People who have never actually read the book The Golden Compass have begun forwarding an email around that claims that the book promotes militant atheism. The emails, which started with a radical right wing religious organization, say that if teenagers read the book, they'll be spiritually damaged, and will be transformed into little militant atheists.
I'm reading the book right now, and I see that there's a lot of time given over to the agony of a person being separated from their own soul. That pain seems to be the main focus of the book. Could someone who has actually read the book explain to me how the separation from the soul is a militant atheist concern?
I just don't see the connection. It seems to me that a book that features souls and psychic powers, life after death and magic is not really a very strong atheist manifesto. Maybe it isn't Christian, but so far, it reads more New Age than atheist to me.
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I'll take a wild guess. Because believers don't have souls?
1. Because "the Authority" (God) that "the Magisterium" in the book serves appears evil. (It's actually more complicated than that, but I don't want to spoil the other two books for you.) Now, of course, the book describes an alternate world, but the Magisterium and its teachings look kinda familiar... :-)
2. Pullman has made pretty strong anti-religious statements and self-identifies as an agnostic and an atheist.
3. Pullman has criticized C.S. Lewis's Narnia series and consciously set out to write an anti-Narnia, so to speak. I'm not sure if the fact that many readers like both series means that he succeeded, or that he did not. :-)