I visited a Bushlovin Catholic friend of mine today, and noticed on his kitchen table a copy of a Franciscan magazine called the “St. Anthony Messenger”. Being a masochist, I opened it, and found a picture of Lyra, and a review of the movie.

The review was accurate and neutral. It mentioned Bill Donahue’s “your kids will want to read the books!” trope (without mentioning his name), since many of that magazine’s demographic will have heard it already. And then … the reviewer’s suggestion was to get the books, read them with your kid and talk about the stories.

I was shocked. Shocked!

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the brilliance of HDM is that he turns the phenomenon of religion on its head. In our world, religion is that which asserts, falsely, the existence of that which is non-existent. In HDM religion is that which denies what exists. But it’s the same faith-based thinking either way.

Lyra and the rest believe in souls because their souls are right there beside them in animal form. They have good evidence for souls. The only people in HDM that are believing things on the basis of no good evidence - that believe in woo - are the people in the Magesterium. I just don’t think HDM sends the message you think it does, the more I think about it. The point of HDM is why you believe, not what you believe in.

Technically true, but that’s not the most obvious interpretation. If I wrote a parable suggesting that “God” is a pretender but “souls” are real, I would expect people to think I at least found the idea of “souls” interesting or in some way valid. I don’t doubt that Pullman himself is an atheist, and he’s most likely a reasonable, thoughtful skeptic, but insofar as his fictional universe is intended to be symbolic of reality, he’s not sending the same message about “souls” and other woo that he’s unambiguously sending about gods.

LOVE IT!

The fact that it happens in a fantasy universe where matter creates souls etc. doesn’t, to my mind, undermine that point. How could it? It requires faith in our universe to believe in the soul; in Pullman’s, it just requires observation. Dust isn’t woo in HDM because it actually exists in HDM.

I have a feeling that doing a ritual does make most of us more mindful of ancestors, in developing a gratitude than not having them (this is based on the idea that mythic stories and practices arising from them highlights particular values and ways of engaging life then say a propositional claim like “go be grateful” does not have).

So do a ritual, Dwight. But why limit yourself to what religions have to offer if ritual is so important to you? Why is the “burning incense” ritual inherently better than my “think about Uncle Bill when you put on his hand-me-down coat” ritual that I’ve developed to honor my own ancestor? Just because one is the perscribed ritual for all adherents of a specific religion, and mine is just something I made up for myself?

If both meet the need - to put one in mind of reverence for one’s ancestors - why privilege one over the other?

In evaluating a tradition, I’m looking at the whole of the Bible, and the whole of the Christian tradition.

Bully for you, but why restrict yourself to religion when you have imagination?

I adore the Earthsea series, but especially The Other Wind. One of the many reasons LeGuin rocks my world is her capacity to revisit and criticize her own ideas. It’s interesting to read The Other Wind alongside HDM - I think she does a better job with a similar afterlife. Her take on it is less didactic, gentler, more universal. I cry every time I read it.

I loved Pullman’s trilogy for the most part, but the ending annoyed me too. You could see the author laboring to play out a cool but abstract idea with the characters he had…and it just didn’t work. Experience (vs. innocence) is something you accumulate, not something you suddenly have after one act. And the whole torrid ZOMG-you’re-the-love-of-my-life doesn’t seem like the most realistic outcome of a 13-year-old kiss.

I have a feeling that doing a ritual does make most of us more mindful of ancestors, in developing a gratitude than not having them (this is based on the idea that mythic stories and practices arising from them highlights particular values and ways of engaging life then say a propositional claim like “go be grateful” does not have).

In evaluating a tradition, I’m looking at the whole of the Bible, and the whole of the Christian tradition. Does reading Augustine’s Confessions help us orientate ourselves in this world? Or Tillich? Or the practices from baptism and communion in my church? Or dealing with the big themes of the tradition from covenant to sin?

Well, giving you much more benefit of the doubt than you deserve, because there is no intellectually honest reading of my posts where it is not clear that “fundamentalist vision” refers to the specific doctrines of literal hell, Authority, and original sin. But to make it clear:

1: His Dark Materials spends almost all of its rhetorical ammunition on three doctrines that are only relevant within a conservative Christian sphere: a literal hell into which all souls are damned to torment, a literal Authority that mandated moral laws for humans, and original sin.

The statement that Pullman’s specific vision of these three doctrines applies equally to other religious faiths is profoundly ignorant and incorrect. Hell is only marginally a part of Judaism with many doctrines holding that souls live there only 11 months before being returned to god. Buddhist hells are also temporary. The traditional Chinese hell is not a place of torment. And there is no consensus regarding hell in Hinduism. Nope, the hell of HDM is almost certainly a Christian one as filtered through Dante. In fact, the whole setup of souls in limbo waiting for the rapture and resurrection into the flesh is so uniquely Christian, that archaeologists can construct timelines of the adoption of Christianity based on how this changed burial practices. Original sin is even more Christian in its framing.

2: The use of dualistic and spiritualistic elements as central to the universe of HDM support many religious readings of the text. Throughout HDM people have souls, and spiritual beings exist, Pullman’s attempt to hand wave this problem away with dust as self-aware matter is indistinguishable from new-age religious twaddle.

3: And when Pullman says, with all seriousness, that myths like Adam and Eve are morally useful, he’s thrown it all to the religious humanists kit and kaboodle. It’s no wonder that religious humanists love him given how the whole thing hinges on replacing myths of shameful disobedience with myths of spiritual enlightenment. It’s all caplets and mantles.

Perhaps its because I’m an atheist who came out of a liberal Christian tradition, and then some looking around at neo-paganism and American Buddhism but HDM is just so loaded with so much religious humanist bullshit presented with such uncritical earnestness that I can’t take it seriously as an atheistic text.

It can, because obviously it does. They do. The Christian Bible, for instance, couldn’t describe a world more at odds with reality - a world where insects have only 4 legs, where rabbits chew cud, where one boat made of non-existent wood can hold two members of millions of different species from vastly different habitats and food for all (even the carnivores!) for half a year - and yet enthusiasm for the Christian religion seems essentially unchanged since the bad old days.

That’s Christianity but there are examples in all religions, because all religions feature faith-based thinking - belief in things on the basis of no good evidence. What a surprise to find that those things turn out to be wrong.

Tapeworms don’t take up residence in humans because its good for humans, contrary to your argument. They take up residence in humans because its good for tapeworms.

Suppose you don’t believe in ancestor spirits in some literal realm above the sky (that’s ok, Confucius didn’t either)..why would such a practice develop?

Because it’s good for the practice for it to have developed, much as its good for the tapeworms for them to have evolved to live in intestines.

Maybe there’s something there…about gratitude, a reverence for the past and a world we did not create?

I’m not from Asia, yet I have gratitude to those who came before me and left me the world that they did. So clearly exposure to ancestor-worshipping religion or the idea that my ancestors can be prayed to is not necessary to engender that gratitude. Gratitude is good. The idea that the souls of my dead relatives are around to smell the incense is unsupportable faith-based thinking, and it’s wrong.

In that, yes I am interested in studying things that some current “memes” of atheism say is verboten, not to be studied but rather to be dismissed as “supersition”.

But they have been studied. Atheists aren’t telling you to throw them out without study. They’re telling you that the claims of religion have been put to the test - and been rejected by rigorous means of inquiry. Hence, atheism. The stuff you want us to study, though, is completely irrelevant fan-cruft.