And yet, the new Daily Show website fails me again.

[queen_of_kithia]

I know, because I looked it up in my journal, that on April 26th, 2005 the Daily Show reported something that Bill Donahue of the so-called "Catholic League" said that made me angry, but I can't remember what it was, and thedailyshow.com can't (or won't) locate any videos from that date (nor does searching under the term "bill donahue" bring up

Comments

[the_red_i]

As someone who read and enjoyed the books enormously, I wouldn't argue that the books are for or even against christianity.

The subject the books deal with (or at least what I thought they dealt with) is the narrow mindedness and bigotry that can come from organized religion, not religion in general.

Yes, there is a bit about killing god (paticularly in The Amber Spyglass, not so much the Golden Compass. but I always had assumed (perhapes mistakenly) that bit was more or less symbolic, rather than Pullman saying "Yes! Killing an omnipotent God is a good thing! For he is undeniably evil!"

I would probably recomend reading the books first before seeing the movie, as it seems that, even though the movie was number one it's opening weekend, it still doesn't look like it's going to make much of a profit (27 million is paltry considering how much it probably cost to make), so the sequals may not be forthcoming.

Jeremy

[queen_of_kithia]

Oh, I guess I cut the part where I said that the Argus article said that the books were all checked out of the Siouxland libraries with a long waiting list, so I couldn't read them now unless I bought them, which I don't want to do because, aside from the fact that I'm not sure I'll like them, I don't want, nor can I really afford, to buy stuff for myself this time of year

[eofs]

I've not quite finished Spyglass yet, but I would say that thus far it's very much anti-ChurchwithabigC rather than anti-religion. And it's only anti-Church if said Church is all-powerful, totalitarian and puts its own interests above those of its people. And frankly every person I see crying about how this film is anti-religion I want to ask them if that is how they see their church. I know that there are some readings though which even go so far as to say that it is pro-spiritual and pro-... having a good relationship with your god? Dunno, hard to say. Especially without having read the ending yet. But certainly one argument I've seen is that it is about the importance of free will. And apparently doing stuff God likes out of free will is better regarded by him than doing it out of fear? I dunno, I'm no theological scholar. But that sounded like a convincing argument to me - partly because that's the objection I've always had to a lot of organised religion

[queen_of_kithia]

Yeah, I pretty much see eye-to-eye with you on this. From what I have read about the books they seemed to be more anti-authoritarianism and anti-corruption than anti-Church or anti-Christian. I cut out the part where I quoted the Augustana professor in that Argus Leader article where he said (now I'm paraphrasing) "the Church in the books has very little resemblance to the Church I belong to and worship in", and from what I've seen and read of it, that's how I feel too