Is pullman just confused?

[Marian]

My big problem with Pullman is that his views are contradictory. Pullman basically asserts that there is nothing after life so you better not waste your time on earth worrying about it. But he also suggests that when we die we are a part of everything and that that everything has a conciousness. Isn't that what all religions fundamentally believe? That we are all a part of God, all connected? I think this man is confused and it leads to a confusing end to his books.

[Gabe495]

He does not say that there is nothing after life. His book even states that there is life after death. Also he is not against religion, just organized religion taking power.

[Marian]

That is what I thought while reading the first book. But, at the end of the third he makes it clear that you have to value the life you have before it's over. Wikipedia the man, it's not just organized religion he doesn't believe in.

[Luke]

true marian, but these books are more of a statement against organized religion than anything else.

[Yasi]

I think he does believe in life after death, you become part of everything. And besides in the book you DO have to worry about life on earth so to make the earth a better place for others and bring in more Dust.

[Lucas]

Let's not beat around the bush. Pullman is absolutely pummeling christianity in this trilogy.

Now that that is out of the way, I will try and relieve your confusion marion.

You answered part of it already: "you have to value the life you have before it's over". This is the first key, that we value THIS part of our existence as it is a great conscious part. This does not negate other parts of existence, pullman is very careful not to do that. He even presents the reader with a "hell". What is so wonderful about his "hell" is his belief that it is a christian construction, and his liberation of it through the story.

He frees the souls from christianity's bondage, and allows them to flow out into existence itself. This is the duality of being and non-being, a concept rooted in the ancient text that plays so prominent a role in the third book: the I Ching.

Pullman is suggesting that Christianity is encapsulating our souls, keeping them from transmuting into the "dust" and in turn stunting the existence and non-existence of humankind.

hope this helps!

[Celia]

i think that the golden compass is not non-religion, but the subtle knife gets a little weird w/the angels & i don't get how philip pullman puts angels and refers to lyra as being "Eve" if he doesn't believe in the bible. and in the amber spyglass, the metratron is an evil angel posing as god, & wat is kinda weird, (no offense) is that there are 2 boy angels that r lovers. no offense 2 anyone, but if phillip doesn't wanna b sued 4 weirdness, wats the point in having gay angels? and also, wen marisa coulter goes 2 see the metratron, she has 2 strip! i mean, y, exactly??!! its just sorta weird & im super nervous 4 the movies. everyone knows i luv his dark materials, & wen they c sick parts in the movie, they r gonna think im weird. lets hope they water down the movie A LOT. I think philip shoulda TOTALLY watered it down, but anyway, i think his work is genious and i LUV the books! but i kinda hate em 2. ya, phillip IS SUPER confused. and i think,since the characters & author is athiest,it could lead them 2 atheism. (im super sorry if anyone hates me 4 posting this message!! but its a free country. -_-

[Coral]

You don't get sued for weirdness, no matter what you write. And it is unclear what kind of love his angels felt; it may just have been a very deep, platonic kind of love. Since he explicitly states that they don't have flesh or senses in the way we do, they obviously didn't physically consummate their love. (And this lack of physicality is part of why Metatron fell for Marisa's trick, as that section of the book explained.)

Further, it is a pretty common literary technique to use Christianity as a kind of shorthand, to explain things without ever really having to explain them; it is assumed that most of us participating in Western culture understand the symbols and stories presented in the Bible, so they are a convenient tool for an author to use, whether or not he believes in them (or wants his readers to). He could have just made up a religion--and wasted a lot of space explaining its ins and outs to us--but using Christianity as the basis for the religion in the book allowed him to get things across to us quickly and provided a second (very intentional) layer of meaning. It was a good choice, precisely because he does not believe.

I don't think that Philip Pullman would be bothered if anyone reading his book chose to be atheist because of it, but I also think that's highly unlikely to happen. It's a work of fiction, after all, and the argument isn't against belief in god, so much as belief in organized religion (which we can all agree has led to some evil things, in the past, as well as good).

[Lucas]

finally, words of reason, thanks coral.

I think it is important to note though the misuse of atheism in our common lexicon. It literally means no-god. But does not necessarily mean no-religion, or no-existential dilemma solved by the existence of an essential beingness/nothingness.

What the hell am i getting at? Pullman, in these books, is proposing an idea that is ubiquitous in the far east - that being and nothingness are part of the great expansive fabric. That there is an interwoven energy and life-force, but that it is not in the form of a man, or angel or tangible shape. The thesis of these books is VERY religious by this reasoning. It is just not "theist".
A beautiful example from the third book is the ghosts. His concept is that christianity has held the "being" portion of our selves after death captive. When Lyra and Will cut them out of "hell" they could be resorbed into the great fabric, they no longer have being and flow out into full nothingness, and so disappear from the tangible plane.
again, this is not a-religious, as it requires faith, and the belief in untestable truth. It is just not about a GOD.

my take: the sooner we all get over the idea of a human, or any tangible God, the better we all will be for it.

[Vanessa]

It's very interesting that we have some people discussing this and not arguing about it.

I'm 14, and I read the series two years ago. I personally think that the first two of his books are very much ambiguous in the belief scheme unless one looks really hard; it's only once you get to the third book that it starts seriously mentioning angels and that sort of thing. However, he is using them to ask the questions
Is there a God?
If there is, would he age?
Has He been around for so long that he is so crippled by age that he no longer has any free will and needs to have another run the universe in his stead?

I think these are very valid questions, I have asked them myself several times. It is my belief that his invented universe is one that is like the present, only with more stark contrast between good and evil, right and wrong, life and death, love and hate. The way he portrays life after death is interesting, too, because nobody really knows what happens. This is just his idea of what may happen to our ghosts when they can no longer remain inside our bodies. Whether he is trying to make a point or not, I don't know, but I do know that I will continue to read them, even while others of my religion are poo-pooing them.

[Erica]

I don't see what all the fuss is about with Pullman writing about there not being the God we learned about. There are plenty of people who don't believe in the things that you learn in mass. What I don't get is when Mary Malone decided not to be a nun why she decided that God didn't exist. I mean you don't have to be a a nun to believe in God. Also Pullman never really said that there was no life, no happiness, just Hell when you die. When he wrote that you have to value your life before its over he just meant live it to the fullest, make it count, because weather you end up in heaven or Hell you wanna remember your life when you were alive. Also if you can recall the Angels were jealous of there skin so It's also saying don't take advantage of what you have, because if you loose it, there's no second chance.
Oh and Celia, true Marisa Coulter does have her clothes off she didn't really take them off herself, but Metatron did to fully examine her.

[Siobhan]

if hes confussed, hes confused in a very good
way