As in all things, there will be a moment when we choose it for ourself, whatever it is. And as in all things, it will be an abiding belief and faith that will make the difference.

Whether you believe in God or not, belief and faith is where our power as human “beings” resides.

Pullman frankly admits “my books are about killing God” (2003). Of course, this objective is blasphemous to many and in need of reparation. Such intended Deicide does nothing to contribute to the benefit of humanity, society and higher culture as evidenced by the lack of its fruits. Many prayers are offered for confused parents who would unwittingly steer their children toward his popular demonic prose, especially given his stated goal that “I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.” Pope St. Pius X, whose feast day is celebrated tomorrow on the traditional 1962 calendar, explained “we cannot comprehend the bliss of heaven, because it is beyond the scope of our limited minds, and because the goods of heaven cannot be compared with the goods of this world.” Some minds are even more limited in that they shut out entirely the possibility of such bliss.

I admit these books to seem to be against organized religion. Other than that much ado about nothing. Plodding and slow. Found most of it difficult to get through.
Saw the movie.. not that great, didn’t make any point and mundane.
And just shortly before this movie I recall the C.S Lewis book “the Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” being made into the movie and all the Fundametalists loving it as promoting religion. It didn’t really and the 2nd movie Prince Caspian was ho -hum. While the books aren’t bad they don’t measure up to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings in any way.
Once again much ado about nothing and if you are going to get your beliefs from movies just go with Star Trek.

I heard they were boring as all hell, and the only reason they saw the light of day in print was because they were controversial (always a winner).

Besides, I don’t believe in organized publishing.

I am a Christian and loved the movie, The Golden Compass. I thought the casting was so much better than Lion, Witch And Wardrobe. I just finished the first book and started the second - Clearly Kate is a much faster (or dedicated) reader than me, since I think I can take credit for turning her on to them. Curiously I think that The Golden Compass actually promotes a sense of justice that I hope all Christians would rally around. Lyra is a wonderful character. The Magisterium seems to me to be the logical extension of a moralist religious understanding of the world, many of which have had Christian overtones, but I would not consider Christian. And so if I had lived in Lyra’s world, I too would have banded with the Gyptians to take on this evil and cruel regime, and free the children who are having their souls ripped from them.
By the way, as an avid movie watcher I was surprised at how affected I was by human death, when accompanied by the daemon’s disolving. I thought the book did an even better job of portraying the horror of this bond between body and soul being severed.

Kathy, you can’t compare The Chronicles of Narnia with LOTR, they are completely different in scope and written for entirely different audiences.

The Chronicles are explicitly religious in tone and writing. Lewis is considered one of the great religious writers of the 20th century, and the Chronicles are aimed a children. Now, the fact that Lewis and Tolkien were both contemporaries AND good friends is important, but they disagreed strongly on what their writing was FOR.

I haven’t seen the Golden Compass, and I haven’t read the books…and I don’t intend to.

Excuse me, I can compare anything I want.
They are both fantasy series.
and Fantasy is NOT Religion.

Kathy,

With all due respect, while I think we can agree that fantasy is not religion, there are many people who will state that religion is fantasy. In fact, I think the majority of people in the US will say that any religion that is not theirs, is fantasy.

To quote Heinlein:
“One man’s religion is another man’s belly laugh.”

Simian

Religion is fantasy? Ok. I can buy that. I was told enough stories in school that were lacking in truth.

I am on to the second book, “The Subtle Knife” and became aware today of Pullman’s attention on the soul. In Lyra’s world the soul is embodied in a daemon. In another world, we see Spectres eating people’s souls which are inside them, like in our world. It is curious to me that an avowed Atheist would devote such beautiful creativity and attention to the soul/spirit. I am learning that not all atheists are empiricists and/ or modern thinkers (and I mean modern in the sense of traditional, modern, and post-modern thought). In the first book it was obvious that the Magesterium was intent on separating the soul from the body (ironically something I would consider a “modern” attempt or more literally an “anti-spiritual” attempt), but how he will address this positively will be fun to find out, because I imagine it will be more closely aligned with true Christianity than he realizes.