Frosstbyte

The whole "this is a subversive way of getting our kids to be atheists" argument makes absolutely no sense to me. You could say EXACTLY the same thing about the Narnia movies. They downplay the Christian elements to make it more generally palatable and marketable and it's certainly marketed to kids who might read the meaningfully more Christian books. You didn't hear a whole lot of uproar about that. No surprise there.

There is no question that Pullman himself is an unabashed atheist and there is equally little question that the universe that "His Dark Materials" takes place in is not one where the Western monotheistic deity holds any weight (or any deity for that matter). Contrary to popular belief (if any of the people decrying the books read them, they'd know this), the books are not a many hundred page rant about how god and religion are stupid and don't exist and that we'd all be better off if we stopped believing in stupid stories. They are highly critical of dogmatic religious practice and blind faith and they are intensely concerned with the nature of the human soul and human spirituality.

That being said, they can be easily read as entertaining and immersive literature. Reading the Chronicles of Narnia didn't make me into a devout Christian. My father read Narnia to me originally when I was about 6 from start to finish and I re-read them when I was about 10. Neither time did the reading have any impact on my spirituality. Likewise, kids who enjoyed The Golden Compass aren't going to suddenly become heretics simply by reading His Dark Materials.

Now...it might make them ask difficult questions about their parents' faith and their faith, but I think we'd all agree that books that make you think and ask those questions are exactly how we define good literature. For people whose faith is blind and weak, I guess I can see the concern. For people who understand their faith and seek to help others understand it, there's nothing to worry about. I suppose all the people bitching about this fall into the first category, and there's not much to do about them in any situation anyway.