Why is His Dark Materials harmful?
I asked a friend whether I should encourage my children to read ‘His Dark Materials’. He said ‘yes’. When I asked what he thought about the way Pullman portrays God as evil, his response was along the lines of ‘I don’t recognize the character in Pullman’s books as being the God I believe in from the Bible.’ This sounds reasonable, but having read all three books for myself, I am convinced that • Pullman intends it to be the God of the Bible, and • this is how most people will read it. These books are explicitly anti-Christian: They talk about the church, God, sin, the kingdom of heaven, Jesus, being a Christian, atonement, and redemption. They quote directly from the Bible. At one point, one of the key characters says: I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn’t any God at all and that physics was more interesting anyway. The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all. (The Amber Spyglass, p. 464) So there is no getting awa
