Sorry folks.

The Dark Materials trilogy is typical of Pullman. When you read his other books, you see that the central conflict in virtually every book he has written involves parental abuse or neglect of their child. Because he keeps returning to work on that single topic, his ideas should be considered in light of the probability that the author is attempting to cope with unresolved personal trauma.

Interestingly enough this is a theme common to most fairy tales. The fact that Pullman’s father died in an air crash when he was only seven may also be a contributory factor to certain plot themes. A quick look through the synopses of his other work indicates that the loss or absence of a father though a common theme is not always present.

I only read the Golden Compass a few months ago after hearing of the controversy the filming of a version the work was causing amongst overly sensitive Christians.

I was at first dubious about reading a book for thirteen year old girls, as I do not generally read children’s’ fiction, but the ideas behind the trilogy seemed interesting enough to try reading the first volume. It became an unstoppable read and I quickly worked my way through the complete trilogy. In my opinion the prose is far superior to that of Lewis and has the advantage of lacking of the racist and sexist ideology that creeps into Lewis’s work. I would recommend it to anyone for adult reading as well as for children.

“Now the Golden Compass trilogy, that’s a good read for adult as well as for children with lots of thought provoking ideas.”

The Dark Materials trilogy is typical of Pullman. When you read his other books, you see that the central conflict in virtually every book he has written involves parental abuse or neglect of their child. Because he keeps returning to work on that single topic, his ideas should be considered in light of the probability that the author is attempting to cope with unresolved personal trauma.

Bottom line, don’t try to pick apart sound bytes — we do too much of that in our political system, when most of the time a soundbyte is so vague and uninformative that several interpretations are possible, and a lot of people buy the media interpretation wholesale. (I personally like Dean’s “scream” — but then I was liking Dean before that, so I was more disposed to interpret it as positive enthusiasm.) What we need to do is have some substantial debates that can help people figure out what the candidates actually believe and get a clear idea on what they’ll actually DO.

That ‘end times’ belief is kinda worying when they’ve got their thumb hovering over the ‘Apocalypse’ button, isn’t it?

And any “Old Labour” hack gets respect. The bastards have slightly butchered it, haven’t they?
Blair’s religion is a problem with the creationism thing – though now, thank fuck, there’s a fairly hard-headed realist (well, kinda…) in the office, it’ll stop. Maybe. Hopefully. &ltInsert weael word here&gt.

(Irish, so an external observer-ish).

I’m not as fussed as you about fundamentalist Christians, really – they’re less of an issue over here.

They are even less of an issue here than in Britain, at least in Canada we don’t have millionaires putting up part of the money (most of the funding coming from the state) to create so-called “City Academies” that are out of democratic control and are used to sneak in creationism by the back door. The country has indeed continued in its precipitous social, cultural and political decline since I left it twenty years ago.

It has not been helped by Bliar’s religiosity. I was a member of the old Labour Party when we were there to fight Thatcherism not to promote it as “New Labour” does. However the point is that when in Britain, as now here in Canada, you have a government who thinks its prime function is to ensure that it acts as a satrap of the USian empire, the political influence of the religious right in the US is important as you will be dragged along behind. This is particularly important when we understand that many of them believe we are in “end times” and wish to bring about Armageddon.

And yes, atheism is a religious belief

No it’s not .

Atheism – means not a theist. A theist is someone who believes in a personal god. An atheist is therefore someone who doesn’t believe in a personal god . On this basis even a deist is a form of atheist. She is after all a deist not a theist.

It is quite possible that that we and the entire universe are an emulation on a higher level computational system. Such a computational system could be considered as possessing some if not all the attributes attributed to god. This is purely an hypothesis, it would require scientific evidence in its favour to raise it to the level of requiring even qualified belief.

So there is no difference between atheism and agnosticism. Huxley merely introduced a new and confusing name for it. Agnostic means not a gnostic and Huxley even said:

It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the “gnostic” of Church history

Which is confusing as any mainstream Christian is by this definition an agnostic. They not are not Gnostics and would be against the currently reborn trendiness of Gnosticism as put forward in in the Wachowski brothers’ Matrix movies or on another level by the academic high-priestess of Gnosticism Elaine Paigels (widow of physicist Heinz Paigels). Indeed the ultra neo-Platonism of many modern physicists could be considered almost Gnostic. I don’t think this is what Huxley really meant

On the other hand when he says:

That it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can provide evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts and in my opinion, is all that is essential to agnosticism.

He is merely stating he is an atheist – he has no evidence to believe in a personal god.

Here exists the real thing, dwelling among us. We are indeed a lucky people. Our children can see through the veneer of calloused adults who assume a less than realistic knowledge of, well, knowledge.

Merry Christmas, little girl!