated Christians that if “Yahweh” is just a super-powerful entity within the universe, it is not the ‘God’ that Christians submit exists. God as Christians propose is by definition the creator of the universe. Or, if you wish to propose countless universe, God is the source and sustainer of them all. This is again, by definition. Pullman has no problem equivocating between ‘God’ as Christians understand him and this ‘imposter’ Yahweh. He draws no distinction. In other words, this evolved agent, ‘Yahweh’ simply cannot be the Christian God, but Pullman proceeds willy nilly to identify the two together.
It ought to concern us all that an Oxford educated professor can so horribly massacre a basic Christian doctrine. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on November 11, 2007
Here are a collection of posts that pertain to Pullman that exist on this blog.
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Posted by Anthony on
This Project was Featured on the ChristianPost.com! [opens in new window]
“The Christian religion is a very powerful
and convincing mistake, that’s all.”
(The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman)
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This is a companion to a very detailed analysis I wrote of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series. It is a brief introduction covering points that Christian parents may be interested in knowing about the series.
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Posted by Anthony on November 9, 2007
I stopped talking to this fellah for reasons he’d find less than flattering and his latest post is no exception. You can read my initial reaction here, and here is his response. My more definitive treatment of HDM, however, is here.
We can sum it up well enough. I argued that the working principles underneath the Pullman series are ones that the average college student will receive as fact from their professors. Herr Professor gives an overview of the fantastic elements in the Pullman series and then quotes me when I say that in the Pullman series there is no line between reality and fantasy.
This is as clear an example of Herr Professor’s terrible reading abilities as one can get. My line about there not being a line between reality and fantasy was not in association with the witches and ‘magic’ of the Pullman series, but rather the working principles that undergird the Pullman series – which certainly are presented as reality. Here is the full paragraph of which Herr Professor extracted just a single line:
If we take an example like Harry Potter, whom the author of that article also decries, the difference between the threats is easy enough to detect: Rowling did not present her series as potentially being reality, nor does anyone- even young readers- think that it might be, whereas in the Pullman series, what he presents is explicitly something that he believes could be real, and by connecting with claims that students will hear described as scientific (Ie, Evolutionary theory and the Multiverse), students are led to think the same. There is no line between reality and fantasy, here.
Perhaps Herr Professor believes that evolution and the multiverse is not science, but fantasy? Perhaps Herr Professor has not read the books, or know anything about the multiverse?
He also titles his essay “Insidious plot found in the Golden Compass.” I infer from that that he is mocking the idea that there could be an agenda behind the Pullman series. That there is an agenda, an explicitly atheistic one to boot, is evident to anyone who has heard Pullman talk about the series or read the books himself.
Unless he is ignorant- in which case, he should just stop talking- he is completely out of touch with reality. I am prepared to consider both possibilities and they are not mutually exclusive.
Posted by Anthony on November 7, 2007
The full response is pasted below, but you may want to download and print it off, or attach it in an email. If so, here it is for download:
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The “His Dark Materials” Series is Pullman’s direct answer to CS Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia.” Lewis intended to inoculate a Christian worldview using his series and it is clear that Pullman had the same idea in mind. Except in case you didn’t know, Pullman is a hardcore atheist.
Many Christians will focus on the apparent paganism, the hostility to Christianity and more precisely the Church, and some of the less than subtle sexual allusions. These would be the wrong place to put our emphasis. What Pullman aims to do is to offer a naturalistic explanation for anything and everything, including that which might be true in Christianity or in paganism.
He uses a mainstream interpretation within quantum science that posits that there are an unlimited amount of universes that exist and evolution working out in unlimited ways in each of them, so that one could allow yourself to consider almost anything as possible- without ever invoking a God.
It is this that makes Pullman’s series the threat that it is. Young people all over the place are going to school and university and are actually being taught in dogmatic terms that evolution is the real explanation for how we got here and it is only a matter of time before these students learn about the ‘multiverse’ as well as comprehend that scientists really take it seriously.
Thus, young people are primed to receive the atheistic worldview… they read it in high school as fiction only to have the main premises of the series shoved at them as straight science in college. Though the overt hostility to the Church, the pagan elements, and the sexuality are enough to make many a Christian’s blood boil, these are just symptoms, and we Christians should remember that.
For the full examination click the ‘read the rest of the entry’ link below. Or, to Print it off, download it in PDF here: Read the rest of the entry… »
